Social justice composes the chief part of the religious tenets of the Bible. Even Nietzsche (Jenseits des Guten und Bösen) considers the Old Testament as essentially the book of Divine justice. אל רחום וחנון a God of mercy and pity is Jehova—, but אל רחום וחנון he will by no means clear the guilty. (Exodus xxxiv, 6-7.) Even the passage in the stern Nahum (I, 2) אל קנוא ונקם is falsely translated, “a god of revenge.” It really means “He is a god of retributory justice.” The prophetic teachers, just as the present-day socialists, never asked for love and mercy but for right and justice. The portrayal of a pious man in ancient Israel is given in Job xxix, 12, and xxxi, 13. It is the man of strict social justice. Philo Judeus (Περὶ Φιλανθρωπίας) pointed out the greatness of the social law in ancient Judaism. These Biblical ideas of liberty, equality and brotherly love have been taken up by the altruistic materialists and raised to the top of the mountain of life as a beacon for humanity’s fragile skiff. But the sources whence these ideals originated are not only entirely ignored but are reviled, defamed and ridiculed by these radicals. The socialists did not create the ideals of social justice, as found in their doctrines. They borrowed them from the Jewish-Christian creed, and as atheists—ninety per cent. of them profess atheism—they repudiate this same creed. They borrow the ancient religious ideals of charity and social justice from Christianity and repudiate Christianity.[DI] As altruistic materialists, they are theologically agnostics, but their impulses are Christian. But by this repudiation of religion they forfeit the very foothold to stand upon. Religion has behind its ideal the authority of the divine will. What is behind the materialistic ideal? What is the goal of materialism? Supposing the Spirit of the age, that puts material well-being before all other prizes of life, should carry the victory, supposing the ideal of a perfect materialism should be realized, what then? Cui bono? Contrary to the Judeo-Christian highest ideal of protection of the poor and disinherited, there is the brutal philosophy of Nietzsche’s superman. While the former proclaims the sublimity of abnegation in the interest of the present weak and downtrodden, the latter preaches the extermination of these weaklings in the interest of the future generations of supermen. The vindictive vandal-like philosophy of Nietzsche demands the destruction of the weaker by the stronger.[DJ] In this way a perfect aristocracy will arise. But the principle of a good aristocracy must be not to exist for the sake of society, but only as a foundation and scaffolding by means of which an elect kind of being may arise to its higher tasks.