"Alas, ye men, within the stone there sleepeth an image for me, the image of all my dreams! Alas, that it should have to sleep in the hardest and ugliest stone!
"Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prison. From the stone the fragments fly: what's that to me?
"I will finish it: for a shadow came unto me—the stillest and lightest thing on earth once came unto me!
"The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a shadow. Alas, my brethren! What are the—gods to me now?"
Let me call attention to one last point of view. The line in italics is my pretext for this remark. A Dionysian life-task needs the hardness of the hammer, and one of its first essentials is without doubt the joy even of destruction. The command, "Harden yourselves!" and the deep conviction that all creators are hard, is the really distinctive sign of a Dionysian nature.
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL:
"THE PRELUDE TO A PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE"
1
My work for the years that followed was prescribed as distinctly as possible. Now that the yea-saying part of my life-task was accomplished, there came the turn of the negative portion, both in word and deed: the transvaluation of all values that had existed hitherto, the great war,—the conjuring-up of the day when the fatal outcome of the struggle would be decided. Meanwhile, I had slowly to look about me for my peers, for those who, out of strength, would proffer me a helping hand in my work of destruction. From that time onward, all my writings are so much bait: