A painful and ghastly spectacle has just risen before my eyes. I tore down the curtain which concealed mankind's corruption. This word in my mouth is at least secure from the suspicion that it contains a moral charge against mankind. It is—I would fain emphasise this again—free from moralic acid: to such an extent is this so, that I am most thoroughly conscious of the corruption in question precisely in those quarters in which hitherto people have aspired with most determination to "virtue" and to "godliness." As you have already surmised, I understand corruption in the sense of decadence. What I maintain is this, that all the values upon which mankind builds its highest hopes and desires are decadent values. I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it selects and prefers that which is detrimental to it. A history of the "higher feelings," of "human ideals"—and it is not impossible that I shall have to write it—would almost explain why man is so corrupt.

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