They have also created a _Romanticism of contempt_, at least in France, and notably with Barrès, and indeed since Flaubert and Baudelaire. Nevertheless, it seems to me that in recent times contempt has been practised in France for reasons quite other than aesthetic. These peoples have come to see that by feeling contempt for others they are not only obtaining the pleasure of a lofty attitude, but that when they are really expert in expressing contempt they harm what they despise, do it a real damage. And in fact the kind of contempt which Barrès expresses for the Jews and which certain royalist teachers have displayed for democratic institutions every morning for the past twenty years, do really harm their victims, at least among those very numerous artistic minds for whom a superbly executory gesture is as good as an argument. The modern ‘clerks’ deserve a place of honour in the history of realism; they have come to understand the practical value of contempt. It may also be said that they have created a _cult for cruelty_. Nietzsche proclaims that ‘every superior culture is built up on cruelty’, a doctrine which is explicitly proclaimed in many places by Barrès, author of _Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort_. Nevertheless, the cult of cruelty, which may also be thought necessary ‘to succeed’[130] has remained limited to a few particularly artistic sensibilities, at least in France. It is very far from becoming the cult of a school, like harshness and contempt. Here again we may notice how new this cult is in the land of those who said ‘Cowardice, the mother of cruelty’ (Montaigne), or, to quote a military moralist, ‘a hero does not feel proud of carrying hunger and misery among foreigners, but of enduring them for the State; nor of giving death, but of risking it.’ (Vauvenargues).[131]