when this bold mode of thinking will have reached such a pitch that it feels itself as the summit of pride above men and. things—when the wise man, being at the same time the boldest, sees himself, and, above all, existence furthest below himself? Mankind has hitherto been wanting in this kind of courage which is akin to extravagant generosity. Oh that the poets would again be such as they used to be: seers, foretelling us something of our contingencies! Now that the real and the past are being and have to be taken more and more from them—for the time of innocent false-coining is at an end! Did they wish to make us anticipate future virtues? or virtues that will never be met on earth, though they might exist somewhere in the work ?— purple-glowing stars and whole galaxies of the beautiful ? Where are you, ye astronomers of the ideal?
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The ideal selfishness—Is there a state more blessed than that of pregnancy? To do everything we do in the silent belief that it must needs benefit that which is generating in us? That it must raise its mysterious worth, the thought of which fills us with ecstasy? Then we refrain from much without having to put ourselves under great restraint; we suppress an angry word, we grasp the hand forgivingly: the child shall spring from all that is mild and good, We shrink from our own harshness and abruptness: as though it might instil a
