Could any aberration be more dangerous than the contempt of the body? As if all intellectuality were not thereby condemned to become morbid, and to take refuge in the _vapeurs_ of "idealism"! Nothing that has been thought out by Christians and idealists holds water: we are more radical. We have discovered the "smallest world" everywhere as the most decisive. The paving-stones in the streets, good air in our rooms, food understood according to its worth: we value all the _necessaries_ of life seriously, and _despise_ all "beautiful soulfulness" as a form of "levity and frivolity." That which has been most despised hitherto, is now pressed into the front rank. 1017 In the place of Rousseau's "man of Nature," the nineteenth century has discovered a much _more genuine_ image of "Man,"--it had the courage to do this.... On the whole, the Christian concept of man has in a way been reinstalled. What we have not had the courage to do, was to call precisely this "man _par excellence_," good, and to see the future of mankind guaranteed in him. In the same way, we did not dare to regard the _growth in the terrible side_ of man's character as an accompanying feature of every advance in culture; in this sense we are still under the influence of the Christian ideal, and side with it against paganism, and likewise against the Renaissance concept of _virtù._ But the key of culture is not to be found in this way: and _in praxi_ we still have the forgeries of history in favour of the "good man" (as if he alone constituted the progress of humanity) and the _socialistic ideal (i.e._ the _residue_ of Christianity and of Rousseau in the de-Christianised world). _The fight against the eighteenth century:_ it meets with its _greatest conquerors_ in _Goethe_ and _Napoleon._ Schopenhauer, too, fights against the eighteenth century; but he returns involuntarily to the seventeenth--he is a modern Pascal, with Pascalian valuations, _without_ Christianity. Schopenhauer was not strong enough to invent a _new yea._ _Napoleon:_ we see the necessary relationship between the higher and the terrible man. "Man" reinstalled, and her due of contempt and fear restored to woman. Highest activity and health are the signs of the great man; the straight line and grand style rediscovered in action; the mightiest of all instincts, that of life itself,--the lust of dominion,--heartily welcomed. 1018.