itizens than the Romans? more spiritual than the
men of the Middle Ages? more vigorous than those of the Renaissance?"

"I don't know," replied Parry, "that I am bound to maintain all that.
I only say that on the whole I believe that ideals progress; and that
therefore it is the ideals of our own time, and that alone, which we
ought practically to consider."

"The ideal of our own time?" I said, "but which of them? there are so
many."

"No, there is really only one, as I said before; the one that is
embodied in current laws and customs."

"But these are always themselves in process of change."

"Yes, gradual change."

"Not necessarily gradual; and even if it were, still change. And to
sanction a change, however slight, may always mean, in the end, the
sanctioning of a whole revolution."

"Besides," cried Leslie, "even if there were anything finally
established, what right have we to judge that the established is the
Good?"

"I don't know that we have any right; but I am sure it is what we do."

"Perhaps we do, many of us," I said, "but always, so far as we
reflect, with a lurking sense that we may be all wrong. Or how else do
you account for the curious, almost physical, sinking and disquiet we
are apt to experience in the presence of a bold denier?"

"I don't know that I do experience it."

"Do you not? I do so often; and only yesterday I had a specially vivid
experience of the kind."

"What was that?"

"Well, I was reading Nietzsche."

"Who is he?"

"A German writer. It does not much matter, but I had him in my mind
when I was speaking."

"Well, but what does he say?"

"It's not so much what he says, as what he denies."

"What does he deny, then?"

"Everything that you, I suppose, would assert. I should conjecture,
at least, that you believe in progress, democracy, and all the rest of
it."

"Well?"

"Well, he repudiates all that. Everything that you would reckon as
progress, he reckons as decadence. Democracy he regards, with all that
it involves, as a revolt of the weak against the strong, of the bad
against the good, of the herd against the master. Every great society,
in his view, is aristocratic, and aristocratic in the sense that the
many are deliberately and consciously sacrificed to the few; and
that, not as a painful necessity, but with a good conscience, in free
obedience to the universal law of the world. 'Be strong, be hard' are
his ultimate ethical principles. The modern virtu