Part 9

"Oh, these good people! Good men never speak the truth. To be good in that way is a sickness for the mind.

"They yield, these good men, they submit themselves; their heart saith what is said unto it, their foundation obeyeth. But whoever obeyeth doth not hear himself!"

Nietzsche despises science. He must have had sorry experiences with scientists who offered him the dry bones of scholarship as scientific truth.

"When I lay sleeping, a sheep ate at the ivy-wreath of my head,--ate and said eating: 'Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.'

"Said it and went off clumsily and proudly. So a child told me.

"This is the truth: I have departed from the house of scholars, and the door I have shut violently behind me.

"Too long sat my soul hungry at their table. Not, as they, am I trained for perceiving as for cracking nuts.

"Freedom I love, and a breeze over a fresh soil. And I would rather sleep on ox-skins then on their honors and respectabilities.

"I am too hot and am burnt with mine own thoughts, so as often to take my breath away. Then I must go into the open air and away from all dusty rooms.

"Like millworks they work, and like corn-crushers. Let folk only throw their grain into them! They know only too well how to grind corn and make white dust out of it.

"They look well at each other's fingers and trust each other not over-much. Ingenious in little stratagems, they wait for those whose knowledge walketh on lame feet; like spiders they wait.

"They also know how to play with false dice; and I found them playing so eagerly that they perspired from it.

"We are strangers unto each other, and their virtues are still more contrary unto my taste than their falsehoods and false dice."

Even if all scientists were puny sciolists, the ideal of science would remain, and if all the professed seekers for truth were faithless to and unworthy of their high calling, truth itself would not be abolished.

So far as we can see, Nietzsche never became acquainted with any one of the exact sciences. He was a philologist who felt greatly dissatisfied with the loose methods of his colleagues, but he has not done much in his own specialty to attain to a greater exactness of results. His essays on Homer, on the Greek tragedy, and similar subjects, have apparently not received much recognition among philologists and historians.

Having gathered a number of followers in his cave, one of them, called the conscientious man, said to the others:

"We seek different things, even up here, ye and I. For I seek more security. Therefore have I come unto Zarathustra. For he is the firmest tower and will--

"Fear--that is man's hereditary and fundamental feeling. By fear everything is explained, original sin and original virtue. Out of fear also hath grown my virtue, which is called Science.

"Such long, old fears, at last become refined, spiritual, intellectual, to-day, methinketh, it is called Science."

This conception of science is refuted by Nietzsche in this fashion:

"Thus spake the conscientious one. But Zarathustra, who had just returned into his cave and had heard the last speech and guessed its sense, threw a handful of roses at the conscientious one, laughing at his 'truths.' 'What?' he called. 'What did I hear just now? Verily, methinketh, thou art a fool, or I am one myself. And thy "truth" I turn upside down with one blow, and that quickly.'

"'For fear is our exception. But courage and adventure, and the joy of what is uncertain, what hath never been dared--courage, methinketh, is the whole prehistoric development of man.

"'From the wildest, most courageous beasts he hath, by his envy and his preying, won all their virtues. Only thus hath he become a man.

"'This courage, at last become refined, spiritual, intellectual, this human courage with an eagle's wings and a serpent's wisdom--it, methinketh, is called to-day--'

"'Zarathustra!' cried all who sat together there, as from one mouth making a great laughter withal."

In spite of identifying the self with the body, which is mortal, Nietzsche longs for the immortal. He says:

"Oh! how could I fail to be eager for eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings, the ring of recurrence?

"Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have had children, unless it be this woman I love--for I love thee, O Eternity!"