belief in "another" or "better" life. The hatred of the "world," the curse on the affections, the fear of beauty and sensuality, another world, invented for the purpose of slandering this world the more, at bottom a longing for. Nothingness, for the end, for rest, for the "Sabbath of Sabbaths"--all this, as also the unconditional will of Christianity to recognise _only_ moral values, has always appeared to me as the most dangerous and ominous of all possible forms of a "will to perish"; at the least, as the symptom of a most fatal disease, of profoundest weariness, despondency, exhaustion, impoverishment of life,--for before the tribunal of morality (especially Christian, that is, unconditional morality) life _must_ constantly and inevitably be the loser, because life _is_ something essentially unmoral,--indeed, oppressed with the weight of contempt and the everlasting No, life _must_ finally be regarded as unworthy of desire, as in itself unworthy. Morality itself what?--may not morality be a "will to disown life," a secret instinct for annihilation, a principle of decay, of depreciation, of slander, a beginning of the end? And, consequently, the danger of dangers?... It was _against_ morality, therefore, that my instinct, as an intercessory-instinct for life, turned in this questionable book, inventing for itself a fundamental counter--dogma and counter-valuation of life, purely artistic, purely _anti-Christian._ What should I call it? As a philologist and man of words I baptised it, not without some liberty--for who could be sure of the proper name of the Antichrist?--with the name of a Greek god: I called it _Dionysian._ 6.