208. When a philosopher nowadays makes known that he is not a skeptic — I hope that has been gathered from the foregoing description of the objective spirit? — people all hear it impatiently; they regard him on that account with some apprehension, they would like to ask so many, many questions... indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so many, he is henceforth said to be dangerous. With his repudiation of skepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-threatening sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive were being tried somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered Russian NIHILINE, a pessimism BONAE VOLUNTATIS, that not only denies, means denial, but — dreadful thought!

PRACTISES denial. Against this kind of “good-will” — a will to the