c joy in following the severe and simple
outline of his political system is only marred by the thought of the
appalling practical consequences of those doctrines.

And not only is he a clear thinker. He is also an original and
independent thinker. He has not the professional taint of the German
pedant. He has the German professor's minute knowledge of concrete
facts, and his doctrinaire love of abstract principles, but he is not
a mere scholar and teacher. He always remains the man of the world,
and he brings to the consideration of historical problems the
practical experience which he gained as a journalist and as a member
of the Reichstag. He does not apply any conventional standards to his
judgments of men and events. He looks at everything from his own
angle. There is a delightful freshness about everything he writes. He
believes that the first duty of an historian is to be partial. He
always follows a bias, but it is his own bias. In his German history
he has not been content with digging up thousands of new facts from
the recesses of German records; he gives his own interpretation to the
facts. He has no respect for established fame, for existing theories.
He delights in shocking his readers. In his "Goetzendaemmerung," or
"Twilight of the Gods," Nietzsche has shown us how to "philosophize
with a hammer." Treitschke has written history with a hammer, and all
his writings are strewn with the fragments of broken idols and
shattered reputations.

V.--THE PRUSSIAN STATE THE CENTRE OF TREITSCHKE'S LITERARY ACTIVITIES.

All Treitschke's activities have centred round one subject: the
history and policy of the Prussian State. All his loyalties are given
to one cause, the supremacy of the German Empire led by the Prussian
State. He has been a voluminous writer, and he has written on the most
varied subjects. But all those subjects have only been taken up with
the one object of elucidating Prussian problems and directing Prussian
policy. His studies on Federalism, on the United Netherlands--by far
the most suggestive survey of Dutch history which has so far been
attempted--are intended to solve the problem of the relation of
Prussia to the Federal States of the German Empire. His study on
Cavour and Italian unity was undertaken as an introduction to the
study of German unity. His admirable monograph on that strange and
unique military theocracy of the Teutonic order was an essay on the
early history of Prussia. His vol