civilized World State the balancing of the accounts must never be
brought about in the petty-State fashion by striking out expenditure for
necessary requirements, more especially expenditure on the military
forces, whose maintenance forms the foundation of a satisfactory general
progress. The incomings must, on the contrary, be raised in proportion
to the real needs. But, especially in a State which is so wholly based
on war as the German Empire, the old manly principle of keeping all our
forces on the stretch must never be abandoned out of deference to the
effeminate philosophy of the day. Fichte taught us that there is only
one virtue--to forget the claims of one's personality; and only one
vice--to think of self. Ultimately the State is the transmitter of all
culture, and is therefore entitled to claim all the powers of the
individual for itself.[A] These ideas, which led us out of the deepest
gloom to the sunlit heights of success, must remain our pole-star at an
epoch which in many respects can be compared with the opening years of
the last century. The peace-loving contentment which then prevailed in
Prussia, as if the age of everlasting peace had come, still sways large
sections of our people, and exerts an appreciable influence on the
Government.

Among that peaceful nation "which behind the rampart of its line of
demarcation observed with philosophic calm how two mighty nations
contested the sole possession of the world," nobody gave any thought to
the great change of times. In the same way many Germans to-day look
contentedly and philosophically at the partition of the world, and shut
their eyes to the rushing stream of world-history and the great duties
imposed upon us by it. Even to-day, as then, the same "super-terrestrial
pride, the same super-clever irresolution" spreads among us "which in
our history follows with uncanny regularity the great epochs of audacity
and energy."[B]