WISDOM FROM DOORN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20028, 18 August 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

WISDOM FROM DOORN.

BY KOTAItE

THE ORACLE SPEAKS#

The ex-Kaiser, in spite of Doom,- and a notable beard, and, one hopes, remorseful memories of a great betrayal, occasionally mounts the old high horse and rides forth with shining sword. His latest proclamation of the faith that is in him is addressed to the American people, and has just been published in a leading American magazine. It would be idle to say that it does not show very considerable ability. No one doubted that there was a streak of brilliance in that strange figure, who for so long dominated Europe, as much by what ho was in himself, as by the authority his exalted position gave him. With all his intense individualism, amounting at times to megalomania, he had always a knack of absorbing other people's brains. And ho could say things in a way that gave them at once barbs and wings. That lie lacked balance everyone except himself considered axiomatic. All these qualities appear in full measure in his latest deliverance.

There is now none so poor (o do him reverence •where once an anxious world hung on every syllable, and the great man's opinions could make civilisation totter on its foundations. Yet there is more than a mere interest of curiosity in his point of view. After all lie saw life from a unique angle. Beneath the Emperor, there was always the man reacting like the humblest of his subjects to his specialised environment. Anrl thero is always (he possibility that he, after experiences such as have never fallen to the lot of any other man, may see some facets of truth of which others on different levels can have no inkling. Anyway a considered utterance of his at least merits passing attention. Sex of Nations. Ho labels his latest pronouncement " The Sex of Nations." " Sex," he says, " applies not only to individuals but to races and civilisations." That is his thesis. Ho sets out to prove that there arc distinctly masculine and feminine civilisations. Reasoning from analogy is always a precarious business. The history of human thought shows that an apt metaphor will often bo more potent and formative than all the logic of the schools. What is originally a figure of speech, a mere illustration, becomes petrified into a dogma. Theology still carries a dead-weight of metaphors hardened into articles of faith. He insists that culture and civilisation must be distinguished. _ Culture is deeper, more fundamental. Civilisation is merely one of its aspects. So America is more highly civilised than Europe, while Europe, if only because of its age and traditions and chequered history is more highly cultured than America. Civilisation may be assumed. It is put on as a garment. Culture is a living thing, with all the. stages of growth. It develops out of the soil, draws its life from (ho basal elements of human character, is subject to the ordinary laws of living. There is something in that distinction, and in an age when material prosperity has become the great goal of human striving, it does no harm to question our ultimate values. Here, at least, William of Doom is on the side of the angels.

France and Germany. What is going lo issue from the chaotic welter of European life to.clay ? If the past has been tho product of the geographical and climatic environment of the different races of Europe, as he seems to assume, then tho culture of the Germanic peoples is a permanent and ultimately stable entity which might be submerged for a time by circumstance, but which must in the end _ assert itself as the determining factor in the development of the future. The future can be foretold only from a study of the past. What the German is, is the fruit of all the years, and what he is in the essential parts of him determines what he will be. . He then proceeds to analyse French and German cultures. At this point he borrows from Frobenius the classification, " masculine and feminine." as applied to nations. The sombre hills and valleys and forests of Northern Europe have produced a definite type in the Germanic countries. Peoples in a different setting develop entirely different characteristics, which have been consolidated and emphasised by heredity into their special type. ' Races dwelling in lands drained by great rivers with rich alluvial flats of wide area, find certain features of body and mind varying from the pristine native vigour. Where this softening of fibre has taken place, we have a feminine culture. In the more rigorous lands the culture is masculine. Contra. The conclusion at once leaps to the eyes. Germany is the great masculine nation, Franco tho feminine. In the feminine culture, intuition counts for more Mian education and logic: in the masculine, judgment and reflection govern the individual and the nation.' Not always, of course, in cither case; but in the mass he concludes this is true. Countries of a feminine culture are " governed by instinctive general opinions swaying the masses." In a masculine country power is in the hands of tho leader. A single personality is given control, and the nation can realise it self only under individual guidance. France, then, is culturally democratic, German must have an autocrat. France works always to the centre. The power is generated in the country and focusses itself in Paris. _ In Germany power has its seat and origin in tho ruler and from liim flows out to ends of the nation. Franco must all flow into Paris, while Germany must always be " a federation of a great number of individual states with innumerable separate communal entities." Tlio comforting conclusion deduced from this line of reasoning is that in the end the feminine nation must inevitably succumb to the masculine with the will to conquer. A pretty piece of reasoning to a foregone conclusion; but there are difficulties. The masculine culture of Germany has evolved the most sentimental race in Europe. Tho feminine culture of Franco lias issued in the most logical people of our day. And surely so un-to-date an authority as the ex-Kaiser should know that modern psychology has renounced his primitive view of hereditary influence. Many thinkers deny its potency altogether,' and if hereditary transmission of acquired character is undermined the whole foundation of his thesis goes. What are we lo make of his calm assumption that it is the privilego and destiny of the feminine clement to obey and be in subjection to the masculine ? The whole trend of the modern world proves that it is not only possible but inevitable that masculine and feminine should bo regarded as equal and complementary, requiring no dominance by one or the other. And what if, as some scholars insist, tho difference between masculine and feminine attitudes and points of view are due wholly to early education and imitation and suggestion ? It seems that the ex-Kaiser has not proved his case. It is gratifying to note that he considers our culture, tho AngloSaxon* is not Germanic. With our usual gift of compromise we have produced a monstrosity that is neither- masculine nor feminine, but has elements of both. If that, is so, and we are right in assuming that between masculine and feminine ' there must be no dominance, it seems tho future lies with the Anglo-Saxon culture. From William's angle that is a most unfortunate conclusion.