Epilogue

Abstract

In Chamberlain’s concluding remarks to his hyperbolic vision for renewed inner well-being in Germany, the burden of rejuvenation, as the epigraph above explicitly describes, lays on the shoulders of the individual. This inner state, which in Chamberlain’s mind will fulfill the promise of a unified Greek and Aryan lineage, cannot be achieved, as he explains, through steel, modern technology, or “phantasies of evolution.”² On the surface Chamberlain’s claims and those of others that we have explored throughout this book arose perhaps from honest attempts to restore spiritual sanctuary in the modern world. Yet religious prerogatives and political objectives remained consistently entangled—some more explicitly than others yet always present. Chamberlain’s concluding comments illustrate the depth of this link.

Also in you are all elements unified that can lead to a new, free spiritual blossoming, comparable to the highpoints of human life!

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Arische Weltanschauung (1905)¹