"It was said of old that a good cause sanctifies war; but I say to you that a good war sanctifies any cause."
As to what he meant by a "good" war he leaves us in no doubt. He meant simply a war in which a victorious Prussia would slay and burn without measure and without pity.
"My brothers, I place above you this new Table of the Law: Be hard!"
Zarathustra washes, with shame, his hands, because they have aided someone who was suffering. "Nay, I labour to cleanse my very soul" of the sin of pity, he adds.
"I dream," he cries, "of an association of men who would be whole and complete, who would know no compromise, and who would give themselves the name of destroyers...."
In memorial verses on the death of a friend, killed in France in 1870, he writes—
"Even in the hour of death he ordered men, and he ordered them to destroy."
The three cardinal virtues of the warrior are "pleasure, pride and the instinct of domination."
"If I am convinced"—he means, plainly, "Since I am convinced"—he writes, "that harshness, cruelty, trickery, audacity, and the mood of battle tend to augment the vitality of man, I shall say Yes! to evil, and sin...."
And lest any of his defenders should seek to ex-
