The central problem, then, is the traditional one – Hamlet's delay. On this issue Nietzsche, and the tradition of life philosophy he inaugurates, is essential. Like other nineteenth-century thinkers – Emerson, Mill, Marx, Wilde – Nietzsche was profoundly committed to the ideal of self-realization. Zarathustra is exceptional among prophets because he does not want imitators: ‘I am a law only for my kind, I am no law for all’, he insists. There is a comparison to be made here with Montaigne, who does not set himself up as any sort of teacher: ‘I have not, nor do I desire, enough authority to be believed’; the Essays are offered as ‘my humours, my opinions: I give them as things which I believe, not as things to be believed’ (167; I.26). Like Emerson (‘The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity’), Zarathustra exhorts his listeners to embark upon the one truly necessary project in life. This project is simply: ‘Become who you are!’ Universal ideals – or, as he preferred to call them, idols – appalled Nietzsche. In worshipping such demons, Nietzsche felt, individuals sacrificed their creative powers, erroneously assuming that they had to live according to a universal code (when all any law contained was merely the creative genius of the person who long ago devised it).