We must visualize him, with such a sculptor's tool, standing in the presence of the crucified figure of himself; and altering one by one, its natural lineaments! Nietzsche's own lacerated "intellectual nerves" were the vantage-ground of his spiritual vision. He could write "the Antichrist" because he had "killed." in his own nature, "the thing he loved" It was for this reason that he had such a supernatural insight into the Christian temperament. It was for this reason that he could pour vitriol upon its "little secrets"; and hunt it to its last retreats. Let none think he did not understand the grandeur, and the terrible intoxicating appeal, of the thing he fought. He understood these only too well. What vibrating sympathy--as for a kindred spirit--may be read between the lines of his attack on Pascal--Pascal, the supreme type of the Christian Philosopher! It must be further realized--for after all what are words and phrases?--that it was really nothing but the "Christian conscience" in him that forced him on so desperately to kick against the pricks. It was the "Christian conscience" in him--has he not himself analysed the voluptuous cruelty of that?--which drove him to seek something--if possible--nobler, austerer, gayer, more innocently wicked, than Christianity! It was not in the interests of Truth that he fought it. True Christian, as he was, at heart, he never cared greatly for Truth as Truth. It was in the interest of a Higher Ideal, a more exacting, less human Ideal, that he crushed it down. The Christian spirit, in him set him upon strangling the Christian spirit--and all in the interest of a madness of nobility, itself perforated with Christian conscience! Was Nietzsche really Greek, compared with--Goethe, let us say? Not for a moment. It was in the desperation of his attempt to be so, that he seized upon Greek tragedy and made it dance to Christian cymbals! This is, let it be clearly understood, the hidden secret of his mania for Dionysus--Dionysus gave him his opportunity. In the worship of this god--also a wounded god, be it remarked;--he was able to satisfy his perverted craving for "ecstasy of laceration" under the shadow of another Name. But after all--as Goethe says--"feeling is all in all; the name is sound and smoke." What he felt were Christian feelings, the feelings of a Mystic, a Visionary, a Flagellant. What matter by what name you call them? Christ? Dionysus? It is the secret creative passion of the human heart that sends them Both forth upon their warfaring.