d to grasp more delicately; which scents the hidden and forgotten
treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick dark
ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold, long buried and
imprisoned in mud and sand; the genius of the heart, from contact with
which every one goes away richer; not favoured or surprised, not as
though gratified and oppressed by the good things of others; but richer
in himself, newer than before, broken up, blown upon, and sounded by a
thawing wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more
bruised, but full of hopes which as yet lack names, full of a new will
and current, full of a new ill-will and counter-current... but what am I
doing, my friends? Of whom am I talking to you? Have I forgotten myself
so far that I have not even told you his name? Unless it be that you
have already divined of your own accord who this questionable God
and spirit is, that wishes to be PRAISED in such a manner? For, as it
happens to every one who from childhood onward has always been on his
legs, and in foreign lands, I have also encountered on my path many
strange and dangerous spirits; above all, however, and again and again,
the one of whom I have just spoken: in fact, no less a personage than
the God DIONYSUS, the great equivocator and tempter, to whom, as you
know, I once offered in all secrecy and reverence my first-fruits--the
last, as it seems to me, who has offered a SACRIFICE to him, for I
have found no one who could understand what I was then doing. In
the meantime, however, I have learned much, far too much, about the
philosophy of this God, and, as I said, from mouth to mouth--I, the last
disciple and initiate of the God Dionysus: and perhaps I might at last
begin to give you, my friends, as far as I am allowed, a little taste of
this philosophy? In a hushed voice, as is but seemly: for it has to do
with much that is secret, new, strange, wonderful, and uncanny. The
very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that therefore Gods also
philosophize, seems to me a novelty which is not unensnaring, and might
perhaps arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers;--among you, my
friends, there is less to be said against it, except that it comes too
late and not at the right time; for, as it has been disclosed to me, you
are loth nowadays to believe in God and gods. It may happen, too, that
in the frankness of my story I must go further than is agreeable to the
strict u