He appeals to a saying of Goethe to Eckermann: "We Germans are of yesterday. No doubt in the last hundred years we have been cultivating ourselves quite diligently, but it may take a few centuries yet before our countrymen have absorbed sufficient intellect and higher culture for it to be said of them that it is a long time since they were barbarians." To Nietzsche, as we see, the concepts of culture and homogeneous culture are equivalent. In order to be homogeneous a culture must have reached a certain age and have become strong enough in its peculiar character to have penetrated all forms of life. Homogeneous culture, however, is of course not the same thing as native culture. Ancient Iceland had a homogeneous culture, though its flourishing was brought about precisely by active intercourse with Europe; a homogeneous culture existed in Italy at the time of the Renaissance, in England in the sixteenth, in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although Italy built up her culture of Greek, Roman and Spanish impressions, France hers of classical, Celtic, Spanish and Italian elements, and although the English are the mixed race beyond all others. True, it is only a century and a half since the Germans began to liberate themselves from French culture, and hardly more than a hundred years since they entirely escaped from the Frenchmen's school, whose influence may nevertheless be traced even to-day: but still no one can justly deny the existence of a German culture, even if it is yet comparatively young and in a state of growth. Nor will any one who has a sense for the agreement between German music and German philosophy, an ear for the harmony between German music and German lyrical poetry, an eye for the merits and defects of German painting and sculpture, which are the outcome of the same fundamental tendency that is revealed in the whole intellectual and emotional life of Germany, be disposed in advance to deny Germany a homogeneous culture. More precarious will be the state of such smaller countries whose dependence on foreign nations has not unfrequently been a dependence raised to the second power. To Nietzsche, however, this point is of relatively small importance. He is convinced that the last hour of national cultures is at hand, since the time cannot be far off when it will only be a question of a European or European-American culture. He argues from the fact that the most highly developed people in every country already feel as Europeans, as fellow-countrymen, nay, as confederates, and from the belief that the twentieth century must bring with it the war for the dominion of the world. When, therefore, from the result of this war a tempestuous wind sweeps over all national vanities, bending and breaking them, what will then be the question?