Part 7 (2/2)
But those dangers of which we have spoken, that h.e.l.l of a mechanical socialism, of inst.i.tutions and arrangements without sentiment or spirit, are done away with, for production has ceased to be merely material and formal, it has acquired absolute value and substance.
Spirit is the only end that sanctifies all means; and it sanctifies not by justifying them but by purifying them.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 31: Vergeistigt werden. It is difficult to render this word in the sense in which Rathenau uses it; 'intellectualized' does not say enough, and 'spiritualized' says a little too much.]
[Footnote 32: a.s.suming that the highest output is reached in the particular instance which of course will not be the case with every worker whether in the mechanical or intellectual sphere. The author appears to be referring to amount, not quality, of output, as the latter would be covered by the second clause, relating to grade of culture (Bildungsstufe).]
[Footnote 33: Referring to the shortening of military service which used to be accorded to recruits of a certain educational standard.]
XIII
As the kinsfolk of a dying man comfort themselves in the death-chamber with every little droop in the curve of temperature, although they know in their hearts that the hour has come, so our critics flatter themselves with the idea that in the end all will come right, if not by itself at least with trifling exertion. But it is not so: except by the greatest exertion nothing will come right. Our lake-city of economics and social order is ripe for collapse, for the piles on which it is built are decayed. It is true that it still stands, and will be standing for an hour or so, and life goes on in it very much as in the days when it was sound. We can choose either to leave it alone, and await the downfall of the city, among whose ruins life will never bloom again, or we can begin the underpinning of the tottering edifice, a process which will last for decades, which will allow no peace to any of us, which will be toilsome and dangerous, and will end almost imperceptibly, when the ancient city has been transformed into the new.
Let us have no doubt about it: something tremendous and unprecedented has to be accomplished here. Does any thinking man believe that when the social order of the world has collapsed, when a country of the importance of Germany has lost the very basis of its existence, when the development of centuries is broken off, its faculties and its traditions emptied of value and repudiated--does any man really believe that by means of certain clauses in a Const.i.tution a few confiscations, socializations and rises in wages, a nation of sixty millions can be endowed with a new historical reason for existence?
Why is not the negro republic of Liberia ahead of all of us?
Our character is weak on the side of will, and our former lords say that we are good for nothing except under strict discipline administered by dynasts and hereditary n.o.bles. If that is true, it is all over with us; unless some dictator shall take pity on us and give us a modest place among the nations with a great past and a small future. If we are worthy of our name we must be born again of the Spirit. Merely to conceive this is in itself an achievement for a people; to carry it out, to embody the conception in a new order of society, is at once a test and an achievement.
Our social ethics must take up a new position. Hitherto--stripping off the usual rhetorical phrases--it has taken its stand on two effective and really driving principles, those of Duty and of Success; two side-views of Individualism. All else, including love of one's neighbour, sense of solidarity, faith, spiritual cultivation, feeling for Nature, was (apart from a few lofty spirits) merely subsidiary; means to an end, convention or falsehood. There were few whose careers were not influenced by these estimates; the majority of the upper cla.s.ses was wholly under their dominion.
The two goals of our wishes, to have something and to be something, were expressed by the whole outward aspect of society. The great object was not to be counted as a Tom, d.i.c.k or Harry, one who had less, or was less, than others. There were grades of being, grades of human being: it was possible to be something, to be much, to be little, or to be nothing at all. From the white collar to the pearl necklace, from the good nursery to the saloon car, from the watch-ribbon to the sword-belt, from the place at the ordinary to the t.i.tle of Excellency, everything was a proof of what one had, or was, or believed oneself to be. If one did not know a man one must not speak to him; if one knew him, one might borrow a hundred marks from him, but one must not ask him for a penny. Whoever had wealth displayed it in order to be admired; whoever had a social position displayed his unapproachability and the weight of his dignity, as, for instance, when with an absent look and lost in the burden of his own existence he entered a dining-hall. From inferiors one demanded a degrading att.i.tude and forms of speech, and presented to them a face of stone; towards those in higher position one came to life and displayed an attentive civility. It was--or shall we say is?--permissible to lavish in an hour the monthly income of a poor family. ”One had it to spend” and ”what business was it of theirs?” In the lower ranks there was much of genuine revolt against these abuses and also much envy and malice, much open imitation, and much of secret admiration. Every silly craze was cheapened in hideous imitations, the suburb and the village made a display which in quality, indeed, fell below the model, but in quant.i.ty not at all.
It may be said that these were excrescences or city fas.h.i.+ons; that one must not generalize. These are empty phrases. To understand the spirit of a society it is not hermits that one must study. And, moreover, let any one ask himself whether this society was really based on the idea of solidarity and human friendliness or upon unscrupulous personal interests and exploitation, on shows and shams, on the demand for service and the claim to command. If anything can explain the eagerness with which we Germans flung ourselves into a war whose origins we did not know and did not want to know, then besides the conscious objects, advantage, rehabilitation, and renown, we must also take into account the obscure impulse of the national conscience which in the midst of evil individualism and of personal and cla.s.s egoism yearned for the sense of solidarity and fusion.
Is it objected that all this lies deeply rooted in human nature, that it has been there from time immemorial, and it is impossible to alter it at one stroke? Pedantic drivel! Many things lie deep in human nature, and it depends on which of these the will chooses to develop.
And who talked of altering things at one stroke? Our judgment of values is to be transformed, and if human nature never changed, much that now flaunts itself in the suns.h.i.+ne would be creeping in the shade. This transformation of judgment is a matter of recognizing things for what they are. When pomp, extravagance, exclusiveness, frivolity and fastness, greed, place-hunting and vulgar envy are looked on with the same eyes as aberrations in other provinces of life, then we shall not indeed have abolished all vice, but the atmosphere will be purified. Look at our st.u.r.dy Socialists of the November days[34] and proselytes of every description: you can see that the acquisition of a new judgment of values may be the affair of an hour! And for that reason one must not criticize them too closely--unless they try to make a profit out of their conversion.
All social judgments presuppose a system of recognized values. The values of Christian ethics have never penetrated deeply into the collective judgment of mankind; even in the mediaeval bloom of Christian, or rather of ecclesiastical, culture the moral conceptions of Christianity remained the possession of a few chosen spirits and communities; society in general accepted the mythical element, did homage to the hierarchy, and remained ethically pagan, the upper cla.s.ses being guided by a code of honour resting on the wors.h.i.+p of courage. The Churches never made any serious effort to shape an ethical code; they were preoccupied with the teaching of dogmas of faith which carried them ever farther and farther from the groundwork of the Gospels, and they devoted whatever surplus energies they had to politics, and to accommodations with the ruling powers of the world.
The cult of courage imposed on and exercised by the ruling cla.s.ses, and symbolically imaged in their code of honour, took an effective shape in the banning of cowardice and of cowardly crime. So far as positive values go, the ethics of n.o.bility degenerated into smartness, the claim for ”satisfaction” and the exclusiveness of rank; a Prussian and Kantian abstraction, the conception of duty, a conception at bottom unproved and incapable of generating conviction, became a rule of life, made effective by training and control. The ruling powers and their controls have given way, and their dry brittleness is revealed.
We have not succeeded in finding a subst.i.tute for social ethics in an idealized type of national character. The imagination of the Western nations, like those of antiquity, has shaped ideal types which they believe or would wish themselves to resemble; they know what they mean by ”esprit gaulois,” or ”English character,” or ”American Democracy,”
while, in accordance with the problematic character of our being, we Germans, except for the statuesque heroes of legendary times, or certain historic but inimitable figures, have conceived or poetically created no character of which we can say that it embodies the collective spirit of Germany.
The super-ethical doctrine of the being, the growth and the empire of the soul has been laid down by us, but there are as yet few into whose consciousness it has penetrated; the transformation of thought and feeling which must proceed from it will not lay hold of the ma.s.ses directly, but will filter continually from one social stratum to another.
The recognized values of social judgment! It sounds so abstract, so remote from practice, that one might well believe we were landed again in the cloudland of festal oratory and the emotions of the leading article. The voluntary recognition of an invisible authority! And this after we have shattered the visible, and are living in the midst of intellectual anarchy and moral Nihilism! And yet moral valuations, simple, binding, and on the level of social judgment, are near enough to be within our grasp.
Are not all the four quarters of the world to-day talking about Democracy? Have not we ourselves got tired of this word, forbidden till a year ago--tired, even in circles where the modest word ”Liberal” was never p.r.o.nounced without a frown? And what does Democracy mean? Do we take it in the merely negative sense, that one is no longer obliged to put up with things? Or in the meagre sense, that responsibility goes by favour, and that the majority must decide?
Or the dubious sense, that we are yearning to make our way through a sham Socialism to the Dollar Republic?
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