Racial
differences and consequent alienism in habits of thought made a
_rapprochement_ seem hopeless. It seemed, for awhile, as if the war had
cut down the intellectual territory of the Danes even more than it had
curtailed their material area. They cultivated their little domestic
virtues, talked enthusiastic nonsense on festive occasions, indulged in
vain hopes of recovering their lost provinces, but rarely allowed their
political reverses to interfere with their amusements. They let the
world roar on past their gates, without troubling themselves much as to
what interested or agitated it. A feeble, moonshiny late-romanticism was
predominant in their literature; and in art, philosophy, and politics
that sluggish conservatism which betokens a low vitality, incident upon
intellectual isolation.
What was needed at such a time was a man who could re-attach the broken
connection--a mediator and interpreter of foreign thought in such a form
as to appeal to the Danish temperament and be capable of assimilation by
the Danish intellect.
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