My task, that of preparing the way for a moment of highest self-contemplation on humanity’s part, a great noon-day when it will look back and look ahead, when it will step out from under the dominance of chance and the priests and for the first time ask the question ‘why?’ ‘what for?’ as a whole —this task follows necessarily from the insight that humanity has not found the right way by itself, that it is definitely not divinely ruled but that precisely among its holiest conceptions of value the instinct of negation, of corruption, the décadence instinct has seductively held sway.
