—For a hunt after susceptible simpletons: all mouse-traps for the heart have again been set! And whenever I lift a curtain, a night-moth rusheth out of it. Did it perhaps squat there along with another night-moth? For everywhere do I smell small concealed communities; and wherever there are closets there are new devotees therein, and the atmosphere of devotees. They sit for long evenings beside one another, and say: “Let us again become like little children and say, ‘good God!’”—ruined in mouths and stomachs by the pious confectioners. Or they look for long evenings at a crafty, lurking cross-spider, that preacheth prudence to the spiders themselves, and teacheth that “under crosses it is good for cobweb-spinning!” Or they sit all day at swamps with angle-rods, and on that account think themselves PROFOUND; but whoever fisheth where there are no fish, I do not even call him superficial! Or they learn in godly-gay style to play the harp with a hymn-poet, who would fain harp himself into the heart of young girls:—for he hath tired of old girls and their praises. Or they learn to shudder with a learned semi-madcap, who waiteth in darkened rooms for spirits to come to him—and the spirit runneth away entirely! Or they listen to an old roving howl- and growl-piper, who hath learnt from the sad winds the sadness of sounds; now pipeth he as the wind, and preacheth sadness in sad strains. And some of them have even become night-watchmen: they know now how to blow horns, and go about at night and awaken old things which have long fallen asleep. Five words about old things did I hear yester-night at the garden-wall: they came from such old, sorrowful, arid night-watchmen. “For a father he careth not sufficiently for his children: human fathers do this better!”— “He is too old! He now careth no more for his children,”—answered the other night-watchman. “HATH he then children? No one can prove it unless he himself prove it! I have long wished that he would for once prove it thoroughly.” “Prove? As if HE had ever proved anything! Proving is difficult to him; he layeth great stress on one’s BELIEVING him.” “Ay! Ay! Belief saveth him; belief in him. That is the way with old people! So it is with us also!”— —Thus spake to each other the two old night-watchmen and light-scarers, and tooted thereupon sorrowfully on their horns: so did it happen yester-night at the garden-wall. To me, however, did the heart writhe with laughter, and was like to break; it knew not where to go, and sunk into the midriff. Verily, it will be my death yet—to choke with laughter when I see asses drunken, and hear night-watchmen thus doubt about God. Hath the time not LONG since passed for all such doubts? Who may nowadays awaken such old slumbering, light-shunning things! With the old Deities hath it long since come to an end:—and verily, a good joyful Deity-end had they!