sive as they are evidently unsought for — and in moments of excitement his language, written or spoken, frequently rises to a climax of primitive force and grandeur. But the real importance of Bismarck's literary achievements lies in a very different field. This side of his nature has hitherto been strangely neglected alike by the great statesman's eulogists and his defamers.
Bismarck's temperament — his complexion, as Smollett would say — is essentially that of a poet. I am not alluding here to the youthful efforts which the statesman is said to have offered at the shrine of the muse; nor to his well-known love for music or for nature. I speak of the absolute spontaneity with which he approaches the gravest problems of political science, and which leads him to conclusions glaringly at variance with the ordinary routine of statecraft, and not unfrequently with his own most cherished prejudices. When, for instance, as early as 1861 we find the Junker[1] and aristocrat by birth, and the violent Conservative by persuasion, throwing out the idea of a universal German Parliament, which the more enlightened statesman was some years later to carry out on the most democratic basis — universal suffrage — we must acknowledge a faculty of political intuition attributable to the creative mind alone.
Let us hear the testimony of his enemies on the subject. Count Arnim, the late Prussian ambassador in Paris, now an outlaw and an exile, stands foremost amongst the number. It once was his ambition to be Bismarck's successor, if possible his rival. This ambition extends even to the field of literature. Count Arnim, in his published despatches to the Foreign Office, evidently aims at terseness, wit, brilliancy, and power of expression, all qualities for which his great enemy is renowned. But the literary failure of the unfortunate count is almost as signal as his political. His similes, such as "The clerical wine will be considerably modified by the water of political necessity," show signs of elaboration, and his historic parallels are sometimes far-fetched and little to the point. The account of his first reception by President MacMahon is chatty and amusing, but one never loses the impression of the diplomatist affecting the literary man. This is exactly the reverse with Bismarck. In "Pro Nihilo" the pamphlet published in Count Arnim's defence, and most likely written, or at least immediately inspired, by himself, trying to explain a certain "psychological process" to which some of Prince Bismarck's utterances are said to owe their origin, the author, whoever he may be, proceeds: "To the prodigious qualities of the Imperial chancellor belongs that of not finding the truth from objectively established facts. He does not 'find' it — he creates it. Intuition or inspiration shows the truth to this extraordinary intellect, and his intelligence, so extensively fertile in combinations, then groups the facts in such a manner that they serve as a basis for the first and frequently quite correct impression. The consciousness which had perhaps existed that the first impression rested upon his own or somebody else's inspiration recedes in the further course of the conception of truth from the energy which subordinates the reality of external facts to the creative power of the personal will."
The short meaning of this terribly involved sentence seems to be a charge against Bismarck of a strong tendency towards what is euphemistically called romancing. But what is that grouping of facts from a central point of vision but the birthright and primary function of the poet? He sees into the essence of things, although accidentals may escape him. And if this subjective vision proves true when applied to the realities of science or politics, what better, or indeed what other, criterion of the man's greatness can we demand? What à priori difference, indeed, is there between the empty dreamer and schemer and the wise statesman and philosopher? The event alone can decide. No great man can do without what philosophers might term the inductive faculty. The dry summing up of details is the work of the intellectual journeyman; the master looks to the whole. The late Mr. Buckle, most eminently a man of facts, says on this subject, speaking of the variious developments of the modern mind: "In that field, which our posterity have yet to traverse, I firmly believe that the imagination will effect quite as much as the understanding. Our poetry will have to reinforce our logic, and we must feel as much as we must argue."
Another point dilated upon with intense delight by Bismarck's political adversaries is his early reactionary violence. M. Julian Klaczko, in his clever book, "The Two Chancellors," first published in the columns of the Revue des Deux Mondes, never tires of speaking of the anti-Liberal
- ↑ Reactionary country squire.
