It is already even a sign of disbelief in the wherefore and in the purpose and sense of life--in fact, it is a sign of a lack of will--when the value of pleasure and pain step into the foreground, and hedonistic and pessimistic teaching becomes prevalent; and self-abnegation, resignation, virtue, "objectivity," _may,_ at the very least, be signs that the most important factor is beginning to make its absence felt. 791. Hitherto there has been no German culture. It is no refutation of this assertion to say that there have been great anchorites in Germany (Goethe, for instance); for these had their own culture. But it was precisely around them, as though around mighty, defiant, and isolated rocks, that the remaining spirit of Germany, _as their antithesis,_ lay that is to say, as a soft, swampy, slippery soil, upon which every step and every footprint of the rest of Europe made an impression and created forms. German culture was a thing devoid of character and of almost unlimited yielding power. 792. Germany, though very rich in clever and well-informed scholars, has for some time been so excessively poor in great souls and in mighty minds, that it almost seems to have forgotten what a great soul or a mighty mind is; and to-day mediocre and even ill-constituted men place themselves in the market square without the suggestion of a conscience-prick or a sign of embarrassment, and declare themselves great men, reformers, etc. Take the case of Eugen Dühring, for instance, a really clever and well-informed scholar, but a man who betrays with almost every word he says that he has a miserably small soul, and that he is horribly tormented by narrow envious feelings; moreover, that it is no mighty overflowing, benevolent, and spendthrift spirit that drives him on, but only the spirit of ambition! But to be ambitious in such an age as this is much more unworthy of a philosopher than ever it was: to-day, when it is the mob that rules, when it is the mob that dispenses the honours. 793. My "future": a severe polytechnic education. Conscription; so that as a rule every man of the higher classes should be an officer, whatever else he may be besides. IV. THE WILL TO POWER IN ART. 794. Our religion, morality, and philosophy are decadent human institutions. The counter-agent. Art. 795. The _Artist-philosopher._ A higher concept of art. Can man stand at so great a distance from his fellows as to mould them? (Preliminary exercises thereto:-- 1. To become a self-former, an anchorite. 2. To do what artists have done hitherto, _i.e._ to reach a small degree of perfection in a certain medium.) 796. Art as it appears without the artist, _i.e._ as a body, an organisation (the Prussian Officers' Corps, the Order of the Jesuits). To what extent is the artist merely a preliminary stage? The world regarded as a self-generating work of art. 797.