accustomed, and the accustomed is the most difficult of all to "understand," that is to say, to perceive as a problem, to perceive as strange, distant, "outside of us."... The great certainty of the natural sciences in comparison with psychology and the criticism of the elements of consciousness—_unnatural_ sciences as one might almost be entitled to call them—rests precisely on the fact that they take _what is strange_ as their object: while it is almost like something contradictory and absurd _to wish_ to take generally what is not strange as an object.... 356. _In what Manner Europe will always become "more Artistic."_—Providing a living still enforces even in the present day (in our transition period when so much ceases to enforce) a definite _rôle_ on almost all male Europeans, their so-called callings; some have the liberty, an apparent liberty, to choose this rôle themselves, but most have it chosen for them. The result is strange enough. Almost all Europeans confound themselves with their rôle when they advance in age; they themselves are the victims of their "good acting," they have forgotten how much chance, whim and arbitrariness swayed them when their "calling" was decided—and how many other rôles they _could_ perhaps have played: for it is now too late! Looked at more closely, we see that their characters have actually _evolved_ out of their rôle, nature out of art. There were ages in which people believed with unshaken confidence, yea, with piety, in their predestination for this very business, for that very mode of livelihood, and would not at all acknowledge chance, or the fortuitous rôle, or arbitrariness therein. Ranks, guilds, and hereditary trade privileges succeeded, with the help of this belief, in rearing those extraordinary broad towers of society which distinguished the Middle Ages, and of which at all events one thing remains to their credit: capacity for duration (and duration is a value of the first rank on earth!). But there are ages entirely the reverse, the properly democratic ages, in which people tend to become more and more oblivious of this conviction, and a sort of impudent conviction and quite contrary mode of viewing things comes to the front, the Athenian conviction which is first observed in the epoch of Pericles, the American conviction of the present day, which wants also more and more to become an European conviction, whereby the individual is convinced that he can do almost anything, that he _can play almost any rôle_, whereby everyone makes experiments with himself, improvises, tries anew, tries with delight, whereby all nature ceases and becomes art.... The Greeks, having adopted this _rôle-creed_—an artist creed, if you will—underwent step by step, as is well known, a curious transformation, not in every respect worthy of imitation: _they became actual stage-players_; and as such they enchanted, they conquered all the world, and at last even the conqueror