Let us have no doubt about it: something tremendous and unprecedented
has to be accomplished here. Does any thinking man believe that when
the social order of the world has collapsed, when a country of the
importance of Germany has lost the very basis of its existence, when
the development of centuries is broken off, its faculties and its
traditions emptied of value and repudiated--does any man really
believe that by means of certain clauses in a Constitution a few
confiscations, socializations and rises in wages, a nation of sixty
millions can be endowed with a new historical reason for existence?
Why is not the negro republic of Liberia ahead of all of us?

Our character is weak on the side of will, and our former lords say
that we are good for nothing except under strict discipline
administered by dynasts and hereditary nobles. If that is true, it is
all over with us; unless some dictator shall take pity on us and give
us a modest place among the nations with a great past and a small
future. If we are worthy of our name we must be born again of the
Spirit. Merely to conceive this is in itself an achievement for a
people; to carry it out, to embody the conception in a new order of
society, is at once a test and an achievement.

Our social ethics must take up a new position. Hitherto--stripping off
the usual rhetorical phrases--it has taken its stand on two effective
and really driving principles, those of Duty and of Success; two
side-views of Individualism. All else, including love of one's
neighbour, sense of solidarity, faith, spiritual cultivation, feeling
for Nature, was (apart from a few lofty spirits) merely subsidiary;
means to an end, convention or falsehood. There were few whose
careers were not influenced by these estimates; the majority of the
upper classes was wholly under their dominion.

The two goals of our wishes, to have something and to be something,
were expressed by the whole outward aspect of society. The great
object was not to be counted as a Tom, Dick or Harry, one who had
less, or was less, than others. There were grades of being, grades of
human being: it was possible to be something, to be much, to be
little, or to be nothing at all. From the white collar to the pearl
necklace, from the good nursery to the saloon car, from the
watch-ribbon to the sword-belt, from the place at the ordinary to the
title of Excellency, everything was a proof of what one had, or was,
or believed oneself to