 This is, this is Nietzsche's, one of Nietzsche's great statements. Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness, with greatness. That means cynically and with innocence. What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently, the advent of nihilism. Our whole European culture is moving from some time now with the tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade as towards a catastrophe. Restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects. That's afraid to reflect. He that speaks here has conversely done nothing so far but to reflect. As a philosopher and solitary by instinct who has found his advantage in standing aside, outside. Why has the event of nihilism become necessary? Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final consequence. Because nihilism represents the ultimate logical extension of our great values and ideals. Because we must experience nihilism before we can find out what value these values really had. So one of Nietzsche's claims, for example, was that as Christianity in Europe transformed itself into science. He felt that one of the advantage to the Catholic domination of Europe for so many centuries was that the mind of the Catholic adherents who took the discipline seriously or the dogma seriously learned to interpret all events under the schema of a single theory. And he thought about that as a form of discipline. So you could imagine that if I want to teach you how to theorize. I might teach you a theory and have you adopt it. And Nietzsche's point would mean that well that means you know a theory but it also means something else. It also means that now you know how to theorize. And the important consequence of learning a theory may not be the theory. It may be that you've learned to theorize. Now Nietzsche also pointed out that once you learn to theorize you can separate yourself from the theory that gave rise to that knowledge. And so you can start to theorize even about the theory that you mastered. And he thought that's what happened to Europe as a consequence of its domination by Christianity, especially because of Christianity's essential insistence on the utility of the truth. Now he thought that was transformed after Catholicism into scientific investigation but that the spirit of theorizing and truth remained intact. And then that the consequence of that was that the European mind was disciplined by a dogma then it freed itself from the dogma, then it turned its power on the dogma and noted that the dogma itself seemed to be grounded in nothing that you could get a grip on, the way you grip things with an empirical mind. And so it fell apart. You know and that's not saying much more than science posed a fatal challenge to religion. But it's saying it in a much more profound and interesting way. And it also explains why he makes this claim that nihilism is the logical conclusion of the great values and ideals. So he didn't think about nihilism as a counter proposition say to dogmatic Christianity. He thought about it as the logical outcome of that.