n the one
side, and the character of a people on the other, is still unexplored
and very obscure, although we possess a science which calls itself by
the quite unjustified name of national psychology.

While on one side we have rarely made any serious study of national
characteristics, but have confused them with achievements of culture
and habits of life that mostly proceeded from a thin upper stratum
alone, on the other we have as a rule tacitly set down individual
endowment (with a strong emphasis on our own) as illustrations of
national character. In this respect, too, we showed that laxity in
proving what we wanted to prove which abounds everywhere from the
point where calculation with things weighable and measurable leaves
off, and judgment begins. We think it an established fact--in
accordance with just this arbitrary test of genius--that genius
belongs _par excellence_ to the so-called blonde blue-eyed races of
the earth. The fact that among the score or two of geniuses of all
ages who have been determining forces in the world it is hardly
possible to find a single example of this blue-blonde race, but they
can be proved to have been almost all dark, did not affect the
question. On the other hand the English, whose influence on culture
has been surpassed by none, had their genius-forming power, in which
they are actually deficient, seriously over-estimated. It was the
reverse with the Jews. The fact that in spite of their small numbers
they have produced more of world-moving genius than all other nations
put together, and that from them has proceeded the whole
transcendental ethics of the Western world, has not prevented their
being pronounced wholly incapable of creative endowment.

We shall put aside all this rubbish and for the present decline to go
into theoretic questions. Great individual endowments are related to
national character--to the character of the mind, not that of the
will, which must be considered apart--as the blossom to the plant or
the crystal to the mother-solution; to determine the one from the
other needs something more than a mechanical generalization. There is
no such thing as a "race of thinkers and poets." This, however, we can
say: that a people which begets great musicians, poets and
philosophers is one which devotes itself to moods and to visions,
while another, as for instance the Latin group, which creates forms
and standards, is one that at the cost of mood and vision, incarna