GOVERNMENT.


It is a characteristic failing of the Germans to look in the clouds
for what lies at their feet. An excellent example of this is furnished
by the treatment which the idea of _Natural Right_ has received at
the hands of professors of philosophy. When they are called upon
to explain those simple relations of human life which make up the
substance of this right, such as Right and Wrong, Property, State,
Punishment and so on, they have recourse to the most extravagant,
abstract, remote and meaningless conceptions, and out of them build a
Tower of Babel reaching to the clouds, and taking this or that form
according to the special whim of the professor for the time being. The
clearest and simplest relations of life, such as affect us directly,
are thus made quite unintelligible, to the great detriment of the
young people who are educated in such a school. These relations
themselves are perfectly simple and easily understood--as the reader
may convince himself if he will turn to the account which I have given
of them in the _Foundation of Morality_, § 17, and in my chief work,
bk. i., § 62. But at the sound of certain words, like Right, Freedom,
the Good, Being--this nugatory infinitive of the cupola--and many
others of the same sort, the German's head begins to swim, and falling
straightway into a kind of delirium he launches forth into high-flown
phrases which have no meaning whatever. He takes the most remote and
empty conceptions, and strings them together artificially, instead of
fixing his eyes on the facts, and looking at things and relations as