THIRD ESSAY.
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS?
"Careless, mocking, forceful—so does wisdom wish us: she is a woman, and never loves any one but a warrior."
- Thus Spake Zarathustra.
1.
What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In artists, nothing, or too much; in philosophers and scholars, a kind of "flair" and instinct for the conditions most favourable to advanced intellectualism; in women, at best an additional seductive fascination, a little morbidezza on a fine piece of flesh, the angelhood of a fat, pretty animal; in physiological failures and whiners (in the majority of mortals), an attempt to pose as "too good" for this world, a holy form of debauchery, their chief weapon in the battle with lingering pain and ennui; in priests, the actual priestly faith, their best engine of power, and also the supreme authority for power; in saints, finally a pretext for hibernation, their novissima gloriae cupido, their peace in nothingness ("God"), their form of madness.
But in the very fact that the ascetic ideal has meant so
