The Bride of Dreams | Page 2

to my foreign name - Muralto. They see me
regularly taking the same walk along the sea dike to my nursery, and
my gray felt hat 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