It has already been said: The German invents almost nothing. He works upon the inventions of other people. In order to invent he would have to possess the spirit of rebellion against that which is. He is incapable of that spirit. He is a being who always accepts.
But as soon as a new discovery has been made by others the German gets hold of it. He examines it patiently. He turns and returns it this way, that way, and every way. He, as it were, criticises it. He thus succeeds in augmenting its power. Moreover, he wishes that it shall serve a practical purpose and be classified accordingly, just as he himself serves and is classified in life.
Never have the Germans opened up a great road in science. They open up only bypaths. Leibnitz and Kant joined their paths to the royal high road of Descartes. Haeckel would hardly have existed if Darwin had not existed. Koch and Behring are dependent upon the labors of Pasteur.
This second-hand science is excellent as a means of attracting mediocre minds. To work, each in his little corner, at solving some secondary question, and to believe one's self a somebody when one is hardly anybody, flatters the universal vanity. All the little provincial universities of Germany can live in the illusion that they are full of learned men—thanks to the German conception of what is learned and serious!
It is a system of regimenting in great barracks of laboratories. It is the absolute negation of the spirit of initiative of spontaneity and it is above all the negation of the spirit of protest and revolt.
If the German people had been truly civilized they would never have maintained silence before the assassination of Belgium. Even among those whose ideas are contrary to the existing political order in Germany, none has risen up against this crime admitted and proclaimed at the beginning of the war in full Parliament by the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg himself. The universal astonishment at such a silence was so great that even today the world has not recovered from it. Apart from Liebknecht the whole of German Social Democracy is dishonored: it is desired to expel the German Socialists from the International Socialist Movement. They excuse themselves; they aggravate their fault. They say:
"We should have been arrested and imprisoned." The world replies:
"Are they then afraid of dying?"
In the German Socialist Party everything has been reduced to method and organized as in the German universities and the German Army.
There were I know not how many Socialist electors; German Socialism was thought to be already triumphant and invincible. People said: "They are Germany!"