41.  One must subject oneself to one’s own tests that one is destined for independence and command, and do so at the right time.  One must not avoid one’s tests, although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are in the end tests made only before ourselves and before no other judge.  Not to cleave to any person, be it even the dearest—­every person is a prison and also a recess.  Not to cleave to a fatherland, be it even the most suffering and necessitous—­it is even less difficult to detach one’s heart from a victorious fatherland.  Not to cleave to a sympathy, be it even for higher men, into whose peculiar torture and helplessness chance has given us an insight.  Not to cleave to a science, though it tempt one with the most valuable discoveries, apparently specially reserved for us.  Not to cleave to one’s own liberation, to the voluptuous distance and remoteness of the bird, which always flies further aloft in order always to see more under it—­the danger of the flier.  Not to cleave to our own virtues, nor become as a whole a victim to any of our specialties, to our “hospitality” for instance, which is the danger of dangers for highly developed and wealthy souls, who deal prodigally, almost indifferently with themselves, and push the virtue of liberality so far that it becomes a vice.  One must know how to conserve oneself—­the best test of independence.

42.  A new order of philosophers is appearing; I shall venture to baptize them by a name not without danger.  As far as I understand them, as far as they allow themselves to be understood—­for it is their nature to wish to remain something of a puzzle—­these philosophers of the future might rightly, perhaps also wrongly, claim to be designated as “tempters.”  This name itself is after all only an attempt, or, if it be preferred, a temptation.

43.  Will they be new friends of “truth,” these coming philosophers?  Very probably, for all philosophers hitherto have loved their truths.  But assuredly they will not be dogmatists.  It must be contrary to their pride, and also contrary to their taste, that their truth should still be truth for every one—­that which has hitherto been the secret wish and ultimate purpose of all dogmatic efforts.  “My opinion is my opinion:  another person has not easily a right to it”—­such a philosopher of the future will say, perhaps.  One must renounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people.  “Good” is no longer good when one’s neighbour takes it into his mouth.  And how could there be a “common good”!  The expression contradicts itself; that which can be common is always of small value.  In the end things must be as they are and have always been—­the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.