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Value of the middle of the path. Perhaps the engendering of ge­nius is reserved to only a limited period of humanity. For one cannot expect the future of humanity to hold at the same time everything that only very particular conditions in some past time could produce-the amazing effects of religious feeling, for exam­ple. This has had its time, and many very good things can never grow again because they could grow from it alone. Thus there will never again be a religiously defined horizon to life and cul­ture. Perhaps even the type of the saint is possible only along with a certain intellectual narrowness, which is apparently gone for­ever. And so, perhaps, has the highest level of intelligence been reserved for one single era of humanity; it came forth (and is com­ing forth, for we still live in this era) when, by way of exception, an extraordinary, long-accumulated energy of the will was diver­ted through inheritance to intellectual goals. This highest level will end when such wildness and energy are no longer cultivated. Perhaps mankind, in the middle of its path, the middle period of its existence, is nearer to its actual goal than it will be at the end. The energies that condition art, for example, could very well die out; pleasure in lying, in vagueness, in symbolism, in intoxica­tion, in ecstasy, could come into disrepute. Indeed, once life is structured in a perfect state, then the present will no longer offer any theme for poetry whatsoever, and only backward people would still demand poetic unreality. They would then look back longingly to the times of the imperfect state, the half-barbaric so­ciety, to our times.