Every one criticises, but the criterion is different. People run after the "right" criterion. The right criterion is the first presupposition. The critic starts from a proposition, a truth, a belief. This is not a creation of the critic, but of the dogmatist; nay, commonly it is actually taken up out of the culture of the time without further ceremony, like _e. g._ "liberty," "humanity," etc. The critic has not "discovered man," but this truth has been established as "man" by the dogmatist, and the critic (who, besides, may be the same person with him) believes in this truth, this article of faith. In this faith, and possessed by this faith, he criticises. The secret of criticism is some "truth" or other: this remains its energizing mystery. But I distinguish between _servile_ and _own_ criticism. If I criticise under the presupposition of a supreme being, my criticism _serves_ the being and is carried on for its sake: if, _e. g._, I am possessed by the belief in a "free State," then everything that has a bearing on it I criticise from the standpoint of whether it is suitable to this State, for I _love_ this State; if I criticise as a pious man, then for me everything falls into the classes of divine and diabolical, and before my criticism nature consists of traces of God or traces of the devil (hence names like Godsgift, Godmount, the Devil's Pulpit, etc.), men of believers and unbelievers, etc.; if I criticise while believing in man as the "true essence," then for me everything falls primarily into the classes of man and the un-man, etc. Criticism has to this day remained a work of love: for at all times we exercised it for the love of some being. All servile criticism is a product of love, a possessedness, and proceeds according to that New Testament precept, "Test everything and hold fast the _good_."[236] "The good" is the touchstone, the criterion. The good, returning under a thousand names and forms, remained always the presupposition, remained the dogmatic fixed point for this criticism, remained the--fixed idea. The critic, in setting to work, impartially presupposes the "truth," and seeks for the truth in the belief that it is to be found. He wants to ascertain the true, and has in it that very "good."