This is the
strangest
kind of
"objectivity” that ever existed: my absolute cer-
tainty in regard to what I am, projected itself into
any chance reality-truth about myself was voiced
from out appalling depths.
"objectivity” that ever existed: my absolute cer-
tainty in regard to what I am, projected itself into
any chance reality-truth about myself was voiced
from out appalling depths.
Nietzsche - v17 - Ecce Homo
This knowledge is part
of my Dionysian patrimony. Who knows? may-
be I am the first psychologist of the eternally femi-
nine. Women all like me. . . . But that's an old
story: save, of course, the abortions among them,
the emancipated ones, those who lack the where-
withal to have children. Thank goodness I am not
willing to let myself be torn to pieces! the perfect
woman tears you to'pieces when she loves you: I
know these amiable Maenads. . . . Oh! what a
dangerous, creeping, subterranean little beast of
prey she is! And so agreeable withal! . . . A little
woman, pursuing her vengeance, would force open
even the iron gates of Fate itself. Woman is incal-
culably more wicked than man, she is also cleverer.
Goodness in a woman is already a sign of degenera-
tion. All cases of " beautiful souls " in women may
be traced to a faulty physiological condition—but
I go no further, lest I should become medicynical.
The struggle for equal rights is even a symptom
of disease; every doctor knows this. The more
womanly a woman is, the more she fights tooth and
nail against rights in general: the natural order of
things, the eternal war between the sexes, assigns
to her by far the foremost rank. Have people had
ears to hear my definition of love? It is the only
definition worthy of a philosopher. Love, in its
means, is war; in its foundation, it is the mortal
hatred of the sexes. Have you heard my reply to
the question how a woman can be cured, " saved":
e ::
## p. 66 (#104) #############################################
66 ECCE HOMO
in fact ? —Give her a child! A woman needs
children, man is always only a means, thus spake
Zarathustra. "The emancipation of women,"—this
is the instinctive hatred of physiologically botched
—that is to say, barren—women for those of their
sisters who are well constituted: the fight against
"man " is always only a means, a pretext, a piece
of strategy. By trying to rise to " Woman per se,"
to "Higher Woman," to the "Ideal Woman," all
they wish to do is to lower the general level of
women's rank: and there are no more certain means
to this end than university education, trousers, and
the rights of voting cattle. Truth to tell, the emanci-
pated are the anarchists in the " eternally feminine"
world, the physiological mishaps, the most deep-
rooted instinct of whom is revenge. A whole species
of the most malicious "idealism "—which, by the
bye, also manifests itself in men, in Henrik Ibsen
for instance, that typical old maid—whose object
is to poison the clean conscience, the natural spirit,
of sexual love. . . . And in order to leave no doubt
in your minds in regard to my opinion, which, on
this matter, is as honest as it is severe, I will reveal
to you one more clause out of my moral code against
vice—with the word " vice" I combat every kind of
opposition to Nature, or, if you prefer fine words,
idealism. The clause reads: "Preaching of chastity
is a public incitement to unnatural practices. All
depreciation of the sexual life, all the sullying of
it by means of the concept 'impure,' is the essen-
tial crimeagainst Life—is the essential crime against
the Holy Spirit of Life. "
## p. 67 (#105) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 67
In order to give you some idea of myself as a
psychologist, let me take this curious piece of
psychological analysis out of the book Beyond Good
and Evil, in which it appears. I forbid, by the bye,
any guessing as to whom I am describing in this
passage. "The genius of the heart, as that great
anchorite possesses it, the divine tempter and born
Pied Piper of consciences, whose voice knows how
to sink into the inmost depths of every soul, who
neither utters a word nor casts a glance, in which
some seductive motive or trick does not lie: a part
of whose masterliness is that he understands the art
of seeming—not what he is, but that which will
place a fresh constraint upon his followers to press
ever more closely upon him, to follow him ever more
enthusiastically and whole-heartedly. . . . The
genius of the heart, which makes all loud and self-
conceited things hold their tongues and lend their
ears, which polishes all rough souls and makes them
taste a new longing—to lie placid as a mirror,
that the deep heavens may be reflected in them. . . .
The genius of the heart which teaches the clumsy
and too hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more
tenderly; which scents the hidden and forgotten
treasure, the pearl of goodness and sweet spiritual-
ity, beneath thick black ice, and is a divining rod
for every grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned
in heaps of mud and sand. . . . The genius of the
heart, from contact with which every man goes away
richer, not ' blessed' and overcome, not as though
favoured and crushed by the good things of others;
## p. 68 (#106) #############################################
68 ECCE HOMO
but richer in himself, fresher to himself than before,
opened up, breathed upon and sounded by a thawing
wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more
fragile, more bruised; but full of hopes which as
yet lack names, full of a new will and striving, full
of a new unwillingness and counter-striving. " . . .
"The Birth of Tragedy"
In order to be fair to the Birth of Tragedy (1872)
it is necessary to forget a few things. It created
a sensation and even fascinated by means of its
mistakes—by means of its application to Wagner-
ism, as if the latter were the sign of an ascending
tendency. On that account alone, this treatise was
an event in Wagner's life: thenceforward great hopes
surrounded the name of Wagner. Even to this
day, people remind me, sometimes in the middle of
Parsifal, that it rests on my conscience if the opin-
ion, that this movement is of great value to culture,
at length became prevalent. I have often seen the
book quoted as " The Second Birth of Tragedy
from the Spirit of Music ": people had ears only
for new formulae for Wagner's art, his object and
his mission—and in this way the real hidden value
of the book was overlooked. "Hellenism and
Pessimism "—this would have been a less equivocal
title, seeing that the book contains the first attempt
at showing how the Greeks succeeded in disposing
of pessimism—in what manner they overcame it.
## p. 69 (#107) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 69
. . . Tragedy itself is the proof of the fact that the
Greekswerenotpessimists: Schopenhauerblundered
here as he blundered in everything else. —Regarded
impartially, The Birth of Tragedy is a book quite
strange to its age: no one would dream that it was
begun in the thunder of the battle of Worth. I
thought out these problems on cold September
nights beneath the walls of Metz, in the midst of my
duties as nurse to the wounded; it would be easier to
think that it was written fifty years earlier. Its atti-
tude towards politics is one of indifference,—" un-
German," * as people would say to-day,—it smells
offensively of Hegel; only in one or two formulae is
it infected with the bitter odour of corpses which is
peculiar to Schopenhauer. An idea—the antagon-
ism of the two concepts Dionysian and Apollonian
—is translated into metaphysics; history itself is
depicted as the development of this idea; in tragedy
this antithesis has become unity; from this stand-
point things which theretofore had never been face
to face are suddenly confronted, and understood
and illuminated by each other. . . . Opera and re-
volution, for instance. . . . The two decisive inno-
vations in the book are, first, the comprehension of
the Dionysian phenomenon among the Greeks—it
provides the first psychological analysis of this
phenomenon, and sees in it the single root of all
Greek art; and, secondly, the comprehension of-
* Those Germans who, like Nietzsche or Goethe, recog-
nised that politics constituted a danger to culture, and who
appreciated the literature of maturer cultures, such as that
of France, are called un-deutsch (un-German) by Imperial-
istic Germans. —Tr.
## p. 70 (#108) #############################################
70 ECCE HOMO
Socraticism—Socrates being presented for the first
time as the instrument of Greek dissolution, as
a typical decadent. "Reason" versus Instinct.
"Reason" at any cost, as a dangerous, life-under-
mining force. The whole book is profoundly and
politely silent concerning Christianity: the latter
is neither Apollonian nor Dionysian; it denies all
aesthetic values, which are the only values that The
Birth of Tragedy recognises. Christianity is most
profoundly nihilistic, whereas in the Dionysian
symbol, the most extreme limits of a yea-saying
attitude to life are attained. In one part of the
book the Christian priesthood is referred to as a
"perfidious order of goblins," as " subterraneans. "
This start of mine was remarkable beyond meas-
ure. As a confirmation of my inmost personal ex-
perience I had discovered the only example of this
fact that history possesses,—with this I was the
first to understand the amazing Dionysian pheno-
menon. At the same time, by recognising Socrates
as a decadent, I proved most conclusively that the
certainty of my psychological grasp of things ran
very little risk at the hands of any sort of moral
idiosyncrasy: to regard morality itself as a symptom
of degeneration is an innovation, a unique event of
the first order in the history of knowledge. How
high I had soared above the pitifully foolish gabble
about Optimism and Pessimism with my two new
doctrines! I was the first to see the actual contrast:
the degenerate instinct which turns upon life with
a subterranean lust of vengeance (Christianity,
## p. 71 (#109) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 71
Schopenhauer's philosophy, and in some respects
too even Plato's philosophy—in short, the whole of
idealism in its typical forms)f as opposed to a
formula of the highest yea-saying to life, born of
an abundance and a superabundance of life—a
yea-saying free from all reserve, applying even to
suffering, and guilt, and all that is questionable and
strange in existence. . . . This last, most joyous,
most exuberant and exultant yea to life, is not only
the highest,but also the profoundest conception,and
one which is most strictly confirmed and supported
by truth and science. Nothing that exists must be
suppressed, nothing can be dispensed with. Those
aspects of life which Christians and other Nihilists
reject, belong to an incalculably higher order in the
hierarchy of values, than that which the instinct of
degeneration calls good, and may call good. In
order to understand this, a certain courage is neces-
sary, and, as a prerequisite of this, a certain super-
fluity of strength: for a man can approach only as
near to truth as he has the courage to advance—that
is to say, everything depends strictly upon the mea-
sure of his strength. Knowledge, and the affirmation
of reality, are just as necessary to the strong man
as cowardice, the flight from reality—in fact, the
"ideal"—are necessarytotheweak inspired by weak-
ness. . . . These people are not at liberty to "know,"
—decadents stand in need of lies,—it is one of their
self-preservative measures. He who not only under-
stands the word " Dionysian," but understands him-
self in that term, does not require any refutation of
Plato, or of Christianity, or of Schopenhauer—for
his nose scents decomposition.
## p. 72 (#110) #############################################
72 ECCE HOMO
The extent to which I had by means of these
doctrines discovered the idea of" tragedy," the ulti-
mate explanation of what the psychology of tragedy
is, I discussed finally in The Twilight of the Idols
(Aph. 5, part 10). . . . "The saying of yea to life,
and even to its weirdest and most difficult pro-
blems: the will to life rejoicing at its own infinite
vitality in the sacrifice of its highest types—that is
what I called Dionysian, that is what I meant as
the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet.
Not to cast out terror and pity, or to purge one's self
of dangerous passion by discharging it with vehem-
ence,—this was Aristotle's* misunderstanding of
it,—but to be far beyond terror and pity and to be
the eternal lust of Becoming itself—that lust which
also involves the joy of destruction. " . . . In this
sense I have the right to regard myself as the first
tragic philosopher—that is to say, the most extreme
antithesis and antipodes of a pessimistic philosopher.
Before my time no suchthingexisted as this transla-
tion of the Dionysian phenomenon into philosophic
emotion: tragic wisdom was lacking; in vain have
I sought for signs of it even among the great Greeks
in philosophy—those belonging to the two centuries
before Socrates. I still remained a little doubtful
about Heraclitus, in whose presence, alone, I felt
warmer and more at ease than anywhere else. The
yea-saying to the impermanence and annihilation
of things, which is the decisive feature of a Diony-
* Aristotle's Poetics, c. vi. —Tr.
## p. 73 (#111) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 73
sian philosophy; the yea-saying to contradiction
and war, the postulation of Becoming, together with
the radical rejection even of the concept Being—
in all these things, at all events, I must recognise
him who has come nearest to me in thought hither
to. The doctrine of the " Eternal Recurrence "—
that is to say, of the absolute and eternal repetition
of all things in periodical cycles—this doctrine of
Zarathustra's might, it is true, have been taught be-
fore. In any case, the Stoics, who derived nearly
all their fundamental ideas from Heraclitus, show
traces of it.
A tremendous hope finds expression in this work.
After all, I have absolutely no reason to renounce
the hope for a Dionysian future of music. Let us
look a century ahead, and let us suppose that my
attempt to destroy two millenniums of hostility to
Nature and of the violation of humanity be crowned
with success That new party of life-advocates,
which will undertake the greatest of all tasks, the
elevation and perfection of mankind, as well as the
relentless destruction of all degenerate and para-
sitical elements, will make that superabundance of
life on earth once more possible, out of which the
Dionysian state will perforce arise again. I promise
the advent of a tragic age: the highest art in the
saying of yea to life, " tragedy," will be born again
when mankind has the knowledge of the hardest,
but most necessary of wars, behind it, without, how-
ever, suffering from that knowledge. . . . A psycho-
logist might add that what I heard in Wagnerian
## p. 74 (#112) #############################################
74 ECCE HOMO
music in my youth and early manhood had nothing
whatsoever to do with Wagner; that when I de-
scribed Dionysian music, I described merely what
/ personally had heard—that I was compelled in-
stinctively to translate and transfigure everything
into the new spirit which filled my breast. A proof
of this, and as strong a proof as you could have, is
my essay, Wagner in Bayreuth: in all its decisive
psychological passages I am the only person con-
cerned—without any hesitation you may read my
name or the word "Zarathustra " wherever the text
contains the name of Wagner. The whole pano-
rama of the dithyrambic artist is the representation
of the already existing author of Zarathustra, and
it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not
even once come into contact with the real Wagner.
Wagner himself had a notion of the truth; he did
not recognise himself in the essay. —In this way,
"the idea of Bayreuth" was changed into something
which to those who are acquainted with my Zara-
thustra will be no riddle—that is to say, into the
\ Great Noon when the highest of the elect will conse-
crate themselves for the greatest of all duties—who
knows? the vision of a feast which I may live to
see. . . . The pathos of the first few pages is uni-
versal history; the look which is discussed on page
105 * of the book, is the actual look of Zarathustra;
Wagner, Bayreuth, the whole of this petty German
wretchedness, is a cloud upon which an infinite Fata
Morgana of the future is reflected. Even from the
* This number and those which follow refer to Thoughts out
of Season, Part I. in this edition of Nietzsche's Works. —Tr.
## p. 75 (#113) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 75
\
psychological standpoint, all the decisive traits in
my character are introduced into Wagner's nature
—the juxtaposition of the most brilliant and most
fatal forces, a Will to Power such as no man has ever
possessed—inexorable bravery in matters spiritual,
an unlimited power of learning unaccompanied by
depressed powers for action. Everything in this
essay is a prophecy: the proximity of the resur-
rection of the Greek spirit, the need of men who
will be counter-Alexanders, who will once more tie
the Gordian knot of Greek culture, after it has been
cut. Listen to the world-historic accent with which
the concept "sense for the tragic " is introduced on
page 180: there are little else but world-historic
accents in this essay. This is the strangest kind of
"objectivity" that ever existed: my absolute cer-
tainty in regard to what I am, projected itself into
any chance reality—truth about myself was voiced
from out appalling depths. On pages 174 and 175
the style of Zarathustra is described and foretold
with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent
expression will ever he found than that on pages
144-147 for the event for which Zarathustrastands
—that prodigious act of the purification and conse-
cration of mankind.
"Thoughts out of Season"
1
The four essays composing the Thoughts out
of Season are thoroughly warlike in tone. They
prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight
## p. 75 (#114) #############################################
74
ECCE HOMO
music in my youth and early manhood had nothing
whatsoever to do with Wagner; that when I de-
scribed Dionysian music, I described merely what
I personally had heard—that I was compelled in-
stinctively to translate and transfigure everything
into the new spirit which filled my breast. A proof
of this, and as strong a proof as you could have, is
my essay, Wagner in Bayreuth: in all its decisive
psychological passages I am the only person con-
cerned—without any hesitation you may read my
name or the word “Zarathustra” wherever the text
contains the name of Wagner. The whole pano-
rama of the dithyrambic artist is the representation
of the already existing author of Zarathustra, and
it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not
even once come into contact with the real Wagner.
Wagner himself had a notion of the truth; he did
not recognise himself in the essay. In this way,
“the idea of Bayreuth” was changed into something
which to those who are acquainted with my Zara-
thustra will be no riddle—that is to say, into the
Great Noon when the highest of the elect will conse-
crate themselves for the greatest of all duties—who
knows? the vision of a feast which I may live to
see. . . . The pathos of the first few pages is uni-
versal history; the look which is discussed on page
105* of the book, is the actual look of Zarathustra;
Wagner, Bayreuth, the whole of this petty German
wretchedness, is a cloud upon which an infinite Fata
Morgana of the future is reflected. Even from the
* This number and those which follow refer to Thoughts out
of Season, Part I. in this edition of Nietzsche's Works. —TR.
## p. 75 (#115) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 75
psychological standpoint, all the decisive traits in
my character are introduced into Wagner's nature
—the juxtaposition of the most brilliant and most
fatal forces, a Will to Power such as no man has ever
possessed-inexorable bravery in matters spiritual,
an unlimited power of learning unaccompanied by
depressed powers for action. Everything in this
essay is a prophecy: the proximity of the resur-
rection of the Greek spirit, the need of men who
will be counter-Alexanders, who will once more tie
the Gordian knot of Greek culture, after it has been
cut. Listen to the world-historic accent with which
the concept “sense for the tragic" is introduced on
page 180: there are little else but world-historic
accents in this essay. This is the strangest kind of
"objectivity” that ever existed: my absolute cer-
tainty in regard to what I am, projected itself into
any chance reality- truth about myself was voiced
from out appalling depths. On pages 174 and 175
the style of Zarathustra is described and foretold
with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent
expression will ever he found than that on pages
144-147 for the event for which Zarathustra stands
—that prodigious act of the purification and conse-
cration of mankind.
" THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON ”
I
The four essays composing the Thoughts out
of Season are thoroughly warlike in tone. They
prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight
## p. 75 (#116) #############################################
74
ECCE HOMO
music in my youth and early manhood had nothing
whatsoever to do with Wagner; that when I de-
scribed Dionysian music, I described merely what
I personally had heard—that I was compelled in-
stinctively to translate and transfigure everything
into the new spirit which filled my breast. A proof
of this, and as strong a proof as you could have, is
my essay, Wagner in Bayreuth: in all its decisive
psychological passages I am the only person con-
cerned—without any hesitation you may read my
name or the word “Zarathustra " wherever the text
contains the name of Wagner. The whole pano-
rama of the dithyrambic artist is the representation
of the already existing author of Zarathustra, and
it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not
even once come into contact with the real Wagner.
Wagner himself had a notion of the truth; he did
not recognise himself in the essay. In this way,
“the idea of Bayreuth” was changed into something
which to those who are acquainted with my Zara-
thustra will be no riddle—that is to say, into the
Great Noon when the highest of the elect will conse-
crate themselves for the greatest of all duties—who
knows? the vision of a feast which I may live to
see. . . . The pathos of the first few pages is uni-
versal history; the look which is discussed on page
105* of the book, is the actual look of Zarathustra;
Wagner, Bayreuth, the whole of this petty German
wretchedness, is a cloud upon which an infinite Fata
Morgana of the future is reflected. Even from the
* This number and those which follow refer to Thoughts out
of Season, Part I. in this edition of Nietzsche's Works. -TR.
## p. 75 (#117) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 75
psychological standpoint, all the decisive traits in
my character are introduced into Wagner's nature
-the juxtaposition of the most brilliant and most
fatal forces, a Will to Power such as no man has ever
possessed-inexorable bravery in matters spiritual,
an unlimited power of learning unaccompanied by
depressed powers for action. Everything in this
essay is a prophecy: the proximity of the resur-
rection of the Greek spirit, the need of men who
will be counter-Alexanders, who will once more tie
the Gordian knot of Greek culture, after it has been
cut. Listen to the world-historic accent with which
the concept “sense for the tragic" is introduced on
page 180: there are little else but world-historic
accents in this essay.
This is the strangest kind of
"objectivity” that ever existed: my absolute cer-
tainty in regard to what I am, projected itself into
any chance reality-truth about myself was voiced
from out appalling depths. On pages 174 and 175
the style of Zarathustra is described and foretold
with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent
expression will ever he found than that on pages
144-147 for the event for which Zarathustra stands
—that prodigious act of the purification and conse-
cration of mankind.
“THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON”
The four essays composing the Thoughts out
of Season are thoroughly warlike in tone. They
prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight
## p. 76 (#118) #############################################
/
? 6 ECCE HOMO
/
in drawing the sword—and perhaps, also, that my
wrist is dangerously supple. The first onslaught
(1873) was directed against German culture, upon
which I looked down even at that time with un-
mitigated contempt. Without either sense, sub-
stance, or goal, it was simply "public opinion. "
There could be no more dangerous misunder-
standing than to suppose that Germany's success
at arms proved anything in favour of German
culture—and still less the triumph of this culture
over that of France. The second essay (1874)
brings to light that which is dangerous, that which
corrodes and poisons life in our manner of pursu-
ing scientific study: Life is diseased, thanks to this
dehumanised piece of clockwork and mechanism,
thanks to the "impersonality" of the workman,
and the false economy of the "division of labour. "
The object, which is culture, is lost sight of:
modern scientific activity as a means thereto simply
produces barbarism. In this treatise, the " histori-
cal sense," of which this century is so proud, is for
the first time recognised as sickness, as a typical
symptom of decay. In the third and fourth essays,
a sign-post is set up pointing to a higher concept
of culture, to a re-establishment of the notion
"culture "; and two pictures of the hardest self-
love and self-discipline are presented, two essentially
un-modern types, full of the most sovereign con-
tempt for all that which lay around them and
was called "Empire," "Culture," "Christianity,"
"Bismarck," and "Success," — these two types
were Schopenhauer and Wagner, or, in a word,
Nietzsche. . . .
## p. 77 (#119) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUGH EXCELLENT BOOKS 77
Of these four attacks, the first met with extra-
ordinary success. The stir which it created was in
every way gorgeous. I had put my finger on the
vulnerable spot of a triumphant nation—I had told
it that its victory was not a red-letter day for culture,
but, perhaps, something very different. The reply
rang out from all sides, and certainly not only from
old friends of David Strauss, whom I had made
ridiculous as the type of a German Philistine of
Culture and a man of smug self-content—in short,
as the author of that suburban gospel of his, called
The Old and the New Faith (the term "Philistine
of Culture" passed into the current language of
Germany after the appearance of my book). These
old friends, whose vanity as Wiirtembergians and
Swabians I had deeply wounded in regarding
their unique animal, their bird of Paradise, as a
trifle comic, replied to me as ingenuously and as
grossly as I could have wished. The Prussian
replies were smarter; they contained more" Prussian
blue. " The most disreputable attitude was assumed
by a Leipzig paper, the egregious Grentzboten; and
it cost me some pains to prevent my indignant
friends in Bale from taking action against it. Only
a few old gentlemen decided in my favour, and for
very diverse and sometimes unaccountable reasons.
Among them was one, Ewald of Gottingen, who
made it clear that my attack on Strauss had been
deadly. There was also the Hegelian, Bruno Bauer,
who from that time became one of my most atten-
tive readers. In his later years he liked to refer to
## p. 78 (#120) #############################################
X
78 ECCE HOMO
me, when, for instance, he wanted to give Herr
von Treitschke, the Prussian Historiographer, a
hint as to where he could obtain information about
the notion "Culture," of which he (Herr von T. )
had completely lost sight. The weightiest and
longest notice of my book and its author appeared
in Wiirzburg, and was written by Professor Hoff-
mann, an old pupil of the philosopher von Baader.
The essays made him foresee a great future for me,
namely, that of bringing about a sort of crisis and
decisive turning-point in the problem of atheism,
of which he recognised in me the most instinctive
and most radical advocate. It was atheism that
had drawn me to Schopenhauer. The review which
received by far the most attention, and which ex-
cited the most bitterness, was an extraordinarily
powerful and plucky appreciation of my work by
Carl Hillebrand, a man who was usually so mild,
and the last humane German who knew how to
wield a pen. The article appeared in the Augs-
burg Gazette, and it can be read to-day, couched in
rather more cautious language, among his collected
essays. In it my work was referred to as an event,
as a decisive turning-point, as the first sign of
an awakening, as an excellent symptom, and as
an actual revival of German earnestness and of
German passion in things spiritual. Hillebrand
could speak only in the terms of the highest re-
spect, of the form of my book, of its consummate
taste, of its perfect tact in discriminating between
persons and causes: he characterised it as the best
polemical work in the German language,—the best
performance in the art of polemics, which for
## p. 79 (#121) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 79
Germans is so dangerous and so strongly to be
deprecated. Besides confirming my standpoint, he
laid even greater stress upon what I had dared to
say about the deterioration of language in Germany
(nowadays writers assume the airs of Purists * and
can no longer even construct a sentence); sharing
my contempt for the literary stars of this nation,
he concluded by expressing his admiration for my
courage — that "greatest courage of all which
places the very favourites of the people in the
dock. " . . . The after-effects of this essay of mine
proved invaluable to me in my life. No one has
ever tried to meddle with me since. People are
silent. In Germany I am treated with gloomy
caution: for years I have rejoiced in the privilege
of such absolute freedom of speech, as no one now-
adays, least of all in the " Empire," has enough
liberty to claim. My paradise is " in the shadow
of my sword. " At bottom all I had done was to
put one of Stendhal's maxims into practice: he
advises one to make one's entrance into society by
means of a duel. And how well I had chosen my
opponent! —the foremost free-thinker of Germany.
As a matter of fact, quite a novel kind of free
* The Purists constitute a definite body in Germany, which
is called the Deutscher Sprach- Verein. Their object is to
banish every foreign word from the language, and they carry
this process of ostracism even into the domain of the menu,
where their efforts at rendering the meaning of French dishes
are extremely comical. Strange to say, their principal organ,
and their other publications, are by no means free either from
solecisms or faults of style, and it is doubtless to this curious
anomaly that Nietzsche here refers. —Tr.
## p. 80 (#122) #############################################
80 ECCE HOMO
thought found its expression in this way: up to
the present nothing has been more strange and
more foreign to my blood than the whole of that
European and American species known as libres
penseurs. Incorrigible blockheads and clowns of
"modern ideas" that they are, I feel much more
profoundly at variance with them than with any
one of their adversaries. They also wish to " im-
prove " mankind, after their own fashion—that is to
say, in their own image; against that which I stand
for and desire, they would wage an implacable war,
if only they understood it; the whole gang of them
still believe in an "ideal. " . . . I am the first
Immoralist.
I should not like to say that the last two essays
in the Thoughts out of Season, associated with the
names of Schopenhauer and Wagner respectively,
serve any special purpose in throwing light upon
these two cases, or in formulating their psycholo-
gical problems. This of course does not apply to
a few details. Thus, for instance, in the second
of the two essays, with a profound certainty of in-
stinct I already characterised the elementary factor
in Wagner's nature as a theatrical talent which in
all his means and inspirations only draws its final
conclusions. At bottom, my desire in this essay
was to do something very different from writing
psychology: an unprecedented educational prob-
lem, a new understanding of self-discipline and
self-defence carried to the point of hardness, a road
to greatness and to world-historic duties, yearned
## p. 81 (#123) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 81
to find expression. Roughly speaking, I seized
two famous and, theretofore, completely undefined
types by the forelock, after the manner in which
one seizes opportunities, simply in order to speak
my mind on certain questions, in order to have a
few more formulas, signs, and means of expression
at my disposal. Indeed I actually suggest this,
with most unearthly sagacity, on page 183 of
Schopenhauer as Educator. Plato made use of
Socrates in the same way—that is to say, as a
cipher for Plato. Now that, from some distance,
I can look back upon the conditions of which these
essays are the testimony, I would be loth to deny
that they refer simply to me. The essay Wagner
in Bayreuth is a vision of my own future; on the
other hand, my most secret history, my develop-
ment, is written down in Schopenhauer as Educator.
But, above all, the vow I made! What I am to-
day, the place I now hold—at a height from which
I speak no longer with words but with thunderbolts
—oh, how far I was from all this in those days!
But I saw the land—I did not deceive myself for
one moment as to the way, the sea, the danger—
and success! The great calm in promising, this
happy prospect of a future which must not remain
only a promise! —In this book every word has been
lived, profoundly and intimately; the most painful
things are not lacking in it; it contains words which
are positively running with blood. But a wind of
great freedom blows over the whole; even its
wounds do not constitute an objection. As to
what I understand by being a philosopher,—that
is to say, a terrible explosive in the presence of
F
## p. 82 (#124) #############################################
82 ECCE HOMO
which everything is in danger; as to how I sever
my idea of the philosopher by miles from that
other idea of him which includes even a Kant, not
to speak of the academic "ruminators " and other
professors of philosophy,—concerning all these
things this essay provides invaluable information,
even granting that at bottom, it is not " Schopen-
hauer as Educator" but " Nietzsche as Educator,"
who speaks his sentiments in it. Considering that,
in those days, my trade was that of a scholar, and
perhaps, also, that I understood my trade, the piece
of austere scholar psychology which suddenly
makes its appearance in this essay is not without
importance: it expresses the feeling of distance,
and my profound certainty regarding what was my
real life-task, and what were merely means, intervals,
and accessory work to me. My wisdom consists
in my having been many things, and in many places,
in order to become one thing—in order to be able
to attain to one thing. It was part of my fate to
be a scholar for a while.
"Human, all-too-Human"
Human, all- too-Human, with its two sequels, is
the memorial of a crisis. It is called a book for
free spirits: almost every sentence in it is the ex-
pression of a triumph—by means of it I purged my-
self of everything in me which was foreign to my
nature. Idealism is foreign to me: the title of the
## p. 83 (#125) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 83
book means: "Where ye see ideal things I see—
human, alas! all-too-human things! " . . . I know
men better. The word "free spirit" in this book
must not be understood as anything else than a spirit
that has become free, that has once more taken
possession of itself. My tone, the pitch of my voice,
has completely changed; the book will be thought
clever, cool, and at times both hard and scornful. A
certain spirituality, of noble taste, seems to be ever
struggling to dominate a passionate torrent at its
feet. In this respect there is some sense in the fact
that it was the hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's
death that served, so to speak, as an excuse for the
publication of the book as early as 1878. For Vol-
taire, as the opposite of every one who wrote after
him, was above all a grandee of the intellect: pre-
cisely what I am also. The name of Voltaire on
one of my writings—that was verily a step forward
—in my direction. . . . Looking into this book a
little more closely, you perceive a pitiless spirit who
knows all the secret hiding-places in which ideals
are wont to skulk—where they find their dungeons,
and, as it were, their last refuge. With a torch in
my hand, the light of which is not by any means a
flickering one, I illuminate this nether world with
beams that cut like blades. It is war, but war with-
out powder and smoke, without warlike attitudes,
without pathos and contorted limbs—all these
things would still be "idealism. " One error after the
other is quietly laid upon ice; the ideal is not refuted
—it freezes. Here, for instance, "genius" freezes;
round the corner the " saint " freezes; under a thick
icicle the "hero " freezes; and in the end " faith"
## p. 84 (#126) #############################################
84 ECCE HOMO
itself freezes. So-called "conviction "and also "pity"
are considerably cooled—and almost everywhere
the "thing in itself" is freezing to death.
This book was begun during the first musical fes-
tival at Bayreuth; a feeling of profound strange-
ness towards everything that surrounded me there,
is one of its first conditions. He who has any
notion of the visions which even at that time had
flitted across my path, will be able to guess what
I felt when one day I came to my senses in Bay-
reuth. It was just as if I had been dreaming.
Where on earth was I? I recognised nothing that
I saw; I scarcely recognised Wagner. It was in
vain that I called up reminiscences. Tribschen—
remote island of bliss: not the shadow of a resem-
blance! The incomparable days devoted to the lay-
ing of the first stone, the small group of the initi-
ated who celebrated them, and who were far from
lacking fingers for the handling of delicate things:
not the shadow of a resemblance! What had hap-
pened? —Wagner had been translated into German!
The Wagnerite had become master of Wagner!
— German art! the German master! German
beer! . . . We who know only too well the kind
of refined artists and cosmopolitanism in taste, to
which alone Wagner's art can appeal, were beside
ourselves at the sight of Wagner bedecked with
German virtues. I think I know the Wagnerite, I
have experienced three generations of them, from
Brendel of blessed memory, who confounded
## p. 85 (#127) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 85
Wagner with Hegel, to the "idealists " of the Bay-
reuth Gazette, who confound Wagner with them-
selves,—I have been the recipient of every kind of
confession about Wagner, from "beautiful souls. "
My kingdom for just one intelligent word! —In
very truth, a blood-curdling company! Nohl, Pohl,
and Kohl* and others of their kidney to infinity!
There was not a single abortion that was lacking
among them—no, not even the anti-Semite. —Poor
Wagner! Into whose hands had he fallen? If only
he had gone into a herd of swine! But among Ger- •
mans! Some day, for the edification of posterity,
one ought really to have a genuine Bayreuthian
stuffed, or, better still, preserved in spirit,—for it is
precisely spirit that is lacking in this quarter,—with
this inscription at the foot of the jar: "A sample
of the spirit whereon the 'German Empire' was
founded. " . . . But enough! In the middle of the
festivities I suddenly packed my trunk and left the
place for a few weeks, despite the fact that a charm-
ing Parisian lady sought to comfort me; I excused
myself to Wagner simply by means of a fatalistic
telegram. In a little spot called Klingenbrunn,
deeply buried in the recesses of the Bohmerwald, I
carried my melancholy and my contempt of Ger-
mans about with me like an illness—and, from time
to time, under the general title of "The Plough-
share," I wrote a sentence or two down in my note-
book, nothing but severe psychological stuff, which
* Nohl and Pohl were both writers on music; Kohl,
however, which literally means cabbage, is a slang expres-
sion, denoting superior nonsense. —Tr.
## p. 86 (#128) #############################################
86 ECCE HOMO
it is possible may have found its way into Human,
all-too-Human.
3
That which had taken place in me, then, was not
only a breach with Wagner—I was suffering from
a general aberration of my instincts, of which a
mere isolated blunder, whether it were Wagner or
my professorship at Bale, was nothing more than a
symptom. I was seized with a fit of impatience with
myself; I saw that it was high time that I should
turn my thoughts upon my own lot. In a trice I
realised, with appalling clearness, how much time
had already been squandered—how futile and how
senseless my whole existence as a philologist ap-
peared by the side of my life-task. 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.
of my Dionysian patrimony. Who knows? may-
be I am the first psychologist of the eternally femi-
nine. Women all like me. . . . But that's an old
story: save, of course, the abortions among them,
the emancipated ones, those who lack the where-
withal to have children. Thank goodness I am not
willing to let myself be torn to pieces! the perfect
woman tears you to'pieces when she loves you: I
know these amiable Maenads. . . . Oh! what a
dangerous, creeping, subterranean little beast of
prey she is! And so agreeable withal! . . . A little
woman, pursuing her vengeance, would force open
even the iron gates of Fate itself. Woman is incal-
culably more wicked than man, she is also cleverer.
Goodness in a woman is already a sign of degenera-
tion. All cases of " beautiful souls " in women may
be traced to a faulty physiological condition—but
I go no further, lest I should become medicynical.
The struggle for equal rights is even a symptom
of disease; every doctor knows this. The more
womanly a woman is, the more she fights tooth and
nail against rights in general: the natural order of
things, the eternal war between the sexes, assigns
to her by far the foremost rank. Have people had
ears to hear my definition of love? It is the only
definition worthy of a philosopher. Love, in its
means, is war; in its foundation, it is the mortal
hatred of the sexes. Have you heard my reply to
the question how a woman can be cured, " saved":
e ::
## p. 66 (#104) #############################################
66 ECCE HOMO
in fact ? —Give her a child! A woman needs
children, man is always only a means, thus spake
Zarathustra. "The emancipation of women,"—this
is the instinctive hatred of physiologically botched
—that is to say, barren—women for those of their
sisters who are well constituted: the fight against
"man " is always only a means, a pretext, a piece
of strategy. By trying to rise to " Woman per se,"
to "Higher Woman," to the "Ideal Woman," all
they wish to do is to lower the general level of
women's rank: and there are no more certain means
to this end than university education, trousers, and
the rights of voting cattle. Truth to tell, the emanci-
pated are the anarchists in the " eternally feminine"
world, the physiological mishaps, the most deep-
rooted instinct of whom is revenge. A whole species
of the most malicious "idealism "—which, by the
bye, also manifests itself in men, in Henrik Ibsen
for instance, that typical old maid—whose object
is to poison the clean conscience, the natural spirit,
of sexual love. . . . And in order to leave no doubt
in your minds in regard to my opinion, which, on
this matter, is as honest as it is severe, I will reveal
to you one more clause out of my moral code against
vice—with the word " vice" I combat every kind of
opposition to Nature, or, if you prefer fine words,
idealism. The clause reads: "Preaching of chastity
is a public incitement to unnatural practices. All
depreciation of the sexual life, all the sullying of
it by means of the concept 'impure,' is the essen-
tial crimeagainst Life—is the essential crime against
the Holy Spirit of Life. "
## p. 67 (#105) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 67
In order to give you some idea of myself as a
psychologist, let me take this curious piece of
psychological analysis out of the book Beyond Good
and Evil, in which it appears. I forbid, by the bye,
any guessing as to whom I am describing in this
passage. "The genius of the heart, as that great
anchorite possesses it, the divine tempter and born
Pied Piper of consciences, whose voice knows how
to sink into the inmost depths of every soul, who
neither utters a word nor casts a glance, in which
some seductive motive or trick does not lie: a part
of whose masterliness is that he understands the art
of seeming—not what he is, but that which will
place a fresh constraint upon his followers to press
ever more closely upon him, to follow him ever more
enthusiastically and whole-heartedly. . . . The
genius of the heart, which makes all loud and self-
conceited things hold their tongues and lend their
ears, which polishes all rough souls and makes them
taste a new longing—to lie placid as a mirror,
that the deep heavens may be reflected in them. . . .
The genius of the heart which teaches the clumsy
and too hasty hand to hesitate and grasp more
tenderly; which scents the hidden and forgotten
treasure, the pearl of goodness and sweet spiritual-
ity, beneath thick black ice, and is a divining rod
for every grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned
in heaps of mud and sand. . . . The genius of the
heart, from contact with which every man goes away
richer, not ' blessed' and overcome, not as though
favoured and crushed by the good things of others;
## p. 68 (#106) #############################################
68 ECCE HOMO
but richer in himself, fresher to himself than before,
opened up, breathed upon and sounded by a thawing
wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more
fragile, more bruised; but full of hopes which as
yet lack names, full of a new will and striving, full
of a new unwillingness and counter-striving. " . . .
"The Birth of Tragedy"
In order to be fair to the Birth of Tragedy (1872)
it is necessary to forget a few things. It created
a sensation and even fascinated by means of its
mistakes—by means of its application to Wagner-
ism, as if the latter were the sign of an ascending
tendency. On that account alone, this treatise was
an event in Wagner's life: thenceforward great hopes
surrounded the name of Wagner. Even to this
day, people remind me, sometimes in the middle of
Parsifal, that it rests on my conscience if the opin-
ion, that this movement is of great value to culture,
at length became prevalent. I have often seen the
book quoted as " The Second Birth of Tragedy
from the Spirit of Music ": people had ears only
for new formulae for Wagner's art, his object and
his mission—and in this way the real hidden value
of the book was overlooked. "Hellenism and
Pessimism "—this would have been a less equivocal
title, seeing that the book contains the first attempt
at showing how the Greeks succeeded in disposing
of pessimism—in what manner they overcame it.
## p. 69 (#107) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 69
. . . Tragedy itself is the proof of the fact that the
Greekswerenotpessimists: Schopenhauerblundered
here as he blundered in everything else. —Regarded
impartially, The Birth of Tragedy is a book quite
strange to its age: no one would dream that it was
begun in the thunder of the battle of Worth. I
thought out these problems on cold September
nights beneath the walls of Metz, in the midst of my
duties as nurse to the wounded; it would be easier to
think that it was written fifty years earlier. Its atti-
tude towards politics is one of indifference,—" un-
German," * as people would say to-day,—it smells
offensively of Hegel; only in one or two formulae is
it infected with the bitter odour of corpses which is
peculiar to Schopenhauer. An idea—the antagon-
ism of the two concepts Dionysian and Apollonian
—is translated into metaphysics; history itself is
depicted as the development of this idea; in tragedy
this antithesis has become unity; from this stand-
point things which theretofore had never been face
to face are suddenly confronted, and understood
and illuminated by each other. . . . Opera and re-
volution, for instance. . . . The two decisive inno-
vations in the book are, first, the comprehension of
the Dionysian phenomenon among the Greeks—it
provides the first psychological analysis of this
phenomenon, and sees in it the single root of all
Greek art; and, secondly, the comprehension of-
* Those Germans who, like Nietzsche or Goethe, recog-
nised that politics constituted a danger to culture, and who
appreciated the literature of maturer cultures, such as that
of France, are called un-deutsch (un-German) by Imperial-
istic Germans. —Tr.
## p. 70 (#108) #############################################
70 ECCE HOMO
Socraticism—Socrates being presented for the first
time as the instrument of Greek dissolution, as
a typical decadent. "Reason" versus Instinct.
"Reason" at any cost, as a dangerous, life-under-
mining force. The whole book is profoundly and
politely silent concerning Christianity: the latter
is neither Apollonian nor Dionysian; it denies all
aesthetic values, which are the only values that The
Birth of Tragedy recognises. Christianity is most
profoundly nihilistic, whereas in the Dionysian
symbol, the most extreme limits of a yea-saying
attitude to life are attained. In one part of the
book the Christian priesthood is referred to as a
"perfidious order of goblins," as " subterraneans. "
This start of mine was remarkable beyond meas-
ure. As a confirmation of my inmost personal ex-
perience I had discovered the only example of this
fact that history possesses,—with this I was the
first to understand the amazing Dionysian pheno-
menon. At the same time, by recognising Socrates
as a decadent, I proved most conclusively that the
certainty of my psychological grasp of things ran
very little risk at the hands of any sort of moral
idiosyncrasy: to regard morality itself as a symptom
of degeneration is an innovation, a unique event of
the first order in the history of knowledge. How
high I had soared above the pitifully foolish gabble
about Optimism and Pessimism with my two new
doctrines! I was the first to see the actual contrast:
the degenerate instinct which turns upon life with
a subterranean lust of vengeance (Christianity,
## p. 71 (#109) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 71
Schopenhauer's philosophy, and in some respects
too even Plato's philosophy—in short, the whole of
idealism in its typical forms)f as opposed to a
formula of the highest yea-saying to life, born of
an abundance and a superabundance of life—a
yea-saying free from all reserve, applying even to
suffering, and guilt, and all that is questionable and
strange in existence. . . . This last, most joyous,
most exuberant and exultant yea to life, is not only
the highest,but also the profoundest conception,and
one which is most strictly confirmed and supported
by truth and science. Nothing that exists must be
suppressed, nothing can be dispensed with. Those
aspects of life which Christians and other Nihilists
reject, belong to an incalculably higher order in the
hierarchy of values, than that which the instinct of
degeneration calls good, and may call good. In
order to understand this, a certain courage is neces-
sary, and, as a prerequisite of this, a certain super-
fluity of strength: for a man can approach only as
near to truth as he has the courage to advance—that
is to say, everything depends strictly upon the mea-
sure of his strength. Knowledge, and the affirmation
of reality, are just as necessary to the strong man
as cowardice, the flight from reality—in fact, the
"ideal"—are necessarytotheweak inspired by weak-
ness. . . . These people are not at liberty to "know,"
—decadents stand in need of lies,—it is one of their
self-preservative measures. He who not only under-
stands the word " Dionysian," but understands him-
self in that term, does not require any refutation of
Plato, or of Christianity, or of Schopenhauer—for
his nose scents decomposition.
## p. 72 (#110) #############################################
72 ECCE HOMO
The extent to which I had by means of these
doctrines discovered the idea of" tragedy," the ulti-
mate explanation of what the psychology of tragedy
is, I discussed finally in The Twilight of the Idols
(Aph. 5, part 10). . . . "The saying of yea to life,
and even to its weirdest and most difficult pro-
blems: the will to life rejoicing at its own infinite
vitality in the sacrifice of its highest types—that is
what I called Dionysian, that is what I meant as
the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet.
Not to cast out terror and pity, or to purge one's self
of dangerous passion by discharging it with vehem-
ence,—this was Aristotle's* misunderstanding of
it,—but to be far beyond terror and pity and to be
the eternal lust of Becoming itself—that lust which
also involves the joy of destruction. " . . . In this
sense I have the right to regard myself as the first
tragic philosopher—that is to say, the most extreme
antithesis and antipodes of a pessimistic philosopher.
Before my time no suchthingexisted as this transla-
tion of the Dionysian phenomenon into philosophic
emotion: tragic wisdom was lacking; in vain have
I sought for signs of it even among the great Greeks
in philosophy—those belonging to the two centuries
before Socrates. I still remained a little doubtful
about Heraclitus, in whose presence, alone, I felt
warmer and more at ease than anywhere else. The
yea-saying to the impermanence and annihilation
of things, which is the decisive feature of a Diony-
* Aristotle's Poetics, c. vi. —Tr.
## p. 73 (#111) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 73
sian philosophy; the yea-saying to contradiction
and war, the postulation of Becoming, together with
the radical rejection even of the concept Being—
in all these things, at all events, I must recognise
him who has come nearest to me in thought hither
to. The doctrine of the " Eternal Recurrence "—
that is to say, of the absolute and eternal repetition
of all things in periodical cycles—this doctrine of
Zarathustra's might, it is true, have been taught be-
fore. In any case, the Stoics, who derived nearly
all their fundamental ideas from Heraclitus, show
traces of it.
A tremendous hope finds expression in this work.
After all, I have absolutely no reason to renounce
the hope for a Dionysian future of music. Let us
look a century ahead, and let us suppose that my
attempt to destroy two millenniums of hostility to
Nature and of the violation of humanity be crowned
with success That new party of life-advocates,
which will undertake the greatest of all tasks, the
elevation and perfection of mankind, as well as the
relentless destruction of all degenerate and para-
sitical elements, will make that superabundance of
life on earth once more possible, out of which the
Dionysian state will perforce arise again. I promise
the advent of a tragic age: the highest art in the
saying of yea to life, " tragedy," will be born again
when mankind has the knowledge of the hardest,
but most necessary of wars, behind it, without, how-
ever, suffering from that knowledge. . . . A psycho-
logist might add that what I heard in Wagnerian
## p. 74 (#112) #############################################
74 ECCE HOMO
music in my youth and early manhood had nothing
whatsoever to do with Wagner; that when I de-
scribed Dionysian music, I described merely what
/ personally had heard—that I was compelled in-
stinctively to translate and transfigure everything
into the new spirit which filled my breast. A proof
of this, and as strong a proof as you could have, is
my essay, Wagner in Bayreuth: in all its decisive
psychological passages I am the only person con-
cerned—without any hesitation you may read my
name or the word "Zarathustra " wherever the text
contains the name of Wagner. The whole pano-
rama of the dithyrambic artist is the representation
of the already existing author of Zarathustra, and
it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not
even once come into contact with the real Wagner.
Wagner himself had a notion of the truth; he did
not recognise himself in the essay. —In this way,
"the idea of Bayreuth" was changed into something
which to those who are acquainted with my Zara-
thustra will be no riddle—that is to say, into the
\ Great Noon when the highest of the elect will conse-
crate themselves for the greatest of all duties—who
knows? the vision of a feast which I may live to
see. . . . The pathos of the first few pages is uni-
versal history; the look which is discussed on page
105 * of the book, is the actual look of Zarathustra;
Wagner, Bayreuth, the whole of this petty German
wretchedness, is a cloud upon which an infinite Fata
Morgana of the future is reflected. Even from the
* This number and those which follow refer to Thoughts out
of Season, Part I. in this edition of Nietzsche's Works. —Tr.
## p. 75 (#113) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 75
\
psychological standpoint, all the decisive traits in
my character are introduced into Wagner's nature
—the juxtaposition of the most brilliant and most
fatal forces, a Will to Power such as no man has ever
possessed—inexorable bravery in matters spiritual,
an unlimited power of learning unaccompanied by
depressed powers for action. Everything in this
essay is a prophecy: the proximity of the resur-
rection of the Greek spirit, the need of men who
will be counter-Alexanders, who will once more tie
the Gordian knot of Greek culture, after it has been
cut. Listen to the world-historic accent with which
the concept "sense for the tragic " is introduced on
page 180: there are little else but world-historic
accents in this essay. This is the strangest kind of
"objectivity" that ever existed: my absolute cer-
tainty in regard to what I am, projected itself into
any chance reality—truth about myself was voiced
from out appalling depths. On pages 174 and 175
the style of Zarathustra is described and foretold
with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent
expression will ever he found than that on pages
144-147 for the event for which Zarathustrastands
—that prodigious act of the purification and conse-
cration of mankind.
"Thoughts out of Season"
1
The four essays composing the Thoughts out
of Season are thoroughly warlike in tone. They
prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight
## p. 75 (#114) #############################################
74
ECCE HOMO
music in my youth and early manhood had nothing
whatsoever to do with Wagner; that when I de-
scribed Dionysian music, I described merely what
I personally had heard—that I was compelled in-
stinctively to translate and transfigure everything
into the new spirit which filled my breast. A proof
of this, and as strong a proof as you could have, is
my essay, Wagner in Bayreuth: in all its decisive
psychological passages I am the only person con-
cerned—without any hesitation you may read my
name or the word “Zarathustra” wherever the text
contains the name of Wagner. The whole pano-
rama of the dithyrambic artist is the representation
of the already existing author of Zarathustra, and
it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not
even once come into contact with the real Wagner.
Wagner himself had a notion of the truth; he did
not recognise himself in the essay. In this way,
“the idea of Bayreuth” was changed into something
which to those who are acquainted with my Zara-
thustra will be no riddle—that is to say, into the
Great Noon when the highest of the elect will conse-
crate themselves for the greatest of all duties—who
knows? the vision of a feast which I may live to
see. . . . The pathos of the first few pages is uni-
versal history; the look which is discussed on page
105* of the book, is the actual look of Zarathustra;
Wagner, Bayreuth, the whole of this petty German
wretchedness, is a cloud upon which an infinite Fata
Morgana of the future is reflected. Even from the
* This number and those which follow refer to Thoughts out
of Season, Part I. in this edition of Nietzsche's Works. —TR.
## p. 75 (#115) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 75
psychological standpoint, all the decisive traits in
my character are introduced into Wagner's nature
—the juxtaposition of the most brilliant and most
fatal forces, a Will to Power such as no man has ever
possessed-inexorable bravery in matters spiritual,
an unlimited power of learning unaccompanied by
depressed powers for action. Everything in this
essay is a prophecy: the proximity of the resur-
rection of the Greek spirit, the need of men who
will be counter-Alexanders, who will once more tie
the Gordian knot of Greek culture, after it has been
cut. Listen to the world-historic accent with which
the concept “sense for the tragic" is introduced on
page 180: there are little else but world-historic
accents in this essay. This is the strangest kind of
"objectivity” that ever existed: my absolute cer-
tainty in regard to what I am, projected itself into
any chance reality- truth about myself was voiced
from out appalling depths. On pages 174 and 175
the style of Zarathustra is described and foretold
with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent
expression will ever he found than that on pages
144-147 for the event for which Zarathustra stands
—that prodigious act of the purification and conse-
cration of mankind.
" THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON ”
I
The four essays composing the Thoughts out
of Season are thoroughly warlike in tone. They
prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight
## p. 75 (#116) #############################################
74
ECCE HOMO
music in my youth and early manhood had nothing
whatsoever to do with Wagner; that when I de-
scribed Dionysian music, I described merely what
I personally had heard—that I was compelled in-
stinctively to translate and transfigure everything
into the new spirit which filled my breast. A proof
of this, and as strong a proof as you could have, is
my essay, Wagner in Bayreuth: in all its decisive
psychological passages I am the only person con-
cerned—without any hesitation you may read my
name or the word “Zarathustra " wherever the text
contains the name of Wagner. The whole pano-
rama of the dithyrambic artist is the representation
of the already existing author of Zarathustra, and
it is drawn with an abysmal depth which does not
even once come into contact with the real Wagner.
Wagner himself had a notion of the truth; he did
not recognise himself in the essay. In this way,
“the idea of Bayreuth” was changed into something
which to those who are acquainted with my Zara-
thustra will be no riddle—that is to say, into the
Great Noon when the highest of the elect will conse-
crate themselves for the greatest of all duties—who
knows? the vision of a feast which I may live to
see. . . . The pathos of the first few pages is uni-
versal history; the look which is discussed on page
105* of the book, is the actual look of Zarathustra;
Wagner, Bayreuth, the whole of this petty German
wretchedness, is a cloud upon which an infinite Fata
Morgana of the future is reflected. Even from the
* This number and those which follow refer to Thoughts out
of Season, Part I. in this edition of Nietzsche's Works. -TR.
## p. 75 (#117) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 75
psychological standpoint, all the decisive traits in
my character are introduced into Wagner's nature
-the juxtaposition of the most brilliant and most
fatal forces, a Will to Power such as no man has ever
possessed-inexorable bravery in matters spiritual,
an unlimited power of learning unaccompanied by
depressed powers for action. Everything in this
essay is a prophecy: the proximity of the resur-
rection of the Greek spirit, the need of men who
will be counter-Alexanders, who will once more tie
the Gordian knot of Greek culture, after it has been
cut. Listen to the world-historic accent with which
the concept “sense for the tragic" is introduced on
page 180: there are little else but world-historic
accents in this essay.
This is the strangest kind of
"objectivity” that ever existed: my absolute cer-
tainty in regard to what I am, projected itself into
any chance reality-truth about myself was voiced
from out appalling depths. On pages 174 and 175
the style of Zarathustra is described and foretold
with incisive certainty, and no more magnificent
expression will ever he found than that on pages
144-147 for the event for which Zarathustra stands
—that prodigious act of the purification and conse-
cration of mankind.
“THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON”
The four essays composing the Thoughts out
of Season are thoroughly warlike in tone. They
prove that I was no mere dreamer, that I delight
## p. 76 (#118) #############################################
/
? 6 ECCE HOMO
/
in drawing the sword—and perhaps, also, that my
wrist is dangerously supple. The first onslaught
(1873) was directed against German culture, upon
which I looked down even at that time with un-
mitigated contempt. Without either sense, sub-
stance, or goal, it was simply "public opinion. "
There could be no more dangerous misunder-
standing than to suppose that Germany's success
at arms proved anything in favour of German
culture—and still less the triumph of this culture
over that of France. The second essay (1874)
brings to light that which is dangerous, that which
corrodes and poisons life in our manner of pursu-
ing scientific study: Life is diseased, thanks to this
dehumanised piece of clockwork and mechanism,
thanks to the "impersonality" of the workman,
and the false economy of the "division of labour. "
The object, which is culture, is lost sight of:
modern scientific activity as a means thereto simply
produces barbarism. In this treatise, the " histori-
cal sense," of which this century is so proud, is for
the first time recognised as sickness, as a typical
symptom of decay. In the third and fourth essays,
a sign-post is set up pointing to a higher concept
of culture, to a re-establishment of the notion
"culture "; and two pictures of the hardest self-
love and self-discipline are presented, two essentially
un-modern types, full of the most sovereign con-
tempt for all that which lay around them and
was called "Empire," "Culture," "Christianity,"
"Bismarck," and "Success," — these two types
were Schopenhauer and Wagner, or, in a word,
Nietzsche. . . .
## p. 77 (#119) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUGH EXCELLENT BOOKS 77
Of these four attacks, the first met with extra-
ordinary success. The stir which it created was in
every way gorgeous. I had put my finger on the
vulnerable spot of a triumphant nation—I had told
it that its victory was not a red-letter day for culture,
but, perhaps, something very different. The reply
rang out from all sides, and certainly not only from
old friends of David Strauss, whom I had made
ridiculous as the type of a German Philistine of
Culture and a man of smug self-content—in short,
as the author of that suburban gospel of his, called
The Old and the New Faith (the term "Philistine
of Culture" passed into the current language of
Germany after the appearance of my book). These
old friends, whose vanity as Wiirtembergians and
Swabians I had deeply wounded in regarding
their unique animal, their bird of Paradise, as a
trifle comic, replied to me as ingenuously and as
grossly as I could have wished. The Prussian
replies were smarter; they contained more" Prussian
blue. " The most disreputable attitude was assumed
by a Leipzig paper, the egregious Grentzboten; and
it cost me some pains to prevent my indignant
friends in Bale from taking action against it. Only
a few old gentlemen decided in my favour, and for
very diverse and sometimes unaccountable reasons.
Among them was one, Ewald of Gottingen, who
made it clear that my attack on Strauss had been
deadly. There was also the Hegelian, Bruno Bauer,
who from that time became one of my most atten-
tive readers. In his later years he liked to refer to
## p. 78 (#120) #############################################
X
78 ECCE HOMO
me, when, for instance, he wanted to give Herr
von Treitschke, the Prussian Historiographer, a
hint as to where he could obtain information about
the notion "Culture," of which he (Herr von T. )
had completely lost sight. The weightiest and
longest notice of my book and its author appeared
in Wiirzburg, and was written by Professor Hoff-
mann, an old pupil of the philosopher von Baader.
The essays made him foresee a great future for me,
namely, that of bringing about a sort of crisis and
decisive turning-point in the problem of atheism,
of which he recognised in me the most instinctive
and most radical advocate. It was atheism that
had drawn me to Schopenhauer. The review which
received by far the most attention, and which ex-
cited the most bitterness, was an extraordinarily
powerful and plucky appreciation of my work by
Carl Hillebrand, a man who was usually so mild,
and the last humane German who knew how to
wield a pen. The article appeared in the Augs-
burg Gazette, and it can be read to-day, couched in
rather more cautious language, among his collected
essays. In it my work was referred to as an event,
as a decisive turning-point, as the first sign of
an awakening, as an excellent symptom, and as
an actual revival of German earnestness and of
German passion in things spiritual. Hillebrand
could speak only in the terms of the highest re-
spect, of the form of my book, of its consummate
taste, of its perfect tact in discriminating between
persons and causes: he characterised it as the best
polemical work in the German language,—the best
performance in the art of polemics, which for
## p. 79 (#121) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 79
Germans is so dangerous and so strongly to be
deprecated. Besides confirming my standpoint, he
laid even greater stress upon what I had dared to
say about the deterioration of language in Germany
(nowadays writers assume the airs of Purists * and
can no longer even construct a sentence); sharing
my contempt for the literary stars of this nation,
he concluded by expressing his admiration for my
courage — that "greatest courage of all which
places the very favourites of the people in the
dock. " . . . The after-effects of this essay of mine
proved invaluable to me in my life. No one has
ever tried to meddle with me since. People are
silent. In Germany I am treated with gloomy
caution: for years I have rejoiced in the privilege
of such absolute freedom of speech, as no one now-
adays, least of all in the " Empire," has enough
liberty to claim. My paradise is " in the shadow
of my sword. " At bottom all I had done was to
put one of Stendhal's maxims into practice: he
advises one to make one's entrance into society by
means of a duel. And how well I had chosen my
opponent! —the foremost free-thinker of Germany.
As a matter of fact, quite a novel kind of free
* The Purists constitute a definite body in Germany, which
is called the Deutscher Sprach- Verein. Their object is to
banish every foreign word from the language, and they carry
this process of ostracism even into the domain of the menu,
where their efforts at rendering the meaning of French dishes
are extremely comical. Strange to say, their principal organ,
and their other publications, are by no means free either from
solecisms or faults of style, and it is doubtless to this curious
anomaly that Nietzsche here refers. —Tr.
## p. 80 (#122) #############################################
80 ECCE HOMO
thought found its expression in this way: up to
the present nothing has been more strange and
more foreign to my blood than the whole of that
European and American species known as libres
penseurs. Incorrigible blockheads and clowns of
"modern ideas" that they are, I feel much more
profoundly at variance with them than with any
one of their adversaries. They also wish to " im-
prove " mankind, after their own fashion—that is to
say, in their own image; against that which I stand
for and desire, they would wage an implacable war,
if only they understood it; the whole gang of them
still believe in an "ideal. " . . . I am the first
Immoralist.
I should not like to say that the last two essays
in the Thoughts out of Season, associated with the
names of Schopenhauer and Wagner respectively,
serve any special purpose in throwing light upon
these two cases, or in formulating their psycholo-
gical problems. This of course does not apply to
a few details. Thus, for instance, in the second
of the two essays, with a profound certainty of in-
stinct I already characterised the elementary factor
in Wagner's nature as a theatrical talent which in
all his means and inspirations only draws its final
conclusions. At bottom, my desire in this essay
was to do something very different from writing
psychology: an unprecedented educational prob-
lem, a new understanding of self-discipline and
self-defence carried to the point of hardness, a road
to greatness and to world-historic duties, yearned
## p. 81 (#123) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 81
to find expression. Roughly speaking, I seized
two famous and, theretofore, completely undefined
types by the forelock, after the manner in which
one seizes opportunities, simply in order to speak
my mind on certain questions, in order to have a
few more formulas, signs, and means of expression
at my disposal. Indeed I actually suggest this,
with most unearthly sagacity, on page 183 of
Schopenhauer as Educator. Plato made use of
Socrates in the same way—that is to say, as a
cipher for Plato. Now that, from some distance,
I can look back upon the conditions of which these
essays are the testimony, I would be loth to deny
that they refer simply to me. The essay Wagner
in Bayreuth is a vision of my own future; on the
other hand, my most secret history, my develop-
ment, is written down in Schopenhauer as Educator.
But, above all, the vow I made! What I am to-
day, the place I now hold—at a height from which
I speak no longer with words but with thunderbolts
—oh, how far I was from all this in those days!
But I saw the land—I did not deceive myself for
one moment as to the way, the sea, the danger—
and success! The great calm in promising, this
happy prospect of a future which must not remain
only a promise! —In this book every word has been
lived, profoundly and intimately; the most painful
things are not lacking in it; it contains words which
are positively running with blood. But a wind of
great freedom blows over the whole; even its
wounds do not constitute an objection. As to
what I understand by being a philosopher,—that
is to say, a terrible explosive in the presence of
F
## p. 82 (#124) #############################################
82 ECCE HOMO
which everything is in danger; as to how I sever
my idea of the philosopher by miles from that
other idea of him which includes even a Kant, not
to speak of the academic "ruminators " and other
professors of philosophy,—concerning all these
things this essay provides invaluable information,
even granting that at bottom, it is not " Schopen-
hauer as Educator" but " Nietzsche as Educator,"
who speaks his sentiments in it. Considering that,
in those days, my trade was that of a scholar, and
perhaps, also, that I understood my trade, the piece
of austere scholar psychology which suddenly
makes its appearance in this essay is not without
importance: it expresses the feeling of distance,
and my profound certainty regarding what was my
real life-task, and what were merely means, intervals,
and accessory work to me. My wisdom consists
in my having been many things, and in many places,
in order to become one thing—in order to be able
to attain to one thing. It was part of my fate to
be a scholar for a while.
"Human, all-too-Human"
Human, all- too-Human, with its two sequels, is
the memorial of a crisis. It is called a book for
free spirits: almost every sentence in it is the ex-
pression of a triumph—by means of it I purged my-
self of everything in me which was foreign to my
nature. Idealism is foreign to me: the title of the
## p. 83 (#125) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 83
book means: "Where ye see ideal things I see—
human, alas! all-too-human things! " . . . I know
men better. The word "free spirit" in this book
must not be understood as anything else than a spirit
that has become free, that has once more taken
possession of itself. My tone, the pitch of my voice,
has completely changed; the book will be thought
clever, cool, and at times both hard and scornful. A
certain spirituality, of noble taste, seems to be ever
struggling to dominate a passionate torrent at its
feet. In this respect there is some sense in the fact
that it was the hundredth anniversary of Voltaire's
death that served, so to speak, as an excuse for the
publication of the book as early as 1878. For Vol-
taire, as the opposite of every one who wrote after
him, was above all a grandee of the intellect: pre-
cisely what I am also. The name of Voltaire on
one of my writings—that was verily a step forward
—in my direction. . . . Looking into this book a
little more closely, you perceive a pitiless spirit who
knows all the secret hiding-places in which ideals
are wont to skulk—where they find their dungeons,
and, as it were, their last refuge. With a torch in
my hand, the light of which is not by any means a
flickering one, I illuminate this nether world with
beams that cut like blades. It is war, but war with-
out powder and smoke, without warlike attitudes,
without pathos and contorted limbs—all these
things would still be "idealism. " One error after the
other is quietly laid upon ice; the ideal is not refuted
—it freezes. Here, for instance, "genius" freezes;
round the corner the " saint " freezes; under a thick
icicle the "hero " freezes; and in the end " faith"
## p. 84 (#126) #############################################
84 ECCE HOMO
itself freezes. So-called "conviction "and also "pity"
are considerably cooled—and almost everywhere
the "thing in itself" is freezing to death.
This book was begun during the first musical fes-
tival at Bayreuth; a feeling of profound strange-
ness towards everything that surrounded me there,
is one of its first conditions. He who has any
notion of the visions which even at that time had
flitted across my path, will be able to guess what
I felt when one day I came to my senses in Bay-
reuth. It was just as if I had been dreaming.
Where on earth was I? I recognised nothing that
I saw; I scarcely recognised Wagner. It was in
vain that I called up reminiscences. Tribschen—
remote island of bliss: not the shadow of a resem-
blance! The incomparable days devoted to the lay-
ing of the first stone, the small group of the initi-
ated who celebrated them, and who were far from
lacking fingers for the handling of delicate things:
not the shadow of a resemblance! What had hap-
pened? —Wagner had been translated into German!
The Wagnerite had become master of Wagner!
— German art! the German master! German
beer! . . . We who know only too well the kind
of refined artists and cosmopolitanism in taste, to
which alone Wagner's art can appeal, were beside
ourselves at the sight of Wagner bedecked with
German virtues. I think I know the Wagnerite, I
have experienced three generations of them, from
Brendel of blessed memory, who confounded
## p. 85 (#127) #############################################
WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 85
Wagner with Hegel, to the "idealists " of the Bay-
reuth Gazette, who confound Wagner with them-
selves,—I have been the recipient of every kind of
confession about Wagner, from "beautiful souls. "
My kingdom for just one intelligent word! —In
very truth, a blood-curdling company! Nohl, Pohl,
and Kohl* and others of their kidney to infinity!
There was not a single abortion that was lacking
among them—no, not even the anti-Semite. —Poor
Wagner! Into whose hands had he fallen? If only
he had gone into a herd of swine! But among Ger- •
mans! Some day, for the edification of posterity,
one ought really to have a genuine Bayreuthian
stuffed, or, better still, preserved in spirit,—for it is
precisely spirit that is lacking in this quarter,—with
this inscription at the foot of the jar: "A sample
of the spirit whereon the 'German Empire' was
founded. " . . . But enough! In the middle of the
festivities I suddenly packed my trunk and left the
place for a few weeks, despite the fact that a charm-
ing Parisian lady sought to comfort me; I excused
myself to Wagner simply by means of a fatalistic
telegram. In a little spot called Klingenbrunn,
deeply buried in the recesses of the Bohmerwald, I
carried my melancholy and my contempt of Ger-
mans about with me like an illness—and, from time
to time, under the general title of "The Plough-
share," I wrote a sentence or two down in my note-
book, nothing but severe psychological stuff, which
* Nohl and Pohl were both writers on music; Kohl,
however, which literally means cabbage, is a slang expres-
sion, denoting superior nonsense. —Tr.
## p. 86 (#128) #############################################
86 ECCE HOMO
it is possible may have found its way into Human,
all-too-Human.
3
That which had taken place in me, then, was not
only a breach with Wagner—I was suffering from
a general aberration of my instincts, of which a
mere isolated blunder, whether it were Wagner or
my professorship at Bale, was nothing more than a
symptom. I was seized with a fit of impatience with
myself; I saw that it was high time that I should
turn my thoughts upon my own lot. In a trice I
realised, with appalling clearness, how much time
had already been squandered—how futile and how
senseless my whole existence as a philologist ap-
peared by the side of my life-task. 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.
