Macmillan

and
the
divined in him "
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 59
as it were behind the questionableness
of his frail and wretched appearance
"
superior force
which wished to test itself by such a subjugation;the
strengthof will,in which theyrecognisedtheir own strength
and love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured
something in themselves when theyhonoured the saint.
In addition to this țhe contemplation of the saint suggested
to them a suspicion:such an enormityof self-negation and
anti-naturalness will not have been coveted for "
nothing
theyhave said,inquiringlyṬhere is perhapsa reason for
it,some very great danger,about which the ascetic might
wish to be more accuratelyinformed through his secret
interlocutorsand visitors? In a word, the mighty ones of
the world learned to have a new fear before him, they divined
a new power, a strange, still unconqueredenemy:
"
it was the "Will to Power" which obligedthem to halt before
the saint. They had
to questionhim.
52
In the Jewish"Old Testament,"the book of divine justice,
there are men, things,and sayingson such an immense
scalețhat Greek and Indian literature has nothingto compare
with it. One stands with fear and reverence before
those stupendousremains of what man was formerly,and
one has sad thoughtsabout old Asia and its littleout-pushed
peninsulaEurope,which would like,by all means, to figure
before Asia as the "Progressof Mankind." To be sure, he
*ftio
is himself onlya slender, tame house-animal, and knows
nly the wants of a house-animal (likeour cultured people
of to-day,includingthe Christians of "cultured" Christianity),
need neither be amazed nor even sad amid those
rs
IS ^thetaste for the Old Testament is " a touchstone with