And verily, ye good and just! In you there is much to be laughed at, and especially your fear of what hath hitherto been called "the devil"! So alien are ye in your souls to what is great, that to you the Superman would be _frightful_ in his goodness! And ye wise and knowing ones, ye would flee from the solar-glow of the wisdom in which the Superman joyfully batheth his nakedness! Ye highest men who have come within my ken! this is my doubt of you, and my secret laughter: I suspect ye would call my Superman--a devil! Ah, I became tired of those highest and best ones: from their "height" did I long to be up, out, and away to the Superman! A horror came over me when I saw those best ones naked: then there grew for me the pinions to soar away into distant futures. Into more distant futures, into more southern souths than ever artist dreamed of: thither, where Gods are ashamed of all clothes! But disguised do I want to see _you,_ ye neighbours and fellowmen, and well-attired and vain and estimable, as "the good and just";-- And disguised will I myself sit amongst you--that I may _mistake_ you and myself: for that is my last manly prudence. 174-175 He who would become a child must surmount even his youth. 178 Thou goest the way to thy greatness: here shall no one steal after thee! Thy foot itself hath effaced the path behind thee, and over it standeth written: Impossibility. 184 From the gateway, This Moment, there runneth a long eternal lane _backwards:_ behind us lieth an eternity. Must not whatever _can_ run its course of all things, have already run along that lane? Must not whatever _can_ happen of all things have already happened, resulted, and gone by? And if everything have already existed, what thinkest thou, dwarf, of This Moment? Must not this gateway also--have already existed? And are not all things closely bound together in such wise that This Moment draweth all coming things after it? _Consequently_--itself also? For whatever _can_ run its course of all things, also in this long lane _outward--must_ it once more run!-- And this slow spider which creepeth in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and thou and I in this gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things--must we not all have already existed? 186 And must we not return and run in that other lane out before us, that long weird lane--must we not eternally return? 190-191 All things are baptised at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds. Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that "above all things there standeth, the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of hazard, the heaven of wantonness." "Of Hazard"--that is the oldest nobility in the world; that gave I back to all things; I emancipated them from bondage under purpose.