In other words, he was unwilling to treat this as anything but a concrete problem, and he was used to camels being in villages, and he was quite unable to use the hypothetical, to ask himself what if there were no camels in Germany.
En otras palabras, no estaba  dispuesto a tratar este problema sino como un problema concreto, y estaba acostumbrado a encontrar  camellos en aldeas y era incapaz de usar lo hipotético, y preguntarse qué pasaría de no  haber camellos en Alemania.