The _two_ decadent tendencies and extremes run side by side: (a) the luxuriant and more charming kind of decadence which shows a love of pomp and art, and (b) the gloomy kind, with its religious and moral pathos, its stoical self-hardening tendency, its Platonic denial of the senses, and its preparation of the soil for the coming of Christianity. 428. To what extent psychologists have been corrupted by the moral idiosyncrasy!--Not one of the ancient philosophers had the courage to advance the theory of the non-free will (that is to say, the theory that denies morality);--not one had the courage to identify the typical feature of happiness, of every kind of happiness "pleasure"), with the will to power: for the pleasure of power was considered immoral;--not one had the courage to regard virtue as a _result of immorality_ (as a result of a will to power) in the service of a species (or of a race, or of a _polis_); for the will to power was considered immoral. In the whole of moral evolution, there is no sign of truth: all the conceptual elements which come into play are fictions; all the psychological tenets are false; all the forms of logic employed in this department of prevarication are sophisms. The chief feature of all moral philosophers is their total lack of intellectual cleanliness and self-control: they regard "fine feelings" as arguments: their heaving breasts seem to them the bellows of godliness.... Moral philosophy is the most suspicious period in the history of the human intellect. The first great example: in the name of morality and under its patronage, a great wrong was committed, which as a matter of fact was in every respect an act of decadence. Sufficient stress cannot be laid upon this fact, that the great Greek philosophers not only represented the decadence of _every kind of Greek ability_, but also made it _contagious_.... This "virtue" made wholly abstract was the highest form of seduction; to make oneself abstract means to turn one's back on the world. The moment is a very remarkable one: the Sophists are within sight of the first _criticism of morality,_ the first _knowledge_ of morality:--they classify the majority of moral valuations (in view of their dependence upon local conditions) together;--they lead one to understand that every form of morality is capable of being upheld dialectically: that is to say, they guessed that all the fundamental principles of a morality must be _sophistical_--a proposition which was afterwards proved in the grandest possible style by the ancient philosophers from Plato onwards (up to Kant);--they postulate the primary truth that there is no such thing as a "moral _per se_," a "good _per se_," and that it is madness to talk of "truth" in this respect. Wherever was _intellectual uprightness_ to be found in those days?