e prepared and
provoked it and now conduct it, they violate without scruple the laws of
the civilized world, it is not despite their superior culture, it is in
consequence of that very culture. They are barbarous because they are
more civilized. How can such a combination of contradictory elements,
such a synthesis, be possible?

Fichte in the famous discourses to the German Nation which he delivered
at the University of Berlin during the Winter of 1807 and 1808, had one
object: to arouse the German Nation by kindling its self-consciousness,
that is to say, its pure Germanic essence, _Deutschheit_, in order to
realize that essence when possible beyond its borders and to make it
dominate the world. The general idea which must guide Germany in the
accomplishment of this double task is: Germany is to all the rest of the
world as good is to evil.

The appeal of Fichte was heard. During the century which followed,
Germany in the most precise and practical manner, on the one hand built
up the theory of Germanism or _Deutschtum_, on the other hand prepared
the domination of Germanism in the world. This notion of Germanism
furnishes, if I am not mistaken, the principle of the inference which I
wish to indicate, the explanation of the surprising solidarity which
Germans have created between culture and barbarism.

It would be interesting to probe this notion and follow its development.

In the first place how can a people come to claim for its ideas, its
virtue, its achievements, not only the right to exist and to be
respected by other people, but the privilege of being the sole
expression of the true and the good while everything which emanates from
other peoples represents nothing but error and evil?

The philosopher Fichte after having built up his system under the
influence of Kant and of French ideas, notably under the influence of
Rousseau--of whom he said "peace to his ashes, for he has done
things"--could think of nothing better to reinforce the German soul
after Jena than to persuade it that in itself and itself alone there was
to be found the sense of the ideal combined with power to realize that
ideal in the world.

*The Power to Realize.*

Starting from a certain notion of the absolute he found after Jena that
this very notion constituted the foundation of the German genius. Soon
this mystic method was merged in a more concrete method better adapted
to the positive spirit of modern generations. The one scie