POSTSCRIPT OF 1919

Had the more primitive social type—the migratory, aggressive society of leadership and the pack—had this proved still the master of the less primitive socialized and integrative type, the ultimate outlook for the race would have indeed been black. This is by no means to deny that German civilization had a vigour, a respect for knowledge, and even a benignity within which comfortable life was possible. But it is to assert that it was a regression, a choice of the easy path, a surrender to the tamer platitudes of {234} the spirit that no aggressive vigour could altogether mask. To live dangerously was supposed to be its ideal, but dread was the very atmosphere it breathed. Its armies could be thrown into hysterical convulsions by the thought of the franc-tireur, and the flesh of its leaders made to creep by such naïve and transpontine machinations as its enemies ambitiously called propaganda. The minds that could make bugbears out of such material were little likely to attempt or permit the life of arduous and desperate spiritual adventure that was in the mind of the philosopher when he called on his disciples to live dangerously.