the soul," what is all this if it is not a recipe for decadence? Loss of ballast, resistance offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact--this is what has hitherto been known as morality. With _The Dawn of Day_ I first engaged in a struggle against the morality of self-renunciation. "JOYFUL WISDOM: LA GAYA SCIENZA" 1 _Dawn of Day_ is a yea-saying book, profound, but clear and kindly. The same applies once more and in the highest degree to _La Gaya Scienza:_ in almost every sentence of this book, profundity and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse which expresses my gratitude for the most wonderful month of January which I have ever lived--the whole book is a gift--sufficiently reveals the abysmal depths from which "wisdom" has here become joyful. "Thou who with cleaving fiery lances The stream of my soul from its ice dost free, Till with a rush and a roar it advances To enter with glorious hoping the sea: Brighter to see and purer ever, Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint,-- So it praises thy wondrous endeavour, January, thou beauteous saint!"[1] Who can be in any doubt as to what "glorious hoping" means here, when he has realised the diamond beauty of the first of Zarathustra's words as they appear in a glow of light at the close of the fourth book? Or when he reads the granite sentences at the end of the third book, wherein a fate for all times is first given a formula? The songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird, which, for the most part, were written in Sicily, remind me quite forcibly of that Provencal notion of "_Gaya Scienza,_" of that union of _singer, knight, and free spirit,_ which distinguishes that wonderfully early culture of the Provencals from all ambiguous cultures. The last poem of all, "To the Mistral,"--an exuberant dance song in which, if you please, the new spirit dances freely upon the corpse of morality,--is a perfect Provençalism. [Footnote 1: Translated for _Joyful Wisdom_ by Paul V. Cohn.--TR.] "THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA: A BOOK FOR ALL AND NONE" 1