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128 that is, to us of today with our prevailing social estimates of everything): Grant that all men exist for social purposes and are functions of the social mechanism, what is the purpose of the mechanism itself? To quote his words, "Humanity uses up regardlessly each single person as fuel for its great machines: but for what purpose then are the machines, if all single persons are only of use in maintaining them? Machines that are ends in themselves—is that the umana commedia?" To us in these days society is an ultima ratio—if anything can be shown to be for the good of society, we are as completely satisfied as former ages were to have it shown that anything was for the glory of God. The import of Nietzsche's question will become clearer later on.