The Joyful Wisdom · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
319.
_As Interpreters of our Experiences._—One form of honesty has always been lacking among founders of religions and their kin:—they have never made their experiences a matter of the intellectual conscience. "What did I really experience? What then took place in me and around me? Was my understanding clear enough? Was my will directly opposed to all deception of the senses, and courageous in its defence against fantastic notions?"—None of them ever asked these questions, nor to this day do any of the good religious people ask them. They have rather a thirst for things which are _contrary to reason_, and they don't want to have too much difficulty in satisfying this thirst,—so they experience "miracles" and "regenerations," and hear the voices of angels! But we who are different, who are thirsty for reason, want to look as carefully into our experiences, as in the case of a scientific experiment, hour by hour, day by day! We ourselves want to be our own experiments, and our own subjects of experiment. _On Meeting Again._—A: Do I quite understand you? You are in search of something? _Where_, in the midst of the present, actual world, is _your_ niche and star? Where can _you_ lay yourself in the sun, so that you also may have a surplus of well-being, that your existence may justify itself? Let everyone do that for himself—you seem to say, —and let him put talk about generalities, concern about others and society, out of his mind!—B: I want more; I am no seeker. I want to create my own sun for myself.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.