in short, a man who is a
MASTER by nature--when such a man has sympathy, well! THAT sympathy has
value! But of what account is the sympathy of those who suffer! Or of
those even who preach sympathy! There is nowadays, throughout almost the
whole of Europe, a sickly irritability and sensitiveness towards pain,
and also a repulsive irrestrainableness in complaining, an effeminizing,
which, with the aid of religion and philosophical nonsense, seeks
to deck itself out as something superior--there is a regular cult of
suffering. The UNMANLINESS of that which is called "sympathy" by such
groups of visionaries, is always, I believe, the first thing that
strikes the eye.--One must resolutely and radically taboo this latest
form of bad taste; and finally I wish people to put the good amulet,
"GAI SABER" ("gay science," in ordinary language), on heart and neck, as
a protection against it.

294. THE OLYMPIAN VICE.--Despite the philosopher who, as a genuine
Englishman, tried to bring laughter into bad repute in all thinking
minds--"Laughing is a bad infirmity of human nature, which every
thinking mind will strive to overcome" (Hobbes),--I would even
allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality of their
laughing--up to those who are capable of GOLDEN laughter. And supposing
that Gods also philosophize, which I am strongly inclined to believe,
owing to many reasons--I have no doubt that they also know how to laugh
thereby in an overman-like and new fashion--and at the expense of all
serious things! Gods are fond of ridicule: it seems that they cannot
refrain from laughter even in holy matters.

295. The genius of the heart, as that great mysterious one possesses
it, the tempter-god and born rat-catcher of consciences, whose voice can
descend into the nether-world of every soul, who neither speaks a word
nor casts a glance in which there may not be some motive or touch
of allurement, to whose perfection it pertains that he knows how to
appear,--not as he is, but in a guise which acts as an ADDITIONAL
constraint on his followers to press ever closer to him, to follow him
more cordially and thoroughly;--the genius of the heart, which imposes
silence and attention on everything loud and self-conceited, which
smoothes rough souls and makes them taste a new longing--to lie placid
as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in them;--the genius
of the heart, which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate,
an