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that the downfall of the theological astronomy signified the downfall of that ideal?⁠—Has, perchance, man grown less in need of a transcendental solution of his riddle of existence, because since that time this existence has become more random, casual, and superfluous in the visible order of the universe? Has there not been since the time of Copernicus an unbroken progress in the self-belittling of man and his will for belittling himself? Alas, his belief in his dignity, his uniquenesses irreplaceableness in the scheme of existence, is gone⁠—he has become animal, literal, unqualified, and unmitigated animal, he who in his earlier belief was almost God (“child of God,” “demigod”). Since Copernicus man seems to have fallen on to a steep plane⁠—he rolls faster and faster away from the centre⁠—whither? into nothingness? into the “thrilling sensation of his own nothingness” ⁠—Well! this would be the straight way⁠—to the old ideal?⁠— All science (and by no means only astronomy, with regard to the humiliating and deteriorating effect of which Kant has made a remarkable confession, “it annihilates my own importance”), all science, natural as much as unnatural ⁠—by unnatural I mean the self-critique of reason⁠—nowadays sets out to talk man out of his present opinion of himself, as though that opinion had been nothing but a bizarre piece of conceit; you might go so far as to say that science finds its peculiar pride, its peculiar bitter form of stoical ataraxia, in preserving man’s contempt of himself , that state which it took so much trouble to bring about, as man’s final and most serious claim to self-appreciation (rightly so, in point of fact, for he who despises is always “one who has not forgotten how to appreciate”). But does all this involve any real effort to counteract the ascetic ideal? Is it really seriously suggested that Kant’s victory over the theological dogmatism about “God,” “Soul,” “Freedom,” “Immortality,” has damaged that ideal in any way (as the theologians have imagined to be the case for a long time past)?⁠—And in this connection it does not concern us for a single minute, if Kant himself intended any such consummation. It is certain that from the time of Kant every type of transcendentalist is playing a winning game⁠—they