All these turbid and nondescript ambitions are in a sense artificial; the Germans accept them now as a thousand years ago they accepted Christianity, because such things are suddenly thrust upon them. By nature they are simple, honest, kindly, easily pleased. There is no latent irony or disbelief in their souls. The pleasures of sense, plain and copious, they enjoy hugely, long labour does not exasperate them, science fills them with satisfaction, music entrances them. There ought to be no happier or more innocent nation in this world. Unfortunately their very goodness and simplicity render them helpless; they are what they are dragooned to be. There is no social or intellectual disease to which, in spots, [Pg 160] they do not succumb, as to an epidemic: their philosophy itself is an example of this. They have the defects of the newly prosperous; they are far too proud of their possessions, esteeming them for being theirs, without knowing whether they are good of their kind. Culture is a thing seldom mentioned by those who have it. The real strength of the Germans lies not in those external achievements of which at this moment they make so much--for they may outgrow this new materialism of theirs--it lies rather in what they have always prized, their _Gemüth_ and their music. Perhaps these two things have a common root. Emotion is inarticulate, yet there is a mighty movement in it, and a great complexity of transitions and shades. This intrinsic movement of the feelings is ordinarily little noticed because people are too wide awake, or too imaginative. Everything is a fact or a picture to them, and their emotions seem to them little but obvious qualities of things. They roundly call _things_ beautiful, painful, holy, or ridiculous; they do not speak of their _Gemüth_, although, of course, it is by virtue of their emotions that they pass such judgments. But when the occasions of our emotions, the objects that call them forth, are not so instantly focussed, when we know better what we feel than why we feel it, then we seem to have a richer and more massive sensibility. Our feelings [Pg 161] absorb our attention because they remain a thing apart: they seem to us wonderfully deep because we do not ground them in things external.