Chamberlain praised Rome for its militarism, civic values, patriotism, respect for the law and reverence for the family as offering the best sort of Aryan government. Reflecting his opposition to feminism, Chamberlain lamented how modern women were not like the submissive women of ancient Rome whom he claimed were most happy in obeying the wills of their husbands. Chamberlain asserted that Aryans and Aryans alone are the only people in the entire world capable of creating beautiful art and thinking great thoughts, so he claimed all of the great artists, writers and thinkers of the West such as Homer, Dante, Giotto, Donatello, Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Martin Luther, William Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Ludwig van Beethoven, Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as part of one long glorious tradition of beautiful Aryan art and thought, which Chamberlain planned to have culminate with the life-changing, racially regenerating music of Richard Wagner in the 19th century. As the British historian George Peabody Gooch wrote, here was "a glittering vision of mind and muscle, of large scale organization, of intoxicating self-confidence, of metallic brilliancy, such as Europe has never seen".