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the Germans?⁠—But about many things around him he never spoke explicitly, and all his life he knew how to keep an astute silence⁠—probably he had good reason for it. It is certain that it was not the “Wars of Independence” that made him look up more joyfully, any more than it was the French Revolution⁠—the event on account of which he reconstructed his Faust , and indeed the whole problem of “man,” was the appearance of Napoleon. There are words of Goethe in which he condemns with impatient severity, as from a foreign land, that which Germans take a pride in: he once defined the famous German turn of mind as “Indulgence towards its own and others’ weaknesses.” Was he wrong? it is characteristic of Germans that one is seldom entirely wrong about them. The German soul has passages and galleries in it, there are caves, hiding-places, and dungeons therein, its disorder has much of the charm of the mysterious, the German is well acquainted with the bypaths to chaos. And as everything loves its symbol, so the German loves the clouds and all that is obscure, evolving, crepuscular, damp, and shrouded, it seems to him that everything uncertain, undeveloped, self-displacing, and growing is “deep.” The German himself does not exist , he is becoming , he is “developing himself.” “Development” is therefore the essentially German discovery and hit in the great domain of philosophical formulas⁠—a ruling idea, which, together with German beer and German music, is labouring to Germanise all Europe. Foreigners are astonished and attracted by the riddles which the conflicting nature at the basis of the German soul propounds to them (riddles which Hegel systematised and Richard Wagner has in the end set to music). “Good-natured and spiteful”⁠—such a juxtaposition, preposterous in the case of every other people, is unfortunately only too often justified in Germany one has only to live for a while among Swabians to know this! The clumsiness of the German scholar and his social distastefulness agree alarmingly well with his physical rope-dancing and nimble boldness, of which all the Gods have learnt to be afraid. If anyone wishes to see the “German soul” demonstrated ad oculos , let him