CHAPTER I

THE MODERN SPIRIT

Goethe on epochs of retrogression and progress—The intellectual transformation of Germany—The triumph of materialism—Fichte’s repudiation of world-ambitions—Effect of the French War—The modernising of the schools—Professors Paulsen and Rein quoted—Attractions of a commercial career—The cult of force—Evidence in political and economic movements and in architecture—The spirit of modern Germanism is the spirit of subdual—Romanism in German character—The German unapproachable in his command over matter—His failure in the government of spiritual forces—German worship of systems—National faults the faults of youth.

INONE OF HIS letters to Eckermann, Goethe strikes truth at a deep level when he says, “I will tell you something, and you will often find it confirmed in your later life. All epochs of retrogression and dissolution are subjective; on the contrary, all progressive epochs have an objective direction. Every resolute endeavour turns from within to the world without.”

No words could better characterise the change which has come over the land of Goethe in modern times or better describe the significance of that change. The last fifty years have witnessed the decay and end of the old “subjective” epoch of self-absorption, of concentrated, self-centred national life, and the opening and the triumph of a new “objective” era of external effort, beginning with foreign-trade ambitions and culminating in an ambitious foreign-politics. This more than anything else is the distinguishing mark of the Germany with which the world to-day has to do—the abandonment of the old national forms of life and the resolute pursuit of world-aims and a world-career, with the determination, if not to win absolute primacy amongst the nations and empires of modern civilisation, at least to dispute such primacy with any existing or potential claimant.

A consideration of the modern evolution o