When Wilhelm
von Humboldt's essay on the limits of the opera-
tions of the State appeared for the first time in
complete form, a few years ago, some sensation
was caused by that brilliant work in Germany
too.
von Humboldt's essay on the limits of the opera-
tions of the State appeared for the first time in
complete form, a few years ago, some sensation
was caused by that brilliant work in Germany
too.
Treitschke - 1914 - His Doctrine of German Destiny
The crushing superiority of Russia was
broken by the western Powers without our inter-
ference, and yet our friendly relations with our
eastern neighbour, which were to be so fruitful in
results for Germany's future, remained unbroken.
Even a less undecided, less inactive government
than Manteuffel's ministry could scarcely have
obtained a more favourable result than this. Our
author himself tepidly acknowledges that it was
not Prussia's duty to side with the western
Powers, and thus help on the schemes of Bona-
partism. A really brilliant statesman perhaps
might, as soon as the military forces of France were
locked up in the east, have suddenly made an
alliance with Russia, and attempted the conquest
of Schleswig-Holstein, and the solution of the
German question, without troubling himself about
mistaken public opinion. But it is obvious how
difficult this was, and how impossible for a person-
ality like the King's. Instead of quietly appreciat-
ing the difficulty of the circumstances, our author
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? 292 Treitschke
only vehemently denounces Russia's pride, and
Prussia's servility. He also again ignores the
fact that Prussia then, unfortunately, had fallen
into a state of being regarded as negligible by the
whole world, and the arrogance of the western
Powers was not less than that of Russia. Every-
one knows the letters of Prince Albert, and Napol-
eon Ill's remark, regarding the deference which
Prussia showed towards Russia; the cold disparag-
ing contempt displayed in the letters of the Prince
Consort, who was himself a German, and accus-
tomed to weigh his words carefully, is, in my
opinion, more insulting than the coarse words of
abuse which the harsh despotic Nicholas is said
to have blurted out in moments of sudden anger.
Our author also ignores the fact that the Czar
Nicholas, declared himself ready to purchase
Prussia's help in the field by surrendering Warsaw.
In the camp of the English and French allies they
were willing to pay a price also, but only offered
a slight rectification of the frontier on the left
bank of the Rhine. Which of the offers was the
more favourable?
This whole section of the book is a mixture of
truth and falsehood, of ingenious remarks and
tasteless gossip. We will give one specimen of the
author's manner of relating history. He prints
in spaced letters the following : " In February, 1864,
a Prussian State-secret the just completed plan
of mobilization was revealed to the Court of St.
Petersburg. " Then he relates how one of our
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? Russian and Prussian Alliance 293
noblest patriots, a well-known writer, conveyed the
news of this betrayal, of course in perfect good faith,
to a Berlin lithographic correspondence agency;
and in consequence a secret order was issued for
the writer's arrest. I happen to be exactly
acquainted with the affair, and can confirm the
statement that the order for arrest was certainly
issued a characteristic occurrence in that time
of petty panics on the part of the police. But
more important than this secondary matter, is
the question whether that piece of information
was reliable, and whether that betrayal really took
place. The author has here again concealed
something. The report was that a brother of the
King had committed the treachery. This remark-
able disclosure, however, did not originate with any
one who was really conversant with affairs, but
with an honourable, though at the same time very
credulous and hot-headed, Liberal deputy of the
Landtag, x who had nothing to do with the Court.
Is it exaggerated loyalty when we Prussians de-
mand from the Baltic anonymous author, at
least, some attempt at a proof, before we resolve
to regard one of our royal princes as a traitor to his
country. The story simply belongs to the series
of innumerable scandals, which were only too
gladly believed by the malicious liberalism of the
fifties. It was, we must remember, the time when
Varnhagen von Ense was flourishing. In accord-
ance with the general tenor of his book, the author
1 Parliament of a single State.
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? 294 Treitschke
naturally does not relish the indisputable fact,
that the policy of Alexander II atoned for many
of the wrongs which the Czar Nicholas had com-
mitted against Germany. He seeks rather, during
this period of Russian history, to hunt up every
trace of movements hostile to Germany. It is,
for instance, a well-known fact, that after the Peace
of Paris, Russia sought for a rapprochement to
France; and it may also be safely assumed that
Prince GortschakofT, from the commencement of
his political career, regarded an alliance with
France as the most suitable for Russia. But it
is a long way from such general wishes to the acts
of State-policy. For whole decades the great
majority of French statesmen, without distinction
of party, have given a lip-adherence to the Russian
alliance; even Lamartine, the enthusiast for
freedom, spoke of this alliance as a geographical
necessity and the "cry of nature. " And yet the
course of the world's history went another way.
Then came the Polish rising of 1863. The
Court of St. Petersburg learned to know thor-
oughly the secret intrigues of Bonapartism, and
in Prussia's watchful aid found a proof of the
value of German friendship. Since then, for a
whole decade, its attitude has remained favourable
to our interests, whatever fault the Baltic anony-
mous author may find in details. Certainly it
was only the will of one man, which gave this
direction to Russian policy. The Russo- Prussian
alliance has never denied its origin; it has never
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? Russian and Prussian Alliance 295
evoked a warm friendship between the two nations.
While the great majority of Germans regarded
Russian affairs with complete indifference, there
awoke in the educated circles of Russian society,
as soon as the great decisive days of our history
approached, a bitter hatred against Germany,
which increased from year to year. But that one
will, which was friendly to us, governed the Ger-
man State ;and so long as this condition lasted, the
intelligent German press was bound to treat the
neighbouring Power with forbearance. When the
Baltic author expresses contempt for our press
because of this, and blames it for want of national
pride, he merely shows that he has no comprehen-
sion for the first and most important tasks of
German policy. His thoughts continually re-
volve round Reval, Riga, and Mitau.
That the dislocation of the equilibrium among
the Baltic Powers, and the advance of Prussia in
the Cimbric peninsula must have appeared serious
matters to the St. Petersburg Court, is obvious.
But at last it let the old deeply-rooted tradition
drop, and accommodated itself with as good a
grace as possible to the fait accompli. Similarly
it is evident that the formation of the North
German Confederation could not be agreeable
to it. When the war of 1866 broke out, people at
St. Petersburg and all the other capitals of Europe
expected the probable defeat of Prussia, and at first
were seriously alarmed at the brilliant successes
of our troops. But this time also a sense of fair-
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? 296 Treitschke
ness prevailed. The Czar Alexander accepted the
new order of things in Germany, as soon as he
ascertained what schemes were cherished by the
Court of the Tuileries against the left bank of the
Rhine. In the next year, 1870, this attitude of
our friend and neighbour underwent its severest
test. Austria, Italy, and Denmark, as is well
known, were on the point of concluding an alliance
against Germany, when the strokes of Worth and
Spichern intervened. England did not dare to
forbid the French to make the attack, which a
single word from the Queen of the Seas could have
prevented, and afterwards she prolonged the war
by her sale of arms, and by the one-sided manner
in which she maintained her neutrality. The
Czar Alexander, on the other hand, greeted each
victory of his royal uncle with sincere joy. That
was the important point, and not the ill-humour
of Prince Gortschakoff, which our author depicts
with so much satisfaction. Russia was the only
great Power whose head displayed friendly senti-
ments towards us during that difficult time. And
if we wish to realize how valuable Russian friend-
ship was for us also in the following years, we must
compare the present state of things with the past.
As long as the alliance of the three Emperors lasted,
a European war was quite out of the question, for
the notorious war crisis of 1875 has in reality
never existed. Since Russia has separated from
the other two Imperial Powers, we are at any rate
within sight of the possibility of a European war,
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? Russian and Prussian Alliance 297
and may perhaps be suddenly compelled to act
on two frontiers simultaneously.
The most welcome task for an author, who
openly preaches war against Russia, was obviously
to show in detail through what circumstances the
old alliance after the peace of San Stefano was
loosened and finally dissolved. I know no more
of these matters than anyone else. I only know
that in Russia there is deep vexation at the course
taken by the Berlin Congress, and that a great
deal of the blame is imputed to the German Em-
pire. I have heard of secret negotiations regard-
ing a Franco-Russian alliance, and am without
further argument convinced that Prince Bismarck
would not have given German policy its latest
direction without very solid reasons. But I have
no more exact knowledge of the matter. There-
fore it was with easily intelligible curiosity that
I began to read the last section of the book. I
hoped to learn something about the transactions
between Russia and France; I hoped to learn
whether the sentiments of the Czar Alexander
have changed, or whether that monarch does not
now more personally direct the foreign policy
of his kingdom, etc. But our author himself
knows nothing about such matters; he deceives
himself or others when he pretends to be initiated.
He only produces lengthy extracts from the Ger-
manophobe articles of the Russian press. Every
publicist who is at all an expert knows just as
many fine and pithy passages in Muscovite papers.
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? 298 Treitschke
In Hansen's Coulisses de la Diplomatic the author,
who loves historical sources of this kind, might
discover similar outpourings of Russian politicians.
But all that proves very little. The question is
much rather whether the Russian press, which, as
is well known, enjoys only a certain degree of
freedom in the two capitals and remains quite
unknown to the mass of the people, is powerful
enough to influence the course of Russia's foreign
policy. To this question the author gives no
answer.
So we lay the book aside without any informa-
tion on the present state of affairs, but not without
a feeling of shame. When two who have been
friends for many years have broken with each
other, it is not only unchivalrous for one to tax
his old companions with sins committed long ago,
but unwise; the reproach always falls back on the
reproacher. The last impression which the reader
carries away from this work is much more un-
favourable for Prussia than for Russia; therefore
even the foreign press greeted it at once with
well-deserved contempt. Anyone who believes
the author, must come to the conclusion that
King Frederick William III and his two successors,
had conducted a Russian and not a Prussian policy.
Happily this view is quite false. But we would
remind the Baltic publicist who, under the dis-
guise of a Prussian patriot, draws such a flattering
picture of our history, of an old Prussian story,
which still has its application. In the Rhine
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? Russian and Prussian Alliance 299
campaign of 1793, a Prussian grenadier was
inveighing vigorously against King Frederick
William II; but when an Austrian fellow-soldier
chimed in, the Prussian gave him a box on the
ears and said: "I may talk like that, but not you;
for I am a Prussian. "
The author's remarks on the future are based
upon the tacit assumption that the European
Powers fall naturally into two groups: Austria,
England, Germany, on the one side; Italy, Russia,
and France, on the other. In the short time since
the book came out, this assumption has already
been made void; the English elections have re-
minded the world very forcibly of the instability
of grouping in the system of States. If the author
had commenced his work only four weeks later,
it would probably not have appeared in the book
market at all, or have done so in a very different
shape.
But there is one truth, though certainly no new
one, in the train of thought which is apparent in
this book; it is only too correct that hostility to
everything German is constantly on the increase
in influential Russian society. But we do not
at all believe that an intelligent Russian Gov-
ernment, not misled by the dreams of Pan-
Slavism, must necessarily cherish such a feeling
towards us. We regard a war against Russia
as a great calamity, for who, now, when the
period of colonizing absolutism lies far behind
us, can seriously wish to encumber our State
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? 300 Treitschke
with the possession of Warsaw, and with millions
of Poles and Jews? But many signs indicate that
the next great European crisis will find the Rus-
sians in the ranks of our enemies. All the more
important therefore is our newly-confirmed friend-
ship with Austria.
This alliance is, as a matter of course, sure of
the involuntary sympathy of our people; if it
endures, it may have the useful effect of strength-
ening the German element in Austria, and finally
checking the melancholy decay of our civilization
in Bohemia and Hungary, in Krain and the Tyrol.
Our interests in the East coincide, for the present,
with those of the Danube Empire. After the
occupation of Bosnia has once taken place, Austria
cannot again surrender the position she has taken
up, without preparing a triumph for our common
enemy, Pan-Slavism. Nevertheless, we cannot
join our Baltic author in prophesying that the
treaty of friendship with Austria will be as lasting
and immovable as the unity of the German Em-
pire. Germany has plenty of enemies in the
medley of peoples which exist in Austria; all the
Slavs, even the ultramontane Germans hate us;
nay more, the Magyars, our political friends,
suppress German civilization in the Saxon districts
of Transylvania, much more severely than the
Russians ever ventured to do in their Baltic pro-
vinces. It is not in our power to keep these
hostile forces for ever aloof from the guidance of
Russia. The unity of our Empire, on the other
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? Russian and Prussian Alliance 301
hand, rests on our own power alone, and on the
loyalty which we owe to ourselves; therefore it
will last, whatever changes may take place among
the European alliances.
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? FREEDOM.
WHEN shall we see the last of those [timid
spirits who find it needful to increase the bur-
den of life by self-created torture, to whom every
advance of the human mind is but one sign more of
the decay of our race of the approach of the Day of
Judgment? The great majority of our contem-
poraries are again beginning, thank Heaven! to
believe quite sturdily and heartily in themselves,
yet we are weak enough to repeat some, at least,
of the gloomy predictions of those atrabilious
spirits. It has become a commonplace assumption
that all-conquering culture will at last supplant
national morality by a morality of mankind, and
transform the world into a cosmopolitan, primitive
pap. But the same law holds good of nations, as
of individuals, who show less differentiation in
childhood than in mature years. In other words,
if a people has vitality enough to keep itself and
its nationality going in the merciless race-struggle
of history, every advance in civilization will cer-
tainly bring its external life in closer contact with
other peoples, but it will bring into clearer relief
its more refined, its deeper idiosyncrasies. We all
follow the Paris fashions, we are linked with neigh-
bouring nations by a thousand different interests;
302
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? Freedom 303
yet our feelings and ideas, so far as the French and
British intellectual world is concerned, are un-
doubtedly more independent than they were seven
hundred years ago, when the peasant all over
Europe spent his life fettered by patriarchal
custom, whilst the ecclesiastic in every country
derived his knowledge from the same sources,
and the nobility of Latin Christendom created for
itself a common code of honour and morality
under the walls of Jerusalem. That lively ex-
change of ideas between nations, on which the
present generation rightly plumes itself, has never
been a mere give and take.
We are fortified in this consoling knowledge when
we see how the ideas of a German classic about
the highest object of human thought about
freedom have recently been developed in a very
individual way by two distinguished political
thinkers of France and England.
When Wilhelm
von Humboldt's essay on the limits of the opera-
tions of the State appeared for the first time in
complete form, a few years ago, some sensation
was caused by that brilliant work in Germany
too. We were rejoiced to get a deeper insight
into the evolution of one of our chief men. The
more refined minds delightedly detected the
inspiring breath of the golden age of German
humanity, for it is indeed only in Schiller's nearly-
related letters on the aesthetic education of the
human race that the bright ideal of a beautiful
humanity, which fascinated Germans during that
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? 304 Treitschke
period, has been depicted with equal eloquence
and distinction. The gifted youth who had just
had his first look into the self-complacent red-
tapeism of Frederick William II 's bureaucracy,
and had turned away, chilled by its lifeless for-
malities, in order to live a life of aesthetic leisure
at home he was certainly to be forgiven for
thinking very poorly of the State. Dalberg had
asked him to write the little book a prince who
had the intention of lavishing profusely on his
country all the good things of life by means of an
administration that would know everything, and
look after everything. The young thinker em-
phasized all the more keenly the fact that the
State is nothing but an institution for purposes of
security ; that it must never again interfere, directly
or indirectly, with a nation's morals or character;
that a man was freest when the State was least
active. We, of the present generation, know only
too well that the true cause of the ruin of the old
German State was that all free minds set them-
selves in such morbid opposition to the State
that they fled from it like young Humboldt,
instead of serving it like Humboldt when grown to
a man, and elevating it by the nobility of their
free human development. The doctrine which
sees in the State merely a hindrance, a necessary
evil, seems obsolete to the German of to-day.
Curiously enough, though, this youthful work of
Humboldt's is now being glorified by John Stuart
Mill, in his book On Liberty, and by Edward
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? Freedom 305
Laboulaye in his essay Vetat et ses limites, as a
mine of political wisdom for the troubles of the
present time.
Mill is a faithful son of those genuinely German
middle classes of England, which, since the days
of Richard II have preferentially represented our
country's inner essence, its spiritual work both
in good and bad respects, both by an earnest desire
for truth and by a gloomy, fanatical zeal in re-
ligious belief. He has become a rich man since he
discovered and recognized the most precious jewel
of our people, German idealism. Speaking from
that free watch-tower he utters words of reproach,
bitter words, against his fellow-countrymen's
confused thinking; and unfortunately, also, against
the present generation, bitter words such as only
the honoured national economist would dare to
speak unpunished. But, like a true-born English-
man, as a pupil of Bentham, he tests Kant's ideas
by the standard of the useful, the "well-compre-
hended, permanent" utility of course, and therein
shows, in his own person, the deep abyss which
will always separate the two nations' intellectual
activities. He wavers between the English and
German views of the world in his book On Liberty,
just as in his latest work, Utilitarianism and
finally gets out of the difficulty by attributing
an ideal meaning to Bentham's purely material-
istic thoughts, which brings them close to the
German view. With the help of the apostle of
German humanity he contrives to praise the
20
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? 306 Treitschke
North-American State-methods, which owe little,
or nothing, to the beautiful humanity of German-
Hellenic classicism. Laboulaye, on the other
hand, belongs to that small school of keen-sighted
Liberals, which feels the weakness of their country
to reside in French centralization, and endeavours
to re-awaken the germs of German civilization
which are there slumbering under the Keltic-
Roman regime. The talented author deals with
historical facts, rather boldly than thoroughly;
briefly, he is of opinion that Christianity was the
first to recognize the worth and dignity of the
individual. Well, then, our glorious heathen Hum-
boldt must be a downright Christian philosopher,
and with the nineteenth century, the age must be
approaching when the ideas of Christianity shall
be completely realized, and the individual, not
the State, shall rule. The Frenchman will con-
vince only a small group of believers among his
numerous readers. Mill's book, on the other
hand, has been received with the greatest ap-
plause by his fellow-countrymen. They have
called it the gospel of the nineteenth century.
As a fact, both works strike notes which have
a mighty echo in the heart of every modern man ;
it is therefore instructive to investigate whether
they really expound the principles of genuine
freedom.
Although we have learnt to assign a deeper
foundation and a richer meaning to the words of
the Greek philosopher, no thinker has surpassed
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? Freedom 307
the interpretation of freedom which Aristotle
discovered. He thinks, in his exhaustive, rempiri-
cal way, that freedom embraces two things: the
suitability of the citizens to live as they prefer,
and the sharing of the citizens in the State-
government (ruling, and at the same time, being
ruled). The one-sidedness, which is the lever
of all human progress brought it about that the
nations have hardly ever aspired to the full con-
ception of freedom. It is, on the contrary, well
known that the Greeks preferred political freedom
in a narrower sense, and readily sacrificed the
free activity of the individual to a beautiful and
sound existence as a community. The love of
political liberty, on the part of the ancients, was
certainly by no means so exclusive as is generally
believed. That definition of the Greek thinker
proves that they were by no means lacking in the
comprehension of a life, lived after its own will
and pleasure, of civic, personal freedom. Aristotle
knows very well that a State-administration is
even thinkable which does not include the national
life, taken in sum ; he expressly declares that States
are particularly distinguished from each other,
by the question whether everything, or nothing,
or how much is shared by the citizens. At any
rate, the idea was dominant in the mature State
of antiquity, that the citizen is only a part of the
State, that true virtue is realized only in the State.
Political thinkers among the ancients, therefore,
occupy themselves solely with the questions:
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? 308 Treitschke
Who shall rule in the State? and, How shall the
State be protected? Only occasionally, as a slight
misgiving, is the deeper question stirred : How shall
the citizen be protected from the State? The
ancients were assured that a power which a people
exercises over itself, needs no limitation. How
different are the German conceptions of freedom,
which lay chief emphasis on the unlimited right
of personality! In the Middle Age the State
began everywhere, with an implacable combat of
the State-power against the desire for independence
on the part of individuals, guilds, classes, which
was hostile to the State ; and we Germans experi-
enced in our own persons with what loss of power
and genuine freedom the "Libertat" of the minor
princes, the "freedoms of the Honourable classes"
were bought. If, at length, in the course of this
struggle, which in later times was gloriously
settled by an absolute Monarchy, the majesty,
the unity of the State was preserved, a transfor-
mation would take place in the people's ideas of
freedom, and a fresh quarrel would start. No
longer is the attempt made to separate the indi-
vidual from a State-power, whose necessity has
been understood. But there is a demand that
the State-power should not be independent of the
people; it should become an actual popular ad-
ministration, working within established forms, and
bound by the will of the majority of the citizens.
Everybody knows how immeasurably far from
that goal our Fatherland still is. What Vittorio
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? Freedom 309
Alfieri proposed to himself as his object in life
nearly a hundred years ago :
"Di far con penna ai falsi imperj offesa",
is still a difficult, toilsome task for the Germans.
On the Fulda, on the Leine, and probably also
on the Spree, a pusillanimous German might
even to-day repeat Aifieri's question: Ought a
man who is steeped in the feeling of civism, to take
the responsibility of bringing children into the
world, under the yoke of a tyranny? Ought he
to generate beings who, the more sensitive their
conscience the stronger their sense of justice, are
bound to suffer the more severely beneath that
perversion of all ideas of honour, justice, and
shame, whereby a tyranny poisons a people?
What, however, Alfieri. himself experienced, did
not happen in the case of the peoples. When,
having reached grown-up age, he published the
savage pamphlet, On Tyranny, which he had once
written in holy zeal as a youth, he was obliged
himself to confess: To-day I should be wanting
in the courage, or, more correctly speaking, the
fury, which was requisite for the authorship of
such a book. The nations to-day, regard with
similar feelings the abstract hatred of tyrants of
the past century. We no longer ask: "Come si
debbe morire nella tirannide," but we stand with
determined, invincible confidence, in the midst of
the fight for political freedom, the result of which
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? 310 Treitschke
has for a long time not been in question. For
the common lot of everything human has domi-
nated this struggle too, and this time, also, the
thoughts of the nations largely anticipated actual
conditions. How poor in vitality, in fruitfulness,
are the partisans of absolutism when confronted
with the people's demand for freedom ! When two
mighty streams of thought dash roaring at one
another, a new middle-stream quietly separates
at last from the wild confusion. Nay, rather, a
stream rages against a strong breakwater and
makes itself a way through thousands and thou-
sands of fissures. Everything new that this nine-
teenth century has provided, is the work of
Liberalism. The foes of freedom are able to utter
only a cool negative, or to revive the ideas of
long-forgotten days so that they may seem alive
again, or, finally, they borrow the weapons of their
opponents. In the tribunals of our Chambers,
by means of the free press, which they owe to
the Liberals, by means of catchwords which they
overhear from their adversaries, they are cham-
pioning principles which, if put in operation, would
be bound to annihilate all the freedom of the
press, all Parliamentary life.
Everywhere, even in classes which fifty years
ago were still closed to all political ideas, there is
a calm and firm belief in the truth of those great
words, which, with their deliberate definiteness,
mark the boundary of a new period; belief in the
words of the American Declaration of Independ-
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? Freedom 311
ence : " The just powers of governments are derived
from the consent of the governed. " So indisput-
able is this idea to modern men that even Gentz
had, reluctantly, to agree with the detested pro-
tagonists of freedom, when he said that the State-
power could claim sacrifices from the citizen only
so long as the latter could call the State his State.
And these problems of freedom are so old, so
thoroughly examined in all their aspects, so near
a decisive issue, that as regards most of them a
conciliation and purgation of opinions has already
been achieved. It was at last understood that
the fight for political freedom is not a dispute
between Republic and Monarchy, because the
people's " ruling and at the same time being ruled,"
is equally realizable in both forms of the State.
Only one single corollary of political freedom is,
even to-day, the cause of embittered, passionate
discussion. If, namely, the people's moral con-
sciousness is in very truth the final, just founda-
tion of the State, if in very truth the people rules
according to its own will, and for its own happi-
ness, a longing for the national isolation of the
States arises of its own accord. Because it is
only where the vital, unquestioning consciousness
of belonging together permeates all members of
the State, that the State is what ought to be,
according to its nature, an organized people in
unity. Thence the desire to exclude foreign
elements, and, in divided nations, the impulse
to get rid of the smaller of the two "fatherlands. "
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? 312 Treitschke
It is not our intention to describe to how many
necessary limitations this political liberty is
subject. Suffice it that there is everywhere a
demand for the government of the peoples in
harmony with their will, it is more general and
uniform than ever before in history, and will at
last be as surely satisfied, as the peoples' existence
is more permanent, more justified, and stronger
than the life of their powerful opponents.
^However, let us look things in the face, let us
consider how entirely our ideas of freedom have
changed in this protean fight, in which we, our-
selves, are spectators and actors. We no longer
meet the problems of freedom with the overbear-
ingness, with the vague enthusiasm, of youth.
Political freedom is freedom politically limited
this phrase, which was blamed as servile even
a few decades ago, is, to-day, admitted by every-
body capable of political judgment. And how
ruthlessly has harsh experience destroyed all
those mad ideas which hid themselves behind the
great name of Liberty! The ideas of freedom,
which prevailed during the French Revolution,
were a vague blend of Montesquieu's ideas and
Rousseau's half-antique conception. The con-
struction of political liberty was believed to be
complete if only the legislative power were sepa-
rated from the executive and the judicial, and
every citizen were, on equal terms, to help in
electing the deputies of the National Convention.
Those demands were fulfilled, most abundantly
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? Freedom 313
fulfilled, and what was the end of it all? The
most disgusting despotism Europe ever saw. The
idolatry which our Radicals displayed all too long
for the horrors of the Convention, is at last be-
ginning to die out in the presence of the trifling
reflection: If an all-mighty State-power forbids
me to open my mouth, compels me to belie my
faith, and guillotines me as soon as I defy such
insolence, it is a matter of perfect indifference
whether that tyranny is exercised by a hereditary
prince or by a Convention; both the one and the
other is slavery. But the fallacy in Rousseau's
maxim that, where all are equal, each one obeys
himself, seems, really, too obvious. It is much
truer that he obeys the majority, and what is
to prevent that majority from behaving quite as
tyrannously as an unscrupulous monarch?
If we consider the feverish convulsions, which
have shaken for seventy years the nation on the
other side of the Rhine (which is, despite all, a
great nation), we are ashamed to find that the
French, in spite of all their enthusiasm for liberty,
have only known equality, and never freedom.
But equality is a shallow idea, which may as well
signify an equal slavery of all, as an equal freedom
of all. And it certainly means the former, when
it is aspired to by a people as the sole, highest,
political good. The highest conceivable degree
of equality communism is the highest conceiv-
able degree of serfdom, because it assumes the
suppression of all natural inclinations. Assuredly,
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? 314 Treitschke
it is not an accident that the passionate impulse
for equality is especially rife in that people, whose
Keltic blood is ever and ever again finding pleasure
in flocking, in blind subjection, round a great
Caesarean figure, whether his name be Vercin-
getorix, Louis XIV, or Napoleon. We Germans
insist too proudly on the limitless right of the
individual, for us to be able to discover freedom
in universal suffrage; we reflect, that even in
several Ecclesiastical Orders, the Heads are
chosen by universal suffrage; but who in the wide
world has ever sought for freedom in a convent?
Truly it is not the spirit of liberty which speaks
in Lamartine's declaration, in the year 1848:
"Every Frenchman is an elector, therefore, a
self -ruler; no Frenchman can say to another, 'You
are more a ruler than I. ' What instinct of
mankind is gratified by such words? None other
than the meanest of all envy ! Even Rousseau's
enthusiasm for the civism of the ancients will not
stand serious examination. The civic glory of
Athens rested on the broad substratum of slavery,
of contempt for all economic activities; whilst
we moderns base our fame on respect for all men,
on our acknowledgment of the nobility of labour.
The most bigoted aristocrat in the modern world
seems like a democrat, by comparison with that
Aristotle, who coolly lays it down with horrible
hardness of heart: "It is not possible for a man
who lives the life of a manual labourer to practise
works of virtue. "
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? Freedom 315
Deeper natures were impelled, long ago, by
such considerations, to examine more carefully
on what principles the much-envied freedom of the
Britons rests. They found that in that country
no all-powerful government determines the desti-
nies of the most remote communities, but every
county, however small, is administered by itself.
This acknowledgment of the blessings of self-
government was an extraordinary advance; for
the enervating influence on the citizens of a State
that looks after everything can hardly be depicted
in sufficiently dark colours; it is, therefore, so
uncanny, because a morbid state of the people is
revealed in its full extent only in a later generation.
So long as the eye of the great Frederick watched
over his Prussians, a simple glance at the hero
raised even small souls above their standard, his
vigilance was a spur to the sluggards. But when
he passed away, he left a generation without a
will, accustomed as Napoleon III boasts of his
Frenchmen to expect from the State all incite-
ment to action, disposed to that vanity which is
the opposite of real national pride, capable on
occasion of breaking out in fleeting enthusiasm for
the idea of State-unity, but incapable of command-
ing itself incapable of the greatest task which is
laid upon modern nations. Only those citizens
who have learnt, by self-government, to act as
statesmen in case of need are able to colonize,
to spread the blessings of Western civilization
among barbarians. The management of the
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? 3i6 Treitschke
business of the community by paid State officials,
may be technically more perfect and may be
better than the principle of the division of labour;
yet a State which allows its citizens, of their own
free-will, to look after districts and communities
in honorary service, gains moral force by the self-
consciousness, by the living, practical patriotism,
of the citizens forces which the sole rule of State
officialdom can never evolve. Assuredly, this
admission on our part was a significant deepening
of our ideas of freedom, but it by no means con-
tains the ultimate truth. For, if we inquire where
this self-government of all small local districts
exists, we discover with astonishment that the
numerous small tribes in Turkey enjoy this bless-
ing in a high degree.
broken by the western Powers without our inter-
ference, and yet our friendly relations with our
eastern neighbour, which were to be so fruitful in
results for Germany's future, remained unbroken.
Even a less undecided, less inactive government
than Manteuffel's ministry could scarcely have
obtained a more favourable result than this. Our
author himself tepidly acknowledges that it was
not Prussia's duty to side with the western
Powers, and thus help on the schemes of Bona-
partism. A really brilliant statesman perhaps
might, as soon as the military forces of France were
locked up in the east, have suddenly made an
alliance with Russia, and attempted the conquest
of Schleswig-Holstein, and the solution of the
German question, without troubling himself about
mistaken public opinion. But it is obvious how
difficult this was, and how impossible for a person-
ality like the King's. Instead of quietly appreciat-
ing the difficulty of the circumstances, our author
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? 292 Treitschke
only vehemently denounces Russia's pride, and
Prussia's servility. He also again ignores the
fact that Prussia then, unfortunately, had fallen
into a state of being regarded as negligible by the
whole world, and the arrogance of the western
Powers was not less than that of Russia. Every-
one knows the letters of Prince Albert, and Napol-
eon Ill's remark, regarding the deference which
Prussia showed towards Russia; the cold disparag-
ing contempt displayed in the letters of the Prince
Consort, who was himself a German, and accus-
tomed to weigh his words carefully, is, in my
opinion, more insulting than the coarse words of
abuse which the harsh despotic Nicholas is said
to have blurted out in moments of sudden anger.
Our author also ignores the fact that the Czar
Nicholas, declared himself ready to purchase
Prussia's help in the field by surrendering Warsaw.
In the camp of the English and French allies they
were willing to pay a price also, but only offered
a slight rectification of the frontier on the left
bank of the Rhine. Which of the offers was the
more favourable?
This whole section of the book is a mixture of
truth and falsehood, of ingenious remarks and
tasteless gossip. We will give one specimen of the
author's manner of relating history. He prints
in spaced letters the following : " In February, 1864,
a Prussian State-secret the just completed plan
of mobilization was revealed to the Court of St.
Petersburg. " Then he relates how one of our
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? Russian and Prussian Alliance 293
noblest patriots, a well-known writer, conveyed the
news of this betrayal, of course in perfect good faith,
to a Berlin lithographic correspondence agency;
and in consequence a secret order was issued for
the writer's arrest. I happen to be exactly
acquainted with the affair, and can confirm the
statement that the order for arrest was certainly
issued a characteristic occurrence in that time
of petty panics on the part of the police. But
more important than this secondary matter, is
the question whether that piece of information
was reliable, and whether that betrayal really took
place. The author has here again concealed
something. The report was that a brother of the
King had committed the treachery. This remark-
able disclosure, however, did not originate with any
one who was really conversant with affairs, but
with an honourable, though at the same time very
credulous and hot-headed, Liberal deputy of the
Landtag, x who had nothing to do with the Court.
Is it exaggerated loyalty when we Prussians de-
mand from the Baltic anonymous author, at
least, some attempt at a proof, before we resolve
to regard one of our royal princes as a traitor to his
country. The story simply belongs to the series
of innumerable scandals, which were only too
gladly believed by the malicious liberalism of the
fifties. It was, we must remember, the time when
Varnhagen von Ense was flourishing. In accord-
ance with the general tenor of his book, the author
1 Parliament of a single State.
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? 294 Treitschke
naturally does not relish the indisputable fact,
that the policy of Alexander II atoned for many
of the wrongs which the Czar Nicholas had com-
mitted against Germany. He seeks rather, during
this period of Russian history, to hunt up every
trace of movements hostile to Germany. It is,
for instance, a well-known fact, that after the Peace
of Paris, Russia sought for a rapprochement to
France; and it may also be safely assumed that
Prince GortschakofT, from the commencement of
his political career, regarded an alliance with
France as the most suitable for Russia. But it
is a long way from such general wishes to the acts
of State-policy. For whole decades the great
majority of French statesmen, without distinction
of party, have given a lip-adherence to the Russian
alliance; even Lamartine, the enthusiast for
freedom, spoke of this alliance as a geographical
necessity and the "cry of nature. " And yet the
course of the world's history went another way.
Then came the Polish rising of 1863. The
Court of St. Petersburg learned to know thor-
oughly the secret intrigues of Bonapartism, and
in Prussia's watchful aid found a proof of the
value of German friendship. Since then, for a
whole decade, its attitude has remained favourable
to our interests, whatever fault the Baltic anony-
mous author may find in details. Certainly it
was only the will of one man, which gave this
direction to Russian policy. The Russo- Prussian
alliance has never denied its origin; it has never
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? Russian and Prussian Alliance 295
evoked a warm friendship between the two nations.
While the great majority of Germans regarded
Russian affairs with complete indifference, there
awoke in the educated circles of Russian society,
as soon as the great decisive days of our history
approached, a bitter hatred against Germany,
which increased from year to year. But that one
will, which was friendly to us, governed the Ger-
man State ;and so long as this condition lasted, the
intelligent German press was bound to treat the
neighbouring Power with forbearance. When the
Baltic author expresses contempt for our press
because of this, and blames it for want of national
pride, he merely shows that he has no comprehen-
sion for the first and most important tasks of
German policy. His thoughts continually re-
volve round Reval, Riga, and Mitau.
That the dislocation of the equilibrium among
the Baltic Powers, and the advance of Prussia in
the Cimbric peninsula must have appeared serious
matters to the St. Petersburg Court, is obvious.
But at last it let the old deeply-rooted tradition
drop, and accommodated itself with as good a
grace as possible to the fait accompli. Similarly
it is evident that the formation of the North
German Confederation could not be agreeable
to it. When the war of 1866 broke out, people at
St. Petersburg and all the other capitals of Europe
expected the probable defeat of Prussia, and at first
were seriously alarmed at the brilliant successes
of our troops. But this time also a sense of fair-
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? 296 Treitschke
ness prevailed. The Czar Alexander accepted the
new order of things in Germany, as soon as he
ascertained what schemes were cherished by the
Court of the Tuileries against the left bank of the
Rhine. In the next year, 1870, this attitude of
our friend and neighbour underwent its severest
test. Austria, Italy, and Denmark, as is well
known, were on the point of concluding an alliance
against Germany, when the strokes of Worth and
Spichern intervened. England did not dare to
forbid the French to make the attack, which a
single word from the Queen of the Seas could have
prevented, and afterwards she prolonged the war
by her sale of arms, and by the one-sided manner
in which she maintained her neutrality. The
Czar Alexander, on the other hand, greeted each
victory of his royal uncle with sincere joy. That
was the important point, and not the ill-humour
of Prince Gortschakoff, which our author depicts
with so much satisfaction. Russia was the only
great Power whose head displayed friendly senti-
ments towards us during that difficult time. And
if we wish to realize how valuable Russian friend-
ship was for us also in the following years, we must
compare the present state of things with the past.
As long as the alliance of the three Emperors lasted,
a European war was quite out of the question, for
the notorious war crisis of 1875 has in reality
never existed. Since Russia has separated from
the other two Imperial Powers, we are at any rate
within sight of the possibility of a European war,
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? Russian and Prussian Alliance 297
and may perhaps be suddenly compelled to act
on two frontiers simultaneously.
The most welcome task for an author, who
openly preaches war against Russia, was obviously
to show in detail through what circumstances the
old alliance after the peace of San Stefano was
loosened and finally dissolved. I know no more
of these matters than anyone else. I only know
that in Russia there is deep vexation at the course
taken by the Berlin Congress, and that a great
deal of the blame is imputed to the German Em-
pire. I have heard of secret negotiations regard-
ing a Franco-Russian alliance, and am without
further argument convinced that Prince Bismarck
would not have given German policy its latest
direction without very solid reasons. But I have
no more exact knowledge of the matter. There-
fore it was with easily intelligible curiosity that
I began to read the last section of the book. I
hoped to learn something about the transactions
between Russia and France; I hoped to learn
whether the sentiments of the Czar Alexander
have changed, or whether that monarch does not
now more personally direct the foreign policy
of his kingdom, etc. But our author himself
knows nothing about such matters; he deceives
himself or others when he pretends to be initiated.
He only produces lengthy extracts from the Ger-
manophobe articles of the Russian press. Every
publicist who is at all an expert knows just as
many fine and pithy passages in Muscovite papers.
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? 298 Treitschke
In Hansen's Coulisses de la Diplomatic the author,
who loves historical sources of this kind, might
discover similar outpourings of Russian politicians.
But all that proves very little. The question is
much rather whether the Russian press, which, as
is well known, enjoys only a certain degree of
freedom in the two capitals and remains quite
unknown to the mass of the people, is powerful
enough to influence the course of Russia's foreign
policy. To this question the author gives no
answer.
So we lay the book aside without any informa-
tion on the present state of affairs, but not without
a feeling of shame. When two who have been
friends for many years have broken with each
other, it is not only unchivalrous for one to tax
his old companions with sins committed long ago,
but unwise; the reproach always falls back on the
reproacher. The last impression which the reader
carries away from this work is much more un-
favourable for Prussia than for Russia; therefore
even the foreign press greeted it at once with
well-deserved contempt. Anyone who believes
the author, must come to the conclusion that
King Frederick William III and his two successors,
had conducted a Russian and not a Prussian policy.
Happily this view is quite false. But we would
remind the Baltic publicist who, under the dis-
guise of a Prussian patriot, draws such a flattering
picture of our history, of an old Prussian story,
which still has its application. In the Rhine
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? Russian and Prussian Alliance 299
campaign of 1793, a Prussian grenadier was
inveighing vigorously against King Frederick
William II; but when an Austrian fellow-soldier
chimed in, the Prussian gave him a box on the
ears and said: "I may talk like that, but not you;
for I am a Prussian. "
The author's remarks on the future are based
upon the tacit assumption that the European
Powers fall naturally into two groups: Austria,
England, Germany, on the one side; Italy, Russia,
and France, on the other. In the short time since
the book came out, this assumption has already
been made void; the English elections have re-
minded the world very forcibly of the instability
of grouping in the system of States. If the author
had commenced his work only four weeks later,
it would probably not have appeared in the book
market at all, or have done so in a very different
shape.
But there is one truth, though certainly no new
one, in the train of thought which is apparent in
this book; it is only too correct that hostility to
everything German is constantly on the increase
in influential Russian society. But we do not
at all believe that an intelligent Russian Gov-
ernment, not misled by the dreams of Pan-
Slavism, must necessarily cherish such a feeling
towards us. We regard a war against Russia
as a great calamity, for who, now, when the
period of colonizing absolutism lies far behind
us, can seriously wish to encumber our State
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? 300 Treitschke
with the possession of Warsaw, and with millions
of Poles and Jews? But many signs indicate that
the next great European crisis will find the Rus-
sians in the ranks of our enemies. All the more
important therefore is our newly-confirmed friend-
ship with Austria.
This alliance is, as a matter of course, sure of
the involuntary sympathy of our people; if it
endures, it may have the useful effect of strength-
ening the German element in Austria, and finally
checking the melancholy decay of our civilization
in Bohemia and Hungary, in Krain and the Tyrol.
Our interests in the East coincide, for the present,
with those of the Danube Empire. After the
occupation of Bosnia has once taken place, Austria
cannot again surrender the position she has taken
up, without preparing a triumph for our common
enemy, Pan-Slavism. Nevertheless, we cannot
join our Baltic author in prophesying that the
treaty of friendship with Austria will be as lasting
and immovable as the unity of the German Em-
pire. Germany has plenty of enemies in the
medley of peoples which exist in Austria; all the
Slavs, even the ultramontane Germans hate us;
nay more, the Magyars, our political friends,
suppress German civilization in the Saxon districts
of Transylvania, much more severely than the
Russians ever ventured to do in their Baltic pro-
vinces. It is not in our power to keep these
hostile forces for ever aloof from the guidance of
Russia. The unity of our Empire, on the other
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? Russian and Prussian Alliance 301
hand, rests on our own power alone, and on the
loyalty which we owe to ourselves; therefore it
will last, whatever changes may take place among
the European alliances.
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? FREEDOM.
WHEN shall we see the last of those [timid
spirits who find it needful to increase the bur-
den of life by self-created torture, to whom every
advance of the human mind is but one sign more of
the decay of our race of the approach of the Day of
Judgment? The great majority of our contem-
poraries are again beginning, thank Heaven! to
believe quite sturdily and heartily in themselves,
yet we are weak enough to repeat some, at least,
of the gloomy predictions of those atrabilious
spirits. It has become a commonplace assumption
that all-conquering culture will at last supplant
national morality by a morality of mankind, and
transform the world into a cosmopolitan, primitive
pap. But the same law holds good of nations, as
of individuals, who show less differentiation in
childhood than in mature years. In other words,
if a people has vitality enough to keep itself and
its nationality going in the merciless race-struggle
of history, every advance in civilization will cer-
tainly bring its external life in closer contact with
other peoples, but it will bring into clearer relief
its more refined, its deeper idiosyncrasies. We all
follow the Paris fashions, we are linked with neigh-
bouring nations by a thousand different interests;
302
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? Freedom 303
yet our feelings and ideas, so far as the French and
British intellectual world is concerned, are un-
doubtedly more independent than they were seven
hundred years ago, when the peasant all over
Europe spent his life fettered by patriarchal
custom, whilst the ecclesiastic in every country
derived his knowledge from the same sources,
and the nobility of Latin Christendom created for
itself a common code of honour and morality
under the walls of Jerusalem. That lively ex-
change of ideas between nations, on which the
present generation rightly plumes itself, has never
been a mere give and take.
We are fortified in this consoling knowledge when
we see how the ideas of a German classic about
the highest object of human thought about
freedom have recently been developed in a very
individual way by two distinguished political
thinkers of France and England.
When Wilhelm
von Humboldt's essay on the limits of the opera-
tions of the State appeared for the first time in
complete form, a few years ago, some sensation
was caused by that brilliant work in Germany
too. We were rejoiced to get a deeper insight
into the evolution of one of our chief men. The
more refined minds delightedly detected the
inspiring breath of the golden age of German
humanity, for it is indeed only in Schiller's nearly-
related letters on the aesthetic education of the
human race that the bright ideal of a beautiful
humanity, which fascinated Germans during that
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? 304 Treitschke
period, has been depicted with equal eloquence
and distinction. The gifted youth who had just
had his first look into the self-complacent red-
tapeism of Frederick William II 's bureaucracy,
and had turned away, chilled by its lifeless for-
malities, in order to live a life of aesthetic leisure
at home he was certainly to be forgiven for
thinking very poorly of the State. Dalberg had
asked him to write the little book a prince who
had the intention of lavishing profusely on his
country all the good things of life by means of an
administration that would know everything, and
look after everything. The young thinker em-
phasized all the more keenly the fact that the
State is nothing but an institution for purposes of
security ; that it must never again interfere, directly
or indirectly, with a nation's morals or character;
that a man was freest when the State was least
active. We, of the present generation, know only
too well that the true cause of the ruin of the old
German State was that all free minds set them-
selves in such morbid opposition to the State
that they fled from it like young Humboldt,
instead of serving it like Humboldt when grown to
a man, and elevating it by the nobility of their
free human development. The doctrine which
sees in the State merely a hindrance, a necessary
evil, seems obsolete to the German of to-day.
Curiously enough, though, this youthful work of
Humboldt's is now being glorified by John Stuart
Mill, in his book On Liberty, and by Edward
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? Freedom 305
Laboulaye in his essay Vetat et ses limites, as a
mine of political wisdom for the troubles of the
present time.
Mill is a faithful son of those genuinely German
middle classes of England, which, since the days
of Richard II have preferentially represented our
country's inner essence, its spiritual work both
in good and bad respects, both by an earnest desire
for truth and by a gloomy, fanatical zeal in re-
ligious belief. He has become a rich man since he
discovered and recognized the most precious jewel
of our people, German idealism. Speaking from
that free watch-tower he utters words of reproach,
bitter words, against his fellow-countrymen's
confused thinking; and unfortunately, also, against
the present generation, bitter words such as only
the honoured national economist would dare to
speak unpunished. But, like a true-born English-
man, as a pupil of Bentham, he tests Kant's ideas
by the standard of the useful, the "well-compre-
hended, permanent" utility of course, and therein
shows, in his own person, the deep abyss which
will always separate the two nations' intellectual
activities. He wavers between the English and
German views of the world in his book On Liberty,
just as in his latest work, Utilitarianism and
finally gets out of the difficulty by attributing
an ideal meaning to Bentham's purely material-
istic thoughts, which brings them close to the
German view. With the help of the apostle of
German humanity he contrives to praise the
20
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? 306 Treitschke
North-American State-methods, which owe little,
or nothing, to the beautiful humanity of German-
Hellenic classicism. Laboulaye, on the other
hand, belongs to that small school of keen-sighted
Liberals, which feels the weakness of their country
to reside in French centralization, and endeavours
to re-awaken the germs of German civilization
which are there slumbering under the Keltic-
Roman regime. The talented author deals with
historical facts, rather boldly than thoroughly;
briefly, he is of opinion that Christianity was the
first to recognize the worth and dignity of the
individual. Well, then, our glorious heathen Hum-
boldt must be a downright Christian philosopher,
and with the nineteenth century, the age must be
approaching when the ideas of Christianity shall
be completely realized, and the individual, not
the State, shall rule. The Frenchman will con-
vince only a small group of believers among his
numerous readers. Mill's book, on the other
hand, has been received with the greatest ap-
plause by his fellow-countrymen. They have
called it the gospel of the nineteenth century.
As a fact, both works strike notes which have
a mighty echo in the heart of every modern man ;
it is therefore instructive to investigate whether
they really expound the principles of genuine
freedom.
Although we have learnt to assign a deeper
foundation and a richer meaning to the words of
the Greek philosopher, no thinker has surpassed
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? Freedom 307
the interpretation of freedom which Aristotle
discovered. He thinks, in his exhaustive, rempiri-
cal way, that freedom embraces two things: the
suitability of the citizens to live as they prefer,
and the sharing of the citizens in the State-
government (ruling, and at the same time, being
ruled). The one-sidedness, which is the lever
of all human progress brought it about that the
nations have hardly ever aspired to the full con-
ception of freedom. It is, on the contrary, well
known that the Greeks preferred political freedom
in a narrower sense, and readily sacrificed the
free activity of the individual to a beautiful and
sound existence as a community. The love of
political liberty, on the part of the ancients, was
certainly by no means so exclusive as is generally
believed. That definition of the Greek thinker
proves that they were by no means lacking in the
comprehension of a life, lived after its own will
and pleasure, of civic, personal freedom. Aristotle
knows very well that a State-administration is
even thinkable which does not include the national
life, taken in sum ; he expressly declares that States
are particularly distinguished from each other,
by the question whether everything, or nothing,
or how much is shared by the citizens. At any
rate, the idea was dominant in the mature State
of antiquity, that the citizen is only a part of the
State, that true virtue is realized only in the State.
Political thinkers among the ancients, therefore,
occupy themselves solely with the questions:
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? 308 Treitschke
Who shall rule in the State? and, How shall the
State be protected? Only occasionally, as a slight
misgiving, is the deeper question stirred : How shall
the citizen be protected from the State? The
ancients were assured that a power which a people
exercises over itself, needs no limitation. How
different are the German conceptions of freedom,
which lay chief emphasis on the unlimited right
of personality! In the Middle Age the State
began everywhere, with an implacable combat of
the State-power against the desire for independence
on the part of individuals, guilds, classes, which
was hostile to the State ; and we Germans experi-
enced in our own persons with what loss of power
and genuine freedom the "Libertat" of the minor
princes, the "freedoms of the Honourable classes"
were bought. If, at length, in the course of this
struggle, which in later times was gloriously
settled by an absolute Monarchy, the majesty,
the unity of the State was preserved, a transfor-
mation would take place in the people's ideas of
freedom, and a fresh quarrel would start. No
longer is the attempt made to separate the indi-
vidual from a State-power, whose necessity has
been understood. But there is a demand that
the State-power should not be independent of the
people; it should become an actual popular ad-
ministration, working within established forms, and
bound by the will of the majority of the citizens.
Everybody knows how immeasurably far from
that goal our Fatherland still is. What Vittorio
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? Freedom 309
Alfieri proposed to himself as his object in life
nearly a hundred years ago :
"Di far con penna ai falsi imperj offesa",
is still a difficult, toilsome task for the Germans.
On the Fulda, on the Leine, and probably also
on the Spree, a pusillanimous German might
even to-day repeat Aifieri's question: Ought a
man who is steeped in the feeling of civism, to take
the responsibility of bringing children into the
world, under the yoke of a tyranny? Ought he
to generate beings who, the more sensitive their
conscience the stronger their sense of justice, are
bound to suffer the more severely beneath that
perversion of all ideas of honour, justice, and
shame, whereby a tyranny poisons a people?
What, however, Alfieri. himself experienced, did
not happen in the case of the peoples. When,
having reached grown-up age, he published the
savage pamphlet, On Tyranny, which he had once
written in holy zeal as a youth, he was obliged
himself to confess: To-day I should be wanting
in the courage, or, more correctly speaking, the
fury, which was requisite for the authorship of
such a book. The nations to-day, regard with
similar feelings the abstract hatred of tyrants of
the past century. We no longer ask: "Come si
debbe morire nella tirannide," but we stand with
determined, invincible confidence, in the midst of
the fight for political freedom, the result of which
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? 310 Treitschke
has for a long time not been in question. For
the common lot of everything human has domi-
nated this struggle too, and this time, also, the
thoughts of the nations largely anticipated actual
conditions. How poor in vitality, in fruitfulness,
are the partisans of absolutism when confronted
with the people's demand for freedom ! When two
mighty streams of thought dash roaring at one
another, a new middle-stream quietly separates
at last from the wild confusion. Nay, rather, a
stream rages against a strong breakwater and
makes itself a way through thousands and thou-
sands of fissures. Everything new that this nine-
teenth century has provided, is the work of
Liberalism. The foes of freedom are able to utter
only a cool negative, or to revive the ideas of
long-forgotten days so that they may seem alive
again, or, finally, they borrow the weapons of their
opponents. In the tribunals of our Chambers,
by means of the free press, which they owe to
the Liberals, by means of catchwords which they
overhear from their adversaries, they are cham-
pioning principles which, if put in operation, would
be bound to annihilate all the freedom of the
press, all Parliamentary life.
Everywhere, even in classes which fifty years
ago were still closed to all political ideas, there is
a calm and firm belief in the truth of those great
words, which, with their deliberate definiteness,
mark the boundary of a new period; belief in the
words of the American Declaration of Independ-
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? Freedom 311
ence : " The just powers of governments are derived
from the consent of the governed. " So indisput-
able is this idea to modern men that even Gentz
had, reluctantly, to agree with the detested pro-
tagonists of freedom, when he said that the State-
power could claim sacrifices from the citizen only
so long as the latter could call the State his State.
And these problems of freedom are so old, so
thoroughly examined in all their aspects, so near
a decisive issue, that as regards most of them a
conciliation and purgation of opinions has already
been achieved. It was at last understood that
the fight for political freedom is not a dispute
between Republic and Monarchy, because the
people's " ruling and at the same time being ruled,"
is equally realizable in both forms of the State.
Only one single corollary of political freedom is,
even to-day, the cause of embittered, passionate
discussion. If, namely, the people's moral con-
sciousness is in very truth the final, just founda-
tion of the State, if in very truth the people rules
according to its own will, and for its own happi-
ness, a longing for the national isolation of the
States arises of its own accord. Because it is
only where the vital, unquestioning consciousness
of belonging together permeates all members of
the State, that the State is what ought to be,
according to its nature, an organized people in
unity. Thence the desire to exclude foreign
elements, and, in divided nations, the impulse
to get rid of the smaller of the two "fatherlands. "
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? 312 Treitschke
It is not our intention to describe to how many
necessary limitations this political liberty is
subject. Suffice it that there is everywhere a
demand for the government of the peoples in
harmony with their will, it is more general and
uniform than ever before in history, and will at
last be as surely satisfied, as the peoples' existence
is more permanent, more justified, and stronger
than the life of their powerful opponents.
^However, let us look things in the face, let us
consider how entirely our ideas of freedom have
changed in this protean fight, in which we, our-
selves, are spectators and actors. We no longer
meet the problems of freedom with the overbear-
ingness, with the vague enthusiasm, of youth.
Political freedom is freedom politically limited
this phrase, which was blamed as servile even
a few decades ago, is, to-day, admitted by every-
body capable of political judgment. And how
ruthlessly has harsh experience destroyed all
those mad ideas which hid themselves behind the
great name of Liberty! The ideas of freedom,
which prevailed during the French Revolution,
were a vague blend of Montesquieu's ideas and
Rousseau's half-antique conception. The con-
struction of political liberty was believed to be
complete if only the legislative power were sepa-
rated from the executive and the judicial, and
every citizen were, on equal terms, to help in
electing the deputies of the National Convention.
Those demands were fulfilled, most abundantly
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? Freedom 313
fulfilled, and what was the end of it all? The
most disgusting despotism Europe ever saw. The
idolatry which our Radicals displayed all too long
for the horrors of the Convention, is at last be-
ginning to die out in the presence of the trifling
reflection: If an all-mighty State-power forbids
me to open my mouth, compels me to belie my
faith, and guillotines me as soon as I defy such
insolence, it is a matter of perfect indifference
whether that tyranny is exercised by a hereditary
prince or by a Convention; both the one and the
other is slavery. But the fallacy in Rousseau's
maxim that, where all are equal, each one obeys
himself, seems, really, too obvious. It is much
truer that he obeys the majority, and what is
to prevent that majority from behaving quite as
tyrannously as an unscrupulous monarch?
If we consider the feverish convulsions, which
have shaken for seventy years the nation on the
other side of the Rhine (which is, despite all, a
great nation), we are ashamed to find that the
French, in spite of all their enthusiasm for liberty,
have only known equality, and never freedom.
But equality is a shallow idea, which may as well
signify an equal slavery of all, as an equal freedom
of all. And it certainly means the former, when
it is aspired to by a people as the sole, highest,
political good. The highest conceivable degree
of equality communism is the highest conceiv-
able degree of serfdom, because it assumes the
suppression of all natural inclinations. Assuredly,
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? 314 Treitschke
it is not an accident that the passionate impulse
for equality is especially rife in that people, whose
Keltic blood is ever and ever again finding pleasure
in flocking, in blind subjection, round a great
Caesarean figure, whether his name be Vercin-
getorix, Louis XIV, or Napoleon. We Germans
insist too proudly on the limitless right of the
individual, for us to be able to discover freedom
in universal suffrage; we reflect, that even in
several Ecclesiastical Orders, the Heads are
chosen by universal suffrage; but who in the wide
world has ever sought for freedom in a convent?
Truly it is not the spirit of liberty which speaks
in Lamartine's declaration, in the year 1848:
"Every Frenchman is an elector, therefore, a
self -ruler; no Frenchman can say to another, 'You
are more a ruler than I. ' What instinct of
mankind is gratified by such words? None other
than the meanest of all envy ! Even Rousseau's
enthusiasm for the civism of the ancients will not
stand serious examination. The civic glory of
Athens rested on the broad substratum of slavery,
of contempt for all economic activities; whilst
we moderns base our fame on respect for all men,
on our acknowledgment of the nobility of labour.
The most bigoted aristocrat in the modern world
seems like a democrat, by comparison with that
Aristotle, who coolly lays it down with horrible
hardness of heart: "It is not possible for a man
who lives the life of a manual labourer to practise
works of virtue. "
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? Freedom 315
Deeper natures were impelled, long ago, by
such considerations, to examine more carefully
on what principles the much-envied freedom of the
Britons rests. They found that in that country
no all-powerful government determines the desti-
nies of the most remote communities, but every
county, however small, is administered by itself.
This acknowledgment of the blessings of self-
government was an extraordinary advance; for
the enervating influence on the citizens of a State
that looks after everything can hardly be depicted
in sufficiently dark colours; it is, therefore, so
uncanny, because a morbid state of the people is
revealed in its full extent only in a later generation.
So long as the eye of the great Frederick watched
over his Prussians, a simple glance at the hero
raised even small souls above their standard, his
vigilance was a spur to the sluggards. But when
he passed away, he left a generation without a
will, accustomed as Napoleon III boasts of his
Frenchmen to expect from the State all incite-
ment to action, disposed to that vanity which is
the opposite of real national pride, capable on
occasion of breaking out in fleeting enthusiasm for
the idea of State-unity, but incapable of command-
ing itself incapable of the greatest task which is
laid upon modern nations. Only those citizens
who have learnt, by self-government, to act as
statesmen in case of need are able to colonize,
to spread the blessings of Western civilization
among barbarians. The management of the
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? 3i6 Treitschke
business of the community by paid State officials,
may be technically more perfect and may be
better than the principle of the division of labour;
yet a State which allows its citizens, of their own
free-will, to look after districts and communities
in honorary service, gains moral force by the self-
consciousness, by the living, practical patriotism,
of the citizens forces which the sole rule of State
officialdom can never evolve. Assuredly, this
admission on our part was a significant deepening
of our ideas of freedom, but it by no means con-
tains the ultimate truth. For, if we inquire where
this self-government of all small local districts
exists, we discover with astonishment that the
numerous small tribes in Turkey enjoy this bless-
ing in a high degree.
