value: it seems to us at present absolutely ridiculous when man claims to devise values _to surpass_ the values of the actual world,--it is precisely from that point that we have retraced our steps; as from an extravagant error of human conceit and irrationality, which for a long period has not been recognised as such. This error had its last expression in modern Pessimism; an older and stronger manifestation in the teaching of Buddha; but Christianity also contains it, more dubiously, to be sure, and more ambiguously, but none the less seductive on that account. The whole attitude of "man _versus_ the world," man as world-denying principle, man as the standard of the value of things, as judge of the world, who in the end puts existence itself on his scales and finds it too light--the monstrous impertinence of this attitude has dawned upon us as such, and has disgusted us,--we now laugh when we find, "Man _and_ World" placed beside one another, separated by the sublime presumption of the little word "and"! But how is it? Have we not in our very laughing just made a further step in despising mankind? And consequently also in Pessimism, in despising the existence cognisable _by us?_ Have we not just thereby awakened suspicion that there is an opposition between the world in which we have hitherto been at home with our venerations--for the sake of which we perhaps _endure_ life--and another world _which we ourselves are:_ an inexorable, 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.