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His higher activities are spent in the service of the Church, in the service of Art and Science. Treitschke has fought this heresy of individualism in all his writings. The interest of the individual cannot be opposed to the interest of the State. The individual can only realize himself, he can only realize the higher life, in and through the State.
Thinking Germany has fallen a victim to the teachings of Treitschke and Nietzsche Treitschke with his Macchiavellian doctrine that "Power is the end-all and be-all of a State," Nietzsche with his contempt for pity and the gentler virtues, his admiration for "valour," and his disdain for Christianity. This explanation is too simple to fit the facts.
According to him war always was and will remain the master-builder of national life. Other thinkers, like Joseph de Maistre, have glorified war in the name of theology. Treitschke extols it in the name of politics. War not only makes a State: it makes the citizen. The heroic virtues are warlike virtues; they are the outcome of military institutions. It is not war but peace which is the evil.
Treitschke already cried the watchwords 'Colonies! 'Sea-power to gain colonies! Treitschke already designated England as the object of German attack, and began to instil in Germany a hatred of England.
We shall see in the State, as Fichte taught, an exponent of liberty to the human race, whose task it is to put into practice the moral duty on earth. "The State," says Treitschke, "is a moral community.
In the index to Treitschke's Politik, under the word War, one reads the following headings 'its sanctity'; 'to be conceived as an ordinance set by God'; 'is the most powerful maker of nations'; 'is politics par excellence'. Two functions, says Treitschke, the state exists to discharge; and these are to administer law, and to make war.
As his favorite books and writers Moltke mentions, among others, Littrow's Astronomy, Liebig's Agricultural Chemistry, Clausewitz's On War, Ranke, Treitschke, Carlyle. It appears, then, that his scientific equipment was of the most solid sort, enabling him to make the most valuable contributions to knowledge.
This is the philosophy, the teaching and the language of Nietzsche and on it Treitschke and Bernhardi founded their war propaganda.
New music had to be written for certain portions, and the whole rearranged and adapted to the new conditions. Everything was going Beethoven's way in these years, which may explain his good-natured acquiescence in these demands. "Your revision suits me so well," he wrote Treitschke, "that I have decided once more to rebuild the desolate ruins of an ancient fortress."
Only superior minds reach the conviction of the great advancement that can be accomplished by the sword alone, and that war, as our grand Treitschke says, is the highest form of progress." Again he smiled with a ferocious expression.
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