The men I have regarded with the most loathing, heretofore, are the parasites of intellect: they are to be found everywhere, already, in our modern Europe, and as a matter of fact their conscience is as light as it possibly can be. They may be a little turbid, and savour somewhat of Pessimism, but in the main they are voracious, dirty, dirtying, stealthy, insinuating, light-fingered gentry, scabby--and as innocent as all small sinners and microbes are. They live at the expense of those who have intellect and who distribute it liberally: they know that it is peculiar to the rich mind to live in a disinterested fashion, without taking too much petty thought for the morrow, and to distribute its wealth prodigally. For intellect is a bad domestic economist, and pays no heed whatever to the fact that everything lives on it and devours it. 78. MODERN MUMMERY The motleyness of modern men and its charm Essentially a mask and a sign of boredom. The journalist. The political man (in the "national swindle"). Mummery in the arts:-- The lack of honesty in preparing and schooling oneself for them (Fromentin); The Romanticists (their lack of philosophy and science and their excess in literature); The novelists (Walter Scott, but also the monsters of the _Nibelung,_ with their inordinately nervous music); The lyricists. "Scientifically." Virtuosos (Jews). The popular ideals are overcome, but not yet _in the presence of the people_: The saint, the sage, the prophet. 79. _The want of discipline in the modern spirit_ concealed beneath all kinds of moral finery.--The show-words are: Toleration (for the "incapacity of saying yes or no"); _la largeur de sympathie_ (= a third of indifference, a third of curiosity, and a third of morbid susceptibility); "objectivity" (the lack of personality and of will, and the inability to "love"); "freedom" in regard to the rule (Romanticism); "truth" as opposed to falsehood and lying (Naturalism); the "scientific spirit" (the "human document": or, in plain English, the serial story which means "addition"--instead of "composition"); "passion" in the place of disorder and intemperance; "depth" in the place of confusion and the pell-mell of symbols. 80. _Concerning the criticism of big words._--I am full of mistrust and malice towards what is called "ideal": this is my _Pessimism,_ that I have recognised to what extent "sublime sentiments" are a source of evil--that is to say, a belittling and depreciating of man. Every time "progress" is expected to result from an ideal, disappointment invariably follows; the triumph of an ideal has always been a _retrograde movement_. Christianity, revolution, the abolition of slavery, equal rights, philanthropy, love of peace, justice, truth: all these big words are only valuable in a struggle, as banners: not as realities, but as _show-words,_ for something quite different (yea, even quite opposed to what they mean!). 81.