Wagner was as dictatorial as he was distrustful. The days had become rare when he could converse at leisure with nobleness and freedom as he had done at Triebschen. He spoke briefly, he commanded.
Nietzsche was still ready to go on a mission to Northern Germany to speak, write, and found Vereine, and to "thrust under the noses of the German savants the things which their timid eyes failed to perceive." Wagner would not accept this proposal; he wished Nietzsche to publish his lectures on The Future of our Educational Systems. Nietzsche resisted a desire in which he thought he detected a certain egotism.
"Our Herr Nietzsche only wants to do what he likes," exclaimed the irritable Wagner.
His anger saddened and humiliated Nietzsche both on his own account and on his master's. He thought, "Ill, weighed down with work, have I no right to respect? Am I under any one's orders? Why is Wagner so tyrannical?" We read in his diary, "Wagner has not the strength to make those around him free and great. Wagner is not loyal; he is, on the contrary, suspicious and haughty."
At the same time there appeared a pamphlet, The Philology of the Future, a reply to F. Nietzsche. The author was Willamowitz, who had been Nietzsche's comrade at the school of Pforta.
"DEAR FRIEND," he wrote to Gersdorff, who informed him of the pamphlet, "Don't worry over me. I am ready. I will never entangle myself in polemics. It is a pity it should be Willamowitz. Do you know that he came last autumn to pay me a friendly visit? Why should it be Willamowitz?"
Wagner, at whom the title itself of the pamphlet, The Philology of the Future, was aimed—it parodied his famous formula, The Music of the Future—wrote a reply, and profited by the occasion to renew his invitation to Friedrich Nietzsche.
"What must one think of our schools of culture?" he concludes. "It is for you to tell us what German culture ought to be, so as to direct the regenerated nation towards the most noble objects." Once again Nietzsche was firm in his determination. He was by no means satisfied with these lectures, being discontented with their form and uncertain even of their thought. "I do not wish to publish anything as to which my conscience is not as pure as that of the seraphim." He tried to express his Wagnerian faith in another style.
"I should have so much pleasure," he wrote to Rohde, "in writing something for the service of our cause, but I don't know what. All that I advance is so wounding, such an irritant, and more likely to hurt than to serve. Why should my poor book, naïve and enthusiastic as it was, have been received so badly? Singular! Now, what shall we do, we others?"
He began to write Reden eines Hoffenden (Words of a Man of Hope), which he soon gave up.