The Bride of Dreams | Page 2

and my white coat in summery weather are known as peculiarities of the town. When you read this, reader, I shall be buried, respectably and simply, with twelve hired mourners and the coach with black plumes of the second class, and a wreath from the burgomaster's wife, to whom I gave lessons; from the notary, who occasionally earned something through me; and from the orphanage because, as treasurer, I always kept the accounts in order.
This is as I wish it to be. When you read this my living personality may no longer stand in your way. My individual being may no longer engage your attention. I know how this would veil the truth for you. Never has man accepted new and lucid ideas from a contemporary unless he were an avowed and venerated prophet, that is to say, a man corrupted and lost. I will not let myself be corrupted and give myself up as lost, and yet I know that my thoughts are too great to be accepted from free conviction without slavishness by my living fellow-men. Therefore have I peace in this petty world under the heavy burden of my tremendous life. I did not confer it on myself and I have no choice. Were I to speak my mind freely and honestly, I should be either locked up or worshipped. I deserve neither one nor the other; but such is the nature of the people of this age - they cannot reject without hatred nor accept without slavishness. Thus I live in self-restraint and peace among the lowly.
But these pages are the doors of the cap of my suppressed life. Only by these writings do I keep the peace within and master the tumult.
It is a hard struggle; I am weary from it not from arousing, but from restraining my thoughts. For what I write must be clear and orderly and concise. Readers nowadays are impatient and easily bored, and crave excitement. And they are dulled too, and no longer hear so clearly the true ring of sincere conviction. Yet I have peace, for this will be read. It will strike the summits, and the social system of today is still built so that everything slowly spreads from the summits and penetrates to the very lowest layers.
Do you disagree, reader? Do you accept nothing on higher authority, but judge everything independently for yourself?
Then it is just you I need. Then you are on the summit and all the rest of mankind in ranged about or beneath you. All the rest of mankind accepts and believes on authority - but you do not. Then have I also written this expressly and solely for you. How lucky that at last it has fallen into your hands. Allow me to embrace you in thought, dear, precious, freely-judging and independently-thinking reader. You are such a treasure to me, such a find, that for the world I would not let you go or lose you.
Listen then, dear reader, with a little patience and some painstaking on your part. Sweet spoils are not won without exertion! You are sensible enough not to want to judge without having given faithful attention.
I write this for you because you do not want to act without understanding; because you are restless and dissatisfied, a seeker and lover of the unknown; because at last you have turned on your way to look for what so long has gently pushed and driven you; because your eyes are opened wider and are more intent on the prospect toward which everything seems to lead.
I write this for you, the refractory and rebellious who are tired of all slavery.
I write this for you, who feel that you have reached maturity and no longer want to be treated as a child, not even by fate.
I write this for you, the proud and the evil; yes, for the wantonly wicked who despises the meek and the just. I write this also for you, the earnestly good who wants to love his enemy, but cannot.
The complaisant and contented, the adjusters and compromisers, the advocates and flatters of God, those who shun anxiety and stop their ears against too blatant a truth - they had better read something else; there are plenty of pleasant and entertaining books for amusement.
And the slaves of reason, who tread in a circle around their stake as far as the cord of their logic reaches, they too cannot be my readers.
Only he who has overcome the word, who has forsaken the idolatry of the "true word" - he can read me with profit and understanding.
Listen, then: I am an old man proclaiming the glory of a new era. I am lonely and forsaken, but nevertheless I have a share in the great human world and the life of the gods.
I sit