She could have had the English-speaking world for a confidant had she consented to confide to it; but nothing was less to her liking. She objected to "volunteered and picked confessions," as in their nature insincere, and also as conveying, directly or indirectly, accusations against others. Her natural impulse was to veil her own soul—which was often sick and sore—from scrutiny; and, being a person of limited sympathies, she begrudged her neighbour the privilege of exhibiting his soul, sores and all, to the public. The struggle of human nature "to bury its lowest faculties," over which she cast unbroken silence, is what the egotist wants to reveal, and the public wants to observe. When Nietzsche says debonairly of himself, "I have had no experience of religious difficulties, and have never known what it was to feel sinful," the statement, though probably untrue, creates at once an atmosphere of flat-
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