from a perspective, only a "knowing" from a perspective, and the more emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our "idea" of that thing, our "objectivity." But the elimination of the will altogether, the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, granted that we could do so, what! would not that be called intellectual castration? 13. But let us turn back. Such a self-contradiction, as apparently manifests itself among the ascetics, "Life turned against Life," is--this much is absolutely obvious--from the physiological and not now from the psychological standpoint, simply nonsense. It can only be an apparent contradiction; it must be a kind of provisional expression, an explanation, a formula, an adjustment, a psychological misunderstanding of something, whose real nature could not be understood for a long time, and whose _real essence_ could not be described; a mere word jammed into an old _gap_ of human knowledge. To put briefly the facts against its being real: _the ascetic ideal springs from the prophylactic and self-preservative instincts which mark a decadent life_, which seeks by every means in its power to maintain its position and fight for its existence; it points to a partial physiological depression and exhaustion, against which the most profound and intact life-instincts fight ceaselessly with new weapons and discoveries. The ascetic ideal is such a weapon: its position is consequently exactly the reverse of that which the worshippers of the ideal imagine--life struggles in it and through it with death and against death; the ascetic ideal is a dodge for the _preservation_ of life. An important fact is brought out in the extent to which, as history teaches, this ideal could rule and exercise power over man, especially in all those places where the civilisation and taming of man was completed: that fact is, the diseased state of man up to the present, at any rate, of the man who has been tamed, the physiological struggle of man with death (more precisely, with the disgust with life, with exhaustion, with the wish for the "end"). The ascetic priest is the incarnate wish for an existence of another kind, an existence on another plane,--he is, in fact, the highest point of this wish, its official ecstasy and passion: but it is the very _power_ of this wish which is the fetter that binds him here; it is just that which makes him into a tool that must labour to create more favourable conditions for earthly existence, for existence on the human plane--it is with this very power that he keeps the whole herd of failures, distortions, abortions, unfortunates, _sufferers from themselves_ of every kind, fast to existence, while he as the herdsman goes instinctively on in front. You understand me already: this ascetic priest, this apparent enemy of life, this denier--he actually belongs to the really great _conservative_ and _affirmative_ forces of life....