aintpots,"--said I.

With fifty patches painted on faces and limbs--so sat ye there to mine
astonishment, ye present-day men!

And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colours,
and repeated it!

Verily, ye could wear no better masks, ye present-day men, than your own
faces! Who could--RECOGNISE you!

Written all over with the characters of the past, and these characters
also pencilled over with new characters--thus have ye concealed
yourselves well from all decipherers!

And though one be a trier of the reins, who still believeth that ye have
reins! Out of colours ye seem to be baked, and out of glued scraps.

All times and peoples gaze divers-coloured out of your veils; all
customs and beliefs speak divers-coloured out of your gestures.

He who would strip you of veils and wrappers, and paints and gestures,
would just have enough left to scare the crows.

Verily, I myself am the scared crow that once saw you naked, and without
paint; and I flew away when the skeleton ogled at me.

Rather would I be a day-labourer in the nether-world, and among the
shades of the by-gone!--Fatter and fuller than ye, are forsooth the
nether-worldlings!

This, yea this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure
you naked nor clothed, ye present-day men!

All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever maketh strayed birds
shiver, is verily more homelike and familiar than your "reality."

For thus speak ye: "Real are we wholly, and without faith and
superstition": thus do ye plume yourselves--alas! even without plumes!

Indeed, how would ye be ABLE to believe, ye divers-coloured ones!--ye
who are pictures of all that hath ever been believed!

Perambulating refutations are ye, of belief itself, and a dislocation of
all thought. UNTRUSTWORTHY ONES: thus do _I_ call you, ye real ones!

All periods prate against one another in your spirits; and the dreams
and pratings of all periods were even realer than your awakeness!

Unfruitful are ye: THEREFORE do ye lack belief. But he who had to
create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions--and
believed in believing!--

Half-open doors are ye, at which grave-diggers wait. And this is YOUR
reality: "Everything deserveth to perish."

Alas, how ye stand there before me, ye unfruitful ones; how lean your
ribs! And many of you surely have had knowledge thereof.

Many a one hath said: "There hath surely a God filched something from