"Certainly; that is what writings are for."
"Good! And if now a man, or a people, has a system or a culture which has no connection with the past, with no man and no people who have gone before, what is he?"
"No inheritor."
"I did not expect that answer, but I accept it; good! Then is a people, that invents no culture, in connection with humanity, or in a condition of isolation?"
"Of isolation."
"This is the way it stands, then. We know that we are in the centre, or rather in the advancing front, of a progressive civilization, because we have received an inheritance from the Past, from Persians, Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and we transmit it. The Turks and Chinese, who are not able to do this, stand by themselves and so decline. It is not pride which causes us Germans to consider ourselves in the front rank of civilization, for there is no nation that takes up more fully into itself, and carries on farther, the work of humanity than the German, or, we will say, the Germanic, for your father-land is also included."
"Bravo! bravo!" cried Clodwig, as they all rose. Clodwig went to Sonnenkamp and said,—
"Never was a recommendation better justified than mine of the Captain to you; and you are in the right, Herr Sonnenkamp. I have learned something,—'Help yourself' is a grand new principle: it is not a moral principle, but a preceptive formula. See how our friend teaches your son pre-eminently to help himself: this is the new Socratic method."
Eric and Roland had become now the central objects of the company; and the Prince, coming up to Eric and shaking hands with him, said,—
"You are really a teacher!"