Better know nothing than half-know many things! Better be a fool on one’s own account, than a sage on other people’s approbation! I—go to the basis:
He calls himself the spiritually conscientious one and says he learned his rigour from Zarathustra. He wants only firm basis, however small, and sees nothing great or small in true knowing.
- Scholars, poets and the knowersHe sets out a rigorous ideal of knowledge that prefers a handbreadth of firm ground to wide half-knowing.
What the critics said
Ludovici reads the conscientious in spirit as the honest scientific specialist, like Darwin, who masters a hand's breadth of knowledge and is rigorous and blind beyond it, a higher man whom Zarathustra respects.