5. Do we want to be more prudent than we are, or more daring? 6. Do we want to attain a goal, or do we want to avoid all goals (like the philosopher, for instance, who scents a boundary, a _cul-de-sac,_ a prison, a piece of foolishness in every goal)? 7. Do we want to become more respected, or more feared, or more _despised_? 8. Do we want to become tyrants, and seducers, or do we want to become shepherds and gregarious animals? 910. _The type of my disciples._--To such men as _concern vie in any way_ I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities of all kinds. I wish them to be acquainted with profound self-contempt, with the martyrdom of self-distrust, with the misery of the defeated: I have no pity for them; because I wish them to have the only thing which to-day proves whether a man has any value or not, namely, _the capacity of sticking to his guns._ 911. The happiness and self-contentedness of the lazzaroni, or the blessedness of "beautiful souls," or the consumptive love of Puritan pietists, proves nothing in regard to _the order of rank_ among men. As a great educator one ought inexorably to thrash a race of such blissful creatures into unhappiness. The danger of belittlement and of a slackening of powers follows immediately I am _opposed_ to happiness _à la_ Spinoza or _à la_ Epicurus, and to all the relaxation of contemplative states. But when virtue is the means to such happiness, well then, _one must master even virtue._ 912. I cannot see how any one can make up for having missed going to _a good school_ at the proper time. Such a person does not know himself; he walks through life without ever having learned to walk. His soft muscles betray themselves at every step. Occasionally life itself is merciful enough to make a man recover this lost and severe schooling: by means of periods of sickness, perhaps, which exact the utmost will-power and self-control; or by means of a sudden state of poverty, which threatens his wife and child, and which may force a man to such activity as will restore energy to his slackened tendons, and a _tough spirit_ to his will to life. The most desirable thing of all, however, is, under all circumstances to have severe discipline _at the right time, i.e._ at that age when it makes us proud that people should expect great things from us. For this is what distinguishes hard schooling, as good schooling, from every other schooling, namely, that a good deal is demanded, that a good deal is severely exacted; that goodness, nay even excellence itself, is required as if it were normal; that praise is scanty, that leniency is non-existent; that blame is sharp, practical, and without reprieve, and has no regard to talent and antecedents. We are in every way in need of such a school: and this holds good of corporeal as well as of spiritual things; it would be fatal to draw distinctions here! The same discipline makes the soldier