Heredity and Culture

Race, Nationality and Culture

We speak of race, if a larger group of individual beings within their species agree in the special and balanced constitution of many and precisely the most important genes, and hence in the characteristics and traits in which the genes show themselves. Corresponding to the unity of body and soul, it is about the physical and psychological characterizes, and in man, whose soul produces spiritual and moral forces, also about the spiritual and moral and about the genes that determine this. Race is hence so comprehensive that may sciences are involved in researching and portraying the various sides of its essence, its physical and its psychological, spiritual, moral, its meaning in the present and its working in the past.

Race is an object of natural science, in whose sphere, above all, the physical characteristics and traits belong. Natural science must indeed not ignore the psychological characteristics, they are just not its actual and chief object. However, in man, in whom the psychological characteristics escalate to high intellectual accomplishments, the science of man is joined by (psychological) anthropology, the science of his soul, psychology, and genetics erects a wide bridge between the physical and the psychological, in that it also examines the heredity of psychological characteristics and abilities and the hereditary factors for them.

Race is especially an object of natural history. The heredity of the physical characteristics of race reaches far back, to the time in which the race formed itself. Those are long periods of times, during which the race passed down genes unchanged and even given race-mixing again and again dominated. These processes are natural processes, and their course occupies natural history.

Race is an object of the Science of the Arts, for psychological, intellectual-moral characteristics are tied to the physical characteristics. The psychological (intellectual and moral) constitution and bearing correspond to the physical manifestation, and this psychological aspect is also inherited. But the Science of the Arts examines and treats the psychological content. Insight into the physical aspect of race is likewise necessary for it, however, as natural science prerequisite.

Race is especially an object of the history of ideas, for the intellectual-moral characteristics of the races have demonstrated themselves in their historical accomplishments, and the history of ideas treats these cultural accomplishments of the most diverse kind.

The natural scientific and natural historical significance of race becomes visible almost exclusively among animals, among which the intellectual only here and there, as onset, becomes important for our human view. On the other hand, in terms of the Science of the Arts and the history of ideas, the intellectual-moral significance of race steps into the foreground in man and in the escalation of human accomplishments to nationality and culture. We can dissect folks into their racial elements and discover in nationalities and cultures the diverse inner general attitude of the races involved in them. If this dissection (analysis) is successful, then it must conversely be possible to again also construct, explain and understand the folks, their nationalities and cultures from their racial elements through composition (synthesis).

Racial Property

[Rassengut]

The genes in which the members of a race must agree so that the race exists at all determine through the characters and accomplishments that grow from them the value of this race. These characteristics and accomplishments can hence be designated as racial properties.

In regard to the activity of these racial properties, a basic difference now separates man from the animals, not merely from the mammals closest to him such as the anthropoid apes, rather also from those living in state similar organizations such as bees, ants or termites: The life of animals is almost exclusively instinct regulated and the individual leads its special existence even in the herd or in the animal state. There is hardly teaching and learning. On the other hand, drive life in man is almost totally elevated into consciousness. The drives to imitate, to communicate, to help and to be important have thrived to unexpected strength and take effect in awareness of accomplishments that to lead to it that the individual is never isolated, rather communicates with others through gesture and language, later through writing as well, receives experiences from others and adds his own, passes on this property from generation to generation and finally even becomes conscious of his history within the framework of the community.

The bird builds its nest purely instinctively, even if it has never yet seen one. Likewise, the actions of the ants are integrated purely instinctively and without even the slightest communication. A brood of young ants builds the same kind of construction that corresponds to its species. The direction by oldsters, by the example of the existing structures, is in all probability not necessary for it, although among this or that state-forming insect structures exist that are strongly reminiscent of human culture: a kind of language, pets, slaves, gardens and fields, narcotics, burial and such. But man must always learn almost everything anew and remains, if one artificially keeps him away from the legacy of his nationality, far behind even the most primitive folks and is not even able to speak on his own. What he is, he owes to the acquired experiences and institutions of the others, of his clan, of his tribe, of his folk and of the other folks with which his folk has exchanged such experiences and institutions. The psychological, also the spiritual traits which he has inherited, guarantee him a share in this treasure only insofar as he comes to acquire it; but then he can also increase it and pass in on enriched.

The acquisition of valuable results is tradition, it leads to it that one uses what the other has found, that the new generations stand on the shoulders of the predecessors as it were.

To the bee belongs its honeycomb constructed of hexagonal cells, to the spider belongs its eight-spoke web, to the birds their tendency to their nests, to the fox his house and to the folks belong their racially determined native tribe constitutions, their economic forms, their living manner, their pets, their utensils, weapons and clothes, their language, their art, literature and science, their religious life and their whole culture built upon these details.

Culture is always the result of long-lasting, constantly continued and increased tradition. Each contribution to this increase and escalation, each discovery, invention and improvement, but also every passing along of the already found, is a cultural deed and presupposes a perpetrator, somebody who thereby bears these cultural accomplishments, that means creates, has, passes on, in short, a culture-bearer.

The relationship between culture-bearer and cultural deed, between achiever and achievement, is the one between gene and application of this biological tendency.

Only a Julius Robert Mayer could enrich the knowledge of the laws of inanimate nature with the comprehensive law of the preservation of energy, only a Gregor Mendel our knowledge of the laws of animate nature with the laws of heredity, only a Goethe our literature with his Faust, only a Hitler our folk with his national unification.

Quite specific genes in fortunate union are necessary for accomplishments of the highest kind, which, however, are always only possible and can also only have a fruitful effect, if they have been preceded by numerous small and medium accomplishments, in part by the great men themselves, but more so by others. For even the great thing wants to be earned and could never become tangible to the others, if their own effort did not meet it half-way. anticipating and paving the way; but even the average accomplishments of a peasant bound to the soil, of an asset work of the productive worker, of a conscientious official, rests on the very substantial genes of these culture-bearers and their predecessors.

Each cultural accomplishment is a result of such genes, biological tendencies and the characteristics growing out of them, and the value of cultural accomplishment is the yardstick for the value of the characteristics upon which they rest. The characteristics, however, are tied to the race and hence represent a racial property, and the cultural accomplishments, the result of these characteristics, are, since they only remain valuable, if they are passed on, tradition properties.

One calls the passing along, the handing down, often enough even itself an inheritance. One should think of Goethe’s: “What you have inherited from your fathers, acquire it, in order to possess it.” All cultural property is in this sense cultural legacy. This manner of expression has its good right. A tradition property is only handed down, if genes are there that are fitting for it. If they are lacking, then the legacy becomes forgotten, the cultural property decays.

Racial Properties of First and Higher Order

Our view of the concept legacy has fundamentally changed under the influence of the doctrine of genetics.

Earlier, one designated as legacy above all the properties, house, farm and possessions of the testator. That aside from these materials goods also physical-psychological traits and characteristics are inherited from the parents, in which these traits express themselves, one noted only occasionally, and accordingly one used the word “legacy” for it only in the figurative sense.

Today we know the significance of the passing along of biological tendencies and the characteristics resulting from them through the fertilized egg, and the blood-bound kind of legacy has thereby become the actual one for us. If one speaks of inheritance of house, farm and property, that hence now logically seems to us as the figurative meaning.

This change of the meaning of the word “inheritance” and of all words derived from it away from external goods and assets to those inside the owners, preservers and multipliers of these goods, which is the prerequisite for all possession, preservation and multiplication, is an important achievement of a new time. For it is a shift of the intellectual-moral weight from the effect to the essence-based cause.

But both physical property as well as the intellectual possessions, among which we now speak of inheritance only in the figurative sense, are tied to their bearers.

Raw materials as well and even the ore deposits of a mine are only goods insofar and only have their value insofar as human beings exist who can process these materials and who master the very ingenious process of extraction and utilization.

Or a hereditary farmstead and everything that goes with it is indeed material property, but therein rules something spiritual-moral whose expression is this material property, and which again and again declares itself for the sensible observer in it. The same is true for the spiritual goods of culture; they as well point at the nature and valuable characteristics of their creators and bearers.

Material property and the spiritual goods of culture, both are as inherited goods the result of the genes and characteristics of the bearers of these inherited goods. So that the cultural goods can be created, preserved, increased, blood-tied characteristics are required. Without these characteristics, the cultural goods would not exist, could not be preserved and increased.

The valuable, cultural-creative characteristics of the culture-bearers are the foundation; the inherited goods, their products, build upon them. So it is justified to designate the respective supply of gene-based characteristics as racial properties of the first order and the tradition values as racial properties of higher order.

The racial properties of first and higher order agree in that both of them are not directly inherited and merely gene determined. Directly inherited is not the characteristic, rather the biological tendency, or expressed more precisely: the manner of reaction, that means the manner how the organism responds to stimuli and demands that confront it, takes a position toward them. Each characteristic and each accomplishment is such a response that it gives, such a position that it takes. That is simultaneously the still unconscious preliminary stage of valuation and value creation, which given increased mental forces then reaches the conscious stage and high into the intellectual. However, these first as well as the highest stirrings of valuation and property creation are based on the same primal behaviour of body and soul, thus the physical-psychological union of everything living. The subsequent response, the stand taken, has as result the racial property, and indeed on the still totally unconscious and gene-closest stage of the racial property of first order, the biological tendency based, gene based characteristic, and then on the higher levels the higher, more conscious, finally very thought out and greatly escalated through the amassing of legacy result of those characteristics and the biological tendencies at work within them, the racial properties of higher order. These tradition properties, the higher the magnitudes they reach among the most highly talented races, strive precisely as a result of this their high racial gene determination into the unconditional, commonly valid, and from their environmental condition into the objectively demanded, the necessary. The validity extracted from the actual then finally characterizes the racial properties of highest order, of which we will still speak.

The racial properties of the higher (and highest) order are the constantly increasing result of the racial goods of the first order and build upon them as preliminary stage, like, say, the stories and roof of a house upon the foundation walls and cellar rooms. The roof lies “higher”, but it is not “better” than the cellar, one belongs to the other, and everything collapses without the supporting foundation.

The relationship of a note to its higher notes can provide another comparison. They sound in as soon as the note is struck and determine its tone hue. Similarly, the racial properties of higher order that join in as soon as the racial properties of the first order take effect in the culture-bearers, determine the unique stamp of the culture. But the higher notes are not therefore something “higher” or “better”, and they could never exist on their own.

But any such comparison is able to illustrate only one part of the thing itself, and this only insufficiently; for they are comparisons from the sphere of inanimate nature (house, string), while the result that the racial properties of the first order produce in the racial properties of higher order is a process in animate nature, a life process, and as such possesses its fundamentally incomparable uniqueness. Other life processes as well cannot further illustrate it, and that is not at all necessary; one must adhere to it oneself.

In order to justify the distinction between racial properties of first and higher order, it is also not necessary that one now begins, say, to provide cultural accomplishments with order numbers. Even without that, it is clear that, for example, the steam plough is an accomplishment of a higher order than the wheel plough, and this is one compared to the simple, original hook plough. One could posit such series everywhere and thereby illustrate what it meant by the higher order.

Divergence of Tradition from Heredity

The racial properties of first order rest on the biological tendencies being causally inherited; the gene pool that enters the fertilized egg is quite exactly determined by the heredity process and always the same. Then this gene pool must prove itself in growth and life in the environment into which it is placed.

For the transmission of the racial properties of the higher order, tradition, the corresponding thing applies step by step, but the conformity is likewise based in the fact of the tie of the traditional property to the inherited characteristics. Nonetheless, exact conformity does not exist, rather also divergence.

The first agreement and simultaneously divergence is in regard to heredity and transmission itself.

The racial properties of the first order are elements of their bearers, downright constitute them and are hence quite firmly tied to them. If these bearers just procreate at all, then they necessarily and causally pass along their genes, and thus their racial properties of the first order.

The racial properties of the higher order are no longer so firmly tied to the culture-bearers. If their bearers die, they are also lost, and if their bearers degenerate in their genes, likewise, although usually only after some time, as soon as the consequences take effect. But the racial properties of the higher order can nonetheless also be passed on to bearers of another kind, of another race and of other nationality, if the difference of the borrowers from the creators is not all too great.

What is true for the racial properties of the first order, is also similarly true for the racial properties of the higher order, but not the same, and precisely the divergence and the possibilities and dangers that they present are very substantial.

The second agreement and simultaneously divergence is in regard to the quantity of what is inherited or passed along.

The genes of the cell at fertilization (aside from isolated plants) cannot be accumulated beyond the prescribed measure. They are tied to the cell strings, and from these, thanks to the so-called cell division, always only half of each supply enters the egg at fertilization. So it is assured that the fertilized egg always contains the same gene mass and is never overloaded. The racial properties of the first order, the realized genes, are hence firmly limited.

The racial properties likewise cannot be accumulated arbitrarily, rather only corresponding to the holding capacity of their bearers, and thus is limited even in the greatest genius as in all human ability, and this rests on the natural limitation of the racial properties of the first order. But one of the peculiarities of the culture-creators is that they nonetheless find means to expand these initially quite narrow borders. They finally develop an education system and all kinds of memory aides and can thereby vastly increase the quantity of what is handed down.

One sees how here as well among racial properties of the higher order, what is true for the racial properties of the first order is roughly repeatedly, but not exactly, and how important divergence is at the same time.

The third agreement and simultaneously divergence regards the life- causal preservation of the inherited or passed along.

The genes respond to the environment with characteristics, the racial properties of the first order. Edelweiss existence means producing in the environment of the high mountains fleshy blossoms and leaves with thick white hairs close to the ground. But Edelweiss existence also means in the environment of the low land losing many of these peculiarities and in blossom and growth roughly approaching the ox- eye daisy.

Plants and animals can usually merely respond to the environment, but not formatively intervene into it themselves, aside from, say, their number. But man can do that, and indeed with the help of his racial properties of the higher order. He responds to his environment not merely with his characteristics, rather also in that he uses them, especially the richly developed mental ones, in order to carry out culture creations. They rest indeed on the characteristics of the culture bearers, on the racial properties of the first order, but they go far beyond this foundation and enable the culture-bearers to themselves create their own, new environment from of their cultural accomplishments. Man wraps himself in his clothing, builds his own house, cultivates his field, breeds animals; so he produces his own food, and through the heated room even his own “climate” according to his will and decision. A throng of such institutions and inventions, all racial properties of the higher order, now demand as artificial environment from his genes new, adapted responses and thus confront him with ever more difficult tasks to prove himself.

What among the racial properties of the first order was still almost entirely nature, repeats again in the racial properties of the higher order, increased and increasing, yes, even exaggerated as culture.

Durability and Fleetingness of the Racial Properties

In all three cases, if one pays attention to cultural events, the divergences become visibly more important. The eternally nature-causal and inviolate constant lies in the conformities. The racial values of the first order are durable in value, insofar as they are simply just preserved. Increase of value and decrease of value are possible only through accumulation and consumption, through favourable selection, conscious racial policy, populace policy, or conversely through unfavourable race-mixing, below average procreation of the above-average, increase of congenital diseases and such.

In the divergences, on the other hand, lies the possibility of greater value change, which can far exceed the value increases and value decreases in the gene pool itself, and which are even able to retroactively subject the gene pool to favourable or ruinously un favourable conditions. The racial properties of the higher order can lead to unimagined accomplishments, but also to totally unexpected failure.

If races and folks fail already on a low cultural level, then usually valuable genes were simply missing. Their failure at a higher cultural level, however, awakens the impression that the initial success was a kind of blossoming and maturing, the decay a kind of aging and dying off of the races, folks and cultures. One then figures that the one is just as necessary as the other, one cannot promote anything about it and also not do nothing against it.

But one makes a huge mistake. One can indeed compare the spread of borrowed goods and foreign goods, the exaggerated accumulating of handed down goods, the effeminacy through one’s own, exaggerated culture with the accumulation of non-excreted wastes in an organism, back to which, after all, the manifestations of aging are traced. But that is merely a comparison and does not go far.

Neither races nor folks, neither ant-hills nor states are organisms in the true sense of the word, which one can apply to them only comparatively. With being an organism goes, for example, that it takes in nourishment, absorbs and it and excretes the wastes, that it grows, that it multiplies either through division or fertilization, and that it has organs that serve these functions. But if folks or states subjugate and absorb other such entities, this is visibly not a taking of food into the stomach, and if states divide or fall, also not procreation. They are forms of the living together of organisms, but simply not these organisms themselves, like conversely the so-called cell state is a state only comparatively and in reality is an organism. What is true for organisms, in no way needs to be true for races, folks or states. Comparisons should not guide us, rather only reality.

One could only then rightly designate races, folks and even cultures as young or old, if their genes could be young or age. But they are always equally old and always equally young, come from an eternity and are capable on their own of continuing into eternity.

Not because the genes had aged, do folks fail, rather because they do not keep their gene pool pure and take care of their racial properties of the higher order. But precisely in the high cultures, in the wealth of the handed down goods, lies the manifold opportunity to use the freedom that the divergence of legacy from heredity allows us for bad and offers us for good.

The divergences do not invariably lead to decline, rather contain both possibilities: ruin and vitality.

That the great culture folks previously all eventually took the path of failure and only in the beginning, during their so-called blossoming and maturation, passed the test, does not rest not upon a law of nature that one cannot escape.

Many forests perished previously, but that does not lie in the nature of the forest, rather in external natural events and also incorrect planting and care and preservation. Forests cannot assure this care for themselves, but cultures consist of human beings who are able to recognize their life conditions and adjust care accordingly. Certainly, this requires a high decree of insight and political will formation. Both must also be put into action long in and long-term. One generation does not suffice to secure the sequence of generations itself in the long run. Only long-term, goal-conscious work reaching across many generations can bring success.

Among the folks of the previous cultures, much of the required will and desire already appeared here and there, but it did not suffice. The Indians saw the decline of their race, but their caste laws were only in part race laws and came too late. The Romans as well saw the desolation of their farms and childlessness, but the laws with which they wanted to counteract this were too weak and were not upheld. The insight of those times did not penetrate to the true causes of the decline, and the political energy as well no longer sufficed to steer a new course. So one could not effectively counter the misfortune, neither through race policy and population policy in favour of the racial properties of the first order nor through culture policy in favour of the racial properties of the higher order, and also from them again in favour of the racial properties of the first order and of the genes themselves as their foundation.

The Dangers from the Racial Properties of the Higher Order

In the divergence of legacy from heredity lie compulsion and freedom, ruin and prosperity; but initially the dangers dominate among these consequences. One must first understand them, before one can go about evaluating the great uses as well that lie in the possibilities of divergence, and thus our freedom, and finally mastering the dangers themselves. They are: foreign influence, accumulation, misdirection.

1. Foreign Influence

The native tradition of a folk, its own property, is the direct result of its legacy that grows out of itself and is again activated and affirmed, broadened and shaped by each new folk comrade. But because the extremely complicated soul of man is thoroughly trainable, he is able to learn and acquire much, even such things that he himself has not sought or found, yes, which attracts him due to its exoticness or is forced upon him by foreigners.

The same thing applies even to the animal to a limited degree. A chimpanzee can ride a bicycle with a mastery that man will hardly ever achieve. But the difference immediately shows itself that he can no longer repair even the slightest damage to the bicycle. His skill lasts only as long as man is there, who maintains the equipment for him.

The Negro still learns to fix the bicycle, but he has not invented it, and it is difficult for him to himself adapt it to new conditions or to improve it. The state is more ingenious that a bicycle, and one has also put this “tool” into the hands of the Negroes. Caricatures, like the states in Liberia, Haiti and San Domingo, were the result, and even that much would not have come about, if one had not been able to convey the accomplished examples of our states and without halfbreeds.

“Great is every creator; important only through the preserver” (Jahn); merely learned, handed down goods, hence actually foreign property, is usually soon lost, the folks adapt what is really learned to their own nature: understood, improving, enriching, or misunderstood, distorting, twisting. They thereby make it their borrowed property. With time and with the folks, handed down goods often begin long journeys, in the process become re-shaped manifold and themselves have a re-shaping effect. Frequently, all kinds of upheavals sweep away the connecting links, and the deception arises as if the various folks had accomplished the same or similar thing independently from each other.

The one half of a comprehensive history of the cultures would have to ascertain the wandering path and modifications of the borrowed goods and the retention or rejection of foreign property, the other half the points of origin of the native property.

The more native property of an ethnic group that one can discover, the more clearly one can ascertain its guiding influence in the independent processing of foreign property into borrowed property, the more significantly does the tribal essence emerge, and the more clearly does the essence of its culture-bearing racial core reveal itself in it.

The Nordic race is the great example; its world historical significance rests on the wealth of its native property, on the energy with which it independently processes borrowed property and develops it from its essence. But the danger of foreign influence exists for it as well.

Every culture tends to contain a certain measure of foreign property, and it is all the better off, the more it has already improved it, adapted it to its own nature or even overcome it with more developed new creations. No ethnic group can shut itself off from the rest of the world, and if it managed that, it would thereby lose an important source of its strength, namely the altercation with the foreigner.

[Excessive] foreign influence [Überfremdung] is only present, if the foreign material that is not processed and cannot be processed becomes so much that even the native threatens to drown in it. One should take language as an example. A few borrowed words, a foreign word here and there, should not yet endanger it. But usually these intruders are only pace-makers for more. But if the most important basic concepts are always expressed in foreign words, and if these expressions become frequent in the sentences, then the language is already foreign influenced and in danger, and the idea even more much so.

Namely, foreign property then reaches deep into the conceptual, into the moral, into the life bearing and world-view. “What is most natural to a folk, because inborn to it and hence appropriate life expression, under circumstances means for a folk with a different nature not only a grave threaten, rather even the end.” (Adolf Hitler.)

2. Accumulation

Seen from our perspective, among native cultures only a minor growth of cultural property results, and it integrates into the older elements fitting to growth. There cannot yet be much talk of actual accumulation. It also already preconditions the penetration of foreign property, a certain disruption of the native order or even already difficulties to retain it.

But the more cultural property comes together in the cultures of higher level, the sooner do the capacities for comprehension and memory prove themselves too weak for the task arising for them, and one thinks up remedies. Individual folks, for example, the Jews, elevate memorization to an admirable art, others, such as the Egyptians and Babylonians, rely since ancient times on writing. Organized education and writing even a curriculum, libraries, reference works, a developed educational system, schools of various levels, museums and many other things then enable high cultures a previously unknown stockpiling and handing down of legacies, historical accounts and cultural accomplishments of every kind, and soon these become so plentiful that the individual can no longer master it.

The professions divide, require their own teaching, and only with effort can schools fulfil their task to select and convey the most important. Everything seems important, the old and the new, the failure and the success, the distant and the near, the foreign and the native; yes, the foreign beckons more and hence also means more. The bearers of the culture threaten to suffocate in the native and foreign traditions created and taken ever farther by them.

Is one educated, if one knows where one should look things up? According to Lagarde, one is educated, if one is able to distinguish between the important and the unimportant. Just, what is important? Where does over-stimulated thought still find support: Each word threatens to remain a mere concept, behind which one seeks to grasp a second. In this condition, thought dissolves from things, reason from comprehension. Real capacity for comprehension is replaced by a feigned one, intelligence by intellectualism. No wonder, for the energy of direct will and thought is consumed in the processing of tradition or of individual parts of it. Between man and reality, which he should confront with breast and brow, steps the concept already thought for him, the word, writing, the book. Everything seems already thought, said, taken for granted.

But that is mere appearance. For all human knowledge and human ability, even if it always penetrates farther, is nonetheless small and only piecemeal, and the still non-researched, unshaped, unfathomed mass remains infinite and inexhaustible. But especially in the sciences, one thing builds on the other, and the new knowledge tends to precondition to a great degree the previously already achieved. So the accumulated tradition indeed simplifies the more distant steps here as well, but nonetheless simultaneously makes them harder.

Highly developed cultures can only remain viable, if these dangers of suffocation in the accumulated cultural goods are effectively countered.

Misdirection

Cultured man has tamed his pets, his useful plants, his whole environment (cultivated, domesticated), and he has thereby tamed himself as well. But while pets and plants are tended by him, so that his breeding and his protection replace the strict selection of nature, the tamed (cultivated, domesticated) human being only appears to have removed himself a little from this selection; he must nonetheless, when things get serious, continue to assert himself against his own, his enemies and nature.

To prove oneself in the natural, uncultivated environment, is difficult, for its put its life and death demands pitilessly severe. But the self-created environment consists of nothing but mitigation: better food, better housing, richer life, not quite so close to death.

This elbow-room, created by beginning culture, is constantly widened, often very quickly with its successful development. In it lies all the advantages of culture, but also all alienation from nature and the danger to thereby become unsure in the responses which this mitigated, as it were, itself tamed environment nonetheless demands relentlessly. It is all the more treacherous, as the cloaking veil of culture removes these demands from view for long stretches.

One can compare a living creature that asserts itself against its environment through the responses that it gives to it in the form of its characteristics on the basis of its genes to a swimmer struggling against the waves, and the demands of the environment, even the strict selection that it imposes, to turbulent weather and storm. Steering happens through the racial properties of the first order.

Even the racial properties of the higher order steer their bearers onward in the direction of the racial properties of the first order, which work and realize themselves in the cultural creations; yes, their development initially means an important head start for their bearers.

Let us take as example those racial properties of the higher order which constitute crop cultivation. The crop-field nourishes the most capable peasant best. He preserves and protects the peasant virtues through his work, from which crop cultivation grew. Even when other professions are added, the peasantry remains the nourishment profession, the unshakeable support of folk energy through a long time. So far, culture stays in the direction of the racial properties of its creators and protects them.

But it only does that for a stretch. The rural settlement grows, the city emerges. The steam plough of the large landholder threatens the peasant. Those whom he is supposed to nourish can become too many. The other professions can uproot him through taxes and other means of their greed.

Or another case: the trades escalate to industry that destroys the tradesman. The original direction, as if were, has reversed itself.

The racial properties turn in their escalated forms against their creators. Such manifestations exist in the most diverse areas.

The machine, invented in order to help with work, one uses it to make people unemployed.

Chemistry supplies poison gases and explosives of unexpected effectiveness.

Contraceptive measures threaten to prevent procreation.

Even medicine turns into harm, when it secures more favourable conditions for the sick to reproduce than it does for the healthy.

Adding to the difficulty are:

First, inflowing foreign goods that the culture-forming energy is in no way always able to process into its own goods (borrowed goods), and which then have a decaying effect.

Second, the paralysis of the culture-forming energy itself, since the new growth of cultural goods no longer grows properly, professions and strata of the folk get jumbled together, whole groups sink more frequently than individual ones rise, a mass uprooted in its property and upper stratum uprooted in its ideals endanger the spiritual moral existent of the whole. The accumulation of tradition goods gets out of hand, and judgment, the identification of the important, of the vital, becomes ever more difficult.

Third, an effeminacy of cultured man through his cultural institutions, which enrich his life of feeling, broaden his knowledge, beautify his existence, but all too easily paralyze his decisiveness down to the bone.

It is as if the creations of culture had become independent, as if the culture-bearers had lost their mastery over them, even though they are still able to ever increase and perfect the accomplishment itself, and as if the cultural institutions rebelled against their creators.

The racial goods of the higher order steer the culture through the environment effect that develops them no longer in the direction of the racial properties of the first order, rather the steering first becomes unsure through them and then turns into the opposite, into misdirection, and threatens to destroy the flagging bearers of heritage themselves.

The Bolshevist Lunacy and Our Culture-Political Will

If one ponders these dangers, one could come to the conclusion: only from the decline of the high cultures could again sprout a new cultural creation, a new beginning, excessive foreign influence could only be overpowered, the ballast of all too highly piled tradition only cast off, the culture-harming environment effect of exaggerated cultural achievements only be overcome, through a thorough destruction of existing culture and through a new construction from the foundation up and with all that freedom and impartiality that must result, if one is not bound by any restricting and burdening past.

That would be an extermination of all traditions, such as Bolshevism wants. One torches the house in order to get rid of the bugs. It is not, say, a lack of daring that makes us reject such criminal experiments. Rather they are senseless and futile, because the new start would be purchased through the loss of all the experiences of the past and through the extermination of the bearers of these experiences and institutions, who necessarily stand by their cultural goods and would have to be destroyed with them in order to make room for the dreamed renewal.

This would be a repetition of the already achieved, and the old dangers would exist with it as well. But they could not set it at all. For the destruction of the culture-bearers must lead to the loss of culture. The destruction of precisely that blood from which alone the valuable could grow again is inherent within it. The cultural soil would then be killed, any hope gone.

Hence it would mean cowardly and criminally withdrawing from the tasks that these dangers from the cultural properties of the higher order put to us, if one chooses the destruction of culture and its bearers as desperate escape. But there is no reason at all for desperation, for each of the named dangers, as soon as it is recognized in its essence, can also be dammed up again and overcome.

The Overcoming of the Dangers

Each of the possibilities for the divergence of tradition from heredity is not merely a danger, rather also a gift and part of our grace, if we only know how to use it correctly. We can learn, teach, pass along, we can stockpile experiences, retain knowledge, take applications from it, we can, even if only within very modest boundaries, look ahead and shape world and fate; we have creative energies, memory beyond our individual life in tradition and the talent to consciously employ all of this.

Hence, we will also do it, in that we 1. expand the native, 2. make the important dominant, 3. correctly steer ourselves from our environment.

1. Expansion of the Native

Every culture absorbs foreign goods from the outside, but also tends to give its own goods to the outside. It only remains leading insofar as it is able to assert itself toward the absorbed and insofar as it is able to offer the folks around it something decisive.

Advantages and disadvantages lie in both, and it is important to use the advantages and to counter the disadvantages. One should learn wherever one can learn, but should also distinguish whether it is about valuable, superfluous or even dangerous things, and what effect it will have in the own folk nature. The worst thing is what is imposed by foreigners; one should think about opium in China.

Even with native property, one should be careful about how one handles it. The most precious thing are the people themselves. Indo-Germanic man, Germanic man, then Europe’s folks, then we Germans have through emigration suffered heavy losses and gained little from the foreign foundations not guided by plan. The cultures of the Nordic race have indeed conquered the world, but the Nordic folks have almost bled dry in the process.

When Greek culture, through Alexander’s campaign, poured into the orient, the decline of Greekdom was no longer to be stopped. Germanic man learned from the Romans to assert himself and win against superior weaponry, military leadership, administration, and defeated Rome. Charlemagne, the Frank emperor, had to forbid the export of German swords to the Slavs.

But all Europe’s folks have given their weapons, even their intellectual ones, their science, their technology, in part in joy to be their teachers, in part in competition for base, race-betraying profit and in short-sighted underestimation of the danger. These folks are already rising up and turning against their benefactors.

Not being complaisant in adoption, reserved in giving, in both considering the consequences, that will protect against harm, will elevate reputation, solidify self-esteem. Only seldom does something let itself be made reversible. Instead, one must add new layers in order to abolish the old ones again, where that is necessary and desirable. The prerequisite is that one finds the strength, above all, even the political strength, to put the native in the centre and to logically expand where it is still capable of such an expansion.

Every culture contains an unexpected quantity of still unused creative possibilities. One must learn to find and exploit them. That way, one pushes out the foreign the fastest. Only this procedure secures the necessary superiority as well, while all mere opposition simultaneously makes the opponent dependent. The struggle against the foreign word, for example, remains hopeless, if the foreign words are merely supposed to be Germanized and not instead language-creative energies are freed up which lead to a new, independent expression of the idea.

One should not let oneself become annoyed, because many of these attempts do not work right away; for it is about the grains of seed that sprout. It is like the effort to replace foreign raw materials with native ones. They must not remain substitutes, and not every attempt succeeds. Yes, one can even deceive oneself in regard to need. Many foreign goods are worth a lot, but like tobacco are better off absent.

The shaping of the native will frequently begin with a return to the native. Only one must be clear that the old cannot be repeated, rather should merely give a stimulus for the new. In things of culture, there are no repetitions. Everything past stands on an earlier level, but everything future, according to its beginnings, still under the totally different conditions of the present. Nonetheless, the old has again and again been the teacher for the new. The great example overall is the Renaissance.

It is not necessary that the old presents itself to the later generation in superior perfection in order to stimulate it to new creations. Even modest beginnings, lovingly undertaken, can contribute something important for the higher level. In that Luther looked at how the folk talked, he gave the German language a decisive push forward. Inner value can exist even without outer splendour. Buried beginnings of Germanic antiquity that today gain validity again are, for example: the leader and the following, male loyalty, honouring the ancestors and love for the clan, the hereditary farmstead.

Often enough, the foreign has crowded out something native and very imposing, which could have continued in another direction, for example, among us the end rhyme and the staff alliteration. This and Germanic verse structure were highly appropriate for our language, which stresses the meaning-bearing syllables, while the end rhyme and the new poetry of the south inflict great violence upon it. Nonetheless, here as well, there is no return to the old, but indeed very important opportunities for something new, something again appropriate for our language. Richard Wagner and others have taken up the alliteration again here and there, and if such experiments gain room, the guide back to the original inner bearing, which alone is what matters; the form is only serving means.

Many foreign goods seem harmless and secondary, say some allegedly indispensable foreign word or a foreign fashion. But the fundamental stands even behind the secondary, fashion includes lipstick and fingernail polish, the cigarette, jazz and much else, and if such things gain the upper hand, the German woman and German social life suddenly have an alien face.

Usually, foreign powers are then also at play, like with import from across the sea, foreign commerce, or, with wine, Rome from ancient times, which is why already the Germanic tribe of the Sweben tried to ban the import of wine.

But it went deeper, when Roman law came to Germania and the new religion. Both examples show, followed through the history of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the German religious wars, how such borrowed goods can also have the highest political importance and can grow into a folk’s foundations. For that, the foreigners do not even have to first enter the land in numbers. But if they do that and claim, like among us the Jews, even dominance, then one must with calm firmness return them to the limits of right and fairness.

2. Determination of the Essential

The expansion of the native continues itself in the determination of the essential. The faith in the future replaces the obligation toward the past.

The fertilized egg receives only so much in its new life as is necessary; not the body that it should build for itself, already in miniature, rather the main thing: the basic traits of the later arrangement, its melody, as it were, plus a little nourishment. It resembles a backpack packed with the strictest thrift, in which the order to march is the main thing.

The heir of a culture must also ask himself: how do I pack my backpack? It is extremely small, the cultural goods overwhelmingly manifold. The most important thing here as well are the basic traits of the order itself. Some spiritual trail food is likewise necessary, but just enough so that the order can begin with it, which is brought along as melody and is that of all the life that develops from this good, and which later consumes what is necessary of spiritual nourishment, of knowledge, always according to requirement and overfeeding is avoided.

This is true for every culture-close person newly born into his culture, and it is true for the culture overall. It must maintain its sleekness and cast off clinkers. Only the unshakeable faith in the future gives it the strength to free itself from the appendages of the past that have accumulated over the course of tradition.

Accumulation of cultural goods means that the essential was buried by much that is inessential, not merely by superfluous or dangerous foreign goods, rather also by many remnants and side-effects of its own cultural work. The additions, which did not follow proper growth, are hence to be sorted out, the view is to be opened for what, growing properly, belongs together. Only the latter is important, and in that one determines it, it becomes distinguishable from the unimportant. This work consists simultaneously in a continuing use and an increasing strengthening of the power of judgment.

More important than passing down through teaching and writing is the passing down through the existing institutions of the folk whole. These are what is direct, the other is merely deduced. Yet one should not underestimate it. Science, art. literature, writing again and again give culture its direction from what has already been accomplished, in the good and in the bad.

Institutions must stand out according to their importance for the whole: the constitution, the professions and strata of the folk, the manifold dividing occupations and their duties. Specialization in the occupations is necessary, but it should not happen for the sake of the specialists, rather make the whole more structured, ordered, controllable. The whole must become visible ethnically-graphically in the meaningful gradation of its elements at festivals, processions and similar occasions. Through their striving upward, toward the whole, the fields and occupations must meet half-way the structure of the whole from below. In every field, in every occupation, in every special branch of knowledge and action, the whole shines and presents itself inside it, if it is nurtured from the ground up. It is so better controlled from the inside than from the outside through the imprinting of a mass of knowledge that soon escapes memory again. A “general (merely encyclopaedic) education” that wants to consider everything, but treats nothing thoroughly and uproots people, gives little benefit.

Knowing a lot does not teach, having reason - said already the profound thinker Heraclitus of Ephesosos. Certainly, he also said: Wisdom-loving men must be knowledgeable of many things. Weighing both sayings against each other leads to the essence of true education.

Schools must orient themselves accordingly, the material to be taught must be limited to the essential and the instruction so improved that it strengthens the power of judgment, the meaning for the whole. Technical special training should be moved from the schools to the occupations.

Genuine humanity roots itself at the place in reality due it through nationality, homeland and talent, and draws from this its best energy and grows from here out of inner maturity with purified will also most surely into the communality, insofar this is given to it. So the indigenous man can preserve his freshness and everything that was achieved before him will be available to him and promote him when he needs it, instead of hindering him. In the process, he will let himself be guided by the example of the great cultural accomplishments of the past that have emerged from related blood and by the ideal picture of a purified and firm culture of the German future.

3. Environment Shaping for the Security of the Culture-Bearing Race

It is about turning the steering wheel and holding firm course from a well-understood past through a calm present into the future of the most distant generations. We do not need to let ourselves be driven by the environment effect of our cultural goods, rather we can intentionally employ them as environment in order to steer ourselves again in the direction of our culture-bearing racial properties.

The racial properties of the higher order, used in this manner, are an important means to put the racial properties of the first order in order again as well, yes, if one looks closely, they are the only means that stand at our disposal for this purpose; but, fortunately, this means already suffices, thanks to the progress of our knowledge.

To the racial properties of the higher order belongs namely also all the knowledge of the laws of genetics and of the distribution of genetic characteristics in the population. Applying this knowledge, for example, along the path of population-policy legislation, means giving them environment effect and thereby bringing out the improvement of the condition of the racial properties of the first order. Racial properties of the higher order, this time the results of the doctrine of genetics and population science, are employed in order to steer the racial properties of the first order.

The creations of art have a similar environmental effect as the products of science and their technical applications. The ideal picture of man that they present to our eyes, making motives actions, reaches into the feeling and viewing of people. If art loses itself to false ideals, then it no longer has any at all, then it has a decaying effect; but if it manages to give them the drive for new life-promoting ideals, then it recruits for them, and the racial goods of the high and highest order, the works of art that they crate, again serve the purpose of steering the healing of the racial properties of the first order. Finally, the economy can be employed especially effectively. If it keeps house with the import of dispensable wares, then it makes us dependent and consumes our energy in favour of the others; if, on the other hand, it tries to make do with that we have and shuts off false requirements, then it leads us back to ourselves again.

If it guides itself according to the greedy spirit, then it destroys the life of many and of precisely the best inherited goods and culture bearers. Conversely if it works from the productive spirit, then it builds up, and the entangled system of racial properties of the higher order, which every economy represents, likewise has the effect of steering in favour of the racial properties of the first order.

If we shape our whole culture so that the foreign is pushed back, the native becomes guideline, then the slogan “open the path for the capable” first obtains its real meaning; for only he will now be considered as capable, whose character lies in the direction that we must wish, so that the folk whole becomes uniform and elevated. And the same is true for the concept performance. For there as well, we do not mean simply performance, say some record without inner content, rather solely such performances that aim at the overall goal.

The Racial Properties of the Highest Order

The more it is possible to make the racial properties of the higher order, the insights conquered over the course of culture, useable for the steering of the racial properties of the first order, the more decisively the uncertainty is overcome that could result from the divergence of tradition from heredity.

The security that now returns again rests on the truth content of the employed insights and knowledge. But so that these were won and prospered so far, required an intellectual work continued through many generations, in which each new result rests upon the earlier one. Hence it will be appropriate to designate as racial properties of the highest order these highly escalated insights and knowledge that already stretch deep into the area of truth.

They include, above all, the solutions to social questions according to the principles of morality, then the creations of the arts, of the visual ones and of literature, finally scientific knowledge. The great politician has such a strong share in all these groups of racial properties of the highest order that he thereby finds the solution to his tasks.

Basically, already every, even the simplest cultural achievement, preconditions some insights and knowledge, but there is nonetheless a huge difference, whether one is still dependent on experimenting or is already beyond that.

On the level of testing out, success or failure decide over right and wrong afterward, the objects whose existence is at stake give the answer themselves. It is not always sufficiently certain, and one must learn to laboriously differentiate between apparent and real success.

But our insight can also extend so far that we do not have to judge at the end after the result of the success, rather can predict the success already in advance, because we master the conditions under which it set in. Previously, the object provided the answer, and we would have known it precisely, then we would not have had to ask it any longer. Now, on the higher level, we provide it ourselves, and indeed in that we think it out in advance in strict contact with the object. Truth consists of the strict contact and the agreement of thought with the object.

Truth does not deduce its validity from the success, and even the practical applications that it allows can merely display their value for certain purposes, but not prove the truth as truth. There are also truths without visible uses, yes, truth can occasionally even be harmful for people who are not up to it and lies apparently useful for a stretch. Also, benefits and damages change abruptly, according to the conditions, and have degrees. But the truth nonetheless exists unchanged, even though new truths go beyond the old ones, and it is valid without gradations.

The relationship toward truth finding is very diverse among folks and cultures. Many have hardly taken any steps in it, others brought decisive things to light, in part in their social institutions, in part in their art, the fewest in science, which was reserved almost exclusively for the folks of Nordic race.

But once found, grasped and obligated, the good, beautiful, genuine does not only grip and obligate the people of the race who have found it, rather also others far beyond it, even if finding and going along in the understanding have their racially determined boundaries.

The power of the Nordic race to feel and think its way into the highest accomplishments of even foreign and racially foreign determined cultures is unique; the other races follow it in this in very diverse intervals. In it, tied to the strength to appreciate the foreign in its ultimate values, is the strength to lead in accomplishment in its native law, in art, in science, and to devote itself to them, and indeed to an extent which the other races have remained far behind.

The direction in which the racial properties of such highest, unconditional validity must be sought, is, however, a matter of the special, racially determined talent, which can often be quite diverse even among Europe’s racially so closely related folks. So we see how a Newton and a Leibniz, independent of one another, in the service of similar research tasks escalate the synthetic method of observation, while two Frenchman, like Descartes with his analytical geometry and Galois with his group theory and its application to the fundamental principle of algebra, advance in the sense of analytical thought.

Hence even in mathematics, the talents of folks express themselves, and not merely personal ones. Nonetheless, the infinitesimal calculus and analytical geometry are valid totally independent of the beings who are, say, capable of grasping them, and the same as for mathematics also applies to the natural sciences and their technical applications, where it is about the ability to grasp and to dominate reality.

The social sciences as well open the view to facts, fathoming of essence and practical application. Here, for example, the application of the concept of race points to the side of analytical talent, that of the concepts of nationality and culture to the side of synthetic talent, and it is again to be noted that a Frenchman, Gobineau, was the pioneering racial theoretician, even though a German like Arndt had already preceded him there in important realizations and another like Woltmann become leading in it.

Again and again, it is the Nordic race that has created the sciences, knowledge, applications, and the preliminary work and accomplishment of other races in the same as well as every other direction were minor, measured against the accomplishment of the Nordic race. Only to it and the racial properties of the first order tied to it is it given to create racial properties of the higher and highest order with this energy and as foregone conclusion, which ultimately also stretches into the area of the genuine and discards everything conditional, which otherwise necessarily attaches itself to it, so much that they achieve unconditional validity, even though they admittedly remain dependent on their bearers and dry out as soon as they perish.

Freedom and Cultural Technology

Genes are fate. Their application and development, however, elevates itself above fate and juts into the realm of freedom. The products finally, which the racial properties of the first order bring into the racial properties of the higher and highest order, make us really free, if we apply them correctly and make sure that they continue to work according to the law from which they have been breed, according to the law of the spirit of our own nationality and the culture-bearing race determining it.

For the freedom for which we strive does not consist of us renouncing our own folk’s essence, rather of fulfilling it. We want to finally be, and be allowed to become, those who we actually already always were, and we want the freedom to act accordingly.

The insights according to which the dangers of high culture are banished, and being able to move the forces that work in the wrong direction into the right one, demand that we develop a conscious cultural technology.

Culture is not something that we must let drift and accept just as it comes, rather it is our duty to nurture it according to the best knowledge and conscience and with world-historical responsibility.

It is also correct that the great cultural accomplishments always emanate from talented individuals, who do not let themselves be arbitrarily compelled, but it is likewise correct that very much can happen in order to prepare the paths for the emergence and working of such talents.

A substantial number of our greatest geniuses were not the first or second, rather later children of their parents. If the one child system becomes common custom, then the talents that can lie in children born later are lost to the nation. Promotion of child-rich, congenitally healthy families thus also means increase of the probability of the appearance of great talents.

One must not have exaggerated impressions about the ability of a talent to develop under adverse conditions. Although personality grows from obstacles, it nonetheless likewise needs the preconditions favourable for it; time will never be equally ripe for them, but they must mature toward it. For where nothing ripens, even the best farmer cannot harvest.

Many, and precisely the most important, men were the fulfilment of long harboured yearnings. So apparently an extraordinarily lot lies in us awakening the right yearnings, so that men grow up who can fulfil them.

Indeed, the laws of nature are necessary and universally valid, and we also stand under them. But all technology shows that we can also apply these laws according to our need and will. In this application, we are free. The momentary laws of decline are valid only for as long as we endure them.