He completed a finer and sober essay, _Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im ausser moralischen Sinne (On Truth and Falsehood in an Extra-Moral Sense.)_ (It is a pity that it is necessary to translate these high-sounding expressions, and we render them word for word.) Nietzsche always liked high-sounding words; he does not recoil here from using the word "untruth," and essays for the first time a "reversal of values." To the true he opposes the false and prefers it. He exalts the imaginary worlds which poets add to the real world. "Dare to deceive thyself and dream," Schiller had said; Friedrich Nietzsche repeats this advice. It was the happy audacity of the Greeks; they intoxicated themselves with their divine histories, their heroic myths, and this intoxication set their souls on high adventures. The loyal Athenian, persuaded that Pallas dwelt in his city, lived in a dream. More clear-sighted, would he have been stronger; more passionate, braver? Truth is good in proportion to the services which it assures, and illusion is preferable if it performs its duty better. Why deify the truth? It is the tendency of the moderns; _Pereat vita, fiat veritas!_ they say readily. Why this fanaticism? It is an inversion of the sane law for men: _Pereat Veritas, fiat vita!_ Nietzsche wrote down these dogmatic formulas, but did not stop at them. He went on writing. It was thus that he worked and advanced in his researches. Let us not forget that these thoughts, firm though they were in manner, were only indications, steps on the road. He would give birth to other and perhaps contrary thoughts. Friedrich Nietzsche had in him two instincts, opposed to each other; the one, that of the philosopher, and the other, that of the artist; the one was bent on truth, the other was ready to fabricate. He hesitated at the moment when he had to sacrifice one or the other. The instinct for the true protested within him. He did not abandon his formulas; he took them up again, he essayed new definitions, he indicated the difficulties, the hiatus. His thoughts had no disguise, and we can follow his researches. Let us translate this significant disorder: "_The philosopher of the tragic knowledge._ He binds the disordered instinct of knowledge, but not by a new metaphysic. He does not establish new beliefs. He sees with a tragic emotion that the ground of metaphysics opens under him, and he knows that the many-coloured whirlwind of science can never satisfy him. He builds for himself a new life; to art he restores its rights. "_The philosopher of the desperate knowledge_ abandons himself to blind science: knowledge at any price.