2. "

2. "This beginning is singular beyond measure. I had for my own inmost experience _discovered_ the only symbol and counterpart of history,--I had just thereby been the first to grasp the wonderful phenomenon of the Dionysian. And again, through my diagnosing Socrates as a decadent, I had given a wholly unequivocal proof of how little risk the trustworthiness of my psychological grasp would run of being weakened by some moralistic idiosyncrasy--to view morality itself as a symptom of decadence is an innovation, a novelty of the first rank in the history of knowledge. How far I had leaped in either case beyond the smug shallow-pate-gossip of optimism _contra_ pessimism! I was the first to see the intrinsic antithesis: here, the _degenerating_ instinct which, with subterranean vindictiveness, turns against life (Christianity, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, in a certain sense already the philosophy of Plato, all idealistic systems as typical forms), and there, a formula of _highest affirmation,_ born of fullness and overfullness, a yea-saying without reserve to suffering's self, to guilt's self, to all that is questionable and strange in existence itself. This final, cheerfullest, exuberantly mad-and-merriest Yea to life is not only the highest insight, it is also the _deepest,_ it is that which is most rigorously confirmed and upheld by truth and science. Naught that is, is to be deducted, naught is dispensable; the phases of existence rejected by the Christians and other nihilists are even of an infinitely higher order in the hierarchy of values than that which the instinct of decadence sanctions, yea durst _sanction._ To comprehend this _courage_ is needed, and, as a condition thereof, a surplus of _strength_: for precisely in degree as courage _dares_ to thrust forward, precisely according to the measure of strength, does one approach truth. Perception, the yea-saying to reality, is as much a necessity to the strong as to the weak, under the inspiration of weakness, cowardly shrinking, and _flight_ from reality--the 'ideal.' ... They are not free to perceive: the decadents have _need_ of the lie,--it is one of their conditions of self-preservation. Whoso not only comprehends the word Dionysian, but also grasps his _self_ in this word, requires no refutation of Plato or of Christianity or of Schopenhauer--_he smells the putrefaction._"