Eberhard Arnold

The German Spirit [Geist]¹

[Arnold, Eberhard and Emmy papers - P.M.S.]

[Draft Translation by Bruderhof Historical Archive]

EA 15/4

Fourteenth Wartime Issue of the Furche, August 1915

From the war literature.

By Dr. Eberhard Arnold.

The German Spirit.

Hermann Cohen: Das Eigentümliche des deutschen Geistes [The Uniqueness of the German Spirit]. Published by Reuther & Reichard, Berlin. 1914.

Werner Sombart: Händler und Helden [Merchants and Heroes]. Published by Duncker. Munich and Leipzig 1915.

Wilhelm Wundt: Die Nationen und ihre Philosophie [The Nations and Their Philosophy]. Published by Kröner. Leipzig 1915.

I. Hermann Cohen.

“Our participation in the administration of Europe must remain leading, if political leadership in the ethical sense of world history belongs to the spirit and a universal kind of spirit at all.”² The rule of the spirit and the universality of the spirit, the inwardness and the freedom of the spirit is the uniqueness of the German, as Hermann Cohen testifies to it, a uniqueness which includes within itself the vocation to being effective through leadership.

It is the communion of spirit and soul with the Greek people that singles us out from the other nations. The Greeks possessed the power of spirit to universalize philosophy for all fields, to absorb and imbibe the richest material in an original spirit, and we only find this again among the German people. Nicholas of Cusa was the first great German who worked out this community of German and Greek essence. Nicholas of Cusa, whom Cohen identifies as the first mature embodiment of this German type, is considered by him to be the very representative and instaurator of German philosophizing. The connection with the Greek spirit, as the inner striving for truthfulness and certainty, the foundation in reason and mathematics, demonstrates the German in this man just as much as does his enthusiasm for unity, which became universality for him in religion too. His connection with mysticism, highlighted by Cohen, should have led to the emphasis on the deeply German manner in which Nicholas of Cusa grasped infinity, as an infinity of the ineffable and unknowable, which can only be experienced in supra-conceptual intuition [p. 331], as an infinity which, in a certain sense, also belongs to the universe and to the individual.ⁱ

But Cohen’s position on Kant makes reasoning and accountability appear to him as the basic process of reason, as the highest stage of cognition, against which he ironically refers to everything that wants to go further as “paraphysics.” In Leibniz, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, too, he is only able to recognize the foundation of reason and the sincerity of the penetrating art of reason as their Germanness [Deutschheit]. Cohen sees the uniqueness of the German spirit in its theoretical thinking as a universality of the human spirit in its scientific reason. The real opponent for him is England, the English sensualism of sensory feeling, and the English eudaemonism of bliss. He takes the greatest representative of this, Herbert Spencer, and makes Lord Kelvin’s words his own: “This is not philosophy.”³ Against this sensualism, according to Cohen, the only weapon is rationalism, which holds that truth is not to be found in sensory perception, but only in the pure thinking of reason. But rationalism leads to idealism.

For Cohen, Kant is also the consummation of the ethical spirit of Germanness. With his distinction between logic and ethics, he finally overcame the abhorrent defect of French philosophy, where Descartes could frighten us with the sudden question as to whether God could also be a “mauvais génie” [evil genius], who took pleasure in deceiving humanity. In Kant's moral thinking, humanity is the standard for the value and dignity of life: the starry sky above me and humanity within me. In the principle of freedom and in the self-legislation of the categorical imperative, humanity appears as the foundation and end; the idea of humanity appears as the triumph over eudaemonism.

In this moral idea, Cohen recognizes the essence of the German spirit, as it has proven itself in the fact that the origin of the German army constitution was born from the spirit of Kant as well as from the vital need and vital force of the German people, which Cohen has demonstrated with regard to [Wilhelm von] Schoen, [Carl von] Clausewitz, and [Hermann von] Boyen. For Cohen, Kant’s self-legislation of morality is the final development of Luther’s justification by faith, and also in this respect the outcome of the German spirit. He understands Luther’s great achievement to be the liberation of moral thinking and conscience, the thought [p. 332] that the Word of God no less than the sacrificial works of the church are mute witnesses unless they receive life from humanity’s own spiritual power.

As with Kant, Hermann Cohen also draws a clear line from Luther to Fichte. The most fundamental [innerlichst] feature of Luther and his work of faith is that he, more consciously than a new church, wanted to found a new school. For Luther's Germandom [Deutschtum], the state is not only (like the dead English theory) the order that stands against violence and robbery, but the educational institution of the spirit and as such also that of the morality of the people. In accordance with Luther's Germanness, Fichte's future social state demands universal education on the national level, and further education in universal compulsory schooling by the state.

And again it is the inwardness of Reformation religiosity from which the German spirit climbs to its climax in painting with [Albrecht] Dürer. It is the inwardness of German love in reverence and longing that came to expression in the Reformation movement's preference for the Psalms. Reverence for the infinite and longing for the infinite, this is the most profound feature of German inwardness, a feature that also finds form in the poetry and music of German inwardness. (Cf. Dr. Eb. Arnold, Der Krieg, ein Aufruf zur Innerlichkeit. P. Ott. Gotha 1914.)⁴

II. Werner Sombart.

Werner Sombart also sees the deeper world-historical meaning of today's war in the struggle of opposites between the English and the German worldviews. His book almost exclusively focusses on the moral opposition between the ideas of 1789 and German militarism and barbarism, in other words the opposition between the egoistic eudaemonism of human rights and the sacrificial idealism of duty, the opposition between commercialism [Händlertum] and heroism.

Sombart's idealist perception of the world culminates in the sacrifice of the naturalistic individual life in order to gain a higher life in the spirit in its place. The conviction to live and die for the whole that is above us constitutes the moral content of the idea of the fatherland. Only those who see a moral greatness in the fatherland, an intellectual realm [geistiges Reich] of German dignity, as Schiller expressed it,⁵ are able to grasp the German idea of the fatherland. Therefore, those who occupy themselves with philosophy and art belong to their fatherland more intrinsically than anyone else. What Germans have lost in external power, they have gained in internal strength. Inwardness [p. 333] and devotion to that which is higher demonstrate the essence of the German. Sombart is of the opinion that among all higher ideals it is finally only love for the fatherland, only the idea of the state, that can make the idealist worldview a truly universal one for a people. According to him, the idea of being human, the idea of humanity, in its deepest sense, can only be understood as one that reaches its highest and richest expression in individual noble peoples. The German can elevate himself to become an über-German, but never to become an Übermensch, and therefore not even to become a European. As such, for Sombart the ideal of humanity is almost as dangerous a word as individualism, because both can mean the highest heroism and equally the most profound commercialism. The ideals of humanity found in the ideas of 1789 – liberty, equality, and fraternity – are, according to Sombart, genuinely and properly merchant ideals, because they have no other purpose than to confer certain advantages on individuals. In the English view, the individual only has rights with respect to the state. The state serves to protect property and the freedom of its members: “The proprietors keep the state like the master keeps a servant” (Fichte).⁶ Therefore, in England freedom appears to be arbitrary and independent. All people are free to do what they want, so long as they do not interfere with the freedom of anyone else. “People have sought to make the state the cushion of indolence, and yet the state is supposed to be just the opposite – it is an armature of all activity; its purpose is to make the human being . . . the most active being” (Novalis).⁷ “The state is a unit which increases the powers of all individuals a millionfold” ([Ferdinand] Lassalle).⁸ Therefore, the development that leads to freedom in the Fichtean sense, in the German sense, means “the freedom to form oneself into moral perfection.”⁹

This is the great opposition between the conflicting worldviews, whether a person wants to demand or bestow, to take or give. Mammonism and materialism want to take and enjoy. Idealism knows how to give and bestow, to work and do. That is why the German-thinking German has in every age, whether his name was Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Fichte, or Nietzsche, whether he was a classicist or a romantic, a Potsdamer or a Weimarian, rejected every utilitarian philosophy, every philosophy of happiness or pleasure. Englishness [Engländertum] is the inability to rise above practical pursuits, the pronounced inclination for physical comfort and material wellbeing: “the greatest happiness for the greatest number!”¹⁰ – Happiness as a comfort in respectability – with the [p. 334] negative virtues of temperance, contentment, continence, and patience.

How sharply our thinkers have opposed this English nature: “Wickedness consists precisely in loving only one’s sensible well-being” (Fichte).¹¹ “Overcome, you Higher Men [. . . .] miserable ease, the ‘happiness of the greatest number’!” (Nietzsche).¹² “Here too life by no means presents itself as a gift to be enjoyed, but as a task, a drudgery, to be worked through” (Schopenhauer).¹³ “For do I aspire after happiness? I aspire after work!” (Nietzsche).¹⁴ “It is not necessary that I live; but it is necessary that I do my duty” (Frederick the Great).¹⁵ “Try to do your duty [. . . . T]he demand of the day.”¹⁶ Whoever is poor wants to take; whoever is rich wants to give. Therefore Germans counter the negative virtues of the English with positive, giving powers: sacrificial courage and loyalty, reverence and bravery, piety, goodness, and obedience.

“Duty! Sublime and mighty name [. . . .] What origin is there worthy of you, and where is to be found the root of your noble descent [? . . .] It can be nothing less than what elevates a human being above himself” (Kant).¹⁷ It is something great and mighty when people, before demanding their rights, attain devotion to duty, when they go from the pleasurable life of bliss to the sacrificial life of the highest tasks. This is why Zarathustra says, “You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?”¹⁸ This is why Sombart calls it “the only thing that can be found again in all German being [. . . .]: that the German never actually is [der Deutsche nicht eigentlich ist] but rather eternally becomes.”¹⁹ “And so long as you lack this: die and become, you are nothing but a gloomy guest on the dark earth” . . . (Goethe).²⁰ The surrender [Aufgabe] of our own “I” gives us the only deep satisfaction, if it leads us to real tasks [Aufgaben]. This is why Sombart calls it the clearest [lichtest] characteristic of our German thinking, namely achieving union with the Godhead already on earth, and achieving this not through the mortification of our flesh and our will, but through powerful action and accomplishment, through ceaselessly setting and completing new tasks in active life. “Ideal and Life,” as Schiller formulated it;²¹ the realization of the infinite and invisible, it could be called.

This German philosophy rises to the unchangeable “more than all infinity,” which Fichte shaped into a great word: “It sees time, and eternity, and infinity in its emergence from the appearance and growing visibility of the oneness that is in itself [p. 335] invisible, and is only properly comprehended in this its invisibility.”²² Genuine philosophy strives for infinity, which it seeks to behold in the appearance of the invisible as a visible thing in time, even though the one infinite thing can only be grasped in its invisibility.

III. Wilhelm Wundt

Wundt, too, sees in philosophy, along with poetry, the special expression of a nation’s spiritual character. “The philosophy someone has shows what kind of person he or she is” (Fichte).²³ The spread of a philosophy within its nation and its influence on its philosophical successors provide the measure for how far a philosophy is the expression of the inner being of its people. Therefore, it is its harmony with a nation’s poetry that proves that a philosophy belongs to its people. When the French get excited with La Marseillaise’s words, “Lejour de gloire est arrive!” [the day of glory has arrived]²⁴ they testify to the same egoism, increased and extended in honor and fame, as their philosophy. Likewise, the serious and reserved, “Rule, Britannia, rule the waves. Britons never shall be slaves!”²⁵ demonstrates the same English concept of freedom and the same outwardly directed will to rule as can be found in their philosophy. – “Firm and faithful stands the watch [. . .] on the Rhine!”²⁶ Firmness and faithfulness, the calm certainty of the fulfillment of duty, constitute the simple moral ideal of the German.

The spirit of the Italian nation is not uniform. The imagination and passions of the southern Italians, with their not infrequent, deeper energy, incline toward German philosophy. The northern Italian clarity of mind [Geist] and the rather volatile excitability of the whole country have always pushed toward an inner connection to France. Italian poetry and philosophy understand how to combine the most diverse elements, and Dante’s work is the best example of this, seeking to saturate the Middle Ages, scholasticism, and antiquity with the spirit of the new age. The great and only philosopher of the Italian Renaissance, Giordano Bruno, knew how to apply Nicholas of Cusa’s German idea of infinity to Copernicus’s German conception of the world.

With regard to both clarity of mind [Geist] and fluctuating temperament, the French surpass most peoples. Descartes was a genuine French-sharp skeptic and a believing dogmatician at the same time. Today’s French also like to get enthusiastic about religion [dem Kultus der Religion]. But, out of the three components of Cartesian thought, French philosophy has only retained and continued studying the mechanism of extended matter and has eliminated God and the soul from its intellectual life [Geistesleben]. As such, [p. 336] French materialism arose from Descartes, as well as from the rejection of all moral theories as represented by [Alfred] Fouillée and [Jean-Marie] Guyau. Altruism, which [Auguste] Comte had made the motto of ethics without the approval of his nation, is here identified as expanded and increased egoism, specifically through the connection with the drive to excel. Materialism and the elevation of individual value naturally led to a preference for external characteristics at the expense of inwardness.

This is even more evident in the case of England. Here, too, faith is separated and excluded from science and philosophical thinking, as was already done by the English scholastics, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, and to a greater extent by Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke. But while French materialism logically leads to non-belief, the political creation of the English Church makes ecclesiasticism [Kirchlichkeit] a moral imperative and generates the idea of England as the chosen people. But the sharp separation of knowledge and belief, of private ecclesiasticism and scientific conviction, frees the English spirit to engage in mechanism and materialism so recklessly, to give such an exclusive estimation to egoism and purely practical or external questions, as we see begun in Hobbes and completed in Locke and Spencer. For John Locke and his successors, practical utility determines both what is true in epistemology and what is good in morality. Locke’s confinement to epistemology and morality, his exclusive realism of sensory experience, and his utilitarianism guided by egoism have proved themselves to be genuinely English in that they have never disappeared from English philosophy since. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill base their principle of the maximization of happiness on these themes of utility and material goods, pleasure and wealth. Only the satisfaction of physical needs remains as the ideal of the Spencerian industrial state. Utilitarianism is the philosophy of the sated who hold their external demands to be self-evident.

The uniqueness of German philosophy proves itself from the beginning through its immersion in religious and metaphysical problems. In Wittenberg, Giordano Bruno commended Nicholas [of Cusa], Copernicus, and Paracelsus as the three great Germans who had opened new paths for philosophy, and in the same speech he praised Luther as the new Hercules of the spirit. The religious grasp of unity and infinity in Nicholas and the mystical contemplation of the human being as microcosm [p. 337] in Paracelsus leads to the genuinely German creation that is Leibniz’s philosophy. In the unity of being and in the spiritual being of things, Leibniz is the founder of German idealism, that intellectual harmony between cognizing and willing, morality and religion, which has proved to be a living continuation of the effects of the German Reformation and German mysticism.

From Leibniz on, the idea of duty has been in the foreground of German ethics. Kant himself indicated that the goal of his whole philosophy was the detachment of morality from the reflection of the useful and of eudaemonism, and the securing of a new foundation for the self-legislation of duty. Schleiermacher assigned the inwardness of feeling to religion and gave the moral will its autonomy for life’s tasks. Fichte and Hegel strengthened this new foundation with the imperative drives of the will that belong to the superior, commanding, universal will of the community. Fichte’s unification of the categorical imperative of duty with devotion to the community, following the example of the Reformation, pushes toward the true purpose of humanity, in contrast to the ideas of utility and the enjoyment of life.

In Schopenhauer’s pessimism, too, we comprehend life and suffering as a task. From his ingenious person as the goal of creation, Nietzsche’s new ideal of the future leads to a new idealism that embraces the whole of life. Nietzsche wants to shape the ancient German force of the idea of infinity in the temporal recurrence of the same, more powerfully than Cusa had been able to with the infinity of space. The low and the common that Friedrich Nietzsche fights against consists in that which the masses call a happy and enjoyable existence. His revaluation of all values only overthrows those virtues that Spinoza already calls negative ones: humility and compassion. Energetic character, courage, and truthfulness have been regarded as moral goods everywhere beyond asceticism. Against Wundt's assumption that Nietzsche's unreserved idealism leads to an unrestrained individualism, Brahn’s recent remarks “concerning the Übermensch as the molder and arranger of life and Nietzsche’s ideal of hierarchy in the state” should be noted (Friedrich Nietzsches Meinungen über Staaten und Kriege [Friedrich Nietzsche’s Views on States and Wars] by Dr. Max Brahn, Leipzig 1915). “I do not teach individualism; I teach hierarchy,” Friedrich Nietzsche said.²⁷

But Wundt recognizes that Nietzsche’s ideal person also demands ideal purposes; the ideal of the Übermensch is directed toward action and leads [p. 338] to devotion to the task, to sacrifice. Friedrich Nietzsche embodies German idealism as well, so that even Wundt can declare that Nietzsche led German idealism toward its rebirth – in the problems of the moral worldview. Behind Nietzsche’s Übermensch, there is also the commandment with regard to duty: “You should surrender yourself to the task that is set for you in the world!”²⁸ Wilhelm Wundt even thinks that socialism has had its day, in that German idealism will be victorious over communism, which itself goes back to the French morality of egoism.

IV. Conclusion

German thought strives for the sovereignty of the mind [Geist] over matter, the leadership of the spirit [Geist] in all areas. The universality of the spirit wants to encompass everything, including religion, and the unity and infinity of the world as a whole, as well. This is why German thinking is directed against mechanism and materialism to the extent that even Germans who call themselves materialists and monists are unable to deny their idealism. Everywhere the German sees the spiritual being of things. Mysticism and Reformation represent high points of Germandom.

The high regard for inwardness in opposition to the preference for external characteristics and practical questions designates the essence of Germandom. In mysticism, this inwardness becomes the enthusiasm of unity in infinity. In logic and epistemology, it molds itself into inner striving for truthfulness and conscientiousness. Everywhere, and especially in relationship to God, it struggles for the freedom of the spirit from everything that oppresses it from the outside. In the Reformation, German inwardness fought for justification by faith, for unmediated unity with the Redeemer. In Kant, German inwardness struggled for the liberation of moral thought and conscience. German inwardness is reverence for the infinite and longing for the infinite, is German love and German becoming, and is therefore the enemy of all satiety and self-sufficiency.

Germans are in search of life's true purpose [Bestimmung]. They strive to elevate themselves above the practical and external things of existence, to elevate themselves to the highest, the infinite, and the invisible. The identification of every ideal makes them aspire to something better, higher, and more perfect. The unfathomable nature of their inner being only allows them to comprehend their inner destiny [Bestimmung] in terms of the highest destiny and only allows them to be satisfied when they are subordinated to the highest, [p. 339] commanding will. As such, the ideal of the fatherland and the ideal of humanity can then serve the German spirit as one step toward making the highest ascent. Indeed, they will never be able to disappear from the Germans’ field of vision [Gesichtskreis], because they form the circle [Kreis] of activity for our moral will. But the detachment from the selfishness that is inherent in these ideals surely means a broadening, but by no means a modification, of inner vision. French ethics is right when it only wants to see an extension of egoism in the altruism of the ideal of the fatherland and of the ideal of humanity. This certainly entails egoism’s ennoblement, but it cannot bring about an inner liberation by any means. The ideals of the family, fatherland, and humanity signify the multiplication and extension of the concentric circles around the same steadfast center.

This is why the German spirit was unable to find satisfaction in the human ideal of the Enlightenment. If our inner destiny is to be the highest, it can only be gained in the one infinite and invisible Godhead. This is what the spirit strives for most deeply, to be united with the Godhead, in order to experience, from within the Godhead, being lifted out and carried up on to a new surface and around a new center. The longing of the German soul has always been to perish [verwerden] (Eckhart),²⁹ to de-self [sich zu entselbsten] (Goethe),³⁰ to abandon itself and dissolve [aufgehen], only to serve (Wagner).³¹ According to Goethe, [“]We profess to be the people [Geschlecht] who strive out of the darkness and into the light[”].³² We share the unfathomability of inwardness with the Russians, which the French and English do not know, but we differ from the Russians with their dark, inner chaos through our desire for clarity, our sense for the pure line and measure, exactitude and determinacy, which we share with the French (cf. Hermann Bahr, Kriegssegen [The Blessings of War], Munich 1915).

This is why Germandom has never been able to feel comfortable in a mysticism and asceticism that is alienated from the world and distant to the earth. Germans want to realize union with the Godhead in doing and acting, in setting and completing tasks in the active life. Germans understand the realization of the kingdom of God as Jesus testified with his deeds, his works in John [e.g. John 10:25]. Germans need faith as a basis and foundation (ὑπόστασις [substance], Heb. 11:1), as a realization of what we hope for in real [tatsächlich] life, as the evidence, test, and substantiation for what we do not see. [p. 340]

As such, the German spirit seeks the intellectual harmony between cognizing and willing, morality and religion. It renounces any purpose of life that is to be found in utility and pleasure. It wants to dedicate life to a higher life, a sacrificial life of the highest, real tasks. The devoted idealism of duty in life’s tasks, the generous virtues of obedience and faithfulness, self-sacrifice and bravery, truthfulness and the creative energy of character – these are the things that should make every person the most active personality in his or her place and fatherland and increase each person’s strength in the most powerful way. For Germans, freedom is freedom of the spirit for the unrestrained development of its innermost and highest destiny.

i. Cf. Drei Briefe im Felde, by Dr. Eberhard Arnold. 25 pfennigs. Published by P. Ott, Gotha 1915. [The book title should instead read Drei Bücher im Felde, i.e., Three Books at the Front. See EA 15/01.]

Editorial Notes

1. In this article, German Geist and related words may refer specifically to the mind and its functions or more generally to the human spirit.

2. Hermann Cohen, Über das Eigentümliche des deutschen Geistes (Berlin: Reuther & Richard, 1914), 45. Quoted text adjusted by Arnold.

3. Cohen, Über das Eigentümliche, 13.

4. War: A Call to Inwardness. See EA 14/05.

5. Perhaps a reference to Schiller’s unfinished poem, “Deutsche Größe” (German Greatness), 1801. See Bernard Suphan, ed., Deutsche Größe: Ein unvollendetes Gedicht Schillers (Weimar: 1902), p. 5, lines 1–36.

6. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Über den Begriff des wahrhaften Krieges: In Bezug auf den Krieg im Jahre 1813 (Tübingen: Cottaische, 1815), 7. Quoted text adjusted by Arnold.

7. Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel, ed., Novalis Schriften: Die Werke Friedrich von Hardenbergs, vol. 3, Das philosophische Werk II (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960), 298.

8. Eduard Bernstein, ed., Ferd. Lassalle’s Reden und Schriften: Neue Gesammt-Ausgabe, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1893), 77.

9. Source unknown.

10. A central principle in utilitarian philosophy.

11. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation (Berlin, 1808), 56. Translation taken from Addresses to the German Nation, trans. Isaac Nakhimovsky, Béla Kapossy, and Keith Tribe (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2013), 22.

12. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, part 4, § “Vom höheren Menschen,” chapter 3. Translation taken from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 2003), 298.

13. Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 3rd ed., vol. 2 (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1859), 406. Translation taken from The World as Will and Representation, trans. E. F. J. Payne, vol. 2 (New York: Dover, 1966), 357.

14. Nietzsche, Zarathustra, part 4, § “Das Zeichen.” Translation taken from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 336, emphasis original.

15. Letter to Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d’Argens, September 18, 1760.

16. Curt Noch, ed., Goethes Sämtliche Werke: Propyläen-Ausgabe, vol. 41 (Berlin: Propyläen, 1829), 361.

17. Immanuel Kants Werke, vol. 5, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, ed. Benzion Kellermann (Berlin: Cassirer, 1914), 95. Translation taken from Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 71.

18. Nietzsche, Zarathustra, part 1, § “Vom Wege des Schaffenden.” Translation taken from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 90.

19. Werner Sombart, Händler und Helden: Patriotische Besinnungen (Munich and Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1915), 54–55. Quoted text adjusted by Arnold.

20. For the original German and an alternative (freer) English translation, see Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Selected Poetry, trans. David Luke (Penguin, 2005), 182–83. Arnold quotes the lines as prose, reflected in the way we have translated the text above. The ellipsis is also his.

21. “Das Ideal und das Leben” is the title of one of Schiller’s poems.

22. Fichte, Reden, 239. Translation taken from Addresses, 93.

23. Fichte, “Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre,” Philosophisches Journal einer Gesellschaft teutscher Gelehrten 1:5 (1797): 1–49, at 25. Quote adjusted by Arnold.

24. “La Marseillaise” (1792), which later became the French national anthem.

25. “Rule, Britannia!” (1740).

26. “Die Wacht am Rhein” (1840).

27. Source unknown.

28. Wilhelm Wundt, Die Nationen und ihre Philosophie: Ein Kapitel zum Weltkrieg (Leipzig: Alfred Kröner, 1915), 114.

29. See e.g. Franz Pfeiffer, ed. Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. 2, Meister Eckhart, part 1 (Leipzig: Göschen, 1857). Translations of Eckhart’s Middle High German into Modern German tend to replace the word verwerden with a modern synonym.

30. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit, vol. 2 (Tübingen: Cotta, 1812), 337.

31. Source unknown.

32. Source unknown. Also attributed to Goethe in Willibald Hentschel, Varuna: Eine Welt- und Geschichts-Betrachtung vom Standpunkt des Ariers (Leipzig: Fritsch, 1901), 72.