Delaforte said to Madame de Staël, to wit: "My dear, I must confess
that I find no one but myself invariably right."

VI.

A corpse is a pleasant thought for a worm, and a worm is a dreadful
thought for every living creature. Worms fancy their kingdom of heaven
in a fat body; professors of philosophy seek theirs in rummaging among
Schopenhauer's entrails, and as long as rodents exist, there will
exist a heaven for rodents. In this, we have the answer to our first
question: How does the believer in the new faith picture his heaven?
The Straussian Philistine harbours in the works of our great poets and
musicians like a parasitic worm whose life is destruction, whose
admiration is devouring, and whose worship is digesting.

Now, however, our second question must be answered: How far does the
courage lent to its adherents by this new faith extend? Even this
question would already have been answered, if courage and
pretentiousness had been one; for then Strauss would not be lacking
even in the just and veritable courage of a Mameluke. At all events,
the "becoming modesty" of which Strauss speaks in the above-mentioned
passage, where he is referring to Beethoven, can only be a stylistic
and not a moral manner of speech. Strauss has his full share of the
temerity to which every successful hero assumes the right: all flowers
grow only for him--the conqueror; and he praises the sun because it
shines in at his window just at the right time. He does not even spare
the venerable old universe in his eulogies--as though it were only now
and henceforward sufficiently sanctified by praise to revolve around
the central monad David Strauss. The universe, he is happy to inform
us, is, it is true, a machine with jagged iron wheels, stamping and