The national State is alone invested with the attributes of sovereignty. There is nothing above it. National rights must be final. The national State may for the time being limit its absolute sovereignty by international agreements, but any such agreements are only conditional and temporary—_rebus sic stantibus_. No national State can make international agreements which are binding for the future. The time must always come when the scrap of paper has to be torn asunder. It is true that the national State is indirectly playing its part in the moral education of humanity, but it will best serve humanity by only thinking of itself. XII.—THE HERESY OF INDIVIDUALISM. There are many heresies which threaten the orthodox religion of the national State. The first and the most dangerous is the heresy of individualism. A school of modern theorists, William von Humboldt and John Stuart Mill, have asserted the rights of the individual apart from and above the rights of the State. They reserve for the individual a sphere where the State may not encroach. According to Mill, the political life is only a part and the minor part of his social activities. His higher activities are spent in the service of the Church, in the service of Art and Science. Treitschke has fought this heresy of individualism in all his writings. The interest of the individual cannot be opposed to the interest of the State. The individual can only realize himself, he can only realize the higher life, in and through the State. It is the State which sets free the spiritual forces of the individual by securing for him security, prosperity, and economic independence. XIII.—THE HERESY OF INTERNATIONALISM. The second deadly heresy which threatens the dogma of the national State is the heresy of internationalism. It takes the form either of the black internationalism of the Catholic Church or the red internationalism of Social Democracy. Treitschke has fought Roman Catholicism and its champions, the Jesuits, with relentless hate. Through all his writings there sounds the watchword of Voltaire, the spiritual adviser of Frederick the Great, “Écrasez l’infâme,” and the battle-cry of Gambetta, “Le clericalisme, voilà l’ennemi.” Nor is he less bitter against the Socialists. Bismarck and the Kaiser opposed the encroachments of the Social Democracy in a succession of anti-Socialist repressive measures. Treitschke may have disapproved of some of the _Sozialisten Gesetze_ because they defeated their purpose. But he shares the Kaiser’s hatred against those irreconcilable enemies of Prussian greatness. The Social Democratic theories of the Jews—Lassalle, Marx, and Bernstein—are one of the most deadly poisons that imperil the constitution of the German body politic.