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Spinozas or Giordano Brunos⁠—always become in the end, even under the most intellectual masquerade, and perhaps without being themselves aware of it, refined vengeance-seekers and poison-brewers (just lay bare the foundation of Spinoza’s ethics and theology!), not to speak of the stupidity of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that the sense of philosophical humour has left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his “sacrifice for the sake of truth,” forces into the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him; and if one has hitherto contemplated him only with artistic curiosity, with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous desire to see him also in his deterioration (deteriorated into a “martyr,” into a stage-and-tribune-bawler). Only, that it is necessary with such a desire to be clear what spectacle one will see in any case⁠—merely a satyric play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the continued proof that the long, real tragedy is at an end , supposing that every philosophy has been a long tragedy in its origin.