eligion into the
mouth of the "Saviour" as his own inventions, and not only into the
mouth--he _made_ out of him something that even a priest of Mithras
could understand.... This was his revelation at Damascus: he grasped the
fact that he _needed_ the belief in immortality in order to rob "the
world" of its value, that the concept of "hell" would master Rome--that
the notion of a "beyond" is the _death of life_.... Nihilist and
Christian: they rhyme in German, and they do more than rhyme....

59.

The whole labour of the ancient world gone for _naught_: I have no word
to describe the feelings that such an enormity arouses in me.--And,
considering the fact that its labour was merely preparatory, that with
adamantine self-consciousness it laid only the foundations for a work to
go on for thousands of years, the whole _meaning_ of antiquity
disappears!... To what end the Greeks? to what end the Romans?--All the
prerequisites to a learned culture, all the _methods_ of science, were
already there; man had already perfected the great and incomparable art
of reading profitably--that first necessity to the tradition of
culture, the unity of the sciences; the natural sciences, in alliance
with mathematics and mechanics, were on the right road,--_the sense of
fact_, the last and more valuable of all the senses, had its schools,
and its traditions were already centuries old! Is all this properly
understood? Every _essential_ to the beginning of the work was
ready:--and the _most_ essential, it cannot be said too often, are
methods, and also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed
by habit and laziness. What we have today reconquered, with unspeakable
self-discipline, for ourselves--for certain bad instincts, certain
Christian instincts, still lurk in our bodies--that is to say, the keen
eye for reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the
smallest things, the whole _integrity_ of knowledge--all these things
were already there, and had been there for two thousand years! _More_,
there was also a refined and excellent tact and taste! _Not_ as mere
brain-drilling! _Not_ as "German" culture, with its loutish manners! But
as body, as bearing, as instinct--in short, as reality.... _All gone for
naught!_ Overnight it became merely a memory!--The Greeks! The Romans!
Instinctive nobility, taste, methodical inquiry, genius for organization
and administration, faith in and the _will_ to secure the future of ma