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Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is free from the crowd, the many, the majority⁠—where he may forget “men who are the rule,” as their exception;⁠—exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense. Whoever, in intercourse with men, does not occasionally glisten in all the green and grey colours of distress, owing to disgust, satiety, sympathy, gloominess, and solitariness, is assuredly not a man of elevated tastes; supposing, however, that he does not voluntarily take all this burden and disgust upon himself, that he persistently avoids it, and remains, as I said, quietly and proudly hidden in his citadel, one thing is then certain: he was not made, he was not predestined for knowledge. For as such, he would one day have to say to himself: “The devil take my good taste! but ‘the rule’ is more interesting than the exception⁠—than myself, the exception!” And he would go down , and above all, he would go “inside.” The long and serious study of the average man⁠—and consequently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity, and bad intercourse (all intercourse is bad intercourse except with one’s equals):⁠—that constitutes a necessary part of the life-history of every philosopher; perhaps the most disagreeable, odious, and disappointing part. If he is fortunate, however, as a favourite child of knowledge should be, he will meet with suitable auxiliaries who will shorten and lighten his task; I mean so-called cynics, those who simply recognize the animal, the commonplace and “the rule” in themselves, and at the same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them talk of themselves and their like before witnesses ⁠—sometimes they wallow, even in books, as on their own dunghill. Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is called honesty; and the higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself when the clown becomes