reminds us, however, that while time is long, propitious time is not necessarily so. We cannot assume that mankind will always be able to go on in the higher direction. Things do not improve by instinct or any divine destiny. There may be movement down as well as up, and mankind at the end of its career may be on a lower level than it is now. With the downfall of Roman culture and the spread of Christianity, man became increasingly unsightly within the Empire; and human-kind in general, as it has come up from the ape, may at last go down to it.[1] The race may be nearer the heights possible to it in the middle of its journey than at the close—the end of a melody is not its goal, the end of a man's life (above all when it is in weakness) is not its goal.[2] Therefore let us compass the utmost possible now—the chance may not come again.
Nietzsche has certain anticipations even in the religious field—if religion may be taken broadly to cover any kind of a cultus of ideal things. "A Vision" is the title of one aphorism, which reads as follows: "Lectures and hours for meditation set apart for adults, mature and maturest, and these daily, uncompulsory, but visited by every one from force of custom; churches, as the places worthiest and richest in memories, to be used for this purpose; almost daily festivals in honor of the attained or attainable dignity of human reason; a new and fuller blossoming of the ideal of the teacher, in which clergyman, artist, physician, scholar, and wise man, blend in one … this is my vision, which ever comes back to me, and about which I firmly believe that it has lifted a corner of the future's veil."[3] He expresses the desire for a new style of architecture which shall more worthily, more fittingly express the serious ideas of men today—still, ample spaces, where no sound of traffic is heard and a finer decency even forbids praying aloud to the priest, where one can think and for a few moments be by oneself.[4] But the religious suggestions of Nietzsche I must practically leave out of account in the present volume.[5]
