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Rh many kinds of mistrust and hate, will need to practise much hardness against himself and alas! also against others—such a philosophy offers easy flattery to no one: one must be born for it." Not all are so born, he freely admits, and he speaks of himself as a law for his own, not for all. He even says that a deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood, for "in the latter case his vanity perhaps suffers, but in the former his heart, his sympathy, which always says, 'Ah, why will you have things as hard as I?'" So independence is to his mind something for few, and one should not attempt it, unless "compelled." So much did he feel that necessity hedges us about and that we must come to terms with it, that amor fati became one of his mottoes.

And yet loneliness, and, above all, change in loneliness are not agreeable things, and it is impossible to avoid a sense of insecurity in the midst of them. With all his assurance Nietzsche knew that his way was a dangerous one, and he had his moments of misgiving. He craved companionship and the support that companionship gives. Once the confession drops from him that after an hour of sympathetic intercourse with men of opposite views his whole philosophy wavers, so foolish does it seem to wish to be in the right at the cost of love, and so hard not to be able to communicate what is dearest for fear of losing sympathy—"hinc meae lacrimae." He had accordingly no wish to impose himself on others. He asks youthful readers not to take his doctrines forthwith as a guide of life, but rather as theses to be weighed; he throws the responsibility on them, urging them to be true to themselves even against him, and saying that so they will be really true to him. In the same spirit he says,

It lureth thee, my mode and speech? Thou followest me, to hear me teach?