On the question of being understandable. – One does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is by no means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it incomprehensible: perhaps that was part of the author’s intention – he didn’t want to be understood by just ‘anybody’. Every nobler spirit and taste selects his audience when he wants to communicate; in selecting it, he simultaneously erects barriers against ‘the others’. All subtler laws of a style originated therein: they simultaneously keep away, create a distance, forbid ‘entrance’, understanding, as said above – while they open the ears of those whose ears are related to ours. And let me say this amongst ourselves and about my own case: I want neither the inexperience nor the liveliness of my temperament to keep me from being understandable to you, my friends – not the liveliness, as much as it forces me to deal with a matter swiftly in order to deal with it at all. For I approach deep problems such as I do cold baths: fast in, fast out. That this is no way to get to the depths, to get deep enough, is the superstition of those who fear water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. Oh, the great cold makes one fast! And incidentally: does a matter stay unrecognized, not understood, merely because it has been touched in flight; is only glanced at, seen in a flash? Does one absolutely have to sit firmly on it first? Have brooded on it as on an egg? *Diu noctuque incubando,*54 as Newton said of himself? At least there are truths that are especially shy and ticklish and can’t be caught except suddenly – that one must surprise or leave alone. Finally, my brevity has yet another value: given the questions that occupy me, I must say many things briefly so that they will be heard even more briefly. For, as an immoralist, one needs to avoid corrupting innocents – I mean, asses and old maids of both sexes to whom life offers nothing but their innocence; even more, my writing should inspire, elevate, and encourage them to be virtuous. I can’t imagine a funnier sight on earth than inspired old asses and maids who get aroused by the sweet sentiments of virtue: and ‘this I have seen’ – thus spoke Zarathustra. Enough about brevity; things stand worse with my ignorance, which I don’t try to hide from myself. There are hours when I am ashamed of it to be sure, also hours when I am ashamed of this shame. Maybe we philosophers are all in a bad position regarding knowledge these days: science is growing, and the most scholarly of us are close to discovering that they know too little. But it would be even worse if things were different – if we knew too much; our task is and remains above all not to mistake ourselves for someone else. We are different from scholars, although we are inevitably also, among other things, scholarly. We have different needs, grow differently; have a different digestion: we need more; we also need less. There is no formula for how much a spirit needs for its nourishment; but if it has a taste for independence, for quick coming and going, for wandering, perhaps for adventures of which only the swiftest are capable, it would rather live free with little food than unfree and stuffed. It is not fat but the greatest possible suppleness and strength that a good dancer wants from his nourishment and I wouldn’t know what the spirit of a philosopher might more want to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his art, and finally also his only piety, his ‘service of God’.