a description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands and senses could hardly be fine enough for it!  It was precisely owing to moral philosophers’ knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary epitome, or an accidental abridgement—­perhaps as the morality of their environment, their position, their church, their Zeitgeist, their climate and zone—­it was precisely because they were badly instructed with regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by no means eager to know about these matters, that they did not even come in sight of the real problems of morals—­problems which only disclose themselves by a comparison of many kinds of morality.  In every “Science of Morals” hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself has been omitted:  there has been no suspicion that there was anything problematic there!  That which philosophers called “giving a basis to morality,” and endeavoured to realize, has, when seen in a right light, proved merely a learned form of good faith in prevailing morality, a new means of its expression, consequently just a matter-of-fact within the sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort of denial that it is lawful for this morality to be called in question—­and in any case the reverse of the testing, analyzing, doubting, and vivisecting of this very faith.  Hear, for instance, with what innocence—­almost worthy of honour—­Schopenhauer represents his own task, and draw your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a “Science” whose latest master still talks in the strain of children and old wives:  “The principle,” he says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme der Ethik), [Footnote:  Pages 54-55 of Schopenhauer’s Basis of Morality, translated by Arthur B. Bullock, M.A. (1903).] “the axiom about the purport of which all moralists are practically agreed:  neminem laede, immo omnes quantum potes juva—­is really the proposition which all moral teachers strive to establish, . . . the real basis of ethics which has been sought, like the philosopher’s stone, for centuries.”—­The difficulty of establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be great—­it is well known that Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false and sentimental this proposition is, in a world whose essence is Will to Power, may be reminded that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist, actually—­played the flute . . . daily after dinner:  one may read about the matter in his biography.  A question by the way:  a pessimist, a repudiator of God and of the world, who makes A halt at morality—­who assents to morality, and plays the flute to laede-neminem morals, what?  Is that really—­a pessimist?