Our air. – We know it very well: to those who glance at science as if passing it on a walk, in the manner of women and unfortunately also many artists, the severity of its service – this inexorability in matters great and small, this swiftness in weighing, judging, and passing judgement – has something dizzying and fear-inspiring. What frightens them especially is how the hardest is demanded and the best done despite the absence of praise and awards; rather, as among soldiers, what one mostly hears is almost exclusively reproaches and sharp reprimands – for doing things well is considered the rule, and failure the exception; yet here as everywhere else, the rule has a reticent mouth. Now this ‘severity of science’ has something in common with the form and decorum of the very best society: it frightens the uninitiated. But someone accustomed to it wants to live nowhere else than in this bright, transparent, strongly electric air – in this masculine air. Anywhere else is not clean and airy enough for him: he suspects that there, his best art would be of no real use to anyone and of no delight to himself; that among misunderstandings half his life would slip through his fingers; that much caution, much concealment and restraint would constantly be called for – ways of having large amounts of one’s strength sapped uselessly! But in this severe and clear element he has his full strength: here he can fly! Why descend into those murky waters where one has to swim and wade and sully one’s wings? No, it’s too hard for us to live there; it’s not our fault that we were born for the air, for clean air, we rivals of the light beam, and that we would prefer to ride on specks of ether, like it – not away from the sun but towards the sun! That, however, we cannot do. So let us do all we can do: bring light to the earth; be ‘the light of the earth’! And for that, we have our wings and our speed and our severity; for that, we are masculine and even terrifying, like fire. May those be terrified of us who do not know how to gain warmth and light from us!