_Change_ and _perishability_ were also feared; and by this fear an oppressed soul is revealed, full of distrust and painful experiences (the case with _Spinoza_: a man differently constituted would have regarded this change as a charm). A nature overflowing and _playing_ with energy, would call precisely the _passions, irrationality_ and _change, good_ in a eudemonistic sense, together with their consequences: danger, contrast, ruin, etc. 577. Against the value of that which always remains the same (remember Spinoza's artlessness and Descartes' likewise), the value of the shortest and of the most perishable, the seductive flash of gold on the belly of the serpent _vita_---- 578. _Moral values in epistemology itself:_-- The faith in reason--why not mistrust? The "real world" is the good world--why? Appearance, change, contradiction, struggle, regarded as immoral: the desire for a world which _knows nothing_ of these things. The transcendental world discovered, _so that_ a place may be kept for "moral freedom" (as in Kant). Dialectics as the road to virtue (in Plato and Socrates: probably because sophistry was held to be the road to immorality). Time and space are ideal: consequently there is unity in the essence of things; consequently no sin, no evil, no imperfection, a _justification_ of God. Epicurus _denied_ the possibility of knowledge, in order to keep the moral (particularly the hedonistic) values as the highest. Augustine does the same, and later Pascal ("corrupted reason"), in favour of Christian values. Descartes' contempt for everything variable; likewise Spinoza's. 579. _Concerning the psychology of metaphysics._--This world is only apparent: _therefore_ there must be a real world;--this world is conditioned: _consequently_ there must be an unconditioned world;--this world is contradictory: _consequently_ there is a world free from contradiction;--this world is evolving: _consequently_ there is somewhere a static world:--a host of false conclusions (blind faith in reason: if A exists, then its opposite B must also _exist_). Pain _inspires these conclusions_: at bottom they are _withes_ that such a world might exist; the hatred of a world which leads to suffering is likewise revealed by the fact that another and _better_ world is imagined: the _resentment_ of the metaphysician against reality is creative here.