All morality, all good in and for itself is rejected, but the patent of nobility grows more precious until it becomes, if not the only value, at least the chief. Life loses its meaning once titles and ranks are destroyed, once he is deprived of the right to hold his head high, to throw out his chest, his belly even, and to look with contempt upon those about him. In order to show to what extent the doctrine of rank has become attached to the human soul, I would recall the words of the Gospel about the first and last. Christ, who seemed to speak in a language utterly new, who taught men to despise earthly blessings--riches, fame, honours, who so easily yielded Caesar his due, because he thought that only Caesar would find it useful--Christ himself, when he spoke to men, did not think it possible to take away from them their hope of distinction. 'The first shall be last.' What will there be first and second there, too? Yes, so it stands in the Gospel. Is it because there is indeed in the division of men into ranks something original and warrantable, or is it because Christ who spoke to humankind could not but use human words? It may be that, but for that promise, and generally the series of promises of rewards, accessible to the human understanding, the Gospel would not have fulfilled its great historic mission, it would have passed unnoticed on the earth, and no one would have detected or recognised in it the Evangel. Christ knew that men could renounce all things, save the right to superiority alone, to superiority over one's neighbours, to that which Nietzsche calls 'the patent of nobility.' Without that superiority men of a certain kind cannot live. They become what the Germans so appropriately call _Vogelfrei,_ deprived of the protection of the laws, since the laws are the only source of _their_ right. Rude, nonsensical, disgusting reality--against which, I repeat, their _only_ defence is the patent of nobility, the unwritten charter--approaches them closer and closer, with more and more menace and importunacy, and claims its right. 'If you are the same as all other men,' it says, 'take your experience of life from me, fulfil your trivial obligations, worse than that, accept from me the fines and reprimands to which the rank and file are subject, even to corporal punishment.' How could he accept these degrading conditions who had been used to think he had the right to carry his head high, to be proud and independent? Nietzsche tries with dull submissiveness to swallow the horrible bitterness of his confession, but courage and endurance, even _his_ courage and endurance, are not enough for this his greatest and most terrible task. He cannot bear the horror of a life deprived of rights and defences: he seeks again for power and authority which would protect him and give him his lost rights again. He will not rest until he receives under another name a _restitutio in integrum_ of all the rights which had previously been his.