of disturbance and hindrance which obstructs or could obstruct his way to that optimum (it is not his way to happiness of which I am talking, but his way to power, to action, the most powerful action, and in point of fact in many cases his way to unhappiness). Similarly, the philosopher shudders mortally at <b>marriage</b>, together with all that could persuade him to it--marriage as a fatal hindrance on the way to the _optimum_. Up to the present what great philosophers have been married? Heracleitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Schopenhauer--they were not married, and, further, one cannot _imagine_ them as married. A married philosopher belongs to _comedy_, that is my rule; as for that exception of a Socrates--the malicious Socrates married himself, it seems, _ironice_, just to prove this _very_ rule. Every philosopher would say, as Buddha said, when the birth of a son was announced to him: "Râhoula has been born to me, a fetter has been forged for me" (Râhoula means here "a little demon"); there must come an hour of reflection to every "free spirit" (granted that he has had previously an hour of thoughtlessness), just as one came once to the same Buddha: "Narrowly cramped," he reflected, "is life in the house; it is a place of uncleanness; freedom is found in leaving the house." Because he thought like this, he left the house. So many bridges to independence are shown in the ascetic idea], that the philosopher cannot refrain from exultation and clapping of hands when he hears the history of all those resolute ones, who on one day uttered a nay to all servitude and went into some _desert_; even granting that they were only strong asses, and the absolute opposite of strong minds. What, then, does the ascetic ideal mean in a philosopher? This is my answer--it will have been guessed long ago: when he sees this ideal the philosopher smiles because he sees therein an _optimum_ of the conditions of the highest and boldest intellectuality; he does not thereby deny "existence," he rather affirms thereby _his_ existence and _only_ his existence, and this perhaps to the point of not being far off the blasphemous wish, _pereat mundus, fiat philosophia, fiat philosophus, fiam!_ 8.