What has been calumniated? That which has tended to separate higher men from their inferiors, the instincts which cleave gulfs and build barriers.
33.
Causes effecting the rise of Pessimism:—
(1) The most powerful instincts and those which promised most for the future have hitherto been calumniated, so that life has a curse upon it.
(2) The growing bravery and the more daring mistrust on the part of man have led him to discover the fact that these instincts cannot be cut adrift from life, and thus he turns to embrace life.
(3) Only the most mediocre, who are not conscious of this conflict, prosper; the higher species fail, and as an example of degeneration tend to dispose all hearts against them—on the other hand, there is some indignation caused by the mediocre positing themselves as the end and meaning of all things. No one can any longer reply to the question: "Why?"
(4) Belittlement, susceptibility to pain, unrest, haste, and confusion are steadily increasing—the materialisation of all these tendencies, which is called "civilisation," becomes every day more simple, with the result that, in the face of the monstrous machine, the individual despairs and surrenders.
34.
Modern Pessimism is an expression of the uselessness only of the modern world, not of the world and existence as such.
35.