Note 33 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTION
Charles Francis Atkinson translation
The modern Germans are a conspicuous example of a people that has become expansive without knowing it or willing it. They were already in that state while they still believed themselves to be the people of Goethe. Even Bismarck, the founder of the new age, never had the slightest idea of it, and believed himself to have reached the conclusion of a political process (cf. Vol. II, 529).