We have said that the proposed means of cultivating a new race of men must first be applied by Germans to Germans, and that it is a task that quite properly and immediately pertains to our nation. This proposition, too, is in need of proof and here also we shall begin, just as we have done thus far, with that which is highest and most general. We shall demonstrate what the German in and of himself, independently of the fate that has now befallen him, is and has always been in his essential character, ever since he came into existence. And we shall show that his aptitude for and receptivity to a culture such as we envisage lies already in this essential character and separates him from every other European nation.

The Germans are first and foremost one of the Teutonic tribes. As to the latter it will suffice here to define them as those whose task it was to unite the social order established in ancient Europe with the true religion preserved in ancient Asia, and thus to develop out of themselves a new age in opposition to the antiquity that had perished. Furthermore, it is enough to describe the Germans as such in contrast only with the other Teutonic peoples. While some modern European nations, such as those of Slavic descent, seem not to have developed so clearly from the rest of Europe that a definite portrait of them would be possible, others of the same Teutonic stock, to whom the ground of distinction that I shall presently adduce does not apply, like the Scandinavians, are here taken undoubtedly for Germans and included in all the general conclusions of our meditations.