The national expression of this kind of freedom is what the Germans call _Kultur_, a word not well understood in other countries. Every nation has certain characteristic institutions, certain representative writers and statesmen, past and present, certain forms of art and industry, a certain type of policy and moral inspiration. These are its _Kultur_, its national tradition and equipment. When by education the individual is brought to understand all these things, to share their spirit and life, and to be able to carry them forward faithfully, then he has absorbed the _Kultur_ in his own person. _Kultur_ is transmitted by systematic education. It is not, like culture, a matter of miscellaneous private attainments and refined tastes, but, rather, participation in a national purpose and in the means of executing it. The adept in this _Kultur_ can live freely the life of his country, possessing its secret inspiration, valuing what it pursues and finding his happiness in those successes which he can help it to attain. _Kultur_ is a lay religion, which includes ecclesiastical religion and assigns to it its due place. German _Kultur_ resembles the polity of ancient cities and of the Christian church in that it constitutes a definite, authoritative, earnest discipline, a training which is practical and is thought to be urgent and momentous. It is a system to be propagated and to be imposed. It is all-inclusive and demands entire devotion from everybody. At the same time it has this great advantage over the classic systems, that it admits variations. At Sparta, in Plato's Republic, and in the Catholic church the aims and constitution of society were expected to remain always the same. The German ideal, on the contrary, not only admits evolution, but insists upon it. Like music, it is essentially a form of movement. According to the philosophers, however, the form of this movement is fixed by the absolute genius of the composer, and prescribes the way in which the changes shall go on. Evolution thus introduces life into this ideal, but does not admit ambiguities. In this sense the German law of progression is as inexorable as the classic model of form.