m envy, from
_revenge_.--The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry....

[30] Few men are noble.

58.

In point of fact, the end for which one lies makes a great difference:
whether one preserves thereby or destroys. There is a perfect likeness
between Christian and anarchist: their object, their instinct, points
only toward destruction. One need only turn to history for a proof of
this: there it appears with appalling distinctness. We have just studied
a code of religious legislation whose object it was to convert the
conditions which cause life to _flourish_ into an "eternal" social
organization,--Christianity found its mission in putting an end to such
an organization, _because life flourished under it_. There the benefits
that reason had produced during long ages of experiment and insecurity
were applied to the most remote uses, and an effort was made to bring in
a harvest that should be as large, as rich and as complete as possible;
here, on the contrary, the harvest is _blighted_ overnight.... That
which stood there _aere perennis_, the _imperium Romanum_, the most
magnificent form of organization under difficult conditions that has
ever been achieved, and compared to which everything before it and after
it appears as patchwork, bungling, _dilletantism_--those holy anarchists
made it a matter of "piety" to destroy "the world," _which is to say_,
the _imperium Romanum_, so that in the end not a stone stood upon
another--and even Germans and other such louts were able to become its
masters.... The Christian and the anarchist: both are _decadents_; both
are incapable of any act that is not disintegrating, poisonous,
degenerating, _blood-sucking_; both have an instinct of _mortal hatred_
of everything that stands up, and is great, and has durability, and
promises life a future.... Christianity was the vampire of the _imperium
Romanum_,--overnight it destroyed the vast achievement of the Romans:
the conquest of the soil for a great culture _that could await its
time_. Can it be that this fact is not yet understood? The _imperium
Romanum_ that we know, and that the history of the Roman provinces
teaches us to know better and better,--this most admirable of all works
of art in the grand manner was merely the beginning, and the structure
to follow was not to _prove_ its worth for thousands of years. To this
day, nothing on a like scale _sub specie aeterni_ has been brought into
being, or even dreamed of!-