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We “good Europeans,” we also have hours when we allow ourselves a warmhearted patriotism, a plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow views⁠—I have just given an example of it⁠—hours of national excitement, of patriotic anguish, and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment. Duller spirits may perhaps only get done with what confines its operations in us to hours and plays itself out in hours⁠—in a considerable time: some in half a year, others in half a lifetime, according to the speed and strength with which they digest and “change their material.” Indeed, I could think of sluggish, hesitating races, which even in our rapidly moving Europe, would require half a century ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and soil-attachment, and return once more to reason, that is to say, to “good Europeanism.” And while digressing on this possibility, I happen to become an earwitness of a conversation between two old patriots⁠—they were evidently both hard of hearing and consequently spoke all the louder. “ He has as much, and knows as much, philosophy as a peasant or a corps-student,” said the one⁠—“he is still innocent. But what does that matter nowadays! It is the age of the masses: they lie on their belly before everything that is massive. And so also in politicis . A statesman who rears up for them a new Tower of Babel, some monstrosity of empire and power, they call ‘great’⁠—what does it matter that we more prudent and conservative ones do not meanwhile give up the old belief that it is only the great thought that gives greatness to an action or affair. Supposing a statesman were to bring his people into the position of being obliged henceforth to practise ‘high politics,’ for which they were by nature badly endowed and prepared, so that they would have to sacrifice their old and reliable virtues, out of love to a new and doubtful mediocrity;⁠—supposing a statesman were to condemn his people generally to ‘practise politics,’ when they have hitherto had something better to do and think