Here
the fetich of German scholarship should not deceive us. Culture--a
balanced and humanized state of mind--is only remotely connected with
scholarship or even with education. A Spanish peasant or an Italian
waiter may have finer culture than a German university professor. And in
the field of scholarship, Germany is in the main chiefly laborious,
accurate, and small-minded. Her scholarship is related not to culture,
but is a minor expression of Kultur. Such scholarly men of letters as
Darwin, Huxley, Renan, Taine, Boissier, Gaston Paris, Menendez y Pelayo,
Francis J. Child, Germany used to produce in the days of the Grimms and
Schlegels. She rarely does so now. Her culture has been swallowed up in
her Kultur.
The claim of Germany to realize her Kultur at the expense of her
neighbors is at first sight plausible. Her Kultur is unquestionably
higher than theirs. She has a sharply realized idea of the State, and
she has justified it largely in practice. In a certain patience,
thoroughness, and perfection of political organization her pre-eminence
is unquestionable. The tone of her apologists shows amazement and
indignation over the fact that the world, so far from welcoming the
extension of German Kultur, is actively hostile to that ambition.
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