Future Virtues.—How has it come about that, the more intelligible the world has become, the more all kinds of ceremonies have diminished? Was fear so frequently the fundamental basis of that awe which overcame us at the sight of anything hitherto unknown and mysterious, and which taught us to fall upon our knees before the unintelligible, and to beg for mercy? And has the world, perhaps, through the very fact that we have [pg 383] grown less timid, lost some of the charms it formerly had for us? Is it not possible that our own dignity and stateliness, our formidable character, has decreased together with our spirit of dread? Perhaps we value the world and ourselves less highly since we have begun to think more boldly about it and ourselves? Perhaps there will come a moment in the future when this courageous spirit of thinking will have reached such a point that it will feel itself soaring in supreme pride, far above men and things—when the wise man, being also the boldest, will see himself and even more particularly existence, the lowest of all beneath himself?

This type of courage, which is not far removed from excessive generosity, has been lacking in humanity up to the present.—Oh, that our poets might once again become what they once were: seers, telling us something about what might possibly happen! now that what is real and what is past are being ever more and more taken from them, and must continue to be taken from them—for the time of innocent counterfeiting is at an end! Let them try to enable us to anticipate future virtues, or virtues that will never be found on earth, although they may exist somewhere in the world!—purple-glowing constellations and whole Milky Ways of the beautiful! Where are ye, ye astronomers of the ideal?