, and above all to interpret himself into them--he,
the most daring of all interpreters, who lifted the entire Socrates out
of the street, as a popular theme and song, to exhibit him in endless
and impossible modifications--namely, in all his own disguises and
multiplicities. In jest, and in Homeric language as well, what is the
Platonic Socrates, if not--[Greek words inserted here.]

191. The old theological problem of "Faith" and "Knowledge," or more
plainly, of instinct and reason--the question whether, in respect to the
valuation of things, instinct deserves more authority than rationality,
which wants to appreciate and act according to motives, according to
a "Why," that is to say, in conformity to purpose and utility--it
is always the old moral problem that first appeared in the person of
Socrates, and had divided men's minds long before Christianity. Socrates
himself, following, of course, the taste of his talent--that of a
surpassing dialectician--took first the side of reason; and, in fact,
what did he do all his life but laugh at the awkward incapacity of the
noble Athenians, who were men of instinct, like all noble men, and could
never give satisfactory answers concerning the motives of their actions?
In the end, however, though silently and secretly, he laughed also
at himself: with his finer conscience and introspection, he found
in himself the same difficulty and incapacity. "But why"--he said
to himself--"should one on that account separate oneself from the
instincts! One must set them right, and the reason ALSO--one must follow
the instincts, but at the same time persuade the reason to support them
with good arguments." This was the real FALSENESS of that great and
mysterious ironist; he brought his conscience up to the point that he
was satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting: in fact, he perceived
the irrationality in the moral judgment.--Plato, more innocent in such
matters, and without the craftiness of the plebeian, wished to prove to
himself, at the expenditure of all his strength--the greatest strength
a philosopher had ever expended--that reason and instinct lead
spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to "God"; and since Plato, all
theologians and philosophers have followed the same path--which means
that in matters of morality, instinct (or as Christians call it,
"Faith," or as I call it, "the herd") has hitherto triumphed. Unless
one should make an exception in the case of Descartes, the fathe