German civilization has developed in antagonism with the Greco-Roman civilization. To adopt the former was on the part of God to reject the latter. Therefore German consciousness, realized without hindrance in all its force, is but the Divine consciousness. Deutschtum = God and God = Deutschtum. In practice it is enough that an idea is authentically German in order that we may and must conclude that it is true, that it is just, and that it ought to prevail.
What are the essential dogmas of this truth, which is German because it is true and which is true because it is German? German metaphysicians explain that to us more clearly than is usual by thought. The first quality of this truth is that it is in opposition to what classic or Greco-Latin thought would recognize as true. The latter has sought to discover what in man is essentially human, to render man superior to other beings, and to substitute more and more the superior elements for the inferior elements in human life—reason for blind impulse, justice for force, good for wickedness. It has undertaken to create in the world a moral force capable of controlling and humanizing material forces. To this doctrine, which rests upon man as its centre and which was essentially human, German thought opposes itself as the infinite opposes the finite, the absolute the relative, the whole the part. The disciples of the Greeks had at their disposition no light except that of human reason; the German genius possesses a transcendent reason which pierces the mysteries of the absolute, of the Divine. What would light be without the shadow from which it is detached? How could the ego exist if there was not somewhere a non ego to which it is opposed? Evil is not less indispensable than good in the transcendent symphony of the whole.
There is something more. It may be a satisfaction for a Greco-Latin, impelled by his mediocre logic to say that good is good, evil is evil, but these simple formulas are contrary to the truth per se. Good by itself is absolutely impotent to realize itself. It is only an idea, an abstraction. The power and faculty of creation belong to evil alone. So that if good is to be realized it can only be by means of evil, and by means of evil left entirely to itself. God could not exist if He were not created by the devil, and thus, in a sense, evil is good and good is bad. Evil is good because it creates. Good is bad because it is impotent. The supreme and true divine law is just this: That evil left to itself, evil as evil, gives birth to good, which, by itself, would never be able to advance from the ideal to the real. "I am," said Mephistopheles, "part of that force which always wishes evil and always creates the good." Such is the divine order. He who undertakes to do good by good will only do evil. It is only in unchaining the power of evil that one has a chance to realize any good.
From these metaphysical principles questions raised by the idea of civilization receive most remarkable solutions.
The Essence of Civilization.
What is civilization in the German and true sense of the word?
Nations in general, especially the Latin nations, put the essence of civilization in the moral element of human life, in the softening of human manners. To those who understand human culture in this way the Germans will apply the words of Ibsen's Brand, "You wish to do great things but you lack energy. You expect success from mildness and goodness." According to the German thought, mildness and goodness are only weakness and impotence. Force alone is strong and force par excellence is science, which puts at our disposal the powers of nature and indefinitely multiplies our strength. Science, then, should be the principal object of our efforts. From science and from the culture of scientific intelligence there will necessarily result, by the effect of Divine grace, the progress of the will and of the conscience which is called moral progress. It is in this sense that Bismarck said, "Imagination and sentiment are to science and intelligence what the tares are to the wheat. The tares threaten to stifle the wheat; that is why they are cut down and burned." True civilization is a virile education, aiming at force and implying force. A civilization which under pretext of humanity and of courtesy enervates and softens man is fit only for women and for slaves.
Is that to say that the notion of right which men invoke against force has in reality no meaning, and that a highly civilized people would disregard it? We must clearly understand the relation which exists between the notion of right and the notion of force. Force is not the right. All existing forces do not have an equal right to exist; mediocre forces in reality have but a feeble share in the Divine force; but in proportion as a force becomes greater it is more noble. A universally victorious and all-powerful force would be identical with Divine force and should, therefore, be obeyed and honored in the same degree. Justice and force, moreover, belong to two different worlds—the natural and the spiritual. The former is the phenomenon and symbol of the latter. We live in a world of symbols; and so preponderant force is for us the visible and practical equivalent of right.
It is, then, puerile to admit the existence of a natural right inherent in individuals or in nations, and manifested in their aspirations, their powers, their sympathies, their wills. The right of peoples should be determined by a purely objective method.
Now in this sense people should be divided into Naturvölker, Halbkulturvölker, and Kulturvölker—people in the state of nature, half-cultivated people, and cultivated people. This is not all. There are people who are simply cultivated—Naturvölker—and people who are wholly cultivated—Vollkulturvölker. Now the degree of right depends on the degree of culture. As compared with the Kulturvölker the Naturvölker have no rights. They have only duties—submission, docility, obedience. And if there exists a people which deserves more than all others the title of Vollkulturvölker—completely cultured people—to this people the earth belongs and the supremacy thereof. Its mission is to bend all other peoples beneath the yoke of its omnipotence co-ordinated with its supreme culture.