The greatest danger. – Had there not always been a majority of men who felt the discipline of their heads – their ‘rationality’ – to be their pride, their obligation, their virtue, and who were embarrassed or ashamed by all fantasizing and debauchery of thought, being the friends of ‘healthy common sense’, humanity would have perished long ago! The greatest danger that hovered and still hovers over humanity is the outbreak of madness – that is, the outbreak of arbitrariness in feeling, seeing, and hearing; the enjoyment in the lack of discipline of the head, the joy in human unreason. The opposite of the world of the madman is not truth and certainty but the generality and universal bindingness of a faith; in short, the non-arbitrary in judgement. And man’s greatest labour so far has been to reach agreement about very many things and to lay down a law of agreement – regardless of whether these things are true or false. This is the discipline of the head which has preserved humanity – but the counter-drives are still so powerful that it is basically with little confidence that one may speak of the future of humanity. The picture of things still moves and shifts continually, and perhaps more and faster from now on than ever before; continually, the most select minds bristle at this universal bindingness – the explorers of truth above all! Continually this faith, as a commonplace belief shared by everyone, breeds nausea and a new lust in subtler minds; and the slow tempo for all spiritual processes which this faith makes necessary, this imitation of the tortoise that is recognized as the norm here, would by itself be sufficient to turn artists and poets into deserters: it is these impatient minds in whom a veritable delight in madness breaks out, because madness has such a cheerful tempo! What is needed, then, are virtuous intellects – oh, I’ll use the most unambiguous word – what is needed is virtuous stupidity; what is needed are unwavering beat-keepers of the slow spirit, so that the believers of the great common faith stay together and go on dancing their dance: it is an exigency of the first order which commands and demands. We others are the exception and the danger – we stand eternally in need of defence! – Now there is certainly something to be said for the exception, provided it never wants to become the rule.