Metaphysical world.- It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off.
At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.
Why couldn't the world that concerns us- be a fiction? And if somebody asked, 'but to be a fiction there surely belongs an author?'- couldn't one answer simply: 'Why? Doesn't this "belongs" perhaps belong to the fiction, too?'
I want to speak to the despisers of the body. I would not have them learn and teach differently, but merely say farewell to their own bodies-- and thus become silent.
Above all, there is no exception to this rule: that the idea of political superiority always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority.
Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.
Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby has he overcome every animal. With sound of triumph has he overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain.
Modern science has as its object as little pain as possible, as long a life as possible - hence a sort of eternal blessedness, but of a very limited kind in comparison with the promises of religion.