necessary: they are different points of view which cannot be circumvented either with arguments or counter-arguments. One cannot refute Christianity: it is impossible to refute a diseased eyesight. That people should have combated pessimism as if it had been a philosophy, was the very acme of learned stupidity. The concepts “true” and “untrue” do not seem to me to have any sense in optics.—That, alone, which has to be guarded against is the falsity, the instinctive duplicity which _would fain_ regard this antithesis as no antithesis at all: just as Wagner did,—and his mastery in this kind of falseness was of no mean order. To cast side-long glances at master-morality, at _noble_ morality (—Icelandic saga is perhaps the greatest documentary evidence of these values), and at the same time to have the opposite teaching, the “gospel of the lowly,” the doctrine of the _need_ of salvation, on one’s lips!… Incidentally, I admire the modesty of Christians who go to Bayreuth. As for myself, I could _not_ endure to hear the sound of certain words on Wagner’s lips. There are some concepts which are too good for Bayreuth … What? Christianity adjusted for female Wagnerites, perhaps _by_ female Wagnerites—for, in his latter days Wagner was thoroughly _feminini generis_—? Again I say, the Christians of to-day are too modest for me.… If Wagner were a Christian, then Liszt was perhaps a Father of the Church!—The need of _salvation_, the quintessence of all Christian needs, has nothing in common with such clowns; it is the most straightforward expression of decadence, it is the most convincing and most painful affirmation of decadence, in sublime symbols and practices. The Christian wishes _to be rid_ of himself. _Le moi est toujours haissable._ Noble morality, master-morality, on the other hand, is rooted in a triumphant saying of yea to _one’s self_,—it is the self-affirmation and self-glorification of life; it also requires sublime symbols and practices; but only “because its heart is too full.” The whole of beautiful art and of great art belongs here; their common essence is gratitude. But we must allow it a certain instinctive repugnance _to décadents_, and a scorn and horror of the latter’s symbolism: such things almost prove it. The noble Romans considered Christianity as a _fœda superstitio_: let me call to your minds the feelings which the last German of noble taste—Goethe—had in regard to the cross. It is idle to look for more valuable, more _necessary_ contrasts.(14)