acles they are endeavouring to break
down. Here, the soul which has won to peace, sees passing before it the
tragical flood of the present. Unperturbed, it torments itself no
longer, for its gaze takes in the whole course of the stream, absorbing
into itself the secular energies of that stream and the tranquil destiny
which leads the flow onward towards the infinite.

_November 20, 1917._

Written for the review "Coenobium," edited by Enrico Bignami, at
Lugano.

XX

A GREAT EUROPEAN: G. F. NICOLAI[48]

I

Art and science have bent the knee to war. Art has become war's
sycophant; science, war's hand-maiden. Few have had the strength or
inclination to resist. In art, rare works, sombre French works, have
blossomed on the blood-drenched soil. In science, the greatest product
during these three criminal years has been the one we owe to G. F.
Nicolai, a German whose spirit is free and whose thought has an enormous
range.

The book is, as it were, a symbol of that unconquerable Freedom whom all
the tyrannies of this age of force have vainly endeavoured to gag. It
was written behind prison walls, but these walls were not thick enough
to stifle the voice which judges the oppressors and will survive them.

Dr. Nicolai, professor of physiology at Berlin University and physician
to the imperial household, found himself, when the war broke out, in the
very focus of the madness which seized the flower of his nation. Not
merely did he refuse to share that madness. Yet more daring, he openly
resisted it. In reply to the manifesto of the 93 intellectuals,
published in the beginning of October, 1914, he wrote a
counter-manifesto, _An Appeal to Europeans_, which was endorsed by two
other distinguished professors at the university of Berlin, Albert
Einstein, the celebrated physicist, and Wilhelm Foerster, president of
the international bureau of weights and measures, the father of
Professor F. W. Foerster. This manifesto was not published, for Nicolai
was unable to collect a sufficient number of signatures. In the summer
term of 1915 he incorporated it in the opening of a series of lectures
he planned to deliver upon the war. Thus, for the fulfilment of what he
deemed his duty as an honest thinker, he deliberately risked his social
position, his academic career, his distinctions, his comfort, and his
friendships. He was arrested, and was interned in Graudenz fortress.
There, unaided, and almost without bo