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service of the ascetic ideal is consequently the most absolute artistic corruption that there can be, though unfortunately it is one of the most frequent phases, for nothing is more corruptible than an artist.) Considered physiologically, moreover, science rests on the same basis as does the ascetic ideal: a certain impoverishment of life is the presupposition of the latter as of the former⁠—add, frigidity of the emotions, slackening of the tempo, the substitution of dialectic for instinct, seriousness impressed on mien and gesture (seriousness, that most unmistakable sign of strenuous metabolism, of struggling, toiling life). Consider the periods in a nation in which the learned man comes into prominence; they are the periods of exhaustion, often of sunset, of decay⁠—the effervescing strength, the confidence in life, the confidence in the future are no more. The preponderance of the mandarins never signifies any good, any more than does the advent of democracy, or arbitration instead of war, equal rights for women, the religion of pity, and all the other symptoms of declining life. (Science handled as a problem! what is the meaning of science?⁠—upon this point the Preface to the Birth of Tragedy .) No! this “modern science”⁠—mark you this well⁠—is at times the best ally for the ascetic ideal, and for the very reason that it is the ally which is most unconscious, most automatic, most secret, and most subterranean! They have been playing into each other’s hands up to the present, have these “poor in spirit” and the scientific opponents of that ideal (take care, by the by, not to think that these opponents are the antithesis of this ideal, that they are the rich in spirit⁠—that they are not ; I have called them the hectic in spirit). As for these celebrated victories of science; there is no doubt that they are victories ⁠—but victories over what? There was not for a single minute any victory among their list over the ascetic ideal, rather was it made stronger, that is to say, more elusive, more abstract, more insidious, from the fact that a wall, an outwork, that had got built on to the main fortress and disfigured its appearance, should from time to time be ruthlessly destroyed and broken down by science. Does anyone seriously suggest