Certainly there can be no better summary of the savage than this,
which, as we have seen, unfits him for the duel. He is the man who cannot
love--no, nor even hate--his neighbour as himself.
But this quality in Prussia does have one effect which has reference
to the same quest of the lower civilisations. It disposes once and
for all at least of the civilising mission of Germany. Evidently the
Germans are the last people in the world to be trusted with the task. They
are as shortsighted morally as physically. What is their sophism of
"necessity" but an inability to imagine to-morrow morning? What is their
non-reciprocity but an inability to imagine, not a god or devil, but
merely another man? Are these to judge mankind? Men of two tribes in
Africa not only know that they are all men, but can understand that they
are all black men. In this they are quite seriously in advance of the
intellectual Prussian; who cannot be got to see that we are all white
men. The ordinary eye is unable to perceive in the North-East Teuton,
anything that marks him out especially from the more colourless classes of
the rest of Aryan mankind.
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