(10) Do not play with political notions, aristocratisms or the reverse, for that is a compromise with the herd. Do not allow yourself to imagine “a fine herd though still a herd.” There is no _fine herd_. The cattle that call themselves “gentlemen” you will observe to be a little cleaner. It is merely cunning and produced with a product called _soap_. But you will find no serious difference between them and those vast dismal herds they avoid. Some of them are very dangerous and treacherous.=Be on your guard with the small herd of gentlemen! (11) You will meet with this pitfall: at moments, surrounded by the multitude of unsatisfactory replicas, you will grow confused by a similarity bringing them so near to us.=You will reason, where, from some points of view, the difference is so slight, whether that delicate margin is of the immense importance that we hold it to be: _the only thing of importance_ in fact.=That group of men talking by the fire in your club (you will still remain a member of your club), that party at the theatre, look good enough, you will say. Their skins are fresh, they are well-made, their manners are good. You must then consider what they really are. On closer inspection you _know_, from unpleasant experience, that they are _nothing_ but limitations and vulgarities of the most irritating description. The devil Nature has painted these sepulchres pink, and covered them with a blasphemous Bond Street distinction. Matter that has not sufficient mind to permeate it grows, as you know, gangrenous and rotten. Animal high spirits, a little, but easily exhausted, goodness, is all that they can claim. What seduced you from your severity for a moment was the same thing as a dull woman’s good-looks.=This is _probably_ what you will have in front of you.=On the other hand, everywhere you will find a few people, who, although not a mountain people are not herd.=They may be herdsmen gone mad through contact with the herd, and strayed: or through inadequate energy for our task they may be found there: or they may be a hybrid, or they may even be herdsmen temporarily bored with the mountain. (I have a pipe below myself sometimes.) There are numerous “other denominations.” Treat them as brothers. Employ them, as opportunity offers, as auxiliaries in your duties. Their society and help will render your task less arduous. (12) As to women: wherever you can, substitute the society of men.=Treat them kindly, for they suffer from the herd, although of it, and have many of the same contempts as yourself. They are a sort of bastard mountain people.=There must be somewhere a female mountain, a sort of mirage-mountain. I should like to visit it.=But women, and the processes for which they exist, are the arch conjuring trick: and they have the cheap mystery and a good deal of the slipperiness, of the conjuror.=Sodomy should be avoided, as far as possible. It tends to add to the abominable confusion already existing.