an intellectual conscience? A conscience behind your "conscience"? Your decision, "this is right," has a previous history in your impulses, your likes and dislikes, your experiences and non-experiences; "_how_ has it originated?" you must ask, and afterwards the further question: "_what_ really impels me to give ear to it?" You can listen to its command like a brave soldier who hears the command of his officer. Or like a woman who loves him who commands. Or like a flatterer and coward, afraid of the commander. Or like a blockhead who follows because he has nothing to say to the contrary. In short, you can give ear to your conscience in a hundred different ways. But _that_ you hear this or that judgment as the voice of conscience, consequently, _that_ you feel a thing to be right—may have its cause in the fact that you have never reflected about yourself, and have blindly accepted from your childhood what has been designated to you as _right_: or in the fact that hitherto bread and honours have fallen to your share with that which you call your duty,—it is "right" to you, because it seems to be _your_ "condition of existence" (that you, however, have a _right_ to existence appears to you as irrefutable!). The _persistency_ of your moral judgment might still be just a proof of personal wretchedness or impersonality; your "moral force" might have its source in your obstinacy—or in your incapacity to perceive new ideals! And to be brief: if you had thought more acutely, observed more accurately, and had learned more, you would no longer under all circumstances call this and that your "duty" and your "conscience": the knowledge _how moral judgments have in general always originated_, would make you tired of these pathetic words,—as you have already grown tired of other pathetic words, for instance "sin," "salvation," and "redemption."—And now, my friend, do not talk to me about the categorical imperative! That word tickles my ear, and I must laugh in spite of your presence and your seriousness. In this connection I recollect old Kant, who, as a punishment for having _gained possession surreptitiously_ of the "thing in itself"—also a very ludicrous affair!—was imposed upon by the categorical imperative, and with that in his heart _strayed back again_ to "God," the "soul," "freedom," and "immortality," like a fox which strays back into its cage: and it had been _his_ strength and shrewdness which had _broken open_ this cage!—What? You admire the categorical imperative in you? This "persistency" of your so-called moral judgment? This absoluteness of the feeling that "as I think on this matter, so must everyone think"? Admire rather your _selfishness_ therein! And the blindness, paltriness, and modesty of your selfishness! For it is selfishness in a person to regard _his_ judgment as universal law, and a blind, paltry and modest selfishness besides, because it betrays that you have not yet discovered