in such self-deception,--and how much falseness I still _require_ in order to allow myself again and again the luxury of _my_ sincerity? ... In short, I still live; and life, in spite of ourselves, is not devised by morality; it _demands_ illusion, it _lives_ by illusion ... but----There! I am already beginning again and doing what I have always done, old immoralist and bird-catcher that I am,--I am talking un-morally, ultra-morally, "beyond good and evil"?... 2. Thus then, when I found it necessary, I _invented_ once on a time the "free spirits," to whom this discouragingly encouraging book with the title _Human, all-too-Human,_ is dedicated. There are no such "free spirits" nor have there been such, but, as already said, I then required them for company to keep me cheerful in the midst of evils (sickness, loneliness, foreignness,--_acedia,_ inactivity) as brave companions and ghosts with whom I could laugh and gossip when so inclined and send to the devil when they became bores,--as compensation for the lack of friends. That such free spirits _will be possible_ some day, that our Europe _will_ have such bold and cheerful wights amongst her sons of to-morrow and the day after to-morrow, as the shadows of a hermit's phantasmagoria--_I_ should be the last to doubt thereof. Already I see them _coming,_ slowly, slowly; and perhaps I am doing something to hasten their coming when I describe in advance under what auspices I _see_ them originate, and upon what paths I _see_ them come. 3.