the Latin nations received the direct heritage from Greece and Rome. At that moment, for reasons the explanation of which would require a general review of history, a fierce need of emancipation and separation took possession of her; she decided to affirm in all the manifestations of the mind her own independent personality.
Meanwhile she found herself behind other western peoples, especially the French, in civilisation, and had nothing original to set against the old common culture from which it was her pretension to emancipate herself. How was Germany to bring this situation and this ambition into harmony? There was only one way, that she should turn this very backwardness, with all that it implied of comparative rudeness and barbarism, into a boast; that she should interpret her apparent inferiority as the sign of a real superiority. And this, with the aid of her philosophers, she did. Strong in the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, of whom one may say that he was to prove, though without intention, the prophet of German national thought, these philosophers furnished her with grounds for depreciation of the acquired perfections which compose an outstanding civilisation, depreciation of the learned classical discipline of reason, depreciation of politeness of taste and manners; thus providing at the same time grounds for admiration of Germany, who had kept closer to nature. This comparison, entirely to their own advantage, marked out their path for the Germans and fired them with enthusiasm. The return to Nature for them meant a return to their own nature. By discarding the artificial training to which they had too long been slaves, they would restore themselves morally to the original
