radical, most profound suspicion concerning ourselves, which is continually getting us Europeans more annoyingly into its power, and could easily face the coming generation with the terrible alternative: "Either do away with your venerations, or—_with yourselves_!" The latter would be Nihilism—but would not the former also be Nihilism? This is _our_ note of interrogation. 347. _Believers and their Need of Belief._—How much _faith_ a person requires in order to flourish, how much "fixed opinion" he requires which he does not wish to have shaken, because he _holds_ himself thereby—is a measure of his power (or more plainly speaking, of his weakness). Most people in old Europe, as it seems to me, still need Christianity at present, and on that account it still finds belief. For such is man: a theological dogma might be refuted to him a thousand times,—provided, however, that he had need of it, he would again and again accept it as "true,"—according to the famous "proof of power" of which the Bible speaks. Some have still need of metaphysics; but also the impatient _longing for certainty_ which at present discharges itself in scientific, positivist fashion among large numbers of the people, the longing by all means to get at something stable (while on account of the warmth of the longing the establishing of the certainty is more leisurely and negligently undertaken): even this is still the longing for a hold, a support; in short, the _instinct of weakness_, which, while not actually creating religions, metaphysics, and convictions of all kinds, nevertheless—preserves them. In fact, around all these positivist systems there fume the vapours of a certain pessimistic gloom, something of weariness, fatalism, disillusionment, and fear of new disillusionment—or else manifest animosity, ill-humour, anarchic exasperation, and whatever there is of symptom or masquerade of the feeling of weakness. Even the readiness with which our cleverest contemporaries get lost in wretched corners and alleys, for example, in Vaterländerei (so I designate Jingoism, called _chauvinisme_ in France, and "_deutsch_" in Germany), or in petty æsthetic creeds in the manner of Parisian _naturalisme_ (which only brings into prominence and uncovers _that_ aspect of nature which excites simultaneously disgust and astonishment—they like at present to call this aspect _la vérité vraie_), or in Nihilism in the St Petersburg style (that is to say, in the _belief in unbelief_, even to martyrdom for it):—this shows always and above all the need of belief, support, backbone, and buttress.... Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed where there is a lack of will: for the will, as emotion of command, is the distinguishing characteristic of sovereignty and power. That is to say, the less a person knows how to command, the more urgent is his desire for one who commands, who commands sternly,—a God, a prince, a caste, a physician, a