{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_47588/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_47588","id":"gutenberg_47588","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47588","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: German Literature","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900","Philosophers -- Germany -- Biography","Philosophy, German -- 19th century"],"text":"FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE\n\nBY\n\nGEORGE BRANDES\n\n\nAUTHOR OF \"WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,\" ETC.\n\n\nLONDON\n\nWILLIAM HEINEMANN\n\n\n1914\n\n\n[Illustration: Sculptor: J. Davidson.--Photo: A. Langdon Coburn.]\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nAN ESSAY ON\n\nARISTOCRATIC RADICALISM[1]\n\n(1889)\n\n\nFriedrich Nietzsche appears to me the most interesting writer in German\nliterature at the present time. Though little known even in his own\ncountry, he is a thinker of a high order, who fully deserves to be\nstudied, discussed, contested and mastered. Among many good qualities\nhe has that of imparting his mood to others and setting their thoughts\nin motion.\n\nDuring a period of eighteen years Nietzsche has written a long series\nof books and pamphlets. Most of these volumes consist of aphorisms,\nand of these the greater part, as well as the more original, are\nconcerned with moral prejudices. In this province will be found his\nlasting importance. But besides this he has dealt with the most varied\nproblems; he has written on culture and history, on art and women,\non companionship and solitude, on the State and society, on life's\nstruggle and death.\n\nHe was born on October 15, 1844; studied philology; became in 1869\nprofessor of philology at Basle; made the acquaintance of Richard\nWagner and became warmly attached to him, and associated also with\nthe distinguished historian of the Renaissance, Jakob Burkhardt.\nNietzsche's admiration and affection for Burkhardt were lasting. His\nfeeling for Wagner, on the other hand, underwent a complete revulsion\nin the course of years. From having been Wagner's prophet he developed\ninto his most passionate opponent.\n\nNietzsche was always heart and soul a musician; he even tried his\nhand as a composer in his _Hymn to Life_ (for chorus and orchestra,\n1888), and his intercourse with Wagner left deep traces in his earliest\nwritings. But the opera of Parsifal, with its tendency to Catholicism\nand its advancement of the ascetic ideals which had previously been\nentirely foreign to Wagner, caused Nietzsche to see in the great\ncomposer a danger, an enemy, a morbid phenomenon, since this last work\nshowed him all the earlier operas in a new light.\n\nDuring his residence in Switzerland Nietzsche came to know a large\ncircle of interesting people. He suffered, however, from extremely\nsevere headaches, so frequent that they incapacitated him for about two\nhundred days in the year and brought him to the verge of the grave.\nIn 1879 he resigned his professorship. From 1882 to 1888 his state of\nhealth improved, though extremely slowly. His eyes were still so weak\nthat he was threatened with blindness. He was compelled to be extremely\ncareful in his mode of life and to choose his place of residence in\nobedience to climatic and meteorological conditions. He usually spent\nthe winter at Nice and the summer at Sils-Maria in the Upper Engadine.\nThe years 1887 and 1888 were astonishingly rich in production; they\nsaw the publication of the most remarkable works of widely different\nnature and the preparation of a whole series of new books. Then, at\nthe close of the latter year, perhaps as the result of overstrain, a\nviolent attack of mental disorder occurred, from which Nietzsche never\nrecovered.\n\nAs a thinker his starting-point is Schopenhauer; in his first books\nhe is actually his disciple. But, after several years of silence,\nduring which he passes through his first intellectual crisis, he\nreappears emancipated from all ties of discipleship. He then undergoes\nso powerful and rapid a development--less in his thought itself than\nin the courage to express his thoughts--that each succeeding book\nmarks a fresh stage, until by degrees he concentrates himself upon\na single fundamental question, the question of moral values. On his\nearliest appearance as a thinker he had already entered a protest,\nin opposition to David Strauss, against any moral interpretation of\nthe nature of the Cosmos and assigned to our morality its place in\nthe world of phenomena, now as semblance or error, now as artificial\narrangement. And his literary activity reached its highest point in an\ninvestigation of the origin of the moral concepts, while it was his\nhope and intention to give to the world an exhaustive criticism of\nmoral values, an examination of the value of these values (regarded as\nfixed once for all). The first book of his work, _The Transvaluation of\nall Values_, was completed when his malady declared itself.\n\n\n[1] \"The expression 'aristocratic radicalism,' which you employ, is\nvery good. It is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing I have yet read\nabout myself,\"--Nietzsche, Dec. 2, 1887.\n\n\n\nI.\n\n\nNietzsche first received a good deal of notice, though not much\ncommendation, for a caustic and juvenile polemical pamphlet against\nDavid Strauss, occasioned by the latter's book, _The Old Faith and\nthe New_. His attack, irreverent in tone, is directed not against the\nfirst, warlike section of the book, but against the constructive and\ncomplementary section. The attack, however, is less concerned with the\nonce great critic's last effort than with the mediocracy in Germany,\nto which Strauss's last word represented the last word of culture in\ngeneral.\n\nA year and a half had elapsed since the close of the Franco-German War.\nNever had the waves of German self esteem run so high. The exultation\nof victory had passed into a tumultuous self-glorification. The\nuniversal view was that German culture had vanquished French. Then this\nvoice made itself heard, saying--\n\nAdmitting that this was really a conflict between two civilisations,\nthere would still be no reason for crowning the victorious one; we\nshould first have to know what the vanquished one was worth; if its\nvalue was very slight--and this is what is said of French culture--then\nthere was no great honour in the victory. But in the next place there\ncan be no question at all in this case of a victory of German culture;\npartly because French culture still persists, and partly because\nthe Germans, now as heretofore, are dependent on it. It was military\ndiscipline, natural bravery, endurance, superiority on the part of the\nleaders and obedience on the part of the led, in short, _factors that\nhave nothing to do with culture_, which gave Germany the victory. But\nfinally and above all, German culture was not victorious for the good\nreason that Germany as yet has nothing that can be called culture.\n\nIt was then only a year since Nietzsche himself had formed the greatest\nexpectations of Germany's future, had looked forward to her speedy\nliberation from the leading-strings of Latin civilisation, and heard\nthe most favourable omens in German music.[2] The intellectual decline,\nwhich seemed to him--rightly, no doubt--to date indisputably from the\nfoundation of the Empire, now made him oppose a ruthless defiance to\nthe prevailing popular sentiment.\n\nHe maintains that culture shows itself above all else in a unity of\nartistic style running through every expression of a nation's life. On\nthe other hand, the fact of having learnt much and knowing much is,\nas he points out, neither a necessary means to culture nor a sign of\nculture; it accords remarkably well with barbarism, that is to say,\nwith want of style or a motley hotchpotch of styles. And his contention\nis simply this, that with a culture consisting of hotchpotch it is\nimpossible to subdue any enemy, above all an enemy like the French,\nwho have long possessed a genuine and productive culture, whether we\nattribute a greater or a lesser value to it.\n\nHe appeals to a saying of Goethe to Eckermann: \"We Germans are of\nyesterday. No doubt in the last hundred years we have been cultivating\nourselves quite diligently, but it may take a few centuries yet before\nour countrymen have absorbed sufficient intellect and higher culture\nfor it to be said of them that it is a long time since they were\nbarbarians.\"\n\nTo Nietzsche, as we see, the concepts of culture and homogeneous\nculture are equivalent. In order to be homogeneous a culture must\nhave reached a certain age and have become strong enough in its\npeculiar character to have penetrated all forms of life. Homogeneous\nculture, however, is of course not the same thing as native culture.\nAncient Iceland had a homogeneous culture, though its flourishing\nwas brought about precisely by active intercourse with Europe; a\nhomogeneous culture existed in Italy at the time of the Renaissance, in\nEngland in the sixteenth, in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth\ncenturies, although Italy built up her culture of Greek, Roman and\nSpanish impressions, France hers of classical, Celtic, Spanish and\nItalian elements, and although the English are the mixed race beyond\nall others. True, it is only a century and a half since the Germans\nbegan to liberate themselves from French culture, and hardly more\nthan a hundred years since they entirely escaped from the Frenchmen's\nschool, whose influence may nevertheless be traced even to-day: but\nstill no one can justly deny the existence of a German culture, even if\nit is yet comparatively young and in a state of growth. Nor will any\none who has a sense for the agreement between German music and German\nphilosophy, an ear for the harmony between German music and German\nlyrical poetry, an eye for the merits and defects of German painting\nand sculpture, which are the outcome of the same fundamental tendency\nthat is revealed in the whole intellectual and emotional life of\nGermany, be disposed in advance to deny Germany a homogeneous culture.\nMore precarious will be the state of such smaller countries whose\ndependence on foreign nations has not unfrequently been a dependence\nraised to the second power.\n\nTo Nietzsche, however, this point is of relatively small importance.\nHe is convinced that the last hour of national cultures is at hand,\nsince the time cannot be far off when it will only be a question of a\nEuropean or European-American culture. He argues from the fact that\nthe most highly developed people in every country already feel as\nEuropeans, as fellow-countrymen, nay, as confederates, and from the\nbelief that the twentieth century must bring with it the war for the\ndominion of the world.\n\nWhen, therefore, from the result of this war a tempestuous wind sweeps\nover all national vanities, bending and breaking them, what will then\nbe the question?\n\nThe question will then be, thinks Nietzsche, in exact agreement with\nthe most eminent Frenchmen of our day, whether by that time it has been\npossible to train or rear a sort of caste of pre-eminent spirits who\nwill be able to grasp the central power.\n\nThe real misfortune is, therefore, not that a country is still without\na genuine, homogeneous and perfected culture, but that it thinks\nitself cultured. And with his eye upon Germany Nietzsche asks how it\nhas come about that so prodigious a contradiction can exist as that\nbetween the lack of true culture and the self-satisfied belief in\nactually possessing the only true one--and he finds the answer in\nthe circumstance that a class of men has come to the front which no\nformer century has known, and to which (in 1873) he gave the name of\n\"Culture-Philistines.\"\n\nThe Culture-Philistine regards his own impersonal education as the real\nculture; if he has been told that culture presupposes a homogeneous\nstamp of mind, he is confirmed in his good opinion of himself, since\neverywhere he meets with educated people of his own sort, and since\nschools, universities and academies are adapted to his requirements\nand fashioned on the model corresponding to his cultivation. Since\nhe finds almost everywhere the same tacit conventions with respect\nto religion, morality and literature, with respect to marriage, the\nfamily, the community and the State, he considers it demonstrated that\nthis imposing homogeneity is culture. It never enters his head that\nthis systematic and well-organised philistinism, which is set up in\nall high places and installed at every editorial desk, is not by any\nmeans made culture just because its organs are in concert. It is not\neven bad culture, says Nietzsche; it is barbarism fortified to the best\nof its ability, but entirely lacking the freshness and savage force of\noriginal barbarism; and he has many graphic expressions to describe\nCulture-Philistinism as the morass in which all weariness is stuck\nfast, and in the poisonous mists of which all endeavour languishes.\n\nAll of us are now born into the society of cultured philistinism, in\nit we all grow up. It confronts us with prevailing opinions, which we\nunconsciously adopt; and even when opinions are divided, the division\nis only into party opinions--public opinions.\n\nAn aphorism of Nietzsche's reads: \"What is public opinion? It is\nprivate indolence.\" The dictum requires qualification. There are cases\nwhere public opinion is worth something: John Morley has written a good\nbook on the subject. In the face of certain gross breaches of faith\nand law, certain monstrous violations of human rights, public opinion\nmay now and then assert itself as a power worthy to be followed.\nOtherwise it is as a rule a factory working for the benefit of\nCulture-Philistinism.\n\nOn entering life, then, young people meet with various collective\nopinions, more or less narrow-minded. The more the individual has it\nin him to become a real personality, the more he will resist following\na herd. But even if an inner voice says to him: \"Become thyself! Be\nthyself!\" he hears its appeal with despondency. Has he a self? He does\nnot know; he is not yet aware of it.\n\nHe therefore looks about for a teacher, an educator, one who will teach\nhim, not something foreign, but how to become his own individual self.\n\nWe had in Denmark a great man who with impressive force exhorted his\ncontemporaries to become individuals. But S\u00f6ren Kierkegaard's appeal\nwas not intended to be taken so unconditionally as it sounded. For\nthe goal was fixed. They were to become individuals, not in order to\ndevelop into free personalities, but in order by this means to become\ntrue Christians. Their freedom was only apparent; above them was\nsuspended a \"Thou shalt believe!\" and a \"Thou shalt obey!\" Even as\nindividuals they had a halter round their necks, and on the farther\nside of the narrow passage of individualism, through which the herd was\ndriven, the herd awaited them again--one flock, one shepherd.\n\nIt is not with this idea of immediately resigning his personality again\nthat the young man in our day desires to become himself and seeks an\neducator. He will not have a dogma set up before him, at which he is\nexpected to arrive. But he has an uneasy feeling that he is packed with\ndogmas. How is he to find himself in himself, how is he to dig himself\nout of himself? This is where the educator should help him. An educator\ncan only be a liberator.\n\nIt was a liberating educator of this kind that Nietzsche as a young man\nlooked for and found in Schopenhauer. Such a one will be found by every\nseeker in the personality that has the most liberating effect on him\nduring his period of development. Nietzsche says that as soon as he had\nread a single page of Schopenhauer, he knew he would read every page of\nhim and pay heed to every word, even to the errors he might find. Every\nintellectual aspirant will be able to name men whom he has read in this\nway.\n\nIt is true that for Nietzsche, as for any other aspirant, there\nremained one more step to be taken, that of liberating himself from\nthe liberator. We find in his earliest writings certain favourite\nexpressions of Schopenhauer's which no longer appear in his later\nworks. But the liberation is here a tranquil development to\nindependence, throughout which he retains his deep gratitude; not, as\nin his relations with Wagner, a violent revulsion which leads him to\ndeny any value to the works he had once regarded as the most valuable\nof all.\n\nHe praises Schopenhauer's lofty honesty, beside which he can only\nplace Montaigne's, his lucidity, his constancy, and the purity of his\nrelations with society, State and State-religion, which are in such\nsharp contrast with those of Kant. With Schopenhauer there is never a\nconcession, never a dallying.\n\nAnd Nietzsche is astounded by the fact that Schopenhauer could endure\nlife in Germany at all. A modern Englishman has said: \"Shelley could\nnever have lived in England: a race of Shelleys would have been\nimpossible.\" Spirits of this kind are early broken, then become\nmelancholy, morbid or insane. The society of the Culture-Philistines\nmakes life a burden to exceptional men. Examples of this occur in\nplenty in the literature of every country, and the trial is constantly\nbeing made. We need only think of the number of talented men who sooner\nor later make their apologies and concessions to philistinism, so\nas to be permitted to exist. But even in the strongest the vain and\nweary struggle with Culture-Philistinism shows itself in lines and\nwrinkles. Nietzsche quotes the saying of the old diplomatist, who had\nonly casually seen and spoken to Goethe: \"_Voil\u00e0 un homme qui a eu\nde grands chagrins_,\" and Goethe's comment, when repeating it to his\nfriends: \"If the traces of our sufferings and activities are indelible\neven in our features, it is no wonder that all that survives of us and\nour struggles should bear the same marks.\" And this is Goethe, who is\nlooked upon as the favourite of fortune!\n\nSchopenhauer, as is well known, was until his latest years a solitary\nman. No one understood him, no one read him. The greater part of the\nfirst edition of his work, _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, had to\nbe sold as waste paper.\n\nIn our day Taine's view has widely gained ground, that the great man is\nentirely determined by the age whose child he is, that he unconsciously\nsums it up and ought consciously to give it expression.[3] But\nalthough, of course, the great man does not stand outside the course of\nhistory and must always depend upon predecessors, an idea nevertheless\nalways germinates in a single individual or in a few individuals; and\nthese individuals are not scattered points in the low-lying mass, but\nhighly gifted ones who draw the mass to them instead of being drawn by\nit. What is called the spirit of the age originates in quite a small\nnumber of brains.\n\nNietzsche who, mainly no doubt through Schopenhauer's influence, had\noriginally been strongly impressed by the dictum that the great man is\nnot the child of his age but its step-child, demands that the educator\nshall help the young to educate themselves _in opposition to the age_.\n\nIt appears to him that the modern age has produced for imitation three\nparticular types of man, one after the other. First Rousseau's man; the\nTitan who raises himself, oppressed and bound by the higher castes, and\nin his need calls upon holy Nature. Then Goethe's man; not Werther or\nthe revolutionary figures related to him, who are still derived from\nRousseau, nor the original Faust figure, but Faust as he gradually\ndevelops. He is no liberator, but a spectator, of the world. He is not\nthe man of action. Nietzsche reminds us of Jarno's words to Wilhelm\nMeister: \"You are vexed and bitter, that is a very good thing. If you\ncould be thoroughly angry for once, it would be better still.\"\n\nTo become thoroughly angry in order to make things better, this,\nin the view of the Nietzsche of thirty, will be the exhortation of\nSchopenhauer's man. This man voluntarily takes upon himself the pain of\ntelling the truth. His fundamental idea is this: A life of happiness is\nimpossible; the highest a man can attain to is a heroic life, one in\nwhich he fights against the greatest difficulties for something which,\nin one way or another, will be for the good of all. To what is truly\nhuman, only true human beings can raise us; those who seem to have\ncome into being by a leap in Nature; thinkers and educators, artists\nand creators, and those who influence us more by their nature than by\ntheir activity: the noble, the good in a grand style, those in whom the\ngenius of good is at work.\n\nThese men are the aim of history.\n\nNietzsche formulates this proposition: \"Humanity must work unceasingly\nfor the production of solitary great men--this and nothing else is its\ntask.\" This is the same formula at which several aristocratic spirits\namong his contemporaries have arrived. Thus Renan says, almost in the\nsame words: \"In fine, the object of humanity is the production of great\nmen ... nothing but great men; salvation will come from great men.\" And\nwe see from Flaubert's letters to George Sand how convinced he was of\nthe same thing. He says, for instance: \"The only rational thing is and\nalways will be a government of mandarins, provided that the mandarins\ncan do something, or rather, can do much.... It matters little whether\na greater or smaller number of peasants are able to read instead of\nlistening to their priest, but it is infinitely important that many men\nlike Renan and Littr\u00e9 may live and be heard. Our salvation now lies in\na real aristocracy.\"[4] Both Renan and Flaubert would have subscribed\nto Nietzsche's fundamental idea that a nation is the roundabout way\nNature goes in order to produce a dozen great men.\n\nYet, although the idea does not lack advocates, this does not make it\na dominant thought in European philosophy. In Germany, for instance,\nEduard von Hartmann thinks very differently of the aim--of history. His\npublished utterances on the subject are well known. In conversation he\nonce hinted how his idea had originated in his mind: \"It was clear to\nme long ago,\" he said, \"that history, or, to use a wider expression,\nthe world process, must have an aim, and that this aim could only be\nnegative. For a golden age is too foolish a figment.\" Hence his visions\nof a destruction of the world voluntarily brought about by the most\ngifted men. And connected with this is his doctrine that humanity has\nnow reached man's estate, that is, has passed the stage of development\nin which geniuses were necessary.\n\nIn the face of all this talk of the world process, the aim of which is\nannihilation or deliverance--deliverance even of the suffering godhead\nfrom existence--Nietzsche takes a very sober and sensible stand with\nhis simple belief that the goal of humanity is not to be infinitely\ndeferred, but must be found in the highest examples of humanity itself.\n\nAnd herewith he has arrived at his final answer to the question, What\nis culture? For upon this relation depend the fundamental idea of\nculture and the duties culture imposes. It imposes on me the duty of\nassociating myself by my own activity with the great human ideals. Its\nfundamental idea is this: it assigns to every individual who wishes to\nwork for it and participate in it, the task of striving to produce,\nwithin and without himself, the thinker and artist, the lover of truth\nand beauty, the pure and good personality, and thereby striving for the\nperfection of Nature, towards the goal of a perfected Nature.\n\nWhen does a state of culture prevail? When the men of a community are\nsteadily working for the production of single great men. From this\nhighest aim all the others follow. And what state is farthest removed\nfrom a state of culture? That in which men energetically and with\nunited forces resist the appearance of great men, partly by preventing\nthe cultivation of the soil required for the growth of genius, partly\nby obstinately opposing everything in the shape of genius that appears\namongst them. Such a state is more remote from culture than that of\nsheer barbarism.\n\nBut does such a state exist? perhaps some one will ask. Most of the\nsmaller nations will be able to read the answer in the history of their\nnative land. It will there be seen, in proportion as \"refinement\"\ngrows, that the refined atmosphere is diffused, which is unfavourable\nto genius. And this is all the more serious, since many people think\nthat in modern times and in the races which now share the dominion of\nthe world among them, a political community of only a few millions is\nseldom sufficiently numerous to produce minds of the very first order.\nIt looks as if geniuses could only be distilled from some thirty or\nforty millions of people. Norway with Ibsen, Belgium with Maeterlinck\nand Verhaeren are exceptions. All the more reason is there for the\nsmaller communities to work at culture to their utmost capacity.\n\nIn recent times we have become familiar with the thought that the goal\nto be aimed at is happiness, the happiness of all, or at any rate of\nthe greatest number. Wherein happiness consists is less frequently\ndiscussed, and yet it is impossible to avoid the question, whether a\nyear, a day, an hour in Paradise does not bring more happiness than a\nlifetime in the chimney-corner. But be that as it may: owing to our\nfamiliarity with the notion of making sacrifices for a whole country,\na multitude of people, it appears unreasonable that a man should exist\nfor the sake of a few other men, that it should be his duty to devote\nhis life to them in order thereby to promote culture. But nevertheless\nthe answer to the question of culture--how the individual human life\nmay acquire its highest value and its greatest significance--must be:\nBy being lived for the benefit of the rarest and most valuable examples\nof the human race. This will also be the way in which the individual\ncan best impart a value to the life of the greatest number.\n\nIn our day a so-called cultural institution means an organisation in\nvirtue of which the \"cultured\" advance in serried ranks and thrust\naside all solitary and obstinate men whose efforts are directed to\nhigher ends; therefore even the learned are as a rule lacking in any\nsense for budding genius and any feeling for the value of struggling\ncontemporary genius. Therefore, in spite of the indisputable and\nrestless progress in all technical and specialised departments, the\nconditions necessary to the appearance of great men are so far from\nhaving improved, that dislike of genius has rather increased than\ndiminished.\n\nFrom the State the exceptional individual cannot expect much. He is\nseldom benefited by being taken into its service; the only certain\nadvantage it can give him is complete independence. Only real culture\nwill prevent his being too early tired out or used up, and will spare\nhim the exhausting struggle against Culture-Philistinism.\n\nNietzsche's value lies in his being one of these vehicles of culture:\na mind which, itself independent, diffuses independence and may become\nto others a liberating force, such as Schopenhauer was to Nietzsche\nhimself in his younger days.\n\n\n[2] _The Birth of Tragedy_, p. 150 ff. (English edition).\n\n[3] The author of these lines has not made himself the advocate of this\nview, as has sometimes been publicly stated, but on the contrary has\nopposed it. After some uncertainty I pronounced against it as early\nas 1870, in _Den franske \u00c6sthetik i vore Dage_, pp. 105, 106, and\nafterwards in many other places.\n\n[4] Nietzsche; _Thoughts out of Season_, II., p. 155 f. (English\nedition). Renan: _Dialogues et Fragments Philosophiques_, p. 103.\nFlaubert: _Lettres \u00e0 George Sand_, p. 139 ff.\n\n\n\n2.\n\n\nFour of Nietzsche's early works bear the collective title, _Thoughts\nout of Season_ (_Unzeitgem\u00e4sse Betrachtungen_), a title which is\nsignificant of his early-formed determination to go against the stream.\n\nOne of the fields in which he opposed the spirit of the age in Germany\nis that of education, since he condemns in the most uncompromising\nfashion the entire historical system of education of which Germany is\nproud, and which as a rule is everywhere regarded as desirable.\n\nHis view is that what keeps the race from breathing freely and\nwilling boldly is that it drags far too much of its past about with\nit, like a round-shot chained to a convict's leg. He thinks it is\nhistorical education that fetters the race both in enjoyment and in\naction, since he who cannot concentrate himself on the moment and live\nentirely in it, can neither feel happiness himself nor do anything\nto make others happy. Without the power of feeling unhistorically,\nthere is no happiness. And in the same way, forgetfulness, or rather,\nnon-knowledge of the past is essential to all action. Forgetfulness,\nthe unhistorical, is as it were the enveloping air, the atmosphere,\nin which alone life can come into being. In order to understand it,\nlet us imagine a youth who is seized with a passion for a woman, or\na man who is swayed by a passion for his work. In both cases what\nlies behind them has ceased to exist--and yet this state (the most\nunhistorical that can be imagined) is that in which every action, every\ngreat deed is conceived and accomplished. Now answering to this, says\nNietzsche, there exists a certain degree of historical knowledge which\nis destructive of a man's energy and fatal to the productive powers of\na nation.\n\nIn this reasoning we can hear the voice of the learned German\nphilologist, whose observations have mostly been drawn from German\nscholars and artists. For it would be unreasonable to suppose that the\ncommercial or peasant class, the soldiers or manufacturers of Germany\nsuffered from an excess of historical culture. But even in the case of\nGerman savants, authors and artists the evil here pointed out may be of\nsuch a nature as not to admit of remedy by simply abolishing historical\neducation. Those men whose productive impulse has been checked or\nkilled by historical studies were already so impotent and ineffective\nthat the world would not have been enriched by their productions. And\nmoreover, what paralyses is not so much the heterogeneous mass of\ndead historical learning (about the actions of governments, political\nchess-moves, military achievements, artistic styles, etc.), as the\nknowledge of certain great minds of the past, by the side of whose\nproduction anything that can be shown by a man now living appears so\ninsignificant as to make it a matter of indifference whether his\nwork sees the light or not. Goethe alone is enough to reduce a young\nGerman poet to despair. But a hero-worshipper like Nietzsche cannot\nconsistently desire to curtail our knowledge of the greatest.\n\nThe want of artistic courage and intellectual boldness has certainly\ndeeper-lying causes; above all, the disintegration of the individuality\nwhich the modern order of society involves. Strong men can carry a\nheavy load of history without becoming incapacitated for living.\n\nBut what is interesting and significant of Nietzsche's whole\nintellectual standpoint is his inquiry as to how far life is able\nto make use of history. History, in his view, belongs to him who\nis fighting a great fight, and who needs examples, teachers and\ncomforters, but cannot find them among his contemporaries. Without\nhistory the mountain chain of great men's great moments, which runs\nthrough milleniums, could not stand clearly and vividly before me. When\none sees, that it only took about a hundred men to bring in the culture\nof the Renaissance; it may easily be supposed, for example, that a\nhundred productive minds, trained in a new style, would be enough to\nmake an end of Culture-Philistinism. On the other hand, history may\nhave pernicious effects in the hands of unproductive men. Thus young\nartists are driven into galleries instead of out into nature, and are\nsent, with minds still unformed, to centres of art, where they lose\ncourage. And in all its forms history may render men unfit for life;\nin its _monumental_ form by evoking the illusion that there are such\nthings as fixed, recurring historical conjunctions, so that what has\nonce been possible is now, in entirely altered conditions, possible\nagain; in its _antiquarian_ form by awakening a feeling of piety for\nancient, bygone things, which paralyses the man of action, who must\nalways outrage some piety or other; finally in its _critical_ form\nby giving rise to the depressing feeling that the very errors of the\npast, which we are striving to overcome, are inherited in our blood\nand impressed on our childhood, so that we live in a continual inner\nconflict between an old and a new nature.\n\nOn this point, as on others already alluded to, Nietzsche's quarrel is\nultimately with the broken-winded education of the present day. That\n_education_ and _historical education_ have in our time almost become\nsynonymous terms, is to him a mournful sign. It has been irretrievably\nforgotten that culture ought to be what it was with the Greeks: a\nmotive, a prompting to resolution; nowadays culture is commonly\ndescribed as inwardness, because it is a dead internal lump, which\ndoes not stir its possessor. The most \"educated\" people are walking\nencyclop\u00e6dias. When they act, they do so in virtue of a universally\napproved, miserable convention, or else from simple barbarism.\n\nWith this reflection, no doubt of general application, is connected a\ncomplaint which was bound to be evoked by modern literary Germany in\nparticular; the complaint of the oppressive effect of the greatness\nof former times, as shown in the latter-day man's conviction that he\nis a latecomer, an after-birth of a greater age, who may indeed teach\nhimself history, but can never produce it.\n\nEven philosophy, Nietzsche complains, with a side-glance at the German\nuniversities, has been more and more transformed into the history of\nphilosophy, a teaching of what everybody has thought about everything;\n\"a sort of harmless gossip between academic grey-beards and academic\nsucklings.\" It is boasted as a point of honour that freedom of thought\nexists in various countries. In reality it is only a poor sort of\nfreedom. One may think in a hundred ways, but one may only act in one\nway--and that is the way that is called \"culture\" and is in reality\n\"only a form, and what is more a bad form, a uniform.\"\n\nNietzsche attacks the view which regards the historically cultured\nperson as the justest of all. We honour the historian who aims at pure\nknowledge, from which nothing follows. But there are many trivial\ntruths, and it is a misfortune that whole battalions of inquirers\nshould fling themselves upon them, even if these narrow minds belong to\nhonest men. The historian is looked upon as objective when he measures\nthe past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when\nhe does not take these opinions for models. That man is thought best\nfitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected\nby that period. But only he who has a share in building up the future\ncan grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work\nof art can history arouse or even sustain instincts.\n\nAs historical education is now conducted, the mass of impressions\ncommunicated is so great as to produce numbness, a feeling of being\nborn old of an old stock--although less than thirty human lives,\nreckoned at seventy years each, divide us from the beginning of our\nera. And with this is connected the immense superstition of the\nvalue and significance of universal history. Schiller's phrase is\neverlastingly repeated: \"The history of the world is the tribunal of\nthe world,\" as though there could be any other historical tribunal\nthan thought; and the Hegelian view of history as the ever-clearer\nself-revelation of the godhead has obstinately held its own, only that\nit has gradually passed into sheer admiration of success, an approval\nof any and every fact, be it never so brutal. But greatness has nothing\nto do with results or with success. Demosthenes, who spoke in vain, is\ngreater than Philip, who was always victorious. Everything in our day\nis thought to be in order, if only it be an accomplished fact; even\nwhen a man of genius dies in the fulness of his powers, proofs are\nforthcoming that he died at the right time. And the fragment of history\nwe possess is entitled \"the world process\"; men cudgel their brains,\nlike Eduard von Hartmann, in trying to find out its origin and final\ngoal--which seems to be a waste of time. Why you exist, says Nietzsche\nwith S\u00f6ren Kierkegaard, nobody in the world can tell you in advance;\nbut since you do exist, try to give your existence a meaning by setting\nup for yourself as lofty and noble a goal as you can.\n\nSignificant of Nietzsche's aristocratic tendency, so marked later, is\nhis anger with the deference paid by modern historians to the masses.\nFormerly, he argues, history was written from the standpoint of the\nrulers; it was occupied exclusively with them, however mediocre or\nbad they might be. Now it has crossed over to the standpoint of the\nmasses. But the masses--they are only to be regarded as one of three\nthings: either as copies of great personalities, bad copies, clumsily\nproduced in a poor material, or as foils to the great, or finally\nas their tools. Otherwise they are matter for statisticians to deal\nwith, who find so-called historical laws in the instincts of the\nmasses--aping, laziness, hunger and sexual impulse. What has set the\nmass in motion for any length of time is then called great. It is given\nthe name of a historical power. When, for example, the vulgar mob has\nappropriated or adapted to its needs some religious idea, has defended\nit stubbornly and dragged it along for centuries, then the originator\nof that idea is called great. There is the testimony of thousands of\nyears for it, we are told. But--this is Nietzsche's and Kierkegaard's\nidea--the noblest and highest does not affect the masses at all, either\nat the moment or later. Therefore the historical success of a religion,\nits toughness and persistence, witness against its founder's greatness\nrather than for it.\n\nWhen an instance is required of one of the few enterprises in history\nthat have been completely successful, the Reformation is commonly\nchosen. Against the significance of this success Nietzsche does not\nurge the facts usually quoted: its early secularisation by Luther;\nhis compromises with those in power; the interest of princes in\nemancipating themselves from the mastery of the Church and laying\nhands on its estates, while at the same time securing a submissive and\ndependent clergy instead of one independent of the State. He sees the\nchief cause of the success of the Reformation in the uncultured state\nof the nations of northern Europe. Many attempts at founding new Greek\nreligions came to naught in antiquity. Although men like Pythagoras,\nPlato, perhaps Empedocles, had qualifications as founders of religions,\nthe individuals they had to deal with were far too diversified in their\nnature to be helped by a common doctrine of faith and hope. In contrast\nwith this, the success of Luther's Reformation in the North was an\nindication that northern culture was behind that of southern Europe.\nThe people either blindly obeyed a watchword from above, like a flock\nof sheep; or, where conversion was a matter of conscience, it revealed\nhow little individuality there was among a population which was found\nto be so homogeneous in its spiritual needs. In the same way, too, the\noriginal conversion of pagan antiquity was only successful on account\nof the abundant intermixture of barbarian with Roman blood which had\ntaken place. The new doctrine was forced upon the masters of the world\nby barbarians and slaves.\n\nThe reader now has examples of the arguments Nietzsche employs\nin support of his proposition that history is not so sound and\nstrengthening an educational factor as is thought: only he who has\nlearnt to know life and is equipped for action has use for history and\nis capable of applying it; others are oppressed by it and rendered\nunproductive by being made to feel themselves late-comers, or are\ninduced to worship success in every field.\n\nNietzsche's contribution to this question is a plea against every sort\nof historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary\npessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts--of\ndecadence. He preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a\n_tragic_ culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in\nwhich the spirit of ancient Greece might be born again. He rejects the\npessimism of Schopenhauer, for he already abhors all renunciation; but\nhe seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from\nexuberant power, and he believes he has found it in the Greeks. He has\ndeveloped this view in the learned and profound work of his youth, _The\nBirth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism_, in which he introduced\ntwo new terms, _Apollonian_ and _Dionysian_. The two Greek deities of\nart, Apollo and Dionysus, denote the antithesis between plastic art and\nmusic. The former corresponds to dreaming, the latter to drunkenness.\nIn dreams the forms of the gods first appeared to men; dreams are the\nworld of beauteous appearance. If, on the other hand, we look down into\nman's lowest depths, below the spheres of thought and imagination, we\ncome upon a world of terror and rapture, the realm of Dionysus. Above\nreign beauty, measure and proportion; but underneath the profusion of\nNature surges freely in pleasure and pain. Regarded from Nietzsche's\nlater standpoint, the deeper motive of this searching absorption in\nHellenic antiquity becomes apparent. Even at this early stage he\nsuspects, in what passes for morality, a disparaging principle directed\nagainst Nature; he looks for its essential antithesis, and finds it\nin the purely artistic principle, farthest removed from Christianity,\nwhich he calls Dionysian.\n\nOur author's main psychological features are now clearly apparent. What\nkind of a nature is it that carries this savage hatred of philistinism\neven as far as to David Strauss? An artist's nature, obviously. What\nkind of a writer is it who warns us with such firm conviction against\nthe dangers of historical culture? A philologist obviously, who has\nexperienced them in himself, has felt himself threatened with becoming\na mere aftermath and tempted to worship historical success. What kind\nof a nature is it that so passionately defines culture as the worship\nof genius? Certainly no Eckermann-nature, but an enthusiast, willing\nat the outset to obey where he cannot command, but quick to recognise\nhis own masterful bias, and to see that humanity is far from having\noutgrown the ancient antithetical relation of commanding and obeying.\nThe appearance of Napoleon is to him, as to many others, a proof of\nthis; in the joy that thrilled thousands, when at last they saw one who\nknew how to command.\n\nBut in the sphere of ethics he is not disposed to preach obedience. On\nthe contrary, constituted as he is, he sees the apathy and meanness of\nour modern morality in the fact that it still upholds obedience as the\nhighest moral commandment, instead of the power of dictating to one's\nself one's own morality.\n\nHis military schooling and participation in the war of 1870-71 probably\nled to his discovery of a hard and manly quality in himself, and imbued\nhim with an extreme abhorrence of all softness and effeminacy. He\nturned aside with disgust from the morality of pity in Schopenhauer's\nphilosophy and from the romantic-catholic element in Wagner's music,\nto both of which he had previously paid homage. He saw that he had\ntransformed both masters according to his own needs, and he understood\nquite well the instinct of self preservation that was here at work.\nThe aspiring mind creates the helpers it requires. Thus he afterwards\ndedicated his book, Human, all-too-Human, which was published on\nVoltaire's centenary, to the \"free spirits\" among his contemporaries;\nhis dreams created the associates that he had not yet found in the\nflesh.\n\nThe severe and painful illness, which began in his thirty-second\nyear and long made him a recluse, detached him from all romanticism\nand freed his heart from all bonds of piety. It carried him far away\nfrom pessimism, in virtue of his proud thought that \"a sufferer has\nno right to pessimism.\" This illness made a philosopher of him in a\nstrict sense. His thoughts stole inquisitively along forbidden paths:\nThis thing passes for a value. Can we not turn it upside-down? This\nis regarded as good. Is it not rather evil?--Is not God refuted? But\ncan we say as much of the devil?--Are we not deceived? and deceived\ndeceivers, all of us?...\n\nAnd then out of this long sickliness arises a passionate desire for\nhealth, the joy of the convalescent in life, in light, in warmth, in\nfreedom and ease of mind, in the range and horizon of thought, in\n\"visions of new dawns,\" in creative capacity, in poetical strength.\nAnd he enters upon the lofty self-confidence and ecstasy of a long\nuninterrupted production.\n\n\n\n3.\n\n\nIt is neither possible nor necessary to review here the long series of\nhis writings. In calling attention to an author who is still unread,\none need only throw his most characteristic thoughts and expressions\ninto relief, so that the reader with little trouble may form an idea\nof his way of thinking and quality of mind. The task is here rendered\ndifficult by Nietzsche's thinking in aphorisms, and facilitated by\nhis habit of emphasising every thought in such a way as to give it a\nstartling appearance.\n\nEnglish utilitarianism has met with little acceptance in Germany;\namong more eminent contemporary thinkers Eugen D\u00fchring is its chief\nadvocate; Friedrich Paulsen also sides with the Englishmen. Eduard\nvon Hartmann has attempted to demonstrate the impossibility of\nsimultaneously promoting culture and happiness. Nietzsche finds new\ndifficulties in an analysis of the concept of happiness. The object of\nutilitarianism is to procure humanity as much pleasure and as little\nof the reverse as possible. But what if pleasure and pain are so\nintertwined that he who wants all the pleasure he can get must take a\ncorresponding amount of suffering into the bargain? Cl\u00e4rchen's song\ncontains the words: \"_Himmelhoch jauchzend, zum Tode betr\u00fcbt_\" Who\nknows whether the latter is not the condition of the former? The Stoics\nbelieved this, and, wishing to avoid pain, asked of life the minimum\nof pleasure. Probably it is equally unwise in our day to promise men\nintense joys, if they are to be insured against great sufferings.\n\nWe see that Nietzsche transfers the question to the highest spiritual\nplane, without regard to the fact that the lowest and commonest\nmisfortunes, such as hunger, physical exhaustion, excessive and\nunhealthy labour, yield no compensation in violent joys. Even if\nall pleasure be dearly bought, it does not follow that all pain is\ninterrupted and counterbalanced by intense enjoyment.\n\nIn accordance with his aristocratic bias he then attacks Bentham's\nproposition: the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible\nnumber. The ideal was, of course, to procure happiness for everybody;\nas this could not be done, the formula took the above shape. But why\nhappiness for the greatest number? We might imagine it for the best,\nthe noblest, the most gifted; and we may be permitted to ask whether\nmoderate prosperity and moderate well-being are preferable to the\ninequality of lot which acts as a goad, forcing culture ever upward.\n\nThen there is the doctrine of unselfishness. To be moral is to be\nunselfish. It is good to be so, we are told. But what does that\nmean--good? Good for whom? Not for the self-sacrificer, but for\nhis neighbour. He who praises the virtue of unselfishness, praises\nsomething that is good for the community but harmful to the\nindividual. And the neighbour who wants to be loved unselfishly is not\nhimself unselfish. The fundamental contradiction in this morality is\nthat it demands and commends a renunciation of the ego, for the benefit\nof another ego.\n\nAt the outset the essential and invaluable element of all morality is,\nin Nietzsche's view, simply this, that it is a prolonged constraint. As\nlanguage gains in strength and freedom by the constraint of verse, and\nas all the freedom and delicacy to be found in plastic art, music and\ndancing is the result of arbitrary laws, so also does human nature only\nattain its development under constraint. No violence is thereby done to\nNature; this is the very nature of things.\n\nThe essential point is that there should be obedience, for a long time\nand in the same direction. Thou shalt obey, some one or something, and\nfor a long time--otherwise thou wilt come to grief; this seems to be\nthe moral imperative of Nature, which is certainly neither categorical\n(as Kant thought), nor addressed to the individual (Nature does not\ntrouble about the individual), but seems to be addressed to nations,\nclasses, periods, races--in fact, to mankind. On the other hand, all\nthe morality that is addressed to the individual for his own good, for\nthe sake of his own welfare, is reduced in this view to mere household\nremedies and counsels of prudence, recipes for curbing passions that\nmight want to break out; and all this morality is preposterous in form,\nbecause it addresses itself to all and generalises what does not admit\nof generalisation. Kant gave us a guiding rule with his categorical\nimperative. But this rule has failed us. It is of no use saying to us:\nAct as others ought to act in this case. For we know that there are not\nand cannot be such things as identical actions, but that every action\nis unique in its nature, so that any precept can only apply to the\nrough outside of actions.\n\nBut what of the voice and judgment of conscience? The difficulty is\nthat we have a conscience behind our conscience, an intellectual\none behind the moral. We can tell that the judgment of So-and-So's\nconscience has a past history in his instincts, his original\nsympathies or antipathies, his experience or want of experience. We\ncan see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good, our\nmoral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; but we\nmust begin by refining these opinions and independently creating for\nourselves new tables of values.\n\nAnd as regards the ethical teachers' preaching of morality for all,\nthis is every bit as empty as the gossip of individual society people\nabout each other's morals. Nietzsche gives the moralists this good\nadvice: that, instead of trying to educate the human race, they should\nimitate the pedagogues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who\nconcentrated their efforts on the education of a single person. But as\na rule the moral ranters are themselves quite uneducated persons, and\ntheir children seldom rise above moral mediocrity.\n\nHe who feels that in his inmost being he cannot be compared with\nothers, will be his own lawgiver. For one thing is needful: to give\nstyle to one's character. This art is practised by him who, with an\neye for the strong and weak sides of his nature, removes from it one\nquality and another, and then by daily practice and acquired habit\nreplaces them by others which become second nature to him; in other\nwords, he puts himself under restraint in order by degrees to bend\nhis nature entirely to his own law. Only thus does a man arrive at\nsatisfaction with himself, and only thus does he become endurable to\nothers. For the dissatisfied and the unsuccessful as a rule avenge\nthemselves on others. They absorb poison from everything, from their\nown incompetence as well as from their poor circumstances, and they\nlive in a constant craving for revenge on those in whose nature they\nsuspect harmony. Such people ever have virtuous precepts on their lips;\nthe whole jingle of morality, seriousness, chastity, the claims of\nlife; and their hearts ever bum with envy of those who have become well\nbalanced and can therefore enjoy life.\n\nFor millenniums morality meant obedience to custom, respect for\ninherited usage. The free, exceptional man was immoral, because he\nbroke with the tradition which the others regarded with superstitious\nfear. Very commonly he took the same view and was himself seized by the\nterror he inspired. Thus a popular morality of custom was unconsciously\nelaborated by all who belonged to the tribe; since fresh examples and\nproofs could always be found of the alleged relation between guilt and\npunishment--if you behave in such and such a way, it will go badly with\nyou. Now, as it generally does go badly, the allegation was constantly\nconfirmed; and thus popular morality, a pseudoscience on a level with\npopular medicine, continually gained ground.\n\nManners and customs represented the experiences of bygone generations\nconcerning what was supposed to be useful or harmful; the sense of\nmorality, however, does not attach to these experiences as such, but\nonly to their age, their venerability and consequent incontestability.\nIn the state of war in which a tribe existed in old times, threatened\non every side, there was no greater gratification, under the sway of\nthe strictest morality of custom, than cruelty. Cruelty is one of the\noldest festal and triumphal joys of mankind. It was thought that the\ngods, too, might be gratified and festively disposed by offering them\nthe sight of cruelties--and thus the idea insinuated itself into the\nworld that voluntary self-torture, mortification and abstinence are\nalso of great value, not as discipline, but as a sweet savour unto the\nLord.\n\nChristianity as a religion of the past unceasingly practised and\npreached the torture of souls. Imagine the state of the medi\u00e6val\nChristian, when he supposed he could no longer escape eternal torment.\nEros and Aphrodite were in his imagination powers of hell, and death\nwas a terror.\n\nTo the morality of cruelty has succeeded that of pity. The morality of\npity is lauded as unselfish, by Schopenhauer in particular.\n\nEduard von Hartmann, in his thoughtful work, _Ph\u00e4nomenologie des\nsittlichen Bewusstseins_ (pp. 217-240), has already shown the\nimpossibility of regarding pity as the most important of moral\nincentives, to say nothing of its being the only one, as Schopenhauer\nwould have it. Nietzsche attacks the morality of pity from other\npoints of view. He shows it to be by no means unselfish. Another's\nmisfortune affects us painfully and offends us--perhaps brands us as\ncowards if we do not go to his aid. Or it contains a hint of a possible\ndanger to ourselves; moreover, we feel joy in comparing our own state\nwith that of the unfortunate, joy when we can step in as the stronger,\nthe helper. The help we afford gives us a feeling of happiness, or\nperhaps it merely rescues us from boredom.\n\nPity in the form of actual fellow-suffering would be a weakness, nay,\na misfortune, since it would add to the world's suffering. A man who\nseriously abandoned himself to sympathy with all the misery he found\nabout him, would simply be destroyed by it.\n\nAmong savages the thought of arousing pity is regarded with horror.\nThose who do so are despised. According to savage notions, to feel pity\nfor a person is to despise him; but they find no pleasure in seeing a\ncontemptible person suffer. On the other hand, the sight of an enemy's\nsuffering, when his pride does not forsake him in the midst of his\ntorment--that is enjoyment, that excites admiration.\n\nThe morality of pity is often preached in the formula, love thy\nneighbour.\n\nNietzsche in the interests of his attack seizes upon the word\n_neighbour_. Not only does he demand, with Kierkegaard, a setting-aside\nof morality for the sake of the end in view, but he is exasperated\nthat the true nature of morality should be held to consist in a\nconsideration of the immediate results of our actions, to which we\nare to conform. To what is narrow and pettifogging in this morality\nhe opposes another, which looks beyond these immediate results and\naspires, even by means that cause our neighbour pain, to more distant\nobjects; such as the advancement of knowledge, although this will lead\nto sorrow and doubt and evil passions in our neighbour. We need not on\nthis account be without pity, but we may hold our pity captive for the\nsake of the object.\n\nAnd as it is now unreasonable to term pity unselfish and seek to\nconsecrate it, it is equally so to hand over a series of actions\nto the evil conscience, merely because they have been maligned as\negotistical. What has happened in recent times in this connection\nis that the instinct of self-denial and self-sacrifice, everything\naltruistic, has been glorified as if it were the supreme value of\nmorality.\n\nThe English moralists, who at present dominate Europe, explain\nthe origin of ethics in the following way: Unselfish actions were\noriginally called _good_ by those who were their objects and who\nbenefited by them; afterwards this original reason for praising them\nwas forgotten, and unselfish actions came to be regarded as good in\nthemselves.\n\nAccording to a statement of Nietzsche himself it was a work by a\nGerman author with English leanings, Dr. Paul R\u00e9e's _Der Ursprung der\nmoralischen Empfindungen_ (Chemnitz, 1877), which provoked him to such\npassionate and detailed opposition that he had to thank this book for\nthe impulse to clear up and develop his own ideas on the subject.\n\nThe surprising part of it, however, is this: Dissatisfaction with his\nfirst book caused R\u00e9e to write a second and far more important work on\nthe same subject--_Die Entstehung des Gewissens_ (Berlin, 1885)--in\nwhich the point of view offensive to Nietzsche is abandoned and several\nof the leading ideas advanced by the latter against R\u00e9e are set forth,\nsupported by a mass of evidence taken from various authors and races of\nmen.\n\nThe two philosophers were personally acquainted. I knew them both,\nbut had no opportunity of questioning either on this matter. It is\ntherefore impossible for me to say which of the two influenced the\nother, or why Nietzsche in 1887 alludes to his detestation of the\nopinions put forward by R\u00e9e in 1877, without mentioning how near\nthe latter had come to his own view in the work published two years\npreviously.\n\nR\u00e9e had already adduced a number of examples to show that the most\ndiverse peoples of antiquity knew no other moral classification of men\nthan that of nobles and common people, powerful and weak; so that the\noldest meaning of good both in Greece and Iceland was noble, mighty,\nrich. Nietzsche builds his whole theory on this foundation. His train\nof thought is this--\n\nThe critical word _good_ is not due to those to whom goodness has\nbeen shown. The oldest definition was this: the noble, the mightier,\nhigher-placed and high-minded held themselves and their actions to be\n_good_--of the first rank--in contradistinction to everything low and\nlow-minded. Noble, in the sense of the class-consciousness of a higher\ncaste, is the primary concept from which develops _good_ in the sense\nof spiritually aristocratic. The lowly are designated as _bad_ (not\nevil). Bad does not acquire its unqualified depreciatory meaning till\nmuch later. In the mouth of the people it is a laudatory word; the\nGerman word _schlecht_ is identical with _schlicht_ (cf. _schlechtweg_\nand _schlechterdings_).\n\nThe ruling caste call themselves sometimes simply the Mighty,\nsometimes the Truthful; like the Greek nobility, whose mouthpiece\nTheognis was. With him beautiful, good and noble always have the\nsense of aristocratic. The aristocratic moral valuation proceeds\nfrom a triumphant affirmation, a yea-saying, which we find in the\nHomeric heroes: We, the noble, beautiful and brave--we are the good,\nthe beloved of the gods. These are strong men, charged with force,\nwho delight in warlike deeds, to whom, in other words, happiness is\nactivity.\n\nIt is of course unavoidable that these nobles should misjudge and\ndespise the plebeian herd they dominate. Yet as a rule there may be\ntraced in them a pity for the downtrodden caste, for the drudge and\nbeast of burden, an indulgence towards those to whom happiness is rest,\nthe Sabbath of inactivity.\n\nAmong the lower orders, on the other hand, an image of the ruling\ncaste distorted by hatred and spite is necessarily current. In this\ndistortion there lies a revenge.[5]\n\nIn opposition to the aristocratic valuation (good = noble, beautiful,\nhappy, favoured by the gods) the slave morality then is this: The\nwretched alone are the _good_; those who suffer and are heavy laden,\nthe sick and the ugly, they are the only pious ones. On the other\nhand, you, ye noble and rich, are to all eternity the _evil_, the\ncruel, the insatiate, the ungodly, and after death the damned. Whereas\nnoble morality was the manifestation of great self-esteem, a continual\nyea-saying, slave morality is a continual Nay, a _Thou shalt not_, a\nnegation.\n\nTo the noble valuation _good--bad_ (bad = worthless) corresponds the\nantithesis of slave morality, _good--evil_. And who are the evil in\nthis morality of the oppressed? Precisely the same who in the other\nmorality were the good.\n\nLet any one read the Icelandic sagas and examine the morality of the\nancient Northmen, and then compare with it the complaints of other\nnations about the vikings' misdeeds. It will be seen that these\naristocrats, whose conduct in many ways stood high, were no better\nthan beasts of prey in dealing with their enemies. They fell upon the\ninhabitants of Christian shores like eagles upon lambs. One may say\nthey followed an eagle ideal. But then we cannot wonder that those\nwho were exposed to such fearful attacks gathered round an entirely\nopposite moral ideal, that of the lamb.\n\nIn the third chapter of his _Utilitarianism_, Stuart Mill attempts to\nprove that the sense of justice has developed from the animal instinct\nof making reprisal for an injury or a loss. In an essay on \"the\ntranscendental satisfaction of the feeling of revenge\" (supplement to\nthe first edition of the _Werth des Lebens_) Eugen D\u00fchring has followed\nhim in trying to establish the whole doctrine of punishment upon the\ninstinct of retaliation. In his _Ph\u00e4nomenologie_ Eduard von Hartmann\nshows how this instinct strictly speaking never does more than involve\na new suffering, a new offence, to gain external satisfaction for the\nold one, so that the principle of requital can never be any distinct\nprinciple.\n\nNietzsche makes a violent, passionate attempt to refer the sum total\nof false modern morality, not to the instinct of requital or to the\nfeeling of revenge in general, but to the narrower form of it which\nwe call spite, envy and _rancune_. What he calls slave morality is to\nhim purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to\nall ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness;\ncraven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared\nbecame obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance\nto assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies.\nMisery became a distinction; God chastens whom he loves. Or it became\na preparation, a trial and a training; even more--something that\nwill one day be made good with interest, paid back in bliss. And the\nvilest underground creatures, swollen with hate and spite, were heard\nto say: We, the good, we are the righteous. They did not hate their\nenemies--they hated injustice, ungodliness. What they hoped for was not\nthe sweets of revenge, but the victory of righteousness. Those they had\nleft to love on earth were their brothers and sisters in hatred, whom\nthey called their brothers and sisters in love. The future state they\nlooked for was called the coming of their kingdom, of God's kingdom.\nUntil it arrives they live on in faith, hope and love.\n\nIf Nietzsche's design in this picture was to strike at historical\nChristianity, he has given us--as any one may see--a caricature in the\nspirit and style of the eighteenth century. But that his description\nhits off a certain type of the apostles of spite-morality cannot be\ndenied, and rarely has all the self-deception that may lurk beneath\nmoral preaching been more vigorously unmasked. (Compare _Beyond Good\nand Evil_ and _The Genealogy of Morals_.)[6]\n\n\n[5] Nietzsche supports his hypothesis by derivations, some doubtful,\nothers incorrect; but their value is immaterial.\n\n[6] Where Nietzsche's words are quoted, in the course of this essay,\nconsiderable use has been made of the complete English translation of\nhis works, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.--Tr.\n\n\n\n4.\n\n\nNietzsche would define man as an animal that can make and keep promises.\n\nHe sees the real nobility of man in his capacity for\npromising something, answering for himself and undertaking a\nresponsibility--since man, with the mastery of himself which this\ncapacity implies, necessarily acquires in addition a mastery over\nexternal circumstances and over other creatures, whose will is not so\nlasting.\n\nThe consciousness of this responsibility is what the sovereign man\ncalls his conscience.\n\nWhat, then, is the past history of this responsibility, this\nconscience? It is a long and bloody one. Frightful means have been\nused in the course of history to train men to remember what they have\nonce promised or willed, tacitly or explicitly. For milleniums man was\nconfined in the strait-jacket of the morality of custom, and by such\npunishments as stoning, breaking on the wheel or burning, by burying\nthe sinner alive, tearing him asunder with horses, throwing him into\nthe water with a stone on his neck or in a sack, by scourging, flaying\nand branding--by all these means a long memory for what he had promised\nwas burnt into that forgetful animal, man; in return for which he was\npermitted to enjoy the advantages of being a member of society.\n\nAccording to Nietzsche's hypothesis, the consciousness of guilt\noriginates simply as consciousness of a debt. The relation of contract\nbetween creditor and debtor, which is as old as the earliest primitive\nforms of human intercourse in buying, selling, bartering, etc.--this\nis the relation that underlies it. The debtor (in order to inspire\nconfidence in his promise of repayment) pledges something he possesses:\nhis liberty, his woman, his life; or he gives his creditor the right of\ncutting a larger or smaller piece of flesh from his body, according to\nthe amount of the debt. (The Roman Code of the Twelve Tables; again in\n_The Merchant of Venice_.)\n\nThe logic of this, which has become somewhat strange to us, is as\nfollows: as compensation for his loss the creditor is granted a kind of\nvoluptuous sensation, the delight of being able to exercise his power\nupon the powerless.\n\nThe reader may find evidence in R\u00e9e (_op. cit_., p. 13 ff.) for\nNietzsche's dictum, that for milleniums this was the view of mankind:\nThe sight of suffering does one good.\n\nThe infliction of suffering on another is a feast at which the\nfortunate one swells with the joy of power. We may also find evidence\nin R\u00e9e that the instincts of pity, fairness and clemency, which were\nafterwards glorified as virtues, were originally regarded almost\neverywhere as morally worthless, nay, as indications of weakness.\n\nBuying and selling, as well as everything psychologically connected\ntherewith and older than any form of social organisation, contain the\ngerms, in Nietzsche's view, of compensation, assessing, justice and\nduty. Man soon became proud of himself as a being who measures values.\nOne of the earliest generalisations was this: Everything has its price.\nAnd the thought that everything can be paid for was the oldest and most\nna\u00efve canon of justice.\n\nNow the whole of society, as it gradually develops, stands in the same\nrelation to its members as the creditor to the debtor. Society protects\nits members; they are assured against the state of outlawry--on\ncondition that they do not break their pledges to the community. He who\nbreaks his word--the criminal--is relegated to the outlawry involved in\nexclusion from society.\n\nAs Nietzsche, who is so exclusively taken up by the psychological\naspect, discards all accessories of scholarship, it is impossible to\nexamine directly the accuracy of his assertions. The historical data\nwill be found collected in R\u00e9e's paragraphs on resentment and the sense\nof justice, and in his section on the buying-off of revenge, i. e.\nsettlement by fines.\n\nOther thinkers besides Nietzsche (such as E. von Hartmann and R\u00e9e) have\ncombated the view that the idea of justice has its origin in a state of\nresentment, and Nietzsche has scarcely brought to light any fresh and\nconvincing proof; but what is characteristic of him as a writer is the\nexcess of personal passion with which he attacks this view, obviously\nbecause it is connected with the reasoning of modern democracy.\n\nIn many a modern cry for justice there rings a note of plebeian spite\nand envy. Involuntarily many a modern savant of middle-class or lower\nmiddle-class origin has attributed an unwarrantable importance to the\natavistic emotions prevalent among those who have been long oppressed:\nhatred and rancour, spite and thirst for revenge.\n\nNietzsche does not occupy himself for an instant with the state of\nthings in which revenge does duty as the sole punitive justice; for\nthe death feud is not a manifestation of the thrall's hatred of his\nmaster, but of ideas of honour among equals. He dwells exclusively on\nthe contrast between a ruling caste and a caste of slaves, and shows\na constantly recurring indignation with doctrines which have caused\nthe progressive among his contemporaries to look with indulgence on\nthe instincts of the populace and with suspicion or hostility on\nmaster spirits. His purely personal characteristic, however, the\nunphilosophical and temperamental in him, is revealed in the trait\nthat, while he has nothing but scorn and contempt for the down-trodden\nclass or race, for the _slave morality_ resulting from its suppressed\nrancour, he positively revels in the ruling caste's delight in its\npower, in the atmosphere of healthiness, freedom, frankness and\ntruthfulness in which it lives. Its acts of tyranny he defends or\nexcuses. The image it creates for itself of the slave caste is to him\nfar less falsified than that which the latter forms of the master caste.\n\nNor can there be serious question of any real injustice committed by\nthis caste. For there is no such thing as right or wrong in itself.\nThe infliction of an injury, forcible subjection, exploitation or\nannihilation is not in itself a wrong, cannot be such, since life in\nits essence, in its primary functions, is nothing but oppression,\nexploitation and annihilation. Conditions of justice can never be\nanything but exceptional conditions, that is, as limitations of the\nreal desire of life, the object of which is power.\n\nNietzsche replaces Schopenhauer's _Will to Life_ and Darwin's _Struggle\nfor Existence_ by the _Will to Power_. In his view the fight is not\nfor life--bare existence--but for power. And he has a great deal to\nsay--somewhat beside the mark--of the mean and paltry conditions those\nEnglishmen must have had in view who set up the modest conception of\nthe struggle for life. It appears to him as if they had imagined a\nworld in which everybody is glad if he can only keep body and soul\ntogether. But life is only an expression for the minimum. In itself\nlife seeks, not self-preservation alone, but self-increase, and this\nis precisely the \"will to power.\" It is therefore obvious that there\nis no difference of principle between the new catchword and the old;\nfor the struggle for existence necessarily leads to the conflict of\nforces and the fight for power. Now a system of justice, seen from\nthis standpoint, is a factor in the conflict of forces. Conceived\nas supreme, as a remedy for every kind of struggle, it would be a\nprinciple hostile to life and destructive of the future and progress of\nhumanity.\n\nSomething similar was in the mind of Lassalle, when he declared that\nthe standpoint of justice was a bad standpoint in the life of nations.\nWhat is significant of Nietzsche is his love of fighting for its\nown sake, in contrast to the modern humanitarian view. To Nietzsche\nthe greatness of a movement is to be measured by the sacrifices it\ndemands. The hygiene which keeps alive millions of weak and useless\nbeings who ought rather to die, is to him no true progress. A dead\nlevel of mediocre happiness assured to the largest possible majority\nof the miserable creatures we nowadays call men, would be to him no\ntrue progress. But to him, as to Renan, the rearing of a human species\nhigher and stronger than that which now surrounds us (the \"Superman\"),\neven if this could only be achieved by the sacrifice of masses of such\nmen as we know, would be a great, a real progress. Nietzsche's visions,\nput forth in all seriousness, of the training of the Superman and his\nassumption of the mastery of the world, bear so strong a resemblance\nto Renan's dreams, thrown out half in jest, of a new Asgard, a regular\nmanufactory of \u00c6sir (_Dialogues philosophiques_, 117), that we can\nscarcely doubt the latter's influence. But what Renan wrote under the\noverwhelming impression of the Paris Commune, and, moreover, in the\nform of dialogue, allowing both _pro_ and _con_. to be heard, has\ncrystallised in Nietzsche into dogmatic conviction. One is therefore\nsurprised and hurt to find that Nietzsche never mentions Renan\notherwise than grudgingly. He scarcely alludes to the aristocratic\nquality of his intellect, but he speaks with repugnance of that respect\nfor the gospel of the humble which Renan everywhere discloses, and\nwhich is undeniably at variance with his hope of the foundation of a\nbreeding establishment for supermen.\n\nRenan, and after him Taine, turned against the almost religious\nfeelings which were long entertained in the new Europe towards the\nfirst French Revolution. Renan regretted the Revolution betimes on\nnational grounds; Taine, who began by speaking warmly of it, changed\nhis mind on closer inquiry. Nietzsche follows in their footsteps. It\nis natural for modern authors, who feel themselves to be the children\nof the Revolution, to sympathise with the men of the great revolt;\nand certainly the latter do not receive their due in the present\nanti-revolutionary state of feeling in Europe. But these authors, in\ntheir dread of what in political jargon is called C\u00e6sarism, and in\ntheir superstitious belief in mass movements, have overlooked the fact\nthat the greatest revolutionaries and liberators are not the united\nsmall, but the few great; not the small ungenerous, but the great\nand generous, who are willing to bestow justice and well-being and\nintellectual growth upon the rest.\n\nThere are two classes of revolutionary spirits: those who feel\ninstinctively drawn to Brutus, and those who equally instinctively are\nattracted by C\u00e6sar. C\u00e6sar is the great type; neither Frederick the\nGreat nor Napoleon could claim more than a part of his qualities. The\nmodern poetry of the 'forties teems with songs in praise of Brutus, but\nno poet has sung C\u00e6sar. Even a poet with so little love for democracy\nas Shakespeare totally failed to recognise his greatness; he gave us\na pale caricature of his figure and followed Plutarch in glorifying\nBrutus at his expense. Even Shakespeare could not see that C\u00e6sar placed\na very different stake on the table of life from that of his paltry\nmurderer. C\u00e6sar was descended from Venus; in his form was grace. His\nmind had the grand simplicity which is the mark of the greatest; his\nnature was nobility. He, from whom even to-day all supreme power takes\nits name, had every attribute that belongs to a commander and ruler\nof the highest rank. Only a few men of the Italian Renaissance have\nreached such a height of genius. His life was a guarantee of all the\nprogress that could be accomplished in those days. Brutus's nature was\ndoctrine, his distinguishing mark the narrowness that seeks to bring\nback dead conditions and that sees omens of a call in the accident of\na name. His style was dry and laborious, his mind unfertile. His vice\nwas avarice, usury his delight. To him the provinces were conquests\nbeyond the pale. He had five senators of Salamis starved to death\nbecause the town could not pay. And on account of a dagger-thrust,\nwhich accomplished nothing and hindered nothing of what it was meant\nto hinder, this arid brain has been made a sort of genius of liberty,\nmerely because men have failed to understand what it meant to have the\nstrongest, richest and noblest nature invested with supreme power.\n\nFrom what has been said above it will easily be understood that\nNietzsche derives justice entirely from the active emotions, since in\nhis view revengeful feelings are always low. He does not dwell on this\npoint, however. Older writers had seen in the instinct of retaliation\nthe origin of punishment. Stuart Mill, in his _Utilitarianism_,\nderived justice from already established punitive provisions (_justum_\nfrom _jussum_), which were precautionary measures, not reprisals.\nR\u00e9e, in his book on the _Origin of Conscience_, defended the kindred\nproposition that punishment is not a consequence of the sense of\njustice, but _vice versa_. The English philosophers in general derive\nthe bad conscience from punishment. The value of the latter is supposed\nto consist in awakening a sense of guilt in the delinquent.\n\nAgainst this Nietzsche enters a protest. He maintains that punishment\nonly hardens and benumbs a man; in fact, that the judicial procedure\nitself prevents the criminal from regarding his conduct as\nreprehensible; since he is made to witness precisely the same kind of\nacts as those he has committed--spying, entrapping, outwitting and\ntorturing--all of which are sanctioned when exercised against him in\nthe cause of justice. For long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken\nof the criminal's \"sin\"; he was regarded as harmful, not guilty, and\nlooked upon as a piece of destiny; and the criminal on his side took\nhis punishment as a piece of destiny which had overtaken him, and bore\nit with the same fatalism with which the Russians suffer to this day.\nIn general we may say that punishment tames the man, but does not make\nhim \"better.\"\n\nThe bad conscience, then, is still unexplained. Nietzsche proposes the\nfollowing brilliant hypothesis: The bad conscience is the deep-seated\nmorbid condition that declared itself in man under the stress of the\nmost radical change he has ever experienced--when he found himself\nimprisoned in perpetuity within a society which was inviolable. All\nthe strong and savage instincts such as adventurousness, rashness,\ncunning, rapacity, lust of power, which till then had not only been\nhonoured, but actually encouraged, were suddenly put down as dangerous,\nand by degrees branded as immoral and criminal. Creatures adapted to\na roving life of war and adventure suddenly saw all their instincts\nclassed as worthless, nay, as forbidden. An immense despondency, a\ndejection without parallel, then took possession of them. And all these\ninstincts that were not allowed an outward vent, turned inwards on\nthe man himself--feelings of enmity, cruelty, delight in change, in\nhazard, violence, persecution, destruction--and thus the bad conscience\noriginated.\n\nWhen the State came into existence--not by a social contract, as\nRousseau and his contemporaries assumed--but by a frightful tyranny\nimposed by a conquering race upon a more numerous, but unorganised\npopulation, then all the latter's instinct of freedom turned inwards;\nits active force and will to power were directed against man himself.\nAnd this was the soil which bore such ideals of beauty as self-denial,\nself-sacrifice, unselfishness. The delight in self-sacrifice is in its\norigin a phase of cruelty; the bad conscience is a will for self-abuse.\n\nThen by degrees guilt came to be felt as a debt, to the past, to the\nancestors; a debt that had to be paid back in sacrifices--at first\nof nourishment in its crudest sense--in marks of honour and in\nobedience; for all customs, as the work of ancestors, are at the same\ntime their commands.[7] There is a constant dread of not giving them\nenough; the firstborn, human and animal, are sacrificed to them. Fear\nof the founder grows in proportion as the power of the race increases.\nSometimes he becomes transformed into a god, in which the origin of the\ngod from fear is clearly seen.\n\nThe feeling of owing a debt to the deity steadily grew through the\ncenturies, until the recognition of the Christian deity as universal\ngod brought about the greatest possible outburst of guilty feeling.\nOnly in our day is any noticeable diminution of this sense of guilt to\nbe traced; but where the consciousness of sin reaches its culminating\npoint, there the bad conscience eats its way like a cancer, till the\nsense of the impossibility of paying the debt--atoning for the sin--is\nsupreme and with it is combined the idea of eternal punishment. A\ncurse is now imagined to have been laid upon the founder of the race\n(Adam), and all sin becomes original sin. Indeed, the evil principle\nis attributed to Nature herself, from whose womb man has sprung--until\nwe arrive at the paradoxical expedient in which tormented Christendom\nhas found a temporary consolation for two thousand years: God offers\nhimself for the guilt of mankind, pays himself in his own flesh and\nblood.\n\nWhat has here happened is that the instinct of cruelty, which has\nturned inwards, has become self-torture, and all man's animal instincts\nhave been reinterpreted as guilt towards God. Every Nay man utters to\nhis nature, to his real being, he flings out as a Yea, an affirmation\nof reality applied to God's sanctity, his capacity of judge and\nexecutioner, and in the next place to eternity, the \"Beyond,\" pain\nwithout end, eternal punishment in hell.\n\nIn order rightly to understand the origin of ascetic ideals, we must,\nmoreover, consider that the earliest generations of spiritual and\ncontemplative natures lived under a fearful pressure of contempt on\nthe part of the hunters and warriors. The unwarlike element in them\nwas despicable. They had no other means of holding their own than that\nof inspiring fear. This they could only do by cruelty to themselves,\nmortification and self-discipline in a hermit's life. As priests,\nsoothsayers and sorcerers they then struck superstitious terror into\nthe masses. The ascetic priest is the unsightly larva from which the\nhealthy philosopher has emerged. Under the dominion of the priests our\nearth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space,\npeopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with\nlife, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy\nand hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible.\n\nNevertheless the self-contradiction we find in asceticism--life turned\n_against_ life--is of course only apparent. In reality the ascetic\nideal corresponds to a decadent life's profound need of healing and\ntending. It is an ideal that points to depression and exhaustion;\nby its help life struggles against death. It is life's device for\nself-preservation. Its necessary antecedent is a morbid condition in\nthe tamed human being, a disgust with life, coupled with the desire to\nbe something else, to be somewhere else, raised to the highest pitch of\nemotion and passion.\n\nThe ascetic priest is the embodiment of this very wish. By its power\nhe keeps the whole herd of dejected, fainthearted, despairing and\nunsuccessful creatures, fast to life. The very fact that he himself is\nsick makes him their born herdsman. If he were healthy, he would turn\naway with loathing from all this eagerness to re-label weakness, envy,\nPharisaism and false morality as virtue. But, being himself sick, he is\ncalled upon to be an attendant in the great hospital of sinners--the\nChurch. He is constantly occupied with sufferers who seek the cause\nof their pain outside themselves; he teaches the patient that the\nguilty cause of his pain is himself. Thus he diverts the rancour of the\nabortive man and makes him less harmful, by letting a great part of his\nresentment recoil on himself. The ascetic priest cannot properly be\ncalled a physician; he mitigates suffering and invents consolations of\nevery kind, both narcotics and stimulants.\n\nThe problem was to contend with fatigue and despair, which had seized\nlike an epidemic upon great masses of men. Many remedies were tried.\nFirst, it was sought to depress vitality to the lowest degree: not\nto will, not to desire, not to work, and so on; to become apathetic\n(Pascal's _Il faut s'ab\u00eatir_). The object was sanctification, a\nhypnotising of all mental life, a relaxation of every purpose,\nand consequently freedom from pain. In the next place, mechanical\nactivity was employed as a narcotic against states of depression: the\n\"blessing of labour.\" The ascetic priest, who has to deal chiefly\nwith sufferers of the poorer classes, reinterprets the task of the\nunfortunate drudge for him, making him see in it a benefit. Then again,\nthe prescription of a little, easily accessible joy, is a favourite\nremedy for depression; such as gladdening others, helping them in love\nof one's neighbour. Finally, the decisive cure is to organise all\nthe sick into an immense hospital, to found a congregation of them.\nThe disinclination that accompanies the sense of weakness is thereby\ncombated, since the mass feels strong in its inner cohesion.\n\nBut the chief remedy of the ascetic priest was, after all, his\nreinterpretation of the feeling of guilt as \"sin.\" The inner suffering\nwas a punishment. The sick man was the sinner. Nietzsche compares\nthe unfortunate who receives this explanation of his qualms with a\nhen round which a chalk circle has been drawn: he cannot get out.\nWherever we look, for century after century, we see the hypnotic gaze\nof the sinner, staring--in spite of Job--at guilt as the only cause\nof suffering. Everywhere the evil conscience and the scourge and the\nhairy shirt and weeping and gnashing of teeth, and the cry of \"More\npain! More pain!\" Everything served the ascetic ideal. And then arose\nepidemics like those of St. Vitus's dance and the flagellants, witches'\nhysteria and the wholesale delirium of extravagant sects (which still\nlingers in otherwise beneficially disciplined bodies such as the\nSalvation Army).\n\nThe ascetic ideal has as yet no real assailants; there is no decided\nprophet of a new ideal. Inasmuch as since the time of Copernicus\nscience has constantly tended to deprive man of his earlier belief in\nhis own importance, its influence is rather favourable to asceticism\nthan otherwise. At present the only real enemies and underminers of the\nascetic ideal are to be found in the charlatans of that ideal, in its\nhypocritical champions, who excite and maintain distrust of it.\n\nAs the senselessness of suffering was felt to be a curse, the ascetic\nideal gave it a meaning; a meaning which brought a new flood of\nsuffering with it, but which was better than none. In our day a new\nideal is in process of formation, which sees in suffering a condition\nof life, a condition of happiness, and which in the name of a new\nculture combats all that we have hitherto called culture.\n\n\n[7] Compare Lassalle's theory of the original religion of Rome. G.\nBrandes; _Ferdinand Lassalle_ (London and New York, 1911), pp. 76 ff.\n\n\n\n5.\n\n\nAmong Nietzsche's works there is a strange book which bears the title,\n_Thus Spake Zarathustra_. It consists of four parts, written during the\nyears 1883-85, each part in about ten days, and conceived chapter by\nchapter on long walks--\"with a feeling of inspiration, as though each\nsentence had been shouted in my ear,\" as Nietzsche wrote in a private\nletter.\n\nThe central figure and something of the form are borrowed from the\nPersian _Avesta_. Zarathustra is the mystical founder of a religion\nwhom we usually call Zoroaster. His religion is the religion of purity;\nhis wisdom is cheerful and dauntless, as that of one who laughed at his\nbirth; his nature is light and flame. The eagle and the serpent, who\nshare his mountain cave, the proudest and the wisest of beasts, are\nancient Persian symbols.\n\nThis work contains Nietzsche's doctrine in the form, so to speak, of\nreligion. It is the Koran, or rather the Avesta, which he was impelled\nto leave--obscure and profound, high-soaring and remote from reality,\nprophetic and intoxicated with the future, filled to the brim with the\npersonality of its author, who again is entirely filled with himself.\n\nAmong modern books that have adopted this tone and employed this\nsymbolic and allegorical style may be mentioned Mickiewicz's _Book of\nthe Polish Pilgrims_, Slowacki's Anheli, and The Words of a Believer,\nby Lamennais, who was influenced by Mickiewicz. A newer work, known\nto Nietzsche, is Carl Spitteler's Prometheus and Epimetheus (1881).\nBut all these books, with the exception of Spitteler's, are biblical\nin their language. Zarathustra, on the other hand, is a book of\nedification for free spirits.\n\nNietzsche himself gave this book the highest place among his writings.\nI do not share this view. The imaginative power which sustains it is\nnot sufficiently inventive, and a certain monotony is inseparable from\nan archaistic presentment by means of types.\n\nBut it is a good book for those to have recourse to who are unable\nto master Nietzsche's purely speculative works; it contains all his\nfundamental ideas in the form of poetic recital. Its merit is a style\nthat from the first word to the last is full-toned, sonorous and\npowerful; now and then rather unctuous in its combative judgments and\ncondemnations; always expressive of self-joy, nay, self-intoxication,\nbut rich in subtleties as in audacities, sure, and at times great.\nBehind this style lies a mood as of calm mountain air, so light, so\nethereally pure, that no infection, no bacteria can live in it--no\nnoise, no stench, no dust assails it, nor does any path lead up.\n\nClear sky above, open sea at the mountain's foot, and over all a heaven\nof light, an abyss of light, an azure bell, a vaulted silence above\nroaring waters and mighty mountain-chains. On the heights Zarathustra\nis alone with himself, drawing in the pure air in full, deep breaths,\nalone with the rising sun, alone with the heat of noon, which does not\nimpair the freshness, alone with the voices of the gleaming stars at\nnight.\n\nA good, deep book it is. A book that is bright in its joy of life, dark\nin its riddles, a book for spiritual mountain-climbers and dare-devils\nand for the few who are practised in the great contempt of man that\nloathes the crowd, and in the great love of man that only loathes so\ndeeply because it has a vision of a higher, braver humanity, which it\nseeks to rear and train.\n\nZarathustra has sought the refuge of his cave out of disgust with\npetty happiness and petty virtues. He has seen that men's doctrine\nof virtue and contentment makes them ever smaller: their goodness is\nin the main a wish that no one may do them any harm; therefore they\nforestall the others by doing them a little good. This is cowardice\nand is called virtue. True, they are at the same time quite ready to\nattack and injure, but only those who are once for all at their mercy\nand with whom it is safe to take liberties. This is called bravery and\nis a still baser cowardice. But when Zarathustra tries to drive out the\ncowardly devils in men, the cry is raised against him, \"Zarathustra is\ngodless.\"\n\nHe is lonely, for all his former companions have become apostates;\ntheir young hearts have grown old, and not old even, only weary and\nslothful, only commonplace--and this they call becoming pious again.\n\"Around light and liberty they once fluttered like gnats and young\npoets, and already are they mystifiers, and mumblers and mollycoddles.\"\nThey have understood their age. They chose their time well. \"For now do\nall night-birds again fly abroad. Now is the hour of all that dread the\nlight.\" Zarathustra loathes the great city as a hell for anchorites'\nthoughts. \"All lusts and vices are here at home; but here are also\nthe virtuous, much appointable and appointed virtue. Much appointable\nvirtue with scribe-fingers and hardy sitting-flesh and waiting-flesh,\nblessed with little breast-stars and padded, haunchless daughters. Here\nis also much piety and much devout spittle-licking and honey-slavering\nbefore the God of hosts. For 'from on high' drippeth the star and the\ngracious spittle; and upward longeth every starless bosom.\"\n\nAnd Zarathustra loathes the State, loathes it as Henrik Ibsen did and\nmore profoundly than he.\n\nTo him the State is the coldest of all cold monsters. Its fundamental\nlie is that it is the people. No; creative spirits were they who\ncreated the people and gave it a faith and a love; thus they served\nlife; every people is peculiar to itself, but the State is everywhere\nthe same. The State is to Zarathustra that \"where the slow suicide of\nall is called life.\" The State is for the many too many. Only where the\nState leaves oft does the man who is not superfluous begin; the man who\nis a bridge to the Superman.\n\nFrom states Zarathustra has fled up to his mountain, into his cave.\n\nIn forbearance and pity lay his greatest danger. Rich in, the little\nlies of pity he dwelt among men.\n\n\"Stung from head to foot by poisonous flies and hollowed out like a\nstone by many drops of malice, thus did I sit among them, saying to\nmyself: Innocent is everything petty of its pettiness. Especially they\nwho call themselves the good, they sting in all innocence, they lie in\nall innocence; how could they be just towards me?\n\n\"He who dwelleth among the good, him teacheth pity to lie. Pity\nbreedeth bad air for all free souls. For the stupidity of the good is\nunfathomable.\n\n\"Their stiff wise men did I call wise, not stiff. Their grave-diggers\ndid I call searchers and testers--thus did I learn to confound speech.\nThe grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases. From old refuse arise\nevil exhalations. Upon the mountains one should live.\"\n\nAnd with blessed nostrils he breathes again the freedom of the\nmountains. His nose is now released from the smell of all that is\nhuman. There sits Zarathustra with old broken tables of the law around\nhim and new half-written tables, awaiting his hour; the hour when the\nlion shall come with the flock of doves, strength in company with\ngentleness, to do homage to him. And he holds out to men a new table,\nupon which such maxims as these are written--\n\nSpare not thy neighbour! My great love for the remotest ones commands\nit. Thy neighbour is something that must be surpassed.\n\nSay not: I will do unto others as I would they should do unto me. What\n_thou_ doest, that can no man do to thee again. There is no requital.\n\nDo not believe that thou mayst not rob. A right which thou canst seize\nupon, shalt thou never allow to be given thee.\n\nBeware of good men. They never speak the truth. For all that they\ncall evil--the daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel Nay,\nthe deep disgust with men, the will and the power to cut into the\nquick--all this must be present where a truth is to be born.\n\nAll the past is at man's mercy. But, this being so, it might happen\nthat the rabble became master and drowned all time in its shallow\nwaters, or that a tyrant usurped it all. Therefore we need a new\nnobility, to be the adversary of all rabble and all tyranny, and to\ninscribe on new tables the word \"noble.\" Certainly not a nobility\nthat can be bought, nor a nobility whose virtue is love of country.\nNo, teaches Zarathustra, exiles shall ye be from your fatherlands\nand forefatherlands. Not the land of your fathers shall ye love, but\nyour children's land. This love is the new nobility--love of that new\nland, the undiscovered, far-off country in the remotest sea. To your\nchildren shall ye make amends for the misfortune of being your fathers'\nchildren. Thus shall ye redeem all the past.\n\nZarathustra is full of lenity. Others have said: Thou shalt not commit\nadultery. Zarathustra teaches: The honest should say to each other,\n\"Let us see whether our love continue; let us fix a term, that we may\nfind out whether we desire a longer term.\" What cannot be bent, will be\nbroken. A woman said to Zarathustra, \"Indeed, I broke the marriage, but\nfirst did the marriage break me.\"\n\nZarathustra is without mercy. It has been said: Push not a leaning\nwaggon. But Zarathustra says: That which is ready to fall, shall ye\nalso push. All that belongs to our day is falling and decaying. No one\ncan preserve it, but Zarathustra will even help it to fall faster.\n\nZarathustra loves the brave. But not the bravery that takes up every\nchallenge. There is often more bravery in holding back and passing\nby and reserving one's self for a worthier foe. Zarathustra does not\nteach: Ye shall love your enemies, but: Ye shall not engage in combat\nwith enemies ye despise.\n\nWhy so hard? men cry to Zarathustra. He replies: Why so hard, once said\nthe charcoal to the diamond; are we not near of kin? The creators are\nhard. Their blessedness it is to press their hand upon future centuries\nas upon wax.\n\nNo doctrine revolts Zarathustra more than that of the vanity and\nsenselessness of life. This is in his eyes ancient babbling, old\nwives' babbling. And the pessimists who sum up life with a balance of\naversion, and assert the badness of existence, are the objects of his\npositive loathing. He prefers pain to annihilation.\n\nThe same extravagant love of life is expressed in the _Hymn to Life_,\nwritten by his friend, Lou von Salom\u00e9, which Nietzsche set for chorus\nand orchestra. We read here--\n\n\"So truly loves a friend his friend\nAs I love thee, O Life in myst'ry hidden!\nIf joy or grief to me thou send;\nIf loud I laugh or else to weep am bidden,\nYet love I thee with all thy changeful faces;\nAnd should'st thou doom me to depart,\nSo would I tear myself from thy embraces,\nAs comrade from a comrade's heart.\"\n\nAnd the poem concludes--\n\n\"And if thou hast now left no bliss to crown me.\nLead on I thou hast thy sorrow still!\"[8]\n\nWhen Achilles chose to be a day-labourer on earth rather than a king in\nthe realm of the shades, the expression was a weak one in comparison\nwith this passionate outburst, which paradoxically thirsts even for the\ncup of pain.\n\nEduard von Hartmann believes in a beginning and end of the \"world\nprocess.\" He concludes that no eternity can lie behind us; otherwise\neverything possible must already have happened, which--according to\nhis contention--is not the case. In sharp contrast to him, on this\npoint as on others, Zarathustra teaches, with, be it said, a somewhat\nshallow mysticism--which is derived from the ancient Pythagoreans'\nidea of the circular course of history and is influenced by Cohelet's\nHebrew philosophy of life--the eternal recurrence; that is to say,\nthat all things eternally return and we ourselves with them, that\nwe have already existed an infinite number of times and all things\nwith us. The great clock of the universe is to him an hour-glass,\nwhich is constantly turned and runs out again and again. This is the\ndirect antithesis of Hartmann's doctrine of universal destruction,\nand curiously enough it was put forward at about the same time by two\nFrench thinkers: by Blanqui in _L'\u00c9ternit\u00e9 par les Astres_ (1871), and\nby Gustave Le Bon in _L'Homme et les Soci\u00e9t\u00e9s_ (1881).\n\nAt his death Zarathustra will say: Now I disappear and die; in a moment\nI shall be nothing, for the soul is mortal as the body; but the complex\nof causes in which I am involved will return, and it will continually\nreproduce me.\n\nAt the close of the third part of _Zarathustra_ there is a chapter\nheaded \"The Second Dance Song.\" Dance, in Nietzsche's language, is\nalways an expression for the lofty lightness of mind, which is exalted\nabove the gravity of earth and above all stupid seriousness. This song,\nextremely remarkable in its language, is a good specimen of the style\nof the work, when it soars into its highest flights of poetry. Life\nappears to Zarathustra as a woman; she strikes her castanets and he\ndances with her, flinging out all his wrath with life and all his love\nof life.\n\n    \"Lately looked I into thine eyes, O Life! Gold saw\n    I gleaming in thy night-eye--my heart stood still with\n    the joy of it.\n\n    \"A golden skiff saw I gleaming upon shadowy waters,\n    a sinking, drinking, reblinking, golden swinging-skiff.\n\n    \"At my foot, dancing-mad, didst thou cast a glance,\n    a laughing, questioning, melting, swinging-glance.\n\n    \"Twice only did thy little hands strike the castanets\n    --then was my foot swinging in the madness of the dance.\n\n    *********************************************************\n    \"I fear thee near, I love thee far; thy flight allureth\n    me, thy seeking secureth me; I suffer, but for thee, what\n    would I not gladly bear!\n\n    \"For thee, whose coldness inflameth, whose hatred mis-leadeth,\n    whose flight enchaineth, whose mockery pleadeth!\n\n    \"Who would not hate thee, thou great bindress, inwindress,\n    temptress, seekress, findress! Who would not love thee,\n    thou innocent, impatient, wind-swift, child-eyed sinner!\"\n\nIn this dialogue between the dancers, Life and her lover, these words\noccur: O Zarathustra, thou art far from loving me as dearly as thou\nsayest; thou art not faithful enough to me. There is an old, heavy\nbooming-clock; it boometh by night up to thy cave. When thou hearest\nthis clock at midnight, then dost thou think until noon that soon thou\nwilt forsake me.\n\nAnd then follows, in conclusion, the song of the old midnight clock.\nBut in the fourth part of the work, in the section called \"The\nSleepwalker's Song,\" this short strophe is interpreted line by line;\nin form half like a medi\u00e6val watchman's chant, half like the hymn of\na mystic, it contains the mysterious spirit of Nietzsche's esoteric\ndoctrine concentrated in the shortest formula--\n\n      Midnight is drawing on, and as mysteriously, as terribly,\n      and as cordially as the midnight bell speaketh to\n      Zarathustra, so calleth he to the higher men: At midnight\n      many a thing is heard which may not be heard by day; and\n      the midnight speaketh: _O man, take heed_!\n\n      Whither hath time gone? Have I not sunk into deep wells?\n      The world sleepeth. And shuddering it asketh: Who is to be\n      master of the world? _What saith the deep midnight_?\n\n      The bell boometh, the wood-worm burroweth, the heart-worm\n      gnaweth: _Ah! the world is deep_.\n\n      But the old bell is like a sonorous instrument; all pain\n      hath bitten into its heart, the pain of fathers and\n      forefathers; and all joy hath set it swinging, the joy of\n      fathers and forefathers--there riseth from the bell an\n      odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, golden-wine perfume\n      of old happiness, and this song: The world is deep, _and\n      deeper than the day had thought_.\n\n      I am too pure for the rude hands of the day. The purest\n      shall be masters of the world, the unacknowledged, the\n      strongest, the midnight-souls, who are brighter and deeper\n      than any day. _Deep is its woe_.\n\n      But joy goeth deeper than heart's grief. For grief saith:\n      Break, my heart! Fly away, my pain! _Woe saith: Begone_!\n\n      But, ye higher men, said ye ever Yea to a single joy, then\n      said ye also Yea unto all woe. For joy and woe are linked,\n      enamoured, inseparable. And all beginneth again, all is\n      eternal. _All joys desire eternity, deep, deep, eternity_.\n\nThis, then, is the midnight song--\n\n    \"Oh Mensch! Gieb Acht!\n    Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?\n    'Ich schlief, ich schlief--\n    Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht:--\n    Die Welt ist tief,\n    Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.\n    Tief ist ihr Weh--\n    Lust--tiefer noch als Herzeleid:\n    Weh spricht: Vergeh!\n    Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit--\n    --will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!'\"\n\n\n[8] Translated by Herman Scheffauer. Text and pianoforte score are\ngiven in Vol. XVII (_Ecce Homo_) of the English edition of Nietzsche's\nworks.\n\n\n\n6.\n\n\nSuch is he, then, this warlike mystic, poet and thinker, this\nimmoralist who is never tired of preaching. Coming to him fresh from\nthe English philosophers, one feels transported to another world. The\nEnglishmen are all patient spirits, whose natural bent is towards\nthe accumulation and investigation of a mass of small facts in order\nthereby to discover a law. The best of them are Aristotelian minds.\nFew of them fascinate us personally or seem to be of very complex\npersonality. Their influence lies more in what they do than in what\nthey are. Nietzsche, on the other hand, like Schopenhauer, is a\nguesser, a seer, an artist, less interesting in what he does than in\nwhat he is.\n\nLittle as he feels himself a German, he nevertheless continues the\nmetaphysical and intuitive tradition of German philosophy and has the\nGerman thinker's profound dislike of any utilitarian point of view.\nIn his passionate aphoristical form he is unquestionably original; in\nthe substance of his thought he reminds one here and there of many\nanother writer, both of contemporary Germany and of France; but he\nevidently regards, it as perfectly absurd that he should have to thank\na contemporary for anything, and storms like a German at all those who\nresemble him in any point.\n\nI have already mentioned how strongly he reminds one of Ernest Renan\nin his conception of culture and in his hope of an aristocracy of\nintellect that could seize the dominion of the world. Nevertheless he\nhas not one appreciative word to say for Renan.\n\nI have also alluded to the fact that Eduard von Hartmann was his\npredecessor in his fight against Schopenhauer's morality of pity. In\nthis author, whose talent is indisputable, even though his importance\nmay not correspond with his extraordinary reputation, Nietzsche, with\nthe uncritical injustice of a German university professor, would\nonly see a charlatan. Hartmann's nature is of heavier stuff than\nNietzsche's. He is ponderous, self-complacent, fundamentally Teutonic,\nand, in contrast to Nietzsche, entirely unaffected by French spirit and\nsouthern sunshine. But there are points of resemblance between them,\nwhich are due to historical conditions in the Germany that reared them\nboth.\n\nIn the first place, there was something analogous in their positions\nin life, since both as artillerymen had gone through a similar\nschooling; and in the second place, in their culture, inasmuch as the\nstarting-point of both is Schopenhauer and both nevertheless retain\na great respect for Hegel, thus uniting these two hostile brothers\nin their veneration. They are further in agreement in their equally\nestranged attitude to Christian piety and Christian morality, as well\nas in their contempt, so characteristic of modern Germany, for every\nkind of democracy.\n\nNietzsche resembles Hartmann in his attacks on socialists and\nanarchists, with the difference that Hartmann's attitude is here more\nthat of the savant, while Nietzsche has the bad taste to delight in\ntalking about \"anarchist dogs,\" expressing in the same breath his own\nloathing of the State. Nietzsche further resembles Hartmann in his\nrepeated demonstration of the impossibility of the ideals of equality\nand of peace, since life is nothing but inequality and war: \"What is\ngood? To be brave is good. I do not say, the good cause sanctifies war,\nbut the good war sanctifies every cause.\" Like his predecessor, he\ndwells on the necessity of the struggle for power and on the supposed\nvalue of war to culture.\n\nIn both these authors, comparatively independent as they are, the\none a mystical natural philosopher, the other a mystical immoralist,\nis reflected the all-dominating militarism of the new German Empire.\nHartmann approaches on many points the German snobbish national\nfeeling. Nietzsche is opposed to it on principle, as he is to the\nstatesman \"who has piled up for the Germans a new tower of Babel, a\nmonster in extent of territory and power and for that reason called\ngreat,\" but something of Bismarck's spirit broods nevertheless over\nthe works of both. As regards the question of war, the only difference\nbetween them is that Nietzsche does not desire war for the sake of a\nfantastic redemption of the world, but in order that manliness may not\nbecome extinct.\n\nIn his contempt for woman and his abuse of her efforts for emancipation\nNietzsche again agrees with Hartmann, though only in so far as both\nhere recall Schopenhauer, whose echo Hartmann is in this connection.\nBut whereas Hartmann is here only a moralising doctrinaire with a\nsomewhat offensive dash of pedantry, one can trace beneath Nietzsche's\nattacks on the female sex that subtle sense of woman's dangerousness\nwhich points to painful experience. He does not seem to have known\nmany women, but those he did know, he evidently loved and hated, but\nabove all despised. Again and again he returns to the unfitness of the\nfree and great spirit for marriage. In many of these utterances there\nis a strongly personal note, especially in those which persistently\nassert the necessity of a solitary life for a thinker. But as regards\nthe less personal arguments about woman, old-world Germany here speaks\nthrough the mouth of Nietzsche, as through that of Hartmann; the\nGermany whose women, in contrast to those of France and England, have\nfor centuries been relegated to the domestic and strictly private life.\nWe may recognise in these German writers generally that they have an\neye for the profound antagonism and perpetual war between the sexes,\nwhich Stuart Mill neither saw nor understood. But the injustice to\nman and the rather tame fairness to woman, in which Mill's admirable\nemancipatory attempt occasionally results, is nevertheless greatly to\nbe preferred to Nietzsche's brutal unfairness, which asserts that in\nour treatment of women we ought to return to \"the vast common sense of\nold Asia.\"\n\nFinally, in his conflict with pessimism Nietzsche had Eugen D\u00fchring\n(especially in his _Werth des Lebens_) as a forerunner, and this\ncircumstance seems to have inspired him with so much ill-will, so much\nexasperation indeed, that in a polemic now open, now disguised, he\ncalls D\u00fchring his ape. D\u00fchring is a horror to him as a plebeian, as\nan Antisemite, as the apostle of revenge, and as the disciple of the\nEnglishmen and of Comte; but Nietzsche has not a word to say about\nD\u00fchring's very remarkable qualities, to which such epithets as these\ndo not apply. But we can easily understand, taking Nietzsche's own\ndestiny into consideration, that D\u00fchring, the blind man, the neglected\nthinker who despises official scholars, the philosopher who teaches\noutside the universities, who, in spite of being so little pampered by\nlife, loudly proclaims his love of life--should appear to Nietzsche as\na caricature of himself. This was, however, no reason for his now and\nthen adopting D\u00fchring's abusive tone. And it must be confessed that,\nmuch as Nietzsche wished to be what, for that matter, he was--a Polish\n_szlachcic_, a European man of the world and a cosmopolitan thinker--in\none respect he always remained the German professor: in the rude abuse\nin which his uncontrolled hatred of rivals found vent; and, after\nall, his only rivals as a modern German philosopher were Hartmann and\nD\u00fchring.\n\nIt is strange that this man, who learned such an immense amount from\nFrench moralists and psychologists like La Rochefoucauld, Chamfort\nand Stendhal, was able to acquire so little of the self-control of\ntheir form. He was never subjected to the restraint which the literary\ntone of France imposes upon every writer as regards the mention and\nexhibition of his own person. For a long time he seems to have striven\nto discover himself and to become completely himself. In order to find\nhimself he crept into his solitude, as Zarathustra into his cave. By\nthe time he had succeeded in arriving at full independent development\nand felt the rich flow of individual thought within him, he had lost\nall external standards for measuring his own value; all bridges to the\nworld around him were broken down. The fact that no recognition came\nfrom without only aggravated his self-esteem. The first glimmer of\nrecognition further exalted this self-esteem. At last it closed above\nhis head and darkened this rare and commanding intellect.\n\nAs he stands disclosed in his incompleted life-work, he is a writer\nwell worth studying.\n\nMy principal reason for calling attention to him is that Scandinavian\nliterature appears to me to have been living quite long enough on the\nideas that were put forward and discussed in the last decade. It looks\nas though the power of conceiving great ideas were on the wane, and\neven as though receptivity for them were fast vanishing; people are\nstill busy with the same doctrines, certain theories of heredity, a\nlittle Darwinism, a little emancipation of woman, a little morality of\nhappiness, a little freethought, a little worship of democracy, etc.\nAnd as to the culture of our \"cultured\" people, the level represented\napproximately by the Revue des Deux Mondes threatens to become the\nhigh-water mark of taste. It does not seem yet to have dawned on the\nbest among us that the finer, the only true culture begins on the far\nside of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ in the great personality, rich in\nideas.\n\nThe intellectual development of Scandinavia has advanced comparatively\nrapidly in its literature. We have seen great authors rise above\nall orthodoxy, though they began by being perfectly simple-hearted\nbelievers. This is very honourable, but in the case of those who cannot\nrise higher still, it is nevertheless rather meagre. In the course of\nthe 'seventies it became clear to almost all Scandinavian authors that\nit would no longer do to go on writing on the basis of the Augsburg\nConfession. Some quietly dropped it, others opposed it more or less\nnoisily; while most of those who abandoned it entrenched themselves\nagainst the public, and to some extent against the bad conscience of\ntheir own childhood, behind the established Protestant morality; now\nand then, indeed, behind a good, everyday soup-stock morality--I call\nit thus because so many a soup has been served from it.\n\nBut be that as it may, attacks on existing prejudices and defence of\nexisting institutions threaten at present to sink into one and the same\ncommonplace familiarity.\n\nSoon, I believe, we shall once more receive a lively impression\nthat art cannot rest content with ideas and ideals for the average\nmediocrity, any more than with remnants of the old' catechisms; but\nthat great art demands intellects that stand on a level with the most\nindividual personalities of contemporary thought, in exceptionality, in\nindependence, in defiance and in aristocratic self-supremacy.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nDECEMBER 1899\n\n\nMore than ten years have gone by since I first called attention to\nFriedrich Nietzsche. My essay on \"Aristocratic Radicalism\" was the\nfirst study of any length to be devoted, in the whole of Europe, to\nthis man, whose name has since flown round the world and is at this\nmoment one of the most famous among our contemporaries. This thinker,\nthen almost unknown and seldom mentioned, became, a few years later,\nthe fashionable philosopher in every country of Europe, and this while\nthe great man, to whose lot had suddenly fallen the universal fame he\nhad so passionately desired, lived on without a suspicion of it all, a\nliving corpse cut off from the world by incurable insanity.\n\nBeginning with his native land, which so long as he retained his powers\nnever gave him a sign of recognition, his writings have now made their\nway in every country. Even in France, usually so loth to admit foreign,\nand especially German, influence, his character and his doctrine have\nbeen studied and expounded again and again. In Germany, as well as\noutside it, a sort of school has been formed, which appeals to his\nauthority and not unfrequently compromises him, or rather itself, a\ngood deal. The opposition to him is conducted sometimes (as by Ludwig\nStein) on serious and scientific lines, although from narrow pedagogic\npremises; sometimes (as by Herr Max Nordau) with sorry weapons and with\nthe assumed superiority of presumptuous mediocrity.\n\nInteresting articles and books on Nietzsche have been written by Peter\nGast and Lou von Salom\u00e9 in German and by Henri Lichtenberger in French;\nand in addition Nietzsche's sister, Frau Elisabeth F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche,\nhas not only published an excellent edition of his collected works\n(including his youthful sketches), but has written his Life (and\npublished his Correspondence).\n\nMy old essay on Nietzsche has thus long ago been outstripped by\nlater works, the writers of which were able to take a knowledge of\nNietzsche's work for granted and therefore to examine his writings\nwithout at the same time having to acquaint the reader with their\ncontents. That essay, it may be remembered, occasioned an exchange\nof words between Prof. H\u00f6ffding and myself, in the course of which I\nhad the opportunity of expressing my own views more clearly and of\nshowing what points they had in common with Nietzsche's, and where they\ndiverged from his.[1] As, of course, these polemical utterances of mine\nwere not translated into foreign languages, no notice was taken of them\nanywhere abroad.\n\nThe first essay itself, on the other hand, which was soon translated,\nbrought me in a number of attacks, which gradually acquired a perfectly\nstereotyped formula. In an article by a Germanised Swede, who wanted to\nbe specially spiteful, I was praised for having in that essay broken\nwith my past and resolutely renounced the set of liberal opinions\nand ideas I had hitherto championed. Whatever else I might be blamed\nfor, it had to be acknowledged that twice in my life I had been the\nspokesman of German ideas, in my youth of Hegel's and in my maturer\nyears of Nietzsche's. In a book by a noisy German charlatan living in\nParis, Herr Nordau, it was shortly afterwards asserted that if Danish\nparents could guess what I was really teaching their children at the\nUniversity of Copenhagen, they would kill me in the street--a downright\nincitement to murder, which was all the more comic in its pretext,\nas admission to my lectures has always been open to everybody, the\ngreater part of these lectures has appeared in print, and, finally,\ntwenty years ago the parents used very frequently to come and hear\nme. It was repeated in the same quarter that after being a follower\nof Stuart Mill, I had in that essay turned my back on my past, since\nI had now appeared as an adherent of Nietzsche. This last statement\nwas afterwards copied in a very childish book by a Viennese lady who,\nwithout a notion of the actual facts, writes away, year in, year out,\non Scandinavian literature for the benefit of the German public. This\nnonsense was finally disgorged once more in 1899 by Mr. Alfred Ipsen,\nwho contributed to the London _Athen\u00e6um_ surveys of Danish literature,\namong the virtues of which impartiality did not find a place.\n\nIn the face of these constantly repeated assertions from abroad, I may\nbe permitted to make it clear once more--as I have already shown in\n_Tilskueren_ in 1890 (p. 259)--that my principles have not been in the\nslightest way modified through contact with Nietzsche. When I became\nacquainted with him I was long past the age at which it is possible\nto change one's fundamental view of life. Moreover, I maintained many\nyears ago, in reply to my Danish opponents, that my first thought with\nregard to a philosophical book was by no means to ask whether what\nit contains is right or wrong: \"I go straight through the book to\nthe man behind it. And my first question is this: What is the value\nof this man, is he interesting, or not? If he is, then his books are\nundoubtedly worth knowing. Questions of right or wrong are seldom\napplicable in the highest intellectual spheres, and their answering\nis not unfrequently of relatively small importance. The first lines I\nwrote about Nietzsche were therefore to the effect that he deserved to\nbe studied and _contested_. I rejoiced in him, as I rejoice in every\npowerful and uncommon individuality.\" And three years later I replied\nto the attack of a worthy and able Swiss professor, who had branded\nNietzsche as a reactionary and a cynic, in these words, amongst others:\n\"No mature reader studies Nietzsche with the latent design of adopting\nhis opinions, still less with that of propagating them. We are not\nchildren in search of instruction, but sceptics in search of men, and\nwe rejoice when we have found a man--the rarest thing there is.\"\n\nIt seems to me that this is not exactly the language of an adherent,\nand that my critics might spare some of their powder and shot as\nregards my renunciation of ideas. It is a nuisance to be forced now and\nthen to reply in person to all the allegations that are accumulated\nagainst one year by year in the European press; but when others never\nwrite a sensible word about one, it becomes an obligation at times to\nstand up for one's self.\n\nMy personal connection with Nietzsche began with his sending me his\nbook, _Beyond Good and Evil_. I read it, received a strong impression,\nthough not a clear or decided one, and did nothing further about\nit--for one reason, because I receive every day far too many books\nto be able to acknowledge them. But as in the following year _The\nGenealogy of Morals_ was sent me by the author, and as this book was\nnot only much clearer in itself, but also threw new light on the\nearlier one, I wrote Nietzsche a few lines of thanks, and this led to a\ncorrespondence which was interrupted by Nietzsche's attack of insanity\nthirteen months later.\n\nThe letters he sent me in that last year of his conscious life appear\nto me to be of no little psychological and biographical interest.\n\n\n[1] See _Tilskueren_ (Copenhagen) for August and November-December\n1889, January, February-March, April and May 1890.\n\n\nCORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND GEORGE BRANDES\n\n\n1. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.\n\n\n_Copenhagen_, Nov. 26, 1887.\n\nDEAR SIR,\n\nA year ago I received through your publisher your work _Beyond Good\nand Evil_; the other day your latest book reached me in the same way.\nOf your other books I have _Human, all-too-Human_. I had just sent the\ntwo volumes I possess to the binder, when _The Genealogy of Morals_\narrived, so that I have not been able to compare it with the earlier\nworks, as I mean to do. By degrees I shall read everything of yours\nattentively.\n\nThis time, however, I am anxious to express at once my sincere thanks\nfor the book sent. It is an honour to me to be known to you, and known\nin such a way that you should wish to gain me as a reader.\n\nA new and original spirit breathes to me from your books. I do not yet\nfully understand what I have read; I cannot always see your intention.\nBut I find much that harmonises with my own ideas and sympathies,\nthe depreciation of the ascetic ideals and the profound disgust with\ndemocratic mediocrity, your aristocratic radicalism. Your contempt for\nthe morality of pity is not yet clear to me. There were also in the\nother work some reflections on women in general which did not agree\nwith my own line of thought. Your nature is so absolutely different\nfrom mine that it is not easy for me to feel at home. In spite of your\nuniversality you are very German in your mode of thinking and writing.\nYou are one of the few people with whom I should enjoy a talk.\n\nI know nothing about you. I see with astonishment that you are\na professor and doctor. I congratulate you in any case on being\nintellectually so little of a professor.\n\nI do not know what you have read of mine. My writings only attempt the\nsolution of modest problems. For the most part they are only to be had\nin Danish. For many years I have not written German. I have my best\npublic in the Slavonic countries, I believe. I have lectured in Warsaw\nfor two years in succession, and this year in Petersburg and Moscow,\nin French. Thus I endeavour to break through the narrow limits of my\nnative land.\n\nAlthough no longer young, I am still one of the most inquisitive of\nmen and one of the most eager to learn. You will therefore not find me\nclosed against your ideas, even when I differ from you in thought and\nfeeling. I am often stupid, but never in the least narrow.\n\nLet me have the pleasure of a few lines if you think it worth the\ntrouble.\n\nYours gratefully,\n\nGEORGE BRANDES.\n\n\n2. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.\n\n\n_Nice_, Dec. 2, 1887.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nA few readers whom one honours and beyond them no readers at all--that\nis really what I desire. As regards the latter part of this wish, I am\nbound to say my hope of its realisation is growing less and less. All\nthe more happy am I _in satis sunt pauci_, that the _pauci_ do not fail\nand have never failed me. Of the living amongst them I will mention (to\nname only those whom you are certain to know) my distinguished friend\nJakob Burkhardt, Hans von B\u00fclow, H. Taine, and the Swiss poet Keller;\nof the dead, the old Hegelian Bruno Bauer and Richard Wagner. It gives\nme sincere pleasure that so good a European and missionary of culture\nas yourself will in future be numbered amongst them; I thank you with\nall my heart for this proof of your goodwill.\n\nI am afraid you will find it a difficult position. I myself have no\ndoubt that my writings in one way or another are still \"very German.\"\nYou will, I am sure, feel this all the more markedly, being so spoilt\nby yourself; I mean, by the free and graceful French way in which you\nhandle the language (a more familiar way than mine). With me a great\nmany words have acquired an incrustation of foreign salts and taste\ndifferently on my tongue and on those of my readers. On the scale of\nmy experiences and circumstances the predominance is given to the\nrarer, remoter, more attenuated tones as against the normal, medial\nones. Besides (as an old musician, which is what I really am), I have\nan ear for quarter-tones. Finally--and this probably does most to make\nmy books obscure--there is in me a distrust of dialectics, even of\nreasons. What a person already holds \"true\" or has not yet acknowledged\nas true; seems to me to depend mainly on his courage, on the relative\nstrength of his courage (I seldom have the courage for what I really\nknow).\n\nThe expression _Aristocratic Radicalism_, which you employ, is very\ngood. It is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing I have yet read\nabout myself.\n\nHow far this mode of thought has carried me already, how far it will\ncarry me yet--I am almost afraid to imagine. But there are certain\npaths which do not allow one to go backward and so I go forward,\nbecause I _must_.\n\nThat I may not neglect anything on my part that might facilitate your\naccess to my cave--that is, my philosophy--my Leipzig publisher shall\nsend you all my older books _en bloc_. I recommend you especially to\nread the new prefaces to them (they have nearly all been republished);\nthese prefaces, if read in order, will perhaps throw some light upon\nme, assuming that I am not obscurity in itself (obscure in myself) as\n_obscurissimus obscurorum virorum_. For that is quite possible.\n\nAre you a musician? A work of mine for chorus and orchestra is just\nbeing published, a \"Hymn to Life.\" This is intended to represent my\nmusic to posterity and one day to be sung \"in my memory\"; assuming that\nthere is enough left of me for that. You see what posthumous thoughts\nI have. But a philosophy like mine is like a grave--it takes one\nfrom among the living. _Bene vixit qui bene latuit_--was inscribed on\nDescartes' tombstone. What an epitaph, to be sure!\n\nI too hope we may meet some day,\n\nYours,\n\nNIETZSCHE.\n\nN.B.--I am staying this winter at Nice. My summer address is\nSils-Maria, Upper-Engadine, Switzerland--I have resigned my\nprofessorship at the University. I am three parts blind.\n\n\n3. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.\n\n\n_Copenhagen_, Dec. 15, 1887.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nThe last words of your letter are those that have made most impression\non me; those in which you tell me that your eyes are seriously\naffected. Have you consulted good oculists, the best? It alters one's\nwhole psychological life if one cannot see well. You owe it to all\nwho honour you to do everything possible for the preservation and\nimprovement of your sight.\n\nI have put off answering your letter because you announced the sending\nof a parcel of books, and I wished to thank you for them at the same\ntime. But as the parcel has not yet arrived I will send you a few words\nto-day. I have your books back from the binder and have gone into them\nas deeply as I was able amid the stress of preparing lectures and all\nkinds of literary and political work.\n\nDecember 17.\n\nI am quite willing to be called a \"good European,\" less so to\nbe called a \"missionary of culture.\" I have a horror of all\nmissionary effort--because I have come across none but moralising\nmissionaries--and I am afraid I do not altogether believe in what is\ncalled culture. Our culture as a whole cannot inspire enthusiasm, can\nit? and what would a missionary be without _enthusiasm_! In other\nwords, I am more isolated than you think. All I meant by being German\nwas that you write more for yourself, think more of yourself in\nwriting, than for the general public; whereas most non--German writers\nhave been obliged to force themselves into a certain discipline of\nstyle, which no doubt makes the latter clearer and more plastic, but\nnecessarily deprives it of all profundity and compels the writer to\nkeep to himself his most intimate and best individuality, the anonymous\nin him. I have thus been horrified at times to see how little of my\ninmost self is more than hinted at in my writings.\n\nI am no connoisseur in music. The arts of which I have some notion are\nsculpture and painting; I have to thank them for my deepest artistic\nimpressions. My ear is undeveloped. In my young days this was a great\ngrief to me. I used to play a good deal and worked at thorough-bass for\na few years, but nothing came of it. I can enjoy good music keenly, but\nstill am one of the uninitiated.\n\nI think I can trace in your works certain points of agreement with\nmy own taste: your predilection for Beyle, for instance, and for\nTaine; but the latter I have not seen for seventeen years. I am not so\nenthusiastic about his work on the Revolution as you seem to be. He\ndeplores and harangues an earthquake.\n\nI used the expression \"aristocratic radicalism\" because it so exactly\ndefines my own political convictions. I am a little hurt, however,\nat the offhand and impetuous pronouncements against such--phenomena\nas socialism and anarchism in your works. The anarchism of Prince\nKropotkin, for instance, is no stupidity. The name, of course, is\nnothing. Your intellect, which is usually so dazzling, seems to me to\nfall a trifle short where truth is to be found in a nuance. Your views\non the origin of the moral ideas interest me in the highest degree.\n\nYou share--to my delighted astonishment--a certain repugnance which I\nfeel for Herbert Spencer. With us he passes for the god of philosophy.\nHowever, it is as a rule a distinct merit with these Englishmen that\ntheir not very high-soaring intellect shuns hypotheses, whereas\nhypothesis has destroyed the supremacy of German philosophy. Is\nnot there a great deal that is hypothetical in your ideas of caste\ndistinctions as the source of various moral concepts?\n\nI know R\u00e9e whom you attack, have met him in Berlin; he was a quiet man,\nrather distinguished in his bearing, but a somewhat dry and limited\nintellect. He was living--according to his own account, as brother and\nsister--with a quite young and intelligent Russian lady, who published\na year or two ago a book called _Der Kampf um Gott_, but this gives no\nidea of her genuine gifts.\n\nI am looking forward to receiving the books you promise me. I hope in\nfuture you will not lose sight of me.\n\nYours,\n\nGEORGE BRANDES.\n\n\n4. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.\n\n\n_Nice_, Jan. 8, 1888.\n\nYou should not object to the expression \"missionary of culture.\" What\nbetter way is there of being one in our day than that of \"missionising\"\none's disbelief in culture? To have understood that our European\nculture is a vast problem and by no means a solution--is not such a\ndegree of introspection and self-conquest nowadays culture itself?\n\nI am surprised my books have not yet reached you. I shall not omit to\nsend a reminder to Leipzig. At Christmas time Messieurs the publishers\nare apt to lose their heads. Meanwhile may I be allowed to bring to\nyour notice a daring curiosity over which no publisher has authority,\nan _ineditum_ of mine that is among the most personal things I can\nshow. It is the fourth part of my _Zarathustra_; its proper title, with\nregard to what precedes and follows it, should be--\n\n_Zarathustra's Temptation_\n\nAn Interlude.\n\nPerhaps this is my best answer to your question about my problem of\npity. Besides which, there are excellent reasons for gaining admission\nto \"me\" by this particular secret door; provided that one crosses the\nthreshold with your eyes and ears. Your essay on Zola reminded me once\nmore, like everything I have met with of yours (the last was an essay\nin the Goethe Year-book), in the most agreeable way of your natural\ntendency towards every kind of psychological optics. When working out\nthe most difficult mathematical problems of the _\u00e2me moderne_ you are\nas much in your element as a German scholar in such case is apt to be\nout of his. Or do you perhaps think more favourably of present-day\nGermans? It seems to me that they become year by year more clumsy\nand rectangular _in rebus psychologicis_ (in direct contrast to the\nParisians, with whom everything is becoming _nuance_ and mosaic), so\nthat all events below the surface escape their notice. For example, my\n_Beyond Good and Evil_--what an awkward position it has put them in!\nNot one intelligent word has reached me about this book, let alone an\nintelligent sentiment. I do not believe even the most well-disposed of\nmy readers has discovered that he has here to deal with the logical\nresults of a perfectly definite philosophical _sensibility_, and not\nwith a medley of a hundred promiscuous paradoxes and heterodoxies.\nNothing of the kind has been \"experienced\"; my readers do not bring to\nit a thousandth part of the passion and suffering that is needed. An\n\"immoralist!\" This does not suggest anything to them.\n\nBy the way, the Goncourts in one of their prefaces claim to have\ninvented the phrase _document humain_. But for all that M. Taine may\nwell be its real originator.\n\nYou are right in what you say about \"haranguing an earthquake \"; but\nsuch Quixotism is among the most honourable things on this earth.\n\nWith the greatest respect,\n\nYours,\n\nNIETZSCHE.\n\n\n5. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.\n\n\n_Copenhagen_, Jan. 11, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nYour publisher has apparently forgotten to send me your books, but I\nhave to-day received your letter with thanks. I take the liberty of\nsending you herewith one of my books in proof (because unfortunately\nI have no other copy at hand), a collection of essays intended for\n_export_, therefore not my best wares. They date from various times\nand are all too polite, too laudatory, too idealistic in tone. I never\nreally say all I think in them. The paper on Ibsen is no doubt the\nbest, but the translation of the verses, which I had done for me, is\nunfortunately wretched.\n\nThere is one Scandinavian writer whose works would interest you, if\nonly they were translated: _S\u00f6ren Kierkegaard_; he lived from 1813\nto 1855, and is in my opinion one of the profoundest psychologists\nthat have ever existed. A little book I wrote about him (translated,\nLeipzig, 1879) gives no adequate idea of his genius, as it is a sort\nof polemical pamphlet written to counteract his influence. But in a\npsychological respect it is, I think, the most subtle thing I have\npublished.\n\nThe essay in the Goethe Year-book was unfortunately shortened by more\nthan a third, as the space had been reserved for me. It is a good deal\nbetter in Danish.\n\nIf you happen to read Polish, I will send you a little book that I have\npublished only in that language.\n\nI see the new _Rivista Contemporanea_ of Florence has printed a paper\nof mine on Danish literature. You must not read it. It is full of the\nmost ridiculous mistakes. It is translated from the Russian, I must\ntell you. I had allowed it to be translated into Russian from my French\ntext, but could not check this translation; now it appears in Italian\nfrom the Russian with fresh absurdities; amongst others in the names\n(on account of the Russian pronunciation), G for H throughout.\n\nI am glad you find in me something serviceable to yourself. For the\nlast four years I have been the most detested man in Scandinavia. Every\nday the papers rage against me, especially since my last long quarrel\nwith Bj\u00f6rnson, in which the moral German papers all took part against\nme. I dare say you know his absurd play, _A Gauntlet_, his propaganda\nfor male virginity and his covenant with the spokeswomen of \"the demand\nfor equality in morals.\" Anything like it was certainly unheard of till\nnow. In Sweden these insane women have formed great leagues in which\nthey vow \"only to marry virgin men.\" I suppose they get a guarantee\nwith them, like watches, only the guarantee for the future is not\nlikely to be forthcoming.\n\nI have read the three books of yours that I know again and again.\nThere are two or three bridges leading from my inner world to yours:\nC\u00e6sarism, hatred of pedantry, a sense for Beyle, etc., but still most\nof it is strange to me. Our experiences appear to be so infinitely\ndissimilar. You are without doubt the most suggestive of all German\nwriters.\n\nYour German literature! I don't know what is the matter with it.\nI fancy all the brains must go into the General Staff or the\nadministration. The whole life of Germany and all your institutions\nare spreading the _most hideous uniformity_, and even authorship is\nstifled by publishing.\n\nYour obliged and respectful,\n\nGEORGE BRANDES.\n\n\n6. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.\n\n\n_Nice_, Feb. 19, 1888.\n\nYou have laid me under a most agreeable obligation with your\ncontribution to the idea of \"Modernity,\" for it happens that this\nwinter I am circling round this paramount problem of values, very much\nfrom above and in the manner of a bird, and with the best intention of\nlooking down upon the modern world with as unmodern an eye as possible.\nI admire--let me confess it--the tolerance of your judgment, as much\nas the moderation of your sentences. How you suffer these \"little\nchildren\" to come unto you! Even Heyse!\n\nOn my next visit to Germany I propose to take up the psychological\nproblem of Kierkegaard and at the same time to renew acquaintance with\nyour older literature. It will be of use to me in the best sense of\nthe word--and will serve to restore good humour to my own severity and\narrogance of judgment.\n\nMy publisher telegraphed to me yesterday that the books had gone to\nyou. I will spare you and myself the story of why they were delayed.\nNow, my dear Sir, may you put a good face on a bad bargain, I mean on\nthis Nietzsche literature.\n\nI myself cherish the notion of having given the \"new Germans\" the\nrichest, most actual and most independent books of any they possess;\nalso of being in my own person a capital event in the crisis of the\ndetermination of values. But this may be an error; and, what is more, a\npiece of foolishness--I do not want to have to believe anything [of the\nsort] about myself.\n\nOne or two further remarks: they concern my firstlings (the _Juvenilia_\nand _Juvenalia_).\n\nThe pamphlet against Strauss, the wicked merrymaking of a \"very free\nspirit\" at the expense of one who thought himself such, led to a\nterrific scandal; I was already a _Professor Ordinarius_ at the time,\ntherefore in spite of my twenty-seven years a kind of authority and\nsomething acknowledged. The most unbiassed view of this affair, in\nwhich almost every \"notability\" took part for or against me, and in\nwhich an insane quantity of paper was covered with printer's ink, is\nto be found in Karl Hillebrand's _Zeiten, V\u00f6lker und Menschen_, second\nvolume. The trouble was not that I had jeered at the senile bungling of\nan eminent critic, but that I had caught German taste _in flagranti_\nin compromising tastelessness; for in spite of all party differences\nof religion and theology it had unanimously admired Strauss's _Alten\nund Neuen Glauben_ as a masterpiece of freedom and subtlety of thought\n(even the style!). My pamphlet was the first onslaught on German\nculture (that \"culture\" which they imagined to have gained the victory\nover France). The word \"Culture-Philistine,\" which I then invented, has\nremained in the language as a survival of the raging turmoil of that\npolemic.\n\nThe two papers on Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner appear to me to-day\nto contain self-confessions, above all promises to myself, rather\nthan any real psychology of those two masters, who are at the same\ntime profoundly related and profoundly antagonistic to me--(I was the\nfirst to distill a sort of unity out of them both; at present this\nsuperstition is much to the fore in German culture--that all Wagnerites\nare followers of Schopenhauer. It was otherwise when I was young. Then\nit was the last of the Hegelians who adhered to Wagner, and \"Wagner and\nHegel\" was still the watchword of the 'fifties).\n\nBetween _Thoughts out of Season_ and _Human, all-too-Human_ there lies\na crisis and a skin-casting. Physically too: I lived for years in\nextreme proximity to death. This was my great good fortune: I forgot\nmyself, I outlived myself ... I have performed the same trick once\nagain.\n\nSo now we have each presented gifts to the other: two travellers, it\nseems to me, who are glad to have met.\n\nI remain,\n\nYours most sincerely,\n\nNIETZSCHE.\n\n\n7. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.\n\n\n_Copenhagen_, March 7, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nI imagine you to be living in fine spring weather; up here we are\nburied in abominable snowdrifts and have been cut off from Europe for\nseveral days. To make things worse, I have this evening been talking to\nsome hundred imbeciles, and everything looks grey and dreary around me,\nso to revive my spirits a little I will thank you for your letter of\nFebruary 19 and your generous present of books.\n\nAs I was too busy to write to you at once, I sent you a volume on\nGerman Romanticism which I found on my shelves. I should be very sorry,\nhowever, that you should interpret my sending it otherwise than as a\nsilent expression of thanks.\n\nThe book was written in 1873 and revised in 1886; but my German\npublisher has permitted himself a number of linguistic and other\nalterations, so that the first two pages, for instance, are hardly mine\nat all. Wherever he does not understand my meaning, he puts something\nelse, and declares that what I have written is not German.\n\nMoreover, the man promised to buy the rights of the old translation of\nmy book, but from very foolish economy has not done so; the consequence\nis that the German courts have suppressed my book in two instances\nas pirated(!)--because I had included in it fragments of the old\ntranslation--while the real pirate is allowed to sell my works freely.\n\nThe probable result of this will be that I shall withdraw entirely from\nGerman literature.\n\nI sent that volume because I had no other. But the first one on the\n_\u00e9migr\u00e9s_, the fourth on the English and the fifth on the French\nromanticists are all far, far better; written _con amore_.\n\nThe title of the book, _Moderne Geister_, is fortuitous. I have written\nsome twenty volumes. I wanted to put together for abroad a volume on\npersonalities whose names would be familiar. That is how it came about.\nSome things in it have cost a good deal of study, such as the paper on\nTegn\u00e9r, which tells the truth about him for the first time. Ibsen will\ncertainly interest you as a personality. Unfortunately as a man he does\nnot stand on the same level that he reaches as a poet. Intellectually\nhe owes much to Kierkegaard, and he is still strongly permeated by\ntheology. Bj\u00f6rnson in his latest phase has become just an ordinary\nlay-preacher.\n\nFor more than three years I have not published a book; I felt too\nunhappy. These three years have been among the hardest of my life, and\nI see no sign of the approach of better times. However, I am now going\nto set about the publication of the sixth volume of my work and another\nbook besides. It will take a deal of time.\n\nI was delighted with all the fresh books, turning them over and reading\nthem.\n\nThe youthful books are of great value to me; they make it far easier to\nunderstand you; I am now leisurely ascending the steps that lead up to\nyour intellect. With _Zarathustra_ I began too precipitately. I prefer\nto advance upwards rather than to dive head first as though into a sea.\n\nI knew Hillebrand's essay and read years ago some bitter attacks\non the book about Strauss. I am grateful to you for the word\nculture-philistine; I had no idea it was yours. I take no offence at\nthe criticism of Strauss, although I have feelings of piety for the old\ngentleman. Yet he was always the T\u00fcbingen collegian.\n\nOf the other works I have at present only studied _The Dawn of Day_\nat all closely. I believe I understand the book thoroughly, many of\nits ideas have also been mine, others are new to me or put into a new\nshape, but not on that account _strange_ to me.\n\nOne solitary remark, so as not to make this letter too long. I am\ndelighted with the aphorism on the hazard of marriage (Aphorism 150).\nBut why do you not _dig_ deeper here? You speak somewhere with a\ncertain reverence of marriage, which by implying an emotional ideal has\nidealised emotion--here, however, you are more blunt and forcible.\nWhy not for once say the _full_ truth about it? I am of opinion that\nthe institution of marriage, which may have been very useful in taming\nbrutes, causes more misery to mankind than even the Church has done.\nChurch, monarchy, marriage, property, these are to my mind four old\nvenerable institutions which mankind will have to reform _from the\nfoundations_ in order to be able to breathe freely. And of these\nmarriage alone kills the individuality, paralyses liberty and is the\nembodiment of a paradox. But the shocking thing about it is that\nhumanity is still too coarse to be able to shake it off. The most\nemancipated writers, so called, still speak of marriage with a devout\nand virtuous air which maddens me. And they gain their point, since it\nis impossible to say what one could put in its place for the mob. There\nis nothing else to be done but slowly to transform opinion. What do you\nthink about it?\n\nI should like very much to hear how it is with your eyes. I was glad to\nsee how plain and clear your writing is.\n\nExternally, I suppose, you lead a calm and peaceful life down there?\nMine is a life of conflict which wears one out. In these realms I\nam even more hated now than I was seventeen years ago; this is not\npleasant in itself, though it is gratifying in so far as it proves to\nme that I have not yet lost my vigour nor come to terms on any point\nwith sovereign mediocrity.\n\nYour attentive and grateful reader,\n\nGEORGE BRANDES.\n\n\n8. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.\n\n\n_Nice_, March 27, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nI should much have liked to thank you before this for so rich and\nthoughtful a letter: but my health has been troubling me, so that I\nhave fallen badly into arrears with all good things. In my eyes, I\nmay say in passing, I have a dynamometer for my general state; since\nmy health in the main has once more improved, they have become\nstronger than I had ever believed possible--they have put to shame the\nprophecies of the very best German oculists. If Messieurs Gr\u00e4fe _et hoc\ngenus omne_ had turned out right, I should long ago have been blind. As\nit is, I have come to No. 3 spectacles--bad enough!--_but I still see_.\nI speak of this worry because you were sympathetic enough to inquire\nabout it, and because during the last few weeks my eyes have been\nparticularly weak and irritable.\n\nI feel for you in the North, now so wintry and gloomy; how does one\nmanage to keep one's soul erect there? I admire almost every man who\ndoes not lose faith in himself under a cloudy sky, to say nothing\nof his faith in \"humanity,\" in \"marriage,\" in \"property,\" in the\n\"State.\" ... In Petersburg I should be a nihilist: here I believe as\na plant believes, in the sun. The sun of Nice--you cannot call that\na prejudice. We have had it at the expense of all the rest of Europe.\nGod, with the cynicism peculiar to him, lets it shine upon us idlers,\n\"philosophers\" and sharpers more brightly than upon the far worthier\nmilitary heroes of the \"Fatherland.\"\n\nBut then, with the instinct of the Northerner, you have chosen the\nstrongest of all stimulants to help you to endure life in the North:\nwar, the excitement of aggression, the Viking raid. I divine in\nyour writings the practised soldier; and not only \"mediocrity,\" but\nperhaps especially the more independent or individual characters of\nthe Northern mind may be constantly challenging you to fight. How much\nof the \"parson,\" how much theology is still left behind in all this\nidealism!... To me it would be still worse than a cloudy sky, to have\nto make oneself angry over things _which do not concern one_.\n\nSo much for this time; it is little enough. Your _German Romanticism_\nhas set me thinking, how this whole movement actually only reached\nits goal as music (Schumann, Mendelssohn, Weber, Wagner, Brahms); as\nliterature it remained a great promise. The French were more fortunate.\nI am afraid I am too much of a musician not to be a romanticist.\nWithout music life to me would be a mistake.\n\nWith cordial and grateful regards I remain, dear Sir,\n\nYours,\n\nNIETZSCHE.\n\n\n9. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.\n\n\n_Copenhagen_, April 3, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nYou have called the postman the medium of ill-mannered invasions. That\nis very true as a rule, and should be _sat. sapienti_ not to trouble\nyou. I am not an intruder by nature, so little in fact that I lead an\nalmost isolated life, am indeed loth to write letters and, like all\nauthors, loth to write at all.\n\nYesterday, however, when I had received your letter and taken up one of\nyour books, I suddenly felt a sort of vexation at the idea that nobody\nhere in Scandinavia knew anything about you, and I soon determined to\nmake you known at a stroke. The newspaper cutting will tell you that\n(having just finished a series of lectures on Russia) I am announcing\nfresh lectures on your writings. For many years I have been obliged to\nrepeat all my lectures, as the University cannot hold the audiences;\nthat is not likely to be the case this time, as your name is so\nabsolutely new, but the people who will come and get an impression of\nyour works will not be of the dullest.\n\nAs I should very much like to have an idea of your appearance, _I beg\nyou to give me a portrait of yourself_. I enclose my last photograph.\nI would also ask you to tell me quite briefly when and where you\nwere born and in what years you published (or better, wrote) your\nworks, as they are not dated. If you have any newspaper that contains\nthese details, there will be no need to write. I am an unmethodical\nperson and possess neither dictionaries of authors nor other books of\nreference in which your name might be found.\n\nThe youthful works--the _Thoughts out of Season_--have been very useful\nto me. How young you were and enthusiastic, how frank and na\u00efve I\nThere is much in the maturer books that I do not yet understand; you\nappear to me often to hint at or generalise about entirely intimate,\npersonal data, giving the reader a beautiful casket without the key.\nBut most of it I understand. I was enchanted by the youthful work on\nSchopenhauer; although personally I owe little to Schopenhauer, it\nseemed to speak to me from the soul.\n\nOne or two pedantic corrections: _Joyful Wisdom_, p. 116. The words\nquoted are not Chamfort's last, they are to be found in his _Caract\u00e8res\net Anecdotes_: dialogue between M. D. and M. L. in explanation of the\nsentence: _Peu de personnes et pen de choses m'int\u00e9ressent, mais rien\nne m'int\u00e9resse moins que moi_. The concluding words are: en vivant et\n_en voyant les hommes, il faut que le cour se brise ou se bronze_.\n\nOn p. 118 you speak of the elevation \"in which Shakespeare places\nC\u00e6sar.\" I find Shakespeare's C\u00e6sar pitiable. An act of high treason.\nAnd this glorification of the miserable fellow whose only achievement\nwas to plunge a knife into a great man!\n\n_Human, all-too-Human_, II, p. 59. A holy lie. \"It is the only holy lie\nthat has become famous.\" No, Desdemona's last words are perhaps still\nmore beautiful and just as famous, often quoted in Germany at the time\nwhen Jacobi was writing on Lessing. Am I not right?\n\nThese trifles are only to show you that I read you attentively. Of\ncourse, there are very different matters that I might discuss with you,\nbut a letter is not the place for them.\n\nIf you read Danish, I should like to send you a handsomely got-up\nlittle book on Holberg, which will appear in a week. Let me know\nwhether you understand our language. If you read Swedish, I call your\nattention to Sweden's only genius, August Strindberg. When you write\nabout women you are very like him.\n\nI hope you will have nothing but good to tell me of your eyes.\n\nYours sincerely,\n\nGEORGE BRANDES.\n\n\n10. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.\n\n\n_Torino (Italia) ferma in posta_, April 10, 1888.\n\nBut, my dear Sir, what a surprise is this!--Where have you found the\ncourage to propose to speak in public of a _vir obscurissimus_?...\nDo you imagine that I am known in the beloved Fatherland? They treat\nme there as if I were something singular and absurd, something that\nfor the present need not be _taken seriously_.... Evidently they have\nan inkling that I do not take them seriously either: and how could\nI, nowadays, when \"German intellect\" has become a _contradictio in\nadjecto_!--My best thanks for the photograph. Unfortunately I have\nnone to send in return: my sister, who is married and lives in South\nAmerica, took with her the last portraits I possessed.\n\nEnclosed is a little _vita_, the first I have ever written.\n\nAs regards the dates of composition of the different books, they are to\nbe found on the back of the cover of _Beyond Good and Evil_. Perhaps\nyou no longer have this cover.\n\n_The Birth of Tragedy_ was written between the summer of 1870 and the\nwinter of 1871 (finished at Lugano, where I was living with the family\nof Field-Marshal Moltke).\n\nThe _Thoughts out of Season_ between 1872 and the summer of 1875 (there\nwere to have been thirteen; luckily my health said No!).\n\nWhat you say about Schopenhauer as Educator gives me great pleasure.\nThis little work serves me as a touchstone; he to whom it says nothing\npersonal has probably nothing to do with me either. In reality it\ncontains the whole plan according to which I have hitherto lived; it is\na rigorous promise.\n\n_Human, all-too-Human_, with its two continuations, summer of\n1876-1879. _The Dawn of Day_, 1880. _The Joyful Wisdom_, January 1882.\n_Zarathustra_, 1883-1885 (each part in about ten days. Perfect state\nof \"inspiration.\" All conceived in the course of rapid walks: absolute\ncertainty, as though each sentence were shouted to one. While writing\nthe book, the greatest physical elasticity and sense of power).\n\n_Beyond Good and Evil_, summer of 1885 in the Upper Engadine and the\nfollowing winter at Nice.\n\n_The Genealogy_ decided on, carried out and sent ready for press to the\nprinter at Leipzig, all between July 10 and 30, 1887. (Of course there\nare also _philologica_ of mine, but they do not concern you and me.)\n\nI am now making an experiment with Turin; I shall stay here till June\n5 and then go to the Engadine. The weather so far is wintry, harsh and\nunpleasant. But the town superbly calm and favourable to my instincts.\nThe finest pavement in the world.\n\nSincere greetings from\n\nYours gratefully,\n\nNIETZSCHE.\n\nA pity I understand neither Danish nor Swedish.\n\n_Vita_.--I was born on October 15, 1844, on the battlefield of L\u00fctzen.\nThe first name I heard was that of Gustavus Adolphus. My ancestors\nwere Polish noblemen (Ni\u00ebzky); it seems the type has been well\nmaintained, in spite of three generations of German mothers. Abroad I\nam usually taken for a Pole; this very winter the visitors' list at\nNice entered me _comme Polonais_. I am told my head occurs in Matejko's\npictures. My grandmother belonged to the Schiller-Goethe circles of\nWeimar; her brother was Herder's successor in the position of General\nSuperintendent at Weimar. I had the good fortune to be a pupil of the\nvenerable Pforta School, from which so many who have made a name in\nGerman literature have proceeded (Klopstock, Fichte, Schlegel, Ranke,\netc., etc.). We had masters who would have (or have) done honour to any\nuniversity. I studied at Bonn, afterwards at Leipzig; old Ritschl, then\nthe first philologist in Germany, singled me out almost from the first.\nAt twenty-two I was a contributor to the _Litterarisches Centralblatt_\n(Zarncke). The foundation of the Philological Society of Leipzig, which\nstill exists, is due to me. In the winter of 1868-1869 the University\nof Basle offered me a professorship; I was as yet not even a Doctor.\nThe University of Leipzig afterwards conferred the doctor's degree on\nme, in a very honourable way, without any examination, and even without\na dissertation. From Easter 1869 to 1879 I was at Basle; I was obliged\nto give up my rights as a German subject, since as an officer (Horse\nArtillery) I should have been called up too frequently and my academic\nduties would have been interfered with. I am none the less master\nof two weapons, the sabre and the cannon--and perhaps of a third as\nwell.... At Basle everything went very well, in spite of my youth; it\nsometimes happened, especially with candidates for the doctor's degree,\nthat the examinee was older than the examiner.\n\nI had the great good fortune to form a cordial friendship with Jakob\nBurkhardt, an unusual thing with that very hermit-like and secluded\nthinker. A still greater piece of good fortune was that from the\nearliest days of my Basle existence an indescribably close intimacy\nsprang up between me and Richard and Cosima Wagner, who were then\nliving on their estate of Triebschen, near Lucerne, as though on an\nisland, and were cut off from all former ties. For some years we had\neverything, great and small, in common, a confidence without bounds.\n(You will find printed in Volume VII of Wagner's complete works a\n\"message\" to me, referring to _The Birth of Tragedy_.) As a result\nof these relations I came to know a large circle of persons (and\n\"personesses\"), in fact pretty nearly everything that grows between\nParis and Petersburg. By about 1876 my health became worse. I then\nspent a winter at Sorrento, with my old friend, Baroness Meysenbug\n(_Memoirs of an Idealist_) and the sympathetic Dr. R\u00e9e. There was\nno improvement. I suffered from an extremely painful and persistent\nheadache, which exhausted all my strength. This went on for a number\nof years, till it reached such a climax of habitual suffering, that at\nthat time I had 200 days of torment in the year. The trouble must have\nbeen due entirely to local causes, there is no neuropathic basis for\nit of any sort. I have never had a symptom of mental disturbance; not\neven of fever, nor of fainting. My pulse was at that time as slow as\nthat of the first Napoleon (= 60). My speciality was to endure extreme\npain, _cru, vert_, with perfect clarity, for two or three consecutive\ndays, accompanied by constant vomiting of bile. The report has been\nput about that I was in a madhouse (and indeed that I died there).\nNothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact my intellect\nonly came to maturity during that terrible time: witness the _Dawn of\nDay_, which I wrote in 1881 during a winter of incredible suffering at\nGenoa, away from doctors, friends or relations. This book serves me as\na sort of \"dynamometer\": I composed it with a minimum of strength and\nhealth. From 1882 on I went forward again, very slowly, it is true:\nthe crisis was past (my father died very young, just at the age at\nwhich I was myself so near to death). I have to use extreme care even\nto-day; certain conditions of a climatic and meteorological order are\nindispensable to me. It is not from choice but from necessity that I\nspend the summer in the Upper Engadine and the winter at Nice.... After\nall, my illness has been of the greatest use to me: it has released\nme, it has restored to me the courage to be myself.... And, indeed, in\nvirtue of my instincts, I am a brave animal, a military one even. The\nlong resistance has somewhat exasperated my pride. Am I a philosopher,\ndo you ask?--But what does that matter!...\n\n\n11. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.\n\n\n_Copenhagen_, April 29, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nThe first time I lectured on your works, the hall was not quite full,\nan audience of perhaps a hundred and fifty, since no one knew who and\nwhat you are. But as an important newspaper reported my first lecture,\nand as I have myself written an article on you, interest was roused,\nand next time the hall was full to bursting. Some three hundred people\nlistened with the greatest attention to my exposition of your works.\nNevertheless, I have not ventured to repeat the lectures, as has been\nmy practice for many years, since the subject is hardly of a popular\nnature. I hope the result will be to get you some good readers in the\nNorth.\n\nYour books now stand on one of my shelves, very handsomely bound. I\nshould be very glad to possess everything you have published.\n\nWhen, in your first letter, you offered me a musical work of yours, a\n_Hymn to Life_, I declined the gift from modesty, being no great judge\nof music. Now I think I have deserved the work through my interest in\nit and should be much obliged if you would have it sent to me.\n\nI believe I may sum up the impression of my audience in the feeling of\na young painter, who said to me: \"What makes this so interesting is\nthat it has not to do with books, _but with life_.\" If any objection is\ntaken to your ideas, it is that they are \"too out-and-out.\"\n\nIt was unkind of you not to send me a photograph; I really only sent\nmine to put you under an obligation. It is so little trouble to sit to\na photographer for a minute or two, and one knows a man far better when\none has an idea of his appearance.\n\nYours very sincerely,\n\nGEORGE BRANDES.\n\n\n12. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.\n\n\n_Turin_, May 4, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nWhat you tell me gives me great pleasure and--let me confess it--still\nmore surprise. Be sure I shall owe you for it: you know, hermits are\nnot given to forgetting.\n\nMeanwhile I hope my photograph will have reached you. It goes without\nsaying that I took steps, not exactly to be photographed (for I am\nextremely distrustful of haphazard photographs), but to abstract a\nphotograph from somebody who had one of me. Perhaps I have succeeded; I\nhave not yet heard. If not, I shall avail myself of my next visit to\nMunich (this autumn probably) to be taken again.\n\n_The Hymn to Life_ will start on its journey to Copenhagen one of\nthese days. We philosophers are never more grateful than when we are\nmistaken for artists. I am assured, moreover, by the best judges that\nthe Hymn is thoroughly fit for performance, singable, and sure in its\neffect (--clear in form; this praise gave me the greatest pleasure).\nMottl, the excellent court conductor at Carlsruhe (the conductor of\nthe Bayreuth festival performances, you know), has given me hopes of a\nperformance.\n\nI have just heard from Italy that the point of view of my second\n_Thought out of Season_ has been very honourably mentioned in a survey\nof German literature contributed by the Viennese scholar, Dr. von\nZackauer, at the invitation of the _Archivio storico_ of Florence. He\nconcludes his paper with it.\n\nThese last weeks at Turin, where I shall stay till June 5, have turned\nout better than any I have known for years, above all more philosophic.\nAlmost every day for one or two hours I have reached such a pitch of\nenergy as to be able to view my whole conception from top to bottom;\nso that the immense multiplicity of problems lies spread out beneath\nme, as though in relief and clear in its outlines. This requires a\nmaximum of strength, for which I had almost given up hope. It all hangs\ntogether; years ago it was already on the right course; one builds\none's philosophy like a beaver, one is forced to and does not know\nit: but one has to _see_ all this, as I have now seen it, in order to\nbelieve it.\n\nI am so relieved, so strengthened, in such good humour--I hang a little\nfarcical tail on to the most serious things. What is the reason of all\nthis? Have I not the good _north winds_ to thank for it, the north\nwinds which do not always come from the Alps?--they come now and then\neven from _Copenhagen_!\n\nWith greetings,\n\nYour gratefully devoted,\n\nNIETZSCHE.\n\n\n13. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.\n\n\n_Turin_, May 23, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nI should not like to leave Turin without telling you once more what a\ngreat share you have had in my first _successful_ spring. The history\nof my springs, for the last fifteen years at least, has been, I must\ntell you, a tale of horror, a fatality of decadence and infirmity.\nPlaces made no difference; it was as though no prescription, no diet,\nno climate could change the essentially depressing character of this\ntime of year. But behold, Turin! And the first good news, _your_ news,\nmy dear Sir, which proved to me that I am alive.... For I am sometimes\napt to forget that I am alive. An accident, a question reminded me the\nother day that one of life's leading ideas is positively quenched in\nme, the idea of the _future_. No, wish, not the smallest cloudlet of a\nwish before me! A bare expanse! Why should not a day from my seventieth\nyear be exactly like my day to-day? Have I lived too long in proximity\nto death to be able any longer to open my eyes to fair possibilities.\n--But certain it is that I now limit myself to thinking from day to\nday--that I settle to-day what is to be done to-morrow--and not for\na single day beyond it! This may be irrational, unpractical, perhaps\nalso unchristian--that preacher on the Mount forbade this very \"taking\nthought for the morrow\"--but it seems to me in the highest degree\nphilosophical. I gained more respect for myself than I had before:--I\nunderstood that I had unlearnt how to wish, without even wanting to do\nso.\n\nThese weeks I have employed in \"transvaluing values.\"--You understand\nthis trope?--After all, the alchemist is the most deserving kind of\nman there is! I mean the man who makes of what is base and despised\nsomething valuable, even gold. He alone confers wealth, the others\nmerely give change. My problem this time is rather a curious one: I\nhave asked myself what hitherto has been best hated, feared, despised\nby mankind--and of that and nothing else I have made my \"gold\"....\n\nIf only I am not accused of false-coining! Or rather; that is what will\nhappen.\n\nHas my photograph reached you? My mother has shown me the great\nkindness of relieving me from the appearance of ungratefulness in\nsuch a special case. It is to be hoped the Leipzig publisher, E. W.\nFritzsch, has also done his duty and sent off the Hymn.\n\nIn conclusion I confess to a feeling of curiosity. As it was denied me\nto listen at the crack of the door to learn something about myself,\nI should like to hear something in another way. Three words to\ncharacterise the subjects of your different lectures--how much should I\nlearn from three words!\n\nWith cordial and devoted greetings,\n\nYour\n\nNIETZSCHE.\n\n\n14. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.\n\n\n_Copenhagen_ May 23, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nFor letter, portrait and music I send you my best thanks. The letter\nand the music were an unqualified pleasure, the portrait might have\nbeen better. It is a profile taken at _Naumburg_, characteristic in its\nattitude, but with too little expression. You _must_ look different\nfrom this; the writer of _Zarathustra_ must have many more secrets\nwritten in his own face.\n\nI concluded my lectures on Fr. Nietzsche before Whitsuntide. They\nended, as the papers say, in applause \"which took the form of an\novation.\" The ovation is yours almost entirely. I take the liberty of\ncommunicating it to you herewith in writing. For I can only claim the\ncredit of reproducing, clearly and connectedly, and intelligibly to a\nNorthern audience, what you had originated.\n\nI also tried to indicate your relation to various contemporaries,\nto introduce my hearers into the workshop of your thought, to put\nforward my own favourite ideas, where they coincided with yours,\nto define the points on which I differed from you, and to give a\npsychological portrait of Nietzsche the author. Thus much I may say\nwithout exaggeration: your name is now very popular in all intelligent\ncircles in Copenhagen, and all over Scandinavia it is at least _known_.\nYou have nothing to thank me for; it has been a _pleasure_ to me to\npenetrate into the world of your thoughts. My lectures are not worth\nprinting, as I do not regard pure philosophy as my special province and\nam unwilling to print anything dealing with a subject in which I do not\nfeel sufficiently competent.\n\nI am very glad you feel so invigorated physically and so well disposed\nmentally. Here, after a long winter, we have mild spring weather. We\nare rejoicing in the first green leaves and in a very well-arranged\nNorthern exhibition that has been opened at Copenhagen. All the French\nartists of eminence (painters and sculptors) are also exhibiting here.\nNevertheless, I am longing to get away, but have to stay.\n\nBut this cannot interest you. I forgot to tell you: if you do not know\nthe Icelandic sagas, you must study them. You will find there a great\ndeal to confirm your hypotheses and theories about the morality of a\nmaster race.\n\nIn one trifling detail you seem to have missed the mark. _Gothic_ has\ncertainly nothing to do with _good_ or _God_. It is connected with\ngiessen, he who emits the seed, and means stallion, man.\n\nOn the other hand, our philologists here think your suggestion of\n_bonus--duonus_ is much to the point.\n\nI hope that in future we shall never become entirely strangers to one\nanother.\n\nI remain your faithful reader and admirer,\n\nGEORGE BRANDES.\n\n\n15. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES. (Post-card.)\n\n\n_Turin_, May 27, 1888.\n\nWhat eyes you have! You are right, the Nietzsche of the photograph is\nnot yet the author of _Zarathustra_--he is a few years too young for\nthat.\n\nI am very grateful for the etymology of _Goth_; it is simply godlike.\n\nI presume you are reading another letter of mine to-day.\n\nYour gratefully attached\n\nN.\n\n\n16. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.\n\n\n_Sils-Maria_, Sept. 13, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nHerewith I do myself a pleasure--that of recalling myself to your\nmemory, by sending you a wicked little book, but one that is none the\nless very seriously meant; the product of the _good_ days of Turin.\nFor I must tell you that since then there have been _evil_ days in\nSuperfluity; such a decline in health, courage and \"will to life,\"\nto talk Schopenhauer, that the little spring idyll scarcely seemed\ncredible any longer. Fortunately I still possessed a document belonging\nto it, the _Case of Wagner. A Musician's Problem_. Spiteful tongues\nwill prefer to call it _The Fall of Wagner_.\n\nMuch as you may disclaim music (--the most importunate of all the\nMuses), and with however good reason, yet pray look at this piece of\nmusician's psychology. You, my dear Mr. Cosmopolitan, are far too\nEuropean in your ideas not to hear in it a hundred times more than my\nso-called countrymen, the \"musical\" Germans.\n\nAfter all, in this case I am a connoisseur _in rebus et personis_--and,\nfortunately, enough of a musician by instinct to see that in this\nultimate question of values, the problem is accessible and _soluble_\nthrough music.\n\nIn reality this pamphlet is almost written in French--I dare say it\nwould be easier to translate it into French than into German.\n\nCould you give me one or two more Russian or French addresses to which\nthere would be some _sense_ in sending the pamphlet?\n\nIn a month or two something _philosophical_ may be expected; under the\nvery inoffensive title of _Leisure Hours of \u00e0 Psychologist_ I am saying\nagreeable and disagreeable things to the world at large--including that\nintelligent nation, the Germans.\n\nBut all this is in the main nothing but recreation beside the main\nthing: the name of the latter is _Transvaluation of all Values_. Europe\nwill have to discover a new Siberia, to which to consign the author of\nthese experiments with values.\n\nI hope this high-spirited letter will find you in one of your usual\n_resolute_ moods.\n\nWith kind remembrances,\n\nYours,\n\nDr. NIETZSCHE.\n\nAddress till middle of November: Torino (Italia) ferma in posta.\n\n\n17. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.\n\n\n_Copenhagen_, Oct. 6, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nYour letter and valued gift found me in a raging fever of work. This\naccounts for my delay in answering.\n\nThe mere sight of your handwriting gave me pleasurable excitement.\n\nIt is sad news that you have had a bad summer. I was foolish enough to\nthink that you had already got over all your physical troubles.\n\nI have read the pamphlet with the greatest attention and much\nenjoyment. I am not so unmusical that I cannot enter into the fun of\nit. I am merely not an expert. A few days before receiving the little\nbook I heard a very fine performance of _Carmen_; what glorious music!\nHowever, at the risk of exciting your wrath I confess that Wagner's\n_Tristan und Isolde_ made an indelible impression on me. I once heard\nthis opera in Berlin, in a despondent, altogether shattered state of\nmind, and I felt every note. I do not know whether the impression was\nso deep because I was so ill.\n\nDo you know Bizet's widow? You ought to send her the pamphlet. She\nwould like it. She is the sweetest, most charming of women, with a\nnervous _tic_ that is curiously becoming, but perfectly genuine,\nperfectly sincere and full of fire. Only she has married again (an\nexcellent man, a barrister named Straus, of Paris). I believe she\nknows some German. I could get you her address, if it does not put you\nagainst her that she has not remained true to her god--any more than\nthe Virgin Mary, Mozart's widow or Marie Louise.\n\nBizet's child is ideally beautiful and charming.--But I am gossiping.\n\nI have given a copy of the book to the greatest of Swedish writers,\nAugust Strindberg, whom I have entirely won over to you. He is a true\ngenius, only a trifle mad like most geniuses (and non-geniuses). The\nother copy I shall also place with care.\n\nParis I am not well acquainted with now. But send a copy to the\nfollowing address: Madame la Princesse Anna Dmitrievna T\u00e9nicheff, Quai\nAnglais 20, Petersburg. This lady is a friend of mine; she is also\nacquainted with the musical world of Petersburg and will make you known\nthere. I have asked her before now to buy your works, but they were all\nforbidden in Russia, even _Human, all-too-Human_.\n\nIt would also be as well to send a copy to Prince Urussov (who is\nmentioned in Turgeniev's letters). He is greatly interested in\neverything German, and is a man of rich gifts, an intellectual gourmet.\nI do not remember his address for the moment, but can find it out.\n\nI am glad that in spite of all bodily ills you are working so\nvigorously and keenly. I am looking forward to all the things you\npromise me.\n\nIt would give me great pleasure to be read by you, but unfortunately\nyou do not understand my language. I have produced an enormous amount\nthis summer. I have written two long new books (of twenty-four and\ntwenty-eight sheets), _Impressions of Poland and Impressions of\nRussia_, besides entirely rewriting one of my oldest books, _\u00c6sthetic\nStudies_, for a new edition and correcting the proofs of all three\nbooks myself. In another week or so I shall have finished this work;\nthen I give a series of lectures, writing at the same time another\nseries in French, and leave for Russia in the depth of winter to revive\nthere.\n\nThat is the plan I propose for my winter campaign. May it not be a\nRussian campaign in the bad sense.\n\nI hope you will continue your friendly interest in me.\n\nI remain,\n\nYour faithfully devoted,\n\nGEORGE BRANDES.\n\n\n18. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.\n\n\n_Turin_, Oct. 20, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nOnce more your letter brought me a pleasant wind from the north; it\nis in fact so far the only letter that puts a \"good face,\" or any\nface at all on my attack on Wagner. For people do not write to me. I\nhave irreparably offended even my nearest and dearest. There is, for\ninstance, my old friend, Baron Seydlitz of Munich, who unfortunately\nhappens to be President of the Munich Wagner Society; my still older\nfriend, _Justizrath_ Krug of Cologne, president of the local Wagner\nSociety; my brother-in-law, Dr. Bernhard F\u00f6rster in South America,\nthe not unknown Anti--Semite, one of the keenest contributors to the\n_Bayreuther Bl\u00e4tter_--and my respected friend, Malwida von Meysenbug,\nthe authoress of _Memoirs of an Idealist_, who continues to confuse\nWagner with Michel Angelo....\n\nOn the other side I have been given to understand that I must be on my\nguard against the female Wagnerite: in certain cases she is said to\nbe without scruple. Perhaps Bayreuth will defend itself in the German\nImperial manner, by the prohibition of my writings--as \"dangerous to\npublic morals\"; for here the Emperor is a party to the case.\n\nMy dictum, \"we all know the in\u00e6sthetic concept of the Christian\n_Junker_,\" might even be interpreted as _l\u00e8se-majest\u00e9_.\n\nYour intervention on behalf of Bizet's widow gave me great pleasure.\nPlease let me have her address; also that of prince Urussov. A copy\nhas been sent to your friend, the Princess Dmitrievna T\u00e9nicheff. When\nmy next book is published, which will be before very long (the title\nis now _The Twilight of the Idols. Or, How to Philosophise with the\nHammer_), I should much like to send a copy to the Swede you introduce\nto me in such laudatory terms. But I do not know where he lives. This\nbook is my philosophy _in nuce_--radical to the point of criminality....\n\nAs to the effect of _Tristan_, I, too, could tell strange tales. A\nregular dose of mental anguish seems to me a splendid tonic before a\nWagnerian repast. The _Reichsgerichtsrath_ Dr. Wiener of Leipzig gave\nme to understand that a Carlsbad cure was also a good thing....\n\nAh, how industrious you are! And idiot that I am, not to understand\nDanish! I am quite willing to take your word for it that one can\n\"revive\" in Russia better than elsewhere; I count any Russian book,\nabove all Dostoievsky (translated into French, for Heaven's sake not\nGerman!!) among my greatest sources of relief.\n\nCordially and, with good reason, gratefully,\n\nYours,\n\nNIETZSCHE.\n\n\n19. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.\n\n\n_Copenhagen,_ Nov. 16, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nI have waited in vain for an answer from Paris to learn the address\nof Madame Bizet. On the other hand, I now have the address of Prince\nUrussov. He lives in Petersburg, Sergievskaia 79.\n\nMy three books are now out. I have begun my lectures here.\n\nCurious it is how something in your letter and in your book about\nDostoievsky coincides with my own impressions of him. I have mentioned\nyou, too, in my work on Russia, when dealing with Dostoievsky. He is a\ngreat poet, but an abominable creature, quite Christian in his emotions\nand at the same time quite _sadique_. His whole morality is what you\nhave baptised slave-morality.\n\nThe mad Swede's name is August Strindberg; he lives here. His address\nis Holte, near Copenhagen. He is particularly fond of you, because he\nthinks he finds in you his own hatred of women. On this account he\ncalls you \"modern\" (irony of fate). On reading the newspaper reports\nof my spring lectures, he said: \"It is an astonishing thing about this\nNietzsche; much of what he says is just what I might have written.\" His\ndrama, _P\u00e8re_, has appeared in French with a preface by Zola.\n\nI feel mournful whenever I think of Germany. What a development is now\ngoing on there! How sad to think that to all appearance one will never\nin one's lifetime be a historical witness of the smallest good thing.\n\nWhat a pity that so learned a philologist as you should not understand\nDanish. I am doing all I can to prevent my books on Poland and Russia\nbeing translated, so that I may not be expelled, or at least refused\nthe right of speaking when I next go there.\n\nHoping that these lines will find you still at Turin or will be\nforwarded to you, I am,\n\nYours very sincerely,\n\nGEORGE BRANDES.\n\n\n20. NIETZSCHE to BRANDES.\n\n\n_Torino, via Carlo Alberto_, 6, III.\n\nNov. 20, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nForgive me for answering at once. Curious things are now happening\nin my life, things that are without precedent. First the day before\nyesterday; now again. Ah, if you knew what I had just written when\nyour letter paid me its visit.\n\nWith a cynicism that will become famous in the world's history, I have\nnow related myself. The book is called _Ecce Homo_, and is an attack on\nthe Crucified without the slightest reservation; it ends in thunders\nand lightnings against everything that is Christian or infected with\nChristianity, till one is blinded and deafened. I am in fact the\nfirst psychologist of Christianity and, as an old artilleryman, can\nbring heavy guns into action, the existence of which no opponent of\nChristianity has even suspected. The whole is the prelude to the\n_Transvaluation of all Values_, the work that lies ready before me:\nI swear to you that in two years we shall have the whole world in\nconvulsions. I am a fate.\n\nGuess who come off worst in _Ecce Homo_? Messieurs the Germans! I have\ntold them terrible things.... The Germans, for instance, have it on\ntheir conscience that they deprived the last _great_ epoch of history,\nthe Renaissance, of its meaning--at a moment when the Christian values,\nthe _d\u00e9cadence_ values, were worsted, when they were conquered in the\ninstincts even of the highest ranks of the clergy by the opposite\ninstincts, the instincts of life. To _attack_ the Church--that meant to\nre-establish Christianity. (Cesare Borgia as pope--that would have been\nthe meaning of the Renaissance, its proper symbol.)\n\nYou must not be angry either, to find yourself brought forward at a\ncritical passage in the book--I wrote it just now--where I stigmatise\nthe conduct of my German friends towards me, their absolute leaving me\nin the lurch as regards both fame and philosophy. Then you suddenly\nappear, surrounded by a halo....\n\nI believe implicitly what you say about Dostoievsky; I esteem him, on\nthe other hand, as the most valuable psychological material I know--I\nam grateful to him in an extraordinary way, however antagonistic he may\nbe to my deepest instincts. Much the same as my relation to Pascal,\nwhom I almost love, since he has taught me such an infinite amount; the\nonly _logical_ Christian.\n\nThe day before yesterday I read, with delight and with a feeling of\nbeing thoroughly at home, Les mari\u00e9s, by Herr August Strindberg. My\nsincerest admiration, which is only prejudiced by the feeling that I am\nadmiring myself a little at the same time.\n\nTurin is still my residence.\n\nYour\n\nNIETZSCHE, now a monster.\n\nWhere may I send you the _Twilight of the Idols_? If you will be at\nCopenhagen another fortnight, no answer is necessary.\n\n\n21. BRANDES to NIETZSCHE.\n\n\n_Copenhagen_, Nov. 23, 1888.\n\nMY DEAR SIR,\n\nYour letter found me to-day in full fever of work; I am lecturing here\non Goethe, repeat each lecture twice and yet people wait in line for\nthree quarters of an hour in the square before the University to get\nstanding-room. It amuses me to study the greatest of the great before\nso many. I must stay here till the end of the year.\n\nBut on the other side there is the unfortunate circumstance that--as I\nam informed--one of my old books, lately translated into Russian, has\nbeen condemned in Russia to be publicly _burnt_ as \"irreligious.\"\n\nI already had to fear expulsion on account of my two last works on\nPoland and Russia; now I must try to set in motion all the influence I\ncan command, in order to obtain permission to lecture in Russia this\nwinter. To make matters worse, nearly all letters to and from me are\nnow confiscated. There is great anxiety since the disaster at Borki. It\nwas just the same shortly after the famous attempts. Every letter was\nsnapped up.\n\nIt gives me lively satisfaction to see that you have again got through\nso much. Believe me, I spread your propaganda wherever I can. So late\nas last week I earnestly recommended Henrik Ibsen to study your works.\nWith him too you have some kinship, even if it is a very distant\nkinship. Great and strong and unamiable, but yet _worthy_ of love,\nis this singular person. Strindberg will be glad to hear of your\nappreciation. I do not know the French translation you mention; but\nthey say here that all the best things in _Giftas_ (_Mari\u00e9s_) have\nbeen left out, especially the witty polemic against Ibsen. But read\nhis drama _P\u00e8re_; there is a great scene in it. I am sure he would\ngladly send it you. But I see him so seldom; he is so shy on account\nof an extremely unhappy marriage. Imagine it, he abhors his wife\n_intellectually_ and cannot get away from her _physically_. He is a\nmonogamous misogynist!\n\nIt seems curious to me that the polemical trait is still so strong in\nyou. In my early days I was passionately polemical; now I can only\nexpound; silence is my only weapon of offence. I should as soon think\nof attacking Christianity as of writing a pamphlet against werewolves,\nI mean against the belief in werewolves.\n\nBut I see we understand one another. I too _love_ Pascal. But even\nas a young man I was _for_ the Jesuits against Pascal (in the\n_Provinciales_). The worldly-wise, they were right, of course;\nhe did not understand them; but they understood him and--what a\nmaster-stroke of impudence and sagacity!--they themselves published his\n_Provinciales_ with notes. The best edition is that of the Jesuits.\n\nLuther against the Pope, there we have the same collision. Victor Hugo\nin the preface to the _Feuilles d'Automne_ has this fine saying: _On\nconvoque la di\u00e8te de Worms mais on peint la chapelle Sixtine. Il y a\nLuther, mais il y a Michel-Ange ... et remarquons en passant que Luther\nest dans les vieilleries qui croulent autour de nous et que Michel-Ange\nn'y est pas._\n\nStudy the face of Dostoievsky: half a Russian peasant's face, half\na criminal physiognomy, flat nose, little piercing eyes under lids\nquivering with nervousness, this lofty and well-formed forehead, this\nexpressive mouth that speaks of torments innumerable, of abysmal\nmelancholy, of unhealthy appetites, of infinite pity, passionate envy!\nAn epileptic genius, whose exterior alone speaks of the stream of\ngentleness that filled his spirit, of the wave of acuteness almost\namounting to madness that mounted to his head, and finally of the\nambition, the immense effort, and of the ill-will that results from\npettiness of soul.\n\nHis heroes are not only poor and pitiable creatures, but simple-minded\nsensitive ones, noble strumpets, often victims of hallucination, gifted\nepileptics, enthusiastic candidates for martyrdom--just those types\nwhich we should suspect in the apostles and disciples of the early days\nof Christianity.\n\nCertainly nothing could be farther removed from the Renaissance.\n\nI am excited to know how I can come into your book.\n\nI remain your faithfully devoted\n\nGEORGE BRANDES.\n\n\n22. Unstamped. Without further address, undated. Written in a large\nhand on a piece of paper (not note-paper) ruled in pencil, such as\nchildren use. Post-mark: Turin, January 4, 1889.\n\n\nTO THE FRIEND GEORG\n\nWhen once you had discovered me, it was easy enough to find me: the\ndifficulty now is to get rid of me ...\n\n_The Crucified_.\n\nAs Herr Max Nordau has attempted with incredible coarseness to brand\nNietzsche's whole life-work as the production of a madman, I call\nattention to the fact that signs of powerful exaltation only appear in\nthe last letter but one, and that insanity is only evident in the last\nletter of all, and then not in an unqualified form.\n\nBut at the close of the year 1888 this dear and masterly mind began\nto be deranged. His self-esteem, which had always been very great,\nacquired a morbid character. His light and delicate self-irony, which\nappears not unfrequently in the letters here given, gave place to\nconstantly recurring outbursts of anger with the German public's\nfailure to appreciate the value of his works. It ill became a man of\nNietzsche's intellect, who only a year before (see Letter No. 2) had\ndesired a small number of intelligent readers, to take such offence\nat the indifference of the mob. He now gave expression to the most\nexalted ideas about himself. In his last book but one he had said: \"I\nhave given the Germans the profoundest books of any they possess \";\nin his last he wrote: \"I have given mankind the profoundest book it\npossesses.\" At the same time he yielded to an impulse to describe the\nfame he hoped to attain in the future as already his. As the reader\nwill see, he had asked me to furnish him with the addresses of persons\nin Paris and Petersburg who might be able to make his name known in\nFrance and Russia. I chose them to the best of my judgment. But even\nbefore the books he sent had reached their destinations, Nietzsche\nwrote in a German review: \"And thus I am treated in Germany, I who am\nalready _studied_ in Petersburg and Paris.\" That his sense of propriety\nwas beginning to be deranged was already shown when sending the book\nto Princess T\u00e9nicheff (see Letter No. 18). This lady wrote to me in\nastonishment, asking what kind of a strange friend I had recommended\nto her: he had been sufficiently wanting in taste to give the sender's\nname on the parcel itself as \"The Antichrist.\" Some time after I had\nreceived the last deranged and touching letter, another was shown me,\nwhich Nietzsche had presumably sent the same day, and in which he wrote\nthat he intended to summon a meeting of sovereigns in Rome to have the\nyoung German Emperor shot there; this was signed \"Nietzsche-C\u00e6sar.\" The\nletter to me was signed \"The Crucified.\" It was thus evident that this\ngreat mind in its final megalomania had oscillated between attributing\nto itself the two greatest names in history, so strongly contrasted.\n\nIt was exceedingly sad thus to witness the change that in the course of\na few weeks reduced a genius without equal to a poor helpless creature,\nin whom almost the last gleam of mental life was extinguished for ever.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n(AUGUST 1900)\n\n\nIt sometimes happens that the death of a great individual recalls a\nhalf-forgotten name to our memory, and we then disinter for a brief\nmoment the circumstances, events, writings or achievements which gave\nthat name its renown. Although Friedrich Nietzsche in his silent\nmadness had survived himself for eleven and a half years, there is no\nneed at his death to resuscitate his works or his fame. For during\nthose very years in which he lived on in the night of insanity, his\nname has acquired a lustre unsurpassed by any contemporary reputation,\nand his works have been translated into every language and are known\nall over the world.\n\nTo the older among us, who have followed Nietzsche from the time of\nhis arduous and embittered struggle against the total indifference\nof the reading world, this prodigiously rapid attainment of the most\nabsolute and world-wide renown has in it something in the highest\ndegree surprising. No one in our time has experienced anything like it.\nIn the course of five or six years Nietzsche's intellectual tendency\n--now more or less understood, now misunderstood, now involuntarily\ncaricatured--became the ruling tendency of a great part of the\nliterature of France, Germany, England, Italy, Norway, Sweden and\nRussia. Note, for example, the influence of this spirit on Gabriele\nd'Annunzio. To all that was tragic in Nietzsche's life was added\nthis--that, after thirsting for recognition to the point of morbidity,\nhe attained it in an altogether fantastic degree when, though still\nliving, he was shut out from life. But certain it is that in the decade\n1890-1900 no one engaged and impressed the minds of his contemporaries\nas did this son of a North German clergyman, who tried so hard to be\ntaken for a Polish nobleman, and whose pride it was that his works were\nconceived in French, though written in German. The little weaknesses of\nhis character were forgotten in the grandeur of the style he imparted\nto his life and his production.\n\nTo be able to explain Nietzsche's rapid and overwhelming triumph, one\nwould want the key to the secret of the psychological life of our time.\nHe bewitched the age, though he seems opposed to all its instincts.\nThe age is ultra-democratic; he won its favour as an aristocrat. The\nage is borne on a rising wave of religious reaction; he conquered with\nhis pronounced irreligion. The age is struggling with social questions\nof the most difficult and far-reaching kind; he, the thinker of the\nage, left all these questions on one side as of secondary importance.\nHe was an enemy of the humanitarianism of the present day and of its\ndoctrine of happiness; he had a passion for proving how much that is\nbase and mean may conceal itself beneath the guise of pity, love of\none's neighbour and unselfishness; he assailed pessimism and scorned\noptimism; he attacked the ethics of the philosophers with the same\nviolence as the thinkers of the eighteenth century had attacked the\ndogmas of the theologians. As he became an atheist from religion, so\ndid he become an immoralist from morality. Nevertheless the Voltairians\nof the age could not claim him, since he was a mystic; and contemporary\nanarchists had to reject him as an enthusiast for rulers and castes.\n\nFor all that, he must in some hidden way have been in accord with much\nthat is fermenting in our time, otherwise it would not have adopted\nhim as it has done. The fact of having known Nietzsche, or having been\nin any way connected with him, is enough at present to make an author\nfamous--more famous, sometimes, than all his writings have made him.\n\nWhat Nietzsche, as a young man admired more than anything else in\nSchopenhauer and Richard Wagner was \"the indomitable energy with which\nthey maintained their self-reliance in the midst of the hue and\ncry raised against them by the whole cultured world.\" He made this\nself-reliance his own, and this was no doubt the first thing to make an\nimpression.\n\nIn the next place the artist in him won over those to whom the\naphorisms of the thinker were obscure. With all his mental acuteness\nhe was a pronounced lyricist. In the autumn of 1888 he wrote of Heine:\n\"How he handled German! One day it will be said that Heine and I were\nwithout comparison the supreme artists of the German language.\" One who\nis not a German is but an imperfect judge of Nietzsche's treatment of\nlanguage; but in our day all German connoisseurs are agreed in calling\nhim the greatest stylist of German prose.\n\nHe further impressed his contemporaries by his psychological\nprofundity and abstruseness. His spiritual life has its abysses and\nlabyrinths. Self-contemplation provides him with immense material for\ninvestigation. And he is not content with self-contemplation. His\ncraving for knowledge is a passion; covetousness he calls it: \"In this\nsoul there dwells no unselfishness; on the contrary, an all-desiring\nself that would see by the help of many as with its own eyes and grasp\nas with its _own_ hands; this soul of mine would even choose to bring\nback all the past and not lose anything that might belong to it. What a\nflame is this covetousness of mine!\"\n\nThe equally strong development of his lyrical and critical qualities\nmade a fascinating combination. But it was the cause of those reversals\nof his personal relations which deprive his career (in much the same\nway as S\u00f6ren Kierkegaard's) of some of the dignity it might have\npossessed. When a great personality crossed his path he called all his\nlyricism to arms and with clash of sword on shield hailed the person in\nquestion as a demigod or a god (Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner). When\nlater on he discovered the limitations of his hero, his enthusiasm was\napt to turn to hatred, and this hatred found vent without the smallest\nregard to his former worship. This characteristic is offensively\nconspicuous in Nietzsche's behaviour to Wagner. But who knows whether\nthis very lack of dignity has not contributed to increase the number\nof Nietzsche's admirers in an age that is somewhat undignified on this\npoint!\n\nIn the last period of his life Nietzsche appeared rather as a prophet\nthan as a thinker. He predicts the Superman. And he makes no attempt\nat logical proof, but proceeds from a reliance on the correctness\nand sureness of his instinct, convinced that he himself represents a\nlife-promoting principle and his opponents one hostile to life.\n\nTo him the object of existence is, everywhere the production of genius.\nThe higher man in our day is like a vessel in which the future of the\nrace is fermenting in an impenetrable way, and more than one of these\nvessels is burst or broken in the process. But the human race is not\nruined by the failure of a single creature. Man, as we know him, is\nonly a bridge, a transition from the animal to the superman. What\nthe ape is in relation to man, a laughingstock or a thing of shame,\nthat will man be to the superman. Hitherto every species has produced\nsomething superior to itself. Nietzsche teaches that man too will and\nmust do the same. He has drawn a conclusion from Darwinism which Darwin\nhimself did not see.\n\nIn the last decade of the nineteenth century Nietzsche and Tolstoy\nappeared as the two opposite poles. Nietzsche's morality is\naristocratic as Tolstoy's is popular, individualistic as Tolstoy's\nis evangelical; it asserts the self-majesty of the individual, where\nTolstoy's proclaims the necessity of self-sacrifice.\n\nIn the same decade Nietzsche and Ibsen were sometimes compared. Ibsen,\nlike Nietzsche, was a combative spirit and held entirely aloof from\npolitical and practical life. A first point of agreement between them\nis that they both laid stress on not having come of small folk. Ibsen\nmade known to me in a letter that his parents, both on the father's and\nthe mother's side, belonged to the most esteemed families of their day\nin Skien in Norway, related to all the patrician families of the place\nand country. Skien is no world-city, and the aristocracy of Skien is\nquite unknown outside it; but Ibsen wanted to make it clear that his\nbitterness against the upper class in Norway was in no wise due to the\nrancour and envy of the outsider.\n\nNietzsche always made it known to his acquaintances that he was\ndescended from a Polish noble family, although he possessed no\npedigree. His correspondents took this for an aristocratic whim,\nall the more because the name given out by him, Ni\u00ebzky, by its very\nspelling betrayed itself as not Polish. But the fact is otherwise.\nThe true spelling of the name is Nicki, and a young Polish admirer\nof Nietzsche, Mr. Bernard Scharlitt, has succeeded in proving\nNietzsche's descent from the Nicki family, by pointing out that its\ncrest is to be found in a signet which for centuries has been an\nheirloom in the family of Nietzsche. Perhaps not quite without reason,\nScharlitt therefore sees in Nietzsche's master-morality and his whole\naristocratising of the view of the world an expression of the szlachcic\nspirit inherited from Polish ancestors.\n\nNietzsche and Ibsen, independently of each other but like Renan, have\nsifted the thought of breeding moral aristocrats. It is the favourite\nidea of Ibsen's Rosmer; it remains Dr. Stockmann's. Thus Nietzsche\nspeaks of the higher man as the preliminary aim of the race, before\nZarathustra announces the superman.\n\nThey meet now and then on the territory of psychology. Ibsen speaks\nin _The Wild Duck_ of the necessity of falsehood to life. Nietzsche\nloved life so greatly that even truth appeared to him of worth only in\nthe case of its acting for the preservation and advancement of life.\nFalsehood is to him an injurious and destructive power only in so\nfar as it is life-constricting. It is not objectionable where it is\nnecessary to life.\n\nIt is strange that a thinker who abhorred Jesuitism as Nietzsche did\nshould arrive at this standpoint, which leads directly to Jesuitism.\nNietzsche agrees here with many of his opponents.\n\nIbsen and Nietzsche were both solitary, even if they were not at all\ncareless as to the fate of their works. It is the strongest man, says\nDr. Stockmann, who is most isolated. Who was most isolated, Ibsen or\nNietzsche? Ibsen, who held back from every alliance with others,\nbut exposed his work to the masses of the theatre-going public, or\nNietzsche, who stood alone as a thinker but as a man continually--even\nif, as a rule, in vain--spied after the like-minded and after heralds,\nand whose works, in the time of his conscious life, remained unread by\nthe great public, or in any case misunderstood.\n\nDecision does not fall lightly to one who, by a whim of fate, was\nregarded by both as an ally. Still more difficult is the decision as\nto which of them has had the deepest effect on the contemporary mind\nand which will longest retain his fame. But this need not concern us.\nWherever Nietzsche's teaching extends, and wherever his great and rare\npersonality is mastered, its attraction and repulsion will alike be\npowerful; but everywhere it will contribute to the development and\nmoulding of the individual personality.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n(1909)\n\n\nSince the publication of Nietzsche's collected works was completed,\nFrau F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche has allowed the Insel-Verlag of Leipzig to\nissue, at a high price and for subscribers only, Friedrich Nietzsche's\nposthumous work _Ecce Homo_, which has been lying in manuscript for\nmore than twenty years, and which she herself had formerly excluded\nfrom his works, considering that the German reading public was not ripe\nto receive it in the proper way--which we may doubtless interpret as a\nfear on her part that the attitude of the book towards Germanism and\nChristianity would raise a terrible outcry.\n\nNow that Nietzsche holds undisputed sway over German minds and\nexercises an immense influence in the rest of Europe and in America, it\nwill certainly be read with emotion and discreetly criticised.\n\nIt gives us an autobiography, written during Nietzsche's last\nproductive months, almost immediately before the collapse of his\npowers, between October 15 and November 4, 1888; and in the course of\nthis autobiography each of his books is briefly characterised.\n\nHere as elsewhere Nietzsche's thoughts are centred on the primary\nconceptions of ascent and descent, growth and decay. Bringing himself\ninto relation with them, he finds that, as the victim of stubborn\nillness and chronically recurring pain, he is a decadent; but at\nthe same time, as one who in his inmost self is unaffected by his\nillness, nay, whose strength and fulness of life even increase during\nits attacks, he is the very reverse of a decadent, a being who is\nin process of raising himself to a higher form of life. He once more\nemphasises the fact that the years in which his vitality was lowest\nwere just those in which he threw off all melancholy and recovered his\njoy in life, his enthusiasm for life, since he had a keen sense that a\nsick man has no right to pessimism.\n\nHe begins by giving us plain, matter-of-fact information about\nhimself, speaking warmly and proudly of his father. The latter had\nbeen tutor to four princesses of Altenburg before he was appointed to\nhis living. Out of respect-for Friedrich Wilhelm IV. he gave his son\nthe Hohenzollern names of Friedrich Wilhelm, and he felt the events of\n1848 very keenly. His father only reached the age of thirty-six, and\nNietzsche lost him when he was himself five years old. But he ascribes\nto paternal heredity his ability to feel at home in a world of high\nand delicate things (_in einer Welt hoher und zarter Dinge_). For\nall that, Nietzsche does not forget to bring in, here as elsewhere,\nthe supposition of his descent from Polish noblemen; but he did not\nknow this for a fact, and it was only established by Scharlitt's\ninvestigation of the family seal.\n\nHe describes himself as what we should call a winning personality. He\nhas \"never understood the art of arousing ill-feeling against himself.\"\nHe can tame every bear; he even makes clowns behave decently. However\nout of tune the instrument \"man\" may be, he can coax a pleasing tone\nout of it. During his years of teaching, even the laziest became\ndiligent under him. Whatever offence has been done him, has not been\nthe result of ill-will. The pitiful have wounded him more deeply than\nthe malicious.\n\nNor has he given vent to feelings of revenge or rancour. His conflict\nwith Christianity is only one instance among many of his antagonism to\nresentful feelings. It is an altogether different matter that his very\nnature is that of a warrior. But he confers distinction on the objects\nof his attacks, and he has never waged war on private individuals, only\non types; thus in Strauss he saw nothing but the Culture-Philistine.\n\nHe attributes to himself an extremely vivid and sensitive instinct\nof cleanliness. At the first contact the filth lying at the base of\nanother's nature is revealed to him. The unclean are therefore ill at\nease in his presence; nor does the sense of being seen through make\nthem any more fragrant.\n\nAnd with true psychology he adds that his greatest danger--he means to\nhis spiritual health and balance--is loathing of mankind.\n\nThe loathing of mankind is doubtless the best modern expression for\nwhat the ancients called misanthropy. No one knows what it is till\nhe has experienced it. When we read, for instance, in our youth of\nFrederick the Great that in his later years he was possessed and\nfettered by contempt for men, this appears to us an unfortunate\npeculiarity which the king ought to have overcome; for of course he\nmust have seen other men about him besides those who flattered him for\nthe sake of advantage. But the loathing of mankind is a force that\nsurprises and overwhelms one, fed by hundreds of springs concealed\nin subconsciousness. One only detects its presence after having long\nentertained it unawares.\n\nNietzsche cannot be said to have overcome it; he fled from it, took\nrefuge in solitude, and lived outside the world of men, alone in the\nmountains among cold, fresh springs.\n\nAnd even if he felt no loathing for individuals, his disgust with men\nfound a collective outlet, since he entertained, or rather worked up, a\npositive horror of his countrymen, so powerful that at last it breaks\nout in everything he writes. It reminds us dimly of Byron's dislike of\nEnglishmen, Stendhal's of Frenchmen, and Heine's of Germans. But it\nis of a more violent character than Stendhal's or Heine's, and it has\na pathos and contempt of its own. He shows none of it at the outset.\nIn his first book, _The Birth of Tragedy_, he is no less partial to\nGermany than Heine was in his first, romantically Teutonic period. But\nNietzsche's development carried him with a rush away from Germanism,\nand in this last book of his the word \"German\" has become something\nlike his worst term of abuse.\n\nHe believes only in French culture; all other culture is a\nmisunderstanding. It makes him angry to see those Frenchmen he values\nmost, infected by German spirit. Thus Taine is, in his opinion,\ncorrupted by Hegel's influence. This impression is right in so far as\nHegel deprived Taine of some of the essentially French element which\nhe originally possessed, and of which certain of his admirers before\nnow have painfully felt the loss. But he overlooks the effect of the\nstudy of Hegel in promoting at the same time what one might call the\nextension of Taine's intellectual horizon. And Nietzsche is satisfied\nwith no narrower generalisation of the case than this: Wherever Germany\nextends, she ruins culture.\n\nAs though to make sure of wounding German national pride, he declares\nthat Heinrich Heine (not Goethe) gave him the highest idea of lyric\npoetry, and that as concerns Byron's _Manfred_, he has no words, only a\nlook, for those who in the presence of this work dare to utter the name\nof _Faust_. The Germans, he maintains in connection with _Manfred_, are\nincapable of any conception of greatness. So uncritical has he become\nthat he puts _Manfred_ above _Faust_.\n\nIn his deepest instincts Nietzsche is now, as he asserts, so foreign\nto everything German, that the mere presence of a German \"retards his\ndigestion.\" German intellect is to him indigestion; it can never be\nfinished with anything. If he has been so enthusiastic in his devotion\nto Wagner, if he still regards his intimate relationship with Wagner as\nthe most profound refreshment of his life, this was because in Wagner\nhe honoured the foreigner, because in him he saw the incarnate protest\nagainst all German virtues. In his book, _The Case of Wagner_, he had\nalready hinted that Richard Wagner, the glory of German nationalism,\nwas of Jewish descent, since his real father seems to have been the\nstep-father, Geyer. I could not have survived my youth without Wagner,\nhe says; I was condemned to the society of Germans and had to take a\ncounter-poison; Wagner was the counter-poison.\n\nHere, by way of exception, he generalises his feeling. We who were\nchildren in the 'fifties, he says, necessarily became pessimists\nin regard to the concept \"German.\" We cannot be anything else than\nrevolutionaries. And he explains this expression thus: We can assent to\nno state of affairs which allows the canting bigot to be at the top.\n(H\u00f6ffding's protest against the use of the word \"radicalism\" applied to\nNietzsche, in _Moderne Filosofer_, is thus beside the mark.) Wagner was\na revolutionary; he fled from the Germans. And, Nietzsche adds, as an\nartist, a man has no other home than Paris--the city which, strangely\nenough, he was never, to see. He ranks Wagner among the later masters\nof French romanticism--Delacroix, Berlioz, Baudelaire--and wisely says\nnothing about the reception of Wagnerian opera in Paris under the\nEmpire.\n\nIn everything Nietzsche now adopts the French stand-point--the old and\nnarrow French standpoint--that, for instance, of the elderly Voltaire\ntowards Shakespeare. He declares here, as he has done before, that\nhis artist's taste defends Moli\u00e8re, Corneille and Racine, not without\nbitterness (_nicht ohne Ingrimm_) against such a wild (_w\u00fcstes_) genius\nas Shakespeare. Strangely enough he repeats here his estimate of\nShakespeare's C\u00e6sar as his finest creation, weak as it is: \"My highest\nformula for Shakespeare is that he conceived the type of C\u00e6sar.\" It\nmust be added that here again Nietzsche assents to the unhappy delusion\nthat Shakespeare never wrote the works that bear his name. Nietzsche\nis \"instinctively\" certain that they are due to Bacon, and, ignoring\nrepeated demonstrations of the impossibility of this fatuous notion, he\nsupports his conjecture by the grotesque assertion that if he himself\nhad christened his Zarathustra by a name not his own--by Wagner's, for\ninstance--the acumen of two thousand years would not have sufficed to\nguess who was its originator; no one would have believed it possible\nthat the author of _Human, all-too-Human_ had conceived the visions of\nZarathustra.\n\nHe allows the Germans no honour as philosophers: Leibniz and Kant were\n\"the two greatest clogs upon the intellectual integrity of Europe.\"\nJust when a perfectly scientific attitude of mind had been attained,\nthey managed to find byways back to \"the old ideal.\" And no less\npassionately does he deny to the Germans all honour as musicians:\n\"A German _cannot_ know what music is. The men who pass as German\nmusicians are foreigners, Slavs, Croats, Italians, Dutchmen or Jews. I\nam Pole enough to give up all other music for Chopin--except Wagner's\n_Siegfried-Idyll_, some things of Liszt, and the Italians Rossini and\nPietro Gasti\" (by this last name he appears to mean his favourite\ndisciple, K\u00f6selitz, who wrote under the pseudonym of Peter Gast).\n\nHe abhors the Germans as \"idealists.\" All idealism is falsehood in\nthe face of necessity. He finds a pernicious idealism in Henrik Ibsen\ntoo, \"that typical old maid,\" as well, as in others whose object it\nis to poison the clean conscience, the natural spirit, of sexual\nlove. And he gives us a clause of his moral code, in which, under the\nhead of Vice, he combats every kind of opposition to Nature, or if\nfine words are preferred, every kind of idealism. The clause runs:\n\"Preaching of chastity is a public incitement to unnatural practices.\nAll, depreciation of the sexual life, all sullying of it with the word\n'impure,' is a crime against Life itself--is the real sin against the\nholy Spirit of Life.\"\n\nFinally he attacks what he calls the \"licentiousness\" of the Germans\nin historical matters. German historians, he declares, have lost all\neye for the values of culture; in fact, they have put this power of\nvision under the ban of the Empire. They claim that a man must in the\nfirst place be a German, must belong to the race. If he does, he is\nin a position to determine values or their absence: the Germans are\nthus the \"moral order of the universe\" in history; compared with the\npower of the Roman Empire they are the champions of liberty; compared\nwith the eighteenth century they are the restorers of morality and of\nthe Categorical Imperative. \"History is actually written on Imperial\nGerman and Antisemitic lines--and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed of\nhimself.\"\n\nThe Germans have on their conscience every crime against culture\ncommitted in the last four centuries. As Nietzsche in his later years\nwas never tired of asserting, they deprived the Renaissance of its\nmeaning, they wrecked it by the Reformation; that is, by Luther, an\nimpossible monk who, owing to his impossibility, attacked the Church\nand in so doing restored it. The Catholics would have every reason to\nhonour Luther's name.\n\nAnd when, upon the bridge between two centuries of decadence, a _force\nmajeure_ of genius and will revealed itself, strong enough to weld\nEurope into political and economic unity, the Germans finally, with\ntheir \"Wars of Liberation,\" robbed Europe of the meaning of Napoleon's\nexistence, a prodigy of meaning. Thus they have upon their conscience\nall that followed, nationalism, the _n\u00e9vrose nationale_ from which\nEurope is suffering, and the perpetuation of the system of little\nstates, of petty politics.\n\nLast of all, the Germans have upon their conscience their attitude to\nhimself, their indifference, their lack of recognition, the silence\nin which they buried his life's work. The Germans are bad company.\nAnd although his autobiography ends with a poem in which he affects a\nscorn of fame, \"that coin in which the whole world pays, but which he\nreceives with gloved hands and tramples underfoot with loathing \"--yet\nhis failure to win renown in Germany during his lifetime contributed\npowerfully to foster his antipathy.\n\nThe exaltation that marks the whole tone of the work, the unrestrained\nself-esteem which animates it and is ominous of the near approach of\nmadness, have not deprived _Ecce Homo_ of its character of surpassing\ngreatness.","title":"Friedrich Nietzsche","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":36779}