When he is in lotus-eating mood, the Rubicon is really too big a thing to be crossed lightly.
When he is in his superman’s temper, the undertaking is indeed so small that it is not worth while that such as he should be bothered with it.
The Swiss, as a people, have shown in a high degree that such is the mental composition of a true mountain race. Left for six hundred years to their unbroken line of development, they show in the successive layers of the formation of their national mind the stages of the process.
They first won in the Alps, by arms, sufficient room for themselves, and set round their borders a ring-fence of impassable pikes. Then, turning to supermen, they fought the battles of others, for the sake of war, despising power, and moving untempted in the domains of kings.
In the nineteenth century, the reflective mountain spirit gained hold on them. They held war as an immoral pursuit and ceased from being mercenaries. But their contemptuous loftiness remained. Without despising their former glory they, as it were, drew into themselves and drew themselves up at the same time.
They have become the typically lotus-eating neutral nation in Europe, supermen still in a way and armed to the teeth, but with swords ever sheathed and with bayonets ever resting in the scabbard.
In their national life the Swiss practice political self-education, and would do so rather than seek the means of making their influence felt among nations. The Swiss are but a small and insignificant nation, but their history shows that, disillusioned of mere strength, they passed to the consciousness of a moral identity.
They became self-centred, and liked to keep aloof from other people’s affairs. They formed the conclusion that—
“Le monde se fait lui-même.
Il mondo va da sè;”