It is only in the largest way that this fact may be made clear. It escapes categorical statement;--and can best be glimpsed behind the history of events, from the psychological rather than the physical side.
¶ Bismarck manipulated an invisible but very real human force, made it the breath of life for his plans!
¶ That he warped on the Nineteenth Century the old Holy Roman Empire conception of Divine-right is an amazing politico-military fact.
It was only after many brilliant achievements that, at the height of his power, Cæsar linked himself with the gods. Cæsar's earlier life knew no such pretensions, but as he climbed the dizzy heights of fame, at last the day came when his kinship with the immortal gods themselves alone satisfied his inordinate ambitions; and from that time forth Divine-right became an established fact in the theological-political code of kings; and thus on, down through the Middle Ages, until the French Revolution destroyed confidence in the old-line absolute monarch, as vicegerent of Christ on this earth.
¶ However, that Otto von Bismarck, the blond Pomeranian giant, warped on the Nineteenth Century the Imperial Cæsarian idea of the Divine-right of kings is not the final fact of his work. The inner fact is that he urged the King's authority as a foil against the mob-idea of the French Revolution. The liberty-crazed masses needed a strong hand at this time.
¶ What made possible the coming of the Empire was not, after all, traceable entirely to the political side of Bismarck's hotly contested struggles.
The innate craving of the German people for a strong ruler has a subtle inner meaning, too easily overlooked.
¶ In the final analysis, Bismarck's position expresses Prussian sense of National security in a powerful war lord, rather than supports the conception of master and man. His was not the position of lord and servant; rather it means a manly, intelligent admission of the necessity of a strong central authority in the nation.
¶ By the force of years of tedious repetitions, building on the plain laws of mental suggestion, Bismarck at last created certain dominating ideas; but the germ of these ideas already existed in Prussia's consciousness.
The Prussian character supporting Divine-right represents a singular compound of cadet, blind confidence in aristocratic leadership, religious radicalism, worship of ancestors approximating the Chinese sentiment, and finally, a racial psychology of rulership, based on the rattan of Frederick the Great. On this total combination, the astute Bismarck played for thirty long years, warring for his lord and master, the Hohenzollerns.