1883] The State and the People 



world or at least that part which (having Teutonic 

 blood) was fitted for the ideals of Kultur. 



This doctrine involves in brief (1) the conception of the State Kultur 

 as an ideal entity existing above and beyond the people, superior 

 to all questions of right and wrong and floating in a moral 

 vacuum, the emperor being by divine right its administrator 

 and mediator; (2) the factor of Kultur, or supreme discipline, 

 whereby all personality is merged into the service of the State, 

 the individual being merely a "brick in the wall of an edifice 

 he cannot see and does not understand"; and (3) the doctrine 

 of Social Darwinism, or supreme necessity of conquest, a 

 perversion of science by which it is imagined to be the duty 

 as well as the right of a strong nation to absorb or to subdue 

 its smaller, more backward or more peaceful neighbors, wreak- 

 ing on them its own Kultur, 1 as well as subordinating them to 

 its own advantage. Ideas of this kind stood as a necessary 

 philosophical basis for the acceptance of absolutism by the 

 German mind, and Hegel and other German metaphysicians 

 were not slow in developing a complete theoretical system to 

 accord with German politics. 



Among other things, Treitschke laid stress on the 

 fact that all Germany's territorial gains for a century 

 had been "won by Prussia, and by the sword." He 

 did not, however, foresee the time when all these 

 would be lost by Prussia, and again by the sword! 

 In Hilgendorfs laboratory we held "the propa- 

 gandist," as Ranke, his eminent predecessor, called 

 him, in low esteem, and I myself never went to hear 

 him. 



One summer I also spent a little time with Dr. 

 Decio Vinciguerra, the most eminent of Italian 

 ichthyologists, then director of the Museo Civico at 

 Genoa, later of the Aquario Romano in Rome. At 



1 The elements of "Kultur" were conceived to be "Difnsi, Ordnung und 

 Kraft" "Service, order and power," the first and last resulting from an order 

 or discipline enforced from above. 



