270 MATERIAL PROGRESS 



and Chinese, and have generally been content to 

 accept morality and religion as affairs ot law or of 

 habit. The aesthetic impulses which stir southern 

 races to self-abandoning ecstasy excited in them 

 much colder feelings. Their instincts sought more 

 practical activities and have been turned to the 

 improvement of their material surroundings. 

 Death, which by other peoples has been accepted 

 as decreed by fate, has by them been met in a 

 spirit of antagonism as an evil which man should 

 show his skill by averting. Cleanliness has 

 become accepted as a gospel message, and com- 

 fort as man's most rational desire. Surroundings 

 should not only be clean : they should be pretty ; 

 and, when travelling, we may learn from the 

 cottage gardens of the poor that we are under 

 Baltic not Mediterranean influences. The strong 

 individuality of these northern peoples is mani- 

 fested in their idealization of the home, and by 

 their desire to beautify it : this feeling influences 

 them even when in distant exile : the German 

 colonies in Brazil and Chile are markedly dis- 

 tinguished by neatness of houses and house- 

 surroundings from the cheerless villages of their 

 Latin neighbours. Religion and politics are 

 regarded from a practical standpoint. Their 

 religion has not been so much concerned with 

 technicalities of belief, or mysticism of ceremonial, 

 as with the construction of churches and cathe- 

 drals, with philanthropy and social improvement. 

 Even during the dark ages of Teutonic Christianity 

 the monastic life was esteemed more as an oppor- 

 tunity for industry and good work than for the 

 religious meditation which other races have 

 accepted as its crowning merit. Protestantism 

 sets a higher value upon moral behaviour than 

 upon niceties of belief. The personal issues which 

 everywhere give politics their most exciting 



