Modest, industrious, benevolent, and temperate: thus you would that men were?--that _good men_ were? But such men I can only conceive as slaves, the slaves of the future. 289 Industry, modesty, benevolence, temperance, are just so many _obstacles_ in the way of _sovereign sentiments,_ of great _ingenuity,_ of an heroic purpose, of noble existence for one's self. 290 I have declared war against the anæmic Christian ideal (together with what is closely related to it), not because I want to annihilate it, but only to put an end to its _tyranny_ and clear the way for other _ideals,_ for _more robust_ ideals. 291 If one does good merely out of pity, it is one's self and not one's neighbour that one is succouring. 294 "One is continually promoting the interests of one's _'ego'_ at the cost of other people"; "Living consists in living at the cost of others"--he who has not grasped this fact, has not taken the first step towards truth to himself. 294 A morality and a religion of "love," the _curbing_ of the self-affirming spirit, and a doctrine encouraging patience, resignation, helpfulness, and co-operation in word and deed may be of the highest value within the confines of such classes, even in the eyes of their rulers: for it restrains the feelings of rivalry, of resentment, and of envy,--feelings which are only too natural in the bungled and the botched,--and it even deifies them under the ideal of humility, of obedience, of slave-life, of being-ruled, of poverty, of illness, and of lowliness. This explains why the ruling classes (or races) and individuals of all ages have always upheld the cult of unselfishness, the gospel of the lowly and of "God on the Cross." 296 The _hatred of egoism,_ whether it be one's own (as in the case of the Socialists) appears as a valuation reached under the predominance of revenge; and also as an act of prudence on the part of the preservative instinct of the suffering, in the form of an increase in their feelings of co-operation and unity.... At bottom, the discharge of resentment which takes place in the act of judging, rejecting, and punishing egoism (one's own or that of others) is still a self-preservative measure on the part of the bungled and the botched. In short: the cult of altruism is merely a particular form of egoism, which regularly appears under certain definite physiological circumstances.