The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
PREFACE
This book belongs to the very few. Maybe not one of them is yet alive; unless he be of those who understand my Zarathustra. How _can_ I confound myself with those who to-day already find a hearing?—Only the day after to-morrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously. I am only too well aware of the conditions under which a man understands me, and then _necessarily_ understands. He must be intellectually upright to the point of hardness, in order even to endure my seriousness and my passion. He must be used to living on mountain-tops,—and to feeling the wretched gabble of politics and national egotism _beneath_ him. He must have become indifferent; he must never inquire whether truth is profitable or whether it may prove fatal.... Possessing from strength a predilection for questions for which no one has enough courage nowadays; the courage for the _forbidden;_ his predestination must be the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for the most remote things. A new conscience for truths which hitherto have remained dumb. And the will to economy on a large scale: to husband his strength and his enthusiasm.... He must honour himself, he must love himself; he must be absolutely free with regard to himself.... Very well then! Such men alone are my readers, my proper readers, my preordained readers: of what account are the rest?—the rest are simply—humanity.—One must be superior to humanity in power, in loftiness of soul,—in contempt.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.