his study. The social or moral question that concerns
us is not whether war is good or bad in the sphere of the eternal; but
whether war is good or bad for us in our own moment of time. Now, for
Nicolai, war is a stage in human evolution which man has long outgrown.
His book depicts for us this evolutionary flux of instincts and ideas,
an irresistible current in which there is never a backwash.

* * * * *

The work is divided into two main parts, of unequal length. The first,
occupying three-fourths of the book, is an attack upon the masters of
the hour, war, fatherland, and race; an attack upon the reigning
sophisms. It is entitled "The Evolution of War." The criticism of the
present, in part one, is followed, in part two, by constructive ideas
for the future. This second part is entitled "How War may be abolished."
It outlines the coming society; sketches its morality and its faith. So
abundant, in this book, are data and ideas, that selection is a
difficult matter. Apart from the extraordinary richness of its elements,
the work may be considered from two outlooks, specifically German, and
universally human, respectively. Straightforwardly, at the outset,
Nicolai tells his readers that although, in his opinion, all the nations
must share responsibility for the war, he proposes to concern himself
with the responsibility of Germany alone. He leaves it to the thinkers
of other lands, each in his own country, to settle their country's
accounts. "It is not my business," he says, "to know whether others have
sinned extra muros, but to prevent people from sinning intra muros." If
he chooses his instances from Germany above all, this is not because
instances are lacking elsewhere, but because he writes, above all, for
Germans. A large proportion of his historical and philosophical
criticism deals with Germany ancient and modern. The point is well
worthy of special analysis. No one, henceforward, will have any right to
speak of the German spirit, unless he has read the profound chapters in
which Nicolai, endeavouring to define national individuality, analyses
the characteristics of German Kultur, analyses its virtues and its
vices, its excessive faculty for adaptation, the struggle which the old
Teutonic idealism has waged in its conflict with militarism, and
elucidates the manner in which idealism was vanquished by militarism.
The unfortunate influence of Kant (for whom, none the less, Nicolai h