Page:Decline of the West (Volume 2).djvu/481

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PHILOSOPHY OF POLITICS
465

Cæsar derived his power from the Tribunate, and his dignity and therewith his permanency from his being the Princeps. Here too the soul of old Gothic wakens anew. The spirit of the knightly orders overpowers plunderous Vikingism. The mighty ones of the future may possess the earth as their private property — for the great political form of the Culture is irremediably in ruin — but it matters not, for, formless and limitless as their power may be, it has a task. And this task is the unwearying care for this world as it is, which is the very opposite of the interestedness of the money-power age, and demands high honour and conscientiousness. But for this very reason there now sets in the final battle between Democracy and Cæsarism, between the leading forces of dictatorial money-economics and the purely political will-to-order of the Cæsars. And in order to understand this final battle between Economics and Politics, in which the latter reconquers its realm, we must now turn our glance upon the physiognomy of economic history.