And how many new Gods are not still possible! I, myself, in whom the religious--that is to say, the god-_creating_ instinct occasionally becomes active at the most inappropriate moments: how very differently the divine has revealed itself every time to me! ... So many strange things have passed before me in those timeless moments, which fall into a man's life as if they came from the moon, and in which he absolutely no longer knows how old he is or how young he still may be! ... I would not doubt that there are several kinds of gods.... Some are not wanting which one could not possibly imagine without a certain halcyonic calm and levity.... Light feet perhaps belong to the concept "God". Is it necessary to explain that a _God_ knows how to hold Himself preferably outside all Philistine and rationalist circles? also (between ourselves) beyond good and evil? His outlook is a _free_ one--as Goethe would say.--And to invoke the authority of Zarathustra, which cannot be too highly appreciated in this regard: Zarathustra goes as far as to confess, "I would only believe in a God who knew how to _dance_ ..." Again I say: how many new Gods are not still possible! Certainly Zarathustra himself is merely an old atheist: he believes neither in old nor in new gods. Zarathustra says, _"he would"_--but Zarathustra will not.... Take care to understand him well. The type God conceived according to the type of creative spirits, of "great men." 1039. And how many new _ideals_ are not, at bottom, still possible? Here is a little ideal that I seize upon every five weeks, while upon a wild and lonely walk, in the azure moment of a blasphemous joy. To spend one's life amid delicate and absurd things; a stranger to reality, half-artist, half-bird, half-metaphysician; without a yea or a nay for reality, save that from time to time one acknowledges it, after the manner of a good dancer, with the tips of one's toes; always tickled by some happy ray of sunlight; relieved and encouraged even by sorrow --for sorrow _preserves_ the happy man; fixing a little tail of jokes even to the most holy thing: this, as is clear, is the ideal of a heavy spirit, a ton in weight _of the spirit of gravity._ 1040. _From the military-school of the soul._ (Dedicated to the brave, the good-humoured, and the abstinent.) I should not like to undervalue the amiable virtues; but greatness of soul is not compatible with them. Even in the arts, grand style excludes all merely pleasing qualities. *** In times of painful tension and vulnerability, choose war. War hardens and develops muscle. *** Those who have been deeply wounded have the Olympian laughter; a man only has what he needs. *** It has now already lasted ten years: no sound any longer _reaches_ me--a land without rain. A man must have a vast amount of humanity at his disposal in order not to pine away in such drought.[8]