spite of_ the fact of the inutility and dangerousness of the "Will to truth," of "truth at all costs," being continually demonstrated. "At all costs": alas, we understand that sufficiently well, after having sacrificed and slaughtered one belief after another at this altar!--Consequently, "Will to truth" does _not_ imply, "I will not allow myself to be deceived," but--there is no other alternative--"I will not deceive, not even myself": _and thus we have reached the realm of morality._ For, let one just ask oneself fairly: "Why wilt thou not deceive?" especially if it should seem--and it does seem--as if life were laid out with a view to appearance, I mean, with a view to error deceit, dissimulation, delusion, self-delusion; and when on the other hand it is a matter of fact that the great type of life has always manifested itself on the side of the most unscrupulous πολύτροποι. Such an intention might perhaps, to express it mildly, be a piece of Quixotism, a little enthusiastic craziness; it might also, however, be something worse, namely, a destructive principle, hostile to life.... "Will to Truth,"--that might be a concealed Will to Death.--Thus the question Why is there science? leads back to the moral problem: _What in general is the purpose of morality,_ if life, nature, and history are "non-moral"? There is no doubt that the conscientious man in the daring and extreme sense in which he is presupposed by the belief in science, _affirms thereby a world other than_ that of life, nature, and history; and in so far as he affirms this "other world," what? must he not just thereby--deny its counterpart, this world, _our_ world?... But what I have in view will now be understood, namely, that it is always a _metaphysical belief_ on which our belief in science rests,--and that even we knowing ones of to-day, landless and anti-metaphysical, still take _our_ fire from the conflagration kindled by a belief a millennium old, the Christian belief, which was also the belief of Plato, that God is truth, that the truth is divine.... But what if this itself always becomes more untrustworthy, what if nothing any longer proves itself divine, except it be error, blindness, and falsehood;--what if God himself turns out to be our most persistent lie?-- 345.