Why has German science, justly renowned for its exactness, and often accused because of its heaviness, hurled itself into this whirlpool, in order to rise again, dripping with foul water, and with its hands full of prospectuses for the eternal freeing of the world from evil? Well, one can have too much of a good thing. The scientific spirit can be driven to excess. Science has done so much for us that it was easy to believe that it could accomplish everything. Science and its disciples suddenly proposed to solve all the problems of life; and every one with a project was compelled to give out his method for science to decide upon. Your German, as, a rule, has more adaptability for theoretical learning than for practical action. Into his head everything penetrates, and in his head he accomplishes everything. Other people do much with their five senses and ten fingers without their minds giving much attention to it. We have more learning than action; more criticism than taste; we do better when we work with circumspection than when we attempt to improvise. When, therefore, in the space of a few years, we had conquered two powerful states in war and in diplomacy, and the world asked whence we had taken the means, we reflected upon the secret of our success, and believed that we had found the correct answer in this: “The school-teacher has won the battle of Sadowa!” In all probability it was a school teacher who invented this saying, for fecit cui prodest. Already has Lasker warned us of the folly of this dictum. Nothing can be less acquired in school than genius, and the decisive turn toward greatness which Germany has accomplished was given by the genius of the great men who in the right moment took its destiny into their hands. Statesmanship and war are two arts, not two sciences. To trace the secret of the power of the commander is not vouchsafed us; but as regards the political side of the question, it is certain that no German was ever less of a pedagogue than the imperial chancellor.
We might almost ask how a man who is so exactly the opposite of a school-teacher could be born in Germany. Germany has at length broken through the chain which so long held it prostrate, just because it found a statesman who was so entirely differently constituted from all the rest. For those who desire to make nature and destiny democratic by teaching that no one is irreplaceable this fact is unwelcome; but nothing is more aristocratic than nature and destiny.
But as the schoolmaster carried off and appropriated the laurels of 1866, these of 1870 were awarded to him without question; and when, in the German Empire which he was supposed to have founded, a breach showed itself here and there, who should be called upon to fill it but he? The question was seriously proposed whether society should not be reconstructed from the core. And the schoolmaster undertook to reply.
The turn which public life has thereby taken is of a very dangerous character. If we do not soon turn away from this overrating of the school we shall destroy the whole of German life. By imposing upon science tasks that do not belong to her we would destroy life through science, and science through life, and that which was Germany’s pride and safeguard, her learning and knowledge, would become a burden and a curse.
Science and life have constantly to learn from each other. In an exchange of their riches is to be found their salvation, not in the domination of the one over the other. The much-praised student-life itself does its part in imbuing the student with the inclination for an isolated existence. Many remain students all their lives, and a love for the practical tasks of life is not thereby fostered. The consciousness of high scientific attainments gives a degree of self-confidence which is easily carried too far when applied to worldly affairs. To this temptation more than one succumbed when he was told that it was his task to reconstruct the social structure. The cry was that the whole existing order of things had become “bankrupt.” By what rules, then, was the new order to be established? These were sought and ranged, as the expression went, in a scientific way. The first of these rules is: “The weak person must be protected against the strong.” How much can be brought under this formula! We can pledge ourselves with its aid to work out every communistic programme to the smallest details. If we only once lose the sense of discrimination between theoretical knowledge and practice, no limit can be placed upon self-confidence. Science applied to dogs and frogs is one thing, but it would not do to apply the same rules to men. For the communists to assume for their method of regulating society by scientific means the title of a historical school is indeed a piece of communism!
How was it possible that a number of scholars, to whom no one can deny ability and purity of intentions, could permit themselves to be led on to such extravagances? The overrated conception of the avocation of the teacher is not sufficient to explain this. Another exaggeration had to combine with this: the exaggerated conception of the avocation of the state. Teaching was to prescribe all, the state to execute all.
In regard to the state we have fallen from one extreme to the other. After it had sunk to the level of a caricature during our political degeneracy, the recognition of its high vocation overcame us, and we made an omniscient and omnipotent deity of it. When we say “state” philosophy takes a hand in the matter, and immediately the conception of absoluteness and divinity is apparent—the “state” becomes a god in whom we can place unlimited confidence and from whom we can expect everything. The truth that after all the “state” is only a term for a body of individual ministers or legislators has been forgotten. We make a secret idol of the state. To look behind the curtain is forbidden. But the less the state benefits one, just so much the more does he expect and demand from it. He beats his idol in order to compel it to work miracles. As Herbert Spencer says, it is the fashion to scold the government in one breath for its awkwardness in the most trifling matters, and in the next to demand from it the solution of the most difficult problems. Statecraft, at its best, is only the work of individuals; it must lose in fineness in proportion to the number of those who participate in it. There is a thousand times more wisdom in hero-worship than in the adoration of the intangible collective being to which, under the name of the state, we do divine honors only because we cannot see it. A parliament can be observed at its work; even ministers appear in flesh and blood as parliaments do. But of a sudden parliaments and ministers end their work; the curtain falls; second act: the state! It is divine!
Curiously enough this adhesion to the collective system coincides with the time of the disappointment over this system. For the financial grief of the last few years is nothing but sorrow for the losses to which stock-companies have led. If the anonymous corporation could puzzle so many heads, it is due to the fatal charm which the apparatus of the collective system exercises. Whenever a man withdraws from the eyes of men; where in place of the individual a corporation acts, under whose name the individual is lost to view, there a curtain is drawn which excites the fancy of those without. Even those who partake of the labor inside the curtain are enshrouded by the clouds of anonymousness, and believe more in themselves as a part of the abstract whole than they would believe in themselves as individuals.
Nothing is more calculated to make intelligible the mixture of deceiving elements which lie latent in abstract authorities than the famous sixth great power, the press. How much better were it for that other abstraction, “public opinion,” if it kept in mind that it is only a man (and often what a man!) that stands behind the thought! It has been attempted to remove this cloud, and to force men to see, by compelling every one to sign his articles with his own name. But this was of no avail. The law never was enforced in its true sense. Public opinion as an abstraction feels the need of intercourse with something of a kindred nature far too deeply to be willing to miss an abstraction representing that opinion in the form of an anonymous press. It is the same with anonymous business corporations as with the press. All efforts have failed to effect a reform in the laws relative to stock-gambling by means of which the personal responsibility of the board of control of an anonymous corporation could be brought home to individuals. A piece of fiction will and must always remain here. If the lawmaker were to take upon himself the task of changing this fiction into reality the result would be the same as with the press. Those associations are the best which are most tyrannically administered, and in which the director has the least respect for his executive committee. Tant vaut l’homme tant vaut la chose! There will be no relief until the stockholder knows that in entering a company he sacrifices a part of his motive for self-sustentation.[[99]]