Germany and the Germans from an American Point of ViewCollier, Price
History
Germany and the Germans from an American Point of View
Collier, Price
Germany; National characteristics, German
Germany came
into the modern world as a dreamer, as a maker of melodies, as a
singer of songs, as a sort of post-graduate student in philosophy and
in theoretical, and later applied science. She introduced us to
classical philology, to modern methods of historical research, to the
comparative study of ethnic religions, to daring and scholarly
exegesis, to the study of the science of language. She discovered
Shakespeare to the English; Eduard Maetzner and Eduard Mueller, and
German scholars in the study of phonetics, have written our English
grammars and etymological dictionaries for us, and helped to lay the
foundations for knowledge of our own language. Spinoza, Kant, Hegel,
one need not mention more, attempted to pass beyond the bounds of
human experience and to formulate laws for the process;
Schleiermacher, maintaining that Christian faith is a condition of
devout feeling, a fact of inward experience, an object which may be
observed and described, had an unbounded influence in America, and
many are the ethical discourses I have listened to which owed more to
Schleiermacher than to their authors. Humboldt, Liebig, Bunsen,
Helmholtz, Johannes Mueller, Von Baer, Virchow, Koch, Diesel, even the
British and American man in the street, with little interest in such
matters, knows some of these names; while Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
are symbols of revolt, whose names are flung into an argument by many
who only know their names, but who fondly suppose that the one stands
for despair and suicide, and the other for the joy and unbridled
license of the strong man.
Reckoning by epochs, it was only yesterday
that Germany said to the world: "No more of this!"
"Hang up philosophy!
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,
It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more!"
Of a sudden our scholar threw off his gown and cap, and said: "I
propose to play base-ball and foot-ball with you, I propose to have a
hand in the material spoils of life, I propose to have a seat at the
banquet and to propose toasts and to be toasted!" Faust of a sudden
left his gloomy, cobwebby laboratory, flung a fine cloak over his
shoulders, stuck a dandy feather in his cap, buckled on a rapier, and
began roistering with the best of us. We sneered and smiled at first,
let us be frank and admit it. We did not think much of this new buck.
We had little fear that the professor, even if he took off his
spectacles and slippers and dressing-gown, and exchanged his pipe for
a cigarette, would cut much of a figure as a lover. He was new to the
game, we were old hands at it, but the first thing we knew he had
given the world's mistress, France, a scolding, and flung her into a
corner, a cowering heap of outraged finery; and she has only been safe
ever since in the role of a sort of mistress of England on
board-wages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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