arketable commodities, they are only given
away. And at last the responsible leaders, those who rule in order to
serve, will separate themselves from those of the Cataline type, who
serve in order to rule.

So long has the narrow, parsonical, cynical contempt for the
understanding of the lower classes prevailed--through our fault--a
reversal to blind worship of the masses, of the immature and the
unsuccessful, is not inexcusable. We are here to love mankind--all
mankind, the outcast as well as the weak--every man and all men. But
the masses are not quite the same thing as mankind. The masses who
congregate in the streets and at public meetings are not communities
consisting of whole men, but assemblages in which each man takes a
part and is present, indeed, with his whole body, but by no means with
his whole being. The masses are absent-minded; and presence of mind
only comes to them when through the lips of some true prophet the
Spirit descends upon them. But when that happens, they take no
decisions; they do not get beside themselves; rather, they sink into
themselves. Before the distortions of a mob orator, with his
extravagant promises, the masses become merely a driven crowd eager
for gain, not human souls. They are the concave reflector of passions
and greeds that rage in the focal point of the speaker's rostrum; they
return in concentrated form the rays that dazzle them. He who puts the
masses in the judgment-seat, who looks for counsel and decision at
their hands, has neither reverence nor love for man. Sooner or later
the truth of this will be realized by all honourable men among their
leaders.

The day is also far when the upper classes will come to their senses.
They have never understood what the world is, nor what Germany is, nor
what has happened to themselves. They see houses and fields, streets
and trees very much as they were; they think, if they only play the
game a little craftily at the beginning, everything will remain as it
used to be, and they will come out all right in the end. It is just as
when some merchant goes bankrupt for a million; for the first
fortnight the servants wait at table as usual and the family eat off
silver plate; the ruin is still on paper. But in a year's time
everything is dispersed to the winds, and men have changed along with
their utensils. When one sees for what trivialities people are
fighting to-day one begins to understand how callously and shamelessly
they gave u