The Antichrist · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
54.
Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellects are sceptical. Zarathustra is a sceptic. The strength, the _freedom_ which proceed from intellectual power, from a superabundance of intellectual power, _manifest_ themselves as scepticism. Men of fixed convictions do not count when it comes to determining what is fundamental in values and lack of values. Men of convictions are prisoners. They do not see far enough, they do not see what is _below_ them: whereas a man who would talk to any purpose about value and non-value must be able to see five hundred convictions _beneath_ him--and _behind_ him.... A mind that aspires to great things, and that wills the means thereto, is necessarily sceptical. Freedom from any sort of conviction _belongs_ to strength, and to an independent point of view.... That grand passion which is at once the foundation and the power of a sceptic's existence, and is both more enlightened and more despotic than he is himself, drafts the whole of his intellect into its service; it makes him unscrupulous; it gives him courage to employ unholy means; under certain circumstances it does not _begrudge_ him even convictions. Conviction as a means: one may achieve a good deal by means of a conviction.
A grand passion makes use of and uses up convictions; it does not yield to them--it knows itself to be sovereign.--On the contrary, the need of faith, of something unconditioned by yea or nay, of Carlylism, if I may be allowed the word, is a need of _weakness_. The man of faith, the "believer" of any sort, is necessarily a dependent man--such a man cannot posit _himself_ as a goal, nor can he find goals within himself. The "believer" does not belong to himself; he can only be a means to an end; he must be _used up_; he needs some one to use him up. His instinct gives the highest honours to an ethic of self-effacement; he is prompted to embrace it by everything: his prudence, his experience, his vanity. Every sort of faith is in itself an evidence of self-effacement, of self-estrangement.... When one reflects how necessary it is to the great majority that there be regulations to restrain them from without and hold them fast, and to what extent control, or, in a higher sense, _slavery_, is the one and only condition which makes for the well-being of the weak-willed man, and especially woman, then one at once understands conviction and "faith." To the man with convictions they are his backbone.
To _avoid_ seeing many things, to be impartial about nothing, to be a party man through and through, to estimate all values strictly and infallibly--these are conditions necessary to the existence of such a man. But by the same token they are _antagonists_ of the truthful man--of the truth.... The believer is not free to answer the question, "true" or "not true," according to the dictates of his own conscience: integrity on _this_ point would work his instant downfall. The pathological limitations of his vision turn the man of convictions into a fanatic--Savonarola, Luther, Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon--these types stand in opposition to the strong, _emancipated_ spirit. But the grandiose attitudes of these _sick_ intellects, these intellectual epileptics, are of influence upon the great masses--fanatics are picturesque, and mankind prefers observing poses to listening to _reasons_....
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.