"Trust not thyself, young dreamer."--However sincerely you may long for truth, whatever sufferings and horrors you may have surpassed, do not believe your own self, young dreamer. What you are looking for, you won't find. At the utmost, if you have a gift for writing you will bring out a nice original book. Even--do not be offended--you may be satisfied with such a result. In Nietzsche's letters relating to the year 1888, the year when Brandes discovered him, you will find a sad confirmation of the above. Had not Nietzsche struggled, sought, suffered?--and behold, towards the end of his life, when it would have seemed that all mundane rewards had become trivial to him, he threw himself with rapture on the tidings of first fame, and rushed to share his joy with all his friends, far and near. He does not tire of telling in dozens of letters and in varying forms the story of how Brandes first began his lectures on him, Nietzsche, how the audience consisted of three hundred people, and he even quotes Brandes' placard announcement in the original Danish. Fame just threw him a smile, and forgotten are all the horrible experiences of former days. The loneliness, the desertedness, the cave in the mountain, the man into whose mouth the serpent climbed--all forgotten, every thought turned to the ordinary, easily-comprehensible good. Such is man. _Mit gier'ger Hand nach Schätzen gräbt_ _Und froh ist wenn er Regenwürmer findet_. 19 When a man is young he writes because it seems to him he has discovered a new almighty truth which he must make haste to impart to forlorn mankind. Later, becoming more modest, he begins to doubt his truths: and then he writes to convince himself. A few more years go by, and he knows he was mistaken all round, so there is no need to convince himself. Nevertheless he continues to write, because he is not fit for any other work, and to be accounted a "superfluous" man is so horrible. 20 A very original man is often a banal writer, and vice versa. We tend so often to write not about what is going on in us, but of our _pia desideria_. Thus restless, sleepless men sing the glory of sleep and rest, which have long been sung to death. And those who sleep ten hours on end and are always up to the mark must perforce dream about adventures and storms and dangers, and even extol everything problematical. 21 When one reads the books of long-dead men, a strange sensation comes over one. These men who lived two hundred, three hundred, three thousand years ago are so far off now from this writing which they have left on earth. Yet we look for eternal truths in their works. 22 The truth which I have the right to announce so solemnly to-day, even to the first among men, will probably be a stale old lie on my lips to-morrow. So I will deprive myself of the right of calling such a truth my own. Probably I shall deprive no one but myself: others will go on loving and praising the self-same truth, living with it. 23