for its citizens such social conditions as will best enable them to develop their own humanity, to progress in civilisation, or-to use a word specially dear to Germansto ennoble themselves by some species of Culture. Machiavelli's defect was that he failed to realise this. He gives us the chalice, but he quite forgets the sacrament; and it is the nature of this sacrament, whether we call it 'Culture,' 'Civilisation' or 'Progress,' which gives a State whatever final value it possesses, and enables us to say that, in respect of its general character, or of any of its particular actions, it is good or bad, moral or sinful, worthy to exist or no. Thus, says Treitschke, at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, it is evident to the conscience of everybody that Prussia employed her power in an ideally moral way, for it was a way which promoted civilisation in the highest sense of the word. Austria, on the other hand, though her power may foster some sort of civilisation in Austria, sinned heinously' against the 'Spirit of History' when she imposed her yoke on the northern provinces of Italy, for its effect on Italian Culture was, not to foster, but to crush it. As for Turkey, whatever her power may be, her condition of sin is chronic; for, as her 'miserable architecture' shows, she has no Culture at all, and her very existence is a blot on the map of Europe. In a word, says Treitschke,

'a State is a moral, or else an immoral community; and, in order that its existence may be justified, it is called upon to make positive efforts for the education of the human race ; and its final end must be that a people may shape for themselves a real character in it, and by means of it.'

Now, if the political philosophy of Treitschke could be rewritten from the beginning, the first part of it, which culminates in the doctrine that the State is Power, and the second part, which aims at presenting it as a 'moral community,' might both be so revised that the implications of the one would in some rational way agree with those of the second; but, as matters stand, the second part has not only no logical connexion with the first in the way of logical sequence, but absolutely contradicts it, and can find in it no point of attachment. As regards mere formal logic, the doctrine that a State is an absolutely sovereign Power which justifies all it

does by the fact that it elects to do it, hangs together well enough, if we are willing to accept the consequences. But it is impossible to accept this contention, and yet at the same time to mitigate its consequences by contending, as Treitschke attempts to do, that these sovereign Powers are not sovereign at all; but that somewhere there is some standard which is superior to all and each, and can sentence any one of them as a sinner' if it uses its sovereign power except in certain limited ways. Not only does Treitschke fail even to suggest in definite terms what this common standard is, but in the first part of his argument he closes every logical loophole which might have left him free to argue that any such standard can exist. In that part he contends that a State is an individual thing with an individual will of its own, but that a Society is merely a name for a number of adjacent individuals, whose sole unity is in the image which they form on our mental retina. To what category, then, does the common standard belong, which he calls indifferently 'Culture,' the 'Spirit of History,' 'Real Character,' and 'Progress'? Has Culture an individual will? Is the 'Spirit of History' anything more than a name? 'Progress' perhaps may suggest a sequence of connected facts; but, as Mr Davis observes, Treitschke himself admits that progress is a movement of whose actual existence it is impossible to discover any intellectual proof.' Indeed, his whole doctrine of a moral standard for States, which is anything more than the brute power of each, finally goes to pieces in his own confession that, if it be philosophically analysed, it reduces itself to this proposition that a craving (vague and indefinable) of the individual conscience for individual perfection leads to the conclusion that humanity as a whole experiences the same craving for perfection.'

A philosophy which begins with the bald and uncompromising argument that any acts of a State are for itself moral which tend to increase its power, because each State is 'sovereign' and cannot be subject to any will but its own, and which end with the doctrine that all States are subject to the will of a 'general craving,' or a 'conclusion' that some 'general craving' exists, to which nobody can assign any definite content, is like an image with a body of iron, which, in order to make it

look human, is surmounted by a head of feathers. And this criticism of Treitschke's philosophy is, as we shall see presently, not only that which will be pronounced by the philosophical student, but is that which has been practically pronounced by the whole German people. But, before considering this aspect of the case farther, let us, in view of the fact that Treitschke was no fool, consider how, if his philosophy is really of such a crudely inconsistent kind, it could ever have been regarded and promulgated as a coherent system by himself. The answer is to be found in an observation which has been made already, that the clue to his thought lies in the circumstances of his own life.

Treitschke, says Mr Davis, remained, up to the day of his death, essentially and hopelessly provincial-'as provincial as it is possible for any native of central Europe to be.' The first political impression of which he was vividly conscious was, let it be said once more, that of the weakness of Germany as a cluster of independent States; and from this impression, confirmed by brooding observation, he gradually advanced to two practical conclusions-firstly, that Germany's sole hope for the future lay in some scheme by which these States might be united; and, secondly, that no one of them would renounce its independence voluntarily, out of regard for anything like mere ideas or principles. This led to the further conclusion that, if unity was to be achieved at all, it could only be achieved by force exercised somehow and by somebody, and that ideas must be left to assert themselves and justify the result afterwards.

Hereon followed the question where, within the limits of Germany as it then was, the necessary force was to be found. When Treitschke began to be occupied with these speculations, none of the German States seemed to possess the characteristics necessary for playing so great a part worthily; and none of them did he detest more heartily than he detested Prussia. In those days, though he was by no means an extreme democrat, his theories of domestic government were those of a pronounced liberal; and to place the destinies of Germany in the hands of Prussia would, he declared, be nothing short of madness." 'Prussia,' he said, 'is ruled by a class which has never felt the mighty hand of a new era, but still lives in

a fashion that would be intolerable to any moderately healthy nation.' But gradually this uncompromising attitude began to be modified by the reflection that, if force was necessary for the solution of the great problem, Prussia was the only State in which such force was to be found. Thenceforth the most interesting feature of his mental development was,' says Mr Davis, 'the alternation of fits of revolt against the principles of Prussian Junkerdom with other fits of conviction that, even though the Prussian idol had feet of clay, there was no other possible centre of German unity.' In the end this latter conviction, as representing a hard and unalterable fact, prevailed; and he could say in 1864, 'I shall be happy if before my death I see a Prussian Germany.'

Nevertheless his original antipathy to Prussia, as a brutal repressor of all constitutional liberty, was a sentiment which died hard. It was only extinguished by the results of the Franco-Prussian war; but, when once it had disappeared, its place was rapidly taken by positive sentiments of a new and widely different kind. In the Junkers he came to see a class whose strength of will was invaluable; he came to regard the popular vote as a toy, and the people as fractious children whose tempers were soothed by playing with it; whilst high over all rose the figure of an Imperial Monarch, from whom all power was derived, and in whose person all power was concentrated. The effects of this conversion were manifested in his own career. A few years after the FrancoPrussian war had been ended, the political Ishmael of Saxony was enthroned as Professor of History in the University of Berlin, and was preparing to rewrite his philosophy as a courtier of the House of Hohenzollern. The word 'courtier,' as here applied, involves, however, no suggestion of servility. If Treitschke was servile to anything, he was servile to the logic of events. In this he was consistent with what had always been his own principle that the philosophy of history must be deduced from the facts of history; and no sooner had he accommodated his mind to an acquiescence in accomplished facts than he felt that these facts must be explained as the results of universal principles which the intellect of all might recognise and the conscience of all approve. In this way only, he felt, could the inner spirit of a people

consecrate and confirm the fact of its outward unity. Here we see the genesis of his matured doctrine of Power; and in the crudity of this doctrine, when once nakedly stated, we see the origin of that nebulous superstructure of ideas by which he sought to modify what he perceived to be its logical consequences, but which merely served to hide them from his own eyes.

These incidents of Treitschke's life, however interesting on their own account, are interesting mainly for a very much wider reason. Treitschke's development, excepting in one respect, is an image in miniature of the development of the thought of Germany. One of his earliest observations with regard to German unity was, as we have seen, that it must first be an accomplished fact, and that the ideas by which the fact is to be justified must be left to follow afterwards. The prophecy which these words suggest, a unified Germany has fulfilled. Having achieved unity through Power, it sought to sanctify Power by erecting it into a general principle, which was not merely an induction from the success of particular acts, but was also a moral premiss possessing universal validity, from which the ideal justice of particular acts might be deduced. And the secret of Treitschke's influence in his own country lies in the fact that, up to a certain point, he provided his countrymen with that precise train of reasoning which they required. But he did so, as has been said already, up to a certain point only. Germany has accepted his Old Testament, it has practically ignored his New. The Germans in acting thus have shown a sound logical instinct. The remarkable fact is, not their rejection of the second half of his doctrine, but the eager unanimity with which they have accepted the first.

Germany is a country identified with the fame of great philosophers, historians, musicians, poets, theologians and theological students, and with religious movements expressive of deep popular piety. It has earned the reputation of being the country in which the things of the spirit are appreciated more widely and more profoundly than in any other. And yet this country, in its character of a great State, has, through the mouths of its statesmen, its University professors, its newspapers, and the masses of its population, deliberately thrown to the winds every principle by which