It should be understood that what is being aimed at, here, is a contradiction of Pantheism: for "everything perfect, divine, eternal," _also_ leads _to the belief in Eternal Recurrence._ Question: has this pantheistic and affirmative attitude to all things also been made possible by morality? At bottom only the moral God has been overcome. Is there any sense in imagining a God "beyond good and evil"? Would Pantheism in _this_ sense be possible? Do we withdraw the idea of purpose from the process, and affirm the process notwithstanding? This were so if, within that process, something were _attained_ every moment--and always the same thing. Spinoza won an affirmative position of this sort, in the sense that every moment, according to him, has a logical necessity: and he triumphed by means of his fundamentally logical instinct over a like conformation of the world. *** But his case is exceptional. If every _fundamental trait of character,_ which lies beneath every act, and which finds expression in every act, were recognised by the individual as _his_ fundamental trait of character, this individual would be driven to regard every moment of his existence in general, triumphantly as good. It would simply be necessary for that fundamental trait of character to be felt in oneself as something good, valuable, and pleasurable. *** Now, in the case of those men and classes of men who were treated with violence and oppressed by their fellows, _morality_ saved life from despair and from the leap into nonentity:. for impotence in relation to mankind and _not_ in relation to Nature is what generates the most desperate bitterness towards existence. Morality treated the powerful, the violent, and the "masters" in general, as enemies against whom the common man must be protected--_that is to say, emboldened, strengthened._ Morality has therefore always taught the most profound _hatred_ and _contempt_ of the fundamental trait of character of all rulers--_i.e., their Will to Power._ To suppress, to deny, and to decompose this morality, would mean to regard this most thoroughly detested instinct with the reverse of the old feeling and valuation. If the sufferer and the oppressed man were _to lose his belief_ in his right to contemn the Will to Power, his position would be desperate. This would be so if the trait above-mentioned were essential to life, in which case it would follow that even that will to morality was only a cloak to this "Will to Power," as are also even that hatred and contempt. The oppressed man would then perceive that he stands _on the same platform_ with the oppressor, and that he has no individual privilege, nor any _higher rank_ than the latter. ***