For two reasons it is a fair question whether the German novel has a national character. In the first place, modern Germany has been a nation only since 1871; and in the second place, only in times of some great crisis does there appear to be in Germany a national life, as we understand the term. At other times life in Germany is urban, provincial, or private, in those aspects of existence which the Germans most prize. The imperial capital affects to represent Germany as London represents England and Paris represents France; but such ascendancy is stoutly denied Berlin in the capitals of the other states, and Saxons or Bavarians refuse to submit to Prussian hegemony in any other than political and military affairs. In literature Prussia is not the nation; the empire itself is a federation of states, and Berlin is less specifically a German city than any other in the realm. Germany is emphatically _e pluribus_. Still, there may be some bond of union stronger than political alliance, some fundamental quality common to Prussian, Saxon, and Bavarian. In this we should seek the national character. We should find the national character depicted in the historical novel, which has had a great vogue in Germany; but we may discern it also in the fiction devoted to the problems of contemporary life. It was Goethe's opinion that the hero of a novel should be passive, and so eminently dramatic a genius as Hebbel declared that the important thing for us to observe in any individual is not how he makes his mark in the world, but how the world makes its marks upon him. These views, synonymous in meaning, but uttered by men as different, one from the other, as two Germans could very well be, may suffice as an indication of the common quality for which we are seeking: it is the metaphysical cast of the German mind. When Goethe contemplated the transitoriness of conditions, and in all his work endeavored to catch and preserve these fleeting phenomena, or when Hebbel defined man as the resultant of conflicting forces rather than as an effective force in himself, both evidently thought of life as a product, not as a producer, and sought the meaning of life in personal reaction rather than in personal action. The life of which the German desires abundance is the inner life. Character is to him a greater good than conduct.