In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a sort of tyranny against “nature” and also against “reason,” that is, however, no objection, unless one should again decree by some system of morals, that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful. What is essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a long constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or Port Royal, or Puritanism, one should remember the constraint under which every language has attained to strength and freedom⁠—the metrical constraint, the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. How much trouble have the poets and orators of every nation given themselves!⁠—not excepting some of the prose writers of today, in whose ear dwells an inexorable conscientiousness⁠—“for the sake of a folly,” as utilitarian bunglers say, and thereby deem themselves wise⁠—“from submission to arbitrary laws,” as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves “free,” even free-spirited. The singular fact remains, however, that everything of the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly certainty, which exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself, or in administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as in conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary law, and in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely this is “nature” and “natural”⁠—and