ght out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be
regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices,
which they dub 'truths'--and _very_ far from having the conscience which
bravely admits this to itself; very far from having the good taste or the
courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn
friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.... It has
gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has
consisted of--namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of
involuntary and unconscious autobiography, and, moreover, that the moral
(or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital
germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.... Whoever considers
the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they
may have acted as _inspiring_ genii (or as demons and cobolds) will find
that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that
each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the
ultimate end of existence and the legitimate _lord_ over all the other
impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and, as _such_, attempts to
philosophize."

What Nietzsche has done here is, in his swashbuckling fashion, to cut
under the abstract and final pretensions of creeds. Difficulties arise
when we try to apply this wisdom in the present. That dogmas _were_
instruments of human purposes is not so incredible; that they still _are_
instruments is not so clear to everyone; and that they will be, that they
should be--this seems a monstrous attack on the citadel of truth. It is
possible to believe that other men's theories were temporary and merely
useful; we like to believe that ours will have a greater authority.

It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yet
that is just what it has always done, and ought always to do. Many of us
are ready to grant that in the past men's motives were deeper than their
intellects: we forgive them with a kind of self-righteousness which says
that they knew not what they did. But to follow the great tradition of
human wisdom deliberately, with our eyes open in the manner of Sorel,
that seems a crazy procedure. A notion of intellectual honor fights
against it: we think we must aim at final truth, and not allow
autobiography to creep into speculation.

Now the trouble with such an idol is that