A firm reputation. – A firm reputation used to be a thing of utmost utility; and wherever society is still ruled by herd mentality it is still today most expedient for everyone to act as if his character and occupation are unchangeable, even if basically they are not. ‘One can depend on him; he stays the same’: wherever society is threatened this is the type of praise that means the most. Society sees in this person’s virtue, in that person’s ambition, in the thoughtfulness and passion of a third dependable ever-handy instruments. This is a source of great gratification to society, and it bestows on this instrument-nature, this staying-true-to-oneself, this immutability in views, aspirations, and even vices its highest honours. Such esteem, which blooms and has bloomed everywhere alongside the morality of custom (Sittlichkeit der Sitte), fosters ‘character’ and brings all change, re-learning, and self-transformation into ill repute. However great the advantages of this mentality may be elsewhere, to the search for knowledge it is the most harmful kind of general judgement, for it condemns and discredits the willingness which a seeker after knowledge must have to declare himself against his previous opinion and to mistrust anything that wishes to become firm in us. The attitude of the seeker after knowledge, which is incompatible with a ‘firm reputation’, is considered dishonourable while the petrifaction of opinions has all the honour to itself – still today we must live under the spell of such standards! How hard living is when one feels the judgement of many millennia against and around oneself! It is probable that the search for knowledge was afflicted for many millennia with a bad conscience and that there must have been much self-contempt and secret misery in the history of the greatest spirits.