At this point the Prussian professor and the pacifist apostle, who turned their backs upon one another so angrily at the beginning, and started off, as it seemed, in opposite directions, are confronting one another unexpectedly at the other side of the circle of human endeavour. They ought surely to shake hands; for each, if he be honest, will have to own himself the convert of the other. "You admit then after all," cries the triumphant Pacifist, "that Peace is the real end of human endeavour!" "Whether or no," grunts the other in reply, "this at any rate was the only road to it." One wonders--will the Pacifist be content? He has reached his goal sure enough; though by means which he has been accustomed to denounce as the end of all true morality? Will the Professor, on the other hand, be well pleased when he discovers that by the very triumph of his doctrines he has made war for ever impossible,--manliness, therefore, and all true virtue likewise impossible,--thereby damning {112} the souls of posterity to the end of time? "To put questions in this quarter with a hammer, and to hear perchance that well-known hollow sound which tells of blown-out frogs"[1]--this is a joy, no doubt; and it is all we are ever likely to arrive at by the cross-examination of dreamers. [1] Nietzsche, _The Twilight of Idols_. {113} CHAPTER IV THE NEW MORALISTS The dream of German expansion, as year by year it took firmer hold upon the popular imagination, produced, as might have been expected, a desire that it might be realised. From the stage of vague and ardent longing it was but a short way to the next, where a determined will began to put forth efforts towards achievement. But as mankind in the mass, whether in Germany or England, is still to some extent hampered by human nature, by a number of habits, traditions, and instincts, and by various notions of good and evil, justice and injustice--which the subtlest philosophers and most eloquent rhetoricians have not yet succeeded in eradicating--a need was felt for what the text-books in their solemn nomenclature call _an ethical basis_. In plain words, the German people wanted to have right on their side--if possible, old-fashioned, Sunday-school, copy-book Right. Failing that, even such a plea as the wolf maintained against the lamb would be a great deal better than nothing.