"I believe that all wars for culture are always fought in a small class of thinking people. For the masses, provision for material needs is really the principal thing. In the thinking class, however, there are two parties: one, consisting of the feudalists, the plutocrats, and university-bred business men, fortune-hunters, seeks for itself the privilege of exploiting others; the other consists of the idealists, who desire progress—that is, the education and freeing of the masses. Sometimes the one class, with its aristocratic philosophy of profit, wins the upper hand, sometimes the other. We do not yet know in what Hellenic or Sidonian laws the spiritual ebb and flow will find its consummation. It is certain, however, that each party uses as a means of attraction the declaration that its point of view is the more progressive and that the opposite is the losing side. The individualists, in their scorn of socialism, render the most valuable service towards fundamental and complete reaction to the aristocratic-plutocratic party of exploitation, because they spread confusion in the ranks of the idealists by discrediting their solidarity. Nevertheless, they call themselves "the Moderns," and dub the advocates of solidarity 'old fogies.' The most modern thing in the West is a vile cult of the Uebermensch (over-man) Renaissance sentimentalism and the cult of beauty in bearing—æsthetic snobism."
"All that originates with Nietzsche. The mistake, however, does not lie in the principle of individualism, which does not exclude solidarity, but, on the contrary, advances it. For the individual unquestionably attains solidarity in the very struggle towards his own perfection. The mistake lies in the æstheticism, in the basing of life on externals and on enjoyment. Connected with this is the strangest thing of all, that this resurrection of the madness of the Renaissance has not made use of art. For all that is produced is nothing but pure silliness. I have not laughed so much for years as at an entirely serious account of the contents of Mona Vanna, or at the poems which our æsthete and decadent Balmont read to me. None of those things are to be taken seriously as art. They will only confuse people through their absurdity, which could not exist if the healthy human understanding had not been brought into discredit. It is no better with you in Germany. Why is your literary product so low?"
"Who knows, count? It has already been asserted that since 1870 the gifted minds have turned to more serious and more lucrative callings than literature. But I do not believe it. The sciences show at present just as few geniuses as the arts. It seems as if there were laws of ebb and flow here, too. Sometimes a whole billow of inspired intellects is flung upon the earth, and then there is long drought. We have had no great writers since Gottfried Keller."
"Gottfried Keller? I have never heard the name before. Who was he? What did he write?"
"He was a Swiss who inherited Goethe's free outlook on life, and wrote the best German novels, full of creative art, of racy humor, and of almost uncanny knowledge of human nature. He would give you much pleasure."
"How? You say he inherits to some degree from Goethe. In that case my enthusiasm would be doubtful, for I cannot say I especially love that Goethe of yours."
"Is it possible?"
"There are some of his works I admire without reserve, which stand among the finest things that have ever been written: Hermann and Dorothea, for instance. I once knew his dedication by heart. Yet the lyrics of Heine, for instance, make a deeper impression upon me than Goethe's."
"Pardon the remark, count, but in that case your knowledge of the German language is not sufficient for you to notice the difference in quality. Heine is a virtuoso, who plays with form. With Goethe, every word breathes the deepest spiritual experience and is uttered from inward necessity."