Certain reactions based on practical experience are not excluded; the constant comparison with the past and with foreign countries will show the value of the cultivation of a science, of an art which has no fixed prepossessions and serves no immediate aims. Measures are taken, though without much conviction, by free Academies or the like, to win back something of this; but the atmosphere is not favourable to such attempts, and an artificial and sterile discipline is all that can result. The general tone is that of an excitable, loquacious generation, bent on actualities and matters of practical calculation, fonder of debate than of work, not impressed by any authority, prizing success, watching all that goes on abroad, taking refuge in public from the sordidness of private life, and passionately hostile to all superiority. Through the constant secession of elements to which this tone is antipathetic a kind of natural selection is constantly taking place, and the political defencelessness of the transition period favours disintegrating tendencies of foreign origin. The carving away of ancient German territories works in the same direction. Apart from the varying influence of the four strata already referred to, the general tone will be set by the half-Slavonic lower classes of Middle and North Germany, who have brought about and who control the existing conditions, and by the other elements which have been assimilated to these. In place of German culture and German intellectuality we have a state of things of which a foretaste already exists in parts of America and of Eastern Europe. The fully socialized order, repelling all tutelage through those strata which possess a special tradition, outlook and mentality, has created its own form of civilization. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 10: Rathenau means that it cannot be entertained except on the hypothesis of the profound _inward_ change, which is to be discussed later on.] [Footnote 11: _Kritik der dreifachen Revolution._ S. Fischer.] [Footnote 12: The classes referred to are (1) the old aristocracy, (2) the aristocracy of officialism, (3) that of traditional middle-class culture; (4) the mass of what is called Socialism.] [Footnote 13: L150 in pre-war values. By thrift, by co-operation, and by the cheapness of the public services generally, a surprisingly high standard of life could be maintained on this kind of income in pre-war Germany.] [Footnote 14: Aktualitaet; as, for instance, reference to current topics.] VII Thoughtful and competent judges to whom I have submitted the foregoing section of my work have said to me: This is Hell. That is perhaps going too far, since those who will live in that generation and who have themselves helped it into being will have become more or less adapted to their circumstances.