Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

If it were otherwise, something would result which we Germans have cause to regret already,
without perhaps having hitherto recognized the extent of the tragic calamity. We should be
doomed to remain also in the future only manure for civilization. And that not in the banal
sense of the contemporary bourgeois mind, which sees in a lost fellow member of our people
only a lost citizen, but in a sense which we should have painfully to recognize: namely, that
our racial blood would be destined to disappear. By continually mixing with other races we
might lift them from their former lower level of civilization to a higher grade; but we ourselves
should descend for ever from the heights we had reached.
Finally, from the racial standpoint this training also must find its culmination in the military
service. The term of military service is to be a final stage of the normal training which the
average German receives.
While the People's State attaches the greatest importance to physical and mental training, it
has also to consider, and no less importantly, the task of selecting men for the service of the
State itself. This important matter is passed over lightly at the present time. Generally the
children of parents who are for the time being in higher situations are in their turn
considered worthy of a higher education. Here talent plays a subordinate part. But talent can
be estimated only relatively. Though in general culture he may be inferior to the city child, a
peasant boy may be more talented than the son of a family that has occupied high positions
through many generations. But the superior culture of the city child has in itself nothing to
do with a greater or lesser degree of talent; for this culture has its roots in the more copious
mass of impressions which arise from the more varied education and the surroundings
among which this child lives. If the intelligent son of peasant parents were educated from
childhood in similar surroundings his intellectual accomplishments would be quite
otherwise. In our day there is only one sphere where the family in which a person has been
born means less than his innate gifts. That is the sphere of art. Here, where a person cannot
just 'learn,' but must have innate gifts that later on may undergo a more or less happy
development (in the sense of a wise development of what is already there), money and
parental property are of no account. This is a good proof that genius is not necessarily
connected with the higher social strata or with wealth. Not rarely the greatest artists come
from poor families. And many a boy from the country village has eventually become a
celebrated master.
It does not say much for the mental acumen of our time that advantage is not taken of this
truth for the sake of our whole intellectual life. The opinion is advanced that this principle,
though undoubtedly valid in the field of art, has not the same validity in regard to what are
called the applied sciences. It is true that a man can be trained to a certain amount of
mechanical dexterity, just as a poodle can be taught incredible tricks by a clever master. But
such training does not bring the animal to use his intelligence in order to carry out those
tricks. And the same holds good in regard to man. It is possible to teach men, irrespective of
talent or no talent, to go through certain scientific exercises, but in such cases the results
are quite as inanimate and mechanical as in the case of the animal. It would even be possible
to force a person of mediocre intelligence, by means of a severe course of intellectual drilling,
to acquire more than the average amount of knowledge; but that knowledge would remain
sterile. The result would be a man who might be a walking dictionary of knowledge but who
will fail miserably on every critical occasion in life and at every juncture where vital decisions
have to be taken. Such people need to be drilled specially for every new and even most
insignificant task and will never be capable of contributing in the least to the general
progress of mankind. Knowledge that is merely drilled into people can at best qualify them to
fill government positions under our present regime.
It goes without saying that, among the sum total of individuals who make up a nation, gifted
people are always to be found in every sphere of life. It is also quite natural that the value of
knowledge will be all the greater the more vitally the dead mass of learning is animated by