higher, indeed as of sole, importance. It is this accentuation of the real substance of things, the ever-powerful desire to discover this real substance, and the ever-present impulse to give expression to this inner reality which has become the controlling trait of the Germanic soul. Hence the conviction gained by countless unfruitful efforts, that reason alone will never get at the true foundation of things; hence the thoroughness of German science; hence a great many of the qualities that explain Germanic successes and failures; hence, perhaps, a certain stubbornness and obstinacy, the unwillingness to give up a conviction once formed; hence the tendency to mysticism; hence that continuous struggle which marks the history of German art,--the struggle to give to the contents powerful and adequate expression, and to satisfy at the same time the requirements of esthetic elegance and beauty, a struggle in which the victory is ever on the side of truth, though it be homely, over beauty of form whenever it appears deceitful; hence the part played by music as the only expression of those imponderable vibrations of the soul for which language seems to have no words; hence the faith of the German in his mission among the nations as a bringer of truth, as a recognizer of the real value of things as against the hollow shell of beautiful form, as the doer of right deeds for their own sake and not for any reward beyond the natural outcome of the deed itself."
The division established between the outer realm, in which of course acts fall, and the inner realm of consciousness explains what is otherwise so paradoxical to a foreigner in German writings: The constant assertion that Germany brought to the world the conscious recognition of the principle of freedom coupled with the assertion of the relative incompetency of the German folk _en masse_ for political self-direction.
To one saturated by the English tradition which identifies freedom with power to act upon one's ideas, to make one's purposes effective in regulation of public affairs, the combination seems self-contradictory.
To the German it is natural. Readers who have been led by newspaper quotations to regard Bernhardi as preaching simply a gospel of superior force will find in his writings a continual assertion that _the_ German spirit is the spirit of freedom, of complete intellectual self-determination; that the Germans have "always been the standard bearers of free thought." We find him supporting his teachings not by appeal to Nietzsche, but by the Kantian distinction between the "empirical and rational ego."
It is Bernhardi who says: "Two great movements were born from the German intellectual life, on which, henceforth, _all the intellectual and moral progress of mankind must rest_:--The Reformation and the critical philosophy. The Reformation that broke the intellectual yoke imposed by the Church, which checked all free progress; and the Critique of Pure Reason which put a stop to the caprice of philosophic speculation by defining for the human mind the limitations of its capacities for knowledge, and at the same time pointed out the way in which knowledge is really possible. On this substructure was developed the intellectual life of our time, whose deepest significance consists in the attempt to reconcile the result of free inquiry with the religious needs of the heart, and thus to lay a foundation for the harmonious organization of mankind...The German nation not only laid the foundations of this great struggle for a harmonious development of humanity but took the lead in it. We are thus incurring an obligation for the future from which we cannot shrink. We must be prepared to be the leader in this campaign which is being fought for the highest stake that has been offered to human efforts...To no nation except the German has it been given to enjoy in its inner self 'that which is given to mankind as a whole.'...It is this quality which especially fits us for leadership in the intellectual domain and _imposes upon us the obligation to maintain that position_."[35:A] [35:A] Bernhardi, "Germany and the Next War," pp.
73-74. Italics not in the original text.
More significant than the words themselves are their occasion and the occupation of the one who utters them. Outside of Germany, cavalry generals who employ philosophy to bring home practical lessons are, I think, rare. Outside of Germany, it would be hard to find an audience where an appeal for military preparedness would be reinforced by allusions to the Critique of Pure Reason.
Yet only by taking such statements seriously can one understand the temper in which opinion in Germany meets a national crisis. When the philosopher Eucken (who received a Nobel prize for contributing to the idealistic literature of the world) justifies the part taken by Germany in a world war because the Germans alone do not represent a particularistic and nationalistic spirit, but embody the "universalism" of humanity itself, he utters a conviction bred in German thought by the ruling interpretation of German philosophic idealism. By the side of this _motif_ the glorification of war as a biologic necessity, forced by increase of population, is a secondary detail, giving a totally false impression when isolated from its context. The main thing is that Germany, more than any other nation, in a sense alone of all nations, embodies the essential principle of humanity: freedom of spirit, combined with thorough and detailed work in the outer sphere where reigns causal law, where obedience, discipline and subordination are the necessities of successful organization. It is perhaps worth while to recall that Kant lived, taught and died in Koenigsberg; and that Koenigsberg was the chief city of east Prussia, an island still cut off in his early years from western Prussia, a titular capital for the Prussian kings where they went for their coronations. His lifework in philosophy coincides essentially with the political work of Frederick the Great, the king who combined a regime of freedom of thought and complete religious toleration with the most extraordinary display known in history of administrative and military efficiency. Fortunately for our present purposes, Kant, in one of his minor essays, has touched upon this combination and stated its philosophy in terms of his own thought.
The essay in question is that entitled "What is the Enlightenment?" His reply in substance is that it is the coming of age on the part of humanity: the transition from a state of minority or infancy wherein man does not dare to think freely to that period of majority or maturity in which mankind dares to use its own power of understanding. The growth of this power of free use of reason is the sole hope of progress in human affairs. External revolutions which are not the natural expression of an inner or intellectual revolution are of little significance. Genuine growth is found in the slow growth of science and philosophy and in the gradual diffusion throughout the mass of the discoveries and conclusions of those who are superior in intelligence. True freedom is inner freedom, freedom of thought together with the liberty consequent upon it of teaching and publication. To check this rational freedom "is a sin against the very nature of man, the primary law of which consists in just the advance in rational enlightenment."
In contrast with this realm of inner freedom stands that of civil and political action, the principle of which is obedience or subordination to constituted authority. Kant illustrates the nature of the two by the position of a military subordinate who is given an order to execute which his reason tells him is unwise. His sole duty in the realm of practice is to obey--to do his duty. But as a member not of the State but of the kingdom of science, he has the right of free inquiry and publication. Later he might write upon the campaign in which this event took place and point out, upon intellectual grounds, the mistake involved in the order. No wonder that Kant proclaims that the age of the enlightenment is the age of Frederick the Great. Yet we should do injustice to Kant if we inferred that he expected this dualism of spheres of action, with its twofold moral law of freedom and obedience, to endure forever. By the exercise of freedom of thought, and by its publication and the education which should make its results permeate the whole state, the habits of a nation will finally become elevated to rationality, and the spread of reason will make it possible for the government to treat men, not as cogs in a machine, but in accord with the dignity of rational creatures.
Before leaving this theme, I must point out one aspect of the work of reason thus far passed over. Nature, the sensible world of space and time, is, as a knowable object, constituted by the legislative work of reason, although constituted out of a non-rational sensible stuff. This determining work of reason forms not merely the Idealism of the Kantian philosophy but determines its emphasis upon the _a priori_. The functions of reason through which nature is rendered a knowable object cannot be derived from experience, for they are necessary to the existence of experience. The details of this _a priori_ apparatus lie far outside our present concern. Suffice it to say that as compared with some of his successors, Kant was an economical soul and got along with only two _a priori_ forms and twelve _a priori_ categories. The mental habitudes generated by attachment to _a priori_ categories cannot however be entirely neglected in even such a cursory discussion as the present.
If one were to follow the suggestion involved in the lately quoted passage as to the significant symbolism of the place of the accent in German speech, one might discourse upon the deep meaning of the Capitalization of Nouns in the written form of the German language, together with the richness of the language in abstract nouns. One might fancy that the dignity of the common noun substantive, expressing as it does the universal or generic, has bred an intellectual deference. One may fancy a whole nation of readers reverently bowing their heads at each successively capitalized word. In such fashion one might arrive at a picture, not without its truth, of what it means to be devoted to _a priori_ rational principles.
A number of times during the course of the world war I have heard someone remark that he would not so much mind what the Germans did if it were not for the reasons assigned in its justification. But to rationalize such a tangled skein as human experience is a difficult task. If one is in possession of antecedent rational concepts which are legislative for experience, the task is much simplified. It only remains to subsume each empirical event under its proper category. If the outsider does not see the applicability of the concept to the event, it may be argued that his blindness shows his ineptness for truly universal thinking. He is probably a crass empiric who thinks in terms of material consequences instead of upon the basis of antecedent informing principles of reason.
Thus it has come about that no moral, social or political question is adequately discussed in Germany until the matter in hand has been properly deduced from an exhaustive determination of its fundamental _Begriff_ or _Wesen_. Or if the material is too obviously empirical to allow of such deduction, it must at least be placed under its appropriate rational form. What a convenience, what a resource, nay, what a weapon is the Kantian distinction of _a priori_ rational form and _a posteriori_ empirical matter. Let the latter be as brutely diversified, as chaotic as you please. There always exists a form of unity under which it may be brought. If the empirical facts are recalcitrant, so much the worse for them. It only shows how empirical they are. To put them under a rational form is but to subdue their irrational opposition to reason, or to invade their lukewarm neutrality.
Any violence done them is more than indemnified by the favor of bringing them under the sway of _a priori_ reason, the incarnation of the Absolute on earth.
Yet there are certain disadvantages attached to _a priori_ categories.
They have a certain rigidity, appalling to those who have not learned to identify stiffness with force. Empirical matters are subject to revision. The strongest belief that claims the support of experience is subject to modification when experience testifies against it. But an _a priori_ conception is not open to adverse evidence. There is no court having jurisdiction. If, then, an unfortunate mortal should happen to be imposed upon so that he was led to regard a prejudice or predilection as an _a priori_ truth, contrary experience would have a tendency to make him the more obstinate in his belief. History proves what a dangerous thing it has been for men, when they try to impose their will upon other men, to think of themselves as special instruments and organs of Deity. The danger is equally great when an _a priori_ Reason is substituted for a Divine Providence. Empirically grounded truths do not have a wide scope; they do not inspire such violent loyalty to themselves as ideas supposed to proceed directly from reason itself. But they are discussable; they have a humane and social quality, while truths of pure reason have a paradoxical way, in the end, of escaping from the arbitrament of reasoning. They evade the logic of experience, only to become, in the phrase of a recent writer, the spoil of a "logic of fanaticism." Weapons forged in the smithy of the Absolute become brutal and cruel when confronted by merely human resistance.
The stiffly constrained character of an _a priori_ Reason manifests itself in another way. A category of pure reason is suspiciously like a pigeonhole. An American writer, speaking before the present war, remarked with witty exaggeration that "Germany is a monstrous set of pigeonholes, and every mother's son of a German is pigeoned in his respective hole--tagged, labeled and ticketed. Germany is a huge human check-room, and the government carries the checks in its pocket." John Locke's deepest objection to the older form of the _a priori_ philosophy, the doctrine of innate ideas, was the readiness with which such ideas become strongholds behind which authority shelters itself from questioning. And John Morley pointed out long ago the undoubted historic fact that the whole modern liberal social and political movement has allied itself with philosophic empiricism. It is hard here, as everywhere, to disentangle cause and effect. But one can at least say with considerable assurance that a hierarchically ordered and subordered State will feel an affinity for a philosophy of fixed categories, while a flexible democratic society will, in its crude empiricism, exhibit loose ends.
There is a story to the effect that the good townspeople of Koenigsberg were accustomed to their watches by the time at which Kant passed upon his walks--so uniform was he. Yielding to the Teutonic temptation to find an inner meaning in the outer event, one may wonder whether German thought has not since Kant's time set its intellectual and spiritual clocks by the Kantian standard: the separation of the inner and the outer, with its lesson of freedom and idealism in one realm, and of mechanism, efficiency and organization in the other. A German professor of philosophy has said that while the Latins live in the present moment, the Germans live in the infinite and ineffable. His accusation (though I am not sure he meant it as such) is not completely justified. But it does seem to be true that the Germans, more readily than other peoples, can withdraw themselves from the exigencies and contingencies of life into a region of _Innerlichkeit_ which at least _seems_ boundless; and which can rarely be successfully uttered save through music, and a frail and tender poetry, sometimes domestic, sometimes lyric, but always full of mysterious charm. But technical ideas, ideas about means and instruments, can readily be externalized because the outer world is in truth their abiding home.
II GERMAN MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY It is difficult to select sentences from Kant which are intelligible to those not trained in his vocabulary, unless the selection is accompanied by an almost word-by-word commentary. His writings have proved an admirable _terrain_ for the display of German _Gruendlichkeit_. But I venture upon the quotation of one sentence which may serve the purpose of at once recalling the main lesson of the previous lecture and furnishing a transition to the theme of the present hour.
"Even if an immeasurable gulf is fixed between the sensible realm of the concept of nature and the supersensible realm of the concept of freedom, so that it is not possible to go from the first to the second (at least by means of the theoretical use of reason) any more than if they were two separate worlds of which the first could have no influence upon the second,--yet the second is _meant_ to have an influence upon the first. The concept of freedom is meant to actualize in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws."...That is, the relation between the world of space and time where physical causality reigns and the moral world of freedom and duty is not a symmetrical one. The former cannot intrude into the latter. But it is the very nature of moral legislation that it is meant to influence the world of sense; its object is to realize the purposes of free rational action within the sense world. This fact fixes the chief features of Kant's philosophy of Morals and of the State.
It is a claim of the admirers of Kant that he first brought to recognition the true and infinite nature of the principle of Personality. On one side, the individual is _homo phenomenon_--a part of the scheme of nature, governed by its laws as much as any stone or plant. But in virtue of his citizenship in the kingdom of supersensible Laws and Ends, he is elevated to true universality. He is no longer a mere occurrence. He is a Person--one in whom the purpose of Humanity is incarnate. In English and American writings the terms subjective and subjectivism usually carry with them a disparaging color. Quite otherwise is it in German literature. This sets the age of subjectivism, whose commencement, roughly speaking, coincides with the influence of Kantian thought, in sharp opposition to the age of individualism, as well as to a prior period of subordination to external authority.
Individualism means isolation; it means external relations of human beings with one another and with the world; it looks at things quantitatively, in terms of wholes and parts. Subjectivism means recognition of the principle of free personality: the self as creative, occupied not with an external world which limits it from without, but, through its own self-consciousness, finding a world within itself; and having found the universal within itself, setting to work to recreate itself in what had been the external world, and by its own creative expansion in industry, art and politics to transform what had been mere limiting material into a work of its own. Free as was Kant from the sentimental, the mystic and the romantic phases of this Subjectivism, we shall do well to bear it in mind in thinking of his ethical theory.
Personality means that man as a rational being does not receive the end which forms the law of his action from without, whether from Nature, the State or from God, but from his own self. Morality is autonomous; man, humanity, is an end in itself. Obedience to the self-imposed law will transform the sensible world (within which falls all social ties so far as they spring from natural instinct desire) into a form appropriate to universal reason. Thus we may paraphrase the sentence quoted from Kant.
The gospel of duty has an invigorating ring. It is easy to present it as the most noble and sublime of all moral doctrines. What is more worthy of humanity, what better marks the separation of man from brute, than the will to subordinate selfish desire and individual inclination to the commands of stern and lofty duty? And if the idea of command (which inevitably goes with the notion of duty) carries a sinister suggestion of legal authority, pains and penalties and of subservience to an external authority who issues the commands, Kant seems to have provided a final corrective in insisting that duty is self-imposed. Moral commands are imposed by the higher, supranatural self upon the lower empirical self, by the rational self upon the self of passions and inclinations. German philosophy is attached to antitheses and their reconciliation in a higher synthesis. The Kantian principle of Duty is a striking case of the reconciliation of the seemingly conflicting ideas of freedom and authority.
Unfortunately, however, the balance cannot be maintained in practice.
Kant's faithful logic compels him to insist that the concept of duty is empty and formal. It tells men that to do their duty is their supreme law of action, but is silent as to what men's duties specifically are.
Kant, moreover, insists, as he is in logic bound to do, that the motive which measures duty is wholly inner; it is purely a matter of inner consciousness. To admit that consequences can be taken into account in deciding what duty is in a particular case would be to make concessions to the empirical and sensible world which are fatal to the scheme. The combination of these two features of pure internality and pure formalism leads, in a world where men's _acts_ take place wholly in the external and empirical region, to serious consequences.
The dangerous character of these consequences may perhaps be best gathered indirectly by means of a quotation.
"While the French people in savage revolt against spiritual and secular despotism had broken their chains and proclaimed their _rights_, another quite different revolution was working in Prussia--the revolution of _duty_. The assertion of the rights of the individual leads ultimately to individual irresponsibility and to a repudiation of the State. Immanuel Kant, the founder of the critical philosophy, taught, in opposition to this view, the gospel of moral duty, and Scharnhorst grasped the idea of universal military service. By calling upon which individual to sacrifice property and life for the good of the community, he gave the clearest expression to the idea of the State, and created a sound basis on which the claims to individual rights might rest."[52:A] [52:A] Bernhardi, "Germany and the Next War," pp.
63-64.
The sudden jump, by means of only a comma, from the gospel of moral duty to universal military service is much more logical than the shock which it gives to an American reader would indicate. I do not mean, of course, that Kant's teaching was the cause of Prussia's adoption of universal military service and of the thoroughgoing subordination of individual happiness and liberty of action to that capitalized entity, the State.
But I do mean that when the practical political situation called for universal military service in order to support and expand the existing state, the gospel of a Duty devoid of content naturally lent itself to the consecration and idealization of such specific duties as the existing national order might prescribe. The sense of duty must get its subject-matter somewhere, and unless subjectivism was to revert to anarchic or romantic individualism (which is hardly in the spirit of obedience to authoritative law) its appropriate subject-matter lies in the commands of a superior. Concretely what the State commands is the congenial outer filling of a purely inner sense of duty. That the despotism of Frederick the Great and of the Hohenzollerns who remained true to his policy was at least that hitherto unknown thing, an enlightened despotism, made the identification easier. Individuals have at all times, in epochs of stress, offered their supreme sacrifice to their country's good. In Germany this sacrifice in times of peace as well as of war has been systematically reinforced by an inner mystic sense of a Duty elevating men to the plane of the universal and eternal.
In short, the sublime gospel of duty has its defects. Outside of the theological and the Kantian moral traditions, men have generally agreed that duties are relative to ends. Not the obligation, but some purpose, some good, which the fulfillment of duty realizes, is the principle of morals. The business of reason is to see that the end, the good, for which one acts is a reasonable one--that is to say, as wide and as equitable in its working out as the situation permits. Morals which are based upon consideration of good and evil consequences not only allow, but imperiously demand the exercise of a discriminating intelligence. A gospel of duty separated from empirical purposes and results tends to gag intelligence. It substitutes for the work of reason displayed in a wide and distributed survey of consequences in order to determine where duty lies an inner consciousness, empty of content, which clothes with the form of rationality the demands of existing social authorities. A consciousness which is not based upon and checked by consideration of actual results upon human welfare is none the less socially irresponsible because labeled Reason.
Professor Eucken represents a type of idealistic philosophy which is hardly acceptable to strict Kantians. Yet only where the fundamental Kantian ideas were current would such ethical ideas as the following flourish: "When justice is considered as a mere means of securing man's welfare, and is treated accordingly--whether it be the welfare of individuals or of society as a whole makes no essential difference--it loses all its characteristic features. No longer can it compel us to see life from its own standpoint; no longer can it change the existing condition of things; no longer can it sway our hearts with the force of a primitive passion, and oppose to all consideration of consequences an irresistible spiritual compulsion. It degenerates rather into the complaisant servant of utility; it adopts herself to her demands, and in so doing suffers inward annihilation. It can maintain itself only when it comes as a unique revelation of the Spiritual Life within our human world, as a lofty Presence transcending all considerations of expediency."[55:A] [55:A] Eucken, "The Meaning and Value of Life," translated by Gibson, p. 104.
Such writing is capable of arousing emotional reverberations in the breasts of many persons. But they are emotions which, if given headway, smother intelligence, and undermine its responsibility for promoting the actual goods of life. If justice loses all its characteristic features when regarded as a means (the word "mere" inserted before "means" speaks volumes) of the welfare of society as a whole, then there is no objective and responsible criterion for justice at all. A justice which, irrespective of the determination of social well-being, proclaims itself as an irresistible spiritual impulsion possessed of the force of a primitive passion, is nothing but a primitive passion clothed with a spiritual title so that it is protected from having to render an account of itself. During an ordinary course of things, it passes for but an emotional indulgence; in a time of stress and strain, it exhibits itself as surrender of intelligence to passion.
The passage (from Bernhardi) quoted earlier puts the German principle of duty in opposition to the French principle of rights--a favorite contrast in German thought. Men like Jeremy Bentham also found the Revolutionary Rights of Man doctrinaire and conducing to tyranny rather than to freedom. These Rights were _a priori_, like Duty, being derived from the supposed nature or essence of man, instead of being adopted as empirical expedients to further progress and happiness. But the conception of duty is one-sided, expressing command on one side and obedience on the other, while rights are at least reciprocal. Rights are social and sociable in accord with the spirit of French philosophy. Put in a less abstract form than the revolutionary theory stated them, they are things to be discussed and measured. They admit of more and less, of compromise and adjustment. So also does the characteristic moral contribution of English thought--intelligent self-interest. This is hardly an ultimate idea. But at least it evokes a picture of merchants bargaining, while the categorical imperative calls up the drill sergeant. Trafficking ethics, in which each gives up something which he wants to get something which he wants more, is not the noblest kind of morals, but at least it is socially responsible as far as it goes. "Give so that it may be given to you in return" has at least some tendency to bring men together; it promotes agreement. It requires deliberation and discussion. This is just what the authoritative voice of a superior will not tolerate; it is the one unforgiveable sin.
The morals of bargaining, exchange, the mutual satisfaction of wants may be outlived in some remote future, but up to the present they play an important part in life. To me there is something uncanny in the scorn which German ethics, in behalf of an unsullied moral idealism, pours upon a theory which takes cognizance of practical motives. In a highly esthetic people one might understand the display of contempt. But when an aggressive and commercial nation carries on commerce and war simply from the motive of obedience to duty, there is awakened an unpleasant suspicion of a suppressed "psychic complex." When Nietzsche says, "Man does not desire happiness; only the Englishman does that," we laugh at the fair hit. But persons who profess no regard for happiness as a test of action have an unfortunate way of living up to their principle by making others _un_happy. I should entertain some suspicion of the complete sincerity of those who profess disregard for their own happiness, but I should be quite certain of their sincerity when it comes to a question of _my_ happiness.
Within the Kantian philosophy of morals there is an idea which conducts necessarily to a philosophy of society and the State. Leibniz was the great German source of the philosophy of the enlightenment. Harmony was the dominant thought of this philosophy; the harmony of nature with itself and with intelligence; the harmony of nature with the moral ends of humanity. Although Kant was a true son of the enlightenment, his doctrine of the radically dual nature of the legislation of Reason put an end to its complacent optimism. According to Kant, morality is in no way a work of nature. It is the achievement of the self-conscious reason of man through conquest of nature. The ideal of a final harmony remains, but it is an ideal to be won through a battle with the natural forces of man. His breach with the enlightenment is nowhere as marked as in his denial that man is by nature good. On the contrary, man is by nature evil--that is, his philosophical rendering of the doctrine of original sin. Not that the passions, appetites and senses are of themselves evil, but they tend to usurp the sovereignty of duty as the _motivating_ force of human action. Hence morality is a ceaseless battle to transform all the natural desires of man into willing servants of the law and purpose of reason.
Even the kindly and sociable instincts of man, in which so many have sought the basis of both morality and organized society, fall under Kant's condemnation. As natural desires, they aspire to an illegitimate control in man's motives. They are parts of human self-love: the unlawful tendency to make happiness the controlling purpose of action.
The natural relations of man to man are those of an unsocial sociableness. On the one hand, men are forced together by natural ties.
Only in social relations can individuals develop their capacities. But no sooner do they come together than disintegrating tendencies set in.
Union with his fellows give a stimulus to vanity, avarice and gaining power over others--traits which cannot show in themselves in individuals when they are isolated. This mutual antagonism is, however, more of a force in evolving man from savagery to civilization than are the kindly and sociable instincts.
"Without these unlovely qualities which set man over against man in strife, individuals would have lived on in perfect harmony, contentment and mutual love, with all their distinctive abilities latent and undeveloped."
In short, they would have remained in Rousseau's paradise of a state of nature, and "perhaps Rousseau was right when he preferred the savage state to the state of civilization provided we leave out of account the last stage to which our species is yet destined to rise."
But since the condition of civilization is but an intermediary between the natural state and the truly or rational moral condition to which man is to rise, Rousseau was wrong.
"Thanks then be to nature for the unsociableness, the spiteful competition of vanity, the insatiate desires for power and gain."
These quotations, selected from Kant's little essay on an "Idea for a Universal History," are precious for understanding two of the most characteristic traits of subsequent German thought, the distinctions made between Society and the State and between Civilization and Culture. Much of the trouble which has been experienced in respect to the recent use of _Kultur_ might have been allayed by a knowledge that _Kultur_ has little in common with the English word "culture" save a likeness in sound. _Kultur_ is sharply antithetical to civilization in its meaning. Civilization is a natural and largely unconscious or involuntary growth. It is, so to speak, a by-product of the needs engendered when people live close together. It is external, in short.
Culture, on the other, is deliberate and conscious. It is a fruit not of men's natural motives, but of natural motives which have been transformed by the inner spirit. Kant made the distinction when he said that Rousseau was not so far wrong in preferring savagery to civilization, since civilization meant simply social decencies and elegancies and outward proprieties, while morality, that is, the rule of the end of Reason, is necessary to culture. And the real significance of the term "culture" becomes more obvious when he adds that it involves the slow toil of education of the Inner Life, and that the attainment of culture on the part of an individual depends upon long effort by the community to which he belongs. It is not primarily an individual trait or possession, but a conquest of the community won through devotion to "duty."