Walk in the footsteps in which your fathers' virtue has already walked! How would you rise high, if your fathers' will should not rise with you?
Yet he who would be a firstling, let him take care lest he also become a lastling! And where the vices of your fathers are, there should you not set up as saints!
He whose fathers were inclined for women, and for strong wine and flesh of wildboar swine; what would it be if he demanded chastity of himself?
A folly would it be! Much, verily, does it seem to me for such a one, if he should be the husband of one or of two or of three women.
And if he founded monasteries, and inscribed over their portals: "The way to holiness,"- I should still say: What good is it! it is a new folly!
He has founded for himself a penance-house and refuge-house: much good may it do! But I do not believe in it.
In solitude there grows what any one brings into it- also the brute in one's nature. Thus is solitude inadvisable to many.
Has there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints of the wilderness? Around them was not only the devil loose- but also the swine.
14.
Shy, ashamed, awkward, like the tiger whose spring has failed- thus, you higher men, have I often seen you slink aside. A cast which you made had failed.
But what does it matter, you dice-players! You had not learned
