a soldier--his unquestioning obedience to monarchical discipline--is
so closely bound up with the peculiarly German conceptions of the
functions and the Purpose of the State, that it will be better to
approach this Part of his nature from the political instead of the
military side.

II

In no other of the leading countries of the world has the _laissez
faire_ doctrine had as little influence in political matters as in
Germany. Luther, the fearless champion of religious individualism,
was, in questions of government, the most pronounced advocate of
paternalism. Kant, the cool dissector of the human intellect, was at
the same time the most rigid upholder of corporate morality. It was
Fichte, the ecstatic proclaimer of the glory of the individual will,
who wrote this dithyramb on the necessity of the constant surrender of
private interests to the common welfare: "Nothing can live by itself
or for itself; everything lives in the whole; and the whole
continually sacrifices itself to itself in order to live anew. This is
the law of life. Whatever has come to the consciousness of existence
must fall a victim to the progress of all existence. Only there is a
difference whether you are dragged to the shambles like a beast with
bandaged eyes, or whether, in full and joyous presentiment of the life
which will spring forth from your sacrifice, you offer yourself freely
on the altar of eternity."

Not even Plato and Aristotle went so far in the deification of the
State as Hegel. And if Hegel declared that the real office of the
State is not to further individual interests, to protect private
property, but to be an embodiment of the organic unity of public life;