as a nation; and, unless we have now perhaps come to an end, and unless the last drop of blood inherited from them is dried up in our veins, we shall owe to them all that we shall be in the future.  Even the other Teutonic races, among whom are our brethren, and who have now become foreigners to us, owe to them their existence; when they conquered eternal Rome, no one of all these nations yet existed; at that time the possibility of their future origin was simultaneously won in the struggle.

These, and all others in universal history who have been of their type of thought, have conquered because the eternal inspired them, and thus this inspiration ever and of necessity prevails over him who is not inspired.  It is not the might of arms nor the fitness of weapons that wins victories, but the power of the soul.  He who sets himself a limited goal for his sacrifices, and who can dare no further than a certain point, surrenders resistance as soon as the danger reaches a crisis where he cannot yield or dodge.  He who has set himself no limit whatsoever, but who hazards everything, even life—­the highest boon that can be lost on earth—­never ceases to resist, and, if his opponent has a more limited goal, he indubitably conquers.  A people that is capable, though it be only in its highest representatives and leaders, of keeping firmly before its vision independence, the face from the spirit world, and of being inspired with love for it, as were our remotest forefathers, surely conquers a people that, like the Roman armies, is used merely as a tool for foreign dominion and for the subjugation of independent nations; for the former have everything to lose, the latter have merely something to gain.  But even a whim can prevail over the mental attitude which regards war as a game of hazard for temporal gain or loss, and which, even before the game starts, has fixed the limit of the stake.  Think, for example, of a Mohammed—­not the real Mohammed of history, concerning whom I confess that I have no judgment, but the Mohammed of a distinguished French poet—­who had once become firmly convinced that he was one of the extraordinary natures who are called to guide the obscure and common folk of earth, and to whom, in consequence of this first presupposition, all his whims, however meagre and limited they may really be, must necessarily appear to be great, exalted and inspiring ideas because they are his own, while everything that opposes them must seem obscure, common folk, enemies of their own weal, evil-minded, and hateful.  Such a man, in order to justify this self-conceit to himself as a divine vocation, and entirely absorbed in this thought, must stake everything upon it, nor can he rest until he has trampled under foot all that will not think as highly of him as he does himself, or until his own belief in his divine mission is reflected from the whole contemporary world.  I shall not say what would be his fortunes in case a spiritual vision that is true and clear within itself should actually come against him on the field of battle, but he certainly wins from those limited gamblers, for he hazards everything against those who do not so hazard; no spirit inspires them, but he is altogether inspired by a fanatical spirit—­that of his mighty and powerful self-conceit.