Chamberlain's book. And
the German has made everything. Not indeed the world; that he has only
remade and is about to remake. But he has a way of remaking so creative
that one might say that without him the Creator Himself would be a bit
embarrassed. He has gathered to himself alone the heritage of Greece and
Rome as far as it was worth anything. From the year 1200 to the year
1800 he founded, ripened, and saved a new civilization several times
over. The mother of our sciences and our arts, Italy, is Germanic; the
great architecture of the Middle Ages is Germanic; the true
interpretation of Christianity, the true conception of art, the true
social economy, the love of nature, the sense of individuality, the
exploration of the world and of the soul, the great reawakenings of
conscience, all the great flashes of thought are Germanic; everything is
Germanic, except you and me, perhaps; so much the worse for me and so
much the worse for you. After this book, the success of which has been
prodigious, it would truly seem that there is nothing more to say.
Germanic thought has appropriated the universe to itself. It only
remained for the German sword to complete the work. It is drawn!
I have tried to describe the modifications, or rather the successive
additions, by which the elementary themes disclosing economic,
political, and military appetites in the directing class have been
disguised as theories of biology, history, political economy, sociology,
and morality.
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