He preached struggle and hatred, and yet was so tender-hearted that in an hour of dejection he confessed to his sister with a sigh: "I was not at all made to hate or be an enemy."[7] The decadence which he imputes to mankind is a mere reflection of his own state of mind, and the strength which he praises is that quality in which he is most sorely lacking. Nietzsche himself had the least possible connection with active life. He was unmarried, had no children, nor any interests beyond his ambition, and having served as professor of the classical languages for some time at the small university of Basel, he was for the greater part of his life without a calling, without duties, without aims. He never ventured to put his own theories into practice. He did not even try to rise as a prophet of his own philosophy, and remained in isolation to the very end of his life. Nietzsche must have felt the contradiction between his theories and his habits of life, and it appears that he suffered under it more than can be estimated by an impartial reader of his books. He was like the bird in the cage who sings of liberty, or an apoplectic patient who dreams of deeds of valor as a knight in tournament or as a wrestler in the prize ring. Never was craving for power more closely united with impotence! It is characteristic of him that he said, "If there were a God, how should I endure not to be God?" and so his ambition impelled him at least to prophesy the coming of his ideal, i. e., robust health, full of bodily vigor and animal spirits, unchecked by any rule of morality, and an unstinted use of power. Nietzsche had an exaggerated conception of his vocation and he saw in himself the mouthpiece of that grandest and deepest truth, viz., that man should dare to be himself without any regard of morality or consideration for his fellow beings. And here we have the tragic element of his life. Nietzsche, the atheist, deemed himself a God incarnate, and the despiser of the Crucified, suffered a martyr's fate in offering his own life to the cause of his hope. The earnestness with which he preached his wild and untenable doctrines appeals to us and renders his figure sympathetic, which otherwise would be grotesque. Think of a man who in his megalomania preaches a doctrine that justifies an irresponsible desire for power! Would he not be ridiculous in his impotence to actualize his dream? and on the other hand, if he were strong enough to practice what he preached, if like another Napoleon, he would make true his dreams of enslaving the world, would not mankind in self-defense soon rise in rebellion and treat him as a criminal, rendering him and his followers incapable of doing harm? But Nietzsche's personality, weak and impotent and powerless to appear as the overman and to subjugate the world to his will, suffered excruciating pains in his soul and tormented himself to death, which came to him in the form of decadence--a softening of the brain.