Is this even feasible to-day?... But some day, in a stronger age than this rotting and introspective present, must he in sooth come to us, even the _redeemer_ of great love and scorn, the creative spirit, rebounding by the impetus of his own force back again away from every transcendental plane and dimension, he whose solitude is misunderstanded (sic) of the people, as though it were a flight _from_ reality;--while actually it is only his diving, burrowing, and penetrating _into_ reality, so that when he comes again to the light he can at once bring about by these means the _redemption_ of this reality; its redemption from the curse which the old ideal has laid upon it. This man of the future, who in this wise will redeem us from the old ideal, as he will from that ideal's necessary corollary of great nausea, will to nothingness, and Nihilism; this tocsin of noon and of the great verdict, which renders the will again free, who gives back to the world its goal and to man his hope, this Antichrist and Antinihilist, this conqueror of God and of Nothingness--_he must one day come_. 25. But what am I talking of? Enough! Enough? At this juncture I have only one proper course, silence: otherwise tresspass on a domain open alone to one who is younger than I, one stronger, more "_future_" than I--open alone to _Zarathustra, Zarathustra the godless._ [1] The German is: "_Sittlichkeit der Sitte_." H. B. S. [2] The German world "_schuld_" means both debt and guilt. Cp. the English "owe" and "ought," by which I occasionally render the double meaning.--H. B. S. [3] German: "_Verbrecher_."--H.B.S. [4] An allusion to _Der Zweck im Recht_, by the great German jurist, Professor Ihering. THIRD ESSAY. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS? "Careless, mocking, forceful--so does wisdom wish us: she is a woman, and never loves any one but a warrior." Thus Spake Zarathustra. 1. What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In artists, nothing, or too much; in philosophers and scholars, a kind of "flair" and instinct for the conditions most favourable to advanced intellectualism; in women, at best an _additional_ seductive fascination, a little _morbidezza_ on a fine piece of flesh, the angelhood of a fat, pretty animal; in physiological failures and whiners (in the _majority_ of mortals), an attempt to pose as "too good" for this world, a holy form of debauchery, their chief weapon in the battle with lingering pain and ennui; in priests, the actual priestly faith, their best engine of power, and also the supreme authority for power; in saints, finally a pretext for hibernation, their _novissima gloriæ cupido_, their peace in nothingness ("God"), their form of madness.