2

And indeed, my patient friends, I shall now tell you what I was after down there  here in this late preface which could easily have become a funeral oration: for I have returned and, believe it or not, returned safe and sound. Do not think for a moment that I intend to invite you to the same hazardous enterprise! Or even only to the same solitude! For he who proceeds on his own path in this fashion encounters no one: that is inherent in 'proceeding on one's own path'. No one comes along to help him: all the perils, accidents, malice and bad weather which assail him he has to tackle by himself. For his path is his alone  as is, of course, the bitterness and occasional ill-humour he feels at this 'his alone': among which is included, for instance, the knowledge that even his friends are unable to divine where he is or whither he is going, that they will sometimes ask themselves: 'what? is he going at all? does he still have  a path?'  At that time I undertook something not everyone may undertake: I descended into the depths, I tunnelled into the foundations, I commenced an investigation and digging out of an ancient faith, one upon which we philosophers have for a couple of millennia been accustomed to build as if upon the firmest of all foundations  and have continued to do so even though every building hitherto erected on them has fallen down: I commenced to undermine our faith in morality. But you do not understand me?