time as it may take a
bewildered Hanoverian to turn into a Tartar. Any one who has the painful
habit of personal thought will perceive here at once the non-reciprocal
principle again. Boiled down to its bones of logic, it means simply
this: "I am a German and you are a Chinaman. Therefore, I being a
German, have a right to be a Chinaman. But you have no right to be a
Chinaman, because you are only a Chinaman." This is probably the highest
point to which the German culture has risen.

*"The Principle of Being Unprincipled."*

The principle here neglected, which may be called mutuality by those who
misunderstand and dislike the word equality, does not offer so clear a
distinction between the Prussian and the other peoples as did the first
Prussian principle of an infinite and destructive opportunism; or, in
other words, the principle of being unprincipled. Nor upon this second
can one take up so obvious a position touching the other civilizations
or semi-civilizations of the world. Some idea of oath and bond there is
in the rudest tribes, in the darkest continents. But it might be
maintained, of the more delicate and imaginative element of reciprocity,
that a cannibal in Borneo understands it almost as little as a professor
in Berlin. A narrow and one-sided seriousness is the fault of barbarians
all over the world. This may have been the meaning, for aught I know, of
the one eye of the Cyclops; that the barbarian cannot see around things
or look at them from two points of view, and thus becomes a blind beast
and an eater of men. Certainly there can be no better summary of the
savage than this, which, as we have seen, unfits him for the duel. He is
the man who cannot love--no, nor even hate--his neighbor as himself.

But this quality in Prussia does have one effect which has reference to
the same question of the lower civilizations. It disposes once and for
all at least of the civilizing mission of Germany. Evidently the Germans
are the last people in the world to be trusted with the task. They are
as short-sighted morally as physically. What is their sophism of
"necessity" but an inability to imagine tomorrow morning? What is their
non-reciprocity but an inability to imagine, not a god or devil, but
merely another man? Are these to judge mankind? Men of two tribes in
Africa not only know that they are all men but can understand that they
are all black men. In this they are quite seriously in advance of the
intellectu