Translation

Hotel Annenheim und Seehof am Ossiacher See (Kärnten), Annenheim, 2 September 1907

Dear colleague,

I know you are now in Amsterdam, just before or after your perilous lecture, engaged in the defense of my cause, and it strikes me as almost cowardly that I should meanwhile be looking for mushrooms in the woods or bathing in this peaceful Carinthian lake instead of fighting for my own cause, or at least standing by your side. I take comfort by telling myself that it is better for the cause this way, that you as the other, the second, will be spared at least a part of the opposition that would have been in store for me, that for me to say the same thing over and over would be mere useless repetition, and that you are better fitted for propaganda, for I have always felt that there is something about my personality, my ideas and manner of speaking, that people find strange and repellent, whereas all hearts open to you. If a healthy man like you regards himself as a hysterical type, I can only claim for myself the "obsessional" type, each specimen of which vegetates in a sealed-off world of his own.

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