of another.  On the other hand, let it not be forgotten that this innate tendency of human nature is at times replaced by another which has frequently the same outward manifestations, but is not the same feeling, the sentiment, namely, of embarrassment arising from the fear of being servile, and the equally frequent embarrassment arising from that principle which is always at work in the mind, the association of ideas, which in the case of a monarch presents him to the ordinary mortal as embodying ideas of grandeur, power, might, and intellect to which the latter is unaccustomed.  Education, economic changes, and the art of manners have done much to conceal, if not eradicate, human proneness to servility, and the Byzantinism of the time of Caligula and Nero, of Tiberius, Constantine, or Nikiphoros, of the Stuarts and the Bourbons, has long been modified into respect for oneself as well as for the person one addresses.  There are, however, still traces of the old evil in the German atmosphere, and in especial a tendency among officials of all grades to be humble and submissive to those above them and haughty and domineering to those below them.  The tendency is perhaps not confined to Germany, but it seems, to the inhabitant of countries where bureaucracy is not a powerful caste, to penetrate German society and ordinary life to a greater degree—­yet not to a great degree—­than in more democratic societies.

The Emperor naturally knows nothing of such a thing, for there is no one superior to him in the Empire in point of rank, and he is much too modern, too well educated, and of too kindly and liberal a nature to encourage or permit Byzantinism towards him on the part of others.  Indeed Byzantinism was never a Hohenzollern failing.  In his able work on German civilization Professor Richard tells of some Silesian peasants who knelt down when presenting a petition to Frederick William I, and were promptly told to get up, as “such an attitude was unworthy of a human being.”  Only on one occasion in the reign has an action of the Emperor’s afforded ground for the suspicion that he was for a moment filled with the spirit of the Byzantine emperors—­namely, when he demanded the “kotow” from the Chinese Prince Tschun, who led the “mission of atonement” to Germany.  This, however, was not really the result of a Byzantine character or spirit, but of the excusable anger of a man whose innocent representative had been treacherously killed.

Of affinity with the idea of Byzantinism is that as frequently occurring idea in German court and ordinary life conveyed by the word “reaction.”  Here again we have one of those qualities to be found among mankind everywhere and always:  the instinct opposed to change, even to those changes for the good we call progress, the disposition that made Horace deride the laudator temporis acti se puero of his day, the feeling of the man who laments the passing of the “good old times” and the military veteran who assures us that “the country, sir,