an into the modern era. His ministry of reform by which a
peasant-proprietary was established, and municipal institutions
created, lasted only from September 1807 to November 1808.]

X

On balance it seems that the endowments of the German people work out
as follows:--

High qualities of intellect and heart. Ethics and mentality normal.
Originative will-power and independent activity, weak.

We give our devotion freely, and the heart rules in action. Our
feelings are genuine and powerful. We have courage and endurance. Led
by sentiment rather than by inspiration. We create no forms, are
self-forgetful, seek no responsibility, obey rather than rule. In
obedience we know no limit, and never question what is imposed upon
us.

Of its own accord the German people would never have adopted an ideal
of force. It was imposed on us by the idolaters of the great
war-machine and those who gained by it; even Bismarck did not share
it.

We are not competent to form an ideal of civilization, for the sense
of unity, will to leadership, and formative energy are lacking to us.
We have no political mission for the arrangement of other people's
affairs, for we cannot arrange our own; we do not lead a full life,
and are politically unripe.

We are endowed as no other people is for a mission of the spirit. Such
a mission was ours till a century ago; we renounced it, because
through political slackness of will-power we fell out of step; we did
not keep pace with the other nations in internal political
development, and, instead, devoted ourselves to the most far-reaching
developments of mechanism and to their counterpart in bids for power.
It was Faust, lured away from his true path, cast off by the
Earth-Spirit, astray among witches, brawlers and alchemists.

But the Faust-soul of Germany is not dead. Of all peoples on the earth
we alone have never ceased to struggle with ourselves. And not with
ourselves alone, but with our daemon, our God. We still hear within
ourselves the All, we still expand in every breath of creation. We
understand the language of things, of men and of peoples. We measure
everything by itself, not by us; we do not seek our own will, but the
truth. We are all alike and yet all different; each of us is a
wanderer, a brooder, a seeker. Things of the spirit are taken
seriously with us; we do not make them serve our lives, we serve them
with ours.

"And you dare to say this, in the face of all the bruta