beginning of the Civilization, is "Constitutional Monarchy," the extremest possibility of which appears as what we call nowadays a Republic. It is necessary to get clear, once and for all, of the mumblings of the doctrinaires who think in timeless and therefore unreal concepts and for whom "Republic" is a form-in-itself. The republican ideal of the nineteenth century has no more resemblance to the Classical res publica, or even to Venice or the original Swiss cantons, than the English constitution to a "constitution" in the Continental sense. That which we call republic is a negation, which of inward necessity postulates that the thing denied is an ever-present possibility. It is non-monarchy in forms borrowed from the monarchy. The genealogical feeling is immensely strong in Western mankind; it strains its conscience so far as to pretend that Dynasty determines its political conduct even when Dynasty no longer exists at all. The historical is embodied therein, and unhistorically we cannot live. It makes a great difference whether, as in the case of the Classical world, the dynastic principle conveys absolutely nothing to the inner feelings of a man, or, as in the case of the West, it is real enough to need six generations of educated people to fight it down in themselves. Feeling is the secret enemy of all constitutions that are plans and not growths; they are in last analysis nothing but defensive measures born of fear and mistrust. The urban conception of freedom — freedom from something — narrows itself to a merely anti-dynastic significance, and republican enthusiasm lives only on this feeling.
Such a negation inevitably involves a preponderance of theory. While Dynasty and its close congener Diplomacy conserve the old tradition and pulse, Constitutions contain an overweight of systems, bookishness, and framed concepts — such as is entirely unthinkable in England, where nothing negative and defensive adheres to the form of government. It is not for nothing that the Faustian is par excellence the reading and writing Culture. The printed book is an emblem of temporal, the Press of spatial, infinity. In contrast with the immense power and tyranny of these symbols, even the Chinese Civilization seems almost empty of writing. In Constitutions, literature is put into the field against knowledge of men and things, language against race, abstract right against successful tradition — regardless of whether a nation involved in the tide of events is still capable of work and "maintaining its form." Mirabeau was quite alone and unsuccessful in combating the Assembly, which "confused politics with fiction." Not only the three doctrinaire constitutions of the age — the French of 1791, the German of 1848 and 1919 — but practically all such attempts shut their eyes to the great Destiny in the fact-world and imagine that that is the same as defeating it. In lieu of unforeseen happenings, the incidents of strong personality and imperious circumstances, it is Causality that is to rule — timeless, just, unvarying, rational cohesion of cause and effect. It is symptomatic that no written constitution knows of money as a political force. It is pure theory that they contain, one and all.
