spirit is not wanting even in the most modern democracy. The
historians of Germany have shown us to what an extent the theory of
the divinity of state and its divine mission may be intermingled with
practical politics and have helped to bring to light the psychology of
this movement in history.

Several writers, but especially Le Bon (42), have written about the
relation of mysticism to war. Le Bon said indeed that the main causes
of war, including the most recent one, are mystical causes. By
mysticism he means unconscious factors which are religious in quality
and which contain a race ideal which is both powerful and irrational.
German mysticism appears to have attracted much attention during the
years of the war. Germany has presented the picture, we are told, of
a people becoming dangerous by couching national ambition and honor in
terms of religion. This mysticism of the German contains a powerful
belief in race superiority, and in the supremacy of the culture of
their own nation, beliefs which have the clear marks of mysticism
about them. The traces of the theory of divine origin still cling to
them. Boutroux (13) says the Prussian State is a synthesis of the
divine and the human. Another writer observes that the Germans believe
in the altogether unique and quasi-divine excellence of the German
race, and of Germanism, and that the Germans have a new religion which
they believe in spreading by the sword. Some see in Germany a serious
demand for the revival of the religion of Odin and Thor, the religion
of conflict of primeval forces, and of the triumph of might. Literary
expressions of this religion are certainly to be found, and it may
fairly be maintained that Germany has never become Christianized to
the extent that most modern nations have.

That mysticism has been a large factor in the war spirit of the
Germans in the late war can hardly be doubted, or at least that a
religious element of some kind has played a great part in it. The war
began as Germany's holy war. A cult of State and of self-worship are
involved in it. If not, innumerable expressions of Germany's cause
among German writers are simply literary exaggerations. The Germans
have believed that they are God's chosen people, that they represent
God, and since the German civilization grew up in antagonism to the
Graeco-Roman civilization, God must have adopted the one and discarded
the other. One German writer says that we must eliminate from our
bel