it, and is regarded by every subtler conscience as disreputable, dishonourable, as lying, feminism, weakness, cowardice⁠—by means of this severity, if by means of anything at all, are we, in sooth, good Europeans and heirs of Europe’s longest and bravest self-mastery.”⁠ ⁠… All great things go to ruin by reason of themselves, by reason of an act of self-dissolution: so wills the law of life, the law of necessary “self-mastery” even in the essence of life⁠—ever is the lawgiver finally exposed to the cry, “ patere legem quam ipse tulisti ”; in thus wise did Christianity go to ruin as a dogma , through its own morality; in thus wise must Christianity go again to ruin today as a morality⁠—we are standing on the threshold of this event. After Christian truthfulness has drawn one conclusion after the other, it finally draws its strongest conclusion , its conclusion against itself; this, however, happens, when it puts the question, “ what is the meaning of every will for truth?