to found a new scientific philosophy; hence the constant attempts to organize education, to make schooling compulsory, to popularize scientific knowledge; hence also the growth of journalism and the diffusion of the press.
The Great Revolution, and the mighty changes in life and thought which it entailed, allowed the idea and the ideal of progress in all departments of human effort to take root—the belief that individual peoples and the whole of mankind have the power gradually to attain a higher, nay, the highest, plane of perfection and contentment.
These, it seems to me, are the leading ideas of the European West. (I say “the West,” though I may be thinking in the first place of France; for the West—France, England, America, Italy and the other Romance nations—form a civilized whole, as is clearly shown by the reciprocal influence of the Western peoples upon each other and by their political evolution.) To put it briefly: During the Middle Ages, mankind—mankind being then the Europe of the Holy Roman Empire—was organized extensively by the Roman Catholic Theocracy. Democracy arose through the Reformation and the French Revolution, Democracy being an attempt to organize mankind intensively. Democracy is, in my eyes, the antagonist of Theocracy. We are now in a period of transition from Theocracy to Democracy on a humanitarian basis.
Germany and Europe.
In the Middle Ages, German thought and culture formed part of those of Europe; but in more modern times they were increasingly differentiated and isolated. The Prussian State, which the Reformation strengthened, was aggressive from the outset and dominated Germany. The idea of the State, the so-called “Statism,” prevailed also in Western Europe, though there the State became an organ of Parliament and of public opinion. In Germany, on the contrary, the monarchical State was literally deified, and its absolute power generally recognized. Indeed, it was not until the end of the world war that the King of Prussia, in his capacity of German Emperor, decided in favour of the parliamentarization of Germany. Prussia and Germany were really an organized Caesarism; and Frederick the Great, Bismarck, William I and William II, were, unlike Napoleon, strange Tsarist Caesars. The word “Tsar” is of course derived from “Caesar,” but how widely the word differs from the idea it ostensibly expresses! The Prussian officer,
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