,,friedrich ,,nietzsche ,,by ,,george ,,brandes ,,author ,,of ,,william ,,shakespeare1 ,,etc4 ,,london ,,william ,,heinemann #aiad ,illustration3 ,sculptor3 ,j4 ,davidson4--,photo3 ,a4 ,langdon ,coburn4 ,i ,,an ,,essay ,,on ,,aristocratic ,,radicalism#a 7#ahhi7 ,friedrich ,nietzsche appears to me the most interesting writer in ,german literature at the present time4 ,though little known even in his own country1 he is a thinker of a high order1 who fully deserves to be studied1 discussed1 contested and mastered4 ,among many good qualities he has that of imparting his mood to others and setting their thoughts in motion4 ,during a period of eighteen years ,nietzsche has written a long series of books and pamphlets4 ,most of these volumes consist of aphorisms1 and of these the greater part1 as well as the more original1 are concerned with moral prejudices4 ,in this province will be found his lasting importance4 ,but besides this he has dealt with the most varied problems2 he has written on culture and history1 on art and women1 on companionship and solitude1 on the ,state and society1 on life's struggle and death4 ,he was born on ,october #ae1 #ahdd2 studied philology2 became in #ahfi professor of philology at ,basle2 made the acquaintance of ,richard ,wagner and became warmly attached to him1 and associated also with the distinguished historian of the ,renaissance1 ,jakob ,burkhardt4 ,nietzsche's admiration and affection for ,burkhardt were lasting4 ,his feeling for ,wagner1 on the other hand1 underwent a complete revulsion in the course of years4 ,from having been ,wagner's prophet he developed into his most passionate opponent4 ,nietzsche was always heart and soul a musician2 he even tried his hand as a composer in his ,hymn to ,life 7for chorus and orchestra1 #ahhh71 and his intercourse with ,wagner left deep traces in his earliest writings4 ,but the opera of ,parsifal1 with its tendency to ,catholicism and its advancement of the ascetic ideals which had previously been entirely foreign to ,wagner1 caused ,nietzsche to see in the great composer a danger1 an enemy1 a morbid phenomenon1 since this last work showed him all the earlier operas in a new light4 ,during his residence in ,switzerland ,nietzsche came to know a large circle of interesting people4 ,he suffered1 however1 from extremely severe headaches1 so frequent that they incapacitated him for about two hundred days in the year and brought him to the verge of the grave4 ,in #ahgi he resigned his professorship4 ,from #ahhb to #ahhh his state of health improved1 though extremely slowly4 ,his eyes were still so weak that he was threatened with blindness4 ,he was compelled to be extremely careful in his mode of life and to choose his place of residence in obedience to climatic and meteorological conditions4 ,he usually spent the winter at ,nice and the summer at ,sils-,maria in the ,upper ,engadine4 ,the years #ahhg and #ahhh were astonishingly rich in production2 they saw the publication of the most remarkable works of widely different nature and the preparation of a whole series of new books4 ,then1 at the close of the latter year1 perhaps as the result of overstrain1 a violent attack of mental disorder occurred1 from which ,nietzsche never recovered4 ,as a thinker his starting-point is ,schopenhauer2 in his first books he is actually his disciple4 ,but1 after several years of silence1 during which he passes through his first intellectual crisis1 he reappears emancipated from all ties of discipleship4 ,he then undergoes so powerful and rapid a development--less in his thought itself than in the courage to express his thoughts--that each succeeding book marks a fresh stage1 until by degrees he concentrates himself upon a single fundamental question1 the question of moral values4 ,on his earliest appearance as a thinker he had already entered a protest1 in opposition to ,david ,strauss1 against any moral interpretation of the nature of the ,cosmos and assigned to our morality its place in the world of phenomena1 now as semblance or error1 now as artificial arrangement4 ,and his literary activity reached its highest point in an investigation of the origin of the moral concepts1 while it was his hope and intention to give to the world an exhaustive criticism of moral values1 an examination of the value of these values 7regarded as fixed once for all74 ,the first book of his work1 ,the ,transvaluation of all ,values1 was completed when his malady declared itself4 #a ,the expression 'aristocratic radicalism1' which you employ1 is very good4 ,it is1 permit me to say1 the cleverest thing ,i have yet read about myself1--,nietzsche1 ,dec4 #b1 #ahhg4 ,i4 ,nietzsche first received a good deal of notice1 though not much commendation1 for a caustic and juvenile polemical pamphlet against ,david ,strauss1 occasioned by the latter's book1 ,the ,old ,faith and the ,new4 ,his attack1 irreverent in tone1 is directed not against the first1 warlike section of the book1 but against the constructive and complementary section4 ,the attack1 however1 is less concerned with the once great critic's last effort than with the mediocracy in ,germany1 to which ,strauss's last word represented the last word of culture in general4 ,a year and a half had elapsed since the close of the ,franco-,german ,war4 ,never had the waves of ,german self esteem run so high4 ,the exultation of victory had passed into a tumultuous self-glorification4 ,the universal view was that ,german culture had vanquished ,french4 ,then this voice made itself heard1 saying-- ,admitting that this was really a conflict between two civilisations1 there would still be no reason for crowning the victorious one2 we should first have to know what the vanquished one was worth2 if its value was very slight--and this is what is said of ,french culture--then there was no great honour in the victory4 ,but in the next place there can be no question at all in this case of a victory of ,german culture2 partly because ,french culture still persists1 and partly because the ,germans1 now as heretofore1 are dependent on it4 ,it was military discipline1 natural bravery1 endurance1 superiority on the part of the leaders and obedience on the part of the led1 in short1 factors that have nothing to do with culture1 which gave ,germany the victory4 ,but finally and above all1 ,german culture was not victorious for the good reason that ,germany as yet has nothing that can be called culture4 ,it was then only a year since ,nietzsche himself had formed the greatest expectations of ,germany's future1 had looked forward to her speedy liberation from the leading-strings of ,latin civilisation1 and heard the most favourable omens in ,german music4#b ,the intellectual decline1 which seemed to him--rightly1 no doubt--to date indisputably from the foundation of the ,empire1 now made him oppose a ruthless defiance to the prevailing popular sentiment4 ,he maintains that culture shows itself above all else in a unity of artistic style running through every expression of a nation's life4 ,on the other hand1 the fact of having learnt much and knowing much is1 as he points out1 neither a necessary means to culture nor a sign of culture2 it accords remarkably well with barbarism1 that is to say1 with want of style or a motley hotchpotch of styles4 ,and his contention is simply this1 that with a culture consisting of hotchpotch it is impossible to subdue any enemy1 above all an enemy like the ,french1 who have long possessed a genuine and productive culture1 whether we attribute a greater or a lesser value to it4 ,he appeals to a saying of ,goethe to ,eckermann3 ,we ,germans are of yesterday4 ,no doubt in the last hundred years we have been cultivating ourselves quite diligently1 but it may take a few centuries yet before our countrymen have absorbed sufficient intellect and higher culture for it to be said of them that it is a long time since they were barbarians4 ,to ,nietzsche1 as we see1 the concepts of culture and homogeneous culture are equivalent4 ,in order to be homogeneous a culture must have reached a certain age and have become strong enough in its peculiar character to have penetrated all forms of life4 ,homogeneous culture1 however1 is of course not the same thing as native culture4 ,ancient ,iceland had a homogeneous culture1 though its flourishing was brought about precisely by active intercourse with ,europe2 a homogeneous culture existed in ,italy at the time of the ,renaissance1 in ,england in the sixteenth1 in ,france in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries1 although ,italy built up her culture of ,greek1 ,roman and ,spanish impressions1 ,france hers of classical1 ,celtic1 ,spanish and ,italian elements1 and although the ,english are the mixed race beyond all others4 ,true1 it is only a century and a half since the ,germans began to liberate themselves from ,french culture1 and hardly more than a hundred years since they entirely escaped from the ,frenchmen's school1 whose influence may nevertheless be traced even to-day3 but still no one can justly deny the existence of a ,german culture1 even if it is yet comparatively young and in a state of growth4 ,nor will any one who has a sense for the agreement between ,german music and ,german philosophy1 an ear for the harmony between ,german music and ,german lyrical poetry1 an eye for the merits and defects of ,german painting and sculpture1 which are the outcome of the same fundamental tendency that is revealed in the whole intellectual and emotional life of ,germany1 be disposed in advance to deny ,germany a homogeneous culture4 ,more precarious will be the state of such smaller countries whose dependence on foreign nations has not unfrequently been a dependence raised to the second power4 ,to ,nietzsche1 however1 this point is of relatively small importance4 ,he is convinced that the last hour of national cultures is at hand1 since the time cannot be far off when it will only be a question of a ,european or ,european-,american culture4 ,he argues from the fact that the most highly developed people in every country already feel as ,europeans1 as fellow-countrymen1 nay1 as confederates1 and from the belief that the twentieth century must bring with it the war for the dominion of the world4 ,when1 therefore1 from the result of this war a tempestuous wind sweeps over all national vanities1 bending and breaking them1 what will then be the question8 ,the question will then be1 thinks ,nietzsche1 in exact agreement with the most eminent ,frenchmen of our day1 whether by that time it has been possible to train or rear a sort of caste of pre-eminent spirits who will be able to grasp the central power4 ,the real misfortune is1 therefore1 not that a country is still without a genuine1 homogeneous and perfected culture1 but that it thinks itself cultured4 ,and with his eye upon ,germany ,nietzsche asks how it has come about that so prodigious a contradiction can exist as that between the lack of true culture and the self-satisfied belief in actually possessing the only true one--and he finds the answer in the circumstance that a class of men has come to the front which no former century has known1 and to which 7in #ahgc7 he gave the name of ,culture-,philistines4 ,the ,culture-,philistine regards his own impersonal education as the real culture2 if he has been told that culture presupposes a homogeneous stamp of mind1 he is confirmed in his good opinion of himself1 since everywhere he meets with educated people of his own sort1 and since schools1 universities and academies are adapted to his requirements and fashioned on the model corresponding to his cultivation4 ,since he finds almost everywhere the same tacit conventions with respect to religion1 morality and literature1 with respect to marriage1 the family1 the community and the ,state1 he considers it demonstrated that this imposing homogeneity is culture4 ,it never enters his head that this systematic and well-organised philistinism1 which is set up in all high places and installed at every editorial desk1 is not by any means made culture just because its organs are in concert4 ,it is not even bad culture1 says ,nietzsche2 it is barbarism fortified to the best of its ability1 but entirely lacking the freshness and savage force of original barbarism2 and he has many graphic expressions to describe ,culture-,philistinism as the morass in which all weariness is stuck fast1 and in the poisonous mists of which all endeavour languishes4 ,all of us are now born into the society of cultured philistinism1 in it we all grow up4 ,it confronts us with prevailing opinions1 which we unconsciously adopt2 and even when opinions are divided1 the division is only into party opinions--public opinions4 ,an aphorism of ,nietzsche's reads3 ,what is public opinion8 ,it is private indolence4 ,the dictum requires qualification4 ,there are cases where public opinion is worth something3 ,john ,morley has written a good book on the subject4 ,in the face of certain gross breaches of faith and law1 certain monstrous violations of human rights1 public opinion may now and then assert itself as a power worthy to be followed4 ,otherwise it is as a rule a factory working for the benefit of ,culture-,philistinism4 ,on entering life1 then1 young people meet with various collective opinions1 more or less narrow-minded4 ,the more the individual has it in him to become a real personality1 the more he will resist following a herd4 ,but even if an inner voice says to him3 ,become thyself6 ,be thyself6 he hears its appeal with despondency4 ,has he a self8 ,he does not know2 he is not yet aware of it4 ,he therefore looks about for a teacher1 an educator1 one who will teach him1 not something foreign1 but how to become his own individual self4 ,we had in ,denmark a great man who with impressive force exhorted his contemporaries to become individuals4 ,but ,sren ,kierkegaard's appeal was not intended to be taken so unconditionally as it sounded4 ,for the goal was fixed4 ,they were to become individuals1 not in order to develop into free personalities1 but in order by this means to become true ,christians4 ,their freedom was only apparent2 above them was suspended a ,thou shalt believe6 and a ,thou shalt obey6 ,even as individuals they had a halter round their necks1 and on the farther side of the narrow passage of individualism1 through which the herd was driven1 the herd awaited them again--one flock1 one shepherd4 ,it is not with this idea of immediately resigning his personality again that the young man in our day desires to become himself and seeks an educator4 ,he will not have a dogma set up before him1 at which he is expected to arrive4 ,but he has an uneasy feeling that he is packed with dogmas4 ,how is he to find himself in himself1 how is he to dig himself out of himself8 ,this is where the educator should help him4 ,an educator can only be a liberator4 ,it was a liberating educator of this kind that ,nietzsche as a young man looked for and found in ,schopenhauer4 ,such a one will be found by every seeker in the personality that has the most liberating effect on him during his period of development4 ,nietzsche says that as soon as he had read a single page of ,schopenhauer1 he knew he would read every page of him and pay heed to every word1 even to the errors he might find4 ,every intellectual aspirant will be able to name men whom he has read in this way4 ,it is true that for ,nietzsche1 as for any other aspirant1 there remained one more step to be taken1 that of liberating himself from the liberator4 ,we find in his earliest writings certain favourite expressions of ,schopenhauer's which no longer appear in his later works4 ,but the liberation is here a tranquil development to independence1 throughout which he retains his deep gratitude2 not1 as in his relations with ,wagner1 a violent revulsion which leads him to deny any value to the works he had once regarded as the most valuable of all4 ,he praises ,schopenhauer's lofty honesty1 beside which he can only place ,montaigne's1 his lucidity1 his constancy1 and the purity of his relations with society1 ,state and ,state-religion1 which are in such sharp contrast with those of ,kant4 ,with ,schopenhauer there is never a concession1 never a dallying4 ,and ,nietzsche is astounded by the fact that ,schopenhauer could endure life in ,germany at all4 ,a modern ,englishman has said3 ,shelley could never have lived in ,england3 a race of ,shelleys would have been impossible4 ,spirits of this kind are early broken1 then become melancholy1 morbid or insane4 ,the society of the ,culture-,philistines makes life a burden to exceptional men4 ,examples of this occur in plenty in the literature of every country1 and the trial is constantly being made4 ,we need only think of the number of talented men who sooner or later make their apologies and concessions to philistinism1 so as to be permitted to exist4 ,but even in the strongest the vain and weary struggle with ,culture-,philistinism shows itself in lines and wrinkles4 ,nietzsche quotes the saying of the old diplomatist1 who had only casually seen and spoken to ,goethe3 ,voil un homme qui a eu de grands chagrins1 and ,goethe's comment1 when repeating it to his friends3 ,if the traces of our sufferings and activities are indelible even in our features1 it is no wonder that all that survives of us and our struggles should bear the same marks4 ,and this is ,goethe1 who is looked upon as the favourite of fortune6 ,schopenhauer1 as is well known1 was until his latest years a solitary man4 ,no one understood him1 no one read him4 ,the greater part of the first edition of his work1 ,die ,welt als ,wille und ,vorstellung1 had to be sold as waste paper4 ,in our day ,taine's view has widely gained ground1 that the great man is entirely determined by the age whose child he is1 that he unconsciously sums it up and ought consciously to give it expression4#c ,but although1 of course1 the great man does not stand outside the course of history and must always depend upon predecessors1 an idea nevertheless always germinates in a single individual or in a few individuals2 and these individuals are not scattered points in the low-lying mass1 but highly gifted ones who draw the mass to them instead of being drawn by it4 ,what is called the spirit of the age originates in quite a small number of brains4 ,nietzsche who1 mainly no doubt through ,schopenhauer's influence1 had originally been strongly impressed by the dictum that the great man is not the child of his age but its step-child1 demands that the educator shall help the young to educate themselves in opposition to the age4 ,it appears to him that the modern age has produced for imitation three particular types of man1 one after the other4 ,first ,rousseau's man2 the ,titan who raises himself1 oppressed and bound by the higher castes1 and in his need calls upon holy ,nature4 ,then ,goethe's man2 not ,werther or the revolutionary figures related to him1 who are still derived from ,rousseau1 nor the original ,faust figure1 but ,faust as he gradually develops4 ,he is no liberator1 but a spectator1 of the world4 ,he is not the man of action4 ,nietzsche reminds us of ,jarno's words to ,wilhelm ,meister3 ,you are vexed and bitter1 that is a very good thing4 ,if you could be thoroughly angry for once1 it would be better still4 ,to become thoroughly angry in order to make things better1 this1 in the view of the ,nietzsche of thirty1 will be the exhortation of ,schopenhauer's man4 ,this man voluntarily takes upon himself the pain of telling the truth4 ,his fundamental idea is this3 ,a life of happiness is impossible2 the highest a man can attain to is a heroic life1 one in which he fights against the greatest difficulties for something which1 in one way or another1 will be for the good of all4 ,to what is truly human1 only true human beings can raise us2 those who seem to have come into being by a leap in ,nature2 thinkers and educators1 artists and creators1 and those who influence us more by their nature than by their activity3 the noble1 the good in a grand style1 those in whom the genius of good is at work4 ,these men are the aim of history4 ,nietzsche formulates this proposition3 ,humanity must work unceasingly for the production of solitary great men--this and nothing else is its task4 ,this is the same formula at which several aristocratic spirits among his contemporaries have arrived4 ,thus ,renan says1 almost in the same words3 ,in fine1 the object of humanity is the production of great men 444 nothing but great men2 salvation will come from great men4 ,and we see from ,flaubert's letters to ,george ,sand how convinced he was of the same thing4 ,he says1 for instance3 ,the only rational thing is and always will be a government of mandarins1 provided that the mandarins can do something1 or rather1 can do much4444 ,it matters little whether a greater or smaller number of peasants are able to read instead of listening to their priest1 but it is infinitely important that many men like ,renan and ,littr may live and be heard4 ,our salvation now lies in a real aristocracy4#d ,both ,renan and ,flaubert would have subscribed to ,nietzsche's fundamental idea that a nation is the roundabout way ,nature goes in order to produce a dozen great men4 ,yet1 although the idea does not lack advocates1 this does not make it a dominant thought in ,european philosophy4 ,in ,germany1 for instance1 ,eduard von ,hartmann thinks very differently of the aim--of history4 ,his published utterances on the subject are well known4 ,in conversation he once hinted how his idea had originated in his mind3 ,it was clear to me long ago1 he said1 that history1 or1 to use a wider expression1 the world process1 must have an aim1 and that this aim could only be negative4 ,for a golden age is too foolish a figment4 ,hence his visions of a destruction of the world voluntarily brought about by the most gifted men4 ,and connected with this is his doctrine that humanity has now reached man's estate1 that is1 has passed the stage of development in which geniuses were necessary4 ,in the face of all this talk of the world process1 the aim of which is annihilation or deliverance--deliverance even of the suffering godhead from existence--,nietzsche takes a very sober and sensible stand with his simple belief that the goal of humanity is not to be infinitely deferred1 but must be found in the highest examples of humanity itself4 ,and herewith he has arrived at his final answer to the question1 ,what is culture8 ,for upon this relation depend the fundamental idea of culture and the duties culture imposes4 ,it imposes on me the duty of associating myself by my own activity with the great human ideals4 ,its fundamental idea is this3 it assigns to every individual who wishes to work for it and participate in it1 the task of striving to produce1 within and without himself1 the thinker and artist1 the lover of truth and beauty1 the pure and good personality1 and thereby striving for the perfection of ,nature1 towards the goal of a perfected ,nature4 ,when does a state of culture prevail8 ,when the men of a community are steadily working for the production of single great men4 ,from this highest aim all the others follow4 ,and what state is farthest removed from a state of culture8 ,that in which men energetically and with united forces resist the appearance of great men1 partly by preventing the cultivation of the soil required for the growth of genius1 partly by obstinately opposing everything in the shape of genius that appears amongst them4 ,such a state is more remote from culture than that of sheer barbarism4 ,but does such a state exist8 perhaps some one will ask4 ,most of the smaller nations will be able to read the answer in the history of their native land4 ,it will there be seen1 in proportion as refinement grows1 that the refined atmosphere is diffused1 which is unfavourable to genius4 ,and this is all the more serious1 since many people think that in modern times and in the races which now share the dominion of the world among them1 a political community of only a few millions is seldom sufficiently numerous to produce minds of the very first order4 ,it looks as if geniuses could only be distilled from some thirty or forty millions of people4 ,norway with ,ibsen1 ,belgium with ,maeterlinck and ,verhaeren are exceptions4 ,all the more reason is there for the smaller communities to work at culture to their utmost capacity4 ,in recent times we have become familiar with the thought that the goal to be aimed at is happiness1 the happiness of all1 or at any rate of the greatest number4 ,wherein happiness consists is less frequently discussed1 and yet it is impossible to avoid the question1 whether a year1 a day1 an hour in ,paradise does not bring more happiness than a lifetime in the chimney-corner4 ,but be that as it may3 owing to our familiarity with the notion of making sacrifices for a whole country1 a multitude of people1 it appears unreasonable that a man should exist for the sake of a few other men1 that it should be his duty to devote his life to them in order thereby to promote culture4 ,but nevertheless the answer to the question of culture--how the individual human life may acquire its highest value and its greatest significance--must be3 ,by being lived for the benefit of the rarest and most valuable examples of the human race4 ,this will also be the way in which the individual can best impart a value to the life of the greatest number4 ,in our day a so-called cultural institution means an organisation in virtue of which the cultured advance in serried ranks and thrust aside all solitary and obstinate men whose efforts are directed to higher ends2 therefore even the learned are as a rule lacking in any sense for budding genius and any feeling for the value of struggling contemporary genius4 ,therefore1 in spite of the indisputable and restless progress in all technical and specialised departments1 the conditions necessary to the appearance of great men are so far from having improved1 that dislike of genius has rather increased than diminished4 ,from the ,state the exceptional individual cannot expect much4 ,he is seldom benefited by being taken into its service2 the only certain advantage it can give him is complete independence4 ,only real culture will prevent his being too early tired out or used up1 and will spare him the exhausting struggle against ,culture-,philistinism4 ,nietzsche's value lies in his being one of these vehicles of culture3 a mind which1 itself independent1 diffuses independence and may become to others a liberating force1 such as ,schopenhauer was to ,nietzsche himself in his younger days4 #b ,the ,birth of ,tragedy1 p4 #aej ff4 7,english edition74 #c ,the author of these lines has not made himself the advocate of this view1 as has sometimes been publicly stated1 but on the contrary has opposed it4 ,after some uncertainty ,i pronounced against it as early as #ahgj1 in ,den franske sthetik i vore ,dage1 pp4 #aje1 #ajf1 and afterwards in many other places4 #d ,nietzsche2 ,thoughts out of ,season1 ,,ii41 p4 #aee f4 7,english edition74 ,renan3 ,dialogues et ,fragments ,philosophiques1 p4 #ajc4 ,flaubert3 ,lettres ,george ,sand1 p4 #aci ff4 #b4 ,four of ,nietzsche's early works bear the collective title1 ,thoughts out of ,season 7,unzeitgemsse ,betrachtungen71 a title which is significant of his early-formed determination to go against the stream4 ,one of the fields in which he opposed the spirit of the age in ,germany is that of education1 since he condemns in the most uncompromising fashion the entire historical system of education of which ,germany is proud1 and which as a rule is everywhere regarded as desirable4 ,his view is that what keeps the race from breathing freely and willing boldly is that it drags far too much of its past about with it1 like a round-shot chained to a convict's leg4 ,he thinks it is historical education that fetters the race both in enjoyment and in action1 since he who cannot concentrate himself on the moment and live entirely in it1 can neither feel happiness himself nor do anything to make others happy4 ,without the power of feeling unhistorically1 there is no happiness4 ,and in the same way1 forgetfulness1 or rather1 non-knowledge of the past is essential to all action4 ,forgetfulness1 the unhistorical1 is as it were the enveloping air1 the atmosphere1 in which alone life can come into being4 ,in order to understand it1 let us imagine a youth who is seized with a passion for a woman1 or a man who is swayed by a passion for his work4 ,in both cases what lies behind them has ceased to exist--and yet this state 7the most unhistorical that can be imagined7 is that in which every action1 every great deed is conceived and accomplished4 ,now answering to this1 says ,nietzsche1 there exists a certain degree of historical knowledge which is destructive of a man's energy and fatal to the productive powers of a nation4 ,in this reasoning we can hear the voice of the learned ,german philologist1 whose observations have mostly been drawn from ,german scholars and artists4 ,for it would be unreasonable to suppose that the commercial or peasant class1 the soldiers or manufacturers of ,germany suffered from an excess of historical culture4 ,but even in the case of ,german savants1 authors and artists the evil here pointed out may be of such a nature as not to admit of remedy by simply abolishing historical education4 ,those men whose productive impulse has been checked or killed by historical studies were already so impotent and ineffective that the world would not have been enriched by their productions4 ,and moreover1 what paralyses is not so much the heterogeneous mass of dead historical learning 7about the actions of governments1 political chess-moves1 military achievements1 artistic styles1 etc471 as the knowledge of certain great minds of the past1 by the side of whose production anything that can be shown by a man now living appears so insignificant as to make it a matter of indifference whether his work sees the light or not4 ,goethe alone is enough to reduce a young ,german poet to despair4 ,but a hero-worshipper like ,nietzsche cannot consistently desire to curtail our knowledge of the greatest4 ,the want of artistic courage and intellectual boldness has certainly deeper-lying causes2 above all1 the disintegration of the individuality which the modern order of society involves4 ,strong men can carry a heavy load of history without becoming incapacitated for living4 ,but what is interesting and significant of ,nietzsche's whole intellectual standpoint is his inquiry as to how far life is able to make use of history4 ,history1 in his view1 belongs to him who is fighting a great fight1 and who needs examples1 teachers and comforters1 but cannot find them among his contemporaries4 ,without history the mountain chain of great men's great moments1 which runs through milleniums1 could not stand clearly and vividly before me4 ,when one sees1 that it only took about a hundred men to bring in the culture of the ,renaissance2 it may easily be supposed1 for example1 that a hundred productive minds1 trained in a new style1 would be enough to make an end of ,culture-,philistinism4 ,on the other hand1 history may have pernicious effects in the hands of unproductive men4 ,thus young artists are driven into galleries instead of out into nature1 and are sent1 with minds still unformed1 to centres of art1 where they lose courage4 ,and in all its forms history may render men unfit for life2 in its monumental form by evoking the illusion that there are such things as fixed1 recurring historical conjunctions1 so that what has once been possible is now1 in entirely altered conditions1 possible again2 in its antiquarian form by awakening a feeling of piety for ancient1 bygone things1 which paralyses the man of action1 who must always outrage some piety or other2 finally in its critical form by giving rise to the depressing feeling that the very errors of the past1 which we are striving to overcome1 are inherited in our blood and impressed on our childhood1 so that we live in a continual inner conflict between an old and a new nature4 ,on this point1 as on others already alluded to1 ,nietzsche's quarrel is ultimately with the broken-winded education of the present day4 ,that education and historical education have in our time almost become synonymous terms1 is to him a mournful sign4 ,it has been irretrievably forgotten that culture ought to be what it was with the ,greeks3 a motive1 a prompting to resolution2 nowadays culture is commonly described as inwardness1 because it is a dead internal lump1 which does not stir its possessor4 ,the most educated people are walking encyclopdias4 ,when they act1 they do so in virtue of a universally approved1 miserable convention1 or else from simple barbarism4 ,with this reflection1 no doubt of general application1 is connected a complaint which was bound to be evoked by modern literary ,germany in particular2 the complaint of the oppressive effect of the greatness of former times1 as shown in the latter-day man's conviction that he is a latecomer1 an after-birth of a greater age1 who may indeed teach himself history1 but can never produce it4 ,even philosophy1 ,nietzsche complains1 with a side-glance at the ,german universities1 has been more and more transformed into the history of philosophy1 a teaching of what everybody has thought about everything2 a sort of harmless gossip between academic grey-beards and academic sucklings4 ,it is boasted as a point of honour that freedom of thought exists in various countries4 ,in reality it is only a poor sort of freedom4 ,one may think in a hundred ways1 but one may only act in one way--and that is the way that is called culture and is in reality only a form1 and what is more a bad form1 a uniform4 ,nietzsche attacks the view which regards the historically cultured person as the justest of all4 ,we honour the historian who aims at pure knowledge1 from which nothing follows4 ,but there are many trivial truths1 and it is a misfortune that whole battalions of inquirers should fling themselves upon them1 even if these narrow minds belong to honest men4 ,the historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his own time1 as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models4 ,that man is thought best fitted to depict a period of the past1 who is not in the least affected by that period4 ,but only he who has a share in building up the future can grasp what the past has been1 and only when transformed into a work of art can history arouse or even sustain instincts4 ,as historical education is now conducted1 the mass of impressions communicated is so great as to produce numbness1 a feeling of being born old of an old stock--although less than thirty human lives1 reckoned at seventy years each1 divide us from the beginning of our era4 ,and with this is connected the immense superstition of the value and significance of universal history4 ,schiller's phrase is everlastingly repeated3 ,the history of the world is the tribunal of the world1 as though there could be any other historical tribunal than thought2 and the ,hegelian view of history as the ever-clearer self-revelation of the godhead has obstinately held its own1 only that it has gradually passed into sheer admiration of success1 an approval of any and every fact1 be it never so brutal4 ,but greatness has nothing to do with results or with success4 ,demosthenes1 who spoke in vain1 is greater than ,philip1 who was always victorious4 ,everything in our day is thought to be in order1 if only it be an accomplished fact2 even when a man of genius dies in the fulness of his powers1 proofs are forthcoming that he died at the right time4 ,and the fragment of history we possess is entitled the world process2 men cudgel their brains1 like ,eduard von ,hartmann1 in trying to find out its origin and final goal--which seems to be a waste of time4 ,why you exist1 says ,nietzsche with ,sren ,kierkegaard1 nobody in the world can tell you in advance2 but since you do exist1 try to give your existence a meaning by setting up for yourself as lofty and noble a goal as you can4 ,significant of ,nietzsche's aristocratic tendency1 so marked later1 is his anger with the deference paid by modern historians to the masses4 ,formerly1 he argues1 history was written from the standpoint of the rulers2 it was occupied exclusively with them1 however mediocre or bad they might be4 ,now it has crossed over to the standpoint of the masses4 ,but the masses--they are only to be regarded as one of three things3 either as copies of great personalities1 bad copies1 clumsily produced in a poor material1 or as foils to the great1 or finally as their tools4 ,otherwise they are matter for statisticians to deal with1 who find so-called historical laws in the instincts of the masses--aping1 laziness1 hunger and sexual impulse4 ,what has set the mass in motion for any length of time is then called great4 ,it is given the name of a historical power4 ,when1 for example1 the vulgar mob has appropriated or adapted to its needs some religious idea1 has defended it stubbornly and dragged it along for centuries1 then the originator of that idea is called great4 ,there is the testimony of thousands of years for it1 we are told4 ,but--this is ,nietzsche's and ,kierkegaard's idea--the noblest and highest does not affect the masses at all1 either at the moment or later4 ,therefore the historical success of a religion1 its toughness and persistence1 witness against its founder's greatness rather than for it4 ,when an instance is required of one of the few enterprises in history that have been completely successful1 the ,reformation is commonly chosen4 ,against the significance of this success ,nietzsche does not urge the facts usually quoted3 its early secularisation by ,luther2 his compromises with those in power2 the interest of princes in emancipating themselves from the mastery of the ,church and laying hands on its estates1 while at the same time securing a submissive and dependent clergy instead of one independent of the ,state4 ,he sees the chief cause of the success of the ,reformation in the uncultured state of the nations of northern ,europe4 ,many attempts at founding new ,greek religions came to naught in antiquity4 ,although men like ,pythagoras1 ,plato1 perhaps ,empedocles1 had qualifications as founders of religions1 the individuals they had to deal with were far too diversified in their nature to be helped by a common doctrine of faith and hope4 ,in contrast with this1 the success of ,luther's ,reformation in the ,north was an indication that northern culture was behind that of southern ,europe4 ,the people either blindly obeyed a watchword from above1 like a flock of sheep2 or1 where conversion was a matter of conscience1 it revealed how little individuality there was among a population which was found to be so homogeneous in its spiritual needs4 ,in the same way1 too1 the original conversion of pagan antiquity was only successful on account of the abundant intermixture of barbarian with ,roman blood which had taken place4 ,the new doctrine was forced upon the masters of the world by barbarians and slaves4 ,the reader now has examples of the arguments ,nietzsche employs in support of his proposition that history is not so sound and strengthening an educational factor as is thought3 only he who has learnt to know life and is equipped for action has use for history and is capable of applying it2 others are oppressed by it and rendered unproductive by being made to feel themselves late-comers1 or are induced to worship success in every field4 ,nietzsche's contribution to this question is a plea against every sort of historical optimism2 but he energetically repudiates the ordinary pessimism1 which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts--of decadence4 ,he preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a tragic culture1 introduced by an intrepid rising generation1 in which the spirit of ancient ,greece might be born again4 ,he rejects the pessimism of ,schopenhauer1 for he already abhors all renunciation2 but he seeks a pessimism of healthiness1 one derived from strength1 from exuberant power1 and he believes he has found it in the ,greeks4 ,he has developed this view in the learned and profound work of his youth1 ,the ,birth of ,tragedy1 or ,hellenism and ,pessimism1 in which he introduced two new terms1 ,apollonian and ,dionysian4 ,the two ,greek deities of art1 ,apollo and ,dionysus1 denote the antithesis between plastic art and music4 ,the former corresponds to dreaming1 the latter to drunkenness4 ,in dreams the forms of the gods first appeared to men2 dreams are the world of beauteous appearance4 ,if1 on the other hand1 we look down into man's lowest depths1 below the spheres of thought and imagination1 we come upon a world of terror and rapture1 the realm of ,dionysus4 ,above reign beauty1 measure and proportion2 but underneath the profusion of ,nature surges freely in pleasure and pain4 ,regarded from ,nietzsche's later standpoint1 the deeper motive of this searching absorption in ,hellenic antiquity becomes apparent4 ,even at this early stage he suspects1 in what passes for morality1 a disparaging principle directed against ,nature2 he looks for its essential antithesis1 and finds it in the purely artistic principle1 farthest removed from ,christianity1 which he calls ,dionysian4 ,our author's main psychological features are now clearly apparent4 ,what kind of a nature is it that carries this savage hatred of philistinism even as far as to ,david ,strauss8 ,an artist's nature1 obviously4 ,what kind of a writer is it who warns us with such firm conviction against the dangers of historical culture8 ,a philologist obviously1 who has experienced them in himself1 has felt himself threatened with becoming a mere aftermath and tempted to worship historical success4 ,what kind of a nature is it that so passionately defines culture as the worship of genius8 ,certainly no ,eckermann-nature1 but an enthusiast1 willing at the outset to obey where he cannot command1 but quick to recognise his own masterful bias1 and to see that humanity is far from having outgrown the ancient antithetical relation of commanding and obeying4 ,the appearance of ,napoleon is to him1 as to many others1 a proof of this2 in the joy that thrilled thousands1 when at last they saw one who knew how to command4 ,but in the sphere of ethics he is not disposed to preach obedience4 ,on the contrary1 constituted as he is1 he sees the apathy and meanness of our modern morality in the fact that it still upholds obedience as the highest moral commandment1 instead of the power of dictating to one's self one's own morality4 ,his military schooling and participation in the war of #ahgj-ga probably led to his discovery of a hard and manly quality in himself1 and imbued him with an extreme abhorrence of all softness and effeminacy4 ,he turned aside with disgust from the morality of pity in ,schopenhauer's philosophy and from the romantic-catholic element in ,wagner's music1 to both of which he had previously paid homage4 ,he saw that he had transformed both masters according to his own needs1 and he understood quite well the instinct of self preservation that was here at work4 ,the aspiring mind creates the helpers it requires4 ,thus he afterwards dedicated his book1 ,human1 all-too-,human1 which was published on ,voltaire's centenary1 to the free spirits among his contemporaries2 his dreams created the associates that he had not yet found in the flesh4 ,the severe and painful illness1 which began in his thirty-second year and long made him a recluse1 detached him from all romanticism and freed his heart from all bonds of piety4 ,it carried him far away from pessimism1 in virtue of his proud thought that a sufferer has no right to pessimism4 ,this illness made a philosopher of him in a strict sense4 ,his thoughts stole inquisitively along forbidden paths3 ,this thing passes for a value4 ,can we not turn it upside-down8 ,this is regarded as good4 ,is it not rather evil8--,is not ,god refuted8 ,but can we say as much of the devil8--,are we not deceived8 and deceived deceivers1 all of us8444 ,and then out of this long sickliness arises a passionate desire for health1 the joy of the convalescent in life1 in light1 in warmth1 in freedom and ease of mind1 in the range and horizon of thought1 in visions of new dawns1 in creative capacity1 in poetical strength4 ,and he enters upon the lofty self-confidence and ecstasy of a long uninterrupted production4 #c4 ,it is neither possible nor necessary to review here the long series of his writings4 ,in calling attention to an author who is still unread1 one need only throw his most characteristic thoughts and expressions into relief1 so that the reader with little trouble may form an idea of his way of thinking and quality of mind4 ,the task is here rendered difficult by ,nietzsche's thinking in aphorisms1 and facilitated by his habit of emphasising every thought in such a way as to give it a startling appearance4 ,english utilitarianism has met with little acceptance in ,germany2 among more eminent contemporary thinkers ,eugen ,dhring is its chief advocate2 ,friedrich ,paulsen also sides with the ,englishmen4 ,eduard von ,hartmann has attempted to demonstrate the impossibility of simultaneously promoting culture and happiness4 ,nietzsche finds new difficulties in an analysis of the concept of happiness4 ,the object of utilitarianism is to procure humanity as much pleasure and as little of the reverse as possible4 ,but what if pleasure and pain are so intertwined that he who wants all the pleasure he can get must take a corresponding amount of suffering into the bargain8 ,clrchen's song contains the words3 ,himmelhoch jauchzend1 zum ,tode betrbt ,who knows whether the latter is not the condition of the former8 ,the ,stoics believed this1 and1 wishing to avoid pain1 asked of life the minimum of pleasure4 ,probably it is equally unwise in our day to promise men intense joys1 if they are to be insured against great sufferings4 ,we see that ,nietzsche transfers the question to the highest spiritual plane1 without regard to the fact that the lowest and commonest misfortunes1 such as hunger1 physical exhaustion1 excessive and unhealthy labour1 yield no compensation in violent joys4 ,even if all pleasure be dearly bought1 it does not follow that all pain is interrupted and counterbalanced by intense enjoyment4 ,in accordance with his aristocratic bias he then attacks ,bentham's proposition3 the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number4 ,the ideal was1 of course1 to procure happiness for everybody2 as this could not be done1 the formula took the above shape4 ,but why happiness for the greatest number8 ,we might imagine it for the best1 the noblest1 the most gifted2 and we may be permitted to ask whether moderate prosperity and moderate well-being are preferable to the inequality of lot which acts as a goad1 forcing culture ever upward4 ,then there is the doctrine of unselfishness4 ,to be moral is to be unselfish4 ,it is good to be so1 we are told4 ,but what does that mean--good8 ,good for whom8 ,not for the self-sacrificer1 but for his neighbour4 ,he who praises the virtue of unselfishness1 praises something that is good for the community but harmful to the individual4 ,and the neighbour who wants to be loved unselfishly is not himself unselfish4 ,the fundamental contradiction in this morality is that it demands and commends a renunciation of the ego1 for the benefit of another ego4 ,at the outset the essential and invaluable element of all morality is1 in ,nietzsche's view1 simply this1 that it is a prolonged constraint4 ,as language gains in strength and freedom by the constraint of verse1 and as all the freedom and delicacy to be found in plastic art1 music and dancing is the result of arbitrary laws1 so also does human nature only attain its development under constraint4 ,no violence is thereby done to ,nature2 this is the very nature of things4 ,the essential point is that there should be obedience1 for a long time and in the same direction4 ,thou shalt obey1 some one or something1 and for a long time--otherwise thou wilt come to grief2 this seems to be the moral imperative of ,nature1 which is certainly neither categorical 7as ,kant thought71 nor addressed to the individual 7,nature does not trouble about the individual71 but seems to be addressed to nations1 classes1 periods1 races--in fact1 to mankind4 ,on the other hand1 all the morality that is addressed to the individual for his own good1 for the sake of his own welfare1 is reduced in this view to mere household remedies and counsels of prudence1 recipes for curbing passions that might want to break out2 and all this morality is preposterous in form1 because it addresses itself to all and generalises what does not admit of generalisation4 ,kant gave us a guiding rule with his categorical imperative4 ,but this rule has failed us4 ,it is of no use saying to us3 ,act as others ought to act in this case4 ,for we know that there are not and cannot be such things as identical actions1 but that every action is unique in its nature1 so that any precept can only apply to the rough outside of actions4 ,but what of the voice and judgment of conscience8 ,the difficulty is that we have a conscience behind our conscience1 an intellectual one behind the moral4 ,we can tell that the judgment of ,so-and-,so's conscience has a past history in his instincts1 his original sympathies or antipathies1 his experience or want of experience4 ,we can see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good1 our moral valuations1 are powerful levers where action is concerned2 but we must begin by refining these opinions and independently creating for ourselves new tables of values4 ,and as regards the ethical teachers' preaching of morality for all1 this is every bit as empty as the gossip of individual society people about each other's morals4 ,nietzsche gives the moralists this good advice3 that1 instead of trying to educate the human race1 they should imitate the pedagogues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries1 who concentrated their efforts on the education of a single person4 ,but as a rule the moral ranters are themselves quite uneducated persons1 and their children seldom rise above moral mediocrity4 ,he who feels that in his inmost being he cannot be compared with others1 will be his own lawgiver4 ,for one thing is needful3 to give style to one's character4 ,this art is practised by him who1 with an eye for the strong and weak sides of his nature1 removes from it one quality and another1 and then by daily practice and acquired habit replaces them by others which become second nature to him2 in other words1 he puts himself under restraint in order by degrees to bend his nature entirely to his own law4 ,only thus does a man arrive at satisfaction with himself1 and only thus does he become endurable to others4 ,for the dissatisfied and the unsuccessful as a rule avenge themselves on others4 ,they absorb poison from everything1 from their own incompetence as well as from their poor circumstances1 and they live in a constant craving for revenge on those in whose nature they suspect harmony4 ,such people ever have virtuous precepts on their lips2 the whole jingle of morality1 seriousness1 chastity1 the claims of life2 and their hearts ever bum with envy of those who have become well balanced and can therefore enjoy life4 ,for millenniums morality meant obedience to custom1 respect for inherited usage4 ,the free1 exceptional man was immoral1 because he broke with the tradition which the others regarded with superstitious fear4 ,very commonly he took the same view and was himself seized by the terror he inspired4 ,thus a popular morality of custom was unconsciously elaborated by all who belonged to the tribe2 since fresh examples and proofs could always be found of the alleged relation between guilt and punishment--if you behave in such and such a way1 it will go badly with you4 ,now1 as it generally does go badly1 the allegation was constantly confirmed2 and thus popular morality1 a pseudoscience on a level with popular medicine1 continually gained ground4 ,manners and customs represented the experiences of bygone generations concerning what was supposed to be useful or harmful2 the sense of morality1 however1 does not attach to these experiences as such1 but only to their age1 their venerability and consequent incontestability4 ,in the state of war in which a tribe existed in old times1 threatened on every side1 there was no greater gratification1 under the sway of the strictest morality of custom1 than cruelty4 ,cruelty is one of the oldest festal and triumphal joys of mankind4 ,it was thought that the gods1 too1 might be gratified and festively disposed by offering them the sight of cruelties--and thus the idea insinuated itself into the world that voluntary self-torture1 mortification and abstinence are also of great value1 not as discipline1 but as a sweet savour unto the ,lord4 ,christianity as a religion of the past unceasingly practised and preached the torture of souls4 ,imagine the state of the medival ,christian1 when he supposed he could no longer escape eternal torment4 ,eros and ,aphrodite were in his imagination powers of hell1 and death was a terror4 ,to the morality of cruelty has succeeded that of pity4 ,the morality of pity is lauded as unselfish1 by ,schopenhauer in particular4 ,eduard von ,hartmann1 in his thoughtful work1 ,phnomenologie des sittlichen ,bewusstseins 7pp4 #bag-bdj71 has already shown the impossibility of regarding pity as the most important of moral incentives1 to say nothing of its being the only one1 as ,schopenhauer would have it4 ,nietzsche attacks the morality of pity from other points of view4 ,he shows it to be by no means unselfish4 ,another's misfortune affects us painfully and offends us--perhaps brands us as cowards if we do not go to his aid4 ,or it contains a hint of a possible danger to ourselves2 moreover1 we feel joy in comparing our own state with that of the unfortunate1 joy when we can step in as the stronger1 the helper4 ,the help we afford gives us a feeling of happiness1 or perhaps it merely rescues us from boredom4 ,pity in the form of actual fellow-suffering would be a weakness1 nay1 a misfortune1 since it would add to the world's suffering4 ,a man who seriously abandoned himself to sympathy with all the misery he found about him1 would simply be destroyed by it4 ,among savages the thought of arousing pity is regarded with horror4 ,those who do so are despised4 ,according to savage notions1 to feel pity for a person is to despise him2 but they find no pleasure in seeing a contemptible person suffer4 ,on the other hand1 the sight of an enemy's suffering1 when his pride does not forsake him in the midst of his torment--that is enjoyment1 that excites admiration4 ,the morality of pity is often preached in the formula1 love thy neighbour4 ,nietzsche in the interests of his attack seizes upon the word neighbour4 ,not only does he demand1 with ,kierkegaard1 a setting-aside of morality for the sake of the end in view1 but he is exasperated that the true nature of morality should be held to consist in a consideration of the immediate results of our actions1 to which we are to conform4 ,to what is narrow and pettifogging in this morality he opposes another1 which looks beyond these immediate results and aspires1 even by means that cause our neighbour pain1 to more distant objects2 such as the advancement of knowledge1 although this will lead to sorrow and doubt and evil passions in our neighbour4 ,we need not on this account be without pity1 but we may hold our pity captive for the sake of the object4 ,and as it is now unreasonable to term pity unselfish and seek to consecrate it1 it is equally so to hand over a series of actions to the evil conscience1 merely because they have been maligned as egotistical4 ,what has happened in recent times in this connection is that the instinct of self-denial and self-sacrifice1 everything altruistic1 has been glorified as if it were the supreme value of morality4 ,the ,english moralists1 who at present dominate ,europe1 explain the origin of ethics in the following way3 ,unselfish actions were originally called good by those who were their objects and who benefited by them2 afterwards this original reason for praising them was forgotten1 and unselfish actions came to be regarded as good in themselves4 ,according to a statement of ,nietzsche himself it was a work by a ,german author with ,english leanings1 ,dr4 ,paul ,re's ,der ,ursprung der moralischen ,empfindungen 7,chemnitz1 #ahgg71 which provoked him to such passionate and detailed opposition that he had to thank this book for the impulse to clear up and develop his own ideas on the subject4 ,the surprising part of it1 however1 is this3 ,dissatisfaction with his first book caused ,re to write a second and far more important work on the same subject--,die ,entstehung des ,gewissens 7,berlin1 #ahhe7--;in which the point of view offensive to ,nietzsche is abandoned and several of the leading ideas advanced by the latter against ,re are set forth1 supported by a mass of evidence taken from various authors and races of men4 ,the two philosophers were personally acquainted4 ,i knew them both1 but had no opportunity of questioning either on this matter4 ,it is therefore impossible for me to say which of the two influenced the other1 or why ,nietzsche in #ahhg alludes to his detestation of the opinions put forward by ,re in #ahgg1 without mentioning how near the latter had come to his own view in the work published two years previously4 ,re had already adduced a number of examples to show that the most diverse peoples of antiquity knew no other moral classification of men than that of nobles and common people1 powerful and weak2 so that the oldest meaning of good both in ,greece and ,iceland was noble1 mighty1 rich4 ,nietzsche builds his whole theory on this foundation4 ,his train of thought is this-- ,the critical word good is not due to those to whom goodness has been shown4 ,the oldest definition was this3 the noble1 the mightier1 higher-placed and high-minded held themselves and their actions to be good--of the first rank--in contradistinction to everything low and low-minded4 ,noble1 in the sense of the class-consciousness of a higher caste1 is the primary concept from which develops good in the sense of spiritually aristocratic4 ,the lowly are designated as bad 7not evil74 ,bad does not acquire its unqualified depreciatory meaning till much later4 ,in the mouth of the people it is a laudatory word2 the ,german word schlecht is identical with schlicht 7cf4 schlechtweg and schlechterdings74 ,the ruling caste call themselves sometimes simply the ,mighty1 sometimes the ,truthful2 like the ,greek nobility1 whose mouthpiece ,theognis was4 ,with him beautiful1 good and noble always have the sense of aristocratic4 ,the aristocratic moral valuation proceeds from a triumphant affirmation1 a yea-saying1 which we find in the ,homeric heroes3 ,we1 the noble1 beautiful and brave--we are the good1 the beloved of the gods4 ,these are strong men1 charged with force1 who delight in warlike deeds1 to whom1 in other words1 happiness is activity4 ,it is of course unavoidable that these nobles should misjudge and despise the plebeian herd they dominate4 ,yet as a rule there may be traced in them a pity for the downtrodden caste1 for the drudge and beast of burden1 an indulgence towards those to whom happiness is rest1 the ,sabbath of inactivity4 ,among the lower orders1 on the other hand1 an image of the ruling caste distorted by hatred and spite is necessarily current4 ,in this distortion there lies a revenge4#e ,in opposition to the aristocratic valuation 7good noble1 beautiful1 happy1 favoured by the gods7 the slave morality then is this3 ,the wretched alone are the good2 those who suffer and are heavy laden1 the sick and the ugly1 they are the only pious ones4 ,on the other hand1 you1 ye noble and rich1 are to all eternity the evil1 the cruel1 the insatiate1 the ungodly1 and after death the damned4 ,whereas noble morality was the manifestation of great self-esteem1 a continual yea-saying1 slave morality is a continual ,nay1 a ,thou shalt not1 a negation4 ,to the noble valuation good--bad 7bad worthless7 corresponds the antithesis of slave morality1 good--evil4 ,and who are the evil in this morality of the oppressed8 ,precisely the same who in the other morality were the good4 ,let any one read the ,icelandic sagas and examine the morality of the ancient ,northmen1 and then compare with it the complaints of other nations about the vikings' misdeeds4 ,it will be seen that these aristocrats1 whose conduct in many ways stood high1 were no better than beasts of prey in dealing with their enemies4 ,they fell upon the inhabitants of ,christian shores like eagles upon lambs4 ,one may say they followed an eagle ideal4 ,but then we cannot wonder that those who were exposed to such fearful attacks gathered round an entirely opposite moral ideal1 that of the lamb4 ,in the third chapter of his ,utilitarianism1 ,stuart ,mill attempts to prove that the sense of justice has developed from the animal instinct of making reprisal for an injury or a loss4 ,in an essay on the transcendental satisfaction of the feeling of revenge 7supplement to the first edition of the ,werth des ,lebens7 ,eugen ,dhring has followed him in trying to establish the whole doctrine of punishment upon the instinct of retaliation4 ,in his ,phnomenologie ,eduard von ,hartmann shows how this instinct strictly speaking never does more than involve a new suffering1 a new offence1 to gain external satisfaction for the old one1 so that the principle of requital can never be any distinct principle4 ,nietzsche makes a violent1 passionate attempt to refer the sum total of false modern morality1 not to the instinct of requital or to the feeling of revenge in general1 but to the narrower form of it which we call spite1 envy and rancune4 ,what he calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality2 and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals4 ,thus impotence1 which offers no reprisal1 became goodness2 craven baseness became humility2 submission to him who was feared became obedience2 inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self1 became forgiveness1 love of one's enemies4 ,misery became a distinction2 ,god chastens whom he loves4 ,or it became a preparation1 a trial and a training2 even more--something that will one day be made good with interest1 paid back in bliss4 ,and the vilest underground creatures1 swollen with hate and spite1 were heard to say3 ,we1 the good1 we are the righteous4 ,they did not hate their enemies--they hated injustice1 ungodliness4 ,what they hoped for was not the sweets of revenge1 but the victory of righteousness4 ,those they had left to love on earth were their brothers and sisters in hatred1 whom they called their brothers and sisters in love4 ,the future state they looked for was called the coming of their kingdom1 of ,god's kingdom4 ,until it arrives they live on in faith1 hope and love4 ,if ,nietzsche's design in this picture was to strike at historical ,christianity1 he has given us--as any one may see--a caricature in the spirit and style of the eighteenth century4 ,but that his description hits off a certain type of the apostles of spite-morality cannot be denied1 and rarely has all the self-deception that may lurk beneath moral preaching been more vigorously unmasked4 7,compare ,beyond ,good and ,evil and ,the ,genealogy of ,morals47#f #e ,nietzsche supports his hypothesis by derivations1 some doubtful1 others incorrect2 but their value is immaterial4 #f ,where ,nietzsche's words are quoted1 in the course of this essay1 considerable use has been made of the complete ,english translation of his works1 edited by ,dr4 ,oscar ,levy4--,tr4 #d4 ,nietzsche would define man as an animal that can make and keep promises4 ,he sees the real nobility of man in his capacity for promising something1 answering for himself and undertaking a responsibility--since man1 with the mastery of himself which this capacity implies1 necessarily acquires in addition a mastery over external circumstances and over other creatures1 whose will is not so lasting4 ,the consciousness of this responsibility is what the sovereign man calls his conscience4 ,what1 then1 is the past history of this responsibility1 this conscience8 ,it is a long and bloody one4 ,frightful means have been used in the course of history to train men to remember what they have once promised or willed1 tacitly or explicitly4 ,for milleniums man was confined in the strait-jacket of the morality of custom1 and by such punishments as stoning1 breaking on the wheel or burning1 by burying the sinner alive1 tearing him asunder with horses1 throwing him into the water with a stone on his neck or in a sack1 by scourging1 flaying and branding--by all these means a long memory for what he had promised was burnt into that forgetful animal1 man2 in return for which he was permitted to enjoy the advantages of being a member of society4 ,according to ,nietzsche's hypothesis1 the consciousness of guilt originates simply as consciousness of a debt4 ,the relation of contract between creditor and debtor1 which is as old as the earliest primitive forms of human intercourse in buying1 selling1 bartering1 etc4--this is the relation that underlies it4 ,the debtor 7in order to inspire confidence in his promise of repayment7 pledges something he possesses3 his liberty1 his woman1 his life2 or he gives his creditor the right of cutting a larger or smaller piece of flesh from his body1 according to the amount of the debt4 7,the ,roman ,code of the ,twelve ,tables2 again in ,the ,merchant of ,venice47 ,the logic of this1 which has become somewhat strange to us1 is as follows3 as compensation for his loss the creditor is granted a kind of voluptuous sensation1 the delight of being able to exercise his power upon the powerless4 ,the reader may find evidence in ,re 7op4 cit41 p4 #ac ff47 for ,nietzsche's dictum1 that for milleniums this was the view of mankind3 ,the sight of suffering does one good4 ,the infliction of suffering on another is a feast at which the fortunate one swells with the joy of power4 ,we may also find evidence in ,re that the instincts of pity1 fairness and clemency1 which were afterwards glorified as virtues1 were originally regarded almost everywhere as morally worthless1 nay1 as indications of weakness4 ,buying and selling1 as well as everything psychologically connected therewith and older than any form of social organisation1 contain the germs1 in ,nietzsche's view1 of compensation1 assessing1 justice and duty4 ,man soon became proud of himself as a being who measures values4 ,one of the earliest generalisations was this3 ,everything has its price4 ,and the thought that everything can be paid for was the oldest and most nave canon of justice4 ,now the whole of society1 as it gradually develops1 stands in the same relation to its members as the creditor to the debtor4 ,society protects its members2 they are assured against the state of outlawry--on condition that they do not break their pledges to the community4 ,he who breaks his word--the criminal--is relegated to the outlawry involved in exclusion from society4 ,as ,nietzsche1 who is so exclusively taken up by the psychological aspect1 discards all accessories of scholarship1 it is impossible to examine directly the accuracy of his assertions4 ,the historical data will be found collected in ,re's paragraphs on resentment and the sense of justice1 and in his section on the buying-off of revenge1 i4 e4 settlement by fines4 ,other thinkers besides ,nietzsche 7such as ,e4 von ,hartmann and ,re7 have combated the view that the idea of justice has its origin in a state of resentment1 and ,nietzsche has scarcely brought to light any fresh and convincing proof2 but what is characteristic of him as a writer is the excess of personal passion with which he attacks this view1 obviously because it is connected with the reasoning of modern democracy4 ,in many a modern cry for justice there rings a note of plebeian spite and envy4 ,involuntarily many a modern savant of middle-class or lower middle-class origin has attributed an unwarrantable importance to the atavistic emotions prevalent among those who have been long oppressed3 hatred and rancour1 spite and thirst for revenge4 ,nietzsche does not occupy himself for an instant with the state of things in which revenge does duty as the sole punitive justice2 for the death feud is not a manifestation of the thrall's hatred of his master1 but of ideas of honour among equals4 ,he dwells exclusively on the contrast between a ruling caste and a caste of slaves1 and shows a constantly recurring indignation with doctrines which have caused the progressive among his contemporaries to look with indulgence on the instincts of the populace and with suspicion or hostility on master spirits4 ,his purely personal characteristic1 however1 the unphilosophical and temperamental in him1 is revealed in the trait that1 while he has nothing but scorn and contempt for the down-trodden class or race1 for the slave morality resulting from its suppressed rancour1 he positively revels in the ruling caste's delight in its power1 in the atmosphere of healthiness1 freedom1 frankness and truthfulness in which it lives4 ,its acts of tyranny he defends or excuses4 ,the image it creates for itself of the slave caste is to him far less falsified than that which the latter forms of the master caste4 ,nor can there be serious question of any real injustice committed by this caste4 ,for there is no such thing as right or wrong in itself4 ,the infliction of an injury1 forcible subjection1 exploitation or annihilation is not in itself a wrong1 cannot be such1 since life in its essence1 in its primary functions1 is nothing but oppression1 exploitation and annihilation4 ,conditions of justice can never be anything but exceptional conditions1 that is1 as limitations of the real desire of life1 the object of which is power4 ,nietzsche replaces ,schopenhauer's ,will to ,life and ,darwin's ,struggle for ,existence by the ,will to ,power4 ,in his view the fight is not for life--bare existence--but for power4 ,and he has a great deal to say--somewhat beside the mark--of the mean and paltry conditions those ,englishmen must have had in view who set up the modest conception of the struggle for life4 ,it appears to him as if they had imagined a world in which everybody is glad if he can only keep body and soul together4 ,but life is only an expression for the minimum4 ,in itself life seeks1 not self-preservation alone1 but self-increase1 and this is precisely the will to power4 ,it is therefore obvious that there is no difference of principle between the new catchword and the old2 for the struggle for existence necessarily leads to the conflict of forces and the fight for power4 ,now a system of justice1 seen from this standpoint1 is a factor in the conflict of forces4 ,conceived as supreme1 as a remedy for every kind of struggle1 it would be a principle hostile to life and destructive of the future and progress of humanity4 ,something similar was in the mind of ,lassalle1 when he declared that the standpoint of justice was a bad standpoint in the life of nations4 ,what is significant of ,nietzsche is his love of fighting for its own sake1 in contrast to the modern humanitarian view4 ,to ,nietzsche the greatness of a movement is to be measured by the sacrifices it demands4 ,the hygiene which keeps alive millions of weak and useless beings who ought rather to die1 is to him no true progress4 ,a dead level of mediocre happiness assured to the largest possible majority of the miserable creatures we nowadays call men1 would be to him no true progress4 ,but to him1 as to ,renan1 the rearing of a human species higher and stronger than that which now surrounds us 7the ,superman71 even if this could only be achieved by the sacrifice of masses of such men as we know1 would be a great1 a real progress4 ,nietzsche's visions1 put forth in all seriousness1 of the training of the ,superman and his assumption of the mastery of the world1 bear so strong a resemblance to ,renan's dreams1 thrown out half in jest1 of a new ,asgard1 a regular manufactory of sir 7,dialogues philosophiques1 #aag71 that we can scarcely doubt the latter's influence4 ,but what ,renan wrote under the overwhelming impression of the ,paris ,commune1 and1 moreover1 in the form of dialogue1 allowing both pro and con4 to be heard1 has crystallised in ,nietzsche into dogmatic conviction4 ,one is therefore surprised and hurt to find that ,nietzsche never mentions ,renan otherwise than grudgingly4 ,he scarcely alludes to the aristocratic quality of his intellect1 but he speaks with repugnance of that respect for the gospel of the humble which ,renan everywhere discloses1 and which is undeniably at variance with his hope of the foundation of a breeding establishment for supermen4 ,renan1 and after him ,taine1 turned against the almost religious feelings which were long entertained in the new ,europe towards the first ,french ,revolution4 ,renan regretted the ,revolution betimes on national grounds2 ,taine1 who began by speaking warmly of it1 changed his mind on closer inquiry4 ,nietzsche follows in their footsteps4 ,it is natural for modern authors1 who feel themselves to be the children of the ,revolution1 to sympathise with the men of the great revolt2 and certainly the latter do not receive their due in the present anti-revolutionary state of feeling in ,europe4 ,but these authors1 in their dread of what in political jargon is called ,csarism1 and in their superstitious belief in mass movements1 have overlooked the fact that the greatest revolutionaries and liberators are not the united small1 but the few great2 not the small ungenerous1 but the great and generous1 who are willing to bestow justice and well-being and intellectual growth upon the rest4 ,there are two classes of revolutionary spirits3 those who feel instinctively drawn to ,brutus1 and those who equally instinctively are attracted by ,csar4 ,csar is the great type2 neither ,frederick the ,great nor ,napoleon could claim more than a part of his qualities4 ,the modern poetry of the 'forties teems with songs in praise of ,brutus1 but no poet has sung ,csar4 ,even a poet with so little love for democracy as ,shakespeare totally failed to recognise his greatness2 he gave us a pale caricature of his figure and followed ,plutarch in glorifying ,brutus at his expense4 ,even ,shakespeare could not see that ,csar placed a very different stake on the table of life from that of his paltry murderer4 ,csar was descended from ,venus2 in his form was grace4 ,his mind had the grand simplicity which is the mark of the greatest2 his nature was nobility4 ,he1 from whom even to-day all supreme power takes its name1 had every attribute that belongs to a commander and ruler of the highest rank4 ,only a few men of the ,italian ,renaissance have reached such a height of genius4 ,his life was a guarantee of all the progress that could be accomplished in those days4 ,brutus's nature was doctrine1 his distinguishing mark the narrowness that seeks to bring back dead conditions and that sees omens of a call in the accident of a name4 ,his style was dry and laborious1 his mind unfertile4 ,his vice was avarice1 usury his delight4 ,to him the provinces were conquests beyond the pale4 ,he had five senators of ,salamis starved to death because the town could not pay4 ,and on account of a dagger-thrust1 which accomplished nothing and hindered nothing of what it was meant to hinder1 this arid brain has been made a sort of genius of liberty1 merely because men have failed to understand what it meant to have the strongest1 richest and noblest nature invested with supreme power4 ,from what has been said above it will easily be understood that ,nietzsche derives justice entirely from the active emotions1 since in his view revengeful feelings are always low4 ,he does not dwell on this point1 however4 ,older writers had seen in the instinct of retaliation the origin of punishment4 ,stuart ,mill1 in his ,utilitarianism1 derived justice from already established punitive provisions 7justum from jussum71 which were precautionary measures1 not reprisals4 ,re1 in his book on the ,origin of ,conscience1 defended the kindred proposition that punishment is not a consequence of the sense of justice1 but vice versa4 ,the ,english philosophers in general derive the bad conscience from punishment4 ,the value of the latter is supposed to consist in awakening a sense of guilt in the delinquent4 ,against this ,nietzsche enters a protest4 ,he maintains that punishment only hardens and benumbs a man2 in fact1 that the judicial procedure itself prevents the criminal from regarding his conduct as reprehensible2 since he is made to witness precisely the same kind of acts as those he has committed--spying1 entrapping1 outwitting and torturing--all of which are sanctioned when exercised against him in the cause of justice4 ,for long ages1 too1 no notice whatever was taken of the criminal's sin2 he was regarded as harmful1 not guilty1 and looked upon as a piece of destiny2 and the criminal on his side took his punishment as a piece of destiny which had overtaken him1 and bore it with the same fatalism with which the ,russians suffer to this day4 ,in general we may say that punishment tames the man1 but does not make him better4 ,the bad conscience1 then1 is still unexplained4 ,nietzsche proposes the following brilliant hypothesis3 ,the bad conscience is the deep-seated morbid condition that declared itself in man under the stress of the most radical change he has ever experienced--when he found himself imprisoned in perpetuity within a society which was inviolable4 ,all the strong and savage instincts such as adventurousness1 rashness1 cunning1 rapacity1 lust of power1 which till then had not only been honoured1 but actually encouraged1 were suddenly put down as dangerous1 and by degrees branded as immoral and criminal4 ,creatures adapted to a roving life of war and adventure suddenly saw all their instincts classed as worthless1 nay1 as forbidden4 ,an immense despondency1 a dejection without parallel1 then took possession of them4 ,and all these instincts that were not allowed an outward vent1 turned inwards on the man himself--feelings of enmity1 cruelty1 delight in change1 in hazard1 violence1 persecution1 destruction--and thus the bad conscience originated4 ,when the ,state came into existence--not by a social contract1 as ,rousseau and his contemporaries assumed--but by a frightful tyranny imposed by a conquering race upon a more numerous1 but unorganised population1 then all the latter's instinct of freedom turned inwards2 its active force and will to power were directed against man himself4 ,and this was the soil which bore such ideals of beauty as self-denial1 self-sacrifice1 unselfishness4 ,the delight in self-sacrifice is in its origin a phase of cruelty2 the bad conscience is a will for self-abuse4 ,then by degrees guilt came to be felt as a debt1 to the past1 to the ancestors2 a debt that had to be paid back in sacrifices--at first of nourishment in its crudest sense--in marks of honour and in obedience2 for all customs1 as the work of ancestors1 are at the same time their commands4#g ,there is a constant dread of not giving them enough2 the firstborn1 human and animal1 are sacrificed to them4 ,fear of the founder grows in proportion as the power of the race increases4 ,sometimes he becomes transformed into a god1 in which the origin of the god from fear is clearly seen4 ,the feeling of owing a debt to the deity steadily grew through the centuries1 until the recognition of the ,christian deity as universal god brought about the greatest possible outburst of guilty feeling4 ,only in our day is any noticeable diminution of this sense of guilt to be traced2 but where the consciousness of sin reaches its culminating point1 there the bad conscience eats its way like a cancer1 till the sense of the impossibility of paying the debt--atoning for the sin--is supreme and with it is combined the idea of eternal punishment4 ,a curse is now imagined to have been laid upon the founder of the race 7,adam71 and all sin becomes original sin4 ,indeed1 the evil principle is attributed to ,nature herself1 from whose womb man has sprung--until we arrive at the paradoxical expedient in which tormented ,christendom has found a temporary consolation for two thousand years3 ,god offers himself for the guilt of mankind1 pays himself in his own flesh and blood4 ,what has here happened is that the instinct of cruelty1 which has turned inwards1 has become self-torture1 and all man's animal instincts have been reinterpreted as guilt towards ,god4 ,every ,nay man utters to his nature1 to his real being1 he flings out as a ,yea1 an affirmation of reality applied to ,god's sanctity1 his capacity of judge and executioner1 and in the next place to eternity1 the ,beyond1 pain without end1 eternal punishment in hell4 ,in order rightly to understand the origin of ascetic ideals1 we must1 moreover1 consider that the earliest generations of spiritual and contemplative natures lived under a fearful pressure of contempt on the part of the hunters and warriors4 ,the unwarlike element in them was despicable4 ,they had no other means of holding their own than that of inspiring fear4 ,this they could only do by cruelty to themselves1 mortification and self-discipline in a hermit's life4 ,as priests1 soothsayers and sorcerers they then struck superstitious terror into the masses4 ,the ascetic priest is the unsightly larva from which the healthy philosopher has emerged4 ,under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet2 a squalid den careering through space1 peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures1 who were disgusted with life1 abhorred their globe as a vale of tears1 and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible4 ,nevertheless the self-contradiction we find in asceticism--life turned against life--is of course only apparent4 ,in reality the ascetic ideal corresponds to a decadent life's profound need of healing and tending4 ,it is an ideal that points to depression and exhaustion2 by its help life struggles against death4 ,it is life's device for self-preservation4 ,its necessary antecedent is a morbid condition in the tamed human being1 a disgust with life1 coupled with the desire to be something else1 to be somewhere else1 raised to the highest pitch of emotion and passion4 ,the ascetic priest is the embodiment of this very wish4 ,by its power he keeps the whole herd of dejected1 fainthearted1 despairing and unsuccessful creatures1 fast to life4 ,the very fact that he himself is sick makes him their born herdsman4 ,if he were healthy1 he would turn away with loathing from all this eagerness to re-label weakness1 envy1 ,pharisaism and false morality as virtue4 ,but1 being himself sick1 he is called upon to be an attendant in the great hospital of sinners--the ,church4 ,he is constantly occupied with sufferers who seek the cause of their pain outside themselves2 he teaches the patient that the guilty cause of his pain is himself4 ,thus he diverts the rancour of the abortive man and makes him less harmful1 by letting a great part of his resentment recoil on himself4 ,the ascetic priest cannot properly be called a physician2 he mitigates suffering and invents consolations of every kind1 both narcotics and stimulants4 ,the problem was to contend with fatigue and despair1 which had seized like an epidemic upon great masses of men4 ,many remedies were tried4 ,first1 it was sought to depress vitality to the lowest degree3 not to will1 not to desire1 not to work1 and so on2 to become apathetic 7,pascal's ,il faut s'abtir74 ,the object was sanctification1 a hypnotising of all mental life1 a relaxation of every purpose1 and consequently freedom from pain4 ,in the next place1 mechanical activity was employed as a narcotic against states of depression3 the blessing of labour4 ,the ascetic priest1 who has to deal chiefly with sufferers of the poorer classes1 reinterprets the task of the unfortunate drudge for him1 making him see in it a benefit4 ,then again1 the prescription of a little1 easily accessible joy1 is a favourite remedy for depression2 such as gladdening others1 helping them in love of one's neighbour4 ,finally1 the decisive cure is to organise all the sick into an immense hospital1 to found a congregation of them4 ,the disinclination that accompanies the sense of weakness is thereby combated1 since the mass feels strong in its inner cohesion4 ,but the chief remedy of the ascetic priest was1 after all1 his reinterpretation of the feeling of guilt as sin4 ,the inner suffering was a punishment4 ,the sick man was the sinner4 ,nietzsche compares the unfortunate who receives this explanation of his qualms with a hen round which a chalk circle has been drawn3 he cannot get out4 ,wherever we look1 for century after century1 we see the hypnotic gaze of the sinner1 staring--in spite of ,job--at guilt as the only cause of suffering4 ,everywhere the evil conscience and the scourge and the hairy shirt and weeping and gnashing of teeth1 and the cry of ,more pain6 ,more pain6 ,everything served the ascetic ideal4 ,and then arose epidemics like those of ,st4 ,vitus's dance and the flagellants1 witches' hysteria and the wholesale delirium of extravagant sects 7which still lingers in otherwise beneficially disciplined bodies such as the ,salvation ,army74 ,the ascetic ideal has as yet no real assailants2 there is no decided prophet of a new ideal4 ,inasmuch as since the time of ,copernicus science has constantly tended to deprive man of his earlier belief in his own importance1 its influence is rather favourable to asceticism than otherwise4 ,at present the only real enemies and underminers of the ascetic ideal are to be found in the charlatans of that ideal1 in its hypocritical champions1 who excite and maintain distrust of it4 ,as the senselessness of suffering was felt to be a curse1 the ascetic ideal gave it a meaning2 a meaning which brought a new flood of suffering with it1 but which was better than none4 ,in our day a new ideal is in process of formation1 which sees in suffering a condition of life1 a condition of happiness1 and which in the name of a new culture combats all that we have hitherto called culture4 #g ,compare ,lassalle's theory of the original religion of ,rome4 ,g4 ,brandes2 ,ferdinand ,lassalle 7,london and ,new ,york1 #aiaa71 pp4 #gf ff4 #e4 ,among ,nietzsche's works there is a strange book which bears the title1 ,thus ,spake ,zarathustra4 ,it consists of four parts1 written during the years #ahhc-he1 each part in about ten days1 and conceived chapter by chapter on long walks--with a feeling of inspiration1 as though each sentence had been shouted in my ear1 as ,nietzsche wrote in a private letter4 ,the central figure and something of the form are borrowed from the ,persian ,avesta4 ,zarathustra is the mystical founder of a religion whom we usually call ,zoroaster4 ,his religion is the religion of purity2 his wisdom is cheerful and dauntless1 as that of one who laughed at his birth2 his nature is light and flame4 ,the eagle and the serpent1 who share his mountain cave1 the proudest and the wisest of beasts1 are ancient ,persian symbols4 ,this work contains ,nietzsche's doctrine in the form1 so to speak1 of religion4 ,it is the ,koran1 or rather the ,avesta1 which he was impelled to leave--obscure and profound1 high-soaring and remote from reality1 prophetic and intoxicated with the future1 filled to the brim with the personality of its author1 who again is entirely filled with himself4 ,among modern books that have adopted this tone and employed this symbolic and allegorical style may be mentioned ,mickiewicz's ,book of the ,polish ,pilgrims1 ,slowacki's ,anheli1 and ,the ,words of a ,believer1 by ,lamennais1 who was influenced by ,mickiewicz4 ,a newer work1 known to ,nietzsche1 is ,carl ,spitteler's ,prometheus and ,epimetheus 7#ahha74 ,but all these books1 with the exception of ,spitteler's1 are biblical in their language4 ,zarathustra1 on the other hand1 is a book of edification for free spirits4 ,nietzsche himself gave this book the highest place among his writings4 ,i do not share this view4 ,the imaginative power which sustains it is not sufficiently inventive1 and a certain monotony is inseparable from an archaistic presentment by means of types4 ,but it is a good book for those to have recourse to who are unable to master ,nietzsche's purely speculative works2 it contains all his fundamental ideas in the form of poetic recital4 ,its merit is a style that from the first word to the last is full-toned1 sonorous and powerful2 now and then rather unctuous in its combative judgments and condemnations2 always expressive of self-joy1 nay1 self-intoxication1 but rich in subtleties as in audacities1 sure1 and at times great4 ,behind this style lies a mood as of calm mountain air1 so light1 so ethereally pure1 that no infection1 no bacteria can live in it--no noise1 no stench1 no dust assails it1 nor does any path lead up4 ,clear sky above1 open sea at the mountain's foot1 and over all a heaven of light1 an abyss of light1 an azure bell1 a vaulted silence above roaring waters and mighty mountain-chains4 ,on the heights ,zarathustra is alone with himself1 drawing in the pure air in full1 deep breaths1 alone with the rising sun1 alone with the heat of noon1 which does not impair the freshness1 alone with the voices of the gleaming stars at night4 ,a good1 deep book it is4 ,a book that is bright in its joy of life1 dark in its riddles1 a book for spiritual mountain-climbers and dare-devils and for the few who are practised in the great contempt of man that loathes the crowd1 and in the great love of man that only loathes so deeply because it has a vision of a higher1 braver humanity1 which it seeks to rear and train4 ,zarathustra has sought the refuge of his cave out of disgust with petty happiness and petty virtues4 ,he has seen that men's doctrine of virtue and contentment makes them ever smaller3 their goodness is in the main a wish that no one may do them any harm2 therefore they forestall the others by doing them a little good4 ,this is cowardice and is called virtue4 ,true1 they are at the same time quite ready to attack and injure1 but only those who are once for all at their mercy and with whom it is safe to take liberties4 ,this is called bravery and is a still baser cowardice4 ,but when ,zarathustra tries to drive out the cowardly devils in men1 the cry is raised against him1 ,zarathustra is godless4 ,he is lonely1 for all his former companions have become apostates2 their young hearts have grown old1 and not old even1 only weary and slothful1 only commonplace--and this they call becoming pious again4 ,around light and liberty they once fluttered like gnats and young poets1 and already are they mystifiers1 and mumblers and mollycoddles4 ,they have understood their age4 ,they chose their time well4 ,for now do all night-birds again fly abroad4 ,now is the hour of all that dread the light4 ,zarathustra loathes the great city as a hell for anchorites' thoughts4 ,all lusts and vices are here at home2 but here are also the virtuous1 much appointable and appointed virtue4 ,much appointable virtue with scribe-fingers and hardy sitting-flesh and waiting-flesh1 blessed with little breast-stars and padded1 haunchless daughters4 ,here is also much piety and much devout spittle-licking and honey-slavering before the ,god of hosts4 ,for 'from on high' drippeth the star and the gracious spittle2 and upward longeth every starless bosom4 ,and ,zarathustra loathes the ,state1 loathes it as ,henrik ,ibsen did and more profoundly than he4 ,to him the ,state is the coldest of all cold monsters4 ,its fundamental lie is that it is the people4 ,no2 creative spirits were they who created the people and gave it a faith and a love2 thus they served life2 every people is peculiar to itself1 but the ,state is everywhere the same4 ,the ,state is to ,zarathustra that where the slow suicide of all is called life4 ,the ,state is for the many too many4 ,only where the ,state leaves oft does the man who is not superfluous begin2 the man who is a bridge to the ,superman4 ,from states ,zarathustra has fled up to his mountain1 into his cave4 ,in forbearance and pity lay his greatest danger4 ,rich in1 the little lies of pity he dwelt among men4 ,stung from head to foot by poisonous flies and hollowed out like a stone by many drops of malice1 thus did ,i sit among them1 saying to myself3 ,innocent is everything petty of its pettiness4 ,especially they who call themselves the good1 they sting in all innocence1 they lie in all innocence2 how could they be just towards me8 ,he who dwelleth among the good1 him teacheth pity to lie4 ,pity breedeth bad air for all free souls4 ,for the stupidity of the good is unfathomable4 ,their stiff wise men did ,i call wise1 not stiff4 ,their grave-diggers did ,i call searchers and testers--thus did ,i learn to confound speech4 ,the grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases4 ,from old refuse arise evil exhalations4 ,upon the mountains one should live4 ,and with blessed nostrils he breathes again the freedom of the mountains4 ,his nose is now released from the smell of all that is human4 ,there sits ,zarathustra with old broken tables of the law around him and new half-written tables1 awaiting his hour2 the hour when the lion shall come with the flock of doves1 strength in company with gentleness1 to do homage to him4 ,and he holds out to men a new table1 upon which such maxims as these are written-- ,spare not thy neighbour6 ,my great love for the remotest ones commands it4 ,thy neighbour is something that must be surpassed4 ,say not3 ,i will do unto others as ,i would they should do unto me4 ,what thou doest1 that can no man do to thee again4 ,there is no requital4 ,do not believe that thou mayst not rob4 ,a right which thou canst seize upon1 shalt thou never allow to be given thee4 ,beware of good men4 ,they never speak the truth4 ,for all that they call evil--the daring venture1 the prolonged distrust1 the cruel ,nay1 the deep disgust with men1 the will and the power to cut into the quick--all this must be present where a truth is to be born4 ,all the past is at man's mercy4 ,but1 this being so1 it might happen that the rabble became master and drowned all time in its shallow waters1 or that a tyrant usurped it all4 ,therefore we need a new nobility1 to be the adversary of all rabble and all tyranny1 and to inscribe on new tables the word noble4 ,certainly not a nobility that can be bought1 nor a nobility whose virtue is love of country4 ,no1 teaches ,zarathustra1 exiles shall ye be from your fatherlands and forefatherlands4 ,not the land of your fathers shall ye love1 but your children's land4 ,this love is the new nobility--love of that new land1 the undiscovered1 far-off country in the remotest sea4 ,to your children shall ye make amends for the misfortune of being your fathers' children4 ,thus shall ye redeem all the past4 ,zarathustra is full of lenity4 ,others have said3 ,thou shalt not commit adultery4 ,zarathustra teaches3 ,the honest should say to each other1 ,let us see whether our love continue2 let us fix a term1 that we may find out whether we desire a longer term4 ,what cannot be bent1 will be broken4 ,a woman said to ,zarathustra1 ,indeed1 ,i broke the marriage1 but first did the marriage break me4 ,zarathustra is without mercy4 ,it has been said3 ,push not a leaning waggon4 ,but ,zarathustra says3 ,that which is ready to fall1 shall ye also push4 ,all that belongs to our day is falling and decaying4 ,no one can preserve it1 but ,zarathustra will even help it to fall faster4 ,zarathustra loves the brave4 ,but not the bravery that takes up every challenge4 ,there is often more bravery in holding back and passing by and reserving one's self for a worthier foe4 ,zarathustra does not teach3 ,ye shall love your enemies1 but3 ,ye shall not engage in combat with enemies ye despise4 ,why so hard8 men cry to ,zarathustra4 ,he replies3 ,why so hard1 once said the charcoal to the diamond2 are we not near of kin8 ,the creators are hard4 ,their blessedness it is to press their hand upon future centuries as upon wax4 ,no doctrine revolts ,zarathustra more than that of the vanity and senselessness of life4 ,this is in his eyes ancient babbling1 old wives' babbling4 ,and the pessimists who sum up life with a balance of aversion1 and assert the badness of existence1 are the objects of his positive loathing4 ,he prefers pain to annihilation4 ,the same extravagant love of life is expressed in the ,hymn to ,life1 written by his friend1 ,lou von ,salom1 which ,nietzsche set for chorus and orchestra4 ,we read here-- ,so truly loves a friend his friend ,as ,i love thee1 ,o ,life in myst'ry hidden6 ,if joy or grief to me thou send2 ,if loud ,i laugh or else to weep am bidden1 ,yet love ,i thee with all thy changeful faces2 ,and should'st thou doom me to depart1 ,so would ,i tear myself from thy embraces1 ,as comrade from a comrade's heart4 ,and the poem concludes-- ,and if thou hast now left no bliss to crown me4 ,lead on ,i thou hast thy sorrow still6#h ,when ,achilles chose to be a day-labourer on earth rather than a king in the realm of the shades1 the expression was a weak one in comparison with this passionate outburst1 which paradoxically thirsts even for the cup of pain4 ,eduard von ,hartmann believes in a beginning and end of the world process4 ,he concludes that no eternity can lie behind us2 otherwise everything possible must already have happened1 which--according to his contention--is not the case4 ,in sharp contrast to him1 on this point as on others1 ,zarathustra teaches1 with1 be it said1 a somewhat shallow mysticism--which is derived from the ancient ,pythagoreans' idea of the circular course of history and is influenced by ,cohelet's ,hebrew philosophy of life--the eternal recurrence2 that is to say1 that all things eternally return and we ourselves with them1 that we have already existed an infinite number of times and all things with us4 ,the great clock of the universe is to him an hour-glass1 which is constantly turned and runs out again and again4 ,this is the direct antithesis of ,hartmann's doctrine of universal destruction1 and curiously enough it was put forward at about the same time by two ,french thinkers3 by ,blanqui in ,l'ternit par les ,astres 7#ahga71 and by ,gustave ,le ,bon in ,l',homme et les ,socits 7#ahha74 ,at his death ,zarathustra will say3 ,now ,i disappear and die2 in a moment ,i shall be nothing1 for the soul is mortal as the body2 but the complex of causes in which ,i am involved will return1 and it will continually reproduce me4 ,at the close of the third part of ,zarathustra there is a chapter headed ,the ,second ,dance ,song4 ,dance1 in ,nietzsche's language1 is always an expression for the lofty lightness of mind1 which is exalted above the gravity of earth and above all stupid seriousness4 ,this song1 extremely remarkable in its language1 is a good specimen of the style of the work1 when it soars into its highest flights of poetry4 ,life appears to ,zarathustra as a woman2 she strikes her castanets and he dances with her1 flinging out all his wrath with life and all his love of life4 ,lately looked ,i into thine eyes1 ,o ,life6 ,gold saw ,i gleaming in thy night-eye--my heart stood still with the joy of it4 ,a golden skiff saw ,i gleaming upon shadowy waters1 a sinking1 drinking1 reblinking1 golden swinging-skiff4 ,at my foot1 dancing-mad1 didst thou cast a glance1 a laughing1 questioning1 melting1 swinging-glance4 ,twice only did thy little hands strike the castanets --then was my foot swinging in the madness of the dance4 9999999999999999999999999999999999999999 9999999999999999999999999999999999999999 9999999999999999999999999999999999 ,i fear thee near1 ,i love thee far2 thy flight allureth me1 thy seeking secureth me2 ,i suffer1 but for thee1 what would ,i not gladly bear6 ,for thee1 whose coldness inflameth1 whose hatred mis-leadeth1 whose flight enchaineth1 whose mockery pleadeth6 ,who would not hate thee1 thou great bindress1 inwindress1 temptress1 seekress1 findress6 ,who would not love thee1 thou innocent1 impatient1 wind-swift1 child-eyed sinner6 ,in this dialogue between the dancers1 ,life and her lover1 these words occur3 ,o ,zarathustra1 thou art far from loving me as dearly as thou sayest2 thou art not faithful enough to me4 ,there is an old1 heavy booming-clock2 it boometh by night up to thy cave4 ,when thou hearest this clock at midnight1 then dost thou think until noon that soon thou wilt forsake me4 ,and then follows1 in conclusion1 the song of the old midnight clock4 ,but in the fourth part of the work1 in the section called ,the ,sleepwalker's ,song1 this short strophe is interpreted line by line2 in form half like a medival watchman's chant1 half like the hymn of a mystic1 it contains the mysterious spirit of ,nietzsche's esoteric doctrine concentrated in the shortest formula-- ,midnight is drawing on1 and as mysteriously1 as terribly1 and as cordially as the midnight bell speaketh to ,zarathustra1 so calleth he to the higher men3 ,at midnight many a thing is heard which may not be heard by day2 and the midnight speaketh3 ,o man1 take heed6 ,whither hath time gone8 ,have ,i not sunk into deep wells8 ,the world sleepeth4 ,and shuddering it asketh3 ,who is to be master of the world8 ,what saith the deep midnight8 ,the bell boometh1 the wood-worm burroweth1 the heart-worm gnaweth3 ,ah6 the world is deep4 ,but the old bell is like a sonorous instrument2 all pain hath bitten into its heart1 the pain of fathers and forefathers2 and all joy hath set it swinging1 the joy of fathers and forefathers--there riseth from the bell an odour of eternity1 a rosy-blessed1 golden-wine perfume of old happiness1 and this song3 ,the world is deep1 and deeper than the day had thought4 ,i am too pure for the rude hands of the day4 ,the purest shall be masters of the world1 the unacknowledged1 the strongest1 the midnight-souls1 who are brighter and deeper than any day4 ,deep is its woe4 ,but joy goeth deeper than heart's grief4 ,for grief saith3 ,break1 my heart6 ,fly away1 my pain6 ,woe saith3 ,begone6 ,but1 ye higher men1 said ye ever ,yea to a single joy1 then said ye also ,yea unto all woe4 ,for joy and woe are linked1 enamoured1 inseparable4 ,and all beginneth again1 all is eternal4 ,all joys desire eternity1 deep1 deep1 eternity4 ,this1 then1 is the midnight song-- ,oh ,mensch6 ,gieb ,acht6 ,was spricht die tiefe ,mitternacht8 ',ich schlief1 ich schlief-- ,aus tiefem ,traum bin ich erwacht3-- ,die ,welt ist tief1 ,und tiefer als der ,tag gedacht4 ,tief ist ihr ,weh-- ,lust--tiefer noch als ,herzeleid3 ,weh spricht3 ,vergeh6 ,doch alle ,lust will ,ewigkeit-- --will tiefe1 tiefe ,ewigkeit6' #h ,translated by ,herman ,scheffauer4 ,text and pianoforte score are given in ,vol4 ,,xvii 7,ecce ,homo7 of the ,english edition of ,nietzsche's works4 #f4 ,such is he1 then1 this warlike mystic1 poet and thinker1 this immoralist who is never tired of preaching4 ,coming to him fresh from the ,english philosophers1 one feels transported to another world4 ,the ,englishmen are all patient spirits1 whose natural bent is towards the accumulation and investigation of a mass of small facts in order thereby to discover a law4 ,the best of them are ,aristotelian minds4 ,few of them fascinate us personally or seem to be of very complex personality4 ,their influence lies more in what they do than in what they are4 ,nietzsche1 on the other hand1 like ,schopenhauer1 is a guesser1 a seer1 an artist1 less interesting in what he does than in what he is4 ,little as he feels himself a ,german1 he nevertheless continues the metaphysical and intuitive tradition of ,german philosophy and has the ,german thinker's profound dislike of any utilitarian point of view4 ,in his passionate aphoristical form he is unquestionably original2 in the substance of his thought he reminds one here and there of many another writer1 both of contemporary ,germany and of ,france2 but he evidently regards1 it as perfectly absurd that he should have to thank a contemporary for anything1 and storms like a ,german at all those who resemble him in any point4 ,i have already mentioned how strongly he reminds one of ,ernest ,renan in his conception of culture and in his hope of an aristocracy of intellect that could seize the dominion of the world4 ,nevertheless he has not one appreciative word to say for ,renan4 ,i have also alluded to the fact that ,eduard von ,hartmann was his predecessor in his fight against ,schopenhauer's morality of pity4 ,in this author1 whose talent is indisputable1 even though his importance may not correspond with his extraordinary reputation1 ,nietzsche1 with the uncritical injustice of a ,german university professor1 would only see a charlatan4 ,hartmann's nature is of heavier stuff than ,nietzsche's4 ,he is ponderous1 self-complacent1 fundamentally ,teutonic1 and1 in contrast to ,nietzsche1 entirely unaffected by ,french spirit and southern sunshine4 ,but there are points of resemblance between them1 which are due to historical conditions in the ,germany that reared them both4 ,in the first place1 there was something analogous in their positions in life1 since both as artillerymen had gone through a similar schooling2 and in the second place1 in their culture1 inasmuch as the starting-point of both is ,schopenhauer and both nevertheless retain a great respect for ,hegel1 thus uniting these two hostile brothers in their veneration4 ,they are further in agreement in their equally estranged attitude to ,christian piety and ,christian morality1 as well as in their contempt1 so characteristic of modern ,germany1 for every kind of democracy4 ,nietzsche resembles ,hartmann in his attacks on socialists and anarchists1 with the difference that ,hartmann's attitude is here more that of the savant1 while ,nietzsche has the bad taste to delight in talking about anarchist dogs1 expressing in the same breath his own loathing of the ,state4 ,nietzsche further resembles ,hartmann in his repeated demonstration of the impossibility of the ideals of equality and of peace1 since life is nothing but inequality and war3 ,what is good8 ,to be brave is good4 ,i do not say1 the good cause sanctifies war1 but the good war sanctifies every cause4 ,like his predecessor1 he dwells on the necessity of the struggle for power and on the supposed value of war to culture4 ,in both these authors1 comparatively independent as they are1 the one a mystical natural philosopher1 the other a mystical immoralist1 is reflected the all-dominating militarism of the new ,german ,empire4 ,hartmann approaches on many points the ,german snobbish national feeling4 ,nietzsche is opposed to it on principle1 as he is to the statesman who has piled up for the ,germans a new tower of ,babel1 a monster in extent of territory and power and for that reason called great1 but something of ,bismarck's spirit broods nevertheless over the works of both4 ,as regards the question of war1 the only difference between them is that ,nietzsche does not desire war for the sake of a fantastic redemption of the world1 but in order that manliness may not become extinct4 ,in his contempt for woman and his abuse of her efforts for emancipation ,nietzsche again agrees with ,hartmann1 though only in so far as both here recall ,schopenhauer1 whose echo ,hartmann is in this connection4 ,but whereas ,hartmann is here only a moralising doctrinaire with a somewhat offensive dash of pedantry1 one can trace beneath ,nietzsche's attacks on the female sex that subtle sense of woman's dangerousness which points to painful experience4 ,he does not seem to have known many women1 but those he did know1 he evidently loved and hated1 but above all despised4 ,again and again he returns to the unfitness of the free and great spirit for marriage4 ,in many of these utterances there is a strongly personal note1 especially in those which persistently assert the necessity of a solitary life for a thinker4 ,but as regards the less personal arguments about woman1 old-world ,germany here speaks through the mouth of ,nietzsche1 as through that of ,hartmann2 the ,germany whose women1 in contrast to those of ,france and ,england1 have for centuries been relegated to the domestic and strictly private life4 ,we may recognise in these ,german writers generally that they have an eye for the profound antagonism and perpetual war between the sexes1 which ,stuart ,mill neither saw nor understood4 ,but the injustice to man and the rather tame fairness to woman1 in which ,mill's admirable emancipatory attempt occasionally results1 is nevertheless greatly to be preferred to ,nietzsche's brutal unfairness1 which asserts that in our treatment of women we ought to return to the vast common sense of old ,asia4 ,finally1 in his conflict with pessimism ,nietzsche had ,eugen ,dhring 7especially in his ,werth des ,lebens7 as a forerunner1 and this circumstance seems to have inspired him with so much ill-will1 so much exasperation indeed1 that in a polemic now open1 now disguised1 he calls ,dhring his ape4 ,dhring is a horror to him as a plebeian1 as an ,antisemite1 as the apostle of revenge1 and as the disciple of the ,englishmen and of ,comte2 but ,nietzsche has not a word to say about ,dhring's very remarkable qualities1 to which such epithets as these do not apply4 ,but we can easily understand1 taking ,nietzsche's own destiny into consideration1 that ,dhring1 the blind man1 the neglected thinker who despises official scholars1 the philosopher who teaches outside the universities1 who1 in spite of being so little pampered by life1 loudly proclaims his love of life--should appear to ,nietzsche as a caricature of himself4 ,this was1 however1 no reason for his now and then adopting ,dhring's abusive tone4 ,and it must be confessed that1 much as ,nietzsche wished to be what1 for that matter1 he was--a ,polish szlachcic1 a ,european man of the world and a cosmopolitan thinker--in one respect he always remained the ,german professor3 in the rude abuse in which his uncontrolled hatred of rivals found vent2 and1 after all1 his only rivals as a modern ,german philosopher were ,hartmann and ,dhring4 ,it is strange that this man1 who learned such an immense amount from ,french moralists and psychologists like ,la ,rochefoucauld1 ,chamfort and ,stendhal1 was able to acquire so little of the self-control of their form4 ,he was never subjected to the restraint which the literary tone of ,france imposes upon every writer as regards the mention and exhibition of his own person4 ,for a long time he seems to have striven to discover himself and to become completely himself4 ,in order to find himself he crept into his solitude1 as ,zarathustra into his cave4 ,by the time he had succeeded in arriving at full independent development and felt the rich flow of individual thought within him1 he had lost all external standards for measuring his own value2 all bridges to the world around him were broken down4 ,the fact that no recognition came from without only aggravated his self-esteem4 ,the first glimmer of recognition further exalted this self-esteem4 ,at last it closed above his head and darkened this rare and commanding intellect4 ,as he stands disclosed in his incompleted life-work1 he is a writer well worth studying4 ,my principal reason for calling attention to him is that ,scandinavian literature appears to me to have been living quite long enough on the ideas that were put forward and discussed in the last decade4 ,it looks as though the power of conceiving great ideas were on the wane1 and even as though receptivity for them were fast vanishing2 people are still busy with the same doctrines1 certain theories of heredity1 a little ,darwinism1 a little emancipation of woman1 a little morality of happiness1 a little freethought1 a little worship of democracy1 etc4 ,and as to the culture of our cultured people1 the level represented approximately by the ,revue des ,deux ,mondes threatens to become the high-water mark of taste4 ,it does not seem yet to have dawned on the best among us that the finer1 the only true culture begins on the far side of the ,revue des ,deux ,mondes in the great personality1 rich in ideas4 ,the intellectual development of ,scandinavia has advanced comparatively rapidly in its literature4 ,we have seen great authors rise above all orthodoxy1 though they began by being perfectly simple-hearted believers4 ,this is very honourable1 but in the case of those who cannot rise higher still1 it is nevertheless rather meagre4 ,in the course of the 'seventies it became clear to almost all ,scandinavian authors that it would no longer do to go on writing on the basis of the ,augsburg ,confession4 ,some quietly dropped it1 others opposed it more or less noisily2 while most of those who abandoned it entrenched themselves against the public1 and to some extent against the bad conscience of their own childhood1 behind the established ,protestant morality2 now and then1 indeed1 behind a good1 everyday soup-stock morality--,i call it thus because so many a soup has been served from it4 ,but be that as it may1 attacks on existing prejudices and defence of existing institutions threaten at present to sink into one and the same commonplace familiarity4 ,soon1 ,i believe1 we shall once more receive a lively impression that art cannot rest content with ideas and ideals for the average mediocrity1 any more than with remnants of the old' catechisms2 but that great art demands intellects that stand on a level with the most individual personalities of contemporary thought1 in exceptionality1 in independence1 in defiance and in aristocratic self-supremacy4 ,,ii ,,december #ahii ,more than ten years have gone by since ,i first called attention to ,friedrich ,nietzsche4 ,my essay on ,aristocratic ,radicalism was the first study of any length to be devoted1 in the whole of ,europe1 to this man1 whose name has since flown round the world and is at this moment one of the most famous among our contemporaries4 ,this thinker1 then almost unknown and seldom mentioned1 became1 a few years later1 the fashionable philosopher in every country of ,europe1 and this while the great man1 to whose lot had suddenly fallen the universal fame he had so passionately desired1 lived on without a suspicion of it all1 a living corpse cut off from the world by incurable insanity4 ,beginning with his native land1 which so long as he retained his powers never gave him a sign of recognition1 his writings have now made their way in every country4 ,even in ,france1 usually so loth to admit foreign1 and especially ,german1 influence1 his character and his doctrine have been studied and expounded again and again4 ,in ,germany1 as well as outside it1 a sort of school has been formed1 which appeals to his authority and not unfrequently compromises him1 or rather itself1 a good deal4 ,the opposition to him is conducted sometimes 7as by ,ludwig ,stein7 on serious and scientific lines1 although from narrow pedagogic premises2 sometimes 7as by ,herr ,max ,nordau7 with sorry weapons and with the assumed superiority of presumptuous mediocrity4 ,interesting articles and books on ,nietzsche have been written by ,peter ,gast and ,lou von ,salom in ,german and by ,henri ,lichtenberger in ,french2 and in addition ,nietzsche's sister1 ,frau ,elisabeth ,frster-,nietzsche1 has not only published an excellent edition of his collected works 7including his youthful sketches71 but has written his ,life 7and published his ,correspondence74 ,my old essay on ,nietzsche has thus long ago been outstripped by later works1 the writers of which were able to take a knowledge of ,nietzsche's work for granted and therefore to examine his writings without at the same time having to acquaint the reader with their contents4 ,that essay1 it may be remembered1 occasioned an exchange of words between ,prof4 ,hffding and myself1 in the course of which ,i had the opportunity of expressing my own views more clearly and of showing what points they had in common with ,nietzsche's1 and where they diverged from his4#a ,as1 of course1 these polemical utterances of mine were not translated into foreign languages1 no notice was taken of them anywhere abroad4 ,the first essay itself1 on the other hand1 which was soon translated1 brought me in a number of attacks1 which gradually acquired a perfectly stereotyped formula4 ,in an article by a ,germanised ,swede1 who wanted to be specially spiteful1 ,i was praised for having in that essay broken with my past and resolutely renounced the set of liberal opinions and ideas ,i had hitherto championed4 ,whatever else ,i might be blamed for1 it had to be acknowledged that twice in my life ,i had been the spokesman of ,german ideas1 in my youth of ,hegel's and in my maturer years of ,nietzsche's4 ,in a book by a noisy ,german charlatan living in ,paris1 ,herr ,nordau1 it was shortly afterwards asserted that if ,danish parents could guess what ,i was really teaching their children at the ,university of ,copenhagen1 they would kill me in the street--a downright incitement to murder1 which was all the more comic in its pretext1 as admission to my lectures has always been open to everybody1 the greater part of these lectures has appeared in print1 and1 finally1 twenty years ago the parents used very frequently to come and hear me4 ,it was repeated in the same quarter that after being a follower of ,stuart ,mill1 ,i had in that essay turned my back on my past1 since ,i had now appeared as an adherent of ,nietzsche4 ,this last statement was afterwards copied in a very childish book by a ,viennese lady who1 without a notion of the actual facts1 writes away1 year in1 year out1 on ,scandinavian literature for the benefit of the ,german public4 ,this nonsense was finally disgorged once more in #ahii by ,mr4 ,alfred ,ipsen1 who contributed to the ,london ,athenum surveys of ,danish literature1 among the virtues of which impartiality did not find a place4 ,in the face of these constantly repeated assertions from abroad1 ,i may be permitted to make it clear once more--as ,i have already shown in ,tilskueren in #ahij 7p4 #bei7--that my principles have not been in the slightest way modified through contact with ,nietzsche4 ,when ,i became acquainted with him ,i was long past the age at which it is possible to change one's fundamental view of life4 ,moreover1 ,i maintained many years ago1 in reply to my ,danish opponents1 that my first thought with regard to a philosophical book was by no means to ask whether what it contains is right or wrong3 ,i go straight through the book to the man behind it4 ,and my first question is this3 ,what is the value of this man1 is he interesting1 or not8 ,if he is1 then his books are undoubtedly worth knowing4 ,questions of right or wrong are seldom applicable in the highest intellectual spheres1 and their answering is not unfrequently of relatively small importance4 ,the first lines ,i wrote about ,nietzsche were therefore to the effect that he deserved to be studied and contested4 ,i rejoiced in him1 as ,i rejoice in every powerful and uncommon individuality4 ,and three years later ,i replied to the attack of a worthy and able ,swiss professor1 who had branded ,nietzsche as a reactionary and a cynic1 in these words1 amongst others3 ,no mature reader studies ,nietzsche with the latent design of adopting his opinions1 still less with that of propagating them4 ,we are not children in search of instruction1 but sceptics in search of men1 and we rejoice when we have found a man--the rarest thing there is4 ,it seems to me that this is not exactly the language of an adherent1 and that my critics might spare some of their powder and shot as regards my renunciation of ideas4 ,it is a nuisance to be forced now and then to reply in person to all the allegations that are accumulated against one year by year in the ,european press2 but when others never write a sensible word about one1 it becomes an obligation at times to stand up for one's self4 ,my personal connection with ,nietzsche began with his sending me his book1 ,beyond ,good and ,evil4 ,i read it1 received a strong impression1 though not a clear or decided one1 and did nothing further about it--for one reason1 because ,i receive every day far too many books to be able to acknowledge them4 ,but as in the following year ,the ,genealogy of ,morals was sent me by the author1 and as this book was not only much clearer in itself1 but also threw new light on the earlier one1 ,i wrote ,nietzsche a few lines of thanks1 and this led to a correspondence which was interrupted by ,nietzsche's attack of insanity thirteen months later4 ,the letters he sent me in that last year of his conscious life appear to me to be of no little psychological and biographical interest4 #a ,see ,tilskueren 7,copenhagen7 for ,august and ,november-,december #ahhi1 ,january1 ,february-,march1 ,april and ,may #ahij4 ,,correspondence ,,between ,,friedrich ,,nietzsche ,,and ,,george ,,brandes #a4 ,,brandes to ,,nietzsche4 ,copenhagen1 ,nov4 #bf1 #ahhg4 ,,dear ,,sir1 ,a year ago ,i received through your publisher your work ,beyond ,good and ,evil2 the other day your latest book reached me in the same way4 ,of your other books ,i have ,human1 all-too-,human4 ,i had just sent the two volumes ,i possess to the binder1 when ,the ,genealogy of ,morals arrived1 so that ,i have not been able to compare it with the earlier works1 as ,i mean to do4 ,by degrees ,i shall read everything of yours attentively4 ,this time1 however1 ,i am anxious to express at once my sincere thanks for the book sent4 ,it is an honour to me to be known to you1 and known in such a way that you should wish to gain me as a reader4 ,a new and original spirit breathes to me from your books4 ,i do not yet fully understand what ,i have read2 ,i cannot always see your intention4 ,but ,i find much that harmonises with my own ideas and sympathies1 the depreciation of the ascetic ideals and the profound disgust with democratic mediocrity1 your aristocratic radicalism4 ,your contempt for the morality of pity is not yet clear to me4 ,there were also in the other work some reflections on women in general which did not agree with my own line of thought4 ,your nature is so absolutely different from mine that it is not easy for me to feel at home4 ,in spite of your universality you are very ,german in your mode of thinking and writing4 ,you are one of the few people with whom ,i should enjoy a talk4 ,i know nothing about you4 ,i see with astonishment that you are a professor and doctor4 ,i congratulate you in any case on being intellectually so little of a professor4 ,i do not know what you have read of mine4 ,my writings only attempt the solution of modest problems4 ,for the most part they are only to be had in ,danish4 ,for many years ,i have not written ,german4 ,i have my best public in the ,slavonic countries1 ,i believe4 ,i have lectured in ,warsaw for two years in succession1 and this year in ,petersburg and ,moscow1 in ,french4 ,thus ,i endeavour to break through the narrow limits of my native land4 ,although no longer young1 ,i am still one of the most inquisitive of men and one of the most eager to learn4 ,you will therefore not find me closed against your ideas1 even when ,i differ from you in thought and feeling4 ,i am often stupid1 but never in the least narrow4 ,let me have the pleasure of a few lines if you think it worth the trouble4 ,yours gratefully1 ,,george ,,brandes4 #b4 ,,nietzsche to ,,brandes4 ,nice1 ,dec4 #b1 #ahhg4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,a few readers whom one honours and beyond them no readers at all--that is really what ,i desire4 ,as regards the latter part of this wish1 ,i am bound to say my hope of its realisation is growing less and less4 ,all the more happy am ,i in satis sunt pauci1 that the pauci do not fail and have never failed me4 ,of the living amongst them ,i will mention 7to name only those whom you are certain to know7 my distinguished friend ,jakob ,burkhardt1 ,hans von ,blow1 ,h4 ,taine1 and the ,swiss poet ,keller2 of the dead1 the old ,hegelian ,bruno ,bauer and ,richard ,wagner4 ,it gives me sincere pleasure that so good a ,european and missionary of culture as yourself will in future be numbered amongst them2 ,i thank you with all my heart for this proof of your goodwill4 ,i am afraid you will find it a difficult position4 ,i myself have no doubt that my writings in one way or another are still very ,german4 ,you will1 ,i am sure1 feel this all the more markedly1 being so spoilt by yourself2 ,i mean1 by the free and graceful ,french way in which you handle the language 7a more familiar way than mine74 ,with me a great many words have acquired an incrustation of foreign salts and taste differently on my tongue and on those of my readers4 ,on the scale of my experiences and circumstances the predominance is given to the rarer1 remoter1 more attenuated tones as against the normal1 medial ones4 ,besides 7as an old musician1 which is what ,i really am71 ,i have an ear for quarter-tones4 ,finally--and this probably does most to make my books obscure--there is in me a distrust of dialectics1 even of reasons4 ,what a person already holds true or has not yet acknowledged as true2 seems to me to depend mainly on his courage1 on the relative strength of his courage 7,i seldom have the courage for what ,i really know74 ,the expression ,aristocratic ,radicalism1 which you employ1 is very good4 ,it is1 permit me to say1 the cleverest thing ,i have yet read about myself4 ,how far this mode of thought has carried me already1 how far it will carry me yet--,i am almost afraid to imagine4 ,but there are certain paths which do not allow one to go backward and so ,i go forward1 because ,i must4 ,that ,i may not neglect anything on my part that might facilitate your access to my cave--that is1 my philosophy--my ,leipzig publisher shall send you all my older books en bloc4 ,i recommend you especially to read the new prefaces to them 7they have nearly all been republished72 these prefaces1 if read in order1 will perhaps throw some light upon me1 assuming that ,i am not obscurity in itself 7obscure in myself7 as obscurissimus obscurorum virorum4 ,for that is quite possible4 ,are you a musician8 ,a work of mine for chorus and orchestra is just being published1 a ,hymn to ,life4 ,this is intended to represent my music to posterity and one day to be sung in my memory2 assuming that there is enough left of me for that4 ,you see what posthumous thoughts ,i have4 ,but a philosophy like mine is like a grave--it takes one from among the living4 ,bene vixit qui bene latuit--was inscribed on ,descartes' tombstone4 ,what an epitaph1 to be sure6 ,i too hope we may meet some day1 ,yours1 ,,nietzsche4 ,n4,b4--,i am staying this winter at ,nice4 ,my summer address is ,sils-,maria1 ,upper-,engadine1 ,switzerland--,i have resigned my professorship at the ,university4 ,i am three parts blind4 #c4 ,,brandes to ,,nietzsche4 ,copenhagen1 ,dec4 #ae1 #ahhg4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,the last words of your letter are those that have made most impression on me2 those in which you tell me that your eyes are seriously affected4 ,have you consulted good oculists1 the best8 ,it alters one's whole psychological life if one cannot see well4 ,you owe it to all who honour you to do everything possible for the preservation and improvement of your sight4 ,i have put off answering your letter because you announced the sending of a parcel of books1 and ,i wished to thank you for them at the same time4 ,but as the parcel has not yet arrived ,i will send you a few words to-day4 ,i have your books back from the binder and have gone into them as deeply as ,i was able amid the stress of preparing lectures and all kinds of literary and political work4 ,december #ag4 ,i am quite willing to be called a good ,european1 less so to be called a missionary of culture4 ,i have a horror of all missionary effort--because ,i have come across none but moralising missionaries--and ,i am afraid ,i do not altogether believe in what is called culture4 ,our culture as a whole cannot inspire enthusiasm1 can it8 and what would a missionary be without enthusiasm6 ,in other words1 ,i am more isolated than you think4 ,all ,i meant by being ,german was that you write more for yourself1 think more of yourself in writing1 than for the general public2 whereas most non--,german writers have been obliged to force themselves into a certain discipline of style1 which no doubt makes the latter clearer and more plastic1 but necessarily deprives it of all profundity and compels the writer to keep to himself his most intimate and best individuality1 the anonymous in him4 ,i have thus been horrified at times to see how little of my inmost self is more than hinted at in my writings4 ,i am no connoisseur in music4 ,the arts of which ,i have some notion are sculpture and painting2 ,i have to thank them for my deepest artistic impressions4 ,my ear is undeveloped4 ,in my young days this was a great grief to me4 ,i used to play a good deal and worked at thorough-bass for a few years1 but nothing came of it4 ,i can enjoy good music keenly1 but still am one of the uninitiated4 ,i think ,i can trace in your works certain points of agreement with my own taste3 your predilection for ,beyle1 for instance1 and for ,taine2 but the latter ,i have not seen for seventeen years4 ,i am not so enthusiastic about his work on the ,revolution as you seem to be4 ,he deplores and harangues an earthquake4 ,i used the expression aristocratic radicalism because it so exactly defines my own political convictions4 ,i am a little hurt1 however1 at the offhand and impetuous pronouncements against such--phenomena as socialism and anarchism in your works4 ,the anarchism of ,prince ,kropotkin1 for instance1 is no stupidity4 ,the name1 of course1 is nothing4 ,your intellect1 which is usually so dazzling1 seems to me to fall a trifle short where truth is to be found in a nuance4 ,your views on the origin of the moral ideas interest me in the highest degree4 ,you share--to my delighted astonishment--a certain repugnance which ,i feel for ,herbert ,spencer4 ,with us he passes for the god of philosophy4 ,however1 it is as a rule a distinct merit with these ,englishmen that their not very high-soaring intellect shuns hypotheses1 whereas hypothesis has destroyed the supremacy of ,german philosophy4 ,is not there a great deal that is hypothetical in your ideas of caste distinctions as the source of various moral concepts8 ,i know ,re whom you attack1 have met him in ,berlin2 he was a quiet man1 rather distinguished in his bearing1 but a somewhat dry and limited intellect4 ,he was living--according to his own account1 as brother and sister--with a quite young and intelligent ,russian lady1 who published a year or two ago a book called ,der ,kampf um ,gott1 but this gives no idea of her genuine gifts4 ,i am looking forward to receiving the books you promise me4 ,i hope in future you will not lose sight of me4 ,yours1 ,,george ,,brandes4 #d4 ,,nietzsche to ,,brandes4 ,nice1 ,jan4 #h1 #ahhh4 ,you should not object to the expression missionary of culture4 ,what better way is there of being one in our day than that of missionising one's disbelief in culture8 ,to have understood that our ,european culture is a vast problem and by no means a solution--is not such a degree of introspection and self-conquest nowadays culture itself8 ,i am surprised my books have not yet reached you4 ,i shall not omit to send a reminder to ,leipzig4 ,at ,christmas time ,messieurs the publishers are apt to lose their heads4 ,meanwhile may ,i be allowed to bring to your notice a daring curiosity over which no publisher has authority1 an ineditum of mine that is among the most personal things ,i can show4 ,it is the fourth part of my ,zarathustra2 its proper title1 with regard to what precedes and follows it1 should be-- ,zarathustra's ,temptation ,an ,interlude4 ,perhaps this is my best answer to your question about my problem of pity4 ,besides which1 there are excellent reasons for gaining admission to me by this particular secret door2 provided that one crosses the threshold with your eyes and ears4 ,your essay on ,zola reminded me once more1 like everything ,i have met with of yours 7the last was an essay in the ,goethe ,year-book71 in the most agreeable way of your natural tendency towards every kind of psychological optics4 ,when working out the most difficult mathematical problems of the me moderne you are as much in your element as a ,german scholar in such case is apt to be out of his4 ,or do you perhaps think more favourably of present-day ,germans8 ,it seems to me that they become year by year more clumsy and rectangular in rebus psychologicis 7in direct contrast to the ,parisians1 with whom everything is becoming nuance and mosaic71 so that all events below the surface escape their notice4 ,for example1 my ,beyond ,good and ,evil--what an awkward position it has put them in6 ,not one intelligent word has reached me about this book1 let alone an intelligent sentiment4 ,i do not believe even the most well-disposed of my readers has discovered that he has here to deal with the logical results of a perfectly definite philosophical sensibility1 and not with a medley of a hundred promiscuous paradoxes and heterodoxies4 ,nothing of the kind has been experienced2 my readers do not bring to it a thousandth part of the passion and suffering that is needed4 ,an immoralist6 ,this does not suggest anything to them4 ,by the way1 the ,goncourts in one of their prefaces claim to have invented the phrase document humain4 ,but for all that ,m4 ,taine may well be its real originator4 ,you are right in what you say about haranguing an earthquake 2 but such ,quixotism is among the most honourable things on this earth4 ,with the greatest respect1 ,yours1 ,,nietzsche4 #e4 ,,brandes to ,,nietzsche4 ,copenhagen1 ,jan4 #aa1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,your publisher has apparently forgotten to send me your books1 but ,i have to-day received your letter with thanks4 ,i take the liberty of sending you herewith one of my books in proof 7because unfortunately ,i have no other copy at hand71 a collection of essays intended for export1 therefore not my best wares4 ,they date from various times and are all too polite1 too laudatory1 too idealistic in tone4 ,i never really say all ,i think in them4 ,the paper on ,ibsen is no doubt the best1 but the translation of the verses1 which ,i had done for me1 is unfortunately wretched4 ,there is one ,scandinavian writer whose works would interest you1 if only they were translated3 ,sren ,kierkegaard2 he lived from #ahac to #ahee1 and is in my opinion one of the profoundest psychologists that have ever existed4 ,a little book ,i wrote about him 7translated1 ,leipzig1 #ahgi7 gives no adequate idea of his genius1 as it is a sort of polemical pamphlet written to counteract his influence4 ,but in a psychological respect it is1 ,i think1 the most subtle thing ,i have published4 ,the essay in the ,goethe ,year-book was unfortunately shortened by more than a third1 as the space had been reserved for me4 ,it is a good deal better in ,danish4 ,if you happen to read ,polish1 ,i will send you a little book that ,i have published only in that language4 ,i see the new ,rivista ,contemporanea of ,florence has printed a paper of mine on ,danish literature4 ,you must not read it4 ,it is full of the most ridiculous mistakes4 ,it is translated from the ,russian1 ,i must tell you4 ,i had allowed it to be translated into ,russian from my ,french text1 but could not check this translation2 now it appears in ,italian from the ,russian with fresh absurdities2 amongst others in the names 7on account of the ,russian pronunciation71 ,g for ,h throughout4 ,i am glad you find in me something serviceable to yourself4 ,for the last four years ,i have been the most detested man in ,scandinavia4 ,every day the papers rage against me1 especially since my last long quarrel with ,bjrnson1 in which the moral ,german papers all took part against me4 ,i dare say you know his absurd play1 ,a ,gauntlet1 his propaganda for male virginity and his covenant with the spokeswomen of the demand for equality in morals4 ,anything like it was certainly unheard of till now4 ,in ,sweden these insane women have formed great leagues in which they vow only to marry virgin men4 ,i suppose they get a guarantee with them1 like watches1 only the guarantee for the future is not likely to be forthcoming4 ,i have read the three books of yours that ,i know again and again4 ,there are two or three bridges leading from my inner world to yours3 ,csarism1 hatred of pedantry1 a sense for ,beyle1 etc41 but still most of it is strange to me4 ,our experiences appear to be so infinitely dissimilar4 ,you are without doubt the most suggestive of all ,german writers4 ,your ,german literature6 ,i don't know what is the matter with it4 ,i fancy all the brains must go into the ,general ,staff or the administration4 ,the whole life of ,germany and all your institutions are spreading the most hideous uniformity1 and even authorship is stifled by publishing4 ,your obliged and respectful1 ,,george ,,brandes4 #f4 ,,nietzsche to ,,brandes4 ,nice1 ,feb4 #ai1 #ahhh4 ,you have laid me under a most agreeable obligation with your contribution to the idea of ,modernity1 for it happens that this winter ,i am circling round this paramount problem of values1 very much from above and in the manner of a bird1 and with the best intention of looking down upon the modern world with as unmodern an eye as possible4 ,i admire--let me confess it--the tolerance of your judgment1 as much as the moderation of your sentences4 ,how you suffer these little children to come unto you6 ,even ,heyse6 ,on my next visit to ,germany ,i propose to take up the psychological problem of ,kierkegaard and at the same time to renew acquaintance with your older literature4 ,it will be of use to me in the best sense of the word--and will serve to restore good humour to my own severity and arrogance of judgment4 ,my publisher telegraphed to me yesterday that the books had gone to you4 ,i will spare you and myself the story of why they were delayed4 ,now1 my dear ,sir1 may you put a good face on a bad bargain1 ,i mean on this ,nietzsche literature4 ,i myself cherish the notion of having given the new ,germans the richest1 most actual and most independent books of any they possess2 also of being in my own person a capital event in the crisis of the determination of values4 ,but this may be an error2 and1 what is more1 a piece of foolishness--,i do not want to have to believe anything of the sort about myself4 ,one or two further remarks3 they concern my firstlings 7the ,juvenilia and ,juvenalia74 ,the pamphlet against ,strauss1 the wicked merrymaking of a very free spirit at the expense of one who thought himself such1 led to a terrific scandal2 ,i was already a ,professor ,ordinarius at the time1 therefore in spite of my twenty-seven years a kind of authority and something acknowledged4 ,the most unbiassed view of this affair1 in which almost every notability took part for or against me1 and in which an insane quantity of paper was covered with printer's ink1 is to be found in ,karl ,hillebrand's ,zeiten1 ,vlker und ,menschen1 second volume4 ,the trouble was not that ,i had jeered at the senile bungling of an eminent critic1 but that ,i had caught ,german taste in flagranti in compromising tastelessness2 for in spite of all party differences of religion and theology it had unanimously admired ,strauss's ,alten und ,neuen ,glauben as a masterpiece of freedom and subtlety of thought 7even the style674 ,my pamphlet was the first onslaught on ,german culture 7that culture which they imagined to have gained the victory over ,france74 ,the word ,culture-,philistine1 which ,i then invented1 has remained in the language as a survival of the raging turmoil of that polemic4 ,the two papers on ,schopenhauer and ,richard ,wagner appear to me to-day to contain self-confessions1 above all promises to myself1 rather than any real psychology of those two masters1 who are at the same time profoundly related and profoundly antagonistic to me--7,i was the first to distill a sort of unity out of them both2 at present this superstition is much to the fore in ,german culture--that all ,wagnerites are followers of ,schopenhauer4 ,it was otherwise when ,i was young4 ,then it was the last of the ,hegelians who adhered to ,wagner1 and ,wagner and ,hegel was still the watchword of the 'fifties74 ,between ,thoughts out of ,season and ,human1 all-too-,human there lies a crisis and a skin-casting4 ,physically too3 ,i lived for years in extreme proximity to death4 ,this was my great good fortune3 ,i forgot myself1 ,i outlived myself 444 ,i have performed the same trick once again4 ,so now we have each presented gifts to the other3 two travellers1 it seems to me1 who are glad to have met4 ,i remain1 ,yours most sincerely1 ,,nietzsche4 #g4 ,,brandes to ,,nietzsche4 ,copenhagen1 ,march #g1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,i imagine you to be living in fine spring weather2 up here we are buried in abominable snowdrifts and have been cut off from ,europe for several days4 ,to make things worse1 ,i have this evening been talking to some hundred imbeciles1 and everything looks grey and dreary around me1 so to revive my spirits a little ,i will thank you for your letter of ,february #ai and your generous present of books4 ,as ,i was too busy to write to you at once1 ,i sent you a volume on ,german ,romanticism which ,i found on my shelves4 ,i should be very sorry1 however1 that you should interpret my sending it otherwise than as a silent expression of thanks4 ,the book was written in #ahgc and revised in #ahhf2 but my ,german publisher has permitted himself a number of linguistic and other alterations1 so that the first two pages1 for instance1 are hardly mine at all4 ,wherever he does not understand my meaning1 he puts something else1 and declares that what ,i have written is not ,german4 ,moreover1 the man promised to buy the rights of the old translation of my book1 but from very foolish economy has not done so2 the consequence is that the ,german courts have suppressed my book in two instances as pirated767--because ,i had included in it fragments of the old translation--while the real pirate is allowed to sell my works freely4 ,the probable result of this will be that ,i shall withdraw entirely from ,german literature4 ,i sent that volume because ,i had no other4 ,but the first one on the migrs1 the fourth on the ,english and the fifth on the ,french romanticists are all far1 far better2 written con amore4 ,the title of the book1 ,moderne ,geister1 is fortuitous4 ,i have written some twenty volumes4 ,i wanted to put together for abroad a volume on personalities whose names would be familiar4 ,that is how it came about4 ,some things in it have cost a good deal of study1 such as the paper on ,tegnr1 which tells the truth about him for the first time4 ,ibsen will certainly interest you as a personality4 ,unfortunately as a man he does not stand on the same level that he reaches as a poet4 ,intellectually he owes much to ,kierkegaard1 and he is still strongly permeated by theology4 ,bjrnson in his latest phase has become just an ordinary lay-preacher4 ,for more than three years ,i have not published a book2 ,i felt too unhappy4 ,these three years have been among the hardest of my life1 and ,i see no sign of the approach of better times4 ,however1 ,i am now going to set about the publication of the sixth volume of my work and another book besides4 ,it will take a deal of time4 ,i was delighted with all the fresh books1 turning them over and reading them4 ,the youthful books are of great value to me2 they make it far easier to understand you2 ,i am now leisurely ascending the steps that lead up to your intellect4 ,with ,zarathustra ,i began too precipitately4 ,i prefer to advance upwards rather than to dive head first as though into a sea4 ,i knew ,hillebrand's essay and read years ago some bitter attacks on the book about ,strauss4 ,i am grateful to you for the word culture-philistine2 ,i had no idea it was yours4 ,i take no offence at the criticism of ,strauss1 although ,i have feelings of piety for the old gentleman4 ,yet he was always the ,tbingen collegian4 ,of the other works ,i have at present only studied ,the ,dawn of ,day at all closely4 ,i believe ,i understand the book thoroughly1 many of its ideas have also been mine1 others are new to me or put into a new shape1 but not on that account strange to me4 ,one solitary remark1 so as not to make this letter too long4 ,i am delighted with the aphorism on the hazard of marriage 7,aphorism #aej74 ,but why do you not dig deeper here8 ,you speak somewhere with a certain reverence of marriage1 which by implying an emotional ideal has idealised emotion--here1 however1 you are more blunt and forcible4 ,why not for once say the full truth about it8 ,i am of opinion that the institution of marriage1 which may have been very useful in taming brutes1 causes more misery to mankind than even the ,church has done4 ,church1 monarchy1 marriage1 property1 these are to my mind four old venerable institutions which mankind will have to reform from the foundations in order to be able to breathe freely4 ,and of these marriage alone kills the individuality1 paralyses liberty and is the embodiment of a paradox4 ,but the shocking thing about it is that humanity is still too coarse to be able to shake it off4 ,the most emancipated writers1 so called1 still speak of marriage with a devout and virtuous air which maddens me4 ,and they gain their point1 since it is impossible to say what one could put in its place for the mob4 ,there is nothing else to be done but slowly to transform opinion4 ,what do you think about it8 ,i should like very much to hear how it is with your eyes4 ,i was glad to see how plain and clear your writing is4 ,externally1 ,i suppose1 you lead a calm and peaceful life down there8 ,mine is a life of conflict which wears one out4 ,in these realms ,i am even more hated now than ,i was seventeen years ago2 this is not pleasant in itself1 though it is gratifying in so far as it proves to me that ,i have not yet lost my vigour nor come to terms on any point with sovereign mediocrity4 ,your attentive and grateful reader1 ,,george ,,brandes4 #h4 ,,nietzsche to ,,brandes4 ,nice1 ,march #bg1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,i should much have liked to thank you before this for so rich and thoughtful a letter3 but my health has been troubling me1 so that ,i have fallen badly into arrears with all good things4 ,in my eyes1 ,i may say in passing1 ,i have a dynamometer for my general state2 since my health in the main has once more improved1 they have become stronger than ,i had ever believed possible--they have put to shame the prophecies of the very best ,german oculists4 ,if ,messieurs ,grfe et hoc genus omne had turned out right1 ,i should long ago have been blind4 ,as it is1 ,i have come to ,no4 #c spectacles--bad enough6--but ,i still see4 ,i speak of this worry because you were sympathetic enough to inquire about it1 and because during the last few weeks my eyes have been particularly weak and irritable4 ,i feel for you in the ,north1 now so wintry and gloomy2 how does one manage to keep one's soul erect there8 ,i admire almost every man who does not lose faith in himself under a cloudy sky1 to say nothing of his faith in humanity1 in marriage1 in property1 in the ,state4 444 ,in ,petersburg ,i should be a nihilist3 here ,i believe as a plant believes1 in the sun4 ,the sun of ,nice--you cannot call that a prejudice4 ,we have had it at the expense of all the rest of ,europe4 ,god1 with the cynicism peculiar to him1 lets it shine upon us idlers1 philosophers and sharpers more brightly than upon the far worthier military heroes of the ,fatherland4 ,but then1 with the instinct of the ,northerner1 you have chosen the strongest of all stimulants to help you to endure life in the ,north3 war1 the excitement of aggression1 the ,viking raid4 ,i divine in your writings the practised soldier2 and not only mediocrity1 but perhaps especially the more independent or individual characters of the ,northern mind may be constantly challenging you to fight4 ,how much of the parson1 how much theology is still left behind in all this idealism6444 ,to me it would be still worse than a cloudy sky1 to have to make oneself angry over things which do not concern one4 ,so much for this time2 it is little enough4 ,your ,german ,romanticism has set me thinking1 how this whole movement actually only reached its goal as music 7,schumann1 ,mendelssohn1 ,weber1 ,wagner1 ,brahms72 as literature it remained a great promise4 ,the ,french were more fortunate4 ,i am afraid ,i am too much of a musician not to be a romanticist4 ,without music life to me would be a mistake4 ,with cordial and grateful regards ,i remain1 dear ,sir1 ,yours1 ,,nietzsche4 #i4 ,,brandes to ,,nietzsche4 ,copenhagen1 ,april #c1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,you have called the postman the medium of ill-mannered invasions4 ,that is very true as a rule1 and should be sat4 sapienti not to trouble you4 ,i am not an intruder by nature1 so little in fact that ,i lead an almost isolated life1 am indeed loth to write letters and1 like all authors1 loth to write at all4 ,yesterday1 however1 when ,i had received your letter and taken up one of your books1 ,i suddenly felt a sort of vexation at the idea that nobody here in ,scandinavia knew anything about you1 and ,i soon determined to make you known at a stroke4 ,the newspaper cutting will tell you that 7having just finished a series of lectures on ,russia7 ,i am announcing fresh lectures on your writings4 ,for many years ,i have been obliged to repeat all my lectures1 as the ,university cannot hold the audiences2 that is not likely to be the case this time1 as your name is so absolutely new1 but the people who will come and get an impression of your works will not be of the dullest4 ,as ,i should very much like to have an idea of your appearance1 ,i beg you to give me a portrait of yourself4 ,i enclose my last photograph4 ,i would also ask you to tell me quite briefly when and where you were born and in what years you published 7or better1 wrote7 your works1 as they are not dated4 ,if you have any newspaper that contains these details1 there will be no need to write4 ,i am an unmethodical person and possess neither dictionaries of authors nor other books of reference in which your name might be found4 ,the youthful works--the ,thoughts out of ,season--have been very useful to me4 ,how young you were and enthusiastic1 how frank and nave ,i ,there is much in the maturer books that ,i do not yet understand2 you appear to me often to hint at or generalise about entirely intimate1 personal data1 giving the reader a beautiful casket without the key4 ,but most of it ,i understand4 ,i was enchanted by the youthful work on ,schopenhauer2 although personally ,i owe little to ,schopenhauer1 it seemed to speak to me from the soul4 ,one or two pedantic corrections3 ,joyful ,wisdom1 p4 #aaf4 ,the words quoted are not ,chamfort's last1 they are to be found in his ,caractres et ,anecdotes3 dialogue between ,m4 ,d4 and ,m4 ,l4 in explanation of the sentence3 ,peu de personnes et pen de choses m'intressent1 mais rien ne m'intresse moins que moi4 ,the concluding words are3 en vivant et en voyant les hommes1 il faut que le cour se brise ou se bronze4 ,on p4 #aah you speak of the elevation in which ,shakespeare places ,csar4 ,i find ,shakespeare's ,csar pitiable4 ,an act of high treason4 ,and this glorification of the miserable fellow whose only achievement was to plunge a knife into a great man6 ,human1 all-too-,human1 ,,ii1 p4 #ei4 ,a holy lie4 ,it is the only holy lie that has become famous4 ,no1 ,desdemona's last words are perhaps still more beautiful and just as famous1 often quoted in ,germany at the time when ,jacobi was writing on ,lessing4 ,am ,i not right8 ,these trifles are only to show you that ,i read you attentively4 ,of course1 there are very different matters that ,i might discuss with you1 but a letter is not the place for them4 ,if you read ,danish1 ,i should like to send you a handsomely got-up little book on ,holberg1 which will appear in a week4 ,let me know whether you understand our language4 ,if you read ,swedish1 ,i call your attention to ,sweden's only genius1 ,august ,strindberg4 ,when you write about women you are very like him4 ,i hope you will have nothing but good to tell me of your eyes4 ,yours sincerely1 ,,george ,,brandes4 #aj4 ,,nietzsche to ,,brandes4 ,torino 7,italia7 ferma in posta1 ,april #aj1 #ahhh4 ,but1 my dear ,sir1 what a surprise is this6--,where have you found the courage to propose to speak in public of a vir obscurissimus8444 ,do you imagine that ,i am known in the beloved ,fatherland8 ,they treat me there as if ,i were something singular and absurd1 something that for the present need not be taken seriously4444 ,evidently they have an inkling that ,i do not take them seriously either3 and how could ,i1 nowadays1 when ,german intellect has become a contradictio in adjecto6--,my best thanks for the photograph4 ,unfortunately ,i have none to send in return3 my sister1 who is married and lives in ,south ,america1 took with her the last portraits ,i possessed4 ,enclosed is a little vita1 the first ,i have ever written4 ,as regards the dates of composition of the different books1 they are to be found on the back of the cover of ,beyond ,good and ,evil4 ,perhaps you no longer have this cover4 ,the ,birth of ,tragedy was written between the summer of #ahgj and the winter of #ahga 7finished at ,lugano1 where ,i was living with the family of ,field-,marshal ,moltke74 ,the ,thoughts out of ,season between #ahgb and the summer of #ahge 7there were to have been thirteen2 luckily my health said ,no674 ,what you say about ,schopenhauer as ,educator gives me great pleasure4 ,this little work serves me as a touchstone2 he to whom it says nothing personal has probably nothing to do with me either4 ,in reality it contains the whole plan according to which ,i have hitherto lived2 it is a rigorous promise4 ,human1 all-too-,human1 with its two continuations1 summer of #ahgf-ahgi4 ,the ,dawn of ,day1 #ahhj4 ,the ,joyful ,wisdom1 ,january #ahhb4 ,zarathustra1 #ahhc-ahhe 7each part in about ten days4 ,perfect state of inspiration4 ,all conceived in the course of rapid walks3 absolute certainty1 as though each sentence were shouted to one4 ,while writing the book1 the greatest physical elasticity and sense of power74 ,beyond ,good and ,evil1 summer of #ahhe in the ,upper ,engadine and the following winter at ,nice4 ,the ,genealogy decided on1 carried out and sent ready for press to the printer at ,leipzig1 all between ,july #aj and #cj1 #ahhg4 7,of course there are also philologica of mine1 but they do not concern you and me47 ,i am now making an experiment with ,turin2 ,i shall stay here till ,june #e and then go to the ,engadine4 ,the weather so far is wintry1 harsh and unpleasant4 ,but the town superbly calm and favourable to my instincts4 ,the finest pavement in the world4 ,sincere greetings from ,yours gratefully1 ,,nietzsche4 ,a pity ,i understand neither ,danish nor ,swedish4 ,vita4--,i was born on ,october #ae1 #ahdd1 on the battlefield of ,ltzen4 ,the first name ,i heard was that of ,gustavus ,adolphus4 ,my ancestors were ,polish noblemen 7,nizky72 it seems the type has been well maintained1 in spite of three generations of ,german mothers4 ,abroad ,i am usually taken for a ,pole2 this very winter the visitors' list at ,nice entered me comme ,polonais4 ,i am told my head occurs in ,matejko's pictures4 ,my grandmother belonged to the ,schiller-,goethe circles of ,weimar2 her brother was ,herder's successor in the position of ,general ,superintendent at ,weimar4 ,i had the good fortune to be a pupil of the venerable ,pforta ,school1 from which so many who have made a name in ,german literature have proceeded 7,klopstock1 ,fichte1 ,schlegel1 ,ranke1 etc41 etc474 ,we had masters who would have 7or have7 done honour to any university4 ,i studied at ,bonn1 afterwards at ,leipzig2 old ,ritschl1 then the first philologist in ,germany1 singled me out almost from the first4 ,at twenty-two ,i was a contributor to the ,litterarisches ,centralblatt 7,zarncke74 ,the foundation of the ,philological ,society of ,leipzig1 which still exists1 is due to me4 ,in the winter of #ahfh-ahfi the ,university of ,basle offered me a professorship2 ,i was as yet not even a ,doctor4 ,the ,university of ,leipzig afterwards conferred the doctor's degree on me1 in a very honourable way1 without any examination1 and even without a dissertation4 ,from ,easter #ahfi to #ahgi ,i was at ,basle2 ,i was obliged to give up my rights as a ,german subject1 since as an officer 7,horse ,artillery7 ,i should have been called up too frequently and my academic duties would have been interfered with4 ,i am none the less master of two weapons1 the sabre and the cannon--and perhaps of a third as well4444 ,at ,basle everything went very well1 in spite of my youth2 it sometimes happened1 especially with candidates for the doctor's degree1 that the examinee was older than the examiner4 ,i had the great good fortune to form a cordial friendship with ,jakob ,burkhardt1 an unusual thing with that very hermit-like and secluded thinker4 ,a still greater piece of good fortune was that from the earliest days of my ,basle existence an indescribably close intimacy sprang up between me and ,richard and ,cosima ,wagner1 who were then living on their estate of ,triebschen1 near ,lucerne1 as though on an island1 and were cut off from all former ties4 ,for some years we had everything1 great and small1 in common1 a confidence without bounds4 7,you will find printed in ,volume ,,vii of ,wagner's complete works a message to me1 referring to ,the ,birth of ,tragedy47 ,as a result of these relations ,i came to know a large circle of persons 7and personesses71 in fact pretty nearly everything that grows between ,paris and ,petersburg4 ,by about #ahgf my health became worse4 ,i then spent a winter at ,sorrento1 with my old friend1 ,baroness ,meysenbug 7,memoirs of an ,idealist7 and the sympathetic ,dr4 ,re4 ,there was no improvement4 ,i suffered from an extremely painful and persistent headache1 which exhausted all my strength4 ,this went on for a number of years1 till it reached such a climax of habitual suffering1 that at that time ,i had #bjj days of torment in the year4 ,the trouble must have been due entirely to local causes1 there is no neuropathic basis for it of any sort4 ,i have never had a symptom of mental disturbance2 not even of fever1 nor of fainting4 ,my pulse was at that time as slow as that of the first ,napoleon 7 #fj74 ,my speciality was to endure extreme pain1 cru1 vert1 with perfect clarity1 for two or three consecutive days1 accompanied by constant vomiting of bile4 ,the report has been put about that ,i was in a madhouse 7and indeed that ,i died there74 ,nothing is further from the truth4 ,as a matter of fact my intellect only came to maturity during that terrible time3 witness the ,dawn of ,day1 which ,i wrote in #ahha during a winter of incredible suffering at ,genoa1 away from doctors1 friends or relations4 ,this book serves me as a sort of dynamometer3 ,i composed it with a minimum of strength and health4 ,from #ahhb on ,i went forward again1 very slowly1 it is true3 the crisis was past 7my father died very young1 just at the age at which ,i was myself so near to death74 ,i have to use extreme care even to-day2 certain conditions of a climatic and meteorological order are indispensable to me4 ,it is not from choice but from necessity that ,i spend the summer in the ,upper ,engadine and the winter at ,nice4444 ,after all1 my illness has been of the greatest use to me3 it has released me1 it has restored to me the courage to be myself4444 ,and1 indeed1 in virtue of my instincts1 ,i am a brave animal1 a military one even4 ,the long resistance has somewhat exasperated my pride4 ,am ,i a philosopher1 do you ask8--,but what does that matter6444 #aa4 ,,brandes to ,,nietzsche4 ,copenhagen1 ,april #bi1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,the first time ,i lectured on your works1 the hall was not quite full1 an audience of perhaps a hundred and fifty1 since no one knew who and what you are4 ,but as an important newspaper reported my first lecture1 and as ,i have myself written an article on you1 interest was roused1 and next time the hall was full to bursting4 ,some three hundred people listened with the greatest attention to my exposition of your works4 ,nevertheless1 ,i have not ventured to repeat the lectures1 as has been my practice for many years1 since the subject is hardly of a popular nature4 ,i hope the result will be to get you some good readers in the ,north4 ,your books now stand on one of my shelves1 very handsomely bound4 ,i should be very glad to possess everything you have published4 ,when1 in your first letter1 you offered me a musical work of yours1 a ,hymn to ,life1 ,i declined the gift from modesty1 being no great judge of music4 ,now ,i think ,i have deserved the work through my interest in it and should be much obliged if you would have it sent to me4 ,i believe ,i may sum up the impression of my audience in the feeling of a young painter1 who said to me3 ,what makes this so interesting is that it has not to do with books1 but with life4 ,if any objection is taken to your ideas1 it is that they are too out-and-out4 ,it was unkind of you not to send me a photograph2 ,i really only sent mine to put you under an obligation4 ,it is so little trouble to sit to a photographer for a minute or two1 and one knows a man far better when one has an idea of his appearance4 ,yours very sincerely1 ,,george ,,brandes4 #ab4 ,,nietzsche to ,,brandes4 ,turin1 ,may #d1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,what you tell me gives me great pleasure and--let me confess it--still more surprise4 ,be sure ,i shall owe you for it3 you know1 hermits are not given to forgetting4 ,meanwhile ,i hope my photograph will have reached you4 ,it goes without saying that ,i took steps1 not exactly to be photographed 7for ,i am extremely distrustful of haphazard photographs71 but to abstract a photograph from somebody who had one of me4 ,perhaps ,i have succeeded2 ,i have not yet heard4 ,if not1 ,i shall avail myself of my next visit to ,munich 7this autumn probably7 to be taken again4 ,the ,hymn to ,life will start on its journey to ,copenhagen one of these days4 ,we philosophers are never more grateful than when we are mistaken for artists4 ,i am assured1 moreover1 by the best judges that the ,hymn is thoroughly fit for performance1 singable1 and sure in its effect 7--clear in form2 this praise gave me the greatest pleasure74 ,mottl1 the excellent court conductor at ,carlsruhe 7the conductor of the ,bayreuth festival performances1 you know71 has given me hopes of a performance4 ,i have just heard from ,italy that the point of view of my second ,thought out of ,season has been very honourably mentioned in a survey of ,german literature contributed by the ,viennese scholar1 ,dr4 von ,zackauer1 at the invitation of the ,archivio storico of ,florence4 ,he concludes his paper with it4 ,these last weeks at ,turin1 where ,i shall stay till ,june #e1 have turned out better than any ,i have known for years1 above all more philosophic4 ,almost every day for one or two hours ,i have reached such a pitch of energy as to be able to view my whole conception from top to bottom2 so that the immense multiplicity of problems lies spread out beneath me1 as though in relief and clear in its outlines4 ,this requires a maximum of strength1 for which ,i had almost given up hope4 ,it all hangs together2 years ago it was already on the right course2 one builds one's philosophy like a beaver1 one is forced to and does not know it3 but one has to see all this1 as ,i have now seen it1 in order to believe it4 ,i am so relieved1 so strengthened1 in such good humour--,i hang a little farcical tail on to the most serious things4 ,what is the reason of all this8 ,have ,i not the good north winds to thank for it1 the north winds which do not always come from the ,alps8--they come now and then even from ,copenhagen6 ,with greetings1 ,your gratefully devoted1 ,,nietzsche4 #ac4 ,,nietzsche to ,,brandes4 ,turin1 ,may #bc1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,i should not like to leave ,turin without telling you once more what a great share you have had in my first successful spring4 ,the history of my springs1 for the last fifteen years at least1 has been1 ,i must tell you1 a tale of horror1 a fatality of decadence and infirmity4 ,places made no difference2 it was as though no prescription1 no diet1 no climate could change the essentially depressing character of this time of year4 ,but behold1 ,turin6 ,and the first good news1 your news1 my dear ,sir1 which proved to me that ,i am alive4444 ,for ,i am sometimes apt to forget that ,i am alive4 ,an accident1 a question reminded me the other day that one of life's leading ideas is positively quenched in me1 the idea of the future4 ,no1 wish1 not the smallest cloudlet of a wish before me6 ,a bare expanse6 ,why should not a day from my seventieth year be exactly like my day to-day8 ,have ,i lived too long in proximity to death to be able any longer to open my eyes to fair possibilities4 --,but certain it is that ,i now limit myself to thinking from day to day--that ,i settle to-day what is to be done to-morrow--and not for a single day beyond it6 ,this may be irrational1 unpractical1 perhaps also unchristian--that preacher on the ,mount forbade this very taking thought for the morrow--but it seems to me in the highest degree philosophical4 ,i gained more respect for myself than ,i had before3--,i understood that ,i had unlearnt how to wish1 without even wanting to do so4 ,these weeks ,i have employed in transvaluing values4--,you understand this trope8--,after all1 the alchemist is the most deserving kind of man there is6 ,i mean the man who makes of what is base and despised something valuable1 even gold4 ,he alone confers wealth1 the others merely give change4 ,my problem this time is rather a curious one3 ,i have asked myself what hitherto has been best hated1 feared1 despised by mankind--and of that and nothing else ,i have made my gold4444 ,if only ,i am not accused of false-coining6 ,or rather2 that is what will happen4 ,has my photograph reached you8 ,my mother has shown me the great kindness of relieving me from the appearance of ungratefulness in such a special case4 ,it is to be hoped the ,leipzig publisher1 ,e4 ,w4 ,fritzsch1 has also done his duty and sent off the ,hymn4 ,in conclusion ,i confess to a feeling of curiosity4 ,as it was denied me to listen at the crack of the door to learn something about myself1 ,i should like to hear something in another way4 ,three words to characterise the subjects of your different lectures--how much should ,i learn from three words6 ,with cordial and devoted greetings1 ,your ,,nietzsche4 #ad4 ,,brandes to ,,nietzsche4 ,copenhagen ,may #bc1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,for letter1 portrait and music ,i send you my best thanks4 ,the letter and the music were an unqualified pleasure1 the portrait might have been better4 ,it is a profile taken at ,naumburg1 characteristic in its attitude1 but with too little expression4 ,you must look different from this2 the writer of ,zarathustra must have many more secrets written in his own face4 ,i concluded my lectures on ,fr4 ,nietzsche before ,whitsuntide4 ,they ended1 as the papers say1 in applause which took the form of an ovation4 ,the ovation is yours almost entirely4 ,i take the liberty of communicating it to you herewith in writing4 ,for ,i can only claim the credit of reproducing1 clearly and connectedly1 and intelligibly to a ,northern audience1 what you had originated4 ,i also tried to indicate your relation to various contemporaries1 to introduce my hearers into the workshop of your thought1 to put forward my own favourite ideas1 where they coincided with yours1 to define the points on which ,i differed from you1 and to give a psychological portrait of ,nietzsche the author4 ,thus much ,i may say without exaggeration3 your name is now very popular in all intelligent circles in ,copenhagen1 and all over ,scandinavia it is at least known4 ,you have nothing to thank me for2 it has been a pleasure to me to penetrate into the world of your thoughts4 ,my lectures are not worth printing1 as ,i do not regard pure philosophy as my special province and am unwilling to print anything dealing with a subject in which ,i do not feel sufficiently competent4 ,i am very glad you feel so invigorated physically and so well disposed mentally4 ,here1 after a long winter1 we have mild spring weather4 ,we are rejoicing in the first green leaves and in a very well-arranged ,northern exhibition that has been opened at ,copenhagen4 ,all the ,french artists of eminence 7painters and sculptors7 are also exhibiting here4 ,nevertheless1 ,i am longing to get away1 but have to stay4 ,but this cannot interest you4 ,i forgot to tell you3 if you do not know the ,icelandic sagas1 you must study them4 ,you will find there a great deal to confirm your hypotheses and theories about the morality of a master race4 ,in one trifling detail you seem to have missed the mark4 ,gothic has certainly nothing to do with good or ,god4 ,it is connected with giessen1 he who emits the seed1 and means stallion1 man4 ,on the other hand1 our philologists here think your suggestion of bonus--duonus is much to the point4 ,i hope that in future we shall never become entirely strangers to one another4 ,i remain your faithful reader and admirer1 ,,george ,,brandes4 #ae4 ,,nietzsche to ,,brandes4 7,post-card47 ,turin1 ,may #bg1 #ahhh4 ,what eyes you have6 ,you are right1 the ,nietzsche of the photograph is not yet the author of ,zarathustra--he is a few years too young for that4 ,i am very grateful for the etymology of ,goth2 it is simply godlike4 ,i presume you are reading another letter of mine to-day4 ,your gratefully attached ,n4 #af4 ,,nietzsche to ,,brandes4 ,sils-,maria1 ,sept4 #ac1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,herewith ,i do myself a pleasure--that of recalling myself to your memory1 by sending you a wicked little book1 but one that is none the less very seriously meant2 the product of the good days of ,turin4 ,for ,i must tell you that since then there have been evil days in ,superfluity2 such a decline in health1 courage and will to life1 to talk ,schopenhauer1 that the little spring idyll scarcely seemed credible any longer4 ,fortunately ,i still possessed a document belonging to it1 the ,case of ,wagner4 ,a ,musician's ,problem4 ,spiteful tongues will prefer to call it ,the ,fall of ,wagner4 ,much as you may disclaim music 7--the most importunate of all the ,muses71 and with however good reason1 yet pray look at this piece of musician's psychology4 ,you1 my dear ,mr4 ,cosmopolitan1 are far too ,european in your ideas not to hear in it a hundred times more than my so-called countrymen1 the musical ,germans4 ,after all1 in this case ,i am a connoisseur in rebus et personis--and1 fortunately1 enough of a musician by instinct to see that in this ultimate question of values1 the problem is accessible and soluble through music4 ,in reality this pamphlet is almost written in ,french--,i dare say it would be easier to translate it into ,french than into ,german4 ,could you give me one or two more ,russian or ,french addresses to which there would be some sense in sending the pamphlet8 ,in a month or two something philosophical may be expected2 under the very inoffensive title of ,leisure ,hours of ,psychologist ,i am saying agreeable and disagreeable things to the world at large--including that intelligent nation1 the ,germans4 ,but all this is in the main nothing but recreation beside the main thing3 the name of the latter is ,transvaluation of all ,values4 ,europe will have to discover a new ,siberia1 to which to consign the author of these experiments with values4 ,i hope this high-spirited letter will find you in one of your usual resolute moods4 ,with kind remembrances1 ,yours1 ,dr4 ,,nietzsche4 ,address till middle of ,november3 ,torino 7,italia7 ferma in posta4 #ag4 ,,brandes to ,,nietzsche4 ,copenhagen1 ,oct4 #f1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,your letter and valued gift found me in a raging fever of work4 ,this accounts for my delay in answering4 ,the mere sight of your handwriting gave me pleasurable excitement4 ,it is sad news that you have had a bad summer4 ,i was foolish enough to think that you had already got over all your physical troubles4 ,i have read the pamphlet with the greatest attention and much enjoyment4 ,i am not so unmusical that ,i cannot enter into the fun of it4 ,i am merely not an expert4 ,a few days before receiving the little book ,i heard a very fine performance of ,carmen2 what glorious music6 ,however1 at the risk of exciting your wrath ,i confess that ,wagner's ,tristan und ,isolde made an indelible impression on me4 ,i once heard this opera in ,berlin1 in a despondent1 altogether shattered state of mind1 and ,i felt every note4 ,i do not know whether the impression was so deep because ,i was so ill4 ,do you know ,bizet's widow8 ,you ought to send her the pamphlet4 ,she would like it4 ,she is the sweetest1 most charming of women1 with a nervous tic that is curiously becoming1 but perfectly genuine1 perfectly sincere and full of fire4 ,only she has married again 7an excellent man1 a barrister named ,straus1 of ,paris74 ,i believe she knows some ,german4 ,i could get you her address1 if it does not put you against her that she has not remained true to her god--any more than the ,virgin ,mary1 ,mozart's widow or ,marie ,louise4 ,bizet's child is ideally beautiful and charming4--,but ,i am gossiping4 ,i have given a copy of the book to the greatest of ,swedish writers1 ,august ,strindberg1 whom ,i have entirely won over to you4 ,he is a true genius1 only a trifle mad like most geniuses 7and non-geniuses74 ,the other copy ,i shall also place with care4 ,paris ,i am not well acquainted with now4 ,but send a copy to the following address3 ,madame la ,princesse ,anna ,dmitrievna ,tnicheff1 ,quai ,anglais #bj1 ,petersburg4 ,this lady is a friend of mine2 she is also acquainted with the musical world of ,petersburg and will make you known there4 ,i have asked her before now to buy your works1 but they were all forbidden in ,russia1 even ,human1 all-too-,human4 ,it would also be as well to send a copy to ,prince ,urussov 7who is mentioned in ,turgeniev's letters74 ,he is greatly interested in everything ,german1 and is a man of rich gifts1 an intellectual gourmet4 ,i do not remember his address for the moment1 but can find it out4 ,i am glad that in spite of all bodily ills you are working so vigorously and keenly4 ,i am looking forward to all the things you promise me4 ,it would give me great pleasure to be read by you1 but unfortunately you do not understand my language4 ,i have produced an enormous amount this summer4 ,i have written two long new books 7of twenty-four and twenty-eight sheets71 ,impressions of ,poland and ,impressions of ,russia1 besides entirely rewriting one of my oldest books1 sthetic ,studies1 for a new edition and correcting the proofs of all three books myself4 ,in another week or so ,i shall have finished this work2 then ,i give a series of lectures1 writing at the same time another series in ,french1 and leave for ,russia in the depth of winter to revive there4 ,that is the plan ,i propose for my winter campaign4 ,may it not be a ,russian campaign in the bad sense4 ,i hope you will continue your friendly interest in me4 ,i remain1 ,your faithfully devoted1 ,,george ,,brandes4 #ah4 ,,nietzsche to ,,brandes4 ,turin1 ,oct4 #bj1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,once more your letter brought me a pleasant wind from the north2 it is in fact so far the only letter that puts a good face1 or any face at all on my attack on ,wagner4 ,for people do not write to me4 ,i have irreparably offended even my nearest and dearest4 ,there is1 for instance1 my old friend1 ,baron ,seydlitz of ,munich1 who unfortunately happens to be ,president of the ,munich ,wagner ,society2 my still older friend1 ,justizrath ,krug of ,cologne1 president of the local ,wagner ,society2 my brother-in-law1 ,dr4 ,bernhard ,frster in ,south ,america1 the not unknown ,anti--,semite1 one of the keenest contributors to the ,bayreuther ,bltter--and my respected friend1 ,malwida von ,meysenbug1 the authoress of ,memoirs of an ,idealist1 who continues to confuse ,wagner with ,michel ,angelo4444 ,on the other side ,i have been given to understand that ,i must be on my guard against the female ,wagnerite3 in certain cases she is said to be without scruple4 ,perhaps ,bayreuth will defend itself in the ,german ,imperial manner1 by the prohibition of my writings--as dangerous to public morals2 for here the ,emperor is a party to the case4 ,my dictum1 we all know the insthetic concept of the ,christian ,junker1 might even be interpreted as lse-majest4 ,your intervention on behalf of ,bizet's widow gave me great pleasure4 ,please let me have her address2 also that of prince ,urussov4 ,a copy has been sent to your friend1 the ,princess ,dmitrievna ,tnicheff4 ,when my next book is published1 which will be before very long 7the title is now ,the ,twilight of the ,idols4 ,or1 ,how to ,philosophise with the ,hammer71 ,i should much like to send a copy to the ,swede you introduce to me in such laudatory terms4 ,but ,i do not know where he lives4 ,this book is my philosophy in nuce--radical to the point of criminality4444 ,as to the effect of ,tristan1 ,i1 too1 could tell strange tales4 ,a regular dose of mental anguish seems to me a splendid tonic before a ,wagnerian repast4 ,the ,reichsgerichtsrath ,dr4 ,wiener of ,leipzig gave me to understand that a ,carlsbad cure was also a good thing4444 ,ah1 how industrious you are6 ,and idiot that ,i am1 not to understand ,danish6 ,i am quite willing to take your word for it that one can revive in ,russia better than elsewhere2 ,i count any ,russian book1 above all ,dostoievsky 7translated into ,french1 for ,heaven's sake not ,german667 among my greatest sources of relief4 ,cordially and1 with good reason1 gratefully1 ,yours1 ,,nietzsche4 #ai4 ,,brandes to ,,nietzsche4 ,copenhagen1 ,nov4 #af1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,i have waited in vain for an answer from ,paris to learn the address of ,madame ,bizet4 ,on the other hand1 ,i now have the address of ,prince ,urussov4 ,he lives in ,petersburg1 ,sergievskaia #gi4 ,my three books are now out4 ,i have begun my lectures here4 ,curious it is how something in your letter and in your book about ,dostoievsky coincides with my own impressions of him4 ,i have mentioned you1 too1 in my work on ,russia1 when dealing with ,dostoievsky4 ,he is a great poet1 but an abominable creature1 quite ,christian in his emotions and at the same time quite sadique4 ,his whole morality is what you have baptised slave-morality4 ,the mad ,swede's name is ,august ,strindberg2 he lives here4 ,his address is ,holte1 near ,copenhagen4 ,he is particularly fond of you1 because he thinks he finds in you his own hatred of women4 ,on this account he calls you modern 7irony of fate74 ,on reading the newspaper reports of my spring lectures1 he said3 ,it is an astonishing thing about this ,nietzsche2 much of what he says is just what ,i might have written4 ,his drama1 ,pre1 has appeared in ,french with a preface by ,zola4 ,i feel mournful whenever ,i think of ,germany4 ,what a development is now going on there6 ,how sad to think that to all appearance one will never in one's lifetime be a historical witness of the smallest good thing4 ,what a pity that so learned a philologist as you should not understand ,danish4 ,i am doing all ,i can to prevent my books on ,poland and ,russia being translated1 so that ,i may not be expelled1 or at least refused the right of speaking when ,i next go there4 ,hoping that these lines will find you still at ,turin or will be forwarded to you1 ,i am1 ,yours very sincerely1 ,,george ,,brandes4 #bj4 ,,nietzsche to ,,brandes4 ,torino1 via ,carlo ,alberto1 #f1 ,,iii4 ,nov4 #bj1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,forgive me for answering at once4 ,curious things are now happening in my life1 things that are without precedent4 ,first the day before yesterday2 now again4 ,ah1 if you knew what ,i had just written when your letter paid me its visit4 ,with a cynicism that will become famous in the world's history1 ,i have now related myself4 ,the book is called ,ecce ,homo1 and is an attack on the ,crucified without the slightest reservation2 it ends in thunders and lightnings against everything that is ,christian or infected with ,christianity1 till one is blinded and deafened4 ,i am in fact the first psychologist of ,christianity and1 as an old artilleryman1 can bring heavy guns into action1 the existence of which no opponent of ,christianity has even suspected4 ,the whole is the prelude to the ,transvaluation of all ,values1 the work that lies ready before me3 ,i swear to you that in two years we shall have the whole world in convulsions4 ,i am a fate4 ,guess who come off worst in ,ecce ,homo8 ,messieurs the ,germans6 ,i have told them terrible things4444 ,the ,germans1 for instance1 have it on their conscience that they deprived the last great epoch of history1 the ,renaissance1 of its meaning--at a moment when the ,christian values1 the dcadence values1 were worsted1 when they were conquered in the instincts even of the highest ranks of the clergy by the opposite instincts1 the instincts of life4 ,to attack the ,church--that meant to re-establish ,christianity4 7,cesare ,borgia as pope--that would have been the meaning of the ,renaissance1 its proper symbol47 ,you must not be angry either1 to find yourself brought forward at a critical passage in the book--,i wrote it just now--where ,i stigmatise the conduct of my ,german friends towards me1 their absolute leaving me in the lurch as regards both fame and philosophy4 ,then you suddenly appear1 surrounded by a halo4444 ,i believe implicitly what you say about ,dostoievsky2 ,i esteem him1 on the other hand1 as the most valuable psychological material ,i know--,i am grateful to him in an extraordinary way1 however antagonistic he may be to my deepest instincts4 ,much the same as my relation to ,pascal1 whom ,i almost love1 since he has taught me such an infinite amount2 the only logical ,christian4 ,the day before yesterday ,i read1 with delight and with a feeling of being thoroughly at home1 ,les maris1 by ,herr ,august ,strindberg4 ,my sincerest admiration1 which is only prejudiced by the feeling that ,i am admiring myself a little at the same time4 ,turin is still my residence4 ,your ,,nietzsche1 now a monster4 ,where may ,i send you the ,twilight of the ,idols8 ,if you will be at ,copenhagen another fortnight1 no answer is necessary4 #ba4 ,,brandes to ,,nietzsche4 ,copenhagen1 ,nov4 #bc1 #ahhh4 ,,my ,,dear ,,sir1 ,your letter found me to-day in full fever of work2 ,i am lecturing here on ,goethe1 repeat each lecture twice and yet people wait in line for three quarters of an hour in the square before the ,university to get standing-room4 ,it amuses me to study the greatest of the great before so many4 ,i must stay here till the end of the year4 ,but on the other side there is the unfortunate circumstance that--as ,i am informed--one of my old books1 lately translated into ,russian1 has been condemned in ,russia to be publicly burnt as irreligious4 ,i already had to fear expulsion on account of my two last works on ,poland and ,russia2 now ,i must try to set in motion all the influence ,i can command1 in order to obtain permission to lecture in ,russia this winter4 ,to make matters worse1 nearly all letters to and from me are now confiscated4 ,there is great anxiety since the disaster at ,borki4 ,it was just the same shortly after the famous attempts4 ,every letter was snapped up4 ,it gives me lively satisfaction to see that you have again got through so much4 ,believe me1 ,i spread your propaganda wherever ,i can4 ,so late as last week ,i earnestly recommended ,henrik ,ibsen to study your works4 ,with him too you have some kinship1 even if it is a very distant kinship4 ,great and strong and unamiable1 but yet worthy of love1 is this singular person4 ,strindberg will be glad to hear of your appreciation4 ,i do not know the ,french translation you mention2 but they say here that all the best things in ,giftas 7,maris7 have been left out1 especially the witty polemic against ,ibsen4 ,but read his drama ,pre2 there is a great scene in it4 ,i am sure he would gladly send it you4 ,but ,i see him so seldom2 he is so shy on account of an extremely unhappy marriage4 ,imagine it1 he abhors his wife intellectually and cannot get away from her physically4 ,he is a monogamous misogynist6 ,it seems curious to me that the polemical trait is still so strong in you4 ,in my early days ,i was passionately polemical2 now ,i can only expound2 silence is my only weapon of offence4 ,i should as soon think of attacking ,christianity as of writing a pamphlet against werewolves1 ,i mean against the belief in werewolves4 ,but ,i see we understand one another4 ,i too love ,pascal4 ,but even as a young man ,i was for the ,jesuits against ,pascal 7in the ,provinciales74 ,the worldly-wise1 they were right1 of course2 he did not understand them2 but they understood him and--what a master-stroke of impudence and sagacity6--they themselves published his ,provinciales with notes4 ,the best edition is that of the ,jesuits4 ,luther against the ,pope1 there we have the same collision4 ,victor ,hugo in the preface to the ,feuilles d',automne has this fine saying3 ,on convoque la dite de ,worms mais on peint la chapelle ,sixtine4 ,il y a ,luther1 mais il y a ,michel-,ange 444 et remarquons en passant que ,luther est dans les vieilleries qui croulent autour de nous et que ,michel-,ange n'y est pas4 ,study the face of ,dostoievsky3 half a ,russian peasant's face1 half a criminal physiognomy1 flat nose1 little piercing eyes under lids quivering with nervousness1 this lofty and well-formed forehead1 this expressive mouth that speaks of torments innumerable1 of abysmal melancholy1 of unhealthy appetites1 of infinite pity1 passionate envy6 ,an epileptic genius1 whose exterior alone speaks of the stream of gentleness that filled his spirit1 of the wave of acuteness almost amounting to madness that mounted to his head1 and finally of the ambition1 the immense effort1 and of the ill-will that results from pettiness of soul4 ,his heroes are not only poor and pitiable creatures1 but simple-minded sensitive ones1 noble strumpets1 often victims of hallucination1 gifted epileptics1 enthusiastic candidates for martyrdom--just those types which we should suspect in the apostles and disciples of the early days of ,christianity4 ,certainly nothing could be farther removed from the ,renaissance4 ,i am excited to know how ,i can come into your book4 ,i remain your faithfully devoted ,,george ,,brandes4 #bb4 ,unstamped4 ,without further address1 undated4 ,written in a large hand on a piece of paper 7not note-paper7 ruled in pencil1 such as children use4 ,post-mark3 ,turin1 ,january #d1 #ahhi4 ,,to ,,the ,,friend ,,georg ,when once you had discovered me1 it was easy enough to find me3 the difficulty now is to get rid of me 444 ,the ,crucified4 ,as ,herr ,max ,nordau has attempted with incredible coarseness to brand ,nietzsche's whole life-work as the production of a madman1 ,i call attention to the fact that signs of powerful exaltation only appear in the last letter but one1 and that insanity is only evident in the last letter of all1 and then not in an unqualified form4 ,but at the close of the year #ahhh this dear and masterly mind began to be deranged4 ,his self-esteem1 which had always been very great1 acquired a morbid character4 ,his light and delicate self-irony1 which appears not unfrequently in the letters here given1 gave place to constantly recurring outbursts of anger with the ,german public's failure to appreciate the value of his works4 ,it ill became a man of ,nietzsche's intellect1 who only a year before 7see ,letter ,no4 #b7 had desired a small number of intelligent readers1 to take such offence at the indifference of the mob4 ,he now gave expression to the most exalted ideas about himself4 ,in his last book but one he had said3 ,i have given the ,germans the profoundest books of any they possess 2 in his last he wrote3 ,i have given mankind the profoundest book it possesses4 ,at the same time he yielded to an impulse to describe the fame he hoped to attain in the future as already his4 ,as the reader will see1 he had asked me to furnish him with the addresses of persons in ,paris and ,petersburg who might be able to make his name known in ,france and ,russia4 ,i chose them to the best of my judgment4 ,but even before the books he sent had reached their destinations1 ,nietzsche wrote in a ,german review3 ,and thus ,i am treated in ,germany1 ,i who am already studied in ,petersburg and ,paris4 ,that his sense of propriety was beginning to be deranged was already shown when sending the book to ,princess ,tnicheff 7see ,letter ,no4 #ah74 ,this lady wrote to me in astonishment1 asking what kind of a strange friend ,i had recommended to her3 he had been sufficiently wanting in taste to give the sender's name on the parcel itself as ,the ,antichrist4 ,some time after ,i had received the last deranged and touching letter1 another was shown me1 which ,nietzsche had presumably sent the same day1 and in which he wrote that he intended to summon a meeting of sovereigns in ,rome to have the young ,german ,emperor shot there2 this was signed ,nietzsche-,csar4 ,the letter to me was signed ,the ,crucified4 ,it was thus evident that this great mind in its final megalomania had oscillated between attributing to itself the two greatest names in history1 so strongly contrasted4 ,it was exceedingly sad thus to witness the change that in the course of a few weeks reduced a genius without equal to a poor helpless creature1 in whom almost the last gleam of mental life was extinguished for ever4 ,,iii 7,,august #aijj7 ,it sometimes happens that the death of a great individual recalls a half-forgotten name to our memory1 and we then disinter for a brief moment the circumstances1 events1 writings or achievements which gave that name its renown4 ,although ,friedrich ,nietzsche in his silent madness had survived himself for eleven and a half years1 there is no need at his death to resuscitate his works or his fame4 ,for during those very years in which he lived on in the night of insanity1 his name has acquired a lustre unsurpassed by any contemporary reputation1 and his works have been translated into every language and are known all over the world4 ,to the older among us1 who have followed ,nietzsche from the time of his arduous and embittered struggle against the total indifference of the reading world1 this prodigiously rapid attainment of the most absolute and world-wide renown has in it something in the highest degree surprising4 ,no one in our time has experienced anything like it4 ,in the course of five or six years ,nietzsche's intellectual tendency --now more or less understood1 now misunderstood1 now involuntarily caricatured--became the ruling tendency of a great part of the literature of ,france1 ,germany1 ,england1 ,italy1 ,norway1 ,sweden and ,russia4 ,note1 for example1 the influence of this spirit on ,gabriele d',annunzio4 ,to all that was tragic in ,nietzsche's life was added this--that1 after thirsting for recognition to the point of morbidity1 he attained it in an altogether fantastic degree when1 though still living1 he was shut out from life4 ,but certain it is that in the decade #ahij-aijj no one engaged and impressed the minds of his contemporaries as did this son of a ,north ,german clergyman1 who tried so hard to be taken for a ,polish nobleman1 and whose pride it was that his works were conceived in ,french1 though written in ,german4 ,the little weaknesses of his character were forgotten in the grandeur of the style he imparted to his life and his production4 ,to be able to explain ,nietzsche's rapid and overwhelming triumph1 one would want the key to the secret of the psychological life of our time4 ,he bewitched the age1 though he seems opposed to all its instincts4 ,the age is ultra-democratic2 he won its favour as an aristocrat4 ,the age is borne on a rising wave of religious reaction2 he conquered with his pronounced irreligion4 ,the age is struggling with social questions of the most difficult and far-reaching kind2 he1 the thinker of the age1 left all these questions on one side as of secondary importance4 ,he was an enemy of the humanitarianism of the present day and of its doctrine of happiness2 he had a passion for proving how much that is base and mean may conceal itself beneath the guise of pity1 love of one's neighbour and unselfishness2 he assailed pessimism and scorned optimism2 he attacked the ethics of the philosophers with the same violence as the thinkers of the eighteenth century had attacked the dogmas of the theologians4 ,as he became an atheist from religion1 so did he become an immoralist from morality4 ,nevertheless the ,voltairians of the age could not claim him1 since he was a mystic2 and contemporary anarchists had to reject him as an enthusiast for rulers and castes4 ,for all that1 he must in some hidden way have been in accord with much that is fermenting in our time1 otherwise it would not have adopted him as it has done4 ,the fact of having known ,nietzsche1 or having been in any way connected with him1 is enough at present to make an author famous--more famous1 sometimes1 than all his writings have made him4 ,what ,nietzsche1 as a young man admired more than anything else in ,schopenhauer and ,richard ,wagner was the indomitable energy with which they maintained their self-reliance in the midst of the hue and cry raised against them by the whole cultured world4 ,he made this self-reliance his own1 and this was no doubt the first thing to make an impression4 ,in the next place the artist in him won over those to whom the aphorisms of the thinker were obscure4 ,with all his mental acuteness he was a pronounced lyricist4 ,in the autumn of #ahhh he wrote of ,heine3 ,how he handled ,german6 ,one day it will be said that ,heine and ,i were without comparison the supreme artists of the ,german language4 ,one who is not a ,german is but an imperfect judge of ,nietzsche's treatment of language2 but in our day all ,german connoisseurs are agreed in calling him the greatest stylist of ,german prose4 ,he further impressed his contemporaries by his psychological profundity and abstruseness4 ,his spiritual life has its abysses and labyrinths4 ,self-contemplation provides him with immense material for investigation4 ,and he is not content with self-contemplation4 ,his craving for knowledge is a passion2 covetousness he calls it3 ,in this soul there dwells no unselfishness2 on the contrary1 an all-desiring self that would see by the help of many as with its own eyes and grasp as with its own hands2 this soul of mine would even choose to bring back all the past and not lose anything that might belong to it4 ,what a flame is this covetousness of mine6 ,the equally strong development of his lyrical and critical qualities made a fascinating combination4 ,but it was the cause of those reversals of his personal relations which deprive his career 7in much the same way as ,sren ,kierkegaard's7 of some of the dignity it might have possessed4 ,when a great personality crossed his path he called all his lyricism to arms and with clash of sword on shield hailed the person in question as a demigod or a god 7,schopenhauer and ,richard ,wagner74 ,when later on he discovered the limitations of his hero1 his enthusiasm was apt to turn to hatred1 and this hatred found vent without the smallest regard to his former worship4 ,this characteristic is offensively conspicuous in ,nietzsche's behaviour to ,wagner4 ,but who knows whether this very lack of dignity has not contributed to increase the number of ,nietzsche's admirers in an age that is somewhat undignified on this point6 ,in the last period of his life ,nietzsche appeared rather as a prophet than as a thinker4 ,he predicts the ,superman4 ,and he makes no attempt at logical proof1 but proceeds from a reliance on the correctness and sureness of his instinct1 convinced that he himself represents a life-promoting principle and his opponents one hostile to life4 ,to him the object of existence is1 everywhere the production of genius4 ,the higher man in our day is like a vessel in which the future of the race is fermenting in an impenetrable way1 and more than one of these vessels is burst or broken in the process4 ,but the human race is not ruined by the failure of a single creature4 ,man1 as we know him1 is only a bridge1 a transition from the animal to the superman4 ,what the ape is in relation to man1 a laughingstock or a thing of shame1 that will man be to the superman4 ,hitherto every species has produced something superior to itself4 ,nietzsche teaches that man too will and must do the same4 ,he has drawn a conclusion from ,darwinism which ,darwin himself did not see4 ,in the last decade of the nineteenth century ,nietzsche and ,tolstoy appeared as the two opposite poles4 ,nietzsche's morality is aristocratic as ,tolstoy's is popular1 individualistic as ,tolstoy's is evangelical2 it asserts the self-majesty of the individual1 where ,tolstoy's proclaims the necessity of self-sacrifice4 ,in the same decade ,nietzsche and ,ibsen were sometimes compared4 ,ibsen1 like ,nietzsche1 was a combative spirit and held entirely aloof from political and practical life4 ,a first point of agreement between them is that they both laid stress on not having come of small folk4 ,ibsen made known to me in a letter that his parents1 both on the father's and the mother's side1 belonged to the most esteemed families of their day in ,skien in ,norway1 related to all the patrician families of the place and country4 ,skien is no world-city1 and the aristocracy of ,skien is quite unknown outside it2 but ,ibsen wanted to make it clear that his bitterness against the upper class in ,norway was in no wise due to the rancour and envy of the outsider4 ,nietzsche always made it known to his acquaintances that he was descended from a ,polish noble family1 although he possessed no pedigree4 ,his correspondents took this for an aristocratic whim1 all the more because the name given out by him1 ,nizky1 by its very spelling betrayed itself as not ,polish4 ,but the fact is otherwise4 ,the true spelling of the name is ,nicki1 and a young ,polish admirer of ,nietzsche1 ,mr4 ,bernard ,scharlitt1 has succeeded in proving ,nietzsche's descent from the ,nicki family1 by pointing out that its crest is to be found in a signet which for centuries has been an heirloom in the family of ,nietzsche4 ,perhaps not quite without reason1 ,scharlitt therefore sees in ,nietzsche's master-morality and his whole aristocratising of the view of the world an expression of the szlachcic spirit inherited from ,polish ancestors4 ,nietzsche and ,ibsen1 independently of each other but like ,renan1 have sifted the thought of breeding moral aristocrats4 ,it is the favourite idea of ,ibsen's ,rosmer2 it remains ,dr4 ,stockmann's4 ,thus ,nietzsche speaks of the higher man as the preliminary aim of the race1 before ,zarathustra announces the superman4 ,they meet now and then on the territory of psychology4 ,ibsen speaks in ,the ,wild ,duck of the necessity of falsehood to life4 ,nietzsche loved life so greatly that even truth appeared to him of worth only in the case of its acting for the preservation and advancement of life4 ,falsehood is to him an injurious and destructive power only in so far as it is life-constricting4 ,it is not objectionable where it is necessary to life4 ,it is strange that a thinker who abhorred ,jesuitism as ,nietzsche did should arrive at this standpoint1 which leads directly to ,jesuitism4 ,nietzsche agrees here with many of his opponents4 ,ibsen and ,nietzsche were both solitary1 even if they were not at all careless as to the fate of their works4 ,it is the strongest man1 says ,dr4 ,stockmann1 who is most isolated4 ,who was most isolated1 ,ibsen or ,nietzsche8 ,ibsen1 who held back from every alliance with others1 but exposed his work to the masses of the theatre-going public1 or ,nietzsche1 who stood alone as a thinker but as a man continually--even if1 as a rule1 in vain--spied after the like-minded and after heralds1 and whose works1 in the time of his conscious life1 remained unread by the great public1 or in any case misunderstood4 ,decision does not fall lightly to one who1 by a whim of fate1 was regarded by both as an ally4 ,still more difficult is the decision as to which of them has had the deepest effect on the contemporary mind and which will longest retain his fame4 ,but this need not concern us4 ,wherever ,nietzsche's teaching extends1 and wherever his great and rare personality is mastered1 its attraction and repulsion will alike be powerful2 but everywhere it will contribute to the development and moulding of the individual personality4 ,,iv 7#aiji7 ,since the publication of ,nietzsche's collected works was completed1 ,frau ,frster-,nietzsche has allowed the ,insel-,verlag of ,leipzig to issue1 at a high price and for subscribers only1 ,friedrich ,nietzsche's posthumous work ,ecce ,homo1 which has been lying in manuscript for more than twenty years1 and which she herself had formerly excluded from his works1 considering that the ,german reading public was not ripe to receive it in the proper way--which we may doubtless interpret as a fear on her part that the attitude of the book towards ,germanism and ,christianity would raise a terrible outcry4 ,now that ,nietzsche holds undisputed sway over ,german minds and exercises an immense influence in the rest of ,europe and in ,america1 it will certainly be read with emotion and discreetly criticised4 ,it gives us an autobiography1 written during ,nietzsche's last productive months1 almost immediately before the collapse of his powers1 between ,october #ae and ,november #d1 #ahhh2 and in the course of this autobiography each of his books is briefly characterised4 ,here as elsewhere ,nietzsche's thoughts are centred on the primary conceptions of ascent and descent1 growth and decay4 ,bringing himself into relation with them1 he finds that1 as the victim of stubborn illness and chronically recurring pain1 he is a decadent2 but at the same time1 as one who in his inmost self is unaffected by his illness1 nay1 whose strength and fulness of life even increase during its attacks1 he is the very reverse of a decadent1 a being who is in process of raising himself to a higher form of life4 ,he once more emphasises the fact that the years in which his vitality was lowest were just those in which he threw off all melancholy and recovered his joy in life1 his enthusiasm for life1 since he had a keen sense that a sick man has no right to pessimism4 ,he begins by giving us plain1 matter-of-fact information about himself1 speaking warmly and proudly of his father4 ,the latter had been tutor to four princesses of ,altenburg before he was appointed to his living4 ,out of respect-for ,friedrich ,wilhelm ,,iv4 he gave his son the ,hohenzollern names of ,friedrich ,wilhelm1 and he felt the events of #ahdh very keenly4 ,his father only reached the age of thirty-six1 and ,nietzsche lost him when he was himself five years old4 ,but he ascribes to paternal heredity his ability to feel at home in a world of high and delicate things 7in einer ,welt hoher und zarter ,dinge74 ,for all that1 ,nietzsche does not forget to bring in1 here as elsewhere1 the supposition of his descent from ,polish noblemen2 but he did not know this for a fact1 and it was only established by ,scharlitt's investigation of the family seal4 ,he describes himself as what we should call a winning personality4 ,he has never understood the art of arousing ill-feeling against himself4 ,he can tame every bear2 he even makes clowns behave decently4 ,however out of tune the instrument man may be1 he can coax a pleasing tone out of it4 ,during his years of teaching1 even the laziest became diligent under him4 ,whatever offence has been done him1 has not been the result of ill-will4 ,the pitiful have wounded him more deeply than the malicious4 ,nor has he given vent to feelings of revenge or rancour4 ,his conflict with ,christianity is only one instance among many of his antagonism to resentful feelings4 ,it is an altogether different matter that his very nature is that of a warrior4 ,but he confers distinction on the objects of his attacks1 and he has never waged war on private individuals1 only on types2 thus in ,strauss he saw nothing but the ,culture-,philistine4 ,he attributes to himself an extremely vivid and sensitive instinct of cleanliness4 ,at the first contact the filth lying at the base of another's nature is revealed to him4 ,the unclean are therefore ill at ease in his presence2 nor does the sense of being seen through make them any more fragrant4 ,and with true psychology he adds that his greatest danger--he means to his spiritual health and balance--is loathing of mankind4 ,the loathing of mankind is doubtless the best modern expression for what the ancients called misanthropy4 ,no one knows what it is till he has experienced it4 ,when we read1 for instance1 in our youth of ,frederick the ,great that in his later years he was possessed and fettered by contempt for men1 this appears to us an unfortunate peculiarity which the king ought to have overcome2 for of course he must have seen other men about him besides those who flattered him for the sake of advantage4 ,but the loathing of mankind is a force that surprises and overwhelms one1 fed by hundreds of springs concealed in subconsciousness4 ,one only detects its presence after having long entertained it unawares4 ,nietzsche cannot be said to have overcome it2 he fled from it1 took refuge in solitude1 and lived outside the world of men1 alone in the mountains among cold1 fresh springs4 ,and even if he felt no loathing for individuals1 his disgust with men found a collective outlet1 since he entertained1 or rather worked up1 a positive horror of his countrymen1 so powerful that at last it breaks out in everything he writes4 ,it reminds us dimly of ,byron's dislike of ,englishmen1 ,stendhal's of ,frenchmen1 and ,heine's of ,germans4 ,but it is of a more violent character than ,stendhal's or ,heine's1 and it has a pathos and contempt of its own4 ,he shows none of it at the outset4 ,in his first book1 ,the ,birth of ,tragedy1 he is no less partial to ,germany than ,heine was in his first1 romantically ,teutonic period4 ,but ,nietzsche's development carried him with a rush away from ,germanism1 and in this last book of his the word ,german has become something like his worst term of abuse4 ,he believes only in ,french culture2 all other culture is a misunderstanding4 ,it makes him angry to see those ,frenchmen he values most1 infected by ,german spirit4 ,thus ,taine is1 in his opinion1 corrupted by ,hegel's influence4 ,this impression is right in so far as ,hegel deprived ,taine of some of the essentially ,french element which he originally possessed1 and of which certain of his admirers before now have painfully felt the loss4 ,but he overlooks the effect of the study of ,hegel in promoting at the same time what one might call the extension of ,taine's intellectual horizon4 ,and ,nietzsche is satisfied with no narrower generalisation of the case than this3 ,wherever ,germany extends1 she ruins culture4 ,as though to make sure of wounding ,german national pride1 he declares that ,heinrich ,heine 7not ,goethe7 gave him the highest idea of lyric poetry1 and that as concerns ,byron's ,manfred1 he has no words1 only a look1 for those who in the presence of this work dare to utter the name of ,faust4 ,the ,germans1 he maintains in connection with ,manfred1 are incapable of any conception of greatness4 ,so uncritical has he become that he puts ,manfred above ,faust4 ,in his deepest instincts ,nietzsche is now1 as he asserts1 so foreign to everything ,german1 that the mere presence of a ,german retards his digestion4 ,german intellect is to him indigestion2 it can never be finished with anything4 ,if he has been so enthusiastic in his devotion to ,wagner1 if he still regards his intimate relationship with ,wagner as the most profound refreshment of his life1 this was because in ,wagner he honoured the foreigner1 because in him he saw the incarnate protest against all ,german virtues4 ,in his book1 ,the ,case of ,wagner1 he had already hinted that ,richard ,wagner1 the glory of ,german nationalism1 was of ,jewish descent1 since his real father seems to have been the step-father1 ,geyer4 ,i could not have survived my youth without ,wagner1 he says2 ,i was condemned to the society of ,germans and had to take a counter-poison2 ,wagner was the counter-poison4 ,here1 by way of exception1 he generalises his feeling4 ,we who were children in the 'fifties1 he says1 necessarily became pessimists in regard to the concept ,german4 ,we cannot be anything else than revolutionaries4 ,and he explains this expression thus3 ,we can assent to no state of affairs which allows the canting bigot to be at the top4 7,hffding's protest against the use of the word radicalism applied to ,nietzsche1 in ,moderne ,filosofer1 is thus beside the mark47 ,wagner was a revolutionary2 he fled from the ,germans4 ,and1 ,nietzsche adds1 as an artist1 a man has no other home than ,paris--the city which1 strangely enough1 he was never1 to see4 ,he ranks ,wagner among the later masters of ,french romanticism--,delacroix1 ,berlioz1 ,baudelaire--and wisely says nothing about the reception of ,wagnerian opera in ,paris under the ,empire4 ,in everything ,nietzsche now adopts the ,french stand-point--the old and narrow ,french standpoint--that1 for instance1 of the elderly ,voltaire towards ,shakespeare4 ,he declares here1 as he has done before1 that his artist's taste defends ,molire1 ,corneille and ,racine1 not without bitterness 7nicht ohne ,ingrimm7 against such a wild 7wstes7 genius as ,shakespeare4 ,strangely enough he repeats here his estimate of ,shakespeare's ,csar as his finest creation1 weak as it is3 ,my highest formula for ,shakespeare is that he conceived the type of ,csar4 ,it must be added that here again ,nietzsche assents to the unhappy delusion that ,shakespeare never wrote the works that bear his name4 ,nietzsche is instinctively certain that they are due to ,bacon1 and1 ignoring repeated demonstrations of the impossibility of this fatuous notion1 he supports his conjecture by the grotesque assertion that if he himself had christened his ,zarathustra by a name not his own--by ,wagner's1 for instance--the acumen of two thousand years would not have sufficed to guess who was its originator2 no one would have believed it possible that the author of ,human1 all-too-,human had conceived the visions of ,zarathustra4 ,he allows the ,germans no honour as philosophers3 ,leibniz and ,kant were the two greatest clogs upon the intellectual integrity of ,europe4 ,just when a perfectly scientific attitude of mind had been attained1 they managed to find byways back to the old ideal4 ,and no less passionately does he deny to the ,germans all honour as musicians3 ,a ,german cannot know what music is4 ,the men who pass as ,german musicians are foreigners1 ,slavs1 ,croats1 ,italians1 ,dutchmen or ,jews4 ,i am ,pole enough to give up all other music for ,chopin--except ,wagner's ,siegfried-,idyll1 some things of ,liszt1 and the ,italians ,rossini and ,pietro ,gasti 7by this last name he appears to mean his favourite disciple1 ,kselitz1 who wrote under the pseudonym of ,peter ,gast74 ,he abhors the ,germans as idealists4 ,all idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity4 ,he finds a pernicious idealism in ,henrik ,ibsen too1 that typical old maid1 as well1 as in others whose object it is to poison the clean conscience1 the natural spirit1 of sexual love4 ,and he gives us a clause of his moral code1 in which1 under the head of ,vice1 he combats every kind of opposition to ,nature1 or if fine words are preferred1 every kind of idealism4 ,the clause runs3 ,preaching of chastity is a public incitement to unnatural practices4 ,all1 depreciation of the sexual life1 all sullying of it with the word 'impure1' is a crime against ,life itself--is the real sin against the holy ,spirit of ,life4 ,finally he attacks what he calls the licentiousness of the ,germans in historical matters4 ,german historians1 he declares1 have lost all eye for the values of culture2 in fact1 they have put this power of vision under the ban of the ,empire4 ,they claim that a man must in the first place be a ,german1 must belong to the race4 ,if he does1 he is in a position to determine values or their absence3 the ,germans are thus the moral order of the universe in history2 compared with the power of the ,roman ,empire they are the champions of liberty2 compared with the eighteenth century they are the restorers of morality and of the ,categorical ,imperative4 ,history is actually written on ,imperial ,german and ,antisemitic lines--and ,herr von ,treitschke is not ashamed of himself4 ,the ,germans have on their conscience every crime against culture committed in the last four centuries4 ,as ,nietzsche in his later years was never tired of asserting1 they deprived the ,renaissance of its meaning1 they wrecked it by the ,reformation2 that is1 by ,luther1 an impossible monk who1 owing to his impossibility1 attacked the ,church and in so doing restored it4 ,the ,catholics would have every reason to honour ,luther's name4 ,and when1 upon the bridge between two centuries of decadence1 a force majeure of genius and will revealed itself1 strong enough to weld ,europe into political and economic unity1 the ,germans finally1 with their ,wars of ,liberation1 robbed ,europe of the meaning of ,napoleon's existence1 a prodigy of meaning4 ,thus they have upon their conscience all that followed1 nationalism1 the nvrose nationale from which ,europe is suffering1 and the perpetuation of the system of little states1 of petty politics4 ,last of all1 the ,germans have upon their conscience their attitude to himself1 their indifference1 their lack of recognition1 the silence in which they buried his life's work4 ,the ,germans are bad company4 ,and although his autobiography ends with a poem in which he affects a scorn of fame1 that coin in which the whole world pays1 but which he receives with gloved hands and tramples underfoot with loathing --yet his failure to win renown in ,germany during his lifetime contributed powerfully to foster his antipathy4 ,the exaltation that marks the whole tone of the work1 the unrestrained self-esteem which animates it and is ominous of the near approach of madness1 have not deprived ,ecce ,homo of its character of surpassing greatness4