consciousness — having no relation to origin in the race sense; and thus, in this respect as in others, it is a negation of Time and History. Intellectual affinity and blood-affinity — ponder and probe into the depths of these contrasted expressions! Heritable priesthood is a contradiction in terms. It existed indeed, in a sense, in Vedic India, but the basis of that existence was the fact that there was a second nobility, which reserved the privilege of priesthood to the gifted members of its own circle.[1] And elsewhere celibacy made an end even of this much infringement of principle. The "priest in the man" — whether the man be noble or not — stands for a focus of sacred Causality in the world. The priestly power is itself of a causal nature, brought about by higher causes and itself in turn an efficient cause. The priest is the middleman in the timeless extended that is stretched taut between the waking-consciousness and the ultimate secret; and, therefore, the importance of the clergy in each Culture is determined by its prime-symbol. The Classical soul denies Space and therefore needs no middleman for dealings with it, and so the Classical priesthood disappears in its very beginnings. Faustian man stands face to face with the Infinite, nothing a priori shields him from the crushing force of this aspect, and so the Gothic priesthood elevated itself to the heights of the Papal idea.
As two world-outlooks, two modes of blood-flow in the veins and of thought in the daily being and doing, are interwoven, there arise in the end (in every Culture) two sorts of moral, of which each looks down upon the other — namely, noble custom, and priestly askesis, reciprocally censured as worldly and as servile. It has been shown already[2] how the one proceeds from the castle and the other from the cloister and the minster, the one from full being in the flood of History and the other, aloof therefrom, out of pure waking-consciousness in the ambiance of a God-pervaded nature. The force with which these primary impressions act upon men is something that later periods will be unable even to imagine. The secular and the spiritual class-feeling are starting on their upward career, and cutting out for themselves an ethical class-ideal which is accessible only to the right people, and even to them only by way of long and strict schooling. The great being-stream feels itself as a unit as against the residue of dull, pulseless, and aimless blood. The great mind-community knows itself as a unit as against the residue of uninitiated. These units are the band of heroes and the community of saints.
It will always remain the great merit of Nietzsche that he was the first to recognize the dual nature of all moral.[3] His designations of "master-" and "slave-" moral were inexact, and his presentation of "Christianity" placed it much too definitely on the one side of the dividing line, but at the basis of all his opinions this lies strong and clear, that good and bad are aristocratic, and good and
