Pessimism _pur et vert,_ can _be proved only_ by the self-refutation of the pessimists themselves: one should go a step further in one’s consistency; one should not merely deny life with “The World as Will and Idea,” as Schopenhauer did; one should in the first place _deny Schopenhauer._ ... Incidentally, Pessimism, however infectious it may be, does not increase the morbidness of an age or of a whole species; it is rather the expression of that morbidness. One falls a victim to it in the same way as one falls a victim to cholera; one must already be predisposed to the disease. Pessimism in itself does not increase the number of the world’s _decadents_ by a single unit. Let me remind you of the statistical fact that in those years in which cholera rages, the total number of deaths does not exceed that of other years. 37 _Have we become more moral?_—As might have been expected, the whole _ferocity_ of moral stultification, which, as is well known, passes for morality itself in Germany, hurled itself against my concept “Beyond Good and Evil.” I could tell you some nice tales about this. Above all, people tried to make me see the “incontestable superiority” of our age in regard to moral sentiment, and the _progress_ we had made in these matters. Compared with us, a Cæsar Borgia was by no means to be represented as “higher man,” the sort of _Superman,_ which I declared him to be. The editor of the Swiss paper the _Bund_ went so far as not only to express his admiration for the courage displayed by my enterprise, but also to pretend to “understand” that the intended purpose of my work was to abolish all decent feeling. Much obliged!—In reply, I venture to raise the following question: _have we really become more moral?_ The fact that everybody believes that we have is already an objection to the belief. We modern men, so extremely delicate and susceptible, full of consideration one for the other, actually dare to suppose that the pampering fellow-feeling which we all display, this unanimity which we have at last acquired in sparing and helping and trusting one another marks a definite step forward, and shows us to be far ahead of the man of the Renaissance. But every age thinks the same, it is _bound_ to think the same. This at least, is certain, that we should not dare to stand amid the conditions which prevailed at the Renaissance, we should not even dare to imagine ourselves in those conditions: our nerves could not endure that reality, not to speak of our muscles. The inability to do this however does not denote any progress; but simply the different and more senile quality of our particular nature, its greater weakness, delicateness, and susceptibility, out of which a morality _more rich in consideration_ was bound to arise. If we imagine our delicateness and senility, our physiological decrepitude as non-existent, our morality of “humanisation” would immediately lose all value—no