The opposing of this fatality, the botching of mankind and the allowing of it to putrefy, was given the name "God" One shall not take the name of the Lord one's God in vain.... The race is corrupted--not by its vices, but by its ignorance: it is corrupted because it has not recognised exhaustion as exhaustion: physiological misunderstandings are the cause of all evil. Virtue is our greatest misunderstanding. Problem: how were the exhausted able to make the laws of values? In other words, how did they who are the last, come to power?... How did the instincts of the animal man ever get to stand on their heads?... 4. THE CRISIS: NIHILISM AND THE IDEA OF RECURRENCE. 55. Extreme positions are not relieved by more moderate ones, but by extreme _opposite_ positions. And thus the belief in the utter immorality of nature, and in the absence of all purpose and sense, are psychologically necessary attitudes when the belief in God and in an essentially moral order of things is no longer tenable. Nihilism now appears, _not_ because the sorrows of existence are greater than they were formerly, but because, in a general way, people have grown suspicious of the "meaning" which might be given to evil and even to existence. One interpretation has been overthrown: but since it was held to be _the_ interpretation, it seems as though there were no meaning in existence at all, as though everything were in vain. *** It yet remains to be shown that this "in vain!" is the character of present Nihilism. The mistrust of our former valuations has increased to such an extent that it has led to the question: "are not all 'values' merely allurements prolonging the duration of the comedy, without, however, bringing the unravelling any closer?" The "long period of time" which has culminated in an "in vain," without either goal or purpose, is the _most paralysing_ of thoughts, more particularly when one sees that one is duped without, however, being able to resist being duped. *** Let us imagine this thought in its worst form: existence, as it is, without either a purpose or a goal, but inevitably recurring, without an end in nonentity: "_Eternal Recurrence._" This is the extremest form of Nihilism: nothing (purposelessness) eternal! European form of Buddhism: the energy of knowledge and of strength drives us to such a belief. It is the most _scientific_ of all hypotheses. We deny final purposes. If existence had a final purpose it would have reached it. ***