Was it therewith over? Was that greatest of all antitheses of ideals thereby relegated _ad acta_ for all time? Or only postponed, postponed for a long time? May there not take place at some time or other a much more awful, much more carefully prepared flaring up of the old conflagration? Further! Should not one wish _that_ consummation with all one's strength?--will it one's self? demand it one's self? He who at this juncture begins, like my readers, to reflect, to think further, will have difficulty in coming quickly to a conclusion,--ground enough for me to come myself to a conclusion, taking it for granted that for some time past what I mean has been sufficiently clear, what I exactly _mean_ by that dangerous motto which is inscribed on the body of my last book: _Beyond Good and Evil_--at any rate that is not the same as "Beyond Good and Bad." Note.--I avail myself of the opportunity offered by this treatise to express, openly and formally, a wish which up to the present has only been expressed in occasional conversations with scholars, namely, that some Faculty of philosophy should, by means of a series of prize essays, gain the glory of having promoted the further study of the _history of morals_--perhaps this book may serve to give forcible impetus in such a direction. With regard to a possibility of this character, the following question deserves consideration. It merits quite as much the attention of philologists and historians as of actual professional philosophers. "_What indication of the history of the evolution of the moral ideas is afforded by philology, and especially by etymological investigation?_"