As with all exhausted cultures, the Scotch “people” exist as negation: not being Englishmen. The inverting temperament.
The product of the land, which has the semblance of culture, is ever at odds with their predominating spirit: philistinism. The Scotch spirit is self-arresting, which mugging it strives impressively to paint as EGALITARIAN attitude. Their pudeur is spiritual even as their demotic register is immodest. Authoritarian égalité.
The Scot seethes with hatred of ambition. In the manner of the rebels of 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).
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. The latter-day Scotchman.
They have not so much as a false prophet, like our Wagner. Who might be prophetaster? Mill?
There is nothing specially degenerate about them; all Europe swims much the same fouled tributaries. In Scots one sees the same decline as elsewhere – yet, perhaps, in their good Europeanism and their advanced nihilism, are grounds for something higher, if only they cast aside their camaraderie with herd animals, with sheep. Who can say what new slant daylight may lie in grey places?