Whoever has a deep in himself into which he alone descends and penetrates, a _plus_ of his life that remains after we have known and weighed all his words and deeds, protects this deep and this _plus_ from everything that could make a noise, from all mere words, from all intrusive and obtrusive tittle-tattle. _Sich eine Oberfläche anheucheln_, to feign a surface, to wear a mask, this is the original and fine insight into such psychology. Man envelops himself in unneighborliness, not to hold haughtily other men away from him, but to save himself from them, so that they may not clumsily finger some pearl which could not stand so rude a touch. Why speak in parables? Because it is not given unto them to know the mystery of the kingdom, said the Nazarene. Parables were a protecting shell encasing the most intimate kernel, which ignorance or awkwardness might otherwise corrupt or destroy. Nietzsche and the Nazarene held a deep and a _plus_ so uniquely their own that they intentionally sought, not to be understood, but to be misunderstood, with reference thereto. Yes, there is a “surface” which only the man knows and uses who bears about a deep in his own being. There, hypocrisy becomes a protection of truthfulness; surface a protection of depth. Whoever “feigns such surface,” wears such mask, is infinitely more honest and veracious than he who has no silence in his deep which cannot be speech on his tongue—a speech which is often only motions and noises of the tongue of him who pries curiously into what he is inwardly incompetent to understand, or offers a superficial and voluble sympathy for griefs of which he is as innocent as a babe unborn, or a jaunty appreciation of values and verities and virtues for which he has never sweat even a drop of blood. To wear a mask, to lie, lie, lie,—that is the _truth_ of the soul as it hides its treasures and its sanctities from vulgarity and volubility! ‘The suitor of _truth_? Thou?’ Thus they mocked. ‘Nay! Merely a poet! An animal, a cunning, preying, stealing one, Which must lie, Which must lie, consciously, voluntarily, Longing for prey, _Disguised in many colours,_ _A mask unto itself,_ _A prey unto itself._ _That_—the suitor of truth? Only a fool! a poet! Only a speaker in many colours Speaking in many colours out of fools’ masks, Stalking about on deceitful word bridges, On deceitful rain-bows, Between false heavens Wandering, stealing about— _Only_ a fool! a poet! (_Italics_ mine.) Thus, it is the Deep, the Unique, the Abyss within, that is the great Isolator. Nietzsche was indeed “the eagle that long, long gazeth benumbed into abysses, into _its own_ abysses!” And he spoke in parables. Give heed—so Zarathustra counsels his disciples—to the times when your spirits speak in parables, for in these times is the origin of your virtue.