An important feature of Nietzsche’s thought is a cultivated intuition of a gradation, of a hierarchy from the base, common, mundane to the transcendent. A scale of values is a capacity for recognition of the sacred.  Nietzsche seldom wrote any approving estimation of European Christendom. Here, he acknowledges that “the book” of Christianity has become an apt object of reverence, a touchstone of the sacred.

“Discipline and refinement in manners.” Are these equivalent? Is refinement in manners, the capacity to recognize and show reverence – a matter of training, of disciplined practice? Nietzsche thought so.

I remember experiencing the precision, the measured movements of a Japanese tea ceremony. Discipline Is exercised by the practitioner (master) of tea that conducts the ceremony, as well as by the recipient(s). In Japan for many generations tea has been universally esteemed, worthy of a reverent response.

All of which leaves us with the uncomfortable question, what are we to do when difference engenders hatred instead of reverence. That is when a radical “other” provokes an opposite negative emotion, hatred? Simply, how long ought an ominous response be left to develop? By what measure of response is a toxin shunted aside, sequestered?

Différence engendre haine:*

Many natures have a baseness
that suddenly bursts out, like dirty water,
when any sort of holy vessel, any sort of treasure from a closed shrine,
any sort of book that bears the mark of a great destiny is carried past.

On the other hand,
there is an involuntary hush,
a hesitation of the eye and a quieting of every gesture,
all of which indicate that the soul feels
the presence of something deserving the highest honors.

The way in which respect for the Bible has,
on the whole, been maintained in Europe
might be the best piece of discipline and refinement in manners
that Europe owes to Christianity.

*Difference engenders hatred

Beyond Good and Evil, by Nietzsche, trans, by Judith Butler, aphorism 263