was, indeed, but never were its opportunities for public usefulness more
limited. It was as though the greatness of the days of the second
Frederick lay like a paralyzing weight upon this generation. And this
oppressing sense of impotence was followed, after the Napoleonic Wars,
by the bitterness of disappointment, all the more keenly felt by reason
of this first reawakening of the national consciousness. Great had been
the expectations, enormous the sacrifice; exceedingly small was the gain
to the individual.[10] And the resultant dissonance was the same as that
to which Alfred de Musset gave expression in the words: "The malady of
the present century is due to two causes; the people who have passed
through 1793 and 1814 bear in their hearts two wounds. All that was is
no more; all that will be is not yet. Do not hope to find elsewhere the
secret of our ills."[11]

This then in briefest outline is the transition from the century of
individualism and autocracy to the nineteenth century of democracy.
Small wonder that the struggle claimed its victims in those individuals
who, unable to find a firm basis of conviction and principle, vacillated
constantly between instinctive adherence to old traditions, and
unreasoned inclination to the new order of things.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: "Pessimism, a History and a Criticism," London, 1877.]

[Footnote 2: Ed. von Hartmann: "Zur Geschichte und Begründung des
Pessimismus," Leipzig, Hermann Haacke, p. 187.]

[Footnote 3: "Les Poètes Lyriques de l'Autriche," Paris, 1886, p. 293.]