When and where has any man, _of any note at all,_ resembled the Christian ideal?--at least in the eyes of those who are psychologists and triers of the heart and reins. Look at all Plutarch's heroes! 218. _Our claim to superiority_: we live in an age of _Comparisons_; we are able to calculate as men have never yet calculated; in every way we are history become self-conscious. We enjoy things in a different way; we suffer in a different way: our instinctive activity is the comparison of an enormous variety of things. We understand everything; we experience everything, we no longer have a hostile feeling left within us. However disastrous the results may be to ourselves, our plunging and almost lustful inquisitiveness, attacks, unabashed, the most dangerous of subjects.... "Everything is good"--it gives us pain to say "nay" to anything. We suffer when we feel that we are sufficiently foolish to make a definite stand against anything.... At bottom, it is we scholars who to-day are fulfilling Christ's teaching most thoroughly. 219. We cannot suppress a certain irony when we contemplate those who think they have overcome Christianity by means of modern natural science. Christian values are by no means overcome by such people. "Christ on the cross" is still the most sublime symbol--even now.... 220. The two great Nihilistic movements are: _(a)_ Buddhism, _(b)_ Christianity. The latter has only just about reached a state of culture in which it can fulfil its original object,--it has found its _level,_--and now it can manifest itself _without disguise_..... 221. We have _re-established_ the Christian ideal, it now only remains _to determine_ its value. (1) Which values does it _deny_? What does _the ideal that opposes it_ stand for?--Pride, pathos of distance, great responsibility, exuberant spirits, splendid animalism, the instincts of war and of conquest; the deification of passion, revenge, cunning, anger, voluptuousness, adventure, knowledge--the _noble ideal_ is denied: the beauty, wisdom, power, pomp, and awfulness of the type man: the man who postulates aims, the "future" man (here Christianity presents itself as the _logical result_ of _Judaism_). (2) _Can it be realised?_--Yes, of course, when the climatic conditions are favourable--as in the case of the Indian ideal. Both neglect the factor _work._--It separates a creature from a people, a state, a civilised community, and jurisdiction; it rejects education, wisdom, the cultivation of good manners, acquisition and commerce; it cuts adrift everything which is of use and value to men--by means of an idiosyncrasy of sentiment it _isolates_ a man. It is non-political, anti-national, neither aggressive nor defensive,--and only possible within a strictly-ordered State or state of society, which allows these _holy parasites_ to flourish at the cost of their neighbours.....