time, wherein occurrences are many, but, in the last analysis, devoid of significance. The only historical peoples, the peoples whose existence is world-history, are the nations. Let us be perfectly clear as to what is meant by this. The Ostrogoths suffered a great destiny, and therefore, inwardly, they have no history. Their battles and settlements were not necessary and therefore were episodic; their end was insignificant. In 1500 B.C that which lived about Mycenæ and Tiryns was not as yet a nation, and that which lived in Minoan Crete was no longer a nation. Tiberius was the last ruler who tried to lead a Roman nation further on the road of history, who sought to retrieve it for history. By Marcus Aurelius there was only a Romanic population to be defended — a field for occurrences, but no longer for history. How many free pre-generations of Mede or Achæan or Hun folk there were, in what sort of social groups their predecessors and their descendants lived, cannot be determined and depends upon no rule. But of a nation the life-period is determinate, and so are the pace and the rhythm in which its history moves to fulfilment. From the beginning of the Chóu period to the rulership of Shih-Hwang-ti, from the events on which the Troy legend was founded to Augustus, and from Thinite times to the XVIII Dynasty, the numbers of generations are more or less the same. The "Late" period of the Culture, from Solon to Alexander, from Luther to Napoleon, embraces no more than about ten generations. Within such limits the destiny of the genuine Culture-people, and with it that of world-history in general, reach fulfilment. The Romans, the Arabs, the Prussians, are late-born nations. How many generations of Fabii and Junii had already come and gone as Romans by the time Cannæ was fought?
Further, nations are the true city-building peoples. In the strongholds they arose, with the cities they ripen to the full height of their world-consciousness, and in the world-cities they dissolve. Every "town-formation that has character has also national character. The village, which is wholly a thing of race, does not yet possess it; the megalopolis possesses it no longer. Of this essential, which so characteristically colours the nation's public life that its slightest manifestation identifies it, we cannot exaggerate — we can scarcely imagine — the force, the self-sufficingness, and the loneliness. If between the souls of two Cultures the screen is impenetrable, if no Western may ever hope completely to understand the Indian or the Chinese, this is equally so, even more so, as between well-developed nations. Nations understand one another as little as individuals do so. Each understands merely a self-created picture of the other, and individuals with the insight to penetrate deeper are few and far between. Vis-à-vis the Egyptians, all the Classical peoples necessarily felt themselves as relatives in one whole, but as between themselves they never understood each other. What sharper contrast is there than that between the Athenian and the Spartan spirit? German, French, and English modes of philosophical thinking are distinct, not merely in Bacon, Descartes, and Leibniz, but already in the
