of power to the mind.[1] But from the theory itself he turns away, and while admitting a social revolution to be not unlikely, he thinks that its result will be less than is expected, since man can do so very much less than he wills (as is shown by the French Revolution).[2] He is thus really at home nowhere. While the old aristocratic order is dead, the new commercial order is vulgar and tame, nor does the socialist order which may be coming attract him either. He says in substance, "We [he and his kind] are émigrés, observers of the time,—we wish only to become free of it and understand it, like an eagle flying over it; we have no desire to be citizens or politicians or property-owners, we only want the greatest possible independence; we will be deadly enemies of those of our contemporaries who take refuge in lying and wish reaction; our interest is in individuals and educating them—perhaps humanity will some day have need of them, when the general intoxication of anarchy is past."[3]
IV
Yet, ill-moored as he is to the present time and standing for nothing actual, he has certain expectations—at least, there are better possibilities for the future, to which he more than once recurs.
As for politics, he would like to see it ordered so that moderate intellects might meet its demands, and we should not all have to be continually concerned with it. It is not so great a matter as we sometimes think. We [Germans] rank it so high, because we are deficient in the instincts that make it in the normal man something natural and matter-of-course—we need incitement.[4] He can even imagine an ultimate disappearance of the state—as the old unities of the tribe and the family have disappeared. Its functions might be taken over by private individuals and associations. He admits that it is a different thing to work for such an end: it would be presumptuous and show little knowledge of history to break up old soil,
