terpart of Kultur. It strove to compel absolute submission to itself as the agency "above Society," not of the Prussian Gott, but of a perversion of the Christian God. The Inquisition threw over Humanity, Justice, Mercy, and set up standards of its own, intended to promote only its own interests. To secure conformity and obedience, it imprisoned, harassed, terrorized, tortured, and destroyed its victims. Like Kultur, the Inquisition maintained a large corps of eavesdroppers and spies. Like Kultur, it taught a nation to accept without demur its declaration that it was engaged in the highest mission known to mankind. It did not, indeed, organize an army to wage bodily war against its enemies; it simply used, in case of need, the armed force of temporal rulers to carry out its commands. It both aspired to be and was a world-power, in so far as it was co-extensive with the Spanish Empire.

Millions of people accepted the teachings of the Inquisition and fell quite naturally into

the inhuman state of mind which such teachings induce. Like many a German who would personally shrink from committing cruel acts, the Spaniards and the other races whom the Inquisition held in subjection came to gloat over collective cruelty. How many millions of holiday-makers, men, women, and children, went out from Seville to the Quemadero and witnessed with rejoicing the autos-da-fé of thirty-five thousand heretics whom the Inquisition burned there in the course of three centuries? The feelings of those Spanish spectators, as they beheld such human sacrifice offered up by the Inquisition to its deity, did not differ from those of the Aztecs who watched the blood sacrifices on their pyramid temples, or from those of the French Terrorists who attended the daily exercise of the guillotine, or from those of the Germans who shouted their hallelujahs at the slaughter of the innocents in the Lusitania.

Under whatever name Kultur operates, it tends downward. The individual who thinks

himself a Superman is likely to end in a madhouse or on the gallows: the nation, despotic king, or hierarchy, which substitutes its own selfish interests for humanity, shuts itself out from humanity, becomes inhuman, revives and worships standards of the Beast, and heads straight for perdition.

CHAPTER XIV

DESPOTISM OR DEMOCRACY?

Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow, what are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. ... All the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people— not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. . . Turn it whatever way you will, whether it come from the mouth of a king, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, - it is all the same old serpent.

...

LINCOLN, Reply to Douglas, Chicago, July 10, 1858.

Ν

ON July 3, 1866, when Prussia, by de

Ο

feating Austria at Sadowa, became preponderant in Germany, the Champion of European Despotism in an irrepressible conflict with Democracy was designated. Had Prussia been beaten there, she might never have dominated Germany, especially if Bis

marck had carried out his resolve to blow his brains out in case of defeat. The triumph of Prussia then and her overwhelming victory in 1870 made her the citadel of European Despotism. Her talent for organization, the feudal instinct innate in the Germans, the Hohenzollern ambition, the tenacity of the upper classes, the bureaucracy, and the genius of Bismarck, all worked together to perfect a despotic machine fitted not only to repel the invasion of Democracy but to conquer it.

Less than half a century ago Bismarck predicted that constitutional government would soon cease to exist in Europe. By a noteworthy coincidence Moltke said that the Germans would have to be ready for fifty years to defend Alsace and Lorraine-a hint that he had created an excuse for perpetuating Militarism in the German Empire. Bismarck so disliked having a republic for a neighbor that he even considered intriguing with the French Imperialists to restore Napoleon III to the throne; but as time went on he