which even in our rapidly moving Europe, would require
half a century ere they could surmount such atavistic
attacks of patriotism and soil-attachment, and return
once more to reason, that is to say, to “good
Europeanism.” And while digressing on this
possibility, I happen to become an ear-witness of
a conversation between two old patriots—they
were evidently both hard of hearing and consequently
spoke all the louder. “He has as much,
and knows as much, philosophy as a peasant or a corps-student,”
said the one— “he is still innocent.
But what does that matter nowadays! It is the
age of the masses: they lie on their belly before
everything that is massive. And so also in politicis.
A statesman who rears up for them a new Tower of Babel,
some monstrosity of empire and power, they call ’great’—what
does it matter that we more prudent and conservative
ones do not meanwhile give up the old belief that
it is only the great thought that gives greatness to
an action or affair. Supposing a statesman were
to bring his people into the position of being obliged
henceforth to practise ‘high politics,’
for which they were by nature badly endowed and prepared,
so that they would have to sacrifice their old and
reliable virtues, out of love to a new and doubtful
mediocrity;— supposing a statesman were
to condemn his people generally to ‘practise
politics,’ when they have hitherto had something
better to do and think about, and when in the depths
of their souls they have been unable to free themselves
from a prudent loathing of the restlessness, emptiness,
and noisy wranglings of the essentially politics-practising
nations;—supposing such a statesman were
to stimulate the slumbering passions and avidities
of his people, were to make a stigma out of their former
diffidence and delight in aloofness, an offence out
of their exoticism and hidden permanency, were to
depreciate their most radical proclivities, subvert
their consciences, make their minds narrow, and their
tastes ’national’—what! a statesman
who should do all this, which his people would have
to do penance for throughout their whole future, if
they had a future, such a statesman would be great,
would he?”—“Undoubtedly!”
replied the other old patriot vehemently, “otherwise
he could not have done it! It was mad
perhaps to wish such a thing! But perhaps everything
great has been just as mad at its commencement!”—
“Misuse of words!” cried his interlocutor,
contradictorily— “strong! strong!
Strong and mad! Not great!”—The
old men had obviously become heated as they thus shouted
their “truths” in each other’s faces,
but I, in my happiness and apartness, considered how
soon a stronger one may become master of the strong,
and also that there is a compensation for the intellectual
superficialising of a nation—namely, in
the deepening of another.