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understand it, and laugh at the way in which precisely the
best knowledge seeks most to retain us in this SIMPLIFIED,
thoroughly artificial, suitably imagined, and suitably falsi-
fied world: at the way in which, whether it will or not, it
loves error, because, as living itself, it loves life!

25. After such a cheerful commencement, a serious word
would fain be heard; it appeals to the most serious minds.
Take care, ye philosophers and friends of knowledge, and
beware of martyrdom! Of suffering ‘for the truth’s sake’!
even in your own defense! It spoils all the innocence and
fine neutrality of your conscience; it makes you headstrong
against objections and red rags; it stupefies, animalizes, and
brutalizes, when in the struggle with danger, slander, suspi-
cion, expulsion, and even worse consequences of enmity, ye
have at last to play your last card as protectors of truth upon
earth—as though ‘the Truth’ were such an innocent and
incompetent creature as to require protectors! and you of
all people, ye knights of the sorrowful countenance, Messrs
Loafers and Cobweb-spinners of the spirit! Finally, ye know
sufficiently well that it cannot be of any consequence if YE
just carry your point; ye know that hitherto no philosopher
has carried his point, and that there might be a more laud-
able truthfulness in every little interrogative mark which
you place after your special words and favourite doctrines
(and occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn
pantomime and trumping games before accusers and law-
courts! Rather go out of the way! Flee into concealment! And
have your masks and your ruses, that ye may be mistaken