creations until they are unrecognizable; the “work” of the artist, of the philosopher, only invents him who has created it, is reputed to have created it; the “great men,” as they are reverenced, are poor little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical values spurious coinage prevails.  Those great poets, for example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not venture to mention much greater names, but I have them in my mind), as they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be:  men of the moment, enthusiastic, sensuous, and childish, light-minded and impulsive in their trust and distrust; with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed; often taking revenge with their works for an internal defilement, often seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too true memory, often lost in the mud and almost in love with it, until they become like the Will-o’-the-Wisps around the swamps, and pretend to be stars—­the people then call them idealists,—­often struggling with protracted disgust, with an ever-reappearing phantom of disbelief, which makes them cold, and obliges them to languish for Gloria and devour “faith as it is” out of the hands of intoxicated adulators:—­what a torment these great artists are and the so-called higher men in general, to him who has once found them out!  It is thus conceivable that it is just from woman—­who is clairvoyant in the world of suffering, and also unfortunately eager to help and save to an extent far beyond her powers—­that they have learnt so readily those outbreaks of boundless devoted sympathy, which the multitude, above all the reverent multitude, do not understand, and overwhelm with prying and self-gratifying interpretations.  This sympathizing invariably deceives itself as to its power; woman would like to believe that love can do everything—­it is the superstition peculiar to her.  Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love is—­he finds that it rather destroys than saves!—­It is possible that under the holy fable and travesty of the life of Jesus there is hidden one of the most painful cases of the martyrdom of knowledge about love:  the martyrdom of the most innocent and most craving heart, that never had enough of any human love, that demanded love, that demanded inexorably and frantically to be loved and nothing else, with terrible outbursts against those who refused him their love; the story of a poor soul insatiated and insatiable in love, that had to invent hell to send thither those who would not love him—­and that at last, enlightened about human love, had to invent a God who is entire love, entire capacity for love—­who takes pity on human love, because it is so paltry, so ignorant!  He who has such sentiments, he who has such knowledge about love—­seeks for death!—­But why should one deal with such painful matters?  Provided, of course, that one is not obliged to do so.