He was made the apostle of brute force, a sort of Messiah of the "struggle for life." Moreover, he was soon put one side and Gobineau was revived. He also, who if he did not have genius had wit, would have been surprised and hardly flattered perhaps by the rôle which they made him play. The dolichocephalic (long-skulled) blonde whom he celebrated was not exactly the one whom we are now judging by his works, but at least he proclaimed the superiority of the German race.
His doctrine was the centre around which were gathered a complete ensemble of dogmas and of very diverse theories, whose connected thread it is not easy to discover when it is searched for logically, but appears quite distinctly when not reason, but reasons, are demanded. The reasons are found in the need of justifying in theory the economic and military imperialism, born as we have seen from conditions of fact and from very practical motives.
I do not pretend that it was calculated, nor that the optimates made express requisition of the naturalists, economists, and historians and sociologists and moralists to provide an imperialistic philosophy for the use of adult and normal dolichocephalous blondes. But there certainly was a coincidence. It may have been due to the influence of what is called a milieu ambiant, that of the commercial and military party. The authors of the doctrine lived in a special atmosphere. Their intellect was there formed—or deformed—their work consisted in gathering facts, inventing reasonings, elaborating formulas, so as to subject natural science, history and morality to the service of that keen will for hegemony which was in Germany the common characteristic and was the connecting link between the ancient and the new directing class.
To convince one that this is so, it is enough to arrange the works of the pan-Germanists in a series passing from the simplest to the most complicated. The dates are of no importance. We might put at one of the extremes the works of the Prussian General, von Bernhardi, and at the other the gigantic lucubration of a famous pan-German zealot, a neophite, a convert, almost a deserter, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
Prof. Millioud examines at some length and acutely the tendencies and teachings of von Bernhardi, now familiar to American readers, sums up the work of the philosophers of minor rank and turns to Mr. Chamberlain.
With Mr. Chamberlain the thesis of vital competition, the morality of force, the judgment of history against little nations, the civilizing mission imposed upon greater Germany by its very greatness, by its economic, scientific and artistic superiority, everything tends to the glorification of the German, to his duty to govern the whole world which he feels so imperatively and which he accepts with such a noble simplicity. His work is not easily summarized, not only because it counts 1,379 pages and two appendices, but because all is in everything, and everything in the universe is also in Mr. Chamberlain's book. And the German has made everything. Not indeed the world; that he has only remade and is about to remake. But he has a way of remaking so creative that one might say that without him the Creator Himself would be a bit embarrassed. He has gathered to himself alone the heritage of Greece and Rome as far as it was worth anything. From the year 1200 to the year 1800 he founded, ripened, and saved a new civilization several times over. The mother of our sciences and our arts, Italy, is Germanic; the great architecture of the Middle Ages is Germanic; the true interpretation of Christianity, the true conception of art, the true social economy, the love of nature, the sense of individuality, the exploration of the world and of the soul, the great reawakenings of conscience, all the great flashes of thought are Germanic; everything is Germanic, except you and me, perhaps; so much the worse for me and so much the worse for you. After this book, the success of which has been prodigious, it would truly seem that there is nothing more to say. Germanic thought has appropriated the universe to itself. It only remained for the German sword to complete the work. It is drawn!
I have tried to describe the modifications, or rather the successive additions, by which the elementary themes disclosing economic, political, and military appetites in the directing class have been disguised as theories of biology, history, political economy, sociology, and morality. It would take another study or another article to show how science was perverted to such ends. The severity of methods, rigor in the determination of facts, precision in reasoning, prudence in generalization, serene impartiality and objectivity in verification, in a word the scientific spirit, cannot be bent to so many pleasant compromises without sacrificing a great part of its dignity and its title to respect.
This has been a singular and melancholy event for those of us who have been raised in respect for German science and in admiration for its methods, as well as for its discoveries. Certainly, from Liebig to Roentgen and to Behring, from Kant to Wundt, Germany has counted many distinguished pioneers. In the matter of fecund originality, however, and creative inspiration, Italy and France have always equaled, if not surpassed, her. She has had no Marconi, no Pasteur or Poincaré, no Carrel.
What we have received from her so long that it has become almost a matter of instinct is less dazzling flashes than an equal and constant light. And the savants, the university men who bring to us anthropological romances, history stuffed with legends and personal prejudices, sociology constructed in contempt of the facts!
In these later days we have seen all these joining under the guidance of their most illustrious members to address the civilized nations in an appeal in which by virtue of their quality as savants they undertook to pronounce upon facts which they don't understand, to deny those which they cannot help understanding, and solemnly to declare that it is not true that Germany has violated the neutrality of the territory of Belgium. For proof of this, nothing but their word of honor. Do they take us for those young gentlemen who said to Monge, "Professor, give us your word of honor that this theorem is true and we will excuse you from the demonstration of it"?