But the desire of the priest is
precisely
the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate—this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity.
tion of the whole of mankind; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate—this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity.
Nietzsche - v17 - Ecce Homo
I was ashamed
of this false modesty. . . . Ten years were behind
me, during which, to tell the truth, the nourishment
of my spirit had been at a standstill, during which I
had added not a single useful fragment to my know-
ledge, and had forgotten countless things in the
pursuit of a hotch-potch of dry-as-dust scholarship.
To crawl with meticulous care and short-sighted eyes
through old Greek metricians—that is what I had
come to! . . . Moved to pity I saw myself quite
thin,quite emaciated: realities were only too plainly
absent from my stock of knowledge, and what the
"idealities" were worth the devil alone knew! A
positively burning thirst overcame me: and from
that time forward I have done literally nothing else
than study physiology, medicine, andnaturalscience
—I even returned to the actual study of history
only when my life-task compelled me to. It was
at that time, too, that I first divined the relation be-
## p. 87 (#129) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 87
tween an instinctively repulsive occupation, a so-
called vocation, which is the last thing to which one
is "called," and that need of lulling a feeling of
emptiness and hunger, by means of an art which
is a narcotic—by means of Wagner's art, for in-
stance. After looking carefully about me, I have
discovered that a large number of young men are
all in the same state of distress: one kind of un-
natural practice perforce leads to another. In Ger-
many, or rather, to avoid all ambiguity, in the
Empire,* only too many are condemned to deter-
mine their choice too soon, and then to pine away
beneath a burden that they can no longer throw
off. . . . Such creatures crave for Wagner as for an
opiate,—they are thus able to forget themselves, to
be rid of themselves for a moment. . . . What am
I saying ! —for five or six hours.
4
At this time my instincts turned resolutely
against any further yielding or following on my part,
and any further misunderstanding of myself. Every
kind of life, the most unfavourable circumstances,
illness, poverty—anything seemed to me preferable
to that undignified "selfishness " into which I had
fallen; in the first place, thanks to my ignorance and
youth, and in which I had afterwards remained
owing to laziness—the so-called " sense of duty. "
At this juncture there came to my help, in a way
* Needless to say, Nietzsche distinguishes between Bis-
marckian Germany and that other Germany — Austria,
Switzerland, and the Baltic Provinces—where the German
language is also spoken. —Tr.
## p. 88 (#130) #############################################
88 ECCE HOMO
that I cannot sufficiently admire, and precisely at
the right time, that evil heritage which I derive
from my father's side of the family, and which, at
bottom, is no more than a predisposition to die
young. Illness slowly liberated me from the toils,
it spared me any sort of sudden breach, any sort
of violent and offensive step. At that time I lost
not a particle of the good will of others, but rather
added to my store. Illness likewise gave me the
right completely to reverse my mode of life; it not
only allowed, it actually commanded, me to forget;
it bestowed upon me the necessity of lying still,
of having leisure, of waiting, and of exercising
patience. . . . But all this means thinking! . . .
The state of my eyes alone put an end to all book-
wormishness, or,in plain English—philology: I was
thus delivered from books; for years I ceased from
reading, and this was the greatest boon I ever con-
ferred upon myself! That nethermost self, which
was, as it were, entombed, and which had grown
dumb because it had been forced to listen perpetu-
ally to other selves (for that is what reading means! ),
slowly awakened; at first it was shy and doubtful,
but at last it spoke again. Never have I rejoiced
more over my condition than during the sickest and
most painful moments of my life. You have only
to examine The Dawn of Day, or, perhaps, The
Wanderer and his Shadow* in order to understand
what this "return to myself" actually meant: in
itself it was the highest kind of recovery! . . . My
cure was simply the result of it.
* Human, ail-too-Human, Part II. in this edition. —Tr.
## p. 89 (#131) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 89
5
Human, all-too-Human, this monument of a
course of vigorous self-discipline, by means of which
I put an abrupt end to all the " Superior Bunkum,"
"Idealism," " Beautiful Feelings," and other effem-
inacies that had percolated into my being, was
written principally in Sorrento; it was finished and
given definite shape during a winter at Bale, under
conditions far less favourable than those in Sorrento.
Truth to tell, it was Peter Gast, at that time a
student at the University of Bale, and a devoted
friend of mine, who was responsible for the book.
With my head wrapped in bandages, and extremely
painful, I dictated while he wrote and corrected as
he went along—to be accurate, he was the real
composer, whereas I was only the author. When
the completed book ultimately reached me,—to
the great surprise of the serious invalid I then was,
—I sent, among others, two copies to Bayreuth.
Thanks to a miraculous flash of intelligence on the
part of chance, there reached me precisely at the
same time a splendid copy of the Parsifal text,
with the following inscription from Wagner's pen:
"To his dear friend Friedrich Nietzsche, from
Richard Wagner, Ecclesiastical Councillor. " At
this crossing of the two books I seemed to hear an
ominous note. Did it not sound as if two swords
had crossed? At all events we both felt this was
so, for each of us remained silent. At about this
time the first Bayreuth Pamphlets appeared: and
I then understood the move on my part for which
## p. 90 (#132) #############################################
90 ECCE HOMO
it was high time. Incredible! Wagner had be-
come pious.
6
My attitude to myself at that time (1876), and
the unearthly certitude with which I grasped my
life-task and all its world-historic consequences, is
well revealed throughout the book, but more par-
ticularly in one very significant passage, despite
the fact that, with my instinctive cunning, I once
more circumvented the use of the little word " I,"
—not however, this time, in order to shed world-
historic glory on the names of Schopenhauer and
Wagner, but on that of another of my friends, the
excellent Dr. Paul R^e—fortunately much too
acute a creature to be deceived—others were less
subtle. Among my readers I have a number of
hopeless people, the typical German professor for
instance, who can always be recognised from the
fact that, judging from the passage in question, he
feels compelled to regard the whole book as a sort
of superior Rdealism. As a matter of fact it con-
tradicts five or six of my friend's utterances: only
read the introduction to The Genealogy of Morals
on this question. —The passage above referred to
reads: "What, after all, is the principal axiom to
which the boldest and coldest thinker, the author
of the book On the Origin of Moral Sensations"
(read Nietzsche, the first Immoralist)," has attained
by means of his incisive and decisive analysis of
human actions ? ' The moral man,' he says,' is no
nearer to the intelligible (metaphysical) world than
is the physical man, for there is no intelligible
## p. 91 (#133) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 91
world. ' This theory, hardened and sharpened under
the hammer-blow of historical knowledge"(read The
Transvaluation of all Values), " may some time or
other, perhaps in some future period,—1890! —
serve as the axe which is applied to the root of the
'metaphysical need' of man,—whether more as a
blessing than a curse to the general welfare it is
not easy to say; but in any case as a theory with
the most important consequences, at once fruitful
and terrible, and looking into the world with that
Janus-face which all great knowledge possesses. " *
"The Dawn of Day:
Thoughts about Morality as a Prejudice"
With this book I open my campaign against
morality. Not that it is at all redolent of powder—
you will find quite other and much nicer smells in
it, provided that you have any keenness in your
nostrils. There is nothing either of light or of heavy
artillery in its composition, and if its general end be
a negative one, its means are not so—means out of
which the end follows like a logical conclusion, not
like a cannon-shot. And if the reader takes leave
of this book with a feeling of timid caution in re-
gard to everything which has hitherto been honoured
and even worshipped under the name of morality, it
does not alter the fact that there is not one negative
* Human, all-too-Ifuman, vol. i. Aph. 37.
## p. 92 (#134) #############################################
Q2 ECCE HOMO
word, not one attack, and not one single piece
of malice in the whole work—on the contrary, it
lies in the sunshine, smooth and happy, like a marine
animal, basking in the sun between two rocks. For,
after all, I was this marine animal: almost every sen-
tence in the book was thought out, or rather caught,
among that medley of rocks in the neighbourhood
of Genoa, where 1 lived quite alone, and exchanged
secrets with the ocean. Even to this day, when by
chance I happen to turn over the leaves of this book,
almost every sentence seems to me like a hook by
means of which I draw something incomparable out
of the depths; its whole skin quivers with delicate
shudders of recollection. This book is conspicuous
for no little art in gently catching things which
whisk rapidly and silently away, moments which I
call godlike lizards—not with the cruelty of that
young Greek god who simply transfixed the poor
little beast; but nevertheless with something pointed
—with a pen. "There are so many dawns which
have not yet shed their light"—this Indian maxim is
written over the doorway of this book. Where does
its author seek that new morning, that delicate red,
as yet undiscovered, with which another day—ah!
a whole series of days, a whole world of new days ! —
will begin? In the Transvaluation of all Values,
in an emancipation from all moral values, in a say-
ing of yea, and in an attitude of trust, to all that
which hitherto has been forbidden, despised, and
damned. This yea-saying book projects its light,
its love, its tenderness, over all evil things, it restores
to them their soul, their clear conscience, and their
superior right and privilege to exist on earth.
## p. 93 (#135) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 93
Morality is not assailed, it simply ceases to be
considered. This book closes with the word " or? "
—it is the only book which closes with an "or ? ".
My life-task is to prepare for humanity one
supreme moment in which it can come to its senses,
a Great Noon in which it will turn its gaze back-
wards and forwards, in which it will step from under
the yoke of accident and of priests, and for the first
time set the question of the Why and Wherefore of
humanity as a whole—this life-task naturally fol-
lows out of the conviction that mankind does not
get on the right road of its own accord, that it is
by no means divinely ruled, but rather that it is
precisely under the cover of its most holy valuations
that the instinct of negation, of corruption, and of
degeneration has held such a seductive sway. The
question concerning the origin of moral valuations
is therefore a matter of the highest importance to
me because it determines the future of mankind.
The demand made upon us to believe that every-
thing is really in the best hands, that a certain book,
the Bible, gives us the definite and comforting as-
surance that there is a Providence that wisely rules
the fate of man,—when translated back into reality
amounts simply to this, namely, the will to stifle
the truth which maintains the reverse of all this,
which is that hitherto man has been in the worst
possible hands, and that he has been governed by
the physiologically botched, the men of cunning and
burning revengefulness, and the so-called " saints"
## p. 94 (#136) #############################################
94 ECCE HOMO
—those slanderers of the world and traducers of
humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the
priest (including the priest in disguise, the philo-
sopher) has become master, not only within a cer-
tain limited religious community, but everywhere,
and that the morality of decadence, the will to
nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this: that altruism is now an absolute
value, and egoism is regarded with hostility every-
where. He who disagrees with me on this point,
I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees
with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism
between values admits of no doubt. If the most
insignificant organ within the body neglects, how-
ever slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its
self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The
physiologist insists upon the removal of degener-
ated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts,
and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them.
But the desire of the priest is precisely the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind ; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate—this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity. What meaning have those
lying concepts,those handmaids of morality," Soul,"
"Spirit," " Free will," " God," if their aim is not the
physiological ruin of mankind? When earnest-
ness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-
preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i. e.
at an increase of life; when anaemia is raised to an
ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as
"the salvation of the soul," what is all this if it is not
a recipe for decadence? Loss of ballast, resistance
## p. 95 (#137) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 9$
offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact—this
is what has hitherto been known as morality.
With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a
struggle against the morality of self-renunciation.
"Joyful Wisdom:
La Gaya Scienza"
Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound,
but clear and kindly. The same applies once
more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza:
in almost every sentence of this book, profundity
and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
which expresses my gratitude for the most wonder^
ful month of January which I have ever lived—
the whole book is a gift—sufficiently reveals the
abysmal depths from which " wisdom" has here
become joyful.
"Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea:
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint,—
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint! "*
Who can be in any doubt as to what "glorious
hoping" means here, when he has realised the
* Translated tor Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn. —Tr.
## p. 95 (#138) #############################################
94
ECCE HOMO
—those slanderers of the world and traducers of
humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the
priest (including the priest in disguise, the philo-
sopher) has become master, not only within a cer-
tain limited religious community, but everywhere,
and that the morality of decadence, the will to
nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this: that altruism is now an absolute
value, and egoism is regarded with hostility every-
where. He who disagrees with me on this point,
I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees
with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism
between values admits of no doubt. If the most
insignificant organ within the body neglects, how-
ever slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its
self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The
physiologist insists upon the removal of degener-
ated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts,
and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them.
But the desire of the priest is precisely the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate—this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity. What meaning have those
lying concepts, those handmaids of morality,“ Soul,”
“ Spirit," " Free will,” “ God,” if their aim is not the
physiological ruin of mankind ? When earnest-
ness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-
preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i. e.
at an increase of life; when anæmia is raised to an
ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as
"the salvation of the soul," what is all this if it is not
a recipe for decadence? Loss of ballast, resistance
## p. 95 (#139) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 95
offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact—this
is what has hitherto been known as morality.
With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a
struggle against the morality of self-renunciation.
" JOYFUL WISDOM :
LA GAYA SCIENZA”
Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound,
but clear and kindly. The same applies once
more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza :
in almost every sentence of this book, profundity
and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
which expresses my gratitude for the most wonder-
ful month of January which I have ever lived-
the whole book is a gift—sufficiently reveals the
abysmal depths from which “wisdom” has here
become joyful.
“ Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea :
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint,-
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint ! "*
Who can be in any doubt as to what “glorious
hoping” means here, when he has realised the
* Translated for Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn. —TR.
## p. 95 (#140) #############################################
94
ECCE HOMO
3
—those slanderers of the world and traducers of
humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the
priest (including the priest in disguise, the philo-
sopher) has become master, not only within a cer-
tain limited religious community, but everywhere,
and that the morality of decadence, the will to
nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this: that altruism is now an absolute
value, and egoism is regarded with hostility every-
where. He who disagrees with me on this point,
I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees
with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism
between values admits of no doubt. If the most
insignificant organ within the body neglects, how-
ever slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its
self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The
physiologist insists upon the removal of degener-
ated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts,
and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them.
But the desire of the priest is precisely the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate—this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity. What meaning have those
lying concepts, those handmaids of morality,“ Soul,”
“ Spirit,” “Free will,” “God,” if their aim is not the
physiological ruin of mankind ? When earnest-
ness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-
preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i. e.
at an increase of life; when anæmia is raised to an
ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as
"the salvation of the soul," what is all this if it is not
a recipe for decadence? Loss of ballast, resistance
## p. 95 (#141) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 95
offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact—this
is what has hitherto been known as morality.
With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a
struggle against the morality of self-renunciation.
“ JOYFUL WISDOM :
LA GAYA SCIENZA”
Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound,
but clear and kindly. The same applies once
more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza :
in almost every sentence of this book, profundity
and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
which expresses my gratitude for the most wonder-
ful month of January which I have ever lived
the whole book is a gift-sufficiently reveals the
abysmal depths from which “wisdom” has here
become joyful.
“ Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea :
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint, -
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint ! "*
Who can be in any doubt as to what “glorious
hoping” means here, when he has realised the
* Translated for Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn. —TR.
## p. 95 (#142) #############################################
94.
ECCE HOMO
—those slanderers of the world and traducers of
humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the
priest (including the priest in disguise, the philo-
sopher) has become master, not only within a cer-
tain limited religious community, but everywhere,
and that the morality of decadence, the will to
nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this: that altruism is now an absolute
value, and egoism is regarded with hostility every-
where. He who disagrees with me on this point,
I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees
with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism
between values admits of no doubt. If the most
insignificant organ within the body neglects, how-
ever slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its
self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The
physiologist insists upon the removal of degener-
ated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts,
and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them.
But the desire of the priest is precisely the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate--this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity. What meaning have those
lying concepts, those handmaids of morality,“ Soul,”
“ Spirit,” « Free will,” “ God,” if their aim is not the
physiological ruin of mankind ? When earnest-
ness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-
preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i. e.
at an increase of life; when anæmia is raised to an
ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as
“ the salvation of the soul,” what is all this if it is not
a recipe for decadence? Loss of ballast, resistance
## p. 95 (#143) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 95
offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact—this
is what has hitherto been known as morality.
With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a
struggle against the morality of self-renunciation.
“ JOYFUL WISDOM :
LA GAYA SCIENZA”
Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound,
but clear and kindly. The same applies once
more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza :
in almost every sentence of this book, profundity
and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
which expresses my gratitude for the most wonder-
ful month of January which I have ever lived—
the whole book is a gift-sufficiently reveals the
abysmal depths from which “wisdom” has here
become joyful.
“ Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea :
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint, -
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint ! "*
Who can be in any doubt as to what “glorious
hoping” means here, when he has realised the
* Translated for Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn. —TR.
## p. 95 (#144) #############################################
94
ECCE HOMO
—those slanderers of the world and traducers of
humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the
priest (including the priest in disguise, the philo-
sopher) has become master, not only within a cer-
tain limited religious community, but everywhere,
and that the morality of decadence, the will to
nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this: that altruism is now an absolute
value, and egoism is regarded with hostility every-
where. He who disagrees with me on this point,
I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees
with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism
between values admits of no doubt. If the most
insignificant organ within the body neglects, how-
ever slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its
self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The
physiologist insists upon the removal of degener-
ated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts,
and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them.
But the desire of the priest is precisely the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate—this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity. What meaning have those
lying concepts, those handmaids of morality,“ Soul,”
“ Spirit," “ Free will,” “God," if their aim is not the
physiological ruin of mankind ? When earnest-
ness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-
preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i. e.
at an increase of life; when anæmia is raised to an
ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as
“the salvation of the soul,” what is all this if it is not
a recipe for decadence? Loss of ballast, resistance
## p. 95 (#145) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 95
offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact—this
is what has hitherto been known as morality.
With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a
struggle against the morality of self-renunciation.
“ JOYFUL WISDOM :
LA GAYA SCIENZA”
Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound,
but clear and kindly. The same applies once
more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza :
in almost every sentence of this book, profundity
and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
which expresses my gratitude for the most wonder-
ful month of January which I have ever lived-
the whole book is a gift-sufficiently reveals the
abysmal depths from which “wisdom” has here
become joyful.
“ Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea :
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint, -
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint ! "*
Who can be in any doubt as to what “glorious
hoping” means here, when he has realised the
* Translated for Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn. —TR.
## p. 96 (#146) #############################################
g6 ECCE HOMO
diamond beauty of the first of Zarathustra's words
as they appear in a glow of light at the close of
the fourth book? Or when he reads the granite
sentences at the end of the third book, wherein a
fate for all times is first given a formula? The
songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird, which, for the most
part, were written in Sicily, remind me quite for-
cibly of that Provencal notion of "Gaya Scienza,"
of that union of singer, knight, and free spirit, which
distinguishes that wonderfully early culture of the
Provencals from all ambiguous cultures. The last
poem of all," To the Mistral,"—an exuberant dance
song in which, if you please, the new spirit dances
freely upon the corpse of morality,—is a perfect
Provenc,alism.
"Thus Spake Zarathustra:
A Book for All and None"
I now wish to relate the history of Zarathustra.
The fundamental idea of the work, the Eternal
Recurrence, the highest formula of a Yea-saying to
life that can ever be attained, was first conceived
in the month of August 1881. I made a note of
the idea on a sheet of paper, with the postscript:
"Six thousand feet beyond man and time. " That
day I happened to be wandering through the
woods alongside of the Lake of Silvaplana, and I
halted not far from Surlei, beside a huge rock that
towered aloft like a pyramid. It was then that
## p. 97 (#147) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 97
the thought struck me. Looking back now, I
find that exactly two months before this inspira-
tion I had an omen of its coming in the form of
a sudden and decisive change in my tastes—more
particularly in music. The whole of Zarathustra
might perhaps be classified under the rubric music.
At all events, the essential condition of its produc-
tion was a second birth within me of the art of
hearing. In Recoaro, a small mountain resort
near Vicenza, where I spent the spring of 18 81, I
and my friend and maestro, Peter Gast—who was
also one who had been born again, discovered that
the phoenix music hovered over us, in lighter and
brighter plumage than it had ever worn before.
If, therefore, I now calculate from that day for-
ward the sudden production of the book, under
the most unlikely circumstances, in February 1883,
—the last part, out of which I quoted a few lines
in my preface, was written precisely in the hal-
lowed hour when Richard Wagner gave up the
ghost in Venice,—I come to the conclusion that
the period of gestation covered eighteen months.
This period of exactly eighteen months, might
suggest, at least to Buddhists, that I am in reality
a female elephant The interval was devoted to
the Gaya Scienza, which contains hundreds of
indications of the proximity of something unparal-
leled; for, after all, it shows the beginning of
Zarathustra, since it presents Zarathustra's funda-
mental thought in the last aphorism but one of
the fourth book. To this interval also belongs
that Hymn to Life (for a mixed choir and or-
chestra), the score of which was published in
G
## p. 98 (#148) #############################################
98 ECCE HOMO
Leipzig two years ago by E. W. Fritsch, and
which gave perhaps no slight indication of my
spiritual state during this year, in which the essen-
tially yea-saying pathos, which' I call the tragic
pathos, completely filled me heart and limb. One
day people will sing it to my memory. The text,
let it be well understood, as there is some mis-
understanding abroad on this point, is not by me;
it was the astounding inspiration of a young
Russian lady, Miss Lou von Salome, with whom I
was then on friendly terms. He who is in any
way able to make some sense of the last words of
the poem, will divine why I preferred and admired
it: there is greatness in them. Pain is not re-
garded as an objection to existence: "And if
thou hast no bliss now left to crown me—Lead
on! Thou hast thy Sorrow still. "
Maybe that my music is also great in this
passage. (The last note of the oboe, by the bye,
is C sharp, not C. The latter is a misprint. )
During the following winter, I was living on that
charmingly peaceful Gulf of Rapallo, not far from
Genoa, which cuts inland between Chiavari and
Cape Porto Fino. My health was not very good;
the winter was cold and exceptionally rainy; and
the small albergo in which I lived was so close to
the water that at night my sleep was disturbed
if the sea was rough. These circumstances were
surely the very reverse of favourable; and yet, in
spite of it all, and as if in proof of my belief that
everything decisive comes to life in defiance of
every obstacle, it was precisely during this winter
and in the midst of these unfavourable cir-
## p. 99 (#149) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 99
cumstances that my Zarathustra originated. In
the morning I used to start out in a southerly
direction up the glorious road to Zoagli, which
rises up through a forest of pines and gives one a
view far out to sea. In the afternoon, or as often
as my health allowed, I walked round the whole
bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino.
This spot affected me all the more deeply because
it was so dearly loved by the Emperor Frederick
III. In the autumn of 1886 I chanced to be
there again when he was revisiting this small for-
gotten world of happiness for the last time. It
was on these two roads that all Zarathustra
came to me, above all, Zarathustra himself as a
type—I ought rather to say that it was on these
walks that he waylaid me.
In order to understand this type, you must first
be quite clear concerning its fundamental physio-
logical condition: this condition is what I call
great healthiness. In regard to this idea I cannot
make my meaning more plain or more personal
than I have done already in one of the last aphor-
isms (No. 382) of the fifth book of the Gaya
Scienza: "We new, nameless, and unfathomable
creatures," so reads the passage, "we firstlings
of a future still unproved—we who have a new
end in view also require new means to that end,
that is to say, a new healthiness, a stronger, keener,
tougher, bolder, and merrier healthiness than any
that has existed heretofore. He who longs to
## p. 100 (#150) ############################################
IOO ECCE HOMO
feel in his own soul the whole range of values and
aims that have prevailed on earth until his day,
and to sail round all the coasts of this ideal
'Mediterranean Sea'; who, from the adventures
of his own inmost experience, would fain know
how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of
the ideal;—as also how it is with the artist, the
saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the man
of piety and the godlike anchorite of yore ;—such
a man requires one thing above all for his purpose,
and that is, great healthiness—such healthiness as
he not only possesses, but also constantly acquires
and must acquire, because he is continually sacri-
ficing it again, and is compelled to sacrifice it!
And now, therefore, after having been long on the
way, we Argonauts of the ideal, whose pluck is
greater than prudence would allow, and who are
often shipwrecked and bruised, but, as I have said,
healthier than people would like to admit, danger-
ously healthy, and for ever recovering our health—
it would seem as if we had before us, as a reward
for all our toils, a country still undiscovered, the
horizon of which no one has yet seen, a beyond
to every country and every refuge of the ideal that
man has ever known, a world so overflowing with
beauty, strangeness, doubt, terror, and divinity,
that both our curiosity and our lust of possession
are frantic with eagerness. Alas! how in the
face of such vistas, and with such burning desire in
our conscience and consciousness, could we still
be content with the man of the present day? This
is bad indeed; but, that we should regard his
wprthiest aims and hopes with ill-concealed amuse-
## p. 101 (#151) ############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS IOI
ment, or perhaps give them no thought at all, is in-
evitable. Another ideal now leads us on, a wonderful,
seductive ideal, full of danger, the pursuit of which
we should be loath to urge upon any one, because
we are not so ready to acknowledge any one's
right to it: the ideal of a spirit who plays ingenu-
ously (that is to say, involuntarily, and as the out-
come of superabundant energy and power) with
everything that, hitherto, has been called holy,
good, inviolable, and divine; to whom even the
loftiest thing that the people have with reason
made their measure of value would be no better
than a danger, a decay, and an abasement, or at
least a relaxation and temporary forgetfulness of
self: the ideal of a humanly superhuman well-being
and goodwill, which often enough will seem in-
human—as when, for instance, it stands beside all
past earnestness on earth, and all past solemnities
in hearing, speech, tone, look, morality, and duty,
as their most lifelike and unconscious parody—
but with which, nevertheless, great earnestness
perhaps alone begins, the first note of interroga-
tion is affixed, the fate of the soul changes, the
hour hand moves, and tragedy begins. "
Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century
any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age
understood by the word inspiration? If not, I will
describe it. I f one had the smallest vestige of super-
stition left in one, it would hardly be possible com-
pletely to set aside the idea that one is the mere
## p. 102 (#152) ############################################
102 ECCE HOMO
incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty
power. The idea of revelation, in the sense that
something which profoundly convulses and upsets
one becomes suddenly visible and audible with inde-
scribable certainty and accuracy—describes the
simple fact. One hears—one does not seek; one
takes—one does not ask who gives: a thought
suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with
necessity, without faltering—I have never had any
choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy so great
that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed
by a flood of tears, during which one's steps now in-
voluntarily rush and anon involuntarily lag. There
is the feeling that one is utterly out of hand, with
the very distinct consciousness of an endless number
of fine thrills and titillations descending to one's
very toes;—there is a depth of happiness in which
the most painful and gloomy parts do not act as
antitheses to the rest, but are produced and required
as necessary shades of colour in such an overflow
of light. There is an instinct for rhythmic relations
which embraces a whole world of forms (length, the
need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the
measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of
counterpart to its pressure and tension). Every-
thing happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tem-
pestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of
power and divinity. The involuntary nature of the
figures and similes is the most remarkable thing;
one loses all perception of what is imagery and
metaphor; everything seems to present itself as the
readiest, the truest, and simplest means of expres-
sion. It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra's
## p. 103 (#153) ############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 103
own phrases, as if all things came to one, and
offered themselves as similes. (" Here do all things
come caressingly to thy discourse and natter thee,
for they would fain ride upon thy back. On every
simile thou ridest here unto every truth. Here fly
open unto thee all the speech and word shrines of
the world, here would all existence become speech,
here would all Becoming learn of thee how to
speak. ") This is my experience of inspiration. I
do not doubt but that I should have to go back
thousands of years before I could find another who
could say to me: "It is mine also! "
For a few weeks afterwards I lay an invalid in
Genoa. Then followed a melancholy spring in
Rome, where I only just managed to live—and this
was no easy matter. This city, which is absolutely
unsuited to the poet-author of Zarathustra, and for
the choice of which I was not responsible, made
me inordinately miserable. I tried to leave it. I
wanted to go to Aquila—the opposite of Rome in
every respect, and actually founded in a spirit of
hostility towards that city, just as I also shall found
a city some day, as a memento of an atheist and
genuine enemy of the Church, a person very closely
related to me, the great Hohenstaufen, the Emperor
Frederick II. But Fate lay behind it all: I had to
return again to Rome. In the end I was obliged
to be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini, after I had
exerted myself in vain to find an anti-Christian
quarter. I fear that on one occasion, to avoid bad
## p. 104 (#154) ############################################
104 £CCE HOMO
smells as much as possible, I actually inquired at
the Palazzo del Quirinale whether they could not
provide a quiet room for a philosopher. In a
chamber high above the Piazza just mentioned, from
which one obtained a general view of Rome, and
could hear the fountains plashing far below, the
loneliest of all songs was composed—" The Night-
Song. " About this time I was obsessed by an un-
speakably sad melody, the refrain of which I
recognised in the words, "dead through immor-
tality. " . . . In the summer, finding myself once
more in the sacred place where the first thought of
Zarathustra flashed like a light across my mind, I
conceived the second part. Ten days sufficed.
Neither for the second, the first, nor the third part,
have I required aday longer. In the ensuing winter,
beneath the halcyon sky of Nice, which then for the
first time poured its light into my life, I found the
third Zarathustra—and came to the end of my task:
the whole having occupied me scarcely a year.
Many hidden corners and heights in the country
round about Nice are hallowed for me by moments
that I can never forget. That decisive chapter,
entitled "Old and New Tables," was composed
during the arduous ascent from the station to Eza
—that wonderful Moorish village in the rocks.
During those moments when my creative energy
flowed most plentifully, my muscular activity was
always greatest. The body is inspired: let us waive
the question of " soul. " I might often have been
seen dancing in those days, and I could then walk
for seven or eight hours on end over the hills
without a suggestion of fatigue. I slept well and
## p. 105 (#155) ############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 105
laughed a good deal—I was perfectly robust and
patient.
With the exception of these periods of industry
lasting ten days, the years I spent during the pro-
duction of Zarathustra, and thereafter, were for me
years of unparalleled distress. A man pays dearly
for being immortal: to this end he must die many
times over during his life. There is such a thing
as what I call the rancour of greatness: everything
great, whether a work or a deed, once it is com-
pleted, turns immediately against its author. The
very fact that he is its author makes him weak at
this time. He can no longer endure his deed. He
can no longer look it full in the face. To have
something at one's back which one could never have
willed, something to which the knot of human
destiny is attached—and to be forced thencefor-
ward to bear it on one's shoulders! Why, it almost
crushes one! The rancour of greatness! A some-
what different experience is the uncanny silence that
reigns about one. Solitude has seven skins which
nothing can penetrate. One goes among men; one
greets friends: but these things are only new
deserts, the looks of those one meets no longer bear
a greeting. At the best one encounters a sort of
revolt. This feeling of revolt, I suffered, in varying
degrees of intensity, at the hands of almost every
one who came near me; it would seem that nothing
inflicts a deeper wound than suddenly to make one's
distance felt. Those noble natures are scarce who
## p. 106 (#156) ############################################
106 ECCE HOMO
know not how to live unless they can revere. A
third thing is the absurd susceptibility of the skin
to small pin-pricks, a kind of helplessness in the
presence of all small things. This seems to me a
necessary outcome of the appalling expenditure of
all defensive forces, which is the first condition of
every creative act, of every act which proceeds from
the most intimate, most secret, and most concealed
recesses of a man's being. The small defensive
forces are thus, as it were, suspended, and no fresh
energy reaches them. I even think it probable that
one does not digest so well, that one is less willing
to move, and that one is much too open to sensa-
tions of coldness and suspicion; for, in a large
number of cases, suspicion is merely a blunder in
etiology. On one occasion when I felt like this I
became conscious of the proximity of a herd of cows,
some time before I could possibly have seen it with
my eyes, simply owing to a return in me of milder
and more humane sentiments: they communicated
warmth to me. . . .
This work stands alone. Do not let us mention
the poets in the same breath: nothing perhaps has
ever been produced out of such a superabundance
of strength. My concept "Dionysian" here be-
came the highest deed ; compared with it everything
that other men have done seems poor and limited.
The fact that a Goethe or a Shakespeare would not
for an instant have known how to take breath in
this atmosphere of passion and of the heights; the
## p. 107 (#157) ############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 107
fact that by the side of Zarathustra, Dante is no
more than a believer, and not one who first creates
the truth—that is to say, not a world-ruling spirit,
a Fate; the fact that the poets of the Veda were
priests and not even fit to unfasten Zarathustra's
sandal—all this is the least of things, and gives no
idea of the distance, of the azure solitude, in which
this work dwells. Zarathustra has an eternal right
to say: " I draw around me circles and holy bound-
aries. Ever fewer are they that mount with me to
ever loftier heights. I build me a mountain range
of ever holier mountains. " If all the spirit and
goodness of every great soul were collected together,
the whole could not create a single one of Zara-
thustra's discourses. The ladder upon which he
rises and descends is of boundless length; he has
seen further, he has willed further, and gone further
than any other man. There is contradiction in
every word that he utters, this most yea-saying of
all spirits. Through him all contradictions are
bound up into a new unity. The loftiest and the
basest powers of human nature, the sweetest, the
lightest, and the most terrible, rush forth from out
one spring with everlasting certainty. Until his
coming no one knew what was height, or depth,
and still less what was truth. There is not a single
passage in this revelation of truth which had already
been anticipated and divined by even the greatest
among men. Before Zarathustra there was no
wisdom, no probing of the soul, no art of speech: in
his book, the most familiar and most vulgar thing
utters unheard-of words. The sentence quivers with
passion. Eloquence has become music. Forks of
## p. 108 (#158) ############################################
108 ECCE HOMO
lightning are hurled towards futures of which no one
has ever dreamed before. The most powerful use
of parables that has yet existed is poor beside it,
and mere child's-play compared with this return of
language to the nature of imagery. See how Zara-
thustra goes down from the mountain and speaks
the kindest words to every one! See with what
delicate fingers he touches his very adversaries, the
priests, and how he suffers with them from them-
selves! Here, at every moment, man is overcome,
and the concept "Superman " becomes the greatest
reality,—out of sight, almost far away beneath him,
lies all that which heretofore has been called great
in man. The halcyonic brightness, the light feet,
the presence of wickedness and exuberance through-
out, and all that is the essence of the type Zara-
thustra, was never dreamt of before as a prerequisite
of greatness. In precisely these limits of space and
in this accessibility to opposites Zarathustra feels
himself the highest of all living things: and when
you hear how he defines this highest, you will give
up trying to find his equal.
"The soul which hath the longest ladder and
can step down deepest,
"The vastest soul that can run and stray and
rove furthest in its own domain,
"The most necessary soul, that out of desire
flingeth itself to chance,
"The stable soul that plungeth into Becoming,
the possessing soul that must needs taste of
willing and longing,
"The soul that flyeth from itself, and over-
taketh itself in the widest circle,
## p. 109 (#159) ############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 109
"The wisest soul that folly exhorteth most
sweetly,
"The most self-loving soul, in whom all things
have their rise, their ebb and flow. "
But this is the very idea of Dionysus. Another
consideration leads to this idea. The psychological
problem presented by the type of Zarathustra is,
how can he, who in an unprecedented manner says
no, and acts no, in regard to all that which has been
affirmed hitherto, remain nevertheless a yea-saying ,
spirit? how can he who bears the heaviest destiny
on his shoulders and whose very life-task is a
fatality, yet be the brightest and the most transcen-
dental of spirits—for Zarathustra is a dancer?
how can he who has the hardest and most terrible
grasp of reality, and who has thought the most
"abysmal thoughts," nevertheless avoid conceiving
these things as objections to existence, or even as
objections to the eternal recurrence of existence ? —
how is it that on the contrary he finds reasons for
being himself the eternal affirmation of all things,
"the tremendous and unlimited saying of Yea and
Amen"? . . . " Into every abyss do I bear the
benediction of my yea to Life. " . . . But this, once
more, is precisely the idea of Dionysus.
What language will such a spirit speak, when he
speaks unto his soul? The language of the dithy-
ramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb.
Hearken unto the manner in which Zarathustra
speaks to his soul Before Sunrise (iii. 48). Before
## p. 110 (#160) ############################################
IIO ECCE HOMO
my time such emerald joys and divine tenderness
had found no tongue. Even the profoundest
melancholy of such a Dionysus takes shape as a
dithyramb. As an example of this I take " The
Night-Song,"—the immortal plaint of one who,
thanks to his superabundance of light and power,
thanks to the sun within him, is condemned never
to love.
"It is night: now do all gushing springs raise
their voices. And my soul too is a gushing
spring.
"It is night: now only do all lovers burst into
song. And my soul too is the song of a lover.
"Something unquenched and unquenchable is
within me, that would raise its voice. A craving
for love is within me, which itself speaketh the
language of love.
"Light am I: would that I were night! But
this is my loneliness, that I am begirt with light.
"Alas, why am I not dark and like unto the
night! How joyfully would I then suck at the
breasts of light!
"And even you would I bless, ye twinkling star-
lets and glow-worms on high! and be blessed in
the gifts of your light.
"But in mine own light do I live, ever back into
myself do I drink the flames I send forth.
"I know not the happiness of the hand stretched
forth to grasp; and oft have I dreamt that steal-
ing must be more blessed than taking.
"Wretched am I that my hand may never rest
from giving: an envious fate is mine that I see ex-
pectant eyes and nights made bright with longing.
## p. 111 (#161) ############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS III
"Oh, the wretchedness of all them that give!
Oh, the clouds that cover the face of my sun!
That craving for desire!
of this false modesty. . . . Ten years were behind
me, during which, to tell the truth, the nourishment
of my spirit had been at a standstill, during which I
had added not a single useful fragment to my know-
ledge, and had forgotten countless things in the
pursuit of a hotch-potch of dry-as-dust scholarship.
To crawl with meticulous care and short-sighted eyes
through old Greek metricians—that is what I had
come to! . . . Moved to pity I saw myself quite
thin,quite emaciated: realities were only too plainly
absent from my stock of knowledge, and what the
"idealities" were worth the devil alone knew! A
positively burning thirst overcame me: and from
that time forward I have done literally nothing else
than study physiology, medicine, andnaturalscience
—I even returned to the actual study of history
only when my life-task compelled me to. It was
at that time, too, that I first divined the relation be-
## p. 87 (#129) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 87
tween an instinctively repulsive occupation, a so-
called vocation, which is the last thing to which one
is "called," and that need of lulling a feeling of
emptiness and hunger, by means of an art which
is a narcotic—by means of Wagner's art, for in-
stance. After looking carefully about me, I have
discovered that a large number of young men are
all in the same state of distress: one kind of un-
natural practice perforce leads to another. In Ger-
many, or rather, to avoid all ambiguity, in the
Empire,* only too many are condemned to deter-
mine their choice too soon, and then to pine away
beneath a burden that they can no longer throw
off. . . . Such creatures crave for Wagner as for an
opiate,—they are thus able to forget themselves, to
be rid of themselves for a moment. . . . What am
I saying ! —for five or six hours.
4
At this time my instincts turned resolutely
against any further yielding or following on my part,
and any further misunderstanding of myself. Every
kind of life, the most unfavourable circumstances,
illness, poverty—anything seemed to me preferable
to that undignified "selfishness " into which I had
fallen; in the first place, thanks to my ignorance and
youth, and in which I had afterwards remained
owing to laziness—the so-called " sense of duty. "
At this juncture there came to my help, in a way
* Needless to say, Nietzsche distinguishes between Bis-
marckian Germany and that other Germany — Austria,
Switzerland, and the Baltic Provinces—where the German
language is also spoken. —Tr.
## p. 88 (#130) #############################################
88 ECCE HOMO
that I cannot sufficiently admire, and precisely at
the right time, that evil heritage which I derive
from my father's side of the family, and which, at
bottom, is no more than a predisposition to die
young. Illness slowly liberated me from the toils,
it spared me any sort of sudden breach, any sort
of violent and offensive step. At that time I lost
not a particle of the good will of others, but rather
added to my store. Illness likewise gave me the
right completely to reverse my mode of life; it not
only allowed, it actually commanded, me to forget;
it bestowed upon me the necessity of lying still,
of having leisure, of waiting, and of exercising
patience. . . . But all this means thinking! . . .
The state of my eyes alone put an end to all book-
wormishness, or,in plain English—philology: I was
thus delivered from books; for years I ceased from
reading, and this was the greatest boon I ever con-
ferred upon myself! That nethermost self, which
was, as it were, entombed, and which had grown
dumb because it had been forced to listen perpetu-
ally to other selves (for that is what reading means! ),
slowly awakened; at first it was shy and doubtful,
but at last it spoke again. Never have I rejoiced
more over my condition than during the sickest and
most painful moments of my life. You have only
to examine The Dawn of Day, or, perhaps, The
Wanderer and his Shadow* in order to understand
what this "return to myself" actually meant: in
itself it was the highest kind of recovery! . . . My
cure was simply the result of it.
* Human, ail-too-Human, Part II. in this edition. —Tr.
## p. 89 (#131) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 89
5
Human, all-too-Human, this monument of a
course of vigorous self-discipline, by means of which
I put an abrupt end to all the " Superior Bunkum,"
"Idealism," " Beautiful Feelings," and other effem-
inacies that had percolated into my being, was
written principally in Sorrento; it was finished and
given definite shape during a winter at Bale, under
conditions far less favourable than those in Sorrento.
Truth to tell, it was Peter Gast, at that time a
student at the University of Bale, and a devoted
friend of mine, who was responsible for the book.
With my head wrapped in bandages, and extremely
painful, I dictated while he wrote and corrected as
he went along—to be accurate, he was the real
composer, whereas I was only the author. When
the completed book ultimately reached me,—to
the great surprise of the serious invalid I then was,
—I sent, among others, two copies to Bayreuth.
Thanks to a miraculous flash of intelligence on the
part of chance, there reached me precisely at the
same time a splendid copy of the Parsifal text,
with the following inscription from Wagner's pen:
"To his dear friend Friedrich Nietzsche, from
Richard Wagner, Ecclesiastical Councillor. " At
this crossing of the two books I seemed to hear an
ominous note. Did it not sound as if two swords
had crossed? At all events we both felt this was
so, for each of us remained silent. At about this
time the first Bayreuth Pamphlets appeared: and
I then understood the move on my part for which
## p. 90 (#132) #############################################
90 ECCE HOMO
it was high time. Incredible! Wagner had be-
come pious.
6
My attitude to myself at that time (1876), and
the unearthly certitude with which I grasped my
life-task and all its world-historic consequences, is
well revealed throughout the book, but more par-
ticularly in one very significant passage, despite
the fact that, with my instinctive cunning, I once
more circumvented the use of the little word " I,"
—not however, this time, in order to shed world-
historic glory on the names of Schopenhauer and
Wagner, but on that of another of my friends, the
excellent Dr. Paul R^e—fortunately much too
acute a creature to be deceived—others were less
subtle. Among my readers I have a number of
hopeless people, the typical German professor for
instance, who can always be recognised from the
fact that, judging from the passage in question, he
feels compelled to regard the whole book as a sort
of superior Rdealism. As a matter of fact it con-
tradicts five or six of my friend's utterances: only
read the introduction to The Genealogy of Morals
on this question. —The passage above referred to
reads: "What, after all, is the principal axiom to
which the boldest and coldest thinker, the author
of the book On the Origin of Moral Sensations"
(read Nietzsche, the first Immoralist)," has attained
by means of his incisive and decisive analysis of
human actions ? ' The moral man,' he says,' is no
nearer to the intelligible (metaphysical) world than
is the physical man, for there is no intelligible
## p. 91 (#133) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 91
world. ' This theory, hardened and sharpened under
the hammer-blow of historical knowledge"(read The
Transvaluation of all Values), " may some time or
other, perhaps in some future period,—1890! —
serve as the axe which is applied to the root of the
'metaphysical need' of man,—whether more as a
blessing than a curse to the general welfare it is
not easy to say; but in any case as a theory with
the most important consequences, at once fruitful
and terrible, and looking into the world with that
Janus-face which all great knowledge possesses. " *
"The Dawn of Day:
Thoughts about Morality as a Prejudice"
With this book I open my campaign against
morality. Not that it is at all redolent of powder—
you will find quite other and much nicer smells in
it, provided that you have any keenness in your
nostrils. There is nothing either of light or of heavy
artillery in its composition, and if its general end be
a negative one, its means are not so—means out of
which the end follows like a logical conclusion, not
like a cannon-shot. And if the reader takes leave
of this book with a feeling of timid caution in re-
gard to everything which has hitherto been honoured
and even worshipped under the name of morality, it
does not alter the fact that there is not one negative
* Human, all-too-Ifuman, vol. i. Aph. 37.
## p. 92 (#134) #############################################
Q2 ECCE HOMO
word, not one attack, and not one single piece
of malice in the whole work—on the contrary, it
lies in the sunshine, smooth and happy, like a marine
animal, basking in the sun between two rocks. For,
after all, I was this marine animal: almost every sen-
tence in the book was thought out, or rather caught,
among that medley of rocks in the neighbourhood
of Genoa, where 1 lived quite alone, and exchanged
secrets with the ocean. Even to this day, when by
chance I happen to turn over the leaves of this book,
almost every sentence seems to me like a hook by
means of which I draw something incomparable out
of the depths; its whole skin quivers with delicate
shudders of recollection. This book is conspicuous
for no little art in gently catching things which
whisk rapidly and silently away, moments which I
call godlike lizards—not with the cruelty of that
young Greek god who simply transfixed the poor
little beast; but nevertheless with something pointed
—with a pen. "There are so many dawns which
have not yet shed their light"—this Indian maxim is
written over the doorway of this book. Where does
its author seek that new morning, that delicate red,
as yet undiscovered, with which another day—ah!
a whole series of days, a whole world of new days ! —
will begin? In the Transvaluation of all Values,
in an emancipation from all moral values, in a say-
ing of yea, and in an attitude of trust, to all that
which hitherto has been forbidden, despised, and
damned. This yea-saying book projects its light,
its love, its tenderness, over all evil things, it restores
to them their soul, their clear conscience, and their
superior right and privilege to exist on earth.
## p. 93 (#135) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 93
Morality is not assailed, it simply ceases to be
considered. This book closes with the word " or? "
—it is the only book which closes with an "or ? ".
My life-task is to prepare for humanity one
supreme moment in which it can come to its senses,
a Great Noon in which it will turn its gaze back-
wards and forwards, in which it will step from under
the yoke of accident and of priests, and for the first
time set the question of the Why and Wherefore of
humanity as a whole—this life-task naturally fol-
lows out of the conviction that mankind does not
get on the right road of its own accord, that it is
by no means divinely ruled, but rather that it is
precisely under the cover of its most holy valuations
that the instinct of negation, of corruption, and of
degeneration has held such a seductive sway. The
question concerning the origin of moral valuations
is therefore a matter of the highest importance to
me because it determines the future of mankind.
The demand made upon us to believe that every-
thing is really in the best hands, that a certain book,
the Bible, gives us the definite and comforting as-
surance that there is a Providence that wisely rules
the fate of man,—when translated back into reality
amounts simply to this, namely, the will to stifle
the truth which maintains the reverse of all this,
which is that hitherto man has been in the worst
possible hands, and that he has been governed by
the physiologically botched, the men of cunning and
burning revengefulness, and the so-called " saints"
## p. 94 (#136) #############################################
94 ECCE HOMO
—those slanderers of the world and traducers of
humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the
priest (including the priest in disguise, the philo-
sopher) has become master, not only within a cer-
tain limited religious community, but everywhere,
and that the morality of decadence, the will to
nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this: that altruism is now an absolute
value, and egoism is regarded with hostility every-
where. He who disagrees with me on this point,
I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees
with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism
between values admits of no doubt. If the most
insignificant organ within the body neglects, how-
ever slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its
self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The
physiologist insists upon the removal of degener-
ated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts,
and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them.
But the desire of the priest is precisely the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind ; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate—this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity. What meaning have those
lying concepts,those handmaids of morality," Soul,"
"Spirit," " Free will," " God," if their aim is not the
physiological ruin of mankind? When earnest-
ness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-
preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i. e.
at an increase of life; when anaemia is raised to an
ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as
"the salvation of the soul," what is all this if it is not
a recipe for decadence? Loss of ballast, resistance
## p. 95 (#137) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 9$
offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact—this
is what has hitherto been known as morality.
With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a
struggle against the morality of self-renunciation.
"Joyful Wisdom:
La Gaya Scienza"
Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound,
but clear and kindly. The same applies once
more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza:
in almost every sentence of this book, profundity
and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
which expresses my gratitude for the most wonder^
ful month of January which I have ever lived—
the whole book is a gift—sufficiently reveals the
abysmal depths from which " wisdom" has here
become joyful.
"Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea:
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint,—
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint! "*
Who can be in any doubt as to what "glorious
hoping" means here, when he has realised the
* Translated tor Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn. —Tr.
## p. 95 (#138) #############################################
94
ECCE HOMO
—those slanderers of the world and traducers of
humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the
priest (including the priest in disguise, the philo-
sopher) has become master, not only within a cer-
tain limited religious community, but everywhere,
and that the morality of decadence, the will to
nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this: that altruism is now an absolute
value, and egoism is regarded with hostility every-
where. He who disagrees with me on this point,
I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees
with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism
between values admits of no doubt. If the most
insignificant organ within the body neglects, how-
ever slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its
self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The
physiologist insists upon the removal of degener-
ated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts,
and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them.
But the desire of the priest is precisely the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate—this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity. What meaning have those
lying concepts, those handmaids of morality,“ Soul,”
“ Spirit," " Free will,” “ God,” if their aim is not the
physiological ruin of mankind ? When earnest-
ness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-
preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i. e.
at an increase of life; when anæmia is raised to an
ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as
"the salvation of the soul," what is all this if it is not
a recipe for decadence? Loss of ballast, resistance
## p. 95 (#139) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 95
offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact—this
is what has hitherto been known as morality.
With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a
struggle against the morality of self-renunciation.
" JOYFUL WISDOM :
LA GAYA SCIENZA”
Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound,
but clear and kindly. The same applies once
more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza :
in almost every sentence of this book, profundity
and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
which expresses my gratitude for the most wonder-
ful month of January which I have ever lived-
the whole book is a gift—sufficiently reveals the
abysmal depths from which “wisdom” has here
become joyful.
“ Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea :
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint,-
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint ! "*
Who can be in any doubt as to what “glorious
hoping” means here, when he has realised the
* Translated for Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn. —TR.
## p. 95 (#140) #############################################
94
ECCE HOMO
3
—those slanderers of the world and traducers of
humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the
priest (including the priest in disguise, the philo-
sopher) has become master, not only within a cer-
tain limited religious community, but everywhere,
and that the morality of decadence, the will to
nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this: that altruism is now an absolute
value, and egoism is regarded with hostility every-
where. He who disagrees with me on this point,
I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees
with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism
between values admits of no doubt. If the most
insignificant organ within the body neglects, how-
ever slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its
self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The
physiologist insists upon the removal of degener-
ated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts,
and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them.
But the desire of the priest is precisely the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate—this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity. What meaning have those
lying concepts, those handmaids of morality,“ Soul,”
“ Spirit,” “Free will,” “God,” if their aim is not the
physiological ruin of mankind ? When earnest-
ness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-
preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i. e.
at an increase of life; when anæmia is raised to an
ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as
"the salvation of the soul," what is all this if it is not
a recipe for decadence? Loss of ballast, resistance
## p. 95 (#141) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 95
offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact—this
is what has hitherto been known as morality.
With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a
struggle against the morality of self-renunciation.
“ JOYFUL WISDOM :
LA GAYA SCIENZA”
Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound,
but clear and kindly. The same applies once
more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza :
in almost every sentence of this book, profundity
and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
which expresses my gratitude for the most wonder-
ful month of January which I have ever lived
the whole book is a gift-sufficiently reveals the
abysmal depths from which “wisdom” has here
become joyful.
“ Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea :
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint, -
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint ! "*
Who can be in any doubt as to what “glorious
hoping” means here, when he has realised the
* Translated for Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn. —TR.
## p. 95 (#142) #############################################
94.
ECCE HOMO
—those slanderers of the world and traducers of
humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the
priest (including the priest in disguise, the philo-
sopher) has become master, not only within a cer-
tain limited religious community, but everywhere,
and that the morality of decadence, the will to
nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this: that altruism is now an absolute
value, and egoism is regarded with hostility every-
where. He who disagrees with me on this point,
I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees
with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism
between values admits of no doubt. If the most
insignificant organ within the body neglects, how-
ever slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its
self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The
physiologist insists upon the removal of degener-
ated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts,
and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them.
But the desire of the priest is precisely the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate--this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity. What meaning have those
lying concepts, those handmaids of morality,“ Soul,”
“ Spirit,” « Free will,” “ God,” if their aim is not the
physiological ruin of mankind ? When earnest-
ness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-
preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i. e.
at an increase of life; when anæmia is raised to an
ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as
“ the salvation of the soul,” what is all this if it is not
a recipe for decadence? Loss of ballast, resistance
## p. 95 (#143) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 95
offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact—this
is what has hitherto been known as morality.
With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a
struggle against the morality of self-renunciation.
“ JOYFUL WISDOM :
LA GAYA SCIENZA”
Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound,
but clear and kindly. The same applies once
more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza :
in almost every sentence of this book, profundity
and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
which expresses my gratitude for the most wonder-
ful month of January which I have ever lived—
the whole book is a gift-sufficiently reveals the
abysmal depths from which “wisdom” has here
become joyful.
“ Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea :
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint, -
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint ! "*
Who can be in any doubt as to what “glorious
hoping” means here, when he has realised the
* Translated for Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn. —TR.
## p. 95 (#144) #############################################
94
ECCE HOMO
—those slanderers of the world and traducers of
humanity. The definite proof of the fact that the
priest (including the priest in disguise, the philo-
sopher) has become master, not only within a cer-
tain limited religious community, but everywhere,
and that the morality of decadence, the will to
nonentity, has become morality per se, is to be
found in this: that altruism is now an absolute
value, and egoism is regarded with hostility every-
where. He who disagrees with me on this point,
I regard as infected. But all the world disagrees
with me. To a physiologist a like antagonism
between values admits of no doubt. If the most
insignificant organ within the body neglects, how-
ever slightly, to assert with absolute certainty its
self-preservative powers, its recuperative claims, and
its egoism, the whole system degenerates. The
physiologist insists upon the removal of degener-
ated parts, he denies all fellow-feeling for such parts,
and has not the smallest feeling of pity for them.
But the desire of the priest is precisely the degenera-
tion of the whole of mankind; hence his preservation
of that which is degenerate—this is what his dom-
inion costs humanity. What meaning have those
lying concepts, those handmaids of morality,“ Soul,”
“ Spirit," “ Free will,” “God," if their aim is not the
physiological ruin of mankind ? When earnest-
ness is diverted from the instincts that aim at self-
preservation and an increase of bodily energy, i. e.
at an increase of life; when anæmia is raised to an
ideal and the contempt of the body is construed as
“the salvation of the soul,” what is all this if it is not
a recipe for decadence? Loss of ballast, resistance
## p. 95 (#145) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 95
offered to natural instincts, selflessness, in fact—this
is what has hitherto been known as morality.
With The Dawn of Day I first engaged in a
struggle against the morality of self-renunciation.
“ JOYFUL WISDOM :
LA GAYA SCIENZA”
Dawn of Day is a yea-saying book, profound,
but clear and kindly. The same applies once
more and in the highest degree to La Gaya Scienza :
in almost every sentence of this book, profundity
and playfulness go gently hand in hand. A verse
which expresses my gratitude for the most wonder-
ful month of January which I have ever lived-
the whole book is a gift-sufficiently reveals the
abysmal depths from which “wisdom” has here
become joyful.
“ Thou who with cleaving fiery lances
The stream of my soul from its ice dost free,
Till with a rush and a roar it advances
To enter with glorious hoping the sea :
Brighter to see and purer ever,
Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint, -
So it praises thy wondrous endeavour,
January, thou beauteous saint ! "*
Who can be in any doubt as to what “glorious
hoping” means here, when he has realised the
* Translated for Joyful Wisdom by Paul V. Cohn. —TR.
## p. 96 (#146) #############################################
g6 ECCE HOMO
diamond beauty of the first of Zarathustra's words
as they appear in a glow of light at the close of
the fourth book? Or when he reads the granite
sentences at the end of the third book, wherein a
fate for all times is first given a formula? The
songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird, which, for the most
part, were written in Sicily, remind me quite for-
cibly of that Provencal notion of "Gaya Scienza,"
of that union of singer, knight, and free spirit, which
distinguishes that wonderfully early culture of the
Provencals from all ambiguous cultures. The last
poem of all," To the Mistral,"—an exuberant dance
song in which, if you please, the new spirit dances
freely upon the corpse of morality,—is a perfect
Provenc,alism.
"Thus Spake Zarathustra:
A Book for All and None"
I now wish to relate the history of Zarathustra.
The fundamental idea of the work, the Eternal
Recurrence, the highest formula of a Yea-saying to
life that can ever be attained, was first conceived
in the month of August 1881. I made a note of
the idea on a sheet of paper, with the postscript:
"Six thousand feet beyond man and time. " That
day I happened to be wandering through the
woods alongside of the Lake of Silvaplana, and I
halted not far from Surlei, beside a huge rock that
towered aloft like a pyramid. It was then that
## p. 97 (#147) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 97
the thought struck me. Looking back now, I
find that exactly two months before this inspira-
tion I had an omen of its coming in the form of
a sudden and decisive change in my tastes—more
particularly in music. The whole of Zarathustra
might perhaps be classified under the rubric music.
At all events, the essential condition of its produc-
tion was a second birth within me of the art of
hearing. In Recoaro, a small mountain resort
near Vicenza, where I spent the spring of 18 81, I
and my friend and maestro, Peter Gast—who was
also one who had been born again, discovered that
the phoenix music hovered over us, in lighter and
brighter plumage than it had ever worn before.
If, therefore, I now calculate from that day for-
ward the sudden production of the book, under
the most unlikely circumstances, in February 1883,
—the last part, out of which I quoted a few lines
in my preface, was written precisely in the hal-
lowed hour when Richard Wagner gave up the
ghost in Venice,—I come to the conclusion that
the period of gestation covered eighteen months.
This period of exactly eighteen months, might
suggest, at least to Buddhists, that I am in reality
a female elephant The interval was devoted to
the Gaya Scienza, which contains hundreds of
indications of the proximity of something unparal-
leled; for, after all, it shows the beginning of
Zarathustra, since it presents Zarathustra's funda-
mental thought in the last aphorism but one of
the fourth book. To this interval also belongs
that Hymn to Life (for a mixed choir and or-
chestra), the score of which was published in
G
## p. 98 (#148) #############################################
98 ECCE HOMO
Leipzig two years ago by E. W. Fritsch, and
which gave perhaps no slight indication of my
spiritual state during this year, in which the essen-
tially yea-saying pathos, which' I call the tragic
pathos, completely filled me heart and limb. One
day people will sing it to my memory. The text,
let it be well understood, as there is some mis-
understanding abroad on this point, is not by me;
it was the astounding inspiration of a young
Russian lady, Miss Lou von Salome, with whom I
was then on friendly terms. He who is in any
way able to make some sense of the last words of
the poem, will divine why I preferred and admired
it: there is greatness in them. Pain is not re-
garded as an objection to existence: "And if
thou hast no bliss now left to crown me—Lead
on! Thou hast thy Sorrow still. "
Maybe that my music is also great in this
passage. (The last note of the oboe, by the bye,
is C sharp, not C. The latter is a misprint. )
During the following winter, I was living on that
charmingly peaceful Gulf of Rapallo, not far from
Genoa, which cuts inland between Chiavari and
Cape Porto Fino. My health was not very good;
the winter was cold and exceptionally rainy; and
the small albergo in which I lived was so close to
the water that at night my sleep was disturbed
if the sea was rough. These circumstances were
surely the very reverse of favourable; and yet, in
spite of it all, and as if in proof of my belief that
everything decisive comes to life in defiance of
every obstacle, it was precisely during this winter
and in the midst of these unfavourable cir-
## p. 99 (#149) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 99
cumstances that my Zarathustra originated. In
the morning I used to start out in a southerly
direction up the glorious road to Zoagli, which
rises up through a forest of pines and gives one a
view far out to sea. In the afternoon, or as often
as my health allowed, I walked round the whole
bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino.
This spot affected me all the more deeply because
it was so dearly loved by the Emperor Frederick
III. In the autumn of 1886 I chanced to be
there again when he was revisiting this small for-
gotten world of happiness for the last time. It
was on these two roads that all Zarathustra
came to me, above all, Zarathustra himself as a
type—I ought rather to say that it was on these
walks that he waylaid me.
In order to understand this type, you must first
be quite clear concerning its fundamental physio-
logical condition: this condition is what I call
great healthiness. In regard to this idea I cannot
make my meaning more plain or more personal
than I have done already in one of the last aphor-
isms (No. 382) of the fifth book of the Gaya
Scienza: "We new, nameless, and unfathomable
creatures," so reads the passage, "we firstlings
of a future still unproved—we who have a new
end in view also require new means to that end,
that is to say, a new healthiness, a stronger, keener,
tougher, bolder, and merrier healthiness than any
that has existed heretofore. He who longs to
## p. 100 (#150) ############################################
IOO ECCE HOMO
feel in his own soul the whole range of values and
aims that have prevailed on earth until his day,
and to sail round all the coasts of this ideal
'Mediterranean Sea'; who, from the adventures
of his own inmost experience, would fain know
how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of
the ideal;—as also how it is with the artist, the
saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the man
of piety and the godlike anchorite of yore ;—such
a man requires one thing above all for his purpose,
and that is, great healthiness—such healthiness as
he not only possesses, but also constantly acquires
and must acquire, because he is continually sacri-
ficing it again, and is compelled to sacrifice it!
And now, therefore, after having been long on the
way, we Argonauts of the ideal, whose pluck is
greater than prudence would allow, and who are
often shipwrecked and bruised, but, as I have said,
healthier than people would like to admit, danger-
ously healthy, and for ever recovering our health—
it would seem as if we had before us, as a reward
for all our toils, a country still undiscovered, the
horizon of which no one has yet seen, a beyond
to every country and every refuge of the ideal that
man has ever known, a world so overflowing with
beauty, strangeness, doubt, terror, and divinity,
that both our curiosity and our lust of possession
are frantic with eagerness. Alas! how in the
face of such vistas, and with such burning desire in
our conscience and consciousness, could we still
be content with the man of the present day? This
is bad indeed; but, that we should regard his
wprthiest aims and hopes with ill-concealed amuse-
## p. 101 (#151) ############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS IOI
ment, or perhaps give them no thought at all, is in-
evitable. Another ideal now leads us on, a wonderful,
seductive ideal, full of danger, the pursuit of which
we should be loath to urge upon any one, because
we are not so ready to acknowledge any one's
right to it: the ideal of a spirit who plays ingenu-
ously (that is to say, involuntarily, and as the out-
come of superabundant energy and power) with
everything that, hitherto, has been called holy,
good, inviolable, and divine; to whom even the
loftiest thing that the people have with reason
made their measure of value would be no better
than a danger, a decay, and an abasement, or at
least a relaxation and temporary forgetfulness of
self: the ideal of a humanly superhuman well-being
and goodwill, which often enough will seem in-
human—as when, for instance, it stands beside all
past earnestness on earth, and all past solemnities
in hearing, speech, tone, look, morality, and duty,
as their most lifelike and unconscious parody—
but with which, nevertheless, great earnestness
perhaps alone begins, the first note of interroga-
tion is affixed, the fate of the soul changes, the
hour hand moves, and tragedy begins. "
Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century
any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age
understood by the word inspiration? If not, I will
describe it. I f one had the smallest vestige of super-
stition left in one, it would hardly be possible com-
pletely to set aside the idea that one is the mere
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102 ECCE HOMO
incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty
power. The idea of revelation, in the sense that
something which profoundly convulses and upsets
one becomes suddenly visible and audible with inde-
scribable certainty and accuracy—describes the
simple fact. One hears—one does not seek; one
takes—one does not ask who gives: a thought
suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with
necessity, without faltering—I have never had any
choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy so great
that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed
by a flood of tears, during which one's steps now in-
voluntarily rush and anon involuntarily lag. There
is the feeling that one is utterly out of hand, with
the very distinct consciousness of an endless number
of fine thrills and titillations descending to one's
very toes;—there is a depth of happiness in which
the most painful and gloomy parts do not act as
antitheses to the rest, but are produced and required
as necessary shades of colour in such an overflow
of light. There is an instinct for rhythmic relations
which embraces a whole world of forms (length, the
need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the
measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of
counterpart to its pressure and tension). Every-
thing happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tem-
pestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of
power and divinity. The involuntary nature of the
figures and similes is the most remarkable thing;
one loses all perception of what is imagery and
metaphor; everything seems to present itself as the
readiest, the truest, and simplest means of expres-
sion. It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra's
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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 103
own phrases, as if all things came to one, and
offered themselves as similes. (" Here do all things
come caressingly to thy discourse and natter thee,
for they would fain ride upon thy back. On every
simile thou ridest here unto every truth. Here fly
open unto thee all the speech and word shrines of
the world, here would all existence become speech,
here would all Becoming learn of thee how to
speak. ") This is my experience of inspiration. I
do not doubt but that I should have to go back
thousands of years before I could find another who
could say to me: "It is mine also! "
For a few weeks afterwards I lay an invalid in
Genoa. Then followed a melancholy spring in
Rome, where I only just managed to live—and this
was no easy matter. This city, which is absolutely
unsuited to the poet-author of Zarathustra, and for
the choice of which I was not responsible, made
me inordinately miserable. I tried to leave it. I
wanted to go to Aquila—the opposite of Rome in
every respect, and actually founded in a spirit of
hostility towards that city, just as I also shall found
a city some day, as a memento of an atheist and
genuine enemy of the Church, a person very closely
related to me, the great Hohenstaufen, the Emperor
Frederick II. But Fate lay behind it all: I had to
return again to Rome. In the end I was obliged
to be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini, after I had
exerted myself in vain to find an anti-Christian
quarter. I fear that on one occasion, to avoid bad
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104 £CCE HOMO
smells as much as possible, I actually inquired at
the Palazzo del Quirinale whether they could not
provide a quiet room for a philosopher. In a
chamber high above the Piazza just mentioned, from
which one obtained a general view of Rome, and
could hear the fountains plashing far below, the
loneliest of all songs was composed—" The Night-
Song. " About this time I was obsessed by an un-
speakably sad melody, the refrain of which I
recognised in the words, "dead through immor-
tality. " . . . In the summer, finding myself once
more in the sacred place where the first thought of
Zarathustra flashed like a light across my mind, I
conceived the second part. Ten days sufficed.
Neither for the second, the first, nor the third part,
have I required aday longer. In the ensuing winter,
beneath the halcyon sky of Nice, which then for the
first time poured its light into my life, I found the
third Zarathustra—and came to the end of my task:
the whole having occupied me scarcely a year.
Many hidden corners and heights in the country
round about Nice are hallowed for me by moments
that I can never forget. That decisive chapter,
entitled "Old and New Tables," was composed
during the arduous ascent from the station to Eza
—that wonderful Moorish village in the rocks.
During those moments when my creative energy
flowed most plentifully, my muscular activity was
always greatest. The body is inspired: let us waive
the question of " soul. " I might often have been
seen dancing in those days, and I could then walk
for seven or eight hours on end over the hills
without a suggestion of fatigue. I slept well and
## p. 105 (#155) ############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 105
laughed a good deal—I was perfectly robust and
patient.
With the exception of these periods of industry
lasting ten days, the years I spent during the pro-
duction of Zarathustra, and thereafter, were for me
years of unparalleled distress. A man pays dearly
for being immortal: to this end he must die many
times over during his life. There is such a thing
as what I call the rancour of greatness: everything
great, whether a work or a deed, once it is com-
pleted, turns immediately against its author. The
very fact that he is its author makes him weak at
this time. He can no longer endure his deed. He
can no longer look it full in the face. To have
something at one's back which one could never have
willed, something to which the knot of human
destiny is attached—and to be forced thencefor-
ward to bear it on one's shoulders! Why, it almost
crushes one! The rancour of greatness! A some-
what different experience is the uncanny silence that
reigns about one. Solitude has seven skins which
nothing can penetrate. One goes among men; one
greets friends: but these things are only new
deserts, the looks of those one meets no longer bear
a greeting. At the best one encounters a sort of
revolt. This feeling of revolt, I suffered, in varying
degrees of intensity, at the hands of almost every
one who came near me; it would seem that nothing
inflicts a deeper wound than suddenly to make one's
distance felt. Those noble natures are scarce who
## p. 106 (#156) ############################################
106 ECCE HOMO
know not how to live unless they can revere. A
third thing is the absurd susceptibility of the skin
to small pin-pricks, a kind of helplessness in the
presence of all small things. This seems to me a
necessary outcome of the appalling expenditure of
all defensive forces, which is the first condition of
every creative act, of every act which proceeds from
the most intimate, most secret, and most concealed
recesses of a man's being. The small defensive
forces are thus, as it were, suspended, and no fresh
energy reaches them. I even think it probable that
one does not digest so well, that one is less willing
to move, and that one is much too open to sensa-
tions of coldness and suspicion; for, in a large
number of cases, suspicion is merely a blunder in
etiology. On one occasion when I felt like this I
became conscious of the proximity of a herd of cows,
some time before I could possibly have seen it with
my eyes, simply owing to a return in me of milder
and more humane sentiments: they communicated
warmth to me. . . .
This work stands alone. Do not let us mention
the poets in the same breath: nothing perhaps has
ever been produced out of such a superabundance
of strength. My concept "Dionysian" here be-
came the highest deed ; compared with it everything
that other men have done seems poor and limited.
The fact that a Goethe or a Shakespeare would not
for an instant have known how to take breath in
this atmosphere of passion and of the heights; the
## p. 107 (#157) ############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 107
fact that by the side of Zarathustra, Dante is no
more than a believer, and not one who first creates
the truth—that is to say, not a world-ruling spirit,
a Fate; the fact that the poets of the Veda were
priests and not even fit to unfasten Zarathustra's
sandal—all this is the least of things, and gives no
idea of the distance, of the azure solitude, in which
this work dwells. Zarathustra has an eternal right
to say: " I draw around me circles and holy bound-
aries. Ever fewer are they that mount with me to
ever loftier heights. I build me a mountain range
of ever holier mountains. " If all the spirit and
goodness of every great soul were collected together,
the whole could not create a single one of Zara-
thustra's discourses. The ladder upon which he
rises and descends is of boundless length; he has
seen further, he has willed further, and gone further
than any other man. There is contradiction in
every word that he utters, this most yea-saying of
all spirits. Through him all contradictions are
bound up into a new unity. The loftiest and the
basest powers of human nature, the sweetest, the
lightest, and the most terrible, rush forth from out
one spring with everlasting certainty. Until his
coming no one knew what was height, or depth,
and still less what was truth. There is not a single
passage in this revelation of truth which had already
been anticipated and divined by even the greatest
among men. Before Zarathustra there was no
wisdom, no probing of the soul, no art of speech: in
his book, the most familiar and most vulgar thing
utters unheard-of words. The sentence quivers with
passion. Eloquence has become music. Forks of
## p. 108 (#158) ############################################
108 ECCE HOMO
lightning are hurled towards futures of which no one
has ever dreamed before. The most powerful use
of parables that has yet existed is poor beside it,
and mere child's-play compared with this return of
language to the nature of imagery. See how Zara-
thustra goes down from the mountain and speaks
the kindest words to every one! See with what
delicate fingers he touches his very adversaries, the
priests, and how he suffers with them from them-
selves! Here, at every moment, man is overcome,
and the concept "Superman " becomes the greatest
reality,—out of sight, almost far away beneath him,
lies all that which heretofore has been called great
in man. The halcyonic brightness, the light feet,
the presence of wickedness and exuberance through-
out, and all that is the essence of the type Zara-
thustra, was never dreamt of before as a prerequisite
of greatness. In precisely these limits of space and
in this accessibility to opposites Zarathustra feels
himself the highest of all living things: and when
you hear how he defines this highest, you will give
up trying to find his equal.
"The soul which hath the longest ladder and
can step down deepest,
"The vastest soul that can run and stray and
rove furthest in its own domain,
"The most necessary soul, that out of desire
flingeth itself to chance,
"The stable soul that plungeth into Becoming,
the possessing soul that must needs taste of
willing and longing,
"The soul that flyeth from itself, and over-
taketh itself in the widest circle,
## p. 109 (#159) ############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 109
"The wisest soul that folly exhorteth most
sweetly,
"The most self-loving soul, in whom all things
have their rise, their ebb and flow. "
But this is the very idea of Dionysus. Another
consideration leads to this idea. The psychological
problem presented by the type of Zarathustra is,
how can he, who in an unprecedented manner says
no, and acts no, in regard to all that which has been
affirmed hitherto, remain nevertheless a yea-saying ,
spirit? how can he who bears the heaviest destiny
on his shoulders and whose very life-task is a
fatality, yet be the brightest and the most transcen-
dental of spirits—for Zarathustra is a dancer?
how can he who has the hardest and most terrible
grasp of reality, and who has thought the most
"abysmal thoughts," nevertheless avoid conceiving
these things as objections to existence, or even as
objections to the eternal recurrence of existence ? —
how is it that on the contrary he finds reasons for
being himself the eternal affirmation of all things,
"the tremendous and unlimited saying of Yea and
Amen"? . . . " Into every abyss do I bear the
benediction of my yea to Life. " . . . But this, once
more, is precisely the idea of Dionysus.
What language will such a spirit speak, when he
speaks unto his soul? The language of the dithy-
ramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb.
Hearken unto the manner in which Zarathustra
speaks to his soul Before Sunrise (iii. 48). Before
## p. 110 (#160) ############################################
IIO ECCE HOMO
my time such emerald joys and divine tenderness
had found no tongue. Even the profoundest
melancholy of such a Dionysus takes shape as a
dithyramb. As an example of this I take " The
Night-Song,"—the immortal plaint of one who,
thanks to his superabundance of light and power,
thanks to the sun within him, is condemned never
to love.
"It is night: now do all gushing springs raise
their voices. And my soul too is a gushing
spring.
"It is night: now only do all lovers burst into
song. And my soul too is the song of a lover.
"Something unquenched and unquenchable is
within me, that would raise its voice. A craving
for love is within me, which itself speaketh the
language of love.
"Light am I: would that I were night! But
this is my loneliness, that I am begirt with light.
"Alas, why am I not dark and like unto the
night! How joyfully would I then suck at the
breasts of light!
"And even you would I bless, ye twinkling star-
lets and glow-worms on high! and be blessed in
the gifts of your light.
"But in mine own light do I live, ever back into
myself do I drink the flames I send forth.
"I know not the happiness of the hand stretched
forth to grasp; and oft have I dreamt that steal-
ing must be more blessed than taking.
"Wretched am I that my hand may never rest
from giving: an envious fate is mine that I see ex-
pectant eyes and nights made bright with longing.
## p. 111 (#161) ############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS III
"Oh, the wretchedness of all them that give!
Oh, the clouds that cover the face of my sun!
That craving for desire!
