“Above everything, the German is an observer—­a very diligent observer—­and his mental eyes are likely to be so close to the wall that he sees only a single brick in it, wholly failing to get a comprehensive view of the whole structure.

“Germans are very careful students.  They attach a vast importance to detail.  I think it is not unfair to say that, with the German, the smaller, the more minute the detail, the more it interests him.  The German loves to write a big book on a small subject, and, loving it, he does it well.

“But there are more exalted tasks, as, for example, the writing of big books upon big subjects, giving the world fresh visions of new and far-flung vistas.  The German loves to catalogue and catalogues almost with genius; he loves to deliver long lectures upon microcosms.

“Cataloguing and the near-sightedness which may arise from intense study of the atom, to the exclusion of the collective organism, whether that collective organism be the human individual or the social mass, may render immense service to the world, but it never will be the only service necessary, and, if pursued to the exclusion of all other investigations, such study is likely to produce an aggravated narrowness of vision.  Narrow vision is certain to eventuate in selfishness.

“The Germans became selfish after this fashion.  The present struggle is the war of selfishness against world advance.

“Innumerable, or at least many, individuals have furnished smaller parallels to the course which Germany has taken as a nation.  The individual with the truly and exclusively scientific mind is likely to go too far into abstractions, built from a possible misinterpretation of minutiae.

“The ideal national intellectual development will combine both fact and theory, will join rationalism to idealism, and will be far more like that of certain nations which I shall not name than it will be like that of Germany.  These nations which I shall not name have both.

“In other words, it seems to be the fixed idea of the German that the German civilization is the only civilization; but it is not the thought of France or England that their civilizations are the only ones.

“This very lack of what may be defined as national egotism in France and England enables these nations to work, as Germany does not, for world science and world development—­the growth of civilization as a whole.

“Germany’s scientific work is for German science, she thinks of civilization only as German civilization.  The world’s other great nations—­and may I say the world’s great Latin nations especially?—­internationalize their science and their civilization.”

Why the Philosopher Is Important.

“One must be struck by the fact that Germany’s critical philosophy formed the basis of her educational system and, therefore, the basis of her social system, and that it had in it the basis of the war.