To-day, when all reverence has vanished, even before kings and gods, when to respect oneself overmuch is regarded with undisguised resentment, what can we hope from a quarter in which self-reverence and reverence in general are the first needs of all? We can only hope to find what we actually see, and that, as we all very well know and cannot deny, is a condition of anarchy, incompetence, purposelessness and chaos. "Culture ... has a very important function to fulfil for mankind," said Matthew Arnold. "And this function is particularly important in our modern world, of which the whole civilization is, to a much greater degree than the civilization of Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends constantly to become more so. But, above all, in our own country has culture a weighty part to perform, because, here, that mechanical character, which civilization tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree.... The idea of perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material civilization in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so much in esteem as with us."[53] We may trust that it is not in vain that men like Matthew Arnold and Nietzsche raised their voices against the spirit of the age. And we may hope that it is not in vain that lesser men have taken up their cry. In any case Nietzsche did not write in utter despair. His words do not fall like faded autumn leaves announcing the general death that is imminent. On the contrary, he saw himself approaching a new century, this century, and he drew more than half his ardour from the hope that we might now renounce this heritage of the past, the deleterious effects of which he spent his lifetime in exposing. "Awake and listen, ye lonely ones!" he says. "From the future winds are coming with a gentle beating of wings, and there cometh good tidings for fine ears. "Ye lonely ones of to-day, ye who stand apart, ye shall one day be a people, and from you who have chosen yourselves, a chosen people shall arise. "Verily a place of healing shall the earth become! And already a new odour lieth around it, an odour which bringeth salvation--and a new hope."[54]