Now, Nietzsche had no contempt of wealth with which to insult his fellowmen’s intelligence. Nor was he a socialistic indicter of beneficence. Nor was he even a rigorous critic of the doubtful disposition, so often manifest in such benevolent activities. But perhaps his plain words on the poverty of almsgiving seem so weighty precisely because he must be acquitted without further ado of speaking from contempt, from the standpoint of Christianity, or from the milieu of poor folk. And yet it was this most soaring spirit of the nineteenth century, this aristocrat from top to toe, compared with whom even a Goethe seems like a plebeian, it was precisely he who—as from an aerie up among the eagles—looked down with such abysmal contempt upon the highest and noblest triumph of riches—namely, the ability to bestow benefits—that he detected, even in this triumph, only testimony to the poverty of riches. Along with this, at all events, Nietzsche passed damnatory judgment upon a _Kultur_ which estimates the distances among men, the measure of their greatness according to the distinctions of possession, and therefore derives the right of the influence which it accords the individual from the sums which he donates by way of alms. Then, too, what has the man to do with his possession! It is not his _personality_ which has assigned him a place in life where a confluence of industrial goods crystallize around him! What does it signify as to the worth of a man that he has cast his baited hook into the stream of life just where a big hungry fish swims by and bites! And if, now, this most contingent of all contingencies, that a man should get rich, is considered by his generation as the peculiar deed of a hero, the deed which he was in a position to compass in life,—if the mere fact that a man releases, in the shape of benefits and alms, a part of this wealth which he could not spend upon himself if he would is a phenomenon around which the conversation of the day revolves, of which newspapers in special articles and telegraphic dispatches have so much to say, then this is a sign of the decay of our moral culture, and we cannot be thankful enough to the man who has jolted us out of such aberration of ideas and made us see with eyes no longer blinded by the glitter of gold! Aye, wealth a man does need who wants to give. Wealth he needs for the sake of his giving love. But he must create this wealth himself. He must wrest wealth from all values. He must coerce all things to himself and into himself. All these things must stream back from the well of living water within him as the gifts of his love. Insatiably does the soul seek after treasures and gems because her virtue is insatiable in her will to give. This is the soul’s thirst to be an offering and a gift, and hence she thirsts to house all wealth in herself.