The
Suffragette of England.

Life is not a means; life is an end. That is what we must tell
ourselves in order really to live in this world. Hence the obligation
to perfect life, to make it high and beautiful, to make a masterpiece
of it. Hence too our contempt and hatred for those who wish to tarnish
life, either by their thoughts or by their deeds.

Germany behaves as though it were the most backward among nations. And
indeed it is in spite of appearances essentially feudal. There is
perhaps a German culture, but there is no German _civilization_.

One may be well informed and yet be hardly civilized. A sense of duty
to humanity, a sense of pride, a sense of liberty are independent,
certainly not of intelligence, but are independent of mere knowledge
of accumulated facts.

The German professor is a walking library. He collects, he arranges,
he comments. Arrangement and discipline with him take the place of
everything else, and they inculcate in him the spirit of dependence
and of servility. It is perhaps because he classifies so much that he
is so dully submissive. Everything according to his view is an
ascending or descending scale. Everything is in its compartment.

How, then, can we be surprised if everything becomes materialized and
the mind of each Teuton can lay claim to be nothing more than a sort
of stiff and dingy compartment, in a sort of social chessboard.

It has already been said: The German invents almost nothing. He works
upon the inventions of other people. In order to invent he would have
to possess the spirit of rebellion against that which is. He is
incapable of that spirit. He is a being who always accepts.

But as soon as a new discovery has been made by others the German gets
hold of it. He examines it patiently. He turns and returns it this
way, that way, and every way. He, as it were, criticises it. He thus
succeeds in augmenting its power. Moreover, he wishes that it shall
serve a practical purpose and be classified accordingly, just as he
himself serves and is classified in life.

Never have the Germans opened up a great road in science. They open up
only bypaths. Leibnitz and Kant joined their paths to the royal high
road of Descartes. Haeckel would hardly have existed if Darwin had not
existed. Koch and Behring are dependent upon the labors of Pasteur.

This second-hand science is excellent as a means of attracting
mediocre minds. To work, each in his little corner, at solv