Delusion of the contemplative ones. – Higher human beings distinguish themselves from the lower by seeing and hearing, and thoughtfully seeing and hearing, immeasurably more – and just this distinguishes human beings from animals, and the higher animals from the lower. The world becomes ever fuller for someone who grows into the height of humanity; ever more baited hooks to attract his interest are cast his way; the things that stimulate him grow steadily in number, as do the kinds of things that please and displease him – the higher human being always becomes at the same time happier and unhappier. But a delusion remains his constant companion: he thinks himself placed as spectator and listener before the great visual and acoustic play that is life; he calls his nature contemplative and thereby overlooks the fact that he is also the actual poet and ongoing author of life – that, to be sure, he differs greatly from the actor of this drama, the so-called man of action, but even more so from a mere spectator and festival visitor in front of the stage. As the poet, he certainly possesses vis contemplativa10 and a retrospective view of his work; but at the same time and above all vis creativa,11 which the man of action lacks, whatever appearances and universal belief may say. It is we, the thinking-sensing ones, who really and continually make something that is not yet there: the whole perpetually growing world of valuations, colours, weights, perspectives, scales, affirmations, and negations. This poem that we have invented is constantly internalized, drilled, translated into flesh and reality, indeed, into the commonplace, by the so-called practical human beings (our actors). Whatever has value in the present world has it not in itself, according to its nature – nature is always value-less – but has rather been given, granted value, and we were the givers and granters! Only we have created the world that concerns human beings! But precisely this knowledge we lack, and when we catch it for a moment we have forgotten it the next: we misjudge our best power and underestimate ourselves just a bit, we contemplative ones. We are neither as proud nor as happy as we could be.