This man's climbing up--let us praise him-- But that other we love From aloft doth eternally move, So above even praise let us raise him, He _comes_ from above! 61. _The Sceptic Speaks._ Your life is half-way o'er; The clock-hand moves; your soul is thrilled with fear, It roamed to distant shore And sought and found not, yet you--linger here! Your life is half-way o'er; That hour by hour was pain and error sheer: _Why stay?_ What seek you more? "That's what I'm seeking--reasons why I'm here!" 62. _Ecce Homo._ Yes, I know where I'm related, Like the flame, unquenched, unsated, I consume myself and glow: All's turned to light I lay my hand on, All to coal that I abandon, Yes, I am a flame, I know! 63. _Star Morality_[4] Foredoomed to spaces vast and far, What matters darkness to the star? Roll calmly on, let time go by, Let sorrows pass thee--nations die! Compassion would but dim the light That distant worlds will gladly sight. To thee one law--be pure and bright! [1] Translated by Miss M. D. Petre. [2] A and O, suggestive of Ah! and Oh! refer of course to Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.--TR. [3] Translated by Miss M. D. Petre. [4] Translated by Miss M. D. Petre. BOOK FIRST 1. _The Teachers of the Object of Existence.--_Whether I look with a good or an evil eye upon men, I find them always at one problem, each and all of them: to do that which conduces to the conservation of the human species. And certainly not out of any sentiment of love for this species, but simply because nothing in them is older, stronger, more inexorable and more unconquerable than that instinct,--because it is precisely _the essence_ of our race and herd. Although we are accustomed readily enough, with our usual short-sightedness, to separate our neighbours precisely into useful and hurtful, into good and evil men, yet when we make a general calculation, and reflect longer on the whole question, we become distrustful of this defining and separating, and finally leave it alone. Even the most hurtful man is still perhaps, in respect to the conservation of the race, the most useful of all; for he conserves in himself, or by his effect on others, impulses without which mankind might long ago have languished or decayed. Hatred, delight in mischief, rapacity and ambition, and whatever else is called evil--belong to the marvellous economy of the conservation of the race; to be sure a costly, lavish, and on the whole very foolish economy:--which has, however, hitherto preserved our race, _as is demonstrated to us._ I no longer know, my dear fellow-man and neighbour, if thou _canst_ at all live to the disadvantage of the race, and therefore, "unreasonably" and "badly"; that which could have injured the race has perhaps died out many millenniums ago, and