d' etre_ of German unity. When Sybel speaks, as he constantly
does, of the creation of Germanic unity, after the war of 1870, he, as
a matter of fact, adopts the French theory, while the independent
French writer exposes from a far more German point of view, what have
been and what are the causes underlying the present formation of the
various component parts of Germany into a State. The title of either
tells sufficiently its own tale. Sybel proclaims at once the:--

"_Begruending des Deutschen Reiches durch Wilhelm!_" whilst Levy Bruehl
announces the progress of the "_National Conscience as Developed in a
Race._"

Sybel's is the narrative of a past that is doubly ended, the past of a
country and of a political system, the past of Prussia as personified
by the Hohenzollerns, and of a military and oligarchical absolutism as
represented by Prince Bismarck and Marshal Von Moltke. It is the
chronicle of an epoch whose glories, from 1700 to 1870, none can
dispute, but whose _real life_ was extinct, and whose capacity of
future expansion in its original sense was stopped at Sedan, or a few
months later, at Versailles. Sybel conceives his history as a
thoroughly well-trained functionary must conceive it; he is brought up
in traditional conventionalities, and is rather even an official than
a "public" servant.

The foreign author, on the contrary, feels what has lurked during long
ages in the soul of the innominate throng of the people, and been
expressed in the thoughts and impulses of such men as Hagern,
Scharnhorst, Gueiseman, and Stein, _Germans_, patriots who taught
Prussia to speak, think, act, and embody the inspirations, passions,
and instincts of a whole land; arousing the conscience and vindicating
the honor of seemingly divided communities whose hearts were already
_one_.

No sooner had M. Levy Bruehl's book appeared than the effect was
evident; it was felt that it told the _true truth_ (_"la verite
vraie"_) as the French say; that it set forth the real _"raison d'
etre"_ of the astounding achievement that had taken the world by
surprise, puzzling the patented politicians on one bank of the Rhine
almost as much as those upon the other.[3]

[3] Few events since the deceptions and catastrophes of
the war itself ever produced the sudden impression of
Levy Bruehl's boldly outspoken, utterly impartial book.
Published in the first days of last September (1890),
in one we