10. the eagerness and subtlety, i should even say craftiness, with which the problem of "the real and the apparent world" is dealt with at present throughout europe, furnishes food for thought and attention; and he who hears only a "will to truth" in the background, and nothing else, cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. in rare and isolated cases, it may really have happened that such a will to trutha certain extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the forlorn hopehas participated therein: that which in the end always prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an uncertain something. but that is nihilism, and the sign of a despairing, mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a virtue may display. it seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. in that they side against appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than in one's body?),who knows if they are not really trying to win back something which was formerly an even securer possession, something of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal soul," perhaps "the old god," in short, ideas by which they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by "modern ideas"?
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