_My first solution of the problem: Dionysian wisdom. The joy in the destruction of the most noble thing,_ and at the sight of its gradual undoing, regarded as the joy over what is _coming and what lies in the future,_ which triumphs over _actual things, however good they may be._ Dionysian: temporary identification with the principle of life (voluptuousness of the martyr included). _My innovations._ The Development of Pessimism: intellectual pessimism; _moral_ criticism, the dissolution of the last comfort. Knowledge, a sign of _decay,_ veils by means of an illusion all strong action; isolated culture is unfair and therefore strong. (1) My _fight_ against decay and the increasing weakness of personality. I sought a new _centrum._ (2) The impossibility of this endeavour is _recognised._ (3) _I therefore travelled farther along the road of dissolution--and along it I found new sources of strength for individuals._ We _must be destroyers_!--I perceived that the state of _dissolution is one in which individual beings are able to arrive at a kind of perfection not possible hitherto, it is an image and isolated example of life in general._ To the paralysing feeling of general dissolution and imperfection, I opposed the _Eternal Recurrence._ 418. People naturally seek the picture of life in _that_ philosophy which makes them most cheerful--that is to say, in that philosophy which gives the highest sense of freedom to _their strongest instinct._ This is probably the case with me. 419.