"Even if metaphysics be only an anthropomorphic appearance, for the tragic philosopher that achieves the _image of being._ He is not sceptical. Here there is an idea to create; for scepticism is not the end. The instinct of knowledge forced to its extreme limits turns against itself to transform itself into a criticism of the faculty of knowledge. Knowledge in the service of the best kind of life. One should even _will illusion,_ therein lies the tragic." What is then this philosopher of the desperate knowledge whose attitude Nietzsche defines in two lines. Must he not love him, having found for him already such a beautiful name? _There is an idea to create,_ writes Nietzsche; what then is this idea? It seems that in many passages Nietzsche is pleased to contemplate, without its veils, that terrible reality, whose aspect alone, says the Hindu legend, means death. "How," he writes, "do they dare talk of a destiny for the earth? In infinite time and space there are no ends: _what is there, is eternally there,_ whatever the forms. What can result from it for a metaphysical world one does not see. "Without support of this order humanity should stand firm; a terrible task for the artist! "The terrible consequences of Darwinism, in which, moreover, I believe. We respect certain qualities which we hold as eternal, moral, artistic, religious, &c, &c, &c. The spirit, a production of the brain, to consider it as supernatural! To deify it, what folly! "To speak of an unconscious end of humanity, to me, that is false. Humanity is not a whole like an ant-hill. Perhaps one may speak of the unconscious ends of an ant-hill--but of all the ant-hills of the world! "Our duty is not to take shelter in metaphysics, but actively to sacrifice ourselves to the _birth of culture._ Hence my severity against misty idealism." At that instant Nietzsche had almost reached the term of his thought, but with great labour and consequent suffering. Headaches, pains in the eyes and stomach, laid hold of him once more. The softest light hurt him, he was obliged to give up reading. Nevertheless, his thought never halted. He was again occupied with the philosophers of tragic Greece; he listened to the words which come down to us diminished by the centuries, but always firm. He heard the concert of the everlasting responses-- _Thales._ Everything derives from a unique element. _Anaximander._ The flux of things is their punishment. _Heraclitus._ A law governs the flux and the institution of things. _Parmenides._ The flux and the institution of things is illusion. The One alone exists. _Anaxagoras._ All qualities are eternal; there is no becoming. _The Pythagoreans._ All qualities are quantities. _Empedocles._ All causes are magical. _Democritus._ All causes are mechanical. _Socrates._ Nothing is constant except thought.