Our amazement. – It is a deep and fundamental stroke of luck that science discovers things that stand up under examination and that furnish the basis, again and again, for further discoveries – after all, it could be otherwise! Indeed, we are so convinced of the uncertainty and the fantastical quality of our judgements and of the eternal change of human laws and concepts that it actually amazes us how well the results of science stand up! Formerly, one knew nothing of the changeableness of everything human; the habit of attachment to customary morality (Sitte der Sittlichkeit) sustained the faith that the entire inner life of humanity was fastened to iron necessity with eternal clamps; perhaps people then experienced a similarly voluptuous amazement when they told each other stories and fairy tales. The miraculous did a lot of good to those who at times grew weary of the rule and of eternity. To lose firm ground for once! To float! To err! To be mad! – that was part of the paradise and debauchery of former ages, whereas our bliss is like that of the shipwrecked man who has climbed ashore and is standing with both feet on the firm old earth – marvelling because it does not bob up and down.