The Essence of Civilization.

What is civilization in the German and true sense of the word?

Nations in general, especially the Latin nations, put the essence of civilization in the moral element of human life, in the softening of human manners.  To those who understand human culture in this way the Germans will apply the words of Ibsen’s Brand, “You wish to do great things but you lack energy.  You expect success from mildness and goodness.”  According to the German thought, mildness and goodness are only weakness and impotence.  Force alone is strong and force par excellence is science, which puts at our disposal the powers of nature and indefinitely multiplies our strength.  Science, then, should be the principal object of our efforts.  From science and from the culture of scientific intelligence there will necessarily result, by the effect of Divine grace, the progress of the will and of the conscience which is called moral progress.  It is in this sense that Bismarck said, “Imagination and sentiment are to science and intelligence what the tares are to the wheat.  The tares threaten to stifle the wheat; that is why they are cut down and burned.”  True civilization is a virile education, aiming at force and implying force.  A civilization which under pretext of humanity and of courtesy enervates and softens man is fit only for women and for slaves.

Is that to say that the notion of right which men invoke against force has in reality no meaning, and that a highly civilized people would disregard it?  We must clearly understand the relation which exists between the notion of right and the notion of force.  Force is not the right.  All existing forces do not have an equal right to exist; mediocre forces in reality have but a feeble share in the Divine force; but in proportion as a force becomes greater it is more noble.  A universally victorious and all-powerful force would be identical with Divine force and should, therefore, be obeyed and honored in the same degree.  Justice and force, moreover, belong to two different worlds—­the natural and the spiritual.  The former is the phenomenon and symbol of the latter.  We live in a world of symbols; and so preponderant force is for us the visible and practical equivalent of right.

It is, then, puerile to admit the existence of a natural right inherent in individuals or in nations, and manifested in their aspirations, their powers, their sympathies, their wills.  The right of peoples should be determined by a purely objective method.

Now in this sense people should be divided into Naturvoelker, Halbkulturvoelker, and Kulturvoelker—­people in the state of nature, half-cultivated people, and cultivated people.  This is not all.  There are people who are simply cultivated—­Naturvoelker—­and people who are wholly cultivated—­Vollkulturvoelker.  Now the degree of right depends on the degree of culture.  As compared with the Kulturvoelker the Naturvoelker have no rights.  They have only duties—­submission, docility, obedience.  And if there exists a people which deserves more than all others the title of Vollkulturvoelker—­completely cultured people—­to this people the earth belongs and the supremacy thereof.  Its mission is to bend all other peoples beneath the yoke of its omnipotence co-ordinated with its supreme culture.