"They may eventually, if Mars will continue trifling with wood-nymphs and other well-intended cordials, become a great power. They may beget Neo-Stoics, who may beget Neo-Christians. They themselves may then appear only as the tiny drum-pages running in front or beside the real fighters in battle. Yet their importance will be little impaired thereby.
"The Church Fathers have frequently endeavoured to honour me with the name of one of the lay protagonists of Christianity. But I know much better than that. The true protagonists were Antisthenes or Diogenes; and that is why the Roman Catholic Church has at no time countenanced me. And just as we now do not mind the jokes, burlesques and boutades of Diogenes any more, admitting freely, as we do, that behind them was the aurora borealis of a new creed, a new movement, a new world; even so we must not mind the grotesque boutades of Tolstoy, Ibsen, Shaw, Anatole, and other modern Cynics, for behind them is the magnetic fulguration of new electric currents in the social world.
"This, the public indistinctly feel; that's why they continue to read and criticise or revile these men. The public feels that while there may not be much in what these men yield for the present, the future, possibly, is theirs.
"The little ones below do not as yet know, that there is no future; nor that all that is or can be, has long been. Therefore they do not turn to us who might point out to them what things are driving at; but they want the oldest things in ever new forms.
"We, however, know that plus cela change, plus c'est la même chose, as one of the modern Athenians in Paris has put it.
"Do not frown on me, Heraclitus; I well know that you hold the very reverse, and that you would say: 'plus c'est la même chose, plus cela change.'
"I have gladly accepted that in my earthly time when I made a sharp distinction between phenomena and super-phenomena, or noumena. But I do no longer make such a distinction.
"We are above time. We Hellenes are alive to-day as we were over two thousand years ago. We still think aloud or on papyrus the most beautiful and the truest thoughts of men. Have we not but quite lately sent down for one of us to while amongst us for ever? He too began as a Cynic. But having learnt the inanity of the so-called 'future,' he rose above time and space, and soared on the wings of eagle concepts to the heights where we welcome him. He has just entered the near port in a boat rowed by the nymphs of Circe. We cannot close our meeting in a more condign fashion than by asking Hebe to offer him the goblet of welcome."
The eyes of all present turned to the shore, where a man of middle age, who had evidently regained his former vigour, walked up to the steps of the amphitheatre. When he came quite near to the Assembly, Diogenes exclaimed: "Hail to thee, Frederick Nietzsche!"