The only one to resist the “melancholy voluptuousness” of his art, is
the spiritually conscientious one—the scientific specialist of whom we
read in the discourse entitled “The Leech”. He takes the harp from the
magician and cries for air, while reproving the musician in the style
of “The Case of Wagner”. When the magician retaliates by saying that the
spiritually conscientious one could have understood little of his song,
the latter replies: “Thou praisest me in that thou separatest me from
thyself.” The speech of the scientific man to his fellow higher men is
well worth studying. By means of it, Nietzsche pays a high tribute to
the honesty of the true specialist, while, in representing him as the
only one who can resist the demoniacal influence of the magician’s
music, he elevates him at a stroke, above all those present. Zarathustra
and the spiritually conscientious one join issue at the end on the
question of the proper place of “fear” in man’s history, and Nietzsche
avails himself of the opportunity in order to restate his views
concerning the relation of courage to humanity. It is precisely because
courage has played the most important part in our development that
he would not see it vanish from among our virtues to-day. “...courage
seemeth to me the entire primitive history of man.”