Culture, for which nearest German equivalent is Bildung, is the opposite of all this.  It is an attribute not of nations as a whole but of accomplished individuals.  It acquires national import only through the approval and admiration of these individuals by the rest, who share but slightly in the culture they applaud.  The aim of culture is the enlightened and humane individual, conversant with the best values of the past and sensitive to the best values of the present.  The open-mindedness and imagination implied in culture are potentially destructive to a highly organized national Kultur.  A cultured leader is generally too much alive to the point of view of his rival to be a wholly convinced partisan.  Hence he lacks the intensity, drive, and narrowness that make for competitive success.  He keeps his place in the sun not by masterfully overriding others, but by a series of delicate compromises which reconcile the apparently conflicting claims.  Moreover, he has too great a respect for the differences between men’s gifts to formulate any rigid plan which, requires for its execution a strictly regimented humanity.  He will sacrifice a little efficiency that life may be more various, rich, and delightful.

Hence nations with cultured leaders have generally been beaten by those whose leaders had merely Kultur.  The Spartans and Macedonians had abundant Kultur; they generally beat the Athenians, who had merely very high culture.  The Romans had Kultur, and the Hellenistic world wore their yoke.  Germany unquestionably has admirable Kultur, and none of the mere cultured nations who are leagued against her could hope to beat her singly.

She Does Not Desire Culture.

On the other hand, Germany has singularly little culture, has less than she had a hundred years ago, does not apparently desire it.  She has willingly sacrificed the culture of a few leading individuals to the Kultur of the empire as a whole.  Thus it is not surprising that Germany, as measured by the production of cultured individuals, takes a very low place today.  Not only France and England, Italy and Spain, but also Russia and America, may fairly claim a higher degree of culture.  Here the fetich of German scholarship should not deceive us.  Culture—­a balanced and humanized state of mind—­is only remotely connected with scholarship or even with education.  A Spanish peasant or an Italian waiter may have finer culture than a German university professor.  And in the field of scholarship, Germany is in the main chiefly laborious, accurate, and small-minded.  Her scholarship is related not to culture, but is a minor expression of Kultur.  Such scholarly men of letters as Darwin, Huxley, Renan, Taine, Boissier, Gaston Paris, Menendez y Pelayo, Francis J. Child, Germany used to produce in the days of the Grimms and Schlegels.  She rarely does so now.  Her culture has been swallowed up in her Kultur.