D’UNE DESTINEE INFINIE. . . .  C’EST QUAND il est bon QU’IL VEUT que la virtu CORRESPONDE A un order eternal, c’est QUAND il CONTEMPLE Les CHOSES D’UNE MANIERE DESINTERESSEE QU’IL TROUVE la Mort REVOLTANTE et ABSURDE.  Comment ne Pas supposer que c’est dans CES moments-la, que L’HOMME Voit le MIEUX?” . . .  These sentences are so extremely antipodal to my ears and habits of thought, that in my first impulse of rage on finding them, I wrote on the margin, “La niaiserie RELIGIEUSE par excellence!”—­until in my later rage I even took a fancy to them, these sentences with their truth absolutely inverted!  It is so nice and such a distinction to have one’s own antipodes!

49.  That which is so astonishing in the religious life of the ancient Greeks is the irrestrainable stream of gratitude which it pours forth—­it is a very superior kind of man who takes such an attitude towards nature and life.—­Later on, when the populace got the upper hand in Greece, fear became rampant also in religion; and Christianity was preparing itself.

50.  The passion for God:  there are churlish, honest-hearted, and importunate kinds of it, like that of Luther—­the whole of Protestantism lacks the southern DELICATEZZA.  There is an Oriental exaltation of the mind in it, like that of an undeservedly favoured or elevated slave, as in the case of St. Augustine, for instance, who lacks in an offensive manner, all nobility in bearing and desires.  There is a feminine tenderness and sensuality in it, which modestly and unconsciously longs for a UNIO MYSTICA et PHYSICA, as in the case of Madame de Guyon.  In many cases it appears, curiously enough, as the disguise of a girl’s or youth’s puberty; here and there even as the hysteria of an old maid, also as her last ambition.  The Church has frequently canonized the woman in such a case.

51.  The mightiest men have hitherto always bowed reverently before the saint, as the enigma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary privation—­why did they thus bow?  They divined in him—­ and as it were behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance—­the superior force which wished to test itself by such a subjugation; the strength of will, in which they recognized their own strength and love of power, and knew how to honour it:  they honoured something in themselves when they honoured the saint.  In addition to this, the contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion:  such an enormity of self-negation and anti-naturalness will not have been coveted for nothing—­they have said, inquiringly.  There is perhaps a reason for it, some very great danger, about which the ascetic might wish to be more accurately informed through his secret interlocutors and visitors?  In a word, the mighty ones of the world learned to have a new fear before him, they divined a new power, a strange, still unconquered enemy:—­it was the “Will to Power” which obliged them to halt before the saint.  They had to question him.