GERMAN PHILOSOPHY IN BRINGING ABOUT THE GREAT WAR. 125 



himself) could not be expected to ascertain the truth of a 

 number of details, put them together and draw conclusions ; 

 such geniuses have something better to do than to ascertain 

 anything — they have to be and signify something new, and present 

 new values. The gulf between knowledge and ability is, he 

 says, greater and more mysterious than is ordinarily supposed ; 

 the man of ability on a great scale, the creator, must possibly 

 be ignorant, whereas for scientific discoveries such as Darwin's 

 a certain narrowness, dryness, and industrious carefulness, in 

 short something English, may well be of use. 



This may be so ; but though in Nietzsche's works the 

 absence of accurate study and observation is very marked, the 

 influence on his mind of the methods and results of Darwin and 

 Herbert Spencer is very apparent, the chief difference being that 

 whereas the English writers, like men of moderate ability, take 

 some trouble to ascertain the facts whereon they base their 

 generalizations, Nietzsche, like a man of genius, gets his facts 

 out of his own consciousness. The notion, however, of a history 

 of moral ideas in the animal world is certainly founded on the 

 work of the English evolutionists. 



But in the second place we are much more likely to overrate 

 than to underrate the effect exercised on human conduct by 

 speculative works, however popular. It appears to be true that 

 occasionally the young are led to take serious or even fatal 

 steps by what they read ; thus attempted suicides have been 

 justified by the teaching of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann ; 

 and the enormous sales of works by the latter, whose name in 

 England is known only by specialists in philosophy, certainly 

 indicate that in Germany there is a far greater taste for purely 

 speculative works than there is in this country ; this is a 

 difference of national idiosyncrasy which does not admit of 

 analysis. But the notion that any of these persons have by 

 their writings and teachings affected the policy of the govern- 

 ment and its bureaux cannot easily be admitted. In so 

 instructive a work as The Reflections and Reminiscences of 

 Prince Bismarck this element is left altogether out of account. 

 The saying which Macaulay quotes from Frederick the Great 

 that there was a satisfactory arrangement between the sovereign 

 and his people whereby the latter might say what they liked, 

 whereas the former might do what he liked, suits the facts so 

 far as the philosophers are concerned. It is natural enough 

 that men of ability such as Treitschke should be pressed into 

 the service of the government, if they showed with their ability 

 a readiness to defend Prussian absolutism in the first place and 



