A vigorous opposition to all the encroachments of the social democrats indicated the only right way in which the justifiable efforts of the working class could be reconciled with the continuance of the existing State and of existing society, the two pillars of all civilization and progress. This task is by no means completed. The question still is, How to win back the working class to the ideals of State and country? Willing workers must be still further protected against social democratic tyranny.
Germany, nevertheless, is in social-political respects at the head of all progress in culture. German science has held its place in the world. Germany certainly took the lead in political sciences during the last century, and in all other domains of intellectual inquiry has won a prominent position through the universality of her philosophy and her thorough and unprejudiced research into the nature of things.
The achievements of Germany in the sphere of science and literature are attested by the fact that the annual export of German books to foreign countries is, according to trustworthy estimates, twice as large as that of France, England, and America combined. It is only in the domain of the exact sciences that Germany has often been compelled to give precedence to foreign countries. German art also has failed to win a leading position. It shows, indeed, sound promise in many directions, and has produced much that is really great; but the chaos of our political conditions is, unfortunately, reflected in it. The German Empire has politically been split up into numerous parties. Not only are the social democrats and the middle class opposed, but they, again, are divided among themselves; not only are industries and agriculture bitter enemies, but the national sentiment has not yet been able to vanquish denominational antagonisms, and the historical hostility between North and South has prevented the population from growing into a completely united body.
So stands Germany to-day, torn by internal dissensions, yet full of sustained strength; threatened on all sides by dangers, compressed into narrow, unnatural limits, she still is filled with high aspirations, in her nationality, her intellectual development, in her science, industries, and trade.
And now, what paths does this history indicate to us for the future?
What duties are enforced on us by the past?
It is a question of far-reaching importance; for on the way in which the German State answers this question, depend not only our own further development, but to some extent the subsequent shaping of the history of the world.
CHAPTER IV
GERMANY'S HISTORICAL MISSION
Let us pass before our mind's eye the whole course of our historical development, and let us picture to ourselves the life-giving streams of human beings, that in every age have poured forth from the Empire of Central Europe to all parts of the globe; let us reflect what rich seeds of intellectual and moral development were sown by the German intellectual life: the proud conviction forces itself upon us with irresistible power that a high, if not the highest, importance for the entire development of the human race is ascribable to this German people.
This conviction is based on the intellectual merits of our nation, on the freedom and the universality of the German spirit, which have ever and again been shown in the course of its history. There is no nation whose thinking is at once so free from prejudice and so historical as the German, which knows how to unite so harmoniously the freedom of the intellectual and the restraint of the practical life on the path of free and natural development. The Germans have thus always been the standard-bearers of free thought, but at the same time a strong bulwark against revolutionary anarchical outbreaks. They have often been worsted in the struggle for intellectual freedom, and poured out their best heart's blood in the cause. Intellectual compulsion has sometimes ruled the Germans; revolutionary tremors have shaken the life of this people—the great peasant war in the sixteenth century, and the political attempts at revolution in the middle of the nineteenth century. But the revolutionary movement has been checked and directed into the paths of a healthy natural advancement. The inevitable need of a free intellectual self-determination has again and again disengaged itself from the inner life of the soul of the people, and broadened into world-historical importance.