—When it disgusted thee with all thy waiting and silence, and discouraged thy humble courage: THAT was forsakenness!”— O lonesomeness! My home, lonesomeness! How blessedly and tenderly speaketh thy voice unto me! We do not question each other, we do not complain to each other; we go together openly through open doors. For all is open with thee and clear; and even the hours run here on lighter feet. For in the dark, time weigheth heavier upon one than in the light. Here fly open unto me all being’s words and word-cabinets: here all being wanteth to become words, here all becoming wanteth to learn of me how to talk. Down there, however—all talking is in vain! There, forgetting and passing-by are the best wisdom: THAT have I learned now! He who would understand everything in man must handle everything. But for that I have too clean hands. I do not like even to inhale their breath; alas! that I have lived so long among their noise and bad breaths! O blessed stillness around me! O pure odours around me! How from a deep breast this stillness fetcheth pure breath! How it hearkeneth, this blessed stillness! But down there—there speaketh everything, there is everything misheard. If one announce one’s wisdom with bells, the shopmen in the market-place will out-jingle it with pennies! Everything among them talketh; no one knoweth any longer how to understand. Everything falleth into the water; nothing falleth any longer into deep wells. Everything among them talketh, nothing succeedeth any longer and accomplisheth itself. Everything cackleth, but who will still sit quietly on the nest and hatch eggs? Everything among them talketh, everything is out-talked. And that which yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its tooth, hangeth to-day, outchamped and outchewed, from the mouths of the men of to-day. Everything among them talketh, everything is betrayed. And what was once called the secret and secrecy of profound souls, belongeth to-day to the street-trumpeters and other butterflies. O human hubbub, thou wonderful thing! Thou noise in dark streets! Now art thou again behind me:—my greatest danger lieth behind me! In indulging and pitying lay ever my greatest danger; and all human hubbub wisheth to be indulged and tolerated. With suppressed truths, with fool’s hand and befooled heart, and rich in petty lies of pity:—thus have I ever lived among men. Disguised did I sit amongst them, ready to misjudge MYSELF that I might endure THEM, and willingly saying to myself: “Thou fool, thou dost not know men!” One unlearneth men when one liveth amongst them: there is too much foreground in all men—what can far-seeing, far-longing eyes do THERE! And, fool that I was, when they misjudged me, I indulged them on that account more than myself, being habitually hard on myself, and often even taking revenge on myself for the indulgence.