_A New Precaution._--Let us no longer think so much about punishing, blaming, and improving! We shall seldom be able to alter an individual, and if we should succeed in doing so, something else may also succeed, perhaps unawares: _we_ may have been altered by him! Let us rather see to it that our own influence on _all that is to come_ outweighs and overweighs his influence! Let us not struggle in direct conflict!--all blaming, punishing, and desire to improve comes under this category. But let us elevate ourselves all the higher! Let us ever give to our pattern more shining colours! Let us obscure, the other by our light! No! We do not mean to become _darker_ ourselves on his account, like those who punish and are discontented! Let us rather go aside! Let us look away! 322. _A Simile._--Those thinkers in whom all the stars move in cyclic orbits, are not the most profound. He who looks into himself, as into an immense universe, and carries Milky Ways in himself, knows also how irregular all Milky Ways are; they lead into the very chaos and labyrinth of existence. 323. _Happiness in Destiny._--Destiny confers its greatest distinction upon us when it has made us fight for a time on the side of our adversaries. We are thereby _predestined_ to a great victory. 324. _In Media Vita._--No! Life has not deceived me! On the contrary, from year to year I find it richer, more desirable and more mysterious--from the day on which the great liberator broke my fetters, the thought that life may be an experiment of the thinker--and not a duty, not a fatality, not a deceit!--And knowledge itself may be for others something different; for example, a bed of ease, or the path to a bed of ease, or an entertainment, or a course of idling,--for me it is a world of dangers and victories, in which even the heroic sentiments have their arena and dancing-floor. _"Life as a means to knowledge"_--with this principle in one's heart, one can not only be brave, but can even _live joyfully and laugh joyfully!_ And who could know how to laugh well and live well, who did not first understand the full significance of war and victory? 325. _What Belongs to Greatness._--Who can attain to anything great if he does not feel in himself the force and will _to inflict_ great pain? The ability to suffer is a small matter: in that line, weak women and even slaves often attain masterliness. But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of it--that is great, that belongs to greatness. 326.