As to learning how to think—our schools no longer have any notion of such a thing. Even at the universities, among the actual scholars in philosophy, logic as a theory, as a practical pursuit, and as a business, is beginning to die out. Turn to any German book: you will not find the remotest trace of a realisation that there is such a thing as a technique, a plan of study, a will to mastery, in the matter of thinking,—that thinking insists upon being learnt, just as dancing insists upon being learnt, and that thinking insists upon being learnt as a form of dancing. What single German can still say he knows from experience that delicate shudder which _light footfalls_ in matters intellectual cause to pervade his whole body and limbs! Stiff awkwardness in intellectual attitudes, and the clumsy fist in grasping—these things are so essentially German, that outside Germany they are absolutely confounded with the German spirit. The German has no fingers for delicate _nuances. _ The fact that the people of Germany have actually tolerated their philosophers, more particularly that most deformed cripple of ideas that has ever existed—the great Kant, gives one no inadequate notion of their native elegance. For, truth to tell, dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen—that one must learn how to write?—But at this stage I should become utterly enigmatical to German readers. [1] The German national hymn: “_Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.—_” TR. [2] The word _Kultur-Staat_ “culture-state” has become a standard expression in the German language, and is applied to the leading European States.—TR. SKIRMISHES IN A WAR WITH THE AGE 1 _My Impossible People._—Seneca, or the toreador of virtue—-Rousseau, or the return to nature, _in impuris naturalibus._—Schiller, or the Moral-Trumpeter of Sackingen.—Dante, or the hyæna that writes poetry in tombs.—Kant, or _cant_ as an intelligible character.—Victor Hugo, or the lighthouse on the sea of nonsense.—Liszt, or the school of racing—after women.—George Sand, or _lactea ubertas,_ in plain English: the cow with plenty of beautiful milk.—Michelet, or enthusiasm in its shirt sleeves.—Carlyle, or Pessimism after undigested meals.—John Stuart Mill, or offensive lucidity.—The brothers Goncourt, or the two Ajaxes fighting with Homer. Music by Offenbach.—Zola, or the love of stinking. 2