which the modern melancholy springs. His romantic lamentations and invectives were the outbursts of a too great energy and vital force, not the apathetic reasonings of to-day's pessimist. He felt Weltschmerz; our pessimist professes to be indifferent. He pointed out the causes of his woe, for they lay not in himself. He was like the philosopher who says That is not the way to cognition,' and not like the sceptic, who says, 'There is no way to cognition.' He was what Carlyle would call a 'worshipper of sorrow,' who waged internecine warfare with the Time Spirit,' while the other, our pessimist, combats against the whole spirit, because he feels himself a child of his time. The misanthrope loves man and hates men.

How different is it at present from what the romantic idealist's life was then! The admiration for the poor, threadbare-coated poet or philosopher has disappeared. What was formerly a source of pride is now the opposite. The writer himself knows a German poet of great worth and repute, who is not treated by society with the honour due to him, because he is not in the position to offer expensive hospitality to his friends, while others, acknowledged to be smaller, are the lions of the day. To-day, young idealist, your genius will not suffice. You must be a business man, and make money, and wear a new coat, and cut your hair short like every one else, or you will be laughed at; for a schwärmer is out of fashion. This kills the very idealism which he needs. He finds all romance ridiculed. Like Hamlet, he is not understood by his surroundings, and so becomes indifferent towards the outer world, a despiser of mankind, as Schopenhauer was. Whither, in his distress, does he fly with his idealism? Not to his home, nor to his family, nor to his maiden, for he has them not. Into himself! Here he buries all his treasures. Here there is no Gründerschwindel, no insolence of office, no law's delay: here he who was wont to float on the high paths of idealism need not stoop down and pick up the tiny piece of copper that lies in the dust on the roadside, and that buys bread. Here he is lord, and he revels in the feeling: 'everything is bad; only I am good (for he who can see the bad must stand outside it). This is probably unknown to themselves, the basis of all their pessimist reasonings. Pessimism is the highest stage of Romanticism. Only he is nihilist who has done away with all desires of life, who has relinquished everything, because to him everything must be nothing. No one is more in need of fulness than he who feels the universal emptiness. No one is more in need of the world than he who weeps for it or inveighs against it. The only true nihilist is the indifferent and the laugher, the blasé and the satirist; but the pessimist is the schwärmer par excellence. Both Optimism and Pessimism are, so to say, forms of motion, while Nihilism is stagnation. Optimism and Pessimism are like plus and minus, while nihilism is the only zero

From the social circumstances which we have enumerated, there flow two consequences which form the alternative-either, as ofter

in France, a cynical callousness, or the German Pessimism. Pessimism is, on the practical side of philosophy, what scepticism is on the theoretical. Both are merely points of transition in the development of mind, and are proofs of the still living energy in man: they are the shaking off of lethargy, and if the first plunge is chill and sharp and painful, a pleasant healthy glow will be the result. A nation shows its energy, its power of living, just when it is not indifferent or blasé, but pessimistic. And the Pessimism of to-day is (very short-lived: everywhere one sees attempts to combat it, even out of the very camp of Pessimism-attempts, that is, to remedy it. The act of reflecting upon it is already a sign that its end is near. These attempts at remedying are generally directed in the first place against this dry state of social artificiality: Back to nature' is the cry, Rousseau redivivus !' Look at the purport of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, Nibelungen, &c., of Heyse's novels (and we are told that Gutzkow's newest novel, Die neuen Serapionsbrüder, has the same purport) All seem to say, 'Fling away your cold, dry, unnatural laws of society, for these only kill true human feeling and individuality. To be human is no sin: it is the best virtue man can have. Humanity is no ugly thing, to be trampled out: it is the highest and most beautiful product of nature. Let us have humanity pure and simple.' To use a bold personification, we may say that it is a fine instinct of history to put forth new reformatory truths in the thickest and most striking colours, so that they at first pain the eye, but at least must be seen. One does well in practising a very long jump in order that a much smaller chasm may be overleaped. Every great and sublime truth or fact (and that is the nature of sublimity) must at first awaken a shudder, a certain fear; but it has done one thing which under another garb it could not have done-it has forced itself upon notice. Then comes the work of mitigation and mediation, and the beneficial truth is ripe for the world at large. So do some of these fiery apostles of feeling threaten to dissolve necessary social institutions; but the intelligent reader and auditor will look at the bold relief from the proper distance and so get the fine perspective effect, and the mass will seize these truths far in time, and it will have the same effect. There is one element in the mental history of the world, which, with all progress and development, will always reappear. From the nearest point of view it is negative and destructive; but from a higher or later point it is an essential constituent of all reform and advancement. From the one point it seems to draw backwards to stages already passed and outlived by humanity; while from the other it is merely the turning from an unreal and unhealthy state back to the pure, unprejudiced, 'unidolised' state, in order that mind, that has been working in a wrong direction, may regain its natural energy and vigour, and unsickened may resume its labour, rising higher and higher-it is the cutting off of a sick branch down to the strong stem

in order to give rise to new healthy outgrowths. Th's fear-awakening harbinger has pleasant followers, it drives onwards. In Ethics it is the Rousseau, and in philosophy the Hume!

6

3. There are also political causes for Pessimism among the Germans. This will, no doubt, call forth astonishment. Have they not,' one will say, 'their long-desired national unity?' They have, it is true; but how different, especially for the romantic nature, is the unity of black, white, and red from the longed-for unity of black, red, gold! How different the Germania of 1848, standing oakenwreathed with sword in hand on the Loreleyfelsen on the banks of the Rhine, from the Germania of 1876 with the pickelhaube and the zündnadel (or even now the mauser), posted far at the uttermost boundary of Lorraine! When once the exalting joys of victory had died away, the Frenchman still had his amiable gloire which reflected itself in all the wild and playful amusements of his life; but the German seeks for something else and finds it not. His loved genialität—a mixture of inward genius and originality with outward Bohemianism-is dying a slow death, owing to the politically necessary, but unlucky, militarism. This militarism is the greatest enemy of all the German's innermost longings: it kills individuality, and the stripling's fantastic ideas are soon driven out of him by the village corporal, who takes but little heed of his fine sentiments of liberty and dignity. In the smallest events of society we can see this influence at work. The Prussian lieutenant has in South Germany taken the place of the poor man of genius with threadbare coat and flowing locks. Instead of the deep voice and deep thoughts of the latter, we hear everywhere the dry, insipid, nasal words (and that is generally all) of the former. The changed appearance of society since the last war is visible even to the traveller. The manners (e.g., the bow) in South Germany, so short a time ago as in 1867, were more of the French style, light, and with some variation according to personal taste. To-day we see, even among students, the clapping together of heels and the stiff nodding of the head which characterise the officer's bow. Even in these little matters we cannot help noticing the death of genialität, and the spreading life of superficiality.

Then come the effects of the social and religious contest. We need not dwell long upon this, for it is manifest how depressing and, for some, how demoralising its influence must be. Things for which formerly even he felt a certain awe who did not believe' in them, we see drawn down to daily newspaper contest, a kind of warfare which is often not carried on in the most parliamentary manner. In many places the civil unity has gone. The burgher can no more meet all his neighbours at the tavern, for fanaticism has blown its hot flame between them, and now they sit in little knots, and the former tone of good fellowship is lost. The priests instigate the mothers, and the mothers the

fathers, and the children hear them, and so, down to the children at school, there is dissension. The total result is a loss of reverence. That this state of affairs is not golden will readily be seen: add to it the financial and commercial depression, and we have a picture of the happy state of 'present political prosperity.'

The financial and commercial whirlpool of our time is the enemy of the former contented, happy fulfilment of duties. Everything is uncertain; everybody is excited. The fault chiefly lies in the credit system. Business in general is not so dependent on personal exertion and immediate ability as it was in former days; but there are numerous general fluctuations, impossible to foresee, which, environing the simple enterprise, press upon it and influence it. It is not so much a struggle with an individual difficulty, or a single group of difficulties, as with universal difficulty, on every side. Hence there springs a state of uncertainty, unrest, and worry. The depressing feeling that weighs down a man when he feels that his obstacles may lie beyond the power of his will, is very far from being healthy. Just as those nations who dwell in lands where man is to a great extent at the mercy of nature, become timid and fatalistic, so the business man of our day cannot help feeling his want of controlling power, and comes to look on all success as luck. This difference that marks our modern time, is well illustrated also in our warfare. How easy was self-assured valour, how exhilarating was the wild rush into the mouth of death, when battle was a great single combat, where man could at every moment feel his own prowess: but how different the feeling of him who marches in close file into the thundering and smoking battle of our days, when at any moment a fatal ball may come and put an end to his existence! For this a different kind of valour is required, and only a less enthusiastic kind is possible. Everywhere the causes of discontent abound.

There remains one more very important political source of Pessimism, namely, the growing spirit of centralisation.5 Germany owed, to a great extent, its mental development to its particularism, so favourable to the utterance of individuality. Not, as in other countries, was it generally from one centre that the nation's genius emanated, but there was a conflux from all the little corners. That was the secret of the German's beloved and admirable genialität. Everywhere enlightenment found helping hands. When Fichte could not lecture at Jena, he was received at Berlin; and so with Schelling, so with the criminalist Feuerbach, and many others. It is impossible to imagine Dante-ay, the Renaissance-without the particularistic Italy of that time. Every little State, in order to show its independence, tried as much as possible to distinguish itself from its neigh

Since this paper was written, the debate in the Reichstag on the question of the seat of the Supreme Court of Justice has given ample evidence how the growing spirit of centralisation was felt and opposed by many.

bour by giving vent to its individual character. Thus the personality of State grew, and the individual, seeing this before him, let loose his whole individuality, and often great and beautiful thoughts, works, and characters, which might have been crushed by fashion, sprang to light and gleamed far over the country, over the earth. Many men who, in other countries, would have been overlooked and would have shrunk away at the first comparison with those mental giants who extinguish all lesser lights, find here some little corner where they are loved and revered, and where it is worth while to seek such love and reverence, for culture and susceptibility exist there too. So the cold of disappointment and neglect does not chill their powers; but all the power they have—and it is often no small amountis brought forward and encouraged. It is, we think, the trait which most distinguishes Germany from every other country, that it has hundreds of small towns that are Athens in miniature. In every German village we find some knight of mind!' who lives in happiness at being acknowledged and respected by his surroundings. Not only is he himself the happier, but the advantage reflects on others too, for his thoughts, which in our great cities would always remain in his books, or only circulate among his literary friends or the higher society, are here infused from his very lips into the minds of the whole little town; and so education is effectively transmitted into all layers of society. We should not maintain that all this is no more in Germany, but it is undeniable that centralisation is growing, and that this equality of education is decreasing; and this too is another death-blow to genialität. The prestige of all these little towns is gradually being swallowed up by Berlin and the great centres. The word 'Berlin' as an authority is more and more coming into the mouths of the people, and sometimes the intelligent little burgher must laugh at his own pretensions, just as the long-haired idealist must occasionally laugh when he sees himself in the mirror at an elegant, black-frocked dancing-party. And the little burgher is grieved too.

We can see this growing tendency in the universities. Berlin and Leipzig are slowly pushing back the historically grand smaller ones, as Heidelberg, Jena, Göttingen, Halle, Tübingen, Giessen, Marburg, &c. The number of students at these two chief universities is continually growing, and varies between two and three thousand, while Heidelberg, which not long ago had twelve or fourteen hundred students, had during the winter 1874-5 less than six hundred. Berlin tries to draw all the mind of Germany within its circle. In the last few years it has taken, from Heidelberg alone, men like Helmholtz, Zeller, Kirchhof, and Von Treitschke. There can be no doubt as to the steady growth of this spirit of centralisation; and there can be little doubt of its effect. Large towns, whatever else, good or bad, they may do, tend always to crush deep feeling and idealism; and fast life,' whether in its higher or lower form, does not make the