The _protraction of Christianity_ through the _French Revolution._ The seducer is Rousseau; he once again liberates woman, who thenceforward is always represented as ever more interesting--_suffering._ Then come the slaves and Mrs. Beecher-Stowe. Then the poor and the workmen. Then the vicious and the sick--all this is drawn into the foreground (even for the purpose of disposing people in favour of the genius, it has been customary for five hundred years to press him forward as the great sufferer!). Then comes the cursing of all voluptuousness (Baudelaire and Schopenhauer), the most decided conviction that the lust of power is the greatest vice; absolute certainty that morality and disinterestedness are identical things; that the "happiness of all" is a goal worth striving after (_i.e.,_ Christ's Kingdom of Heaven). We are on the best road to it: the Kingdom of Heaven of the poor in spirit has begun.--Intermediate stages: the bourgeois (as a result of the _nouveau riche_) and the workman (as a result of the machine). Greek and French culture of the time of Louis XIV. compared. A decided belief in oneself. A leisure-class which makes things hard for itself and exercises a great deal of self-control. The power of form, the will to form _oneself._ "Happiness" acknowledged as a purpose. Much strength and energy _behind_ all formality of manners. Pleasure at the sight of a life that is _seemingly so easy._ The _Greeks_ seemed like _children_ to the French. 95. _The Three Centuries._ Their different kinds of _sensitiveness_ may perhaps be best expressed as follows:-- _Aristocracy_: Descartes, the reign of _reason,_ evidence showing the sovereignty of the _will_. _Feminism_: Rousseau, the reign of _feeling,_ evidence showing the sovereignty of the senses; all lies. _Animalism_: Schopenhauer, the reign of _passion,_ evidence showing the sovereignty of animality, more honest, but gloomy. The seventeenth century is _aristocratic,_ all for order, haughty towards everything animal, severe in regard to the heart, "austere," and even free from sentiment, "non-German," averse to all that is burlesque and natural, generalising and maintaining an attitude of sovereignty towards the past for it believes in itself. At bottom it partakes very much of the beast of prey, and practises asceticism in order to remain master. It is the century of strength of will, as also that of strong passion. The eighteenth century is dominated by _woman,_ it is gushing, spiritual, and flat; but with intellect at the service of aspirations and of the heart, it is a libertine in the pleasures of intellect, undermining all authorities; emotionally intoxicated, cheerful, clear, humane, and sociable, false to itself and at bottom very rascally....