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xxii

Indeed, my patient friends, in this late preface, whieh might well-nigh have become a necrologue, a funeral oration, I will tell you what I sought in those depths: for, you see, I have returned and—what is more—safe and sound. Do not think that I intend to invite you to the same hazardous enterprise! Or even to the same solitude! For whoever pursues a course of his own, meets nobody: this is peculiar to the “course of one’s own.” Nobody comes to his assistance; any danger, emergency, wickedness and bad weather, has to be faced alone. He has his own way—and, as is fair, experiences bitterness, and occasional annoyance at this “course of his own”: such as, for instance, the conviction that even his friends cannot make out who he is, whither he is bound; that they occasionally ask themselves: “Well? Does he really proeced?” “Does he know his way?” In those days I undertook something that might not have been to everybody’s taste: I descended into the lowest depths, I searched to the bottom, I began to examine and unearth an old faith on which for thousands of years we philosophers used to build as on the safest foundation—ever again, though, as yet, every structure collapsed. I began to undermine our faith in morals. But you do not understand me?

As yet we have made good and evil the least, last