If in
anything
at all, it was
in this that I became a master.
in this that I became a master.
Nietzsche - v17 - Ecce Homo
Where one commands, where one sees something beneath one,
one oughtnot to wage war. My war tactics can be reduced to four
principles : First, I attack only things that are triumphant—if
necessary I wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I
attack only those things against which I find no allies, against
which I stand alone—against which I compromise nobody but
## p. xi (#19) ##############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xi
myself. . . . Thirdly, I never make personal attacks—I use a
personality merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which I
render a general, but elusive and scarcely noticeable evil, more
apparent. . . . Fourthly, I attack only those things from which
all personal differences are excluded, in which any such thing
as a background of disagreeable experiences is lacking. "
And now notice the gentleness with which, in
Chapter II. , Wagner—the supposed mortal enemy,
the supposed envied rival to Nietzsche—is treated.
Are these the words and the thoughts of a man who
has lost, or who is losing, control?
And even if we confineourselves simply to the sub-
stance of this work and put the question—Is it a new
Nietzsche or the old Nietzsche that we find in these
pages? Is it the old countenance with which we are
familiar, orare the features distorted,awry, disfigured?
What will the answer be? Obviously there is no new
or even deformed Nietzsche here, because he is still
faithful to the position which he assumed in Thus
spake Zarathustra, five years previously, and is per-
fectly conscious of this fidelity (see p. 141); neither
can he be even on the verge of any marked change,
because the whole of the third chapter, in which he
reviews his life-work, is simply a reiteration and a
confirmation of his old points of view, which are here
made all the more telling by additional arguments
suggested, no doubt, by maturer thought. In fact, if
anything at all is new in this work, it is its cool cer-
tainty, its severe deliberateness, and its extraordin-
arilyincisive vision, as shown, for instance, in the sum-
ming up of the genuine import of the third and fourth
essays in the Thoughts out of Season (pp. 75-76,80,
81, 82), a summing up which a most critical analysis
of the essays in question can but verify.
## p. xii (#20) #############################################
xii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
Romanticism,idealism,Christianity,arestill scorned
and despised; another outlook, a nobler, braver, and
more earthly outlook, is still upheld and revered; the
great yea to life, including all that it contains that is
terrible and questionable, is still pronounced in the
teeth of pessimists,nihilists,anarchists,Christians,and
other decadents; and Germany," Europe's flatland," is
still subjected to the most relentlesscriticism. If there
are anysigns of change,besides those of mere growth,
in this work, they certainly succeed in eluding the
most careful search, undertaken with a full knowledge
of Nietzsche's former opinions, and it would be inter-
esting to know precisely where they are found by
those writers whom the titles of the chapters, alone,
seem so radically to have perturbed.
But the most striking thing of all, the miracle, so
to speak, of this autobiography, is the absence from
it of that loathing, that suggestion of surfeit, with
which a life such as the one Nietzsche had led, would
have filled any other man even of power approximate
to his own. This anchorite, who, in the last years of
his life as a healthy human being, suffered the ex-
perience of seeing even his oldest friends, including
Rhode, show the mostcompleteindifferenceto his lot,
this wrestler with Fate, for whom recognition, in the
persons of Brandes, Taine, and Strindberg, had come
all too late, and whom even support, sympathy, and
help, arriving as it did at last, through Deussen and
from Madame de Salis Marschlins, could no longer
cheer or comfort,—this was the man who was able
notwithstanding to inscribe ihedeviceamor/att upon
his shield on the very eve of his final collapse as a
victim of the unspeakable suffering he had endured,
## p. xiii (#21) ############################################
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xiii
And this final collapse might easily have been fore-
seen. Nietzsche's sensorium, as his autobiography
proves, was probably the most delicate instrument
ever possessed by a human being; and with this fragile
structure—the prerequisite, by the bye, of all genius,
—his terriblewill compelled him to confront themost
profound and most recondite problems. We happen
to know from another artist and profound thinker,
Benjamin Disraeli, who himself had experienced a
dangerous breakdown, what the consequences pre-
cisely are of indulging in excessive activity in the
sphere of the spirit, more particularly when that spirit
is highly organised. Disraeli says in ContariniFlem-
ing (Part iv. chap. v. ):—
"I have sometimes half believed, although the suspicion is
mortifying, that there is only one step between his state who
deeply indulges in imaginative meditation, and insanity; for I
well remember that at this period of my life, when I indulged
in meditation to a degree that would now be impossible, and
I hope unnecessary, my senses sometimes appeared to be
wandering. "
And artists are the proper judges of artists,—not
Oxford Dons, like Dr. Schiller, who, in his imprudent
attemptatdealingwithsomething for which his prag-
matic hands are not sufficiently delicate, eagerly av-
ails himself of popular help in his article on Nietzsche
in the eleventh edition oitheEncyclopcediaBritannica,
and implies the hackneyed and wholly exploded belief
that Nietzsche's philosophy is madness in the making.
As German philosophies, however, are said to go to
Oxford only when they die, we may, perhaps, conclude
from this want of appreciation in that quarter, how
very much alive Nietzsche's doctrine still is.
Not that Nietzsche went mad so soon, but that he
## p. xiv (#22) #############################################
xiv TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
went mad so late is the wonder of wonders. Con-
sidering the extraordinary amount of work he did,
the great task of the transvaluation of all values, which
he actually accomplished, and the fact that he endured
such long years of solitude, which to him,thesensitive
artist to whom friends were everything, must have
been a terrible hardship, we can only wonder at his
great health, and can well believe his sister's account
of the phenomenal longevity and bodily vigour of
his ancestors.
Noone, however, who is initiated, no onewhoreads
this work with understanding, will be in need of this
introductory note of mine; for,to all who know, these
pages must speak for themselves. We are no longer
in the nineteenth century. We have learned many
things since then, and if caution is only one of these
things, at least it will prevent us from judging a book
such as this one, with all its apparent pontifical pride
and surging self-reliance, with undue haste, or with
that arrogant assurance with which the ignorance
of " the humble " and " the modest " has always con-
fronted everything truly great.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
PREFACE
As it is my intention within a very short time to
confront my fellow-men with the very greatest
demand that has ever yet been made upon them,
it seems to me above all necessary to declare here
who and what I am. As a matter of fact, this
ought to be pretty well known already, for I have
not "held my tongue" about myself. But the
disparity which obtains between the greatness of
my task and the smallness of my contemporaries,
is revealed by the fact that people have neither
heard me nor yet seen me. I live on my own
self-made credit, and it is probably only a pre-
judice to suppose that I am alive at all. I do but
require to speak to any one of the scholars who
come to the Ober-Engadine in the summer in
order to convince myself that I am not alive. . . .
Under these circumstances, it is a duty—and one
against which my customary reserve, and to a still
greater degree the pride of my instincts, rebel—
to say: Listen ! for I am such and such a person.
For Heaven's sake do not confound me with any one
else!
2
I am, for instance, in no wise a bogey man, or
moral monster. On the contrary, I am the very
A
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2 PREFACE
opposite in nature to the kind of man that has
been honoured hitherto as virtuous. Between
ourselves, it seems to me that this is precisely a
matter on which I may feel proud. I am a dis-
ciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would
prefer to be even a satyr than a saint. But just
read this book! Maybe I have here succeeded in
expressing this contrast in a cheerful and at the
same time sympathetic manner—maybe this is the
only purpose of the present work.
The very last thing I should promise to accom-
plish would be to " improve" mankind. I do not
set up any new idols; may old idols only learn
what it costs to have legs of clay. To overthrow
idols (idols is the name I give to all ideals) is
much more like my business. In proportion as
an ideal world has been falsely assumed, reality
has been robbed of its value, its meaning, and its
truthfulness. . . . The " true world " and the " ap-
parent world"—in plain English, the fictitious
world and reality. . . . Hitherto the lie of the
ideal has been the curse of reality; by means of
it the very source of mankind's instincts has be-
come mendacious and false; so much so that
those values have come to be worshipped which
are the exact opposite of the ones which would
ensure man's prosperity, his future, and his great
right to a future.
He who knows how to breathe in the air of my
writings is conscious that it is the air of the
heights, that it is bracing. A man must be built
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE 3
for it, otherwise the chances are that it will chill
him. The ice is near, the loneliness is terrible—
but how serenely everything lies in the sunshine!
how freely one can breathe! how much, one feels,
lies beneath one! Philosophy, as I have under-
stood it hitherto, is a voluntary retirement into
regions of ice and mountain-peaks—the seeking-
out of everything strange and questionable in
existence, everything upon which, hitherto, morality
has set its ban. Through long experience, de-
rived from such wanderings in forbidden country,
I acquired an opinion very different from that
which may seem generally desirable, of the causes
which hitherto have led to men's moralising and
idealising. The secret history of philosophers,
the psychology of their great names, was revealed
to me. How much truth can a certain mind en-
dure; how much truth can it dare ? —these ques-
tions became for me ever more and more the actual
test of values. Error (the belief in the ideal) is
not blindness ; error is cowardice. . . . Every con-
quest, every step forward in knowledge, is the out-
come of courage, of hardness towards one's self, of
cleanliness towards one's self. I do not refute
ideals; all I do is to draw on my gloves in their
presence. . . . Nitimur in vetitum: with this de-
vice my philosophy will one day be victorious;
for that which has hitherto been most stringently
forbidden is, without exception, Truth.
4
In my lifework, my Zarathustra holds a place
apart. With it, I gave my fellow-men the greatest
## p. 4 (#26) ###############################################
4 PREFACE
gift that has ever been bestowed upon them.
This book, the voice of which speaks out across
the ages, is not only the loftiest book on earth,
literally the book of mountain air,—the whole
phenomenon, mankind, lies at an incalculable dis-
tance beneath it,—but it is also the deepest book,
born of the inmost abundance of truth; an inex-
haustible well, into which no pitcher can be
lowered without coming up again laden with gold
and with goodness. Here it is not a " prophet"
who speaks, one of those gruesome hybrids of
sickness and Will to Power, whom men call
founders of religions. If a man would not do a
sad wrong to his wisdom, he must above all give
proper heed to the tones—the halcyonic tones—
that fall from the lips of Zarathustra:—
"The most silent words are harbingers of the
storm; thoughts that come on dove's feet lead the
world.
"The figs fall from the trees ; they are good and
sweet, and, when they fall, their red skins are rent.
"A north wind am I unto ripe figs.
"Thus, like figs, do these precepts drop down
to you, my friends; now drink their juice and
their sweet pulp.
"It is autumn all around, and clear sky, and
afternoon. "
No fanatic speaks to you here; this is not a
"sermon "; no faith is demanded in these pages.
From out an infinite treasure of light and well of
joy, drop by drop, my words fall out—a slow and
gentle gait is the cadence of these discourses.
Such things can reach only the most elect; it is
## p. 5 (#27) ###############################################
PREFACE
a rare privilege to be a listener here; not every
one who likes can have ears to hear Zarathustra.
Is not Zarathustra, because of these things, a
seducer? . . . But what, indeed, does he himself
say, when for the first time he goes back to his
solitude? Just the reverse of that which any
“ Sage," " Saint," " Saviour of the world,” and
other decadent would say. . . . Not only his
words, but he himself is other than they.
“Alone do I now go, my disciples ! Get ye also
hence, and alone! Thus would I have it.
“ Verily, I beseech you: take your leave of me
and arm yourselves against Zarathustra! And
better still, be ashamed of him! Maybe he hath
deceived you.
“The knight of knowledge must be able not only
to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.
“ The man who remaineth a pupil requiteth his
teacher but ill. And why would ye not pluck at
my wreath?
“Ye honour me; but what if your reverence
should one day break down ? Take heed, lest a
statue crush you.
“Ye say ye believe in Zarathustra ? But of
what account is Zarathustra ? Ye are my be-
lievers : but of what account are all believers ?
“Ye had not yet sought yourselves when ye
found me. Thus do all believers; therefore is all
believing worth so little.
"Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves;
and only when ye have all denied me will I come
back unto you. ”
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
## p. 6 (#28) ###############################################
## p. 7 (#29) ###############################################
On this perfect day, when everything is ripening,
and not only the grapes are getting brown, a ray
of sunshine has fallen on my life: I looked behind
me, I looked before me, and never have I seen so
many good things all at once. Not in vain have
I buried my four-and-fortieth year to-day; I had
the right to bury it—that in it which still had life,
has been saved and is immortal. The first book
of the Transvaluation of all Values, The Songs of
Zarathustra, The Twilight of the Idols, my attempt
to philosophise with the hammer—all these things
are the gift of this year, and even of its last quarter.
How could I help being tltankful to the whole of my
life?
That is why I am now going to tell myself the
story of my life.
## p. 8 (#30) ###############################################
## p. 9 (#31) ###############################################
ECCE HOMO
HOW ONE BECOMES WHAT ONE IS
WHY I AM SO WISE
THE happiness of my existence, its unique char-
acter perhaps, consists in its fatefulness: to speak
in a riddle, as my own father I am already dead,
as my own mother I still live and grow old. This
double origin, taken as it were from the highest
and lowest rungs of the ladder of life, at once a
decadent and a beginning, this, if anything, ex-
plains that neutrality, that freedom from partisan-
ship in regard to the general problem of existence,
which perhaps distinguishes me. To the first in-
dications of ascending or of descending life my
nostrils are more sensitive than those of any man
that has yet lived. In this domain I am a master
to my backbone—I know both sides, for I am
both sides. My father died in his six-and-thirtieth
year: he was delicate, lovable, and morbid, like one
who is preordained to pay simply a flying visit—
a gracious reminder of life rather than life itself.
In the same year that his life declined mine also
declined: in my six-and-thirtieth year I reached
the lowest point in my vitality,—I still lived, but
## p. 10 (#32) ##############################################
IO ECCE HOMO
my eyes could distinguish nothing that lay three
paces away from me. At" that time—it was the
year 1879—I resigned my professorship at Bale,
lived through the summer like a shadow in St.
Moritz, and spent the following winter, the most
sunless of my life, like a shadow in Naumburg.
This was my lowest ebb. During this period I
wrote The Wanderer and His Shadow. Without
a doubt I was conversant with shadows then. The
winter that followed, my first winter in Genoa,
brought forth that sweetness and spirituality which
is almost inseparable from extreme poverty of blood
and muscle, in the shape of The Dawn of Day.
The perfect lucidity and cheerfulness, the intel-
lectual exuberance even, that this work reflects,
coincides, in my case, not only with the most pro-
found physiological weakness, but also with an ex-
cess of suffering. In the midst of the agony of a
headache which lasted three days, accompanied by
violent nausea, I was possessed of most singular
dialectical clearness, and in absolutely cold blood
I then thought out things, for which, in my more
healthy moments, I am not enough of a climber,
not sufficiently subtle, not sufficiently cold. My
readers perhaps know to what extent I consider dia-
lectic a symptom of decadence, as, for instance, in
the most famous of all cases—the case of Socrates.
All the morbid disturbances of the intellect, even
that semi-stupor which accompanies fever, have,
unto this day, remained completely unknown to me;
and for my first information concerning their nature
and frequency, I was obliged to have recourse to
the learned works which have been compiled on the
## p. 11 (#33) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE II
subject. My circulation is slow. No one has ever
been able to detect fever in me. A doctor who
treated me for some time as a nerve patient finally
declared: "No! there is nothing wrong with your
nerves, it is simply I who am nervous. " It has
been absolutely impossible to ascertain any local
degeneration in me, nor any organic stomach
trouble, however much I may have suffered from
profound weakness of the gastric system as the
result of general exhaustion. Even my eye trouble,
which sometimes approached so parlously near to
blindness, was only an effect and not a cause; for,
whenever my general vital condition improved, my
power of vision also increased. Having admitted
all this, do I need to say that I am experienced
in questions of decadence? I know them inside
and out. Even that filigree art of prehension and
comprehension in general, that feeling for delicate
shades of difference, that psychology of "seeing
through brick walls," and whatever else I may be
able to do, was first learnt then, and is the specific
gift of that period during which everything in me
was subtilised,—observation itself, together with all
the organs of observation. To look upon healthier
concepts and values from the standpoint of the sick,
and conversely to look down upon the secret work
of the instincts of decadence from the standpoint
of him who is laden and self-reliant with the rich-
ness of life—this has been my longest exercise, my
principal experience. If in anything at all, it was
in this that I became a master. To-day my hand
knows the trick, I now have the knack of reversing
perspectives: the first reason perhaps why a Trans-
## p. 11 (#34) ##############################################
10
ECCE HOMO
my eyes could distinguish nothing that lay three
paces away from me. At that time—it was the
year 1879—I resigned my professorship at Bâle,
lived through the summer like a shadow in St.
Moritz, and spent the following winter, the most
sunless of my life, like a shadow in Naumburg.
This was my lowest ebb. During this period I
wrote The Wanderer and His Shadow. Without
a doubt I was conversant with shadows then. The
winter that followed, my first winter in Genoa,
brought forth that sweetness and spirituality which
is almost inseparable from extreme poverty of blood
and muscle, in the shape of The Dawn of Day.
The perfect lucidity and cheerfulness, the intel-
lectual exuberance even, that this work reflects,
coincides, in my case, not only with the most pro-
found physiological weakness, but also with an ex-
cess of suffering. In the midst of the agony of a
headache which lasted three days, accompanied by
violent nausea, I was possessed of most singular
dialectical clearness, and in absolutely cold blood
I then thought out things, for which, in my more
healthy moments, I am not enough of a climber,
not sufficiently subtle, not sufficiently cold. My
readers perhaps know to what extent I consider dia-
lectic a symptom of decadence, as, for instance, in
the most famous of all cases—the case of Socrates.
All the morbid disturbances of the intellect, even
that semi-stupor which accompanies fever, have,
unto this day, remained completely unknown to me;
and for my first information concerning their nature
and frequency, I was obliged to have recourse to
the learned works which have been compiled on the
## p. 11 (#35) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE
II
subject. My circulation is slow. No one has ever
been able to detect fever in me. A doctor who
treated me for some time as a nerve patient finally
declared : “No! there is nothing wrong with your
nerves, it is simply I who am nervous. ” It has
been absolutely impossible to ascertain any local
degeneration in me, nor any organic stomach
trouble, however much I may have suffered from
profound weakness of the gastric system as the
result of general exhaustion. Even my eye trouble,
which sometimes approached so parlously near to
blindness, was only an effect and not a cause; for,
whenever my general vital condition improved, my
power of vision also increased. Having admitted
all this, do I need to say that I am experienced
in questions of decadence? I know them inside
and out. Even that filigree art of prehension and
comprehension in general, that feeling for delicate
shades of difference, that psychology of “seeing
through brick walls," and whatever else I may be
able to do, was first learnt then, and is the specific
gift of that period during which everything in me
was subtilised, observation itself, together with all
the organs of observation. To look upon healthier
concepts and values from the standpoint of the sick,
and conversely to look down upon the secret work
of the instincts of decadence from the standpoint
of him who is laden and self-reliant with the rich-
ness of life—this has been my longest exercise, my
principal experience.
If in anything at all, it was
in this that I became a master. To-day my hand
knows the trick, I now have the knack of reversing
perspectives: the first reason perhaps why a Trans-
## p. 12 (#36) ##############################################
12 ECCE HOMO
valuation of all Values has been possible to me
alone.
For, apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I
am also the reverse of such a creature. Among
other things my proof of this is, that I always
instinctively select the proper remedy when my
spiritual or bodily health is low; whereas the de-
cadent, as such, invariably chooses those remedies
which are bad for him. As a whole I was sound,
but in certain details I was a decadent. That
energy with which I sentenced myself to absolute
solitude, and to a severance from all those condi-
tions in life to which I had grown accustomed; my
discipline of myself, and my refusal to allow myself
to be pampered, to be tended hand and foot, and to
be doctored—all this betrays the absolute certainty
of my instincts respecting what at that time was
most needful to me. I placed myself in my own
hands, I restored myself to health: the first con-
dition of success in such an undertaking, as every
physiologist will admit, is that at bottom a man
should be sound. An intrinsically morbid nature
cannot become healthy. On the other hand, to an
intrinsically sound nature, illness may even con-
stitute a powerful stimulus to life, to a surplus of
life. It is in this light that I now regard the long
period of illness that I endured: it seemed as if I
had discovered life afresh, my own self included. I
tasted all good things and even trifles in a way in
which it was not easy for others to taste them—
out of my Will to Health and to Life I made my
\
## p. 13 (#37) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE 13
philosophy. . . . For this should be thoroughly
understood; it was during those years in which my
vitality reached its lowest point that I ceased from
being a pessimist: the instinct of self-recovery for-
bade my holding to a philosophy of poverty and
desperation. Now, by what signs are Nature's
lucky strokes recognised among men? They are
recognised by the fact that any such lucky stroke
gladdens our senses; that he is carved from one
integral block, which is hard, sweet, and fragrant as
well. He enjoys that only which is good for him;
his pleasure, his desire, ceases when the limits of
that which is good for him are overstepped. He
divines remedies for injuries; he knows how to turn
serious accidents to his own advantage; that which
does not kill him makes him stronger. He in-
stinctively gathers his material from all he sees,
hears, and experiences. He is a selective principle;
he rejects much. He is always in his own com-
pany, whether his intercourse be with books, with
men, or with natural scenery; he honours the
things he chooses, the things he acknowledges, the
things he trusts. He reacts slowly to all kinds of
stimuli, with that tardiness which long caution and
deliberate pride have bred in him—he tests the
approaching stimulus; he would not dream of
meeting it half-way. He believes neither in "ill-
luck" nor "guilt"; he can digest himself and others;
he knows how to forget—he is strong enough to
make everything turn to his own advantage.
Lo then! I am the very reverse of a decadent,
for he whom I have just described is none other
than myself,
## p. 14 (#38) ##############################################
14 ECCE HOMO
This double thread of experiences, this means of
access to two worlds that seem so far asunder, finds
in every detail its counterpart in my own nature—I
am my own complement: I have a " second " sight,
as well as a first. And perhaps I also have a third
sight. By the very nature of my origin I was
allowed an outlook beyond all merely local, merely
national and limited horizons; it required no effort
on my part to be a " good European. " On the
other hand, I am perhaps more German than modern
Germans—mere Imperial Germans—can hope to
be,—I, the last anti-political German. Be this as
it may, my ancestors were Polish noblemen: it is
owing to them that I have so much race instinct in
my blood—who knows? perhaps even the liberum
veto* When I think of the number of times in my
travels that I have been accosted as a Pole, even by
Poles themselves, and how seldom I have been taken
for a German, it seems to me as if I belonged to
those only who have a sprinkling of German in
them. But my mother, Franziska Oehler, is at any
rate something very German; as is also my paternal
grandmother, Erdmuthe Krause. The latter spent
the whole of her youth in good old Weimar, not
without coming into contact with Goethe's circle.
Her brother, Krause, the Professor of Theology in
* The right which every Polish deputy, whether a great or
an inferior nobleman, possessed of forbidding the passing of
any measure by the Diet, was called in Poland the liberum veto
(in Polish nie pozwalatn), and brought all legislation to a
standstill. —Tr.
## p. 15 (#39) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE 15
Konigsberg, was called to the post of General
Superintendent at Weimar after Herder's death.
It is not unlikely that her mother, my great grand-
mother, is mentioned in young Goethe's diary under
the name of " Muthgen. " She married twice, and
her second husband was Superintendent Nietzsche
of Eilenburg. In 1813, the year of the great war,
when Napoleon with his general staff entered Eilen-
burg on the 10th of October, she gave birth to a
son. As a daughter of Saxony she was a great
admirer of Napoleon, and maybe I am so still. My
father, born in 1813, died in 1849. Previous to
taking over the pastorship of the parish of Rocken,
not far from Liitzen, he lived for some years at the
Castle of Altenburg, where he had charge of the
education of the four princesses. His pupils are the
Queen of Hanover,the Grand-Duchess Constantine,
the Grand-Duchess of Oldenburg, and the Princess
Theresa of Saxe-Altenburg. He was full of loyal
respect for the Prussian King, Frederick William the
Fourth, from whom he obtained his living at Rocken;
the events of 1848 saddened him extremely. As
I was born on the 1 5 th of October, the birthday of
the king above mentioned, I naturally received the
Hohenzollern names of Frederick William. There
was at all events one advantage in the choice of
this day: my birthday throughout the whole of my
childhood was a day of public rejoicing. I regard
it as a great privilege to have had such a father: it
even seems to me that this embraces all that I can
claim in the matter of privileges—life, the great yea
to life, excepted. What I owe to him above all is
this, that I do not need any special intention, but
## p. 16 (#40) ##############################################
16 ECCE HOMO
merely a little patience, in order involuntarily to
enter a world of higher and more delicate things.
There I am at home, there alone does my inmost
passion become free. The fact that I had to pay
for this privilege almost with my life, certainly does
not make it a bad bargain. In order to understand
even a little of my Zarathustra, perhaps a man must
be situated and constituted very much as I am my-
self—with one foot beyond the realm of the living.
I have never understood the art of arousing ill-
feeling against myself,—this is also something for
which I have to thank my incomparable father,—
even when it seemed to me highly desirable to do
so. However un-Christian it may seem, I do not
even bear any ill-feeling towards myself. Turn my
life about as you may, you will find but seldom—
perhaps indeed only once—any trace of some one's
having shown me ill-will. You might perhaps dis-
cover, however, too many traces of good-vtiM. . . .
My experiences even with those on whom every
other man has burnt his fingers, speak without ex-
ception in their favour; I tame every bear, I can
make even clowns behave decently. During the
seven years in which I taught Greek to the sixth
form of the College at Bale, I never had occasion to
administer a punishment; the laziest youths were
diligent in my class. The unexpected has always
found me equal to it; I must be unprepared in order
to keep my self-command. Whatever the instru-
ment was, even if it were as out of tune as the instrq-
## p. 17 (#41) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE 17
ment " man" can possibly be,—it was only when
I was ill that I could not succeed in making it ex-
press something that was worth hearing. And how
often have I not been told by the "instruments"
themselves, that they had never before heard their
voices express such beautiful things. . . . This
was said to me most delightfully perhaps by that
young fellow Heinrich von Stein, who died at such
an unpardonably early age, and who, after having
considerately asked leave to do so, ortte appeared
in Sils-Maria for a three days' sojourn, telling every-
body there that it was not for the Engadine that he
had come. This excellent person, who with all the
impetuous simplicity of a young Prussian nobleman,
had waded deep into the swamp of Wagnerism
(and into that of DUhringism * into the bargain ! ),
seemed almost transformed during these three days
by a hurricane of freedom, like one who has been
suddenly raised to his full height and given wings.
Again and again I said to him that this was all
owing to the splendid air; everybody felt the same,
—one could not stand 6000 feet above Bayreuth
for nothing,—but he would not believe me. . . .
Be this as it may, if I have been the victim of many
a small or even great offence, it was not " will," and
least of all ///-will that actuated the offenders; but
rather, as I have already suggested, it was good-
will, the cause of no small amount of mischief in
my life, about which I had to complain. My ex-
perience gave me a right to feel suspicious in regard
* Eugen Duhring is a philosopher and political economist
whose general doctrine might be characterised as a sort of
abstract Materialism with an optimistic colouring. —Tr.
B
## p. 18 (#42) ##############################################
18 ECCE HOMO
to all so-called " unselfish" instincts, in regard to
the whole of "neighbourly love" which is ever ready
and waiting with deeds or with advice. To me it
seems that these instincts are a sign of weakness,
they are an example of the inability to withstand
a stimulus—it is only among decadents that this
pity is called a virtue. What I reproach the pitiful
with is, that they are too ready to forget shame,
reverence, and the delicacy of feeling which knows
how to keep at a distance; they do not remember
that this gushing pity stinks of the mob, and that
it is next of kin to bad manners—that pitiful hands
may be thrust with results fatally destructive into
a great destiny, into a lonely and wounded retire-
ment, and into the privileges with which great guilt
endows one. The overcoming of pity I reckon
among the noble virtues. In the "Temptation of
Zarathustra" I have imagined a case, in which a
great cry of distress reaches his ears, in which pity
swoops down upon him like a last sin, and would
make him break faith with himself. To remain
one's own master in such circumstances, to keep the
sublimity of one's mission pure in such cases,—pure
from the many ignoble and more short-sighted im-
pulses which come into play in so-called unselfish
actions,—this is the rub, the last test perhaps which
a Zarathustra has to undergo—the actual proof of
his power.
In yet another respect I am no more than my
father over again, and as it were the continuation
of his life after an all-too-early death. Like every
## p. 19 (#43) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE 19
man who has never been able to meet his equal,
and unto whom the concept "retaliation " is just
as incomprehensible as the notion of " equal rights,"
I have forbidden myself the use of any sort of
measure of security or protection—and also, of
course, of defence and "justification"—in all
cases in which I have been made the victim either
oftrifiingoreven very great foolishness. My form
of retaliation consists in this : as soon as possible
to set a piece of cleverness at the heels of an act
of stupidity; by this means perhaps it may still
be possible to overtake it. To speak in a parable:
I dispatch a pot of jam in order to get rid of a
bitter experience. . . . Let anybody only give me
offence, I shall "retaliate," he can be quite sure
of that: before long I discover an opportunity of
expressing my thanks to the "offender" (among
other things even for the offence)—or of asking
him for something, which can be more courteous
even than giving. It also seems to me that the
rudest word, the rudest letter, is more good-
natured, more straightforward, than silence. Those
who keep silent are almost always lacking in
subtlety and refinement of heart; silence is an
objection, to swallow a grievance must necessarily
produce a bad temper—it even upsets the stomach.
All silent people are dyspeptic. You perceive
that I should not like to see rudeness undervalued;
it is by far the most humane form of contradiction,
and, in the midst of modern effeminacy, it is one
of our first virtues. If one is sufficiently rich for
it, it may even be a joy to be wrong. If a god
were to descend to this earth, he would have to
## p. 20 (#44) ##############################################
20 ECCE HOMO
do nothing but wrong—to take guilt, not punish-
ment,on one's shoulders, is the first proof of divinity.
Freedom from resentment and the understand-
ing of the nature of resentment—who knows how
very much after all I am indebted to my long ill-
ness for these two things? The problem is not
exactly simple: a man must have experienced
both through his strength and through his weak-
ness. If illness and weakness are to be charged
with anything at all, it is with the fact that when
they prevail, the very instinct of recovery, which is
the instinct of defence and of war in man, becomes
decayed. He knows not how to get rid of any-
thing, how to come to terms with anything, and
how to cast anything behind him. Everything
wounds him. People and things draw importun-
ately near, all experiences strike deep, memory
is a gathering wound. To be ill is a sort of
resentment in itself. Against this resentment
the invalid has only one great remedy—I call
it Russian fatalism, that fatalism which is free
from revolt, and with which the Russian soldier,
to whom a campaign proves unbearable, ultimately
lays himself down in the snow. To accept noth-
ing more, to undertake nothing more, to absorb
nothing more—to cease entirely from reacting.
. . . The tremendous sagacity of this fatalism,
which does not always imply merely the courage
for death, but which in the most dangerous cases
may actually constitute a self-preservative measure,
amounts to a reduction of activity in the vital
## p. 21 (#45) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE 21
functions, the slackening down of which is like a
sort of will to hibernate. A few steps farther in
this direction we find the fakir, who will sleep for
weeks in a tomb Owing to the fact
that one would be used up too quickly if one
reacted, one no longer reacts at all: this is the
principle. And nothing on earth consumes a
man more quickly than the passion of resentment.
Mortification, morbid susceptibility, the inability
to wreak revenge, the desire and thirst for re-
venge, the concoction of every sort of poison—this
is surely the most injurious manner of reacting
which could possibly be conceived by exhausted
men. It involves a rapid wasting away of nervous
energy, an abnormal increase of detrimental
secretions, as, for instance, that of bile into the
stomach. To the sick man resentment ought to
be more strictly forbidden than anything else—
it is his special danger: unfortunately, however,
it is also his most natural propensity. This was
fully grasped by that profound physiologist
Buddha. His "religion," which it would be
better to call a system of hygiene, in order to
avoid confounding it with a creed so wretched as
Christianity, depended for its effect upon the
triumph over resentment: to make the soul free
therefrom was considered the first step towards re-
covery. "Not through hostility is hostility put to
flight; through friendship does hostility end": this
stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching—
this is not a precept of morality, but of physiology.
Resentment born of weakness is not more deleteri-
ous to anybody than it is to the weak man himself
## p. 22 (#46) ##############################################
22 ECCE HOMO
—conversely, in the case of that man whose nature
is fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a
superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of
which is almost a proof of riches. Those of my
readers who know the earnestness with which my
philosophy wages war against the feelings of re-
venge and rancour, even to the extent of attacking
the doctrine of" free will " (my conflict with Chris-
tianity is only a particular instance of it), will
understand why I wish to focus attention upon
my own personal attitude and the certainty of my
practical instincts precisely in this matter. In
my moments of decadence I forbade myself the
indulgence of the above feelings, because they
were harmful; as soon as my life recovered enough
riches and pride, however, I regarded them again
as forbidden, but this time because they were
beneath me. That "Russian fatalism" of which
I have spoken manifested itself in me in such a
way that for years I held tenaciously to almost
insufferable conditions, places, habitations, and
companions, once chance had placed them on my
path—it was better than changing them, than
feeling that they could be changed, than revolting
against them. . . . He who stirred me from
this fatalism, he who violently tried to shake me
into consciousness, seemed to me then a mortal
enemy—in point of fact, there was danger of
death each time this was done. To regard one's
self as a destiny, not to wish one's self "differ-
ent"—this, in such circumstances, is sagacity
itself.
## p. 23 (#47) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE 23
War, on the other hand, is something different.
At heart I am a warrior. Attacking belongs to my
instincts. To be able to be an enemy, to be an
enemy—maybe these things presuppose a strong
nature; in any case all strong natures involve
these things. Such natures need resistance, con-
sequently they go in search of obstacles: the
pathos of aggression belongs of necessity to
strength as much as the feelings of revenge and
of rancour belong to weakness. Woman, for in-
stance, is revengeful; her weakness involves this
passion, just as it involves her susceptibility in the
presence of other people's suffering. The strength
of the aggressor can be measured by the opposi-
tion which he needs; every increase of growth
betrays itself by a seeking out of more formidable
opponents—or problems: for a philosopher who
is combative challenges even problems to a duel.
The task is not to overcome opponents in general,
but only those opponents against whom one has
to summon all one's strength, one's skill, and one's
swordsmanship—in fact, opponents who are one's
equals. . . . To be one's enemy's equal—this is
the first condition of an honourable duel. Where
one despises, one cannot wage war. Where one
commands, where one sees something beneath
one, one ought not to wage war. My war tactics
can be reduced to four principles: First, I attack
only things that are triumphant—if necessary I
wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I
attack only those things against which I find no
## p. 23 (#48) ##############################################
22
ECCE HOMO
—conversely, in the case of that man whose nature
is fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a
superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of
which is almost a proof of riches. Those of my
readers who know the earnestness with which my
philosophy wages war against the feelings of re-
venge and rancour, even to the extent of attacking
the doctrine of“ free will ” (my conflict with Chris-
tianity is only a particular instance of it), will
understand why I wish to focus attention upon
my own personal attitude and the certainty of my
practical instincts precisely in this matter. In
my moments of decadence I forbade myself the
indulgence of the above feelings, because they
were harmful; as soon as my life recovered enough
riches and pride, however, I regarded them again
as forbidden, but this time because they were
beneath me. That “Russian fatalism” of which
I have spoken manifested itself in me in such a
way that for years I held tenaciously to almost
insufferable conditions, places, habitations, and
companions, once chance had placed them on my
path—it was better than changing them, than
feeling that they could be changed, than revolting
against them. . . . He who stirred me from
this fatalism, he who violently tried to shake me
into consciousness, seemed to me then a mortal
enemy—in point of fact, there was danger of
death each time this was done. To regard one's
self as a destiny, not to wish one's self “differ-
ent”—this, in such circumstances, is sagacity
itself.
## p. 23 (#49) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE
23
War, on the other hand, is something different.
At heart I am a warrior. Attacking belongs to my
instincts. To be able to be an enemy, to be an
enemy—maybe these things presuppose a strong
nature ; in any case all strong natures involve
these things. Such natures need resistance, con-
sequently they go in search of obstacles : the
pathos of aggression belongs of necessity to
strength as much as the feelings of revenge and
of rancour belong to weakness. Woman, for in-
stance, is revengeful; her weakness involves this
passion, just as it involves her susceptibility in the
presence of other people's suffering. The strength
of the aggressor can be measured by the opposi-
tion which he needs; every increase of growth
betrays itself by a seeking out of more formidable
opponents—or problems : for a philosopher who
is combative challenges even problems to a duel.
The task is not to overcome opponents in general,
but only those opponents against whom one has
to summon all one's strength, one's skill, and one's
swordsmanship-in fact, opponents who are one's
equals. . . . To be one's enemy's equal—this is
the first condition of an honourable duel. Where
one despises, one cannot wage war. Where one
commands, where one sees something beneath
one, one ought not to wage war. My war tactics
can be reduced to four principles : First, I attack
only things that are triumphant—if necessary I
wait until they become triumphant. Secondly, I
attack only those things against which I find no
## p. 24 (#50) ##############################################
24 ECCE HOMO
allies, against which I stand alone—against which
I compromise nobody but myself. . . . I have
not yet taken one single step before the public
eye, which did not compromise me: that is my
criterion of a proper mode of action. Thirdly, I
never make personal attacks—I use a personality
merely as a magnifying-glass, by means of which
I render a general, but elusive and scarcely notice-
able evil, more apparent. In this way I attacked
David Strauss, or rather the success given to a
senile book by the cultured classes of Germany
—by this means I caught German culture red-
handed. In this way I attacked Wagner, or rather
the falsity or mongrel instincts of our "culture"
which confounds the super-refined with the strong,
and the effete with the great. Fourthly, I attack
only those things from which all personal differ-
ences are excluded, in which any such thing as a
background of disagreeable experiences is lacking.
On the contrary, attacking is to me a proof of
goodwill and, in certain circumstances, of gratitude.
By means of it, I do honour to a thing, I dis-
tinguish a thing; whether I associate my name
with that of an institution or a person, by being
against ox for either, is all the same to me. If I
wage war against Christianity, I feel justified in
doing so, because in that quarter I have met with
no fatal experiences and difficulties—the most ear-
nest Christians have always been kindly disposed
to me. I, personally, the most essential opponent
of Christianity, am far from holding the individ-
ual responsible for what is the fatality of long
ages.
## p. 25 (#51) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE 25
8
May I be allowed to hazard a suggestion con-
cerning one last trait in my character, which in my
intercourse with other men has led me into some
difficulties? I am gifted with a sense of cleanliness
the keenness of which is phenomenal; so much so,
that I can ascertain physiologically—that is to say,
smell—the proximity, nay, the inmost core, the
"entrails" of every human soul. . . . This sensi-
tiveness of mine is furnished with psychological
antennas, wherewith I feel and grasp every secret:
the quality of concealed filth lying at the base of
many a human character which may be the in-
evitable outcome of base blood, and which education
may have veneered, is revealed to me at the first
glance. If my observation has been correct, such
people, whom my sense of cleanliness rejects, also
become conscious, on their part, of the cautiousness
to which my loathing prompts me: and this does
not make them any more fragrant.
