), he declares
thatevery one should be able to take leave of his circle
of relatives and intimates when his timeseemsto have
come—that is to say, while he is still himself while he
still knows what he is about,and is able tomeasure his
own life and life in general, and speak of both in a
manner which is not vouchsafed to the groaning in-
valid, to the man lying on his back, decrepit and ex-
## p.
thatevery one should be able to take leave of his circle
of relatives and intimates when his timeseemsto have
come—that is to say, while he is still himself while he
still knows what he is about,and is able tomeasure his
own life and life in general, and speak of both in a
manner which is not vouchsafed to the groaning in-
valid, to the man lying on his back, decrepit and ex-
## p.
Nietzsche - v17 - Ecce Homo
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Title: The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first complete
and authorized English translation, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
Publisher: [Edinburgh and London : T. N. Foulis, 1909-1913. ]
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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
EDITED BY
Dr. OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME SEVENTEEN
ECCE HOMO
## p. ii (#10) ##############################################
Of the First Edition of
Two Thousand Copies
this is
No.
495
## p. iii (#11) #############################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
ECCE HOMO
(NIETZSCHES AUTOBIOGRAPHY)
TRANSLATED BY
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
POETRY RENDERED BY
PAUL V. COHN FRANCIS BICKLEY
HERMAN SCHEFFAUER Dr. G. T. WRENCH
HYMN TO LIFE (composed by F. NIETZSCHE)
T. N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: and LONDON
1911
## p. iv (#12) ##############################################
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh.
## p. v (#13) ###############################################
Morris
Soth
15-2.
CONTENTS
PAGE
vii
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR'S PREFACE •
.
.
.
Why I AM SO WISE -
Why I AM SO CLEVER
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS -
The Birth of Tragedy ·
Thoughts out of Season
Human, All-too-Human
The Dawn of Day
Joyful Wisdom -
Thus spake Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil -
The Genealogy of Morals
118
The Twilight of the Idols
The Case of Wagner .
121
Why I AM A FATALITY
131
## p. vi (#14) ##############################################
CONTENTS
PAGE
EDITORIAL NOTE TO POETRY
.
.
.
145
POETRY-
Songs, Epigrams, etc. ·
·
Dionysus-Dithyrambs · · ·
Fragments of Dionysus-Dithyrambs ·
·
·
·
147
173
191
HYMN TO LIFE, COMPOSED BY F. NIETZSCHE
-
209
## p. vii (#15) #############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
Ecce Homo is the last prose work that Nietzsche
wrote. It is true that the pamphlet Nietzsche contra
Wagner was prepared a month later than the Auto-
biography ; but we cannot consider this pamphlet as
anything more than a compilation, seeing that it con-
sists entirely of aphorisms drawn from such previous
works as Joyful Wisdom, Beyond Good and Evil, The
Genealogy of Morals, etc. Coming at the end of a year
in which he had produced the Case of Wagner, Tfie
Twilight of the Idols, and TIte Antichrist, Ecce Homo
is not only a coping-stone worthy of the wonderful
creations of that year, but also a fitting conclusion to
his whole life, in the form of a grand summing up of
his character as a man, his purpose as a reformer, and
his achievement as a thinker. As if half conscious of
his approaching spiritual end, Nietzsche here bids his
friends farewell, just in the manner in which, in the
Twilight of tlte Idols (Aph. 36, Part ix. ), he declares
thatevery one should be able to take leave of his circle
of relatives and intimates when his timeseemsto have
come—that is to say, while he is still himself while he
still knows what he is about,and is able tomeasure his
own life and life in general, and speak of both in a
manner which is not vouchsafed to the groaning in-
valid, to the man lying on his back, decrepit and ex-
## p. viii (#16) ############################################
viii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
hausted, or to the moribund victim of some wasting
disease. Nietzsche's spiritual death, like his whole
life, was in singular harmony with his doctrine: he
died suddenly and proudly,—sword in hand. War,
which he—and he alone among all the philosophers
of Christendom—had praised so whole-heartedly, at
last struck him down in the full vigour of his man-
hood, and left him a victim on the battlefield—the
terrible battlefield of thought, on which there is no
quarter, and for which no Geneva Convention has yet
been established or even thought of.
To those who know Nietzsche's life-work, no apol-
ogy will be needed for the form and content of this
wonderful work. They will know, at least, that a man
either is, or is not, aware of his significance and of the
significance of what he has accomplished, and that if
he is aware of it, then self-realisation, even of the kind
which we find in these pages, is neither morbid nor
suspicious, but necessary and inevitable. Such chap-
ter headings as " Why I am so Wise," " Why I am a
Fatality," "Why I write such Excellent Books,"—
however much they may have disturbed the equan-
imity, and "objectivity" in particular, of certain
Nietzsche biographers, can be regarded as patho-
logical only in a democratic age in which people have
lost all sense of gradation and rank, and in which the
virtues of modesty and humility have to be preached
far and wide as a corrective against the vulgar pre-
tensions of thousands of wretched nobodies. For
little people can be endured only as modest citizens
or humble Christians. If, however, they demand a
like modesty on the part of the truly great; if they
raise their voices against Nietzsche's lack of the very
## p. ix (#17) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION ix
virtue they so abundantly possess or pretend to pos-
sess, it is time to remind them of Goethe's famous re-
mark: "Nur Lumpesindbescheiden" (Only nobodies
are ever modest).
It took Nietzsche barely three weeks to write this
story of his life. Begun on the 15th of October 1888,
his four-and-fourtieth birthday, it was finished on the
4th of November of the same year, and, but for a few
trifling modifications and additions, is just as Nietz-
sche left it. It was not published in Germany until
the year 1908, eight years after Nietzsche's death. In
a letter dated the 27th of December 1888, addressed
to the musical composer Fuchs, the author declares
the object of the work to be to dispose of all discus-
sion, doubt, and inquiry concerning his own person-
ality, in order to leave the public mind freetoconsider
merely " the things for the sake of which he existed"
(" die Dinge, derentwegen ich da bin "). And, true to
his intention, Nietzsche's honesty in these pages is
certainly one of the most remarkable features about
them. From the first chapter, in which he frankly ac-
knowledges the decadent elements within him, to the
last page, whereon he characterises his mission, his
life-task, and his achievement, by means of the one
symbol, Dionysus versus Christ,—everything comes
straightfromtheshoulder, withouthesitation, without
fear of consequences, and, above all, without conceal-
ment. Only in one place does he appear to conceal
something, and then he actually leads one to under-
stand that he is doing so. It is in regard to Wagner,
the greatest friend of his life. "Who doubts," he
says, " that I, old artillery-man that I am, would be
able if I liked to point my heavy guns at Wagner? "
## p. x (#18) ###############################################
x TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
—But he adds: "Everything decisive in thisquestion
I kept to myself—I have loved Wagner" (p. 122).
To point, as many have done, to the proximity of
all Nietzsche's autumn work of the year 1888 to his
breakdown at the beginning of 1889, and to argue
that in all its main features it foretells the catastrophe
that is imminent, seems a little too plausible, a little
too obvious and simple to require refutation. That
Nietzsche really was in a state which in medicine is
known as euphoria—that istosay,that stateof highest
well-being and capacity which often precedes a com-
plete breakdown, cannot, I suppose, be questioned;
for his style, his penetrating vision, and his vigour,
reach their zenith in the works written in thisautumn
of 1888; but the contention that the matter, the sub-
stance, of these works reveals any signs whatsoever
of waning mental health, or, as a certain French bio-
grapher has it, of an inability to "hold himself and
his judgments in check," is best contradicted by the
internal evidence itself. To take just a few examples
at random, examine the cold and calculating tone
of self-analysis in Chapter I. of the present work; con-
siderthe reserve and the restraintwith which the idea
in Aphorism 7 of that chapter is worked out,—not to
speak of the restraint and self-mastery in the idea
itself, namely:—
"To be one's enemy's equal—this is the first condition of an
honourable duel. Where one despises one cannot wage war.
Where one commands, where one sees something beneath one,
one oughtnot to wage war. My war tactics can be reduced to four
principles : First, I attack only things that are triumphant—if
necessary I wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I
attack only those things against which I find no allies, against
which I stand alone—against which I compromise nobody but
## p. xi (#19) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xi
myself. . . . Thirdly, I never make personal attacks—I use a
personality merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I
render a general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more
apparent. . . . Fourthly, I attack only those things from which
all personal differences are excluded, in which any such thing
as a background of disagreeable experiences is lacking. "
And now notice the gentleness with which, in
Chapter II. , Wagner—the supposed mortal enemy,
the supposed envied rival to Nietzsche—is treated.
Are these the words and the thoughts of a man who
has lost, or who is losing, control?
And even if we confineourselves simply to the sub-
stance of this work and put the question—Is it a new
Nietzsche or the old Nietzsche that we find in these
pages? Is it the old countenance with which we are
familiar, orare the features distorted,awry, disfigured?
What will the answer be? Obviously there is no new
or even deformed Nietzsche here, because he is still
faithful to the position which he assumed in Thus
spake Zarathustra, five years previously, and is per-
fectly conscious of this fidelity (see p. 141); neither
can he be even on the verge of any marked change,
because the whole of the third chapter, in which he
reviews his life-work, is simply a reiteration and a
confirmation of his old points of view, which are here
made all the more telling by additional arguments
suggested, no doubt, by maturer thought. In fact, if
anything at all is new in this work, it is its cool cer-
tainty, its severe deliberateness, and its extraordin-
arilyincisive vision, as shown, for instance, in the sum-
ming up of the genuine import of the third and fourth
essays in the Thoughts out of Season (pp. 75-76,80,
81, 82), a summing up which a most critical analysis
of the essays in question can but verify.
## p. xii (#20) #############################################
xii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
Romanticism,idealism,Christianity,arestill scorned
and despised; another outlook, a nobler, braver, and
more earthly outlook, is still upheld and revered; the
great yea to life, including all that it contains that is
terrible and questionable, is still pronounced in the
teeth of pessimists,nihilists,anarchists,Christians,and
other decadents; and Germany," Europe's flatland," is
still subjected to the most relentlesscriticism. If there
are anysigns of change,besides those of mere growth,
in this work, they certainly succeed in eluding the
most careful search, undertaken with a full knowledge
of Nietzsche's former opinions, and it would be inter-
esting to know precisely where they are found by
those writers whom the titles of the chapters, alone,
seem so radically to have perturbed.
But the most striking thing of all, the miracle, so
to speak, of this autobiography, is the absence from
it of that loathing, that suggestion of surfeit, with
which a life such as the one Nietzsche had led, would
have filled any other man even of power approximate
to his own. This anchorite, who, in the last years of
his life as a healthy human being, suffered the ex-
perience of seeing even his oldest friends, including
Rhode, show the mostcompleteindifferenceto his lot,
this wrestler with Fate, for whom recognition, in the
persons of Brandes, Taine, and Strindberg, had come
all too late, and whom even support, sympathy, and
help, arriving as it did at last, through Deussen and
from Madame de Salis Marschlins, could no longer
cheer or comfort,—this was the man who was able
notwithstanding to inscribe ihedeviceamor/att upon
his shield on the very eve of his final collapse as a
victim of the unspeakable suffering he had endured,
## p. xiii (#21) ############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xiii
And this final collapse might easily have been fore-
seen. Nietzsche's sensorium, as his autobiography
proves, was probably the most delicate instrument
ever possessed by a human being; and with this fragile
structure—the prerequisite, by the bye, of all genius,
—his terriblewill compelled him to confront themost
profound and most recondite problems. We happen
to know from another artist and profound thinker,
Benjamin Disraeli, who himself had experienced a
dangerous breakdown, what the consequences pre-
cisely are of indulging in excessive activity in the
sphere of the spirit, more particularly when that spirit
is highly organised. Disraeli says in ContariniFlem-
ing (Part iv. chap. v. ):—
"I have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion is
mortifying, that there is only one step between his state who
deeply indulges in imaginative meditation, and insanity; for I
well remember that at this period of my life, when I indulged
in meditation to a degree that would now be impossible, and
I hope unnecessary, my senses sometimes appeared to be
wandering. "
And artists are the proper judges of artists,—not
Oxford Dons, like Dr. Schiller, who, in his imprudent
attemptatdealingwithsomething for which his prag-
matic hands are not sufficiently delicate, eagerly av-
ails himself of popular help in his article on Nietzsche
in the eleventh edition oitheEncyclopcediaBritannica,
and implies the hackneyed and wholly exploded belief
that Nietzsche's philosophy is madness in the making.
As German philosophies, however, are said to go to
Oxford only when they die, we may, perhaps, conclude
from this want of appreciation in that quarter, how
very much alive Nietzsche's doctrine still is.
Not that Nietzsche went mad so soon, but that he
## p. xiv (#22) #############################################
xiv TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
went mad so late is the wonder of wonders. Con-
sidering the extraordinary amount of work he did,
the great task of the transvaluation of all values, which
he actually accomplished, and the fact that he endured
such long years of solitude, which to him,thesensitive
artist to whom friends were everything, must have
been a terrible hardship, we can only wonder at his
great health, and can well believe his sister's account
of the phenomenal longevity and bodily vigour of
his ancestors.
Noone, however, who is initiated, no onewhoreads
this work with understanding, will be in need of this
introductory note of mine; for,to all who know, these
pages must speak for themselves. We are no longer
in the nineteenth century. We have learned many
things since then, and if caution is only one of these
things, at least it will prevent us from judging a book
such as this one, with all its apparent pontifical pride
and surging self-reliance, with undue haste, or with
that arrogant assurance with which the ignorance
of " the humble " and " the modest " has always con-
fronted everything truly great.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
PREFACE
As it is my intention within a very short time to
confront my fellow-men with the very greatest
demand that has ever yet been made upon them,
it seems to me above all necessary to declare here
who and what I am. As a matter of fact, this
ought to be pretty well known already, for I have
not "held my tongue" about myself. But the
disparity which obtains between the greatness of
my task and the smallness of my contemporaries,
is revealed by the fact that people have neither
heard me nor yet seen me. I live on my own
self-made credit, and it is probably only a pre-
judice to suppose that I am alive at all. I do but
require to speak to any one of the scholars who
come to the Ober-Engadine in the summer in
order to convince myself that I am not alive. . . .
Under these circumstances, it is a duty—and one
against which my customary reserve, and to a still
greater degree the pride of my instincts, rebel—
to say: Listen ! for I am such and such a person.
For Heaven's sake do not confound me with any one
else!
2
I am, for instance, in no wise a bogey man, or
moral monster. On the contrary, I am the very
A
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2 PREFACE
opposite in nature to the kind of man that has
been honoured hitherto as virtuous. Between
ourselves, it seems to me that this is precisely a
matter on which I may feel proud. I am a dis-
ciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would
prefer to be even a satyr than a saint. But just
read this book! Maybe I have here succeeded in
expressing this contrast in a cheerful and at the
same time sympathetic manner—maybe this is the
only purpose of the present work.
The very last thing I should promise to accom-
plish would be to " improve" mankind. I do not
set up any new idols; may old idols only learn
what it costs to have legs of clay. To overthrow
idols (idols is the name I give to all ideals) is
much more like my business. In proportion as
an ideal world has been falsely assumed, reality
has been robbed of its value, its meaning, and its
truthfulness. . . . The " true world " and the " ap-
parent world"—in plain English, the fictitious
world and reality. . . . Hitherto the lie of the
ideal has been the curse of reality; by means of
it the very source of mankind's instincts has be-
come mendacious and false; so much so that
those values have come to be worshipped which
are the exact opposite of the ones which would
ensure man's prosperity, his future, and his great
right to a future.
He who knows how to breathe in the air of my
writings is conscious that it is the air of the
heights, that it is bracing. A man must be built
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE 3
for it, otherwise the chances are that it will chill
him. The ice is near, the loneliness is terrible—
but how serenely everything lies in the sunshine!
how freely one can breathe! how much, one feels,
lies beneath one! Philosophy, as I have under-
stood it hitherto, is a voluntary retirement into
regions of ice and mountain-peaks—the seeking-
out of everything strange and questionable in
existence, everything upon which, hitherto, morality
has set its ban. Through long experience, de-
rived from such wanderings in forbidden country,
I acquired an opinion very different from that
which may seem generally desirable, of the causes
which hitherto have led to men's moralising and
idealising. The secret history of philosophers,
the psychology of their great names, was revealed
to me. How much truth can a certain mind en-
dure; how much truth can it dare ? —these ques-
tions became for me ever more and more the actual
test of values. Error (the belief in the ideal) is
not blindness ; error is cowardice. . . . Every con-
quest, every step forward in knowledge, is the out-
come of courage, of hardness towards one's self, of
cleanliness towards one's self. I do not refute
ideals; all I do is to draw on my gloves in their
presence. . . . Nitimur in vetitum: with this de-
vice my philosophy will one day be victorious;
for that which has hitherto been most stringently
forbidden is, without exception, Truth.
), he declares
thatevery one should be able to take leave of his circle
of relatives and intimates when his timeseemsto have
come—that is to say, while he is still himself while he
still knows what he is about,and is able tomeasure his
own life and life in general, and speak of both in a
manner which is not vouchsafed to the groaning in-
valid, to the man lying on his back, decrepit and ex-
## p. viii (#16) ############################################
viii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
hausted, or to the moribund victim of some wasting
disease. Nietzsche's spiritual death, like his whole
life, was in singular harmony with his doctrine: he
died suddenly and proudly,—sword in hand. War,
which he—and he alone among all the philosophers
of Christendom—had praised so whole-heartedly, at
last struck him down in the full vigour of his man-
hood, and left him a victim on the battlefield—the
terrible battlefield of thought, on which there is no
quarter, and for which no Geneva Convention has yet
been established or even thought of.
To those who know Nietzsche's life-work, no apol-
ogy will be needed for the form and content of this
wonderful work. They will know, at least, that a man
either is, or is not, aware of his significance and of the
significance of what he has accomplished, and that if
he is aware of it, then self-realisation, even of the kind
which we find in these pages, is neither morbid nor
suspicious, but necessary and inevitable. Such chap-
ter headings as " Why I am so Wise," " Why I am a
Fatality," "Why I write such Excellent Books,"—
however much they may have disturbed the equan-
imity, and "objectivity" in particular, of certain
Nietzsche biographers, can be regarded as patho-
logical only in a democratic age in which people have
lost all sense of gradation and rank, and in which the
virtues of modesty and humility have to be preached
far and wide as a corrective against the vulgar pre-
tensions of thousands of wretched nobodies. For
little people can be endured only as modest citizens
or humble Christians. If, however, they demand a
like modesty on the part of the truly great; if they
raise their voices against Nietzsche's lack of the very
## p. ix (#17) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION ix
virtue they so abundantly possess or pretend to pos-
sess, it is time to remind them of Goethe's famous re-
mark: "Nur Lumpesindbescheiden" (Only nobodies
are ever modest).
It took Nietzsche barely three weeks to write this
story of his life. Begun on the 15th of October 1888,
his four-and-fourtieth birthday, it was finished on the
4th of November of the same year, and, but for a few
trifling modifications and additions, is just as Nietz-
sche left it. It was not published in Germany until
the year 1908, eight years after Nietzsche's death. In
a letter dated the 27th of December 1888, addressed
to the musical composer Fuchs, the author declares
the object of the work to be to dispose of all discus-
sion, doubt, and inquiry concerning his own person-
ality, in order to leave the public mind freetoconsider
merely " the things for the sake of which he existed"
(" die Dinge, derentwegen ich da bin "). And, true to
his intention, Nietzsche's honesty in these pages is
certainly one of the most remarkable features about
them. From the first chapter, in which he frankly ac-
knowledges the decadent elements within him, to the
last page, whereon he characterises his mission, his
life-task, and his achievement, by means of the one
symbol, Dionysus versus Christ,—everything comes
straightfromtheshoulder, withouthesitation, without
fear of consequences, and, above all, without conceal-
ment. Only in one place does he appear to conceal
something, and then he actually leads one to under-
stand that he is doing so. It is in regard to Wagner,
the greatest friend of his life. "Who doubts," he
says, " that I, old artillery-man that I am, would be
able if I liked to point my heavy guns at Wagner? "
## p. x (#18) ###############################################
x TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
—But he adds: "Everything decisive in thisquestion
I kept to myself—I have loved Wagner" (p. 122).
To point, as many have done, to the proximity of
all Nietzsche's autumn work of the year 1888 to his
breakdown at the beginning of 1889, and to argue
that in all its main features it foretells the catastrophe
that is imminent, seems a little too plausible, a little
too obvious and simple to require refutation. That
Nietzsche really was in a state which in medicine is
known as euphoria—that istosay,that stateof highest
well-being and capacity which often precedes a com-
plete breakdown, cannot, I suppose, be questioned;
for his style, his penetrating vision, and his vigour,
reach their zenith in the works written in thisautumn
of 1888; but the contention that the matter, the sub-
stance, of these works reveals any signs whatsoever
of waning mental health, or, as a certain French bio-
grapher has it, of an inability to "hold himself and
his judgments in check," is best contradicted by the
internal evidence itself. To take just a few examples
at random, examine the cold and calculating tone
of self-analysis in Chapter I. of the present work; con-
siderthe reserve and the restraintwith which the idea
in Aphorism 7 of that chapter is worked out,—not to
speak of the restraint and self-mastery in the idea
itself, namely:—
"To be one's enemy's equal—this is the first condition of an
honourable duel. Where one despises one cannot wage war.
Where one commands, where one sees something beneath one,
one oughtnot to wage war. My war tactics can be reduced to four
principles : First, I attack only things that are triumphant—if
necessary I wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I
attack only those things against which I find no allies, against
which I stand alone—against which I compromise nobody but
## p. xi (#19) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xi
myself. . . . Thirdly, I never make personal attacks—I use a
personality merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I
render a general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more
apparent. . . . Fourthly, I attack only those things from which
all personal differences are excluded, in which any such thing
as a background of disagreeable experiences is lacking. "
And now notice the gentleness with which, in
Chapter II. , Wagner—the supposed mortal enemy,
the supposed envied rival to Nietzsche—is treated.
Are these the words and the thoughts of a man who
has lost, or who is losing, control?
And even if we confineourselves simply to the sub-
stance of this work and put the question—Is it a new
Nietzsche or the old Nietzsche that we find in these
pages? Is it the old countenance with which we are
familiar, orare the features distorted,awry, disfigured?
What will the answer be? Obviously there is no new
or even deformed Nietzsche here, because he is still
faithful to the position which he assumed in Thus
spake Zarathustra, five years previously, and is per-
fectly conscious of this fidelity (see p. 141); neither
can he be even on the verge of any marked change,
because the whole of the third chapter, in which he
reviews his life-work, is simply a reiteration and a
confirmation of his old points of view, which are here
made all the more telling by additional arguments
suggested, no doubt, by maturer thought. In fact, if
anything at all is new in this work, it is its cool cer-
tainty, its severe deliberateness, and its extraordin-
arilyincisive vision, as shown, for instance, in the sum-
ming up of the genuine import of the third and fourth
essays in the Thoughts out of Season (pp. 75-76,80,
81, 82), a summing up which a most critical analysis
of the essays in question can but verify.
## p. xii (#20) #############################################
xii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
Romanticism,idealism,Christianity,arestill scorned
and despised; another outlook, a nobler, braver, and
more earthly outlook, is still upheld and revered; the
great yea to life, including all that it contains that is
terrible and questionable, is still pronounced in the
teeth of pessimists,nihilists,anarchists,Christians,and
other decadents; and Germany," Europe's flatland," is
still subjected to the most relentlesscriticism. If there
are anysigns of change,besides those of mere growth,
in this work, they certainly succeed in eluding the
most careful search, undertaken with a full knowledge
of Nietzsche's former opinions, and it would be inter-
esting to know precisely where they are found by
those writers whom the titles of the chapters, alone,
seem so radically to have perturbed.
But the most striking thing of all, the miracle, so
to speak, of this autobiography, is the absence from
it of that loathing, that suggestion of surfeit, with
which a life such as the one Nietzsche had led, would
have filled any other man even of power approximate
to his own. This anchorite, who, in the last years of
his life as a healthy human being, suffered the ex-
perience of seeing even his oldest friends, including
Rhode, show the mostcompleteindifferenceto his lot,
this wrestler with Fate, for whom recognition, in the
persons of Brandes, Taine, and Strindberg, had come
all too late, and whom even support, sympathy, and
help, arriving as it did at last, through Deussen and
from Madame de Salis Marschlins, could no longer
cheer or comfort,—this was the man who was able
notwithstanding to inscribe ihedeviceamor/att upon
his shield on the very eve of his final collapse as a
victim of the unspeakable suffering he had endured,
## p. xiii (#21) ############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xiii
And this final collapse might easily have been fore-
seen. Nietzsche's sensorium, as his autobiography
proves, was probably the most delicate instrument
ever possessed by a human being; and with this fragile
structure—the prerequisite, by the bye, of all genius,
—his terriblewill compelled him to confront themost
profound and most recondite problems. We happen
to know from another artist and profound thinker,
Benjamin Disraeli, who himself had experienced a
dangerous breakdown, what the consequences pre-
cisely are of indulging in excessive activity in the
sphere of the spirit, more particularly when that spirit
is highly organised. Disraeli says in ContariniFlem-
ing (Part iv. chap. v. ):—
"I have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion is
mortifying, that there is only one step between his state who
deeply indulges in imaginative meditation, and insanity; for I
well remember that at this period of my life, when I indulged
in meditation to a degree that would now be impossible, and
I hope unnecessary, my senses sometimes appeared to be
wandering. "
And artists are the proper judges of artists,—not
Oxford Dons, like Dr. Schiller, who, in his imprudent
attemptatdealingwithsomething for which his prag-
matic hands are not sufficiently delicate, eagerly av-
ails himself of popular help in his article on Nietzsche
in the eleventh edition oitheEncyclopcediaBritannica,
and implies the hackneyed and wholly exploded belief
that Nietzsche's philosophy is madness in the making.
As German philosophies, however, are said to go to
Oxford only when they die, we may, perhaps, conclude
from this want of appreciation in that quarter, how
very much alive Nietzsche's doctrine still is.
Not that Nietzsche went mad so soon, but that he
## p. xiv (#22) #############################################
xiv TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
went mad so late is the wonder of wonders. Con-
sidering the extraordinary amount of work he did,
the great task of the transvaluation of all values, which
he actually accomplished, and the fact that he endured
such long years of solitude, which to him,thesensitive
artist to whom friends were everything, must have
been a terrible hardship, we can only wonder at his
great health, and can well believe his sister's account
of the phenomenal longevity and bodily vigour of
his ancestors.
Noone, however, who is initiated, no onewhoreads
this work with understanding, will be in need of this
introductory note of mine; for,to all who know, these
pages must speak for themselves. We are no longer
in the nineteenth century. We have learned many
things since then, and if caution is only one of these
things, at least it will prevent us from judging a book
such as this one, with all its apparent pontifical pride
and surging self-reliance, with undue haste, or with
that arrogant assurance with which the ignorance
of " the humble " and " the modest " has always con-
fronted everything truly great.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
PREFACE
As it is my intention within a very short time to
confront my fellow-men with the very greatest
demand that has ever yet been made upon them,
it seems to me above all necessary to declare here
who and what I am. As a matter of fact, this
ought to be pretty well known already, for I have
not "held my tongue" about myself. But the
disparity which obtains between the greatness of
my task and the smallness of my contemporaries,
is revealed by the fact that people have neither
heard me nor yet seen me. I live on my own
self-made credit, and it is probably only a pre-
judice to suppose that I am alive at all. I do but
require to speak to any one of the scholars who
come to the Ober-Engadine in the summer in
order to convince myself that I am not alive. . . .
Under these circumstances, it is a duty—and one
against which my customary reserve, and to a still
greater degree the pride of my instincts, rebel—
to say: Listen ! for I am such and such a person.
For Heaven's sake do not confound me with any one
else!
2
I am, for instance, in no wise a bogey man, or
moral monster. On the contrary, I am the very
A
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2 PREFACE
opposite in nature to the kind of man that has
been honoured hitherto as virtuous. Between
ourselves, it seems to me that this is precisely a
matter on which I may feel proud. I am a dis-
ciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would
prefer to be even a satyr than a saint. But just
read this book! Maybe I have here succeeded in
expressing this contrast in a cheerful and at the
same time sympathetic manner—maybe this is the
only purpose of the present work.
The very last thing I should promise to accom-
plish would be to " improve" mankind. I do not
set up any new idols; may old idols only learn
what it costs to have legs of clay. To overthrow
idols (idols is the name I give to all ideals) is
much more like my business. In proportion as
an ideal world has been falsely assumed, reality
has been robbed of its value, its meaning, and its
truthfulness. . . . The " true world " and the " ap-
parent world"—in plain English, the fictitious
world and reality. . . . Hitherto the lie of the
ideal has been the curse of reality; by means of
it the very source of mankind's instincts has be-
come mendacious and false; so much so that
those values have come to be worshipped which
are the exact opposite of the ones which would
ensure man's prosperity, his future, and his great
right to a future.
He who knows how to breathe in the air of my
writings is conscious that it is the air of the
heights, that it is bracing. A man must be built
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE 3
for it, otherwise the chances are that it will chill
him. The ice is near, the loneliness is terrible—
but how serenely everything lies in the sunshine!
how freely one can breathe! how much, one feels,
lies beneath one! Philosophy, as I have under-
stood it hitherto, is a voluntary retirement into
regions of ice and mountain-peaks—the seeking-
out of everything strange and questionable in
existence, everything upon which, hitherto, morality
has set its ban. Through long experience, de-
rived from such wanderings in forbidden country,
I acquired an opinion very different from that
which may seem generally desirable, of the causes
which hitherto have led to men's moralising and
idealising. The secret history of philosophers,
the psychology of their great names, was revealed
to me. How much truth can a certain mind en-
dure; how much truth can it dare ? —these ques-
tions became for me ever more and more the actual
test of values. Error (the belief in the ideal) is
not blindness ; error is cowardice. . . . Every con-
quest, every step forward in knowledge, is the out-
come of courage, of hardness towards one's self, of
cleanliness towards one's self. I do not refute
ideals; all I do is to draw on my gloves in their
presence. . . . Nitimur in vetitum: with this de-
vice my philosophy will one day be victorious;
for that which has hitherto been most stringently
forbidden is, without exception, Truth.
4
In my lifework, my Zarathustra holds a place
apart. With it, I gave my fellow-men the greatest
## p. 4 (#26) ###############################################
4 PREFACE
gift that has ever been bestowed upon them.
This book, the voice of which speaks out across
the ages, is not only the loftiest book on earth,
literally the book of mountain air,—the whole
phenomenon, mankind, lies at an incalculable dis-
tance beneath it,—but it is also the deepest book,
born of the inmost abundance of truth; an inex-
haustible well, into which no pitcher can be
lowered without coming up again laden with gold
and with goodness. Here it is not a " prophet"
who speaks, one of those gruesome hybrids of
sickness and Will to Power, whom men call
founders of religions. If a man would not do a
sad wrong to his wisdom, he must above all give
proper heed to the tones—the halcyonic tones—
that fall from the lips of Zarathustra:—
"The most silent words are harbingers of the
storm; thoughts that come on dove's feet lead the
world.
"The figs fall from the trees ; they are good and
sweet, and, when they fall, their red skins are rent.
"A north wind am I unto ripe figs.
"Thus, like figs, do these precepts drop down
to you, my friends; now drink their juice and
their sweet pulp.
"It is autumn all around, and clear sky, and
afternoon. "
No fanatic speaks to you here; this is not a
"sermon "; no faith is demanded in these pages.
From out an infinite treasure of light and well of
joy, drop by drop, my words fall out—a slow and
gentle gait is the cadence of these discourses.
Such things can reach only the most elect; it is
## p. 5 (#27) ###############################################
PREFACE
a rare privilege to be a listener here; not every
one who likes can have ears to hear Zarathustra.
Is not Zarathustra, because of these things, a
seducer? . . . But what, indeed, does he himself
say, when for the first time he goes back to his
solitude? Just the reverse of that which any
“ Sage," " Saint," " Saviour of the world,” and
other decadent would say. . . . Not only his
words, but he himself is other than they.
“Alone do I now go, my disciples ! Get ye also
hence, and alone! Thus would I have it.
“ Verily, I beseech you: take your leave of me
and arm yourselves against Zarathustra! And
better still, be ashamed of him! Maybe he hath
deceived you.
“The knight of knowledge must be able not only
to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.
“ The man who remaineth a pupil requiteth his
teacher but ill. And why would ye not pluck at
my wreath?
“Ye honour me; but what if your reverence
should one day break down ? Take heed, lest a
statue crush you.
“Ye say ye believe in Zarathustra ? But of
what account is Zarathustra ? Ye are my be-
lievers : but of what account are all believers ?
“Ye had not yet sought yourselves when ye
found me. Thus do all believers; therefore is all
believing worth so little.
"Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves;
and only when ye have all denied me will I come
back unto you. ”
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
## p. 6 (#28) ###############################################
## p. 7 (#29) ###############################################
On this perfect day, when everything is ripening,
and not only the grapes are getting brown, a ray
of sunshine has fallen on my life: I looked behind
me, I looked before me, and never have I seen so
many good things all at once. Not in vain have
I buried my four-and-fortieth year to-day; I had
the right to bury it—that in it which still had life,
has been saved and is immortal. The first book
of the Transvaluation of all Values, The Songs of
Zarathustra, The Twilight of the Idols, my attempt
to philosophise with the hammer—all these things
are the gift of this year, and even of its last quarter.
How could I help being tltankful to the whole of my
life?
That is why I am now going to tell myself the
story of my life.
## p. 8 (#30) ###############################################
## p. 9 (#31) ###############################################
ECCE HOMO
HOW ONE BECOMES WHAT ONE IS
WHY I AM SO WISE
THE happiness of my existence, its unique char-
acter perhaps, consists in its fatefulness: to speak
in a riddle, as my own father I am already dead,
as my own mother I still live and grow old. This
double origin, taken as it were from the highest
and lowest rungs of the ladder of life, at once a
decadent and a beginning, this, if anything, ex-
plains that neutrality, that freedom from partisan-
ship in regard to the general problem of existence,
which perhaps distinguishes me. To the first in-
dications of ascending or of descending life my
nostrils are more sensitive than those of any man
that has yet lived. In this domain I am a master
to my backbone—I know both sides, for I am
both sides. My father died in his six-and-thirtieth
year: he was delicate, lovable, and morbid, like one
who is preordained to pay simply a flying visit—
a gracious reminder of life rather than life itself.
In the same year that his life declined mine also
declined: in my six-and-thirtieth year I reached
the lowest point in my vitality,—I still lived, but
## p. 10 (#32) ##############################################
IO ECCE HOMO
my eyes could distinguish nothing that lay three
paces away from me. At" that time—it was the
year 1879—I resigned my professorship at Bale,
lived through the summer like a shadow in St.
Moritz, and spent the following winter, the most
sunless of my life, like a shadow in Naumburg.
This was my lowest ebb. During this period I
wrote The Wanderer and His Shadow. Without
a doubt I was conversant with shadows then. The
winter that followed, my first winter in Genoa,
brought forth that sweetness and spirituality which
is almost inseparable from extreme poverty of blood
and muscle, in the shape of The Dawn of Day.
The perfect lucidity and cheerfulness, the intel-
lectual exuberance even, that this work reflects,
coincides, in my case, not only with the most pro-
found physiological weakness, but also with an ex-
cess of suffering. In the midst of the agony of a
headache which lasted three days, accompanied by
violent nausea, I was possessed of most singular
dialectical clearness, and in absolutely cold blood
I then thought out things, for which, in my more
healthy moments, I am not enough of a climber,
not sufficiently subtle, not sufficiently cold. My
readers perhaps know to what extent I consider dia-
lectic a symptom of decadence, as, for instance, in
the most famous of all cases—the case of Socrates.
All the morbid disturbances of the intellect, even
that semi-stupor which accompanies fever, have,
unto this day, remained completely unknown to me;
and for my first information concerning their nature
and frequency, I was obliged to have recourse to
the learned works which have been compiled on the
## p. 11 (#33) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE II
subject. My circulation is slow. No one has ever
been able to detect fever in me. A doctor who
treated me for some time as a nerve patient finally
declared: "No! there is nothing wrong with your
nerves, it is simply I who am nervous. " It has
been absolutely impossible to ascertain any local
degeneration in me, nor any organic stomach
trouble, however much I may have suffered from
profound weakness of the gastric system as the
result of general exhaustion. Even my eye trouble,
which sometimes approached so parlously near to
blindness, was only an effect and not a cause; for,
whenever my general vital condition improved, my
power of vision also increased. Having admitted
all this, do I need to say that I am experienced
in questions of decadence? I know them inside
and out.
Find more books at https://www. hathitrust. org.
Title: The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first complete
and authorized English translation, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Author: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.
Publisher: [Edinburgh and London : T. N. Foulis, 1909-1913. ]
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I
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## p. i (#9) ################################################
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
EDITED BY
Dr. OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME SEVENTEEN
ECCE HOMO
## p. ii (#10) ##############################################
Of the First Edition of
Two Thousand Copies
this is
No.
495
## p. iii (#11) #############################################
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
ECCE HOMO
(NIETZSCHES AUTOBIOGRAPHY)
TRANSLATED BY
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
POETRY RENDERED BY
PAUL V. COHN FRANCIS BICKLEY
HERMAN SCHEFFAUER Dr. G. T. WRENCH
HYMN TO LIFE (composed by F. NIETZSCHE)
T. N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: and LONDON
1911
## p. iv (#12) ##############################################
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh.
## p. v (#13) ###############################################
Morris
Soth
15-2.
CONTENTS
PAGE
vii
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR'S PREFACE •
.
.
.
Why I AM SO WISE -
Why I AM SO CLEVER
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS -
The Birth of Tragedy ·
Thoughts out of Season
Human, All-too-Human
The Dawn of Day
Joyful Wisdom -
Thus spake Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil -
The Genealogy of Morals
118
The Twilight of the Idols
The Case of Wagner .
121
Why I AM A FATALITY
131
## p. vi (#14) ##############################################
CONTENTS
PAGE
EDITORIAL NOTE TO POETRY
.
.
.
145
POETRY-
Songs, Epigrams, etc. ·
·
Dionysus-Dithyrambs · · ·
Fragments of Dionysus-Dithyrambs ·
·
·
·
147
173
191
HYMN TO LIFE, COMPOSED BY F. NIETZSCHE
-
209
## p. vii (#15) #############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
Ecce Homo is the last prose work that Nietzsche
wrote. It is true that the pamphlet Nietzsche contra
Wagner was prepared a month later than the Auto-
biography ; but we cannot consider this pamphlet as
anything more than a compilation, seeing that it con-
sists entirely of aphorisms drawn from such previous
works as Joyful Wisdom, Beyond Good and Evil, The
Genealogy of Morals, etc. Coming at the end of a year
in which he had produced the Case of Wagner, Tfie
Twilight of the Idols, and TIte Antichrist, Ecce Homo
is not only a coping-stone worthy of the wonderful
creations of that year, but also a fitting conclusion to
his whole life, in the form of a grand summing up of
his character as a man, his purpose as a reformer, and
his achievement as a thinker. As if half conscious of
his approaching spiritual end, Nietzsche here bids his
friends farewell, just in the manner in which, in the
Twilight of tlte Idols (Aph. 36, Part ix. ), he declares
thatevery one should be able to take leave of his circle
of relatives and intimates when his timeseemsto have
come—that is to say, while he is still himself while he
still knows what he is about,and is able tomeasure his
own life and life in general, and speak of both in a
manner which is not vouchsafed to the groaning in-
valid, to the man lying on his back, decrepit and ex-
## p. viii (#16) ############################################
viii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
hausted, or to the moribund victim of some wasting
disease. Nietzsche's spiritual death, like his whole
life, was in singular harmony with his doctrine: he
died suddenly and proudly,—sword in hand. War,
which he—and he alone among all the philosophers
of Christendom—had praised so whole-heartedly, at
last struck him down in the full vigour of his man-
hood, and left him a victim on the battlefield—the
terrible battlefield of thought, on which there is no
quarter, and for which no Geneva Convention has yet
been established or even thought of.
To those who know Nietzsche's life-work, no apol-
ogy will be needed for the form and content of this
wonderful work. They will know, at least, that a man
either is, or is not, aware of his significance and of the
significance of what he has accomplished, and that if
he is aware of it, then self-realisation, even of the kind
which we find in these pages, is neither morbid nor
suspicious, but necessary and inevitable. Such chap-
ter headings as " Why I am so Wise," " Why I am a
Fatality," "Why I write such Excellent Books,"—
however much they may have disturbed the equan-
imity, and "objectivity" in particular, of certain
Nietzsche biographers, can be regarded as patho-
logical only in a democratic age in which people have
lost all sense of gradation and rank, and in which the
virtues of modesty and humility have to be preached
far and wide as a corrective against the vulgar pre-
tensions of thousands of wretched nobodies. For
little people can be endured only as modest citizens
or humble Christians. If, however, they demand a
like modesty on the part of the truly great; if they
raise their voices against Nietzsche's lack of the very
## p. ix (#17) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION ix
virtue they so abundantly possess or pretend to pos-
sess, it is time to remind them of Goethe's famous re-
mark: "Nur Lumpesindbescheiden" (Only nobodies
are ever modest).
It took Nietzsche barely three weeks to write this
story of his life. Begun on the 15th of October 1888,
his four-and-fourtieth birthday, it was finished on the
4th of November of the same year, and, but for a few
trifling modifications and additions, is just as Nietz-
sche left it. It was not published in Germany until
the year 1908, eight years after Nietzsche's death. In
a letter dated the 27th of December 1888, addressed
to the musical composer Fuchs, the author declares
the object of the work to be to dispose of all discus-
sion, doubt, and inquiry concerning his own person-
ality, in order to leave the public mind freetoconsider
merely " the things for the sake of which he existed"
(" die Dinge, derentwegen ich da bin "). And, true to
his intention, Nietzsche's honesty in these pages is
certainly one of the most remarkable features about
them. From the first chapter, in which he frankly ac-
knowledges the decadent elements within him, to the
last page, whereon he characterises his mission, his
life-task, and his achievement, by means of the one
symbol, Dionysus versus Christ,—everything comes
straightfromtheshoulder, withouthesitation, without
fear of consequences, and, above all, without conceal-
ment. Only in one place does he appear to conceal
something, and then he actually leads one to under-
stand that he is doing so. It is in regard to Wagner,
the greatest friend of his life. "Who doubts," he
says, " that I, old artillery-man that I am, would be
able if I liked to point my heavy guns at Wagner? "
## p. x (#18) ###############################################
x TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
—But he adds: "Everything decisive in thisquestion
I kept to myself—I have loved Wagner" (p. 122).
To point, as many have done, to the proximity of
all Nietzsche's autumn work of the year 1888 to his
breakdown at the beginning of 1889, and to argue
that in all its main features it foretells the catastrophe
that is imminent, seems a little too plausible, a little
too obvious and simple to require refutation. That
Nietzsche really was in a state which in medicine is
known as euphoria—that istosay,that stateof highest
well-being and capacity which often precedes a com-
plete breakdown, cannot, I suppose, be questioned;
for his style, his penetrating vision, and his vigour,
reach their zenith in the works written in thisautumn
of 1888; but the contention that the matter, the sub-
stance, of these works reveals any signs whatsoever
of waning mental health, or, as a certain French bio-
grapher has it, of an inability to "hold himself and
his judgments in check," is best contradicted by the
internal evidence itself. To take just a few examples
at random, examine the cold and calculating tone
of self-analysis in Chapter I. of the present work; con-
siderthe reserve and the restraintwith which the idea
in Aphorism 7 of that chapter is worked out,—not to
speak of the restraint and self-mastery in the idea
itself, namely:—
"To be one's enemy's equal—this is the first condition of an
honourable duel. Where one despises one cannot wage war.
Where one commands, where one sees something beneath one,
one oughtnot to wage war. My war tactics can be reduced to four
principles : First, I attack only things that are triumphant—if
necessary I wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I
attack only those things against which I find no allies, against
which I stand alone—against which I compromise nobody but
## p. xi (#19) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xi
myself. . . . Thirdly, I never make personal attacks—I use a
personality merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I
render a general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more
apparent. . . . Fourthly, I attack only those things from which
all personal differences are excluded, in which any such thing
as a background of disagreeable experiences is lacking. "
And now notice the gentleness with which, in
Chapter II. , Wagner—the supposed mortal enemy,
the supposed envied rival to Nietzsche—is treated.
Are these the words and the thoughts of a man who
has lost, or who is losing, control?
And even if we confineourselves simply to the sub-
stance of this work and put the question—Is it a new
Nietzsche or the old Nietzsche that we find in these
pages? Is it the old countenance with which we are
familiar, orare the features distorted,awry, disfigured?
What will the answer be? Obviously there is no new
or even deformed Nietzsche here, because he is still
faithful to the position which he assumed in Thus
spake Zarathustra, five years previously, and is per-
fectly conscious of this fidelity (see p. 141); neither
can he be even on the verge of any marked change,
because the whole of the third chapter, in which he
reviews his life-work, is simply a reiteration and a
confirmation of his old points of view, which are here
made all the more telling by additional arguments
suggested, no doubt, by maturer thought. In fact, if
anything at all is new in this work, it is its cool cer-
tainty, its severe deliberateness, and its extraordin-
arilyincisive vision, as shown, for instance, in the sum-
ming up of the genuine import of the third and fourth
essays in the Thoughts out of Season (pp. 75-76,80,
81, 82), a summing up which a most critical analysis
of the essays in question can but verify.
## p. xii (#20) #############################################
xii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
Romanticism,idealism,Christianity,arestill scorned
and despised; another outlook, a nobler, braver, and
more earthly outlook, is still upheld and revered; the
great yea to life, including all that it contains that is
terrible and questionable, is still pronounced in the
teeth of pessimists,nihilists,anarchists,Christians,and
other decadents; and Germany," Europe's flatland," is
still subjected to the most relentlesscriticism. If there
are anysigns of change,besides those of mere growth,
in this work, they certainly succeed in eluding the
most careful search, undertaken with a full knowledge
of Nietzsche's former opinions, and it would be inter-
esting to know precisely where they are found by
those writers whom the titles of the chapters, alone,
seem so radically to have perturbed.
But the most striking thing of all, the miracle, so
to speak, of this autobiography, is the absence from
it of that loathing, that suggestion of surfeit, with
which a life such as the one Nietzsche had led, would
have filled any other man even of power approximate
to his own. This anchorite, who, in the last years of
his life as a healthy human being, suffered the ex-
perience of seeing even his oldest friends, including
Rhode, show the mostcompleteindifferenceto his lot,
this wrestler with Fate, for whom recognition, in the
persons of Brandes, Taine, and Strindberg, had come
all too late, and whom even support, sympathy, and
help, arriving as it did at last, through Deussen and
from Madame de Salis Marschlins, could no longer
cheer or comfort,—this was the man who was able
notwithstanding to inscribe ihedeviceamor/att upon
his shield on the very eve of his final collapse as a
victim of the unspeakable suffering he had endured,
## p. xiii (#21) ############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xiii
And this final collapse might easily have been fore-
seen. Nietzsche's sensorium, as his autobiography
proves, was probably the most delicate instrument
ever possessed by a human being; and with this fragile
structure—the prerequisite, by the bye, of all genius,
—his terriblewill compelled him to confront themost
profound and most recondite problems. We happen
to know from another artist and profound thinker,
Benjamin Disraeli, who himself had experienced a
dangerous breakdown, what the consequences pre-
cisely are of indulging in excessive activity in the
sphere of the spirit, more particularly when that spirit
is highly organised. Disraeli says in ContariniFlem-
ing (Part iv. chap. v. ):—
"I have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion is
mortifying, that there is only one step between his state who
deeply indulges in imaginative meditation, and insanity; for I
well remember that at this period of my life, when I indulged
in meditation to a degree that would now be impossible, and
I hope unnecessary, my senses sometimes appeared to be
wandering. "
And artists are the proper judges of artists,—not
Oxford Dons, like Dr. Schiller, who, in his imprudent
attemptatdealingwithsomething for which his prag-
matic hands are not sufficiently delicate, eagerly av-
ails himself of popular help in his article on Nietzsche
in the eleventh edition oitheEncyclopcediaBritannica,
and implies the hackneyed and wholly exploded belief
that Nietzsche's philosophy is madness in the making.
As German philosophies, however, are said to go to
Oxford only when they die, we may, perhaps, conclude
from this want of appreciation in that quarter, how
very much alive Nietzsche's doctrine still is.
Not that Nietzsche went mad so soon, but that he
## p. xiv (#22) #############################################
xiv TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
went mad so late is the wonder of wonders. Con-
sidering the extraordinary amount of work he did,
the great task of the transvaluation of all values, which
he actually accomplished, and the fact that he endured
such long years of solitude, which to him,thesensitive
artist to whom friends were everything, must have
been a terrible hardship, we can only wonder at his
great health, and can well believe his sister's account
of the phenomenal longevity and bodily vigour of
his ancestors.
Noone, however, who is initiated, no onewhoreads
this work with understanding, will be in need of this
introductory note of mine; for,to all who know, these
pages must speak for themselves. We are no longer
in the nineteenth century. We have learned many
things since then, and if caution is only one of these
things, at least it will prevent us from judging a book
such as this one, with all its apparent pontifical pride
and surging self-reliance, with undue haste, or with
that arrogant assurance with which the ignorance
of " the humble " and " the modest " has always con-
fronted everything truly great.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
PREFACE
As it is my intention within a very short time to
confront my fellow-men with the very greatest
demand that has ever yet been made upon them,
it seems to me above all necessary to declare here
who and what I am. As a matter of fact, this
ought to be pretty well known already, for I have
not "held my tongue" about myself. But the
disparity which obtains between the greatness of
my task and the smallness of my contemporaries,
is revealed by the fact that people have neither
heard me nor yet seen me. I live on my own
self-made credit, and it is probably only a pre-
judice to suppose that I am alive at all. I do but
require to speak to any one of the scholars who
come to the Ober-Engadine in the summer in
order to convince myself that I am not alive. . . .
Under these circumstances, it is a duty—and one
against which my customary reserve, and to a still
greater degree the pride of my instincts, rebel—
to say: Listen ! for I am such and such a person.
For Heaven's sake do not confound me with any one
else!
2
I am, for instance, in no wise a bogey man, or
moral monster. On the contrary, I am the very
A
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2 PREFACE
opposite in nature to the kind of man that has
been honoured hitherto as virtuous. Between
ourselves, it seems to me that this is precisely a
matter on which I may feel proud. I am a dis-
ciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would
prefer to be even a satyr than a saint. But just
read this book! Maybe I have here succeeded in
expressing this contrast in a cheerful and at the
same time sympathetic manner—maybe this is the
only purpose of the present work.
The very last thing I should promise to accom-
plish would be to " improve" mankind. I do not
set up any new idols; may old idols only learn
what it costs to have legs of clay. To overthrow
idols (idols is the name I give to all ideals) is
much more like my business. In proportion as
an ideal world has been falsely assumed, reality
has been robbed of its value, its meaning, and its
truthfulness. . . . The " true world " and the " ap-
parent world"—in plain English, the fictitious
world and reality. . . . Hitherto the lie of the
ideal has been the curse of reality; by means of
it the very source of mankind's instincts has be-
come mendacious and false; so much so that
those values have come to be worshipped which
are the exact opposite of the ones which would
ensure man's prosperity, his future, and his great
right to a future.
He who knows how to breathe in the air of my
writings is conscious that it is the air of the
heights, that it is bracing. A man must be built
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE 3
for it, otherwise the chances are that it will chill
him. The ice is near, the loneliness is terrible—
but how serenely everything lies in the sunshine!
how freely one can breathe! how much, one feels,
lies beneath one! Philosophy, as I have under-
stood it hitherto, is a voluntary retirement into
regions of ice and mountain-peaks—the seeking-
out of everything strange and questionable in
existence, everything upon which, hitherto, morality
has set its ban. Through long experience, de-
rived from such wanderings in forbidden country,
I acquired an opinion very different from that
which may seem generally desirable, of the causes
which hitherto have led to men's moralising and
idealising. The secret history of philosophers,
the psychology of their great names, was revealed
to me. How much truth can a certain mind en-
dure; how much truth can it dare ? —these ques-
tions became for me ever more and more the actual
test of values. Error (the belief in the ideal) is
not blindness ; error is cowardice. . . . Every con-
quest, every step forward in knowledge, is the out-
come of courage, of hardness towards one's self, of
cleanliness towards one's self. I do not refute
ideals; all I do is to draw on my gloves in their
presence. . . . Nitimur in vetitum: with this de-
vice my philosophy will one day be victorious;
for that which has hitherto been most stringently
forbidden is, without exception, Truth.
), he declares
thatevery one should be able to take leave of his circle
of relatives and intimates when his timeseemsto have
come—that is to say, while he is still himself while he
still knows what he is about,and is able tomeasure his
own life and life in general, and speak of both in a
manner which is not vouchsafed to the groaning in-
valid, to the man lying on his back, decrepit and ex-
## p. viii (#16) ############################################
viii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
hausted, or to the moribund victim of some wasting
disease. Nietzsche's spiritual death, like his whole
life, was in singular harmony with his doctrine: he
died suddenly and proudly,—sword in hand. War,
which he—and he alone among all the philosophers
of Christendom—had praised so whole-heartedly, at
last struck him down in the full vigour of his man-
hood, and left him a victim on the battlefield—the
terrible battlefield of thought, on which there is no
quarter, and for which no Geneva Convention has yet
been established or even thought of.
To those who know Nietzsche's life-work, no apol-
ogy will be needed for the form and content of this
wonderful work. They will know, at least, that a man
either is, or is not, aware of his significance and of the
significance of what he has accomplished, and that if
he is aware of it, then self-realisation, even of the kind
which we find in these pages, is neither morbid nor
suspicious, but necessary and inevitable. Such chap-
ter headings as " Why I am so Wise," " Why I am a
Fatality," "Why I write such Excellent Books,"—
however much they may have disturbed the equan-
imity, and "objectivity" in particular, of certain
Nietzsche biographers, can be regarded as patho-
logical only in a democratic age in which people have
lost all sense of gradation and rank, and in which the
virtues of modesty and humility have to be preached
far and wide as a corrective against the vulgar pre-
tensions of thousands of wretched nobodies. For
little people can be endured only as modest citizens
or humble Christians. If, however, they demand a
like modesty on the part of the truly great; if they
raise their voices against Nietzsche's lack of the very
## p. ix (#17) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION ix
virtue they so abundantly possess or pretend to pos-
sess, it is time to remind them of Goethe's famous re-
mark: "Nur Lumpesindbescheiden" (Only nobodies
are ever modest).
It took Nietzsche barely three weeks to write this
story of his life. Begun on the 15th of October 1888,
his four-and-fourtieth birthday, it was finished on the
4th of November of the same year, and, but for a few
trifling modifications and additions, is just as Nietz-
sche left it. It was not published in Germany until
the year 1908, eight years after Nietzsche's death. In
a letter dated the 27th of December 1888, addressed
to the musical composer Fuchs, the author declares
the object of the work to be to dispose of all discus-
sion, doubt, and inquiry concerning his own person-
ality, in order to leave the public mind freetoconsider
merely " the things for the sake of which he existed"
(" die Dinge, derentwegen ich da bin "). And, true to
his intention, Nietzsche's honesty in these pages is
certainly one of the most remarkable features about
them. From the first chapter, in which he frankly ac-
knowledges the decadent elements within him, to the
last page, whereon he characterises his mission, his
life-task, and his achievement, by means of the one
symbol, Dionysus versus Christ,—everything comes
straightfromtheshoulder, withouthesitation, without
fear of consequences, and, above all, without conceal-
ment. Only in one place does he appear to conceal
something, and then he actually leads one to under-
stand that he is doing so. It is in regard to Wagner,
the greatest friend of his life. "Who doubts," he
says, " that I, old artillery-man that I am, would be
able if I liked to point my heavy guns at Wagner? "
## p. x (#18) ###############################################
x TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
—But he adds: "Everything decisive in thisquestion
I kept to myself—I have loved Wagner" (p. 122).
To point, as many have done, to the proximity of
all Nietzsche's autumn work of the year 1888 to his
breakdown at the beginning of 1889, and to argue
that in all its main features it foretells the catastrophe
that is imminent, seems a little too plausible, a little
too obvious and simple to require refutation. That
Nietzsche really was in a state which in medicine is
known as euphoria—that istosay,that stateof highest
well-being and capacity which often precedes a com-
plete breakdown, cannot, I suppose, be questioned;
for his style, his penetrating vision, and his vigour,
reach their zenith in the works written in thisautumn
of 1888; but the contention that the matter, the sub-
stance, of these works reveals any signs whatsoever
of waning mental health, or, as a certain French bio-
grapher has it, of an inability to "hold himself and
his judgments in check," is best contradicted by the
internal evidence itself. To take just a few examples
at random, examine the cold and calculating tone
of self-analysis in Chapter I. of the present work; con-
siderthe reserve and the restraintwith which the idea
in Aphorism 7 of that chapter is worked out,—not to
speak of the restraint and self-mastery in the idea
itself, namely:—
"To be one's enemy's equal—this is the first condition of an
honourable duel. Where one despises one cannot wage war.
Where one commands, where one sees something beneath one,
one oughtnot to wage war. My war tactics can be reduced to four
principles : First, I attack only things that are triumphant—if
necessary I wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I
attack only those things against which I find no allies, against
which I stand alone—against which I compromise nobody but
## p. xi (#19) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xi
myself. . . . Thirdly, I never make personal attacks—I use a
personality merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I
render a general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more
apparent. . . . Fourthly, I attack only those things from which
all personal differences are excluded, in which any such thing
as a background of disagreeable experiences is lacking. "
And now notice the gentleness with which, in
Chapter II. , Wagner—the supposed mortal enemy,
the supposed envied rival to Nietzsche—is treated.
Are these the words and the thoughts of a man who
has lost, or who is losing, control?
And even if we confineourselves simply to the sub-
stance of this work and put the question—Is it a new
Nietzsche or the old Nietzsche that we find in these
pages? Is it the old countenance with which we are
familiar, orare the features distorted,awry, disfigured?
What will the answer be? Obviously there is no new
or even deformed Nietzsche here, because he is still
faithful to the position which he assumed in Thus
spake Zarathustra, five years previously, and is per-
fectly conscious of this fidelity (see p. 141); neither
can he be even on the verge of any marked change,
because the whole of the third chapter, in which he
reviews his life-work, is simply a reiteration and a
confirmation of his old points of view, which are here
made all the more telling by additional arguments
suggested, no doubt, by maturer thought. In fact, if
anything at all is new in this work, it is its cool cer-
tainty, its severe deliberateness, and its extraordin-
arilyincisive vision, as shown, for instance, in the sum-
ming up of the genuine import of the third and fourth
essays in the Thoughts out of Season (pp. 75-76,80,
81, 82), a summing up which a most critical analysis
of the essays in question can but verify.
## p. xii (#20) #############################################
xii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
Romanticism,idealism,Christianity,arestill scorned
and despised; another outlook, a nobler, braver, and
more earthly outlook, is still upheld and revered; the
great yea to life, including all that it contains that is
terrible and questionable, is still pronounced in the
teeth of pessimists,nihilists,anarchists,Christians,and
other decadents; and Germany," Europe's flatland," is
still subjected to the most relentlesscriticism. If there
are anysigns of change,besides those of mere growth,
in this work, they certainly succeed in eluding the
most careful search, undertaken with a full knowledge
of Nietzsche's former opinions, and it would be inter-
esting to know precisely where they are found by
those writers whom the titles of the chapters, alone,
seem so radically to have perturbed.
But the most striking thing of all, the miracle, so
to speak, of this autobiography, is the absence from
it of that loathing, that suggestion of surfeit, with
which a life such as the one Nietzsche had led, would
have filled any other man even of power approximate
to his own. This anchorite, who, in the last years of
his life as a healthy human being, suffered the ex-
perience of seeing even his oldest friends, including
Rhode, show the mostcompleteindifferenceto his lot,
this wrestler with Fate, for whom recognition, in the
persons of Brandes, Taine, and Strindberg, had come
all too late, and whom even support, sympathy, and
help, arriving as it did at last, through Deussen and
from Madame de Salis Marschlins, could no longer
cheer or comfort,—this was the man who was able
notwithstanding to inscribe ihedeviceamor/att upon
his shield on the very eve of his final collapse as a
victim of the unspeakable suffering he had endured,
## p. xiii (#21) ############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xiii
And this final collapse might easily have been fore-
seen. Nietzsche's sensorium, as his autobiography
proves, was probably the most delicate instrument
ever possessed by a human being; and with this fragile
structure—the prerequisite, by the bye, of all genius,
—his terriblewill compelled him to confront themost
profound and most recondite problems. We happen
to know from another artist and profound thinker,
Benjamin Disraeli, who himself had experienced a
dangerous breakdown, what the consequences pre-
cisely are of indulging in excessive activity in the
sphere of the spirit, more particularly when that spirit
is highly organised. Disraeli says in ContariniFlem-
ing (Part iv. chap. v. ):—
"I have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion is
mortifying, that there is only one step between his state who
deeply indulges in imaginative meditation, and insanity; for I
well remember that at this period of my life, when I indulged
in meditation to a degree that would now be impossible, and
I hope unnecessary, my senses sometimes appeared to be
wandering. "
And artists are the proper judges of artists,—not
Oxford Dons, like Dr. Schiller, who, in his imprudent
attemptatdealingwithsomething for which his prag-
matic hands are not sufficiently delicate, eagerly av-
ails himself of popular help in his article on Nietzsche
in the eleventh edition oitheEncyclopcediaBritannica,
and implies the hackneyed and wholly exploded belief
that Nietzsche's philosophy is madness in the making.
As German philosophies, however, are said to go to
Oxford only when they die, we may, perhaps, conclude
from this want of appreciation in that quarter, how
very much alive Nietzsche's doctrine still is.
Not that Nietzsche went mad so soon, but that he
## p. xiv (#22) #############################################
xiv TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
went mad so late is the wonder of wonders. Con-
sidering the extraordinary amount of work he did,
the great task of the transvaluation of all values, which
he actually accomplished, and the fact that he endured
such long years of solitude, which to him,thesensitive
artist to whom friends were everything, must have
been a terrible hardship, we can only wonder at his
great health, and can well believe his sister's account
of the phenomenal longevity and bodily vigour of
his ancestors.
Noone, however, who is initiated, no onewhoreads
this work with understanding, will be in need of this
introductory note of mine; for,to all who know, these
pages must speak for themselves. We are no longer
in the nineteenth century. We have learned many
things since then, and if caution is only one of these
things, at least it will prevent us from judging a book
such as this one, with all its apparent pontifical pride
and surging self-reliance, with undue haste, or with
that arrogant assurance with which the ignorance
of " the humble " and " the modest " has always con-
fronted everything truly great.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
PREFACE
As it is my intention within a very short time to
confront my fellow-men with the very greatest
demand that has ever yet been made upon them,
it seems to me above all necessary to declare here
who and what I am. As a matter of fact, this
ought to be pretty well known already, for I have
not "held my tongue" about myself. But the
disparity which obtains between the greatness of
my task and the smallness of my contemporaries,
is revealed by the fact that people have neither
heard me nor yet seen me. I live on my own
self-made credit, and it is probably only a pre-
judice to suppose that I am alive at all. I do but
require to speak to any one of the scholars who
come to the Ober-Engadine in the summer in
order to convince myself that I am not alive. . . .
Under these circumstances, it is a duty—and one
against which my customary reserve, and to a still
greater degree the pride of my instincts, rebel—
to say: Listen ! for I am such and such a person.
For Heaven's sake do not confound me with any one
else!
2
I am, for instance, in no wise a bogey man, or
moral monster. On the contrary, I am the very
A
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2 PREFACE
opposite in nature to the kind of man that has
been honoured hitherto as virtuous. Between
ourselves, it seems to me that this is precisely a
matter on which I may feel proud. I am a dis-
ciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would
prefer to be even a satyr than a saint. But just
read this book! Maybe I have here succeeded in
expressing this contrast in a cheerful and at the
same time sympathetic manner—maybe this is the
only purpose of the present work.
The very last thing I should promise to accom-
plish would be to " improve" mankind. I do not
set up any new idols; may old idols only learn
what it costs to have legs of clay. To overthrow
idols (idols is the name I give to all ideals) is
much more like my business. In proportion as
an ideal world has been falsely assumed, reality
has been robbed of its value, its meaning, and its
truthfulness. . . . The " true world " and the " ap-
parent world"—in plain English, the fictitious
world and reality. . . . Hitherto the lie of the
ideal has been the curse of reality; by means of
it the very source of mankind's instincts has be-
come mendacious and false; so much so that
those values have come to be worshipped which
are the exact opposite of the ones which would
ensure man's prosperity, his future, and his great
right to a future.
He who knows how to breathe in the air of my
writings is conscious that it is the air of the
heights, that it is bracing. A man must be built
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE 3
for it, otherwise the chances are that it will chill
him. The ice is near, the loneliness is terrible—
but how serenely everything lies in the sunshine!
how freely one can breathe! how much, one feels,
lies beneath one! Philosophy, as I have under-
stood it hitherto, is a voluntary retirement into
regions of ice and mountain-peaks—the seeking-
out of everything strange and questionable in
existence, everything upon which, hitherto, morality
has set its ban. Through long experience, de-
rived from such wanderings in forbidden country,
I acquired an opinion very different from that
which may seem generally desirable, of the causes
which hitherto have led to men's moralising and
idealising. The secret history of philosophers,
the psychology of their great names, was revealed
to me. How much truth can a certain mind en-
dure; how much truth can it dare ? —these ques-
tions became for me ever more and more the actual
test of values. Error (the belief in the ideal) is
not blindness ; error is cowardice. . . . Every con-
quest, every step forward in knowledge, is the out-
come of courage, of hardness towards one's self, of
cleanliness towards one's self. I do not refute
ideals; all I do is to draw on my gloves in their
presence. . . . Nitimur in vetitum: with this de-
vice my philosophy will one day be victorious;
for that which has hitherto been most stringently
forbidden is, without exception, Truth.
4
In my lifework, my Zarathustra holds a place
apart. With it, I gave my fellow-men the greatest
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4 PREFACE
gift that has ever been bestowed upon them.
This book, the voice of which speaks out across
the ages, is not only the loftiest book on earth,
literally the book of mountain air,—the whole
phenomenon, mankind, lies at an incalculable dis-
tance beneath it,—but it is also the deepest book,
born of the inmost abundance of truth; an inex-
haustible well, into which no pitcher can be
lowered without coming up again laden with gold
and with goodness. Here it is not a " prophet"
who speaks, one of those gruesome hybrids of
sickness and Will to Power, whom men call
founders of religions. If a man would not do a
sad wrong to his wisdom, he must above all give
proper heed to the tones—the halcyonic tones—
that fall from the lips of Zarathustra:—
"The most silent words are harbingers of the
storm; thoughts that come on dove's feet lead the
world.
"The figs fall from the trees ; they are good and
sweet, and, when they fall, their red skins are rent.
"A north wind am I unto ripe figs.
"Thus, like figs, do these precepts drop down
to you, my friends; now drink their juice and
their sweet pulp.
"It is autumn all around, and clear sky, and
afternoon. "
No fanatic speaks to you here; this is not a
"sermon "; no faith is demanded in these pages.
From out an infinite treasure of light and well of
joy, drop by drop, my words fall out—a slow and
gentle gait is the cadence of these discourses.
Such things can reach only the most elect; it is
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PREFACE
a rare privilege to be a listener here; not every
one who likes can have ears to hear Zarathustra.
Is not Zarathustra, because of these things, a
seducer? . . . But what, indeed, does he himself
say, when for the first time he goes back to his
solitude? Just the reverse of that which any
“ Sage," " Saint," " Saviour of the world,” and
other decadent would say. . . . Not only his
words, but he himself is other than they.
“Alone do I now go, my disciples ! Get ye also
hence, and alone! Thus would I have it.
“ Verily, I beseech you: take your leave of me
and arm yourselves against Zarathustra! And
better still, be ashamed of him! Maybe he hath
deceived you.
“The knight of knowledge must be able not only
to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.
“ The man who remaineth a pupil requiteth his
teacher but ill. And why would ye not pluck at
my wreath?
“Ye honour me; but what if your reverence
should one day break down ? Take heed, lest a
statue crush you.
“Ye say ye believe in Zarathustra ? But of
what account is Zarathustra ? Ye are my be-
lievers : but of what account are all believers ?
“Ye had not yet sought yourselves when ye
found me. Thus do all believers; therefore is all
believing worth so little.
"Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves;
and only when ye have all denied me will I come
back unto you. ”
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
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## p. 7 (#29) ###############################################
On this perfect day, when everything is ripening,
and not only the grapes are getting brown, a ray
of sunshine has fallen on my life: I looked behind
me, I looked before me, and never have I seen so
many good things all at once. Not in vain have
I buried my four-and-fortieth year to-day; I had
the right to bury it—that in it which still had life,
has been saved and is immortal. The first book
of the Transvaluation of all Values, The Songs of
Zarathustra, The Twilight of the Idols, my attempt
to philosophise with the hammer—all these things
are the gift of this year, and even of its last quarter.
How could I help being tltankful to the whole of my
life?
That is why I am now going to tell myself the
story of my life.
## p. 8 (#30) ###############################################
## p. 9 (#31) ###############################################
ECCE HOMO
HOW ONE BECOMES WHAT ONE IS
WHY I AM SO WISE
THE happiness of my existence, its unique char-
acter perhaps, consists in its fatefulness: to speak
in a riddle, as my own father I am already dead,
as my own mother I still live and grow old. This
double origin, taken as it were from the highest
and lowest rungs of the ladder of life, at once a
decadent and a beginning, this, if anything, ex-
plains that neutrality, that freedom from partisan-
ship in regard to the general problem of existence,
which perhaps distinguishes me. To the first in-
dications of ascending or of descending life my
nostrils are more sensitive than those of any man
that has yet lived. In this domain I am a master
to my backbone—I know both sides, for I am
both sides. My father died in his six-and-thirtieth
year: he was delicate, lovable, and morbid, like one
who is preordained to pay simply a flying visit—
a gracious reminder of life rather than life itself.
In the same year that his life declined mine also
declined: in my six-and-thirtieth year I reached
the lowest point in my vitality,—I still lived, but
## p. 10 (#32) ##############################################
IO ECCE HOMO
my eyes could distinguish nothing that lay three
paces away from me. At" that time—it was the
year 1879—I resigned my professorship at Bale,
lived through the summer like a shadow in St.
Moritz, and spent the following winter, the most
sunless of my life, like a shadow in Naumburg.
This was my lowest ebb. During this period I
wrote The Wanderer and His Shadow. Without
a doubt I was conversant with shadows then. The
winter that followed, my first winter in Genoa,
brought forth that sweetness and spirituality which
is almost inseparable from extreme poverty of blood
and muscle, in the shape of The Dawn of Day.
The perfect lucidity and cheerfulness, the intel-
lectual exuberance even, that this work reflects,
coincides, in my case, not only with the most pro-
found physiological weakness, but also with an ex-
cess of suffering. In the midst of the agony of a
headache which lasted three days, accompanied by
violent nausea, I was possessed of most singular
dialectical clearness, and in absolutely cold blood
I then thought out things, for which, in my more
healthy moments, I am not enough of a climber,
not sufficiently subtle, not sufficiently cold. My
readers perhaps know to what extent I consider dia-
lectic a symptom of decadence, as, for instance, in
the most famous of all cases—the case of Socrates.
All the morbid disturbances of the intellect, even
that semi-stupor which accompanies fever, have,
unto this day, remained completely unknown to me;
and for my first information concerning their nature
and frequency, I was obliged to have recourse to
the learned works which have been compiled on the
## p. 11 (#33) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE II
subject. My circulation is slow. No one has ever
been able to detect fever in me. A doctor who
treated me for some time as a nerve patient finally
declared: "No! there is nothing wrong with your
nerves, it is simply I who am nervous. " It has
been absolutely impossible to ascertain any local
degeneration in me, nor any organic stomach
trouble, however much I may have suffered from
profound weakness of the gastric system as the
result of general exhaustion. Even my eye trouble,
which sometimes approached so parlously near to
blindness, was only an effect and not a cause; for,
whenever my general vital condition improved, my
power of vision also increased. Having admitted
all this, do I need to say that I am experienced
in questions of decadence? I know them inside
and out.
