Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/248

212 which he may implicitly obey,"—this is a German sentiment, German consistency: it is the basis of all German moral precepts. How different is the impression when we survey the whole field of morality! All those Greek thinkers, however varied their images may appear to us, seem as moralists to resemble the teacher in gymnastics, who persuades a youth by the following words: “Come, follow me! Submit to my discipline ! Then you may perhaps succeed in carrying off the prize as the foremost of the Greeks." Personal distinction is ancient virtue. Submission, conformity, whether public or private, are German virtues. Long before Kant and his categorical imperative, Luther, obeying the same impulse, had said that there must be a being whom man may implicitly trust,—it was his proof for God's existence; he wished, in a coarser and more popular way than Kant, to make us implicitly obey not an idea, but a person; am in the end, even Kant took a round-about way through morals for the sole purpose of arriving at the obedience to the person. This, indeed, is the worship of the German; the more so, the less he has left of religious worship. The Greeks and Romans looked differently at these things and would have laughed at such a "there be a beng, "—it is part and parcel of their Southern boldness of feeling to resist "implicit faith” and to reserve, in the inmost processes of their hearts, a slightly sceptical view on all and everything, be it God, man, or idea. Then take the ancient philosopher:  are the words in which