The possibilities which open out before mankind are sufficiently limited. It is impossible to see everything, impossible to know everything, impossible to rise too high above the earth, impossible to penetrate too deeply down. What has been is hidden away, what will be we cannot anticipate, and we know for certain that we shall never grow wings. Regularity, immutably regular succession of phenomena puts a term to our efforts, drives us into a regular, narrow, hard-beaten road of everyday life. But even on this road we may not wander from side to side. We must watch our feet, consider each step, since the moment we are off our guard disaster is upon us. Another life is conceivable, however: life in which the word disaster does not exist, where responsibility for one's actions, even if it be not completely abolished, at least has not such a deadly and accidental weight, and where, on the other hand, there is no "regularity," but rather an infinite number of possibilities. In such a life the sense of fear--most disgraceful to us--disappears. There the virtues are not the same as ours. Fearlessness in face of danger, liberality, even lavishness are considered virtues with us, but they are respected without any grounds. Socrates was quite right when he argued that not all courage, but only the courage which measures beforehand the risks and the chances of victory, is fully justifiable. To the same extent those economical, careful people who condemn lavishness are in the right. Fearlessness and lavishness do not suit mortal men, rather it becomes them to tremble and to count every penny, seeing what a state of poverty and impotence they exist in. That is why these two virtues are so rarely met with, and when they are met, why they arouse such superstitious reverence in the crowd. "This man fears nothing and spares nothing: he is probably not a man, but a demi-god, perhaps even a god." Socrates did not believe in gods, so he wanted to justify virtue by reason. Kant also did not believe in God, and therefore he derived his morals from "Law." But if there is God, and all men are the children of God, then we should be afraid of nothing and spare nothing. And then the man who madly dissipates his own life and fortunes, and the lives and fortunes of others, is more right than the calculating philosophers who vainly seek to regulate mankind on earth. 34 Moral people are the most revengeful of mankind, they employ their morality as the best and most subtle weapon of vengeance. They are not satisfied with simply despising and condemning their neighbour _themselves_, they want the condemnation to be universal and supreme: that is, that all men should rise as one against the condemned, _and that even the offender's own conscience shall be against him_. Then only are they fully satisfied and reassured. Nothing on earth but morality could lead to such wonderful results. 35