WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS

all political (or Church) puppets; but they have also actually put a ban upon this very breadth of vision. A man must first and foremost be "German," he must belong to "the race"; then only can he pass judgment upon all values and lack of values in history—then only can he establish them.... To be German is in itself an argument, "Germany, Germany above all,"²⁴ is a principle; the Germans stand for the "moral order of the universe" in history; compared with the Roman Empire, they are the up-holders of freedom; compared with the eighteenth century, they are the restorers of morality, of the "Categorical Imperative." There is such a thing as the writing of history according to the lights of Imperial Germany; there is, I fear, anti-Semitic history—there is also history written with an eye to the Court, and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed of himself. Quite recently an idiotic opinion in historicis, an observation of Vischer the Swabian æsthete, since happily deceased, made the round of the German newspapers as a "truth" to which every German must assent The observation was this: "The Renaissance and the Reformation only together constitute a whole—the æsthetic rebirth, and the moral rebirth." When I listen to such things, I lose all patience, and I feel inclined, I even feel it my duty, to tell the Germans, for once in a way, all that they have on their conscience. Every great crime against culture for the last four centuries lies on their conscience.... And always for the same reason, always owing to their bottomless cowardice in the face of reality, which is also cowardice in the face of truth; always owing to the love of falsehood which has become almost instinctive in them—in short, "idealism." It was the Germans who caused Europe to lose the fruits, the whole meaning of her last period of greatness—the period of the Renaissance. At a moment when a higher order of values, values that were noble, that said yea to life, and that guaranteed a future, had succeeded in triumphing over the opposite values, the values of degeneration, in the very seat of Christianity itself,—and even in the hearts of those sitting there,—Luther, that cursed monk, not only restored the Church, but, what was a thousand times worse, restored Christianity, and