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.
