have the same sentiments towards yourselves which you have towards your fellows, if you are unwilling to endure your own suffering even for an hour, and continually forestall all possible misfortune, if you regard suffering and pain generally as evil, as detestable, as deserving of annihilation, and as blots on existence, well, you have then, besides your religion of compassion, yet another religion in your heart (and this is perhaps the mother of the former)--_the religion of smug ease._ Ah, how little you know of the _happiness_ of man, you comfortable and good-natured ones!--for happiness and misfortune are brother and sister, and twins, who grow tall together, or, as with you, _remain small_ together! But now let us return to the first question.--How is it at all possible for a person to keep to _his_ path! Some cry or other is continually calling one aside: our eye then rarely lights on anything without it becoming necessary for us to leave for a moment our own affairs and rush to give assistance. I know there are hundreds of respectable and laudable methods of making me stray _from my course,_ and in truth the most "moral" of methods! Indeed, the opinion of the present-day preachers of the morality of compassion goes so far as to imply that just this, and this alone is moral:--to stray from _our_ course to that extent and to run to the assistance of our neighbour. I am equally certain that I need only give myself over to the sight of one case of actual distress, and I, too, _am_ lost! And if a suffering friend said to me, "See, I shall soon die, only promise to die with me"--I might promise it, just as--to select for once bad examples for good reasons--the sight of a small, mountain people struggling for freedom,. would bring me to the point of offering them my hand and my life. Indeed, there is even a secret seduction in all this awakening of compassion, and calling for help: our "own way" is a thing too hard and insistent, and too far removed from the love and gratitude of others,--we escape from it and from our most personal conscience, not at all unwillingly, and, seeking security in the conscience of others, we take refuge in the lovely temple of the "religion of pity." As soon now as any war breaks out, there always breaks out at the same time a certain secret delight precisely in the noblest class of the people: they rush with rapture to meet the new danger of _death,_ because they believe that in the sacrifice for their country they have finally that long-sought-for permission--the permission _to shirk their aim:_--war is for them a detour to suicide, a detour, however, with a good conscience. And although silent here about some things, I will not, however, be silent about my morality, which says to me: Live in concealment in order that thou _mayest_ live to thyself. Live _ignorant_ of that which seems to thy age to be most important! Put at least the skin of three centuries betwixt thyself, and the present day!