This kind of music expresses best what I think of the Germans: they belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow--THEY HAVE AS YET NO TODAY.
241.

We "good Europeans," we also have hours when we allow ourselves a warm-hearted patriotism, a plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow views--I have just given an example of it--hours of national excitement, of patriotic anguish, and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment.

Duller spirits may perhaps only get done with what confines its operations in us to hours and plays itself out in hours--in a considerable time: some in half a year, others in half a lifetime, according to the speed and strength with which they digest and "change their material." Indeed, I could think of sluggish, hesitating races, which even in our rapidly moving Europe, would require half a century ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and soil-attachment, and return once more to reason, that is to say, to "good Europeanism." And while digressing on this possibility, I happen to become an ear-witness of a conversation between two old patriots--they were evidently both hard of hearing and consequently spoke all the louder.

"HE has as much, and knows as much, philosophy as a peasant or a corps-student," said the one--"he is still innocent.

But what does that matter nowadays! It is the age of the masses: they lie on their belly before everything that is massive.