But it was outside of the associations and outside of the school that the flame of creative genius burned brightly.  The man of the last generation was Nietzsche.  That his thought has been perverted by his interpreters there is no doubt.  They have taken this eagle who gazed unblinded at the sun and exhibited him to the young people in all sorts of philosophic roles for the benefit of the industrial and military coalition.  Nietzsche depicted in lines of fire the resurrection of heroism, his vision of the superman was that of an ardent soul, steeled by sufferings, meditating a tragic conception of life with serenity, and in his solitary individualism surmounting the infirmity of man and his own by the insistent will to eternal ascension.

He was made the apostle of brute force, a sort of Messiah of the “struggle for life.”  Moreover, he was soon put one side and Gobineau was revived.  He also, who if he did not have genius had wit, would have been surprised and hardly flattered perhaps by the role which they made him play.  The dolichocephalic (long-skulled) blonde whom he celebrated was not exactly the one whom we are now judging by his works, but at least he proclaimed the superiority of the German race.

His doctrine was the centre around which were gathered a complete ensemble of dogmas and of very diverse theories, whose connected thread it is not easy to discover when it is searched for logically, but appears quite distinctly when not reason, but reasons, are demanded.  The reasons are found in the need of justifying in theory the economic and military imperialism, born as we have seen from conditions of fact and from very practical motives.

I do not pretend that it was calculated, nor that the optimates made express requisition of the naturalists, economists, and historians and sociologists and moralists to provide an imperialistic philosophy for the use of adult and normal dolichocephalous blondes.  But there certainly was a coincidence.  It may have been due to the influence of what is called a milieu ambiant, that of the commercial and military party.  The authors of the doctrine lived in a special atmosphere.  Their intellect was there formed—­or deformed—­their work consisted in gathering facts, inventing reasonings, elaborating formulas, so as to subject natural science, history and morality to the service of that keen will for hegemony which was in Germany the common characteristic and was the connecting link between the ancient and the new directing class.

To convince one that this is so, it is enough to arrange the works of the pan-Germanists in a series passing from the simplest to the most complicated.  The dates are of no importance.  We might put at one of the extremes the works of the Prussian General, von Bernhardi, and at the other the gigantic lucubration of a famous pan-German zealot, a neophite, a convert, almost a deserter, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain.