The fundamental errors.— For man to feel any sort of physical pleasure or displeasure he must be in the grip of one of these two illusions: either he believes in the identity of certain facts, certain sensations: in which case he experiences psychical pleasure or displeasure through comparing his present states with past ones and declaring them identical or not identical (as happens in all recollection); or he believes in freedom of will, for instance when he thinks “I did not have to do this,” “this could have happened differently,” and likewise gains pleasure or displeasure. Without the errors which are active in every psychical pleasure and displeasure a humanity would never have come into existence—whose fundamental feeling is and remains that man is the free being in a world of unfreedom, the eternal miracle worker whether he does good or ill, the astonishing exception, the superbeast and almost-god, the meaning of creation which cannot be thought away, the solution of the cosmic riddle, the mighty ruler over nature and the despiser of it, the creature which calls its history world history!— Vanitas vanitatum homo.