This is the last and strongest of the Prussian qualities we have here
considered. There is in stupidity of this sort a strange slippery
strength: because it can be not only outside rules but outside reason. The
man who really cannot see that he is contradicting himself has a great
advantage in controversy; though the advantage breaks down when he tries to
reduce it to simple addition, to chess, or to the game called war. It is
the same about the stupidity of the one-sided kinship. The drunkard who is
quite certain that a total stranger is his long-lost brother, has a greater
advantage until it comes to matters of detail. "We must have chaos within"
said Nietzsche, "that we may give birth to a dancing star."
In these slight notes I have suggested the principal strong points of the
Prussian character. A failure in honour which almost amounts to a failure
in memory: an egomania that is honestly blind to the fact that the other
party is an ego; and, above all, an actual itch for tyranny and
interference, the devil which everywhere torments the idle and the proud.
To these must be added a certain mental shapelessness which can expand or
contract without reference to reason or record; a potential infinity of
excuses.
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