54 Social Environment 



of a later period. In the first place, political 

 unity was achieved about the aggressive mili- 

 tary organization of Prussia, and, in the second 

 place, the remarkable industrial expansion of 

 Germany brought inevitable clashing with the 

 interests of other nations. So the internation- 

 alism of Kant became an empty figure, while 

 his concept of duty to a moral ideal became 

 localized in the form of obedience to the 

 Hohenzollerns. This popularization of the 

 divine-rights idea was a symptom of extreme 

 nationalism — a stage in social evolution that 

 had been lived through in England and France, 

 where it had been succeeded in the popular 

 imagination by the sway of majorities. Thus 

 it came about that the evolutionary philosophy 

 in Germany received an interpretation in 

 which the state figured more strikingly as the 

 unit than did the individual. The completed 

 philosophy of history as an evolutionary strug- 

 gle between races and nations was elaborated 

 into a sociology by Ratzenhofer and Gumplo- 

 wicz, and was reflected and popularized by 

 such men as Treitzschke and Bernhardi. This 

 philosophy saw in war what English thought 

 had seen in business competition for property; 

 namely, the necessary, predestined means of 



