GERMAN PHILOSOPHY IN BRINGING ABOUT THE GREAT WAR. 127 



place in general estimation. The theory that philosophy is 

 antagonistic to morality and religion cannot then very well be 

 separated from the name of Kant, unwilling as he would have 

 been to let that be said. His philosophy of religion when he 

 attempted something positive was excessively feeble, and 

 unworthy of the intellectual ability displayed in his chief 

 work. 



Probably, then, Mr. Smith is correct in tracing the negative 

 attitude in matters of religion which is associated with 

 Germany to the work of Kant ; the notion that the conscience 

 could be made a substitute for nature as a source of the 

 knowledge of the creator was little calculated to be 

 permanently maintained, and the Kantian metaphysics were 

 supposed to have excluded the possibility of employing the old 

 argument from the order of nature. In a way, then, the 

 doctrines of Nietzsche are traceable to Kant, but whereas 

 Nietzsche supposed that morality would collapse with the fall 

 of religion, Kant supposed the basis of morality to be so firm 

 that religion, and to some extent Christianity, could be built 

 upon it. 



We have, as has been seen, the high authority of Treitschke 

 for the statement that the Prussian autocracy has steadily 

 grown since the establishment of the German Empire ; for the 

 foreign policy of that empire the Prussian autocrat is directly 

 responsible. Further, it is a maxim of Oriental statecraft, 

 which if it knows little of other forms of government knows 

 much about autocracies, that subjects are of the religion of their 

 kings; that right and wrong have in such cases for the 

 subjects the values which the autocrat assigns the words. The 

 glorification of all sorts of outrages which has marked the 

 German conduct of the war must also be laid to the Kaiser's 

 charge. And it is noteworthy that the morality of Nietzsche 

 himself would apparently have been scandalized by one char- 

 acteristic of German foreign policy : this philosopher holds that 

 his superman will scorn to lie. We have seen that the political 

 theories of Treitschke exclude the erection of a world-empire ; 

 he holds such a notion to be chimerical, and bases his belief in 

 the persistence of war on the fact that rival powers must 

 always exist simultaneously, with conflicting interests incapable 

 of being always harmonized by peaceful methods ; and 

 Nietzsche apparently wished nationality to be merged not in 

 Germanism but in Europeanism, wherein the culture not of 

 Germany but of France should be dominant. The idea then to 

 which these philosophers give no countenance cannot be laid to 



