SOCIAL HEREDITY 297 



the chief conception underlying all the lectures of 

 the teacher who above all others expressed the soul 

 of Germany was that which drew the rising genera- 

 tion of young German students to Treitschke. It 

 was expressed in the saying that the most precious 

 natural possession that a people can hold is its 

 idealism, 1 and in the sustained assertion, that any 

 aim that a living people aspires to, that aim it 

 will infallibly attain.* 



It was in this way that Japan achieved the 

 greatest miracle in modern civilization by re-creating 

 herself, and in a few decades transforming herself 

 into a surprising vehicle of Power. It was in this 

 manner that modern Germany astonished humanity 

 by transforming herself within two generations 

 into a potentiality for good or evil which eclipsed 

 that of ancient Rome. Only through the character 

 of her idealism did Germany fail to reach the world 

 goal at which she aimed. The leaders who imposed 

 the mechanism of Power on her missed the chief 

 knowledge of the law of Power in civilization, namely, 

 that the winning type of Power rests on the prin- 

 ciples which subordinate us to the universal. If 

 her leaders had grasped this central fact of human 

 evolution there is no dream that the German peoples 



1 Essay on Freedom, by Heinrich von Treitschke. 

 The Life of Treitschke, by Adolf Hausrath. 



