“Oh, there is a dignity in the earth and in what belongs to the earth!” “Did the German philosopher ever know you for what you are?” “Yes, toward the end, but then it was too late to undo my work.” “Then also at the end,” I exclaimed, “he saw the two forms of Beyond Man, you and the Christ!” “Yes, he saw. The seeing drove him mad.” “And you have no remorse for your work?” “Remorse? What is that?” “Remorse is an emotion which men feel when they are conscious of having done evil.” “An emotion that _men_ feel,” he repeated. “But I only feel those emotions of men which give me pleasure in the feeling.” “Such as----” “You are really too curious and inquisitive!” “Granted, my curiosity and my inquisitiveness,” I said. “But it interests me, this labor of a lifetime, a man’s lifetime, to make him an instrument through which _all this_ could be produced,” and I indicated by a gesture the battle line beneath us. His eyes were brilliant with fire as he answered: “What is the lifetime of a man in comparison to the glory of all this? One might labor a thousand years and produce nothing in comparison with this!” “It pleases you then, this slaughter?” “What a trifling question! It gratifies me, glorifies me, exalts me--all this carnage of battle brought forth by me and my kind.” “And did you have all this in mind while you were preparing one man to corrupt a nation by his writings?” “Yes. He was the one perfect instrument. None other could have served our purpose so well--ambitious, dissatisfied, aristocratic, arrogant, unloving in the broader sense, capable of infatuation and hence of disenchantment, and last but not least, with eyes open to the vision.” “The vision of you?” “Yes. He saw me first in dreams, and admired me, and desired to emulate me.” “And then you spoke to him of Beyond Man?” “Yes, and I used the old arguments that women were of small account; that the love of woman stood in man’s way; that woman enslaved man unless he enslaved her; that Nature was the devil, not the Great Mother, and so was to be combatted as far as possible; that man rose to Beyond Man by denying all that could influence him, including Nature, and by asserting whatever gave him freedom, such as his own superiority to all other beings, his mastery of them, his mastery of his own thought, his mastery of good and evil, of fact and falsehood.” “A fine _combination_ of fact and falsehood, that teaching of yours,” I said. “Of course,” he answered; “but what would you? Truth alone could never have produced this.” And he swept with his long arm the line of battle beneath us. “And what else did you teach your chosen disciple?” I asked.