occurrences which marked the time before and
immediately after the fall of Sedan.

When later the dormant life that was underneath awoke, breathed, and
became manifest, Sybel's official tone no longer struck the true note;
the heart of peoples had begun to beat, and disturbed its vibrations.
Humanity was astir everywhere, and setting the barriers of etiquette
at defiance. Not only were dry registers based on blue books
insufficient, but the failure of the vital power that engenders other
and further life began to be felt. There was no pulse; the current was
stagnant, had no onward flow.

When this moment came, the truth of the narrative ceased. Henceforth,
it told of only the things of another age, and told them in the
dialect of a bygone tongue. It was the official report of what had
taken place in Old Russia written involuntarily under the omnipotent
but benumbing inspiration of the spirit of caste.

II.

When the volume of M. Levy Bruehl appeared in September of last year,
its name was instantaneously found for it by one of the leaders of
historical criticism in France. Ere one week had passed, M. Albert
Sorel had christened it "_l' Idee elle Fait_,"[4] and the public of
Paris had ratified the title by all but universal acclaim.

[4] "_Le Temps_," 9th September, 1890.

In those words M. Sorel proclaimed the concrete sense of the book, and
no doubt was left as to what was the meaning of the author who had so
freely undertaken to investigate the "developments of the German
national conscience."

The pith of the whole lies in Professor Bruehl's own expression: "In
German unity," he says, "the idea precedes everything else, engenders
the fact _l'est l'Unite nationale d'abord; Unite l'etat ensuite_," and
nowhere in any historical phenomenon has the idea had a larger part to
claim. But here you have at once to get rid of what, in Sybel's
narrative, rests on mere documentary evidence! All anachronisms have
to be set aside. As against the vigor of Levy Bruehl's living men, the
make-believe of the past, with its caste-governed puppets, stares you
in the face. After the rout at Sedan, after the startling
transmutation of long dormant but still live ideas into overwhelming
facts, you realize how entirely the mere Prussian chronicle of events
in their official garb deals with what is forever extinct. These dead
players have lost their significancy; they but simulate humanity from
the outside,--are simply "embro