No  one  who  knows  Germany  from  its  literature,  and  especially
its  poetry  and  its  philosophy,  and  who  has  followed  its  career
during  the  past  generation,  can  have  failed  to  recognise  the
immense  change  which  has  come  over  the  national  life  and
thought.  A  century  ago  idealism  was  supreme ;  half  a  century
ago  it  had  still  not  been  dethroned ;  to-day  its  place  has  been
taken  by  materialism.  This  is  not  to  say  that  belief  in  ideas
is  extinct  or  that  high  thinking  has  passed  out  of  fashion  in
Germany.  Even  to-day  scholarship  is  nowhere  held  in  greater
regard,  learning  is  nowhere  cultivated  more  resolutely  and
for  its    own    sake,   than  in  that   country.      The  universities


THE  MODBEN   SPIEIT  3

train  from  year  to  year  a  larger  number  of  students  than
ever  before,  and  if  "real"  or  practical  studies  have  to  some
extent  challenged  the  supremacy  of  the  old  classical  discipline
in  the  scheme  of  higher  education,  it  may  safely  be  said  that
study  is  followed  with  all  the  old  devotion  and  disinterestedness
no  less  by  the  student  than  the  teacher.  Nevertheless,  the
dominant  note  of  German  life  to-day  is  not  that  of  fifty,  or
forty,  or  oven  thirty  years  ago.
