_bellum_ is there nobility and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient prejudice! 330. _Applause._--The thinker does not need applause or the clapping of hands, provided he be sure of the clapping of his own hands: the latter, however, he cannot do without. Are there men who could also do without this, and in general without any kind of applause? I doubt it: and even as regards the wisest, Tacitus, who is no calumniator of the wise, says: _quando etiam sapientibus gloriæ cupido novissima exuitur_--that means with him: never. 331. _Better Deaf than Deafened._--Formerly a person wanted to have his _calling,_ but that no longer suffices to-day, for the market has become too large,--there has now to be _bawling._ The consequence is that even good throats outcry each other, and the best wares are offered for sale with hoarse voices; without market-place bawling and hoarseness there is now no longer any genius.--It is, sure enough, an evil age for the thinker: he has to learn to find his stillness betwixt two noises, and has to pretend to be deaf until he finally becomes so. As long as he has not learned this, he is in danger of perishing from impatience and headaches. 332. _The Evil Hour._--There has perhaps been an evil hour for every philosopher, in which he thought: What do I matter, if people should not believe my poor arguments!--And then some malicious bird has flown past him and twittered: "What do you matter? What do you matter?" 333. _What does Knowing Mean?--Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere!_ says Spinoza, so simply and sublimely, as is his wont. Nevertheless, what else is this _intelligere_ ultimately, but just the form in which the three other things become perceptible to us all at once? A result of the diverging and opposite impulses of desiring to deride, lament and execrate? Before knowledge is possible each of these impulses must first have brought forward its one-sided view of the object or event. The struggle of these one-sided views occurs afterwards, and out of it there occasionally arises a compromise, a pacification, a recognition of rights on all three sides, a sort of justice and agreement: for in virtue of the justice and agreement all those impulses can maintain themselves in existence and retain their mutual rights. We, to whose consciousness only the closing reconciliation scenes and final settling of accounts of these long processes manifest themselves, think on that account that _intelligere_ is something conciliating, just and good, something essentially antithetical to the impulses; whereas it is only _a certain relation of the impulses to one another._ For a very long time conscious thinking was regarded as the only thinking: it is now only that the truth dawns upon us that the greater part of our intellectual activity goes on unconsciously and unfelt by us; I believe, however, that the impulses which are here in mutual conflict understand rightly how to make