characteristic of man⁠—as consequently something to which the conscience says a hearty yes. The more profound observer has perhaps already had sufficient opportunity for noticing this most ancient and radical joy and delight of mankind; in Beyond Good and Evil , Aph. 188 (and even earlier, in The Dawn of Day , Aphs. 18, 77, 113), I have cautiously indicated the continually growing spiritualisation and “deification” of cruelty, which pervades the whole history of the higher civilisation (and in the larger sense even constitutes it). At any rate the time is not so long past when it was impossible to conceive of royal weddings and national festivals on a grand scale, without executions, tortures, or perhaps an “ auto-da-fé