As a matter of fact, we are no longer so urgently in need of an antidote against the first Nihilism: Life is no longer so uncertain, accidental, and senseless in modern Europe. All such tremendous _exaggeration_ of the value of men, of the value of evil, etc., are not so necessary now; we can endure a considerable diminution of this value, we may grant a great deal of nonsense and accident: the _power_ man has acquired now allows of a _lowering_ of the means of discipline, of which the strongest was the moral interpretation of the universe. The hypothesis "God" is much too extreme. 115. If anything shows that our _humanisation_ is a genuine sign of _progress,_ it is the fact that we no longer require excessive contraries, that we no longer require contraries at all.... We may love the senses; for we have spiritualised them in every way and made them artistic; We have a right to all things which hitherto have been most _calumniated._ 116. _The reversal of the order of rank._--Those pious counterfeiters--the priests--are becoming Chandala in our midst:--they occupy the position of the charlatan, of the quack, of the counterfeiter, of the sorcerer: we regard them as corrupters of the will, as the great slanderers and vindictive enemies of Life, and as the _rebels_ among the bungled and the botched. We have made our middle class out of our servant-caste--the Sudra--that is to say, our people or the body which wields the political power. On the other hand, the Chandala of former times is paramount: the _blasphemers,_ the _immoralists,_ the independents of all kinds, the artists, the Jews, the minstrels--and, at bottom, all _disreputable_ classes are in the van. We have elevated ourselves to _honourable_ thoughts,--even more, we determine what honour is on earth,--"nobility." ... All of us to-day are _advocates of life._--We _Immoralists_ are to-day the _strongest_ power: the other great powers are in need of us ... we re-create the world in our own image. We have transferred the label "Chandala" to the _priests,_ the _backworldsmen,_ and to the deformed _Christian society_ which has become associated with these people, together with creatures of like origin, the pessimists, Nihilists, romanticists of pity, criminals, and men of vicious habits--the whole sphere in which the idea of "God" is that of _Saviour...._ We are proud of being no longer obliged to be liars, slanderers, and detractors of Life.... 117. _The advance_ of the nineteenth century upon the eighteenth (at bottom we _good Europeans_ are carrying on a war against the eighteenth century): (1) "The return to Nature" is getting to be understood, ever more definitely, in a way which is quite the reverse of that in which Rousseau used the phrase--_away from idylls and operas!_ (2) Ever more decided, more anti-idealistic, more objective, more fearless, more industrious, more temperate, more suspicious of sudden changes, _anti-revolutionary_;