I would like to find a very specific passage in Nietzsche’s work in which he explains, magnificently, how the free spirit—the modern man of his time, an atheist and a democrat, of course—in fact attempts, by rejecting but above all by scorning the Church, to revive within himself and among his peers the aristocratic ideal and mode of valuation. Fundamentally, however, this idiot buys into his nihilistic values, since the atheist “⁠does not believe (in God)⁠”. It matters little here that the object of negation should be God: the fact that this free spirit feels no profound pain, and hence no profound disgust followed by a profound aversion, when he asserts without flinching that he “⁠does not believe⁠”, is already, to my mind, a sign of his vital decline, of his irremediable fusion with nothingness. The way he is swallowed up by the latter without a murmur, without his vital being being seized with horror, is the worst of contemporary vital declines.

The passage I am looking for is not paragraph 9 of the First Treatise of On the Genealogy of Morality; at least, my memory tells me that another passage expresses the same idea with far greater magnificence. That said, I have grown tired of looking for it, and I shall therefore recreate it in my own way.

Before continuing, I would like to reiterate—and this is a personal thesis—that the fundamental problem with this hypocritical free spirit is that he has never truly belonged to the left. He has merely and constantly tried, unconsciously, to revive that aristocratic ideal and mode of valuation, while lacking the strength to dissociate himself from the atheist and democratic march of his time. Indeed, it is not even so much that contempt is the absolute enemy of the left, as I often say—enemies hardly matter at this stage in the gestation of the left in itself—but that contempt inspires disgust in anyone who is profoundly left-wing. Moreover, a person on the left feels contempt for no one; on the other hand, he often feels disgust toward others, particularly toward those who do not elevate others as much as they elevate themselves. For someone on the left, this is the greatest sign of vital weakness: someone on the right does not possess the vital resources, the productive capacity, required to concern himself with the elevation and growth of every person he meets. He has vital resources only to concern himself with himself, his own growth, and that of his very restricted circle. Lucchini—who is very fortunate that I should mention him here, even if only to criticize him, both in the academic and the popular sense—tells us that belonging to the left requires a nobility of soul he does not possess. But no, my dear Fabrice: what pisses you off, although you are unaware of it, is that belonging to the left does not require greater nobility of soul; it simply requires vital resources and productive forces that you do not possess. Realize it once and for all; face the harsh reality. The first vital resource you need, and the one you lack, is that which causes the pain of alterity in the presence of another person to be annihilated by the joy, pleasure, and honor of being in the presence of another human being endowed with his own entirely singular productive potency, and by the desire for that other person which consequently arises in every being brimming with life.

But let us return to the passage I must recreate:

“⁠Just listen to this emaciated cassocked man who, at every Mass, seems to breathe his last vital breath,⁠” said the democrat to his friend as he watched Monsignor Ledigne walk past. He did not realize that his demand for science and truth was merely a pretext here for scorning the decline of bodily forces that he perceived in the latter; he did not realize that he was attempting to recreate a vital hierarchy between human beings identical to the one he had nevertheless fought so hard against. Such was this man’s low level of consciousness. Because he in fact needed to unite with his little comrades in the democratic struggle, because his existence alone was incapable of affording him any enjoyment, too little alive as he was, this man had clung to his fellow free spirits and democrats so as to remain above suspicion in his unconscious re-creation of aristocratic ideals and modes of valuation. The proportion of such democratic parasites among democrats as a whole is undoubtedly enormous, my dear Pierrot. They have never understood, and doubtless never will, that the primary pain of someone on the left lies in experiencing contempt—wherever it comes from and wherever it is directed—because at that instant he knows that his forces are declining: his forces for elevating the other person, desiring him, and giving to him. Lastly, this democrat not only spat upon Monsignor Ledigne’s bodily fragility; he also spat upon the poor development of the purely rational part of his neocortex, which is obviously the strongest ally of the person whose body is strong and powerful. In spitting upon obscurantism, therefore, he was merely spitting upon bodily weakness. Yes indeed, my dear Pierrot: the rational part of the neocortex is the ally of instinct, whereas the spiritual part of the neocortex, together with consciousness, are the best allies of the thumos, the chest, the heart and lungs, the heartbeat and the breath. The problem with bad priests—and there are too many of them—is that, in their case, these allies no longer have many people with whom to ally themselves: therein lies their hypocrisy.

Well, in the end the passage has a somewhat pedestrian literary quality, some might say, but I must doubtless accept the natural evolution of my prose; and in fine, I love this passage, and that is all that matters.