which they themselves happen to be capable of--still more, which they _must_ have in order to remain on top--they assume the grand air of men struggling for virtue, of men engaging in a war that virtue may prevail. "We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves _for the good_" (--"the truth," "the light," "the kingdom of God"): in point of fact, they simply do what they cannot help doing. Forced, like hypocrites, to be sneaky, to hide in corners, to slink along in the shadows, they convert their necessity into a _duty_: it is on grounds of duty that they account for their lives of humility, and that humility becomes merely one more proof of their piety.... Ah, that humble, chaste, charitable brand of fraud! "Virtue itself shall bear witness for us."... One may read the gospels as books of _moral_ seduction: these petty folks fasten themselves to morality--they know the uses of morality! Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind _by the nose_!--The fact is that the conscious conceit of the chosen here disguises itself as modesty: it is in this way that _they_, the "community," the "good and just," range themselves, once and for always, on one side, the side of "the truth"--and the rest of mankind, "the world," on the other.... In _that_ we observe the most fatal sort of megalomania that the earth has ever seen: little abortions of bigots and liars began to claim exclusive rights in the concepts of "God," "the truth," "the light," "the spirit," "love," "wisdom" and "life," as if these things were synonyms of themselves and thereby they sought to fence themselves off from the "world"; little super-Jews, ripe for some sort of madhouse, turned values upside down in order to meet _their_ notions, just as if the Christian were the meaning, the salt, the standard and even the _last judgment_ of all the rest.... The whole disaster was only made possible by the fact that there already existed in the world a similar megalomania, allied to this one in race, to wit, the _Jewish_: once a chasm began to yawn between Jews and Judaeo-Christians, the latter had no choice but to employ the self-preservative measures that the Jewish instinct had devised, even _against_ the Jews themselves, whereas the Jews had employed them only against non-Jews. The Christian is simply a Jew of the "reformed" confession.-- 45. --I offer a few examples of the sort of thing these petty people have got into their heads--what they have _put into the mouth_ of the Master: the unalloyed creed of "beautiful souls."-- "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city" (Mark vi, 11)--How _evangelical_!...