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 dung-hill.  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 shameless right before him, or the scientific satyr speaks out.  There are even cases where enchantment mixes with the disgust—­ namely, where by a freak of nature, genius is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and ape, as in the case of the Abbe Galiani, the profoundest, acutest, and perhaps also filthiest man of his century—­he was far profounder than Voltaire, and consequently also, a good deal more silent.  It happens more frequently, as has been hinted, that a scientific head is placed on an ape’s body, a fine exceptional understanding in a base soul, an occurrence by no means rare, especially among doctors and moral physiologists.  And whenever anyone speaks without bitterness, or rather quite innocently, of man as a belly with two requirements, and a head with one; whenever any one sees, seeks, and wants to see only hunger, sexual instinct, and vanity as the real and only motives of human actions; in short, when any one speaks “badly”—­and not even “ill”—­of man, then ought the lover of knowledge to hearken attentively and diligently; he ought, in general, to have an open ear wherever there is talk without indignation.  For the indignant man, and he who perpetually tears and lacerates himself with his own teeth (or, in place of himself, the world, God, or society), may indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more ordinary, more indifferent, and less instructive case.  And no one is such a liar as the indignant man.

27.  It is difficult to be understood, especially when one thinks and lives gangasrotogati [Footnote:  Like the river Ganges:  presto.] among those only who think and live otherwise—­namely, kurmagati [Footnote:  Like the tortoise:  lento.], or at best “froglike,” mandeikagati [Footnote:  Like the frog:  staccato.] (I do everything to be “difficultly understood” myself!)—­and one should be heartily grateful for the good will to some refinement of interpretation.  As regards “the good friends,” however, who are always too easy-going, and think that as friends they have a right to ease, one does well at the very first to grant them a play-ground and romping-place for misunderstanding—­one can thus laugh still; or get rid of them altogether, these good friends—­ and laugh then also!