Here it is necessary to revive a memory which will be a hundred times more painful to Germans. The Germans have destroyed the last great harvest of culture which was to be garnered for Europe,—it destroyed the _Renaissance._ Does anybody at last understand, _will_ anybody understand what the Renaissance was? _The transvaluation of Christian values,_ the attempt undertaken with all means, all instincts and all genius to make the _opposite_ values, the _noble_ values triumph,... Hitherto there has been only _this_ great war: there has never yet been a more decisive question than the Renaissance,—_my_ question is the question of the Renaissance:—there has never been a more fundamental, a more direct and a more severe _attack,_ delivered with a whole front upon the centre of the foe. To attack at the decisive quarter, at the very seat of Christianity, and there to place _noble_ values on the throne,—that is to say, to _introduce_ them into the instincts, into the most fundamental needs and desires of those sitting there.... I see before me a possibility perfectly magic in its charm and glorious colouring—it seems to me to scintillate with all the quivering grandeur of refined beauty, that there is an art at work within it which is so divine, so infernally divine, that one might seek through millenniums in vain for another such possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in meaning and so wonderfully paradoxical to boot, that it would be enough to make all the gods of Olympus rock with immortal laughter,—_Cæsar Borgia as Pope._ ... Do you understand me? ... Very well then, this would have been the triumph which I alone am longing for to-day:—this would have _swept_ Christianity _away!_—What happened? A German monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, with all the vindictive instincts of an abortive priest in his body, foamed with rage over the Renaissance in Rome.... Instead of, with the profoundest gratitude, understanding the vast miracle that had taken place, the overcoming of Christianity at its _headquarters,_—the fire of his hate knew only how to draw fresh fuel from this spectacle. A religious man thinks only of himself.—Luther saw the corruption of the Papacy when the very reverse stared him in the face: the old corruption, the _peceatum originate,_ Christianity _no_ longer sat upon the Papal chair! But Life! The triumph of Life! The great yea to all lofty, beautiful and daring things!... And Luther reinstated the Church; he attacked it The Renaissance thus became an event without meaning, a great _in vain!_—Ah these Germans, what have they not cost us already! In vain—this has always been the achievement of the Germans.—The Reformation, Leibniz, Kant and so-called German philosophy, the Wars of Liberation, the Empire—in each case are in vain for something which had already existed, for something which _cannot be recovered._ ... I confess it, these Germans are my enemies: I despise every sort of uncleanliness