No More Learning



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g6 ECCE HOMO
diamond beauty of the first of Zarathustra's words
as they appear in a glow of light at the close of
the fourth book? Or when he reads the granite
sentences at the end of the third book, wherein a
fate for all times is first given a formula? The
songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird, which, for the most
part, were written in Sicily, remind me quite for-
cibly of that Provencal notion of "Gaya Scienza,"
of that union of singer, knight, and free spirit, which
distinguishes that wonderfully early culture of the
Provencals from all ambiguous cultures. The last
poem of all," To the Mistral,"—an exuberant dance
song in which, if you please, the new spirit dances
freely upon the corpse of morality,—is a perfect
Provenc,alism.
"Thus Spake Zarathustra:
A Book for All and None"
I now wish to relate the history of Zarathustra.
The fundamental idea of the work, the Eternal
Recurrence, the highest formula of a Yea-saying to
life that can ever be attained, was first conceived
in the month of August 1881. I made a note of
the idea on a sheet of paper, with the postscript:
"Six thousand feet beyond man and time. " That
day I happened to be wandering through the
woods alongside of the Lake of Silvaplana, and I
halted not far from Surlei, beside a huge rock that
towered aloft like a pyramid. It was then that


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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 97
the thought struck me. Looking back now, I
find that exactly two months before this inspira-
tion I had an omen of its coming in the form of
a sudden and decisive change in my tastes—more
particularly in music. The whole of Zarathustra
might perhaps be classified under the rubric music.
At all events, the essential condition of its produc-
tion was a second birth within me of the art of
hearing. In Recoaro, a small mountain resort
near Vicenza, where I spent the spring of 18 81, I
and my friend and maestro, Peter Gast—who was
also one who had been born again, discovered that
the phoenix music hovered over us, in lighter and
brighter plumage than it had ever worn before.
If, therefore, I now calculate from that day for-
ward the sudden production of the book, under
the most unlikely circumstances, in February 1883,
—the last part, out of which I quoted a few lines
in my preface, was written precisely in the hal-
lowed hour when Richard Wagner gave up the
ghost in Venice,—I come to the conclusion that
the period of gestation covered eighteen months.
This period of exactly eighteen months, might
suggest, at least to Buddhists, that I am in reality
a female elephant The interval was devoted to
the Gaya Scienza, which contains hundreds of
indications of the proximity of something unparal-
leled; for, after all, it shows the beginning of
Zarathustra, since it presents Zarathustra's funda-
mental thought in the last aphorism but one of
the fourth book. To this interval also belongs
that Hymn to Life (for a mixed choir and or-
chestra), the score of which was published in
G


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98 ECCE HOMO
Leipzig two years ago by E. W. Fritsch, and
which gave perhaps no slight indication of my
spiritual state during this year, in which the essen-
tially yea-saying pathos, which' I call the tragic
pathos, completely filled me heart and limb. One
day people will sing it to my memory. The text,
let it be well understood, as there is some mis-
understanding abroad on this point, is not by me;
it was the astounding inspiration of a young
Russian lady, Miss Lou von Salome, with whom I
was then on friendly terms. He who is in any
way able to make some sense of the last words of
the poem, will divine why I preferred and admired
it: there is greatness in them. Pain is not re-
garded as an objection to existence: "And if
thou hast no bliss now left to crown me—Lead
on! Thou hast thy Sorrow still. "
Maybe that my music is also great in this
passage. (The last note of the oboe, by the bye,
is C sharp, not C. The latter is a misprint. )
During the following winter, I was living on that
charmingly peaceful Gulf of Rapallo, not far from
Genoa, which cuts inland between Chiavari and
Cape Porto Fino. My health was not very good;
the winter was cold and exceptionally rainy; and
the small albergo in which I lived was so close to
the water that at night my sleep was disturbed
if the sea was rough. These circumstances were
surely the very reverse of favourable; and yet, in
spite of it all, and as if in proof of my belief that
everything decisive comes to life in defiance of
every obstacle, it was precisely during this winter
and in the midst of these unfavourable cir-


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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 99
cumstances that my Zarathustra originated. In
the morning I used to start out in a southerly
direction up the glorious road to Zoagli, which
rises up through a forest of pines and gives one a
view far out to sea. In the afternoon, or as often
as my health allowed, I walked round the whole
bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino.
This spot affected me all the more deeply because
it was so dearly loved by the Emperor Frederick
III. In the autumn of 1886 I chanced to be
there again when he was revisiting this small for-
gotten world of happiness for the last time. It
was on these two roads that all Zarathustra
came to me, above all, Zarathustra himself as a
type—I ought rather to say that it was on these
walks that he waylaid me.
In order to understand this type, you must first
be quite clear concerning its fundamental physio-
logical condition: this condition is what I call
great healthiness. In regard to this idea I cannot
make my meaning more plain or more personal
than I have done already in one of the last aphor-
isms (No. 382) of the fifth book of the Gaya
Scienza: "We new, nameless, and unfathomable
creatures," so reads the passage, "we firstlings
of a future still unproved—we who have a new
end in view also require new means to that end,
that is to say, a new healthiness, a stronger, keener,
tougher, bolder, and merrier healthiness than any
that has existed heretofore. He who longs to


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IOO ECCE HOMO
feel in his own soul the whole range of values and
aims that have prevailed on earth until his day,
and to sail round all the coasts of this ideal
'Mediterranean Sea'; who, from the adventures
of his own inmost experience, would fain know
how it feels to be a conqueror and discoverer of
the ideal;—as also how it is with the artist, the
saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the man
of piety and the godlike anchorite of yore ;—such
a man requires one thing above all for his purpose,
and that is, great healthiness—such healthiness as
he not only possesses, but also constantly acquires
and must acquire, because he is continually sacri-
ficing it again, and is compelled to sacrifice it!
And now, therefore, after having been long on the
way, we Argonauts of the ideal, whose pluck is
greater than prudence would allow, and who are
often shipwrecked and bruised, but, as I have said,
healthier than people would like to admit, danger-
ously healthy, and for ever recovering our health—
it would seem as if we had before us, as a reward
for all our toils, a country still undiscovered, the
horizon of which no one has yet seen, a beyond
to every country and every refuge of the ideal that
man has ever known, a world so overflowing with
beauty, strangeness, doubt, terror, and divinity,
that both our curiosity and our lust of possession
are frantic with eagerness. Alas! how in the
face of such vistas, and with such burning desire in
our conscience and consciousness, could we still
be content with the man of the present day? This
is bad indeed; but, that we should regard his
wprthiest aims and hopes with ill-concealed amuse-


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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS IOI
ment, or perhaps give them no thought at all, is in-
evitable. Another ideal now leads us on, a wonderful,
seductive ideal, full of danger, the pursuit of which
we should be loath to urge upon any one, because
we are not so ready to acknowledge any one's
right to it: the ideal of a spirit who plays ingenu-
ously (that is to say, involuntarily, and as the out-
come of superabundant energy and power) with
everything that, hitherto, has been called holy,
good, inviolable, and divine; to whom even the
loftiest thing that the people have with reason
made their measure of value would be no better
than a danger, a decay, and an abasement, or at
least a relaxation and temporary forgetfulness of
self: the ideal of a humanly superhuman well-being
and goodwill, which often enough will seem in-
human—as when, for instance, it stands beside all
past earnestness on earth, and all past solemnities
in hearing, speech, tone, look, morality, and duty,
as their most lifelike and unconscious parody—
but with which, nevertheless, great earnestness
perhaps alone begins, the first note of interroga-
tion is affixed, the fate of the soul changes, the
hour hand moves, and tragedy begins. "
Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century
any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age
understood by the word inspiration? If not, I will
describe it. I f one had the smallest vestige of super-
stition left in one, it would hardly be possible com-
pletely to set aside the idea that one is the mere


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102 ECCE HOMO
incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty
power. The idea of revelation, in the sense that
something which profoundly convulses and upsets
one becomes suddenly visible and audible with inde-
scribable certainty and accuracy—describes the
simple fact. One hears—one does not seek; one
takes—one does not ask who gives: a thought
suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with
necessity, without faltering—I have never had any
choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy so great
that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed
by a flood of tears, during which one's steps now in-
voluntarily rush and anon involuntarily lag. There
is the feeling that one is utterly out of hand, with
the very distinct consciousness of an endless number
of fine thrills and titillations descending to one's
very toes;—there is a depth of happiness in which
the most painful and gloomy parts do not act as
antitheses to the rest, but are produced and required
as necessary shades of colour in such an overflow
of light. There is an instinct for rhythmic relations
which embraces a whole world of forms (length, the
need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the
measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of
counterpart to its pressure and tension). Every-
thing happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tem-
pestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of
power and divinity. The involuntary nature of the
figures and similes is the most remarkable thing;
one loses all perception of what is imagery and
metaphor; everything seems to present itself as the
readiest, the truest, and simplest means of expres-
sion. It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra's


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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 103
own phrases, as if all things came to one, and
offered themselves as similes. (" Here do all things
come caressingly to thy discourse and natter thee,
for they would fain ride upon thy back. On every
simile thou ridest here unto every truth. Here fly
open unto thee all the speech and word shrines of
the world, here would all existence become speech,
here would all Becoming learn of thee how to
speak. ") This is my experience of inspiration. I
do not doubt but that I should have to go back
thousands of years before I could find another who
could say to me: "It is mine also! "
For a few weeks afterwards I lay an invalid in
Genoa. Then followed a melancholy spring in
Rome, where I only just managed to live—and this
was no easy matter. This city, which is absolutely
unsuited to the poet-author of Zarathustra, and for
the choice of which I was not responsible, made
me inordinately miserable. I tried to leave it. I
wanted to go to Aquila—the opposite of Rome in
every respect, and actually founded in a spirit of
hostility towards that city, just as I also shall found
a city some day, as a memento of an atheist and
genuine enemy of the Church, a person very closely
related to me, the great Hohenstaufen, the Emperor
Frederick II. But Fate lay behind it all: I had to
return again to Rome. In the end I was obliged
to be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini, after I had
exerted myself in vain to find an anti-Christian
quarter. I fear that on one occasion, to avoid bad


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104 £CCE HOMO
smells as much as possible, I actually inquired at
the Palazzo del Quirinale whether they could not
provide a quiet room for a philosopher. In a
chamber high above the Piazza just mentioned, from
which one obtained a general view of Rome, and
could hear the fountains plashing far below, the
loneliest of all songs was composed—" The Night-
Song. " About this time I was obsessed by an un-
speakably sad melody, the refrain of which I
recognised in the words, "dead through immor-
tality. " . . . In the summer, finding myself once
more in the sacred place where the first thought of
Zarathustra flashed like a light across my mind, I
conceived the second part. Ten days sufficed.
Neither for the second, the first, nor the third part,
have I required aday longer. In the ensuing winter,
beneath the halcyon sky of Nice, which then for the
first time poured its light into my life, I found the
third Zarathustra—and came to the end of my task:
the whole having occupied me scarcely a year.
Many hidden corners and heights in the country
round about Nice are hallowed for me by moments
that I can never forget. That decisive chapter,
entitled "Old and New Tables," was composed
during the arduous ascent from the station to Eza
—that wonderful Moorish village in the rocks.
During those moments when my creative energy
flowed most plentifully, my muscular activity was
always greatest. The body is inspired: let us waive
the question of " soul. " I might often have been
seen dancing in those days, and I could then walk
for seven or eight hours on end over the hills
without a suggestion of fatigue. I slept well and


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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 105
laughed a good deal—I was perfectly robust and
patient.
With the exception of these periods of industry
lasting ten days, the years I spent during the pro-
duction of Zarathustra, and thereafter, were for me
years of unparalleled distress. A man pays dearly
for being immortal: to this end he must die many
times over during his life. There is such a thing
as what I call the rancour of greatness: everything
great, whether a work or a deed, once it is com-
pleted, turns immediately against its author. The
very fact that he is its author makes him weak at
this time. He can no longer endure his deed. He
can no longer look it full in the face. To have
something at one's back which one could never have
willed, something to which the knot of human
destiny is attached—and to be forced thencefor-
ward to bear it on one's shoulders! Why, it almost
crushes one! The rancour of greatness! A some-
what different experience is the uncanny silence that
reigns about one. Solitude has seven skins which
nothing can penetrate. One goes among men; one
greets friends: but these things are only new
deserts, the looks of those one meets no longer bear
a greeting. At the best one encounters a sort of
revolt. This feeling of revolt, I suffered, in varying
degrees of intensity, at the hands of almost every
one who came near me; it would seem that nothing
inflicts a deeper wound than suddenly to make one's
distance felt. Those noble natures are scarce who


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106 ECCE HOMO
know not how to live unless they can revere. A
third thing is the absurd susceptibility of the skin
to small pin-pricks, a kind of helplessness in the
presence of all small things. This seems to me a
necessary outcome of the appalling expenditure of
all defensive forces, which is the first condition of
every creative act, of every act which proceeds from
the most intimate, most secret, and most concealed
recesses of a man's being. The small defensive
forces are thus, as it were, suspended, and no fresh
energy reaches them. I even think it probable that
one does not digest so well, that one is less willing
to move, and that one is much too open to sensa-
tions of coldness and suspicion; for, in a large
number of cases, suspicion is merely a blunder in
etiology. On one occasion when I felt like this I
became conscious of the proximity of a herd of cows,
some time before I could possibly have seen it with
my eyes, simply owing to a return in me of milder
and more humane sentiments: they communicated
warmth to me. . . .
This work stands alone. Do not let us mention
the poets in the same breath: nothing perhaps has
ever been produced out of such a superabundance
of strength. My concept "Dionysian" here be-
came the highest deed ; compared with it everything
that other men have done seems poor and limited.
The fact that a Goethe or a Shakespeare would not
for an instant have known how to take breath in
this atmosphere of passion and of the heights; the


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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 107
fact that by the side of Zarathustra, Dante is no
more than a believer, and not one who first creates
the truth—that is to say, not a world-ruling spirit,
a Fate; the fact that the poets of the Veda were
priests and not even fit to unfasten Zarathustra's
sandal—all this is the least of things, and gives no
idea of the distance, of the azure solitude, in which
this work dwells. Zarathustra has an eternal right
to say: " I draw around me circles and holy bound-
aries. Ever fewer are they that mount with me to
ever loftier heights. I build me a mountain range
of ever holier mountains. " If all the spirit and
goodness of every great soul were collected together,
the whole could not create a single one of Zara-
thustra's discourses. The ladder upon which he
rises and descends is of boundless length; he has
seen further, he has willed further, and gone further
than any other man. There is contradiction in
every word that he utters, this most yea-saying of
all spirits. Through him all contradictions are
bound up into a new unity. The loftiest and the
basest powers of human nature, the sweetest, the
lightest, and the most terrible, rush forth from out
one spring with everlasting certainty. Until his
coming no one knew what was height, or depth,
and still less what was truth. There is not a single
passage in this revelation of truth which had already
been anticipated and divined by even the greatest
among men. Before Zarathustra there was no
wisdom, no probing of the soul, no art of speech: in
his book, the most familiar and most vulgar thing
utters unheard-of words. The sentence quivers with
passion. Eloquence has become music. Forks of


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108 ECCE HOMO
lightning are hurled towards futures of which no one
has ever dreamed before. The most powerful use
of parables that has yet existed is poor beside it,
and mere child's-play compared with this return of
language to the nature of imagery. See how Zara-
thustra goes down from the mountain and speaks
the kindest words to every one! See with what
delicate fingers he touches his very adversaries, the
priests, and how he suffers with them from them-
selves! Here, at every moment, man is overcome,
and the concept "Superman " becomes the greatest
reality,—out of sight, almost far away beneath him,
lies all that which heretofore has been called great
in man. The halcyonic brightness, the light feet,
the presence of wickedness and exuberance through-
out, and all that is the essence of the type Zara-
thustra, was never dreamt of before as a prerequisite
of greatness. In precisely these limits of space and
in this accessibility to opposites Zarathustra feels
himself the highest of all living things: and when
you hear how he defines this highest, you will give
up trying to find his equal.
"The soul which hath the longest ladder and
can step down deepest,
"The vastest soul that can run and stray and
rove furthest in its own domain,
"The most necessary soul, that out of desire
flingeth itself to chance,
"The stable soul that plungeth into Becoming,
the possessing soul that must needs taste of
willing and longing,
"The soul that flyeth from itself, and over-
taketh itself in the widest circle,


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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 109
"The wisest soul that folly exhorteth most
sweetly,
"The most self-loving soul, in whom all things
have their rise, their ebb and flow. "
But this is the very idea of Dionysus. Another
consideration leads to this idea. The psychological
problem presented by the type of Zarathustra is,
how can he, who in an unprecedented manner says
no, and acts no, in regard to all that which has been
affirmed hitherto, remain nevertheless a yea-saying ,
spirit? how can he who bears the heaviest destiny
on his shoulders and whose very life-task is a
fatality, yet be the brightest and the most transcen-
dental of spirits—for Zarathustra is a dancer?
how can he who has the hardest and most terrible
grasp of reality, and who has thought the most
"abysmal thoughts," nevertheless avoid conceiving
these things as objections to existence, or even as
objections to the eternal recurrence of existence ? —
how is it that on the contrary he finds reasons for
being himself the eternal affirmation of all things,
"the tremendous and unlimited saying of Yea and
Amen"? . . . " Into every abyss do I bear the
benediction of my yea to Life. " . . . But this, once
more, is precisely the idea of Dionysus.
What language will such a spirit speak, when he
speaks unto his soul? The language of the dithy-
ramb. I am the inventor of the dithyramb.
Hearken unto the manner in which Zarathustra
speaks to his soul Before Sunrise (iii. 48). Before


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IIO ECCE HOMO
my time such emerald joys and divine tenderness
had found no tongue. Even the profoundest
melancholy of such a Dionysus takes shape as a
dithyramb. As an example of this I take " The
Night-Song,"—the immortal plaint of one who,
thanks to his superabundance of light and power,
thanks to the sun within him, is condemned never
to love.
"It is night: now do all gushing springs raise
their voices. And my soul too is a gushing
spring.
"It is night: now only do all lovers burst into
song. And my soul too is the song of a lover.
"Something unquenched and unquenchable is
within me, that would raise its voice. A craving
for love is within me, which itself speaketh the
language of love.
"Light am I: would that I were night! But
this is my loneliness, that I am begirt with light.
"Alas, why am I not dark and like unto the
night! How joyfully would I then suck at the
breasts of light!
"And even you would I bless, ye twinkling star-
lets and glow-worms on high! and be blessed in
the gifts of your light.
"But in mine own light do I live, ever back into
myself do I drink the flames I send forth.
"I know not the happiness of the hand stretched
forth to grasp; and oft have I dreamt that steal-
ing must be more blessed than taking.
"Wretched am I that my hand may never rest
from giving: an envious fate is mine that I see ex-
pectant eyes and nights made bright with longing.


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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS III
"Oh, the wretchedness of all them that give!
Oh, the clouds that cover the face of my sun!
That craving for desire! that burning hunger at
the end of the feast!
"They take what I give them; but do I touch
their soul? A gulf is there 'twixt giving and tak-
ing; and the smallest gulf is the last to be bridged.
"An appetite is born from out my beauty: would
that I might do harm to them that I fill with
light; would that I might rob them of the gifts
I have given:—thus do I thirst for wickedness.
"To withdraw my hand when their hand is
ready stretched forth like the waterfall that wavers,
wavers even in its fall:—thus do I thirst for
wickedness.
"For such vengeance doth my fulness yearn: to
such tricks doth my loneliness give birth.
"My joy in giving died with the deed. By its
very fulness did my virtue grow weary of itself.
"He who giveth risketh to lose his shame; he
that is ever distributing groweth callous in hand
and heart therefrom.
"Mine eyes no longer melt into tears at the
sight of the suppliant's shame; my hand hath be-
come too hard to feel the quivering of laden hands.
"Whither have ye fled, the tears of mine eyes and
the bloom of my heart? Oh, the solitude of all
givers! Oh, the silence of all beacons!
"Many are the suns that circle in barren space;
to all that is dark do they speak with their light—
to me alone are they silent.
"Alas, this is the hatred of light for that which
shineth: pitiless it runneth its course.


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112 ECCE HOMO
"Unfair in its inmost heart to that which shineth;
cold toward suns,—thus doth every sun go its way.
"Like a tempest do the suns fly over their course:
for such is their way. Their own unswerving will
do they follow: that is their coldness.
"Alas, it is ye alone, ye creatures of gloom, ye
spirits of the night, that take your warmth from that
which shineth. Ye alone suck your milk and com-
fort from the udders of light.
"Alas, about me there is ice, my hand burneth
itself against ice!
"Alas, within me is a thirst that thirsteth for
your thirst!
"It is night: woe is me, that I must needs
be light! And thirst after darkness! And
loneliness!
"It is night: now doth my longing burst forth
like a spring,—for speech do I long.
"It is night: now do all gushing springs raise
their voices. And my soul too is a gushing spring.
"It is night: now only do all lovers burst into
song. And my soul too is the song of a lover. "
8
Such things have never been written, never been
felt, never been suffered: only a God, only Dionysus
suffers in this way. The reply to such a dithyramb
on the sun's solitude in light would be Ariadne.
. . . Who knows, but I, who Ariadne is! To all
such riddles no one heretofore had ever found an
answer; I doubt even whether any one had ever
seen a riddle here. One day Zarathustra severely


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WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 113
determines his life-task—and it is also mine. Let
no one misunderstand its meaning. It is a yea-
saying to the point of justifying, to the point of
redeeming even all that is past.
"I walk among men as among fragments of the
future: of that future which I see.
"And all my creativeness and effort is but this,
that I may be able to think and recast all these
fragments and riddles and dismal accidents into
one piece.
"And how could I bear to be a man, if man
were not also a poet, a riddle reader, and a
redeemer of chance!
"To redeem all the past, and to transform every
'it was ' into ' thus would I have it'—that alone
would be my salvation! "
In another passage he defines as strictly as
possible what to him alone "man" can be,—not
a subject for love nor yet for pity—Zarathustra
became master even of his loathing of man: man
is to him a thing unshaped, raw material, an
ugly stone that needs the sculptor's chisel.
"No longer to will, no longer to value, no
longer to create! Oh, that this great weariness
may never be mine!
"Even in the lust of knowledge, I feel only the
joy of my will to beget and to grow; and if there
be innocence in my knowledge, it is because my
procreative will is in it.
"Away from God and gods did this will lure
me: what would there be to create if there were
gods?
"But to man doth it ever drive me anew, my
H


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114 ECCE HOMO
burning, creative will. Thus driveth it the hammer
to the stone.
"Alas, ye men, within the stone there sleepeth
an image for me, the image of all my dreams!
Alas, that it should have to sleep in the hardest
and ugliest stone!
"Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its
prison. From the stone the fragments fly: what's
that to me?
"I will finish it: for a shadow came unto me—
the stillest and lightest thing on earth once came
unto me!
"The beauty of the Superman came unto me as
a shadow. Alas, my brethren! What are the—
gods to me now? "
Let me call attention to one last point of view.
The line in italics is my pretext for this remark.
A Dionysian life-task needs the hardness of the
hammer, and one of its first essentials is without
doubt the joy even of destruction. The command,
"Harden yourselves ! " and the deep conviction that
all creators are hard, is the really distinctive sign
of a Dionysian nature.
"Beyond Good and Evil: The Prelude
to a Philosophy of the Future"
My work for the years that followed was pre-
scribed as distinctly as possible. Now that the
yea-saying part of my life-task was accomplished,


## p. 115 (#165) ############################################

WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 115
there came the turn of the negative portion, both
in word and deed: the transvaluation of all values
that had existed hitherto, the great war,—the con-
juring-up of the day when the fatal outcome of the
struggle would be decided. Meanwhile, I had
slowly to look about me for my peers, for those
who, out of strength, would proffer me a helping
hand in my work of destruction. From that time
onward, all my writings are so much bait: maybe
I understand as much about fishing as most people?
If nothing was caught, it was not I who was at
fault. There were no fish to come and bite.
In all its essential points, this book (1886) is
a criticism of modernity, embracing the modern
sciences, arts, even politics, together with certain
indications as to a type which would be the reverse
of modern man, or as little like him as possible, a
noble and yea-saying type. In this last respect
the book is a school for gentlemen—the term
gentleman being understood here in a much more
spiritual and radical sense than it has implied hither-
to. All those things of which the age is proud,—
as, for instance, far-famed " objectivity," " sympathy
with all that suffers," "the historical sense," with
its subjection to foreign tastes, with its lying-in-the-
dust before petits faits, and the rage for science,—
are shown to be the contradiction of the type re-
commended, and are regarded as almost ill-bred.
If you remember that this book follows upon
Zarathustra, you may possibly guess to what
system of diet it owes its life. The eye which,


## p. 116 (#166) ############################################

Il6 ECCE HOMO
owing to tremendous constraint, has become
accustomed to see at a great distance,—Zara-
thustra is even more far-sighted than the Tsar,—
is here forced to focus sharply that which is close
at hand, the present time, the things that lie about
him. In all the aphorisms and more particularly
in the form of this book, the reader will find the
same voluntary turning away from those instincts
which made a Zarathustra a possible feat. Re-
finement in form, in aspiration, and in the art of
keeping silent, are its more or less obvious quali-
ties; psychology is handled with deliberate hard-
ness and cruelty,—the whole book does not con-
tain one single good-natured word. . . . All this
sort of thing refreshes a man. Who can guess
the kind of recreation that is necessary after such
an expenditure of goodness as is to be found in
Zaratkustraf From a theological standpoint—
now pay ye heed; for it is but on rare occasions
that I speak as a theologian—it was God Himself
who, at the end of His great work, coiled Himself
up in the form of a serpent at the foot of the tree
of knowledge. It was thus that He recovered from
being a God. . . . He had made everything too
beautiful. . . . The devil is simply God's moment
of idleness, on that seventh day.
"The Genealogy of Morals:
A Polemic"
The three essays which constitute this genealogy
are, as regards expression, aspiration, and the art


## p. 117 (#167) ############################################

WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 117
of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious
things that have ever been written. Dionysus, as
you know, is also the god of darkness. In each
case the beginning is calculated to mystify; it is
cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally thrust
to the fore, intentionally reticent. Gradually less
calmness prevails; here and there a flash of light-
ning defines the horizon; exceedingly unpleasant
truths break upon your ears from out remote dis-
tances with a dull, rumbling sound,—until very
soon a fierce tempo is attained in which everything
presses forward at a terrible degree of tension.
At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps,
a new truth shines out between thick clouds. The
truth of the first essay is the psychology of Chris-
tianity: the birth of Christianity out of the spirit
of resentment, not, as is supposed, out of the
"Spirit,"—in all its essentials, a counter-movement,
the great insurrection against the dominion of
noble values. The second essay contains the psy-
chology of conscience: this is not, as you may be-
lieve, " the voice of God in man "; it is the instinct
of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is unable
to discharge itself outwardly. Cruelty is here ex-
posed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and
most indispensable elements in the foundation of
culture. The third essay replies to the question
as to the origin of the formidable power of the
ascetic ideal, of the priest ideal, despite the fact
that this ideal is essentially detrimental, that it is
a will to nonentity and to decadence. Reply: it
flourished not because God was active behind the
priests, as is generally believed, but because it was


## p. 117 (#168) ############################################

116
ECCE HOMO
owing to tremendous constraint, has become
accustomed to see at a great distance,—Zara-
thustra is even more far-sighted than the Tsar,—
is here forced to focus sharply that which is close
at hand, the present time, the things that lie about
him. In all the aphorisms and more particularly
in the form of this book, the reader will find the
same voluntary turning away from those instincts
which made a Zarathustra a possible feat. Re-
finement in form, in aspiration, and in the art of
keeping silent, are its more or less obvious quali-
ties; psychology is handled with deliberate hard-
ness and cruelty,—the whole book does not con-
tain one single good-natured word. . . . All this
sort of thing refreshes a man. Who can guess
the kind of recreation that is necessary after such
an expenditure of goodness as is to be found in
Zarathustra? From a theological standpoint-
now pay ye heed; for it is but on rare occasions
that I speak as a theologian-it was God Himself
who, at the end of His great work, coiled Himself
up in the form of a serpent at the foot of the tree
of knowledge. It was thus that He recovered from
being a God. . . . He had made everything too
beautiful. . . . The devil is simply God's moment
of idleness, on that seventh day.
“THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS:
A POLEMIC”
The three essays which constitute this genealogy
are, as regards expression, aspiration, and the art


## p. 117 (#169) ############################################

WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 117
of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious
things that have ever been written. . Dionysus, as
you know, is also the god of darkness. In each
case the beginning is calculated to mystify; it is
cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally thrust
to the fore, intentionally reticent. Gradually less
calmness prevails; here and there a flash of light-
ning defines the horizon; exceedingly unpleasant
truths break upon your ears from out remote dis-
tances with a dull, rumbling sound,—until very
soon a fierce tempo is attained in which everything
presses forward at a terrible degree of tension.
At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps,
a new truth shines out between thick clouds. The
truth of the first essay is the psychology of Chris-
tianity: the birth of Christianity out of the spirit
of resentment, not, as is supposed, out of the
“Spirit,"—in all its essentials, a counter-movement,
the great insurrection against the dominion of
noble values. The second essay contains the psy-
chology of conscience: this is not, as you may be-
lieve, “the voice of God in man”; it is the instinct
of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is unable
to discharge itself outwardly. Cruelty is here ex-
posed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and
most indispensable elements in the foundation of
culture. The third essay replies to the question
as to the origin of the formidable power of the
ascetic ideal, of the priest ideal, despite the fact
that this ideal is essentially detrimental, that it is
a will to nonentity and to decadence. Reply : it
flourished not because God was active behind the
priests, as is generally believed, but because it was


## p. 117 (#170) ############################################

116
ECCE HOMO
owing to tremendous constraint, has become
accustomed to see at a great distance, -Zara-
thustra is even more far-sighted than the Tsar,—
is here forced to focus sharply that which is close
at hand, the present time, the things that lie about
him. In all the aphorisms and more particularly
in the form of this book, the reader will find the
same voluntary turning away from those instincts
which made a Zarathustra a possible feat. Re-
finement in form, in aspiration, and in the art of
keeping silent, are its more or less obvious quali-
ties; psychology is handled with deliberate hard-
ness and cruelty,—the whole book does not con-
tain one single good-natured word. . . . All this
sort of thing refreshes a man. Who can guess
the kind of recreation that is necessary after such
an expenditure of goodness as is to be found in
Zarathustra ? From a theological standpoint-
now pay ye heed; for it is but on rare occasions
that I speak as a theologian—it was God Himself
who, at the end of His great work, coiled Himself
up in the form of a serpent at the foot of the tree
of knowledge. It was thus that He recovered from
being a God. . . . He had made everything too
beautiful. . . . The devil is simply God's moment
of idleness, on that seventh day.

“ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS:
A POLEMIC
g
en
The three essays which cor
are, as regards expression,


## p. 117 (#171) ############################################

WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 117
of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious
things that have ever been written. Dionysus, as
you know, is also the god of darkness. In each
case the beginning is calculated to mystify; it is
cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally thrust
to the fore, intentionally reticent. Gradually less
calmness prevails; here and there a flash of light-
ning defines the horizon ; exceedingly unpleasant
truths break upon your ears from out remote dis-
tances with a dull, rumbling sound,—until very
soon a fierce tempo is attained in which everything
presses forward at a terrible degree of tension.
At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps,
a new truth shines out between thick clouds. The
truth of the first essay is the psychology of Chris-
tianity: the birth of Christianity out of the spirit
of resentment, not, as is supposed, out of the
“Spirit,”—in all its essentials, a counter-movement,
the great insurrection against the dominion of
noble values. The second essay contains the psy-
chology of conscience: this is not, as you may be-
lieve, “the voice of God in man”; it is the instinct
of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is unable
to discharge itself outwardly. Cruelty is here ex-
posed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and
most indispensable elements in the foundation of
culture. The third essay replies to the question
as to the origin of the formidable power of the
ascetic ideal, of the priest ideal, despite the fact
that this ideal is essentially detrimental, that it is
a will to nonentity and to decadence. Reply : it
flourished not because God was active behind the
priests, as is generally believed, but because it was



## p. 117 (#172) ############################################

116
ECCE HOMO
owing to tremendous constraint, has become
accustomed to see at a great distance,-Zara-
thustra is even more far-sighted than the Tsar,—
is here forced to focus sharply that which is close
at hand, the present time, the things that lie about
him. In all the aphorisms and more particularly
in the form of this book, the reader will find the
same voluntary turning away from those instincts
which made a Zarathustra a possible feat. Re-
finement in form, in aspiration, and in the art of
keeping silent, are its more or less obvious quali-
ties; psychology is handled with deliberate hard-
ness and cruelty,—the whole book does not con-
tain one single good-natured word. . . . All this
sort of thing refreshes a man. Who can guess
the kind of recreation that is necessary after such
an expenditure of goodness as is to be found in
Zarathustra? From a theological standpoint-
now pay ye heed; for it is but on rare occasions
that I speak as a theologian-it was God Himself
who, at the end of His great work, coiled Himself
up in the form of a serpent at the foot of the tree
of knowledge. It was thus that He recovered from
being a God. . . . He had made everything too
beautiful. . . . The devil is simply God's moment
of idleness, on that seventh day.
“ THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS:
A POLEMIC”
The three essays which constitute this genealogy
are, as regards expression, aspiration, and the art


## p. 117 (#173) ############################################

WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 117
of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious
things that have ever been written. Dionysus, as
you know, is also the god of darkness. In each
case the beginning is calculated to mystify; it is
cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally thrust
to the fore, intentionally reticent. Gradually less
calmness prevails; here and there a flash of light-
ning defines the horizon; exceedingly unpleasant
truths break upon your ears from out remote dis-
tances with a dull, rumbling sound,—until very
soon a fierce tempo is attained in which everything
presses forward at a terrible degree of tension.
At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps,
a new truth shines out between thick clouds. The
truth of the first essay is the psychology of Chris-
tianity: the birth of Christianity out of the spirit
of resentment, not, as is supposed, out of the
“Spirit,"—in all its essentials, a counter-movement,
the great insurrection against the dominion of
noble values. The second essay contains the psy-
chology of conscience: this is not, as you may be-
lieve, “the voice of God in man”; it is the instinct
of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is unable
to discharge itself outwardly. Cruelty is here ex-
posed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and
most indispensable elements in the foundation of
culture. The third essay replies to the question
as to the origin of the formidable power of the
ascetic ideal, of the priest ideal, despite the fact
that this ideal is essentially detrimental, that it is
a will to nonentity and to decadence. Reply : it
flourished not because God was active behind the
priests, as is generally believed, but because it was


## p. 118 (#174) ############################################

Il8 ECCE HOMO
a faute de mieux—from the fact that hitherto it
has been the only ideal and has had no competitors.
"For man prefers to aspire to nonentity than not
to aspire at all. " But above all, until the time of
Zarathustra there was no such thing as a counter-
ideal. You have understood my meaning. Three
decisive overtures on the part of a psychologist
to a Transvaluation of all Values. —This book
contains the first psychology of the priest.
"The Twilight of the Idols:
How to Philosophise with the Hammer"
This work—which covers scarcely one hundred
and fifty pages, with its cheerful and fateful tone,
like a laughing demon, and the production of which
occupied so few days that I hesitate to give their
number—is altogether an exception among books:
there is no work more rich in substance, more
independent, more upsetting—more wicked. If
any one should desire to obtain a rapid sketch
of how everything, before my time, was standing
on its head, he should begin reading me in this
book. That which is called " Idols" on the title
page is simply the old truth that has been be-
lieved in hitherto. In plain English, The Twi-
light of the Idols means that the old truth is on its
last legs.


## p. 119 (#175) ############################################

WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS 119
There is no reality, no "ideality," which has
not been touched in this book (touched! what a
cautious euphemism ! ). Not only the eternal idols,
but also the youngest—that is to say, the most
senile: modern ideas, for instance. A strong
wind blows between the trees and in all directions
fall the fruit—the truths. There is the waste of
an all-too-rich autumn in this book : you trip over
truths. You even crush some to death, there are
too many of them. Those things that you can
grasp, however, are quite unquestionable ; they are
irrevocable decrees. I alone have the criterion of
"truths" in my possession.