The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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Suddenly the terrible chamber of truth is opened, an unconscious self-protectiveness, caution, ambush, defence keeps us from the gravest knowledge. Thus have I lived heretofore. I suppress something; but the restless babbling and rolling down of stones has rendered my instinct over-powerful. Now I am rolling my last stone, the most appalling truth stands close to my hand. Truth has been exorcised out of its grave:—we created it, we waked it: the highest expression of courage and of the feeling of power. Scorn of all pessimism that has existed hitherto! We fight with it,—we find out that our only means of enduring it is to create a creature who is able to endure it:—unless, of course, we voluntarily dazzle ourselves afresh and blind ourselves in regard to it But this we are no longer able to do! We it was who created the gravest thought,—let us now create a being unto whom it will be not only light but blessed. In order to be able to create we must allow ourselves greater freedom than has ever been vouch-safed us before; to this end we must be emancipated from morality, and we must be relieved by means of feasts (Premonitions of the future! We must celebrate the future and no longer the past! We must compose the myth poetry of the future! We must live in hopes!) Blessed moments I And then we must once again pull down the curtain and turn our thoughts to the next unswerving purpose.
Mankind must set its goal above itself—not in a false world, however, but in one which would be a continuation of humanity. The half-way house is always present when the will to the future arises: the greatest event stands immediately before it. Our very essence is to create a being higher than ourselves. We must create beyond ourselves. That is the instinct of procreation, that is the instinct of action and of work.—Just as all willing presupposes a purpose, so does mankind presuppose a creature which is not yet formed but which provides the aim of life. This is the freedom of all will. Love, reverence, yearning for perfection, longing, all these things are inherent in a purpose.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.