As with all exhausted cultures, the Scotch “people” exist in negation: in not being Englishmen. The inverting temperament.
The issue of that land, which has on occasion taken the semblance of culture, is ever at odds with their predominating spirit. The Scotch spirit is self-arresting, mugging striven impressively to paint itself as an EGALITARIAN attitude. Their pudeur is spiritual even as their demotic register is immodest. A land of Bildungsphilister.
When a man does what his social circumstances are inimical to, he is shunned. When his own actions are inimical to his own morals, he shuns himself.
Against ambition the Scotchman seethes. In the manner of the rebels of the last century, every other imagines himself a noble unluckily in exile from a true Scotland where the masters are dead. In this way they slander their heroes, those doomed fools; those were at least men of conviction (however dim and servile the conviction).
When a man does what his social circumstances are inimical to, he is shunned. When his own actions are inimical to his own morals, he shuns himself.
They have not so much as a false prophet, like our Wagner. Who might be their prophetaster? Scott, of the misty eyes and misty heart? Carlyle, of the involuntary farce and the noiseless rhetoric? They had Hume and have become Carlyle.
But there is nothing specially degenerate about them; all Europe swims the same fouled tributaries. Yet, perhaps, in their good Europeanism and their nihilism advanced beyond ours, are grounds for something higher, if only they could cast aside their camaraderie with sheep. Who can say what new – slant – daylight may lie in grey places?