This view is a result of fully developed "truthfulness": therefore a consequence of the belief in morality. 4. What _advantages_ did the Christian hypothesis of morality offer? (1) It bestowed an intrinsic value upon men, which contrasted with their apparent insignificance and subordination to chance in the eternal flux of becoming and perishing. (2) It served the purpose of God's advocates, inasmuch as it granted the world a certain _perfection_ despite its sorrow and evil--it also granted the world that proverbial "freedom": evil seemed full of _meaning_. (3) It assumed that man could have a _knowledge_ of absolute values, and thus granted him _adequate perception_ for the most important things. (4) It prevented man from despising himself as man, from turning against life, and from being driven to despair by knowledge: it was a self-preservative measure. In short: Morality was the great _antidote_ against practical and theoretical Nihilism. 5. But among the forces reared by morality, there was _truthfulness_: this in the end turns against morality, exposes the _teleology_ of the latter, its interestedness, and now the _recognition_ of this lie so long incorporated, from which we despaired of ever freeing ourselves, acts just like a stimulus. We perceive certain needs in ourselves, implanted during the long dynasty of the moral interpretation of life, which now seem to us to be needs of untruth: on the other hand, those very needs represent the highest values owing to which we are able to endure life. We have _ceased_ from attaching any worth to what we know, and we _dare_ not attach any more worth to that with which we would fain deceive ourselves--from this antagonism there results a process of dissolution. 6. This is the _antinomy_: In so far as we believe in morality, we condemn existence. 7. The highest values in the service of which man ought to live, more particularly when they oppressed and constrained him most--these _social values, owing to their tone-strengthening_ tendencies, were built over men's heads as though they were the will of God or "reality," or the actual world, or even a hope of a world to come. Now that the lowly origin of these values has become known, the whole universe seems to have been transvalued and to have lost its significance--but this is only an intermediate stage. 8.