If however, it be permitted to grow and to spread, if it be spoilt by
the flattering and nonsensical assurance that it has been
victorious,--then, as I have said, it will have the power to extirpate
German mind, and, when that is done, who knows whether there will
still be anything to be made out of the surviving German body!

Provided it were possible to direct that calm and tenacious bravery
which the German opposed to the pathetic and spontaneous fury of the
Frenchman, against the inward enemy, against the highly suspicious
and, at all events, unnative "cultivation" which, owing to a dangerous
misunderstanding, is called "culture" in Germany, then all hope of a
really genuine German "culture"--the reverse of that
"cultivation"--would not be entirely lost. For the Germans have never
known any lack of clear-sighted and heroic leaders, though these,
often enough, probably, have lacked Germans. But whether it be
possible to turn German bravery into a new direction seems to me to
become ever more and more doubtful; for I realise how fully convinced
every one is that such a struggle and such bravery are no longer
requisite; on the contrary, that most things are regulated as
satisactorily as they possibly can be--or, at all events, that
everything of moment has long ago been discovered and accomplished: in
a word, that the seed of culture is already sown everywhere, and is
now either shooting up its fresh green blades, or, here and there,
even bursting forth into luxuriant blossom. In this sphere, not only
happiness but ecstasy reigns supreme. I am conscious of this ecstasy
and happiness, in the ineffable, truculent assurance of German
journalists and manufacturers of novels, tragedies, poems, and
histories (for it must be clear that these people belong to one
category), who seem to have conspired to improve the leisure and
ruminative hours--that is to say, "the intellectual lapses"--of the