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.
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.
Nietzsche - v17 - Ecce Homo
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. . . . In keeping
with a custom which I have long observed,—pure
habits and honesty towards myself are among the
first conditions of my existence, I would die in
unclean surroundings,—I swim, bathe, and splash
about, as it were, incessantly in water, in any kind
of perfectly transparent and shining element. That
is why my relations with my fellows try my patience
to no small extent; my humanity does not consist
in the fact that I understand the feelings of my
fellows, but that I can endure to understand. . . .
My humanity is a perpetual process of self-mastery.
But I need solitude—that is to say, recovery,
## p. 26 (#52) ##############################################
26 ECCE HOMO
return to myself, the breathing of free, crisp, brac-
ing air. . . . The whole of my Zarathustra is a
dithyramb in honour of solitude, or, if I have been
understood, in honour of purity. Thank Heaven,
it is not in honour of " pure foolery " ! * He who
has an eye for colour will call him a diamond.
The loathing of mankind, of the rabble, was always
my greatest danger. . . . Would you hearken to the
words spoken by Zarathustra concerning deliver-
ance from loathing?
"What forsooth hath come unto me? How did I
deliver myself from loathing? Who hath made mine
eye younger? How did I soar to the height, where
there are no more rabble sitting about the well?
"Did my very loathing forge me wings and the
strength to scent fountains afar off? Verily to
the loftiest heights did I need to fly, to find once
more the spring of joyfulness.
"Oh, I found it, my brethren! Up here, on the
loftiest height, the spring of joyfulness gusheth
forth for me. And there is a life at the well of
which no rabble can drink with you.
"Almost too fiercely dost thou rush, for me, thou
spring of joyfulness! And ofttimes dost thou empty
the pitcher again in trying to fill it.
"And yet must I learn to draw near thee more
humbly. Far too eagerly doth my heart jump to
meet thee.
"My heart, whereon my summer burneth, my
short, hot, melancholy, over-blessed summer: how
my summer heart yearneth for thy coolness!
* This, of course, is a reference to Wagner's Parsifal.
See my note on p. 96 of The Will to Power, vol. i. —Tr.
## p. 27 (#53) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE 27
"Farewell, the lingering affliction of my spring!
Past is the wickedness of my snowflakes in June!
Summer have I become entirely, and summer noon-
tide!
"A summer in the loftiest heights, with cold
springs and blessed stillness: oh come, my friends,
that the stillness may wax even more blessed!
"For this is our height and our home: too high
and steep is our dwelling for all the unclean and
their appetites.
"Do but cast your pure eyes into the well of my
joyfulness, my friends! How could it thus become
muddy! It will laugh back at you with its purity.
"On the tree called Future do we build our nest:
eagles shall bring food in their beaks unto us lonely
ones!
"Verily not the food whereof the unclean might
partake. They would think they ate fire and would
burn their mouths!
"Verily, no abodes for the unclean do we here
hold in readiness! To their bodies our happiness
would seem an ice-cavern, and to their spirits also!
"And like strong winds will we live above them,
neighbours to the eagles, companions of the snow,
and playmates of the sun: thus do strong winds
live.
"And like a wind shall I one day blow amidst
them, and take away their soul's breath with my
spirit: thus my future willeth it.
"Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low
lands ; and this is his counsel to his foes and to all
those who spit and spew: 'Beware of spitting
against the wind ! '"
## p. 28 (#54) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO CLEVER
Why do I know more things than other people?
Why, in fact,am I so clever? I have never pondered
over questions that are not questions. I have never
squandered my strength. Of actual religious diffi-
culties, for instance, I have no experience. I have
never known what it is to feel "sinful. " In the
same way I completely lack any reliable criterion
for ascertaining what constitutes a prick of con-
science: from all accounts a prick of conscience
does not seem to be a very estimable thing. . . .
Once it was done I should hate to leave an action
of mine in the lurch; I should prefer completely to
omit the evil outcome, the consequences, from the
problem concerning the value of an action. In the
face of evil consequences one is too ready to lose
the proper standpoint from which one's deed ought
to be considered. A prick of conscience strikes me
as a sort of " evil eye. " Something that has failed
should be honoured all the more jealously, precisely
because it has failed—this is much more in keeping
with my morality. —" God," " the immortality of the
soul," "salvation,"a "beyond"—to all these notions,
even as a child, I never paid any attention whatso-
ever, nor did I waste any time upon them,—maybe
I was never naif enough for that ? —I am quite un-
acquainted with atheism as a result, and still less
## p. 29 (#55) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO CLEVER 29
as an event in my life: in me it is inborn, instinc-
tive. I am too inquisitive, too incredulous, too high
spirited, to be satisfied with such a palpably clumsy
solution of things. God is a too palpably clumsy
solution of things; a solution which shows a lack of
delicacy towards us thinkers—at bottom He is really
no more than a coarse and rude prohibition of us:
ye shall not think ! . . . I am much more interested
in another question,—a question upon which the
"salvation of humanity" depends to a far greater
degree than it does upon any piece of theological
curiosity: I refer to nutrition. For ordinary pur-
poses, it may be formulated as follows: "How pre-
cisely must thou feed thyself in order to attain to thy
maximum of power, or virtu in the Renaissance
style,—of virtue free from moralic acid? " My
experiences in regard to this matter have been as
bad as they possibly could be; I am surprised that
I set myself this question so late in life, and that it
took me so long to draw "rational " conclusions
from my experiences. Only the absolute worth-
lessness of German culture—its " idealism "—can
to some extent explain how it was that precisely in
this matter I was so backward that my ignorance
was almost saintly. This "culture," which from first
to last teaches one to lose sight of actual things and
to hunt after thoroughly problematic and so-called
ideal aims, as, for instance, " classical culture "—as
if it were not hopeless from the start to try to unite
"classical" and "German" in one concept. It is
even a little comical—try and imagine a " classic-
ally cultured " citizen of Leipzig ! —Indeed, I can
say, that up to a very mature age, my food was en-
## p. 30 (#56) ##############################################
30 ECCE HOMO
tirely bad—expressed morally, it was "impersonal,"
"selfless," "altruistic," to the glory of cooks and all
other fellow-Christians. It was through the cook-
ing in vogue at Leipzig, for instance, together
with my first study of Schopenhauer (1865), that
I earnestly renounced my "Will to Live. " To
spoil one's stomach by absorbing insufficient
nourishment—this problem seemed to my mind
solved with admirable felicity by the above-men-
tioned cookery. (It is said that in the year
1866 changes were introduced into this depart-
ment. ) But as to German cookery in general—
what has it not got on its conscience! Soup
before the meal (still called alia tedesca in the Vene-
tian cookery books of the sixteenth century); meat
boiled to shreds, vegetables cooked with fat and
flour; the degeneration of pastries into paper-
weights! And, if you add thereto the absolutely
bestial post-prandial drinking habits of the ancients,
and not alone of the ancient Germans, you will
understand where German intellect took its origin—
that is to say, in sadly disordered intestines. . . .
German intellect is indigestion; it can assimilate
nothing. But even English diet, which in com-
parison with German, and indeed with French ali-
mentation, seems to me to constitute a "return to
Nature,"—that is to say, to cannibalism,—is pro-
foundly opposed to my own instincts. It seems
to me to give the intellect heavy feet, in fact,
Englishwomen's feet. . . . The best cooking is
that of Piedmont. Alcoholic drinks do not agree
with me; a single glass of wine or beer a day is
amply sufficient to turn life into a valley of tears
## p. 31 (#57) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO CLEVER 31
for me;—in Munich live my antipodes. Although
I admit that this knowledge came to me somewhat
late, it already formed part of my experience even
as a child. As a boy I believed that the drinking
of wine and the smoking of tobacco were at first but
the vanities of youths, and later merely bad habits.
Maybe the poor wine of Naumburg was partly re-
sponsible for this poor opinion of wine in general.
In order to believe that wine was exhilarating, I
should have had to be a Christian—in other words,
I should have had to believe in what, to my mind, is
an absurdity. Strange to say, whereas small quan-
tities of alcohol, taken with plenty of water, suc-
ceed in making me feel out of sorts, large quanti-
ties turn me almost into a rollicking tar. Even as
a boy I showed my bravado in this respect. To
compose a long Latin essay in one night, to revise
and recopy it, to aspire with my pen to emulating
the exactitude and the terseness of my model,
Sallust, and to pour a few very strong grogs over
it all—this mode of procedure, while I was a pupil
at the venerable old school of Pforta, was not in the
least out of keeping with my physiology, nor per-
haps with that of Sallust, however much it may have
been alien to dignified Pforta. Later on, towards
the middle of my life, I grew more and more op-
posed to alcoholic drinks: I, an opponent of vege-
tarianism, who have experienced what vegetarian-
ism is,—just as Wagner, who converted me back
to meat, experienced it,—cannot with sufficient
earnestness advise all more spiritual natures to ab-
stain absolutely from alcohol. Water answers the
purpose. . . . I have a predilection in favour of
## p. 32 (#58) ##############################################
32 ECCE HOMO
those places where in all directions one has oppor-
tunities of drinking from running brooks (Nice,
Turin, Sils). In vino Veritas: it seems that here
once more I am at variance with the rest of the
world about the concept " Truth "—with me spirit
moves on the face of the waters. . . . Here are a
few more indications as to my morality. A heavy
meal is digested more easily than an inadequate one.
The first principle of a good digestion is that the
stomach should become active as a whole. A man
ought, therefore, to know the size of his stomach.
For the same reasons all those interminable meals,
which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which
are to be had at any table d'hdte, are strongly
to be deprecated. Nothing should be eaten be-
tween meals, coffee should be given up—coffee
makes one gloomy. Tea is beneficial only in the
morning. It should be taken in small quantities,
but very strong. It may be very harmful, and indis-
pose you for the whole day, if it be taken the least
bit too weak. Everybody has his own standard
in this matter,often between the narrowest and most
delicate limits. In an enervating climate tea is not
a good beverage with which to start the day: an
hour before taking it an excellent thing is to drink
a cup of thick cocoa, freed from oil. Remain seated
as little as possible, put no trust in any thought
that is not born in the open, to the accompaniment
of free bodily motion—nor in one in which even
the muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices
take their origin in the intestines. A sedentary life,
as I have already said elsewhere, is the real sin
against the Holy Spirit.
## p. 33 (#59) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO CLEVER 33
To the question of nutrition, that of locality and
climate is next of kin. Nobody is so constituted
as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere;
and he who has great duties to perform, which lay
claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very
limited choice. The influence of climate upon the
bodily functions, affecting their acceleration or re-
tardation, extends so far, that a blunder in the
choice of locality and climate is able not only to
alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to
withhold it from him altogether, so that he never
even comes face to face with it. Animal vigour
never acquires enough strength in him in order to
reach that pitch of artistic freedom which makes
his own soul whisper to him: I, alone, can do
that. . . . Ever so slight a tendency to laziness in
the intestines, once it has become a habit, is quite
sufficient to make something mediocre, something
"German " out of a genius; the climate of Germany,
alone, is enough to discourage the strongest and
most heroically disposed intestines. The tempo of
the body's functions is closely bound up with the
agility or the clumsiness of the spirit's feet; spirit
itself is indeed only a form of these organic func-
tions. Let anybody make a list of the places in
which men of great intellect have been found, and
are still found; where wit, subtlety, and malice
constitute happiness ; where genius is almost neces-
sarily at home: all of them rejoice in exceptionally
dry air. Paris, Provence, Florence, Jerusalem,
Athens—these names prove something, namely:
c
## p. 34 (#60) ##############################################
34 ECCE HOMO
that genius is conditioned by dry air, by a pure
sky—that is to say, by rapid organic functions, by
the constant and ever-present possibility of procur-
ing for one's self great and even enormous quantities
of strength. I have a certain case in mind in which
a man of remarkable intellect and independent
spirit became a narrow, craven specialist and a
grumpy old crank,simply owing to a lack of subtlety
in his instinct for climate. And I myself might
have been an example of the same thing, if illness
had not compelled me to reason, and to reflect upon
reason realistically. Now that I have learnt through
long practice to read the effects of climatic and
meteorological influences, from my own body, as
though from a very delicate and reliable instrument,
and that I am able to calculate the change in de-
grees of atmospheric moisture by means of physio-
logical observations upon myself, even on so short
a journey as that from Turin to Milan; I think with
horror of the ghastly fact that my whole life, until
the last ten years,—the most perilous years,—has
always been spent in the wrong, and what to me
ought to have been the most forbidden, places.
Naumburg, Pforta, Thuringia in general, Leipzig,
Bale, Venice—so many ill-starred places for a con-
stitution like mine. If I cannot recall one single
happy reminiscence of my childhood and youth, it
is nonsense to suppose that so-called "moral"
causes could account for this—as, for instance, the
incontestable fact that I lacked companions that
could have satisfied me; for this fact is the same
to-day as it ever was, and it does not prevent me
from being cheerful and brave. But it was ignor-
## p. 35 (#61) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO CLEVER 35
ance in physiological matters—that confounded
"Idealism "—that was the real curse of my life.
This was the superfluous and foolish element in my
existence; something from which nothing could
spring, and for which there can be no settlement
and no compensation. As the outcome of this
"Idealism" I regard all the blunders, the great ab-
errations of instinct, and the "modest specialisa-
tions" which drew me aside from the task of my
life; as, for instance, the fact that I became a philo-
logist—why not at least a medical man or anything
else which might have opened my eyes? My days
at Bale, the whole of my intellectual routine, in-
cluding my daily time-table, was an absolutely
senseless abuse of extraordinary powers, without
the slightest compensation for the strength that I
spent, without even a thought of what I was squan-
dering and how its place might be filled. I lacked
all subtlety in egoism, all the fostering care of an
imperative instinct; I was in a state in which one
is ready to regard one's self as anybody's equal, a
state of " disinterestedness," a forgetting of one's
distance from others—something,in short, for which
I can never forgive myself. When I had well-nigh
reached the end of my tether, simply because I had
almost reached my end, I began to reflect upon the
fundamental absurdity of my life—" Idealism. " It
was illness that first brought me to reason.
After the choice of nutrition,the choice of climate
and locality, the third matter concerning which one
## p. 36 (#62) ##############################################
36 ECCE HOMO
must not on any account make a blunder, is the
choice of the manner in which one recuperates one's
strength. Here, again, according to the extent to
which a spirit is suigeneris, the limits of that which
he can allow himself—in other words, the limits of
that which is beneficial to him—become more and
more confined. As far as I in particular am con-
cerned, reading in general belongs to my means
of recuperation; consequently it belongs to that
which rids me of myself, to that which enables me
to wander in strange sciences and strange souls—
to that,in fact,about which I am no longer in earnest.
Indeed, it is while reading that I recover from my
earnestness. During the time that I am deeply
absorbed in my work, no books are found within my
reach; it would never occur to me to allow any one
to speak or even to think in my presence. For that
is what reading would mean. . . . Has any one ever
actually noticed, that, during the period of profound
tension to which the state of pregnancy condemns
not only the mind, but also, at bottom, the whole
organism, accident and every kind of external
stimulus acts too acutely and strikes too deep? Ac-
cident and external stimuli must, as far as possible,
be avoided: a sort of walling-of-one's-self-in is one
of the primary instinctive precautions of spiritual
pregnancy. Shall I allow a strange thought to steal
secretly over the wall? For that is what reading
would mean. . . . The periods of work and fruit-
fulness are followed by periods of recuperation:
come hither, ye delightful, intellectual, intelligent
books! Shall I read German books?
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. . . . In keeping
with a custom which I have long observed,—pure
habits and honesty towards myself are among the
first conditions of my existence, I would die in
unclean surroundings,—I swim, bathe, and splash
about, as it were, incessantly in water, in any kind
of perfectly transparent and shining element. That
is why my relations with my fellows try my patience
to no small extent; my humanity does not consist
in the fact that I understand the feelings of my
fellows, but that I can endure to understand. . . .
My humanity is a perpetual process of self-mastery.
But I need solitude—that is to say, recovery,
## p. 26 (#52) ##############################################
26 ECCE HOMO
return to myself, the breathing of free, crisp, brac-
ing air. . . . The whole of my Zarathustra is a
dithyramb in honour of solitude, or, if I have been
understood, in honour of purity. Thank Heaven,
it is not in honour of " pure foolery " ! * He who
has an eye for colour will call him a diamond.
The loathing of mankind, of the rabble, was always
my greatest danger. . . . Would you hearken to the
words spoken by Zarathustra concerning deliver-
ance from loathing?
"What forsooth hath come unto me? How did I
deliver myself from loathing? Who hath made mine
eye younger? How did I soar to the height, where
there are no more rabble sitting about the well?
"Did my very loathing forge me wings and the
strength to scent fountains afar off? Verily to
the loftiest heights did I need to fly, to find once
more the spring of joyfulness.
"Oh, I found it, my brethren! Up here, on the
loftiest height, the spring of joyfulness gusheth
forth for me. And there is a life at the well of
which no rabble can drink with you.
"Almost too fiercely dost thou rush, for me, thou
spring of joyfulness! And ofttimes dost thou empty
the pitcher again in trying to fill it.
"And yet must I learn to draw near thee more
humbly. Far too eagerly doth my heart jump to
meet thee.
"My heart, whereon my summer burneth, my
short, hot, melancholy, over-blessed summer: how
my summer heart yearneth for thy coolness!
* This, of course, is a reference to Wagner's Parsifal.
See my note on p. 96 of The Will to Power, vol. i. —Tr.
## p. 27 (#53) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO WISE 27
"Farewell, the lingering affliction of my spring!
Past is the wickedness of my snowflakes in June!
Summer have I become entirely, and summer noon-
tide!
"A summer in the loftiest heights, with cold
springs and blessed stillness: oh come, my friends,
that the stillness may wax even more blessed!
"For this is our height and our home: too high
and steep is our dwelling for all the unclean and
their appetites.
"Do but cast your pure eyes into the well of my
joyfulness, my friends! How could it thus become
muddy! It will laugh back at you with its purity.
"On the tree called Future do we build our nest:
eagles shall bring food in their beaks unto us lonely
ones!
"Verily not the food whereof the unclean might
partake. They would think they ate fire and would
burn their mouths!
"Verily, no abodes for the unclean do we here
hold in readiness! To their bodies our happiness
would seem an ice-cavern, and to their spirits also!
"And like strong winds will we live above them,
neighbours to the eagles, companions of the snow,
and playmates of the sun: thus do strong winds
live.
"And like a wind shall I one day blow amidst
them, and take away their soul's breath with my
spirit: thus my future willeth it.
"Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low
lands ; and this is his counsel to his foes and to all
those who spit and spew: 'Beware of spitting
against the wind ! '"
## p. 28 (#54) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO CLEVER
Why do I know more things than other people?
Why, in fact,am I so clever? I have never pondered
over questions that are not questions. I have never
squandered my strength. Of actual religious diffi-
culties, for instance, I have no experience. I have
never known what it is to feel "sinful. " In the
same way I completely lack any reliable criterion
for ascertaining what constitutes a prick of con-
science: from all accounts a prick of conscience
does not seem to be a very estimable thing. . . .
Once it was done I should hate to leave an action
of mine in the lurch; I should prefer completely to
omit the evil outcome, the consequences, from the
problem concerning the value of an action. In the
face of evil consequences one is too ready to lose
the proper standpoint from which one's deed ought
to be considered. A prick of conscience strikes me
as a sort of " evil eye. " Something that has failed
should be honoured all the more jealously, precisely
because it has failed—this is much more in keeping
with my morality. —" God," " the immortality of the
soul," "salvation,"a "beyond"—to all these notions,
even as a child, I never paid any attention whatso-
ever, nor did I waste any time upon them,—maybe
I was never naif enough for that ? —I am quite un-
acquainted with atheism as a result, and still less
## p. 29 (#55) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO CLEVER 29
as an event in my life: in me it is inborn, instinc-
tive. I am too inquisitive, too incredulous, too high
spirited, to be satisfied with such a palpably clumsy
solution of things. God is a too palpably clumsy
solution of things; a solution which shows a lack of
delicacy towards us thinkers—at bottom He is really
no more than a coarse and rude prohibition of us:
ye shall not think ! . . . I am much more interested
in another question,—a question upon which the
"salvation of humanity" depends to a far greater
degree than it does upon any piece of theological
curiosity: I refer to nutrition. For ordinary pur-
poses, it may be formulated as follows: "How pre-
cisely must thou feed thyself in order to attain to thy
maximum of power, or virtu in the Renaissance
style,—of virtue free from moralic acid? " My
experiences in regard to this matter have been as
bad as they possibly could be; I am surprised that
I set myself this question so late in life, and that it
took me so long to draw "rational " conclusions
from my experiences. Only the absolute worth-
lessness of German culture—its " idealism "—can
to some extent explain how it was that precisely in
this matter I was so backward that my ignorance
was almost saintly. This "culture," which from first
to last teaches one to lose sight of actual things and
to hunt after thoroughly problematic and so-called
ideal aims, as, for instance, " classical culture "—as
if it were not hopeless from the start to try to unite
"classical" and "German" in one concept. It is
even a little comical—try and imagine a " classic-
ally cultured " citizen of Leipzig ! —Indeed, I can
say, that up to a very mature age, my food was en-
## p. 30 (#56) ##############################################
30 ECCE HOMO
tirely bad—expressed morally, it was "impersonal,"
"selfless," "altruistic," to the glory of cooks and all
other fellow-Christians. It was through the cook-
ing in vogue at Leipzig, for instance, together
with my first study of Schopenhauer (1865), that
I earnestly renounced my "Will to Live. " To
spoil one's stomach by absorbing insufficient
nourishment—this problem seemed to my mind
solved with admirable felicity by the above-men-
tioned cookery. (It is said that in the year
1866 changes were introduced into this depart-
ment. ) But as to German cookery in general—
what has it not got on its conscience! Soup
before the meal (still called alia tedesca in the Vene-
tian cookery books of the sixteenth century); meat
boiled to shreds, vegetables cooked with fat and
flour; the degeneration of pastries into paper-
weights! And, if you add thereto the absolutely
bestial post-prandial drinking habits of the ancients,
and not alone of the ancient Germans, you will
understand where German intellect took its origin—
that is to say, in sadly disordered intestines. . . .
German intellect is indigestion; it can assimilate
nothing. But even English diet, which in com-
parison with German, and indeed with French ali-
mentation, seems to me to constitute a "return to
Nature,"—that is to say, to cannibalism,—is pro-
foundly opposed to my own instincts. It seems
to me to give the intellect heavy feet, in fact,
Englishwomen's feet. . . . The best cooking is
that of Piedmont. Alcoholic drinks do not agree
with me; a single glass of wine or beer a day is
amply sufficient to turn life into a valley of tears
## p. 31 (#57) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO CLEVER 31
for me;—in Munich live my antipodes. Although
I admit that this knowledge came to me somewhat
late, it already formed part of my experience even
as a child. As a boy I believed that the drinking
of wine and the smoking of tobacco were at first but
the vanities of youths, and later merely bad habits.
Maybe the poor wine of Naumburg was partly re-
sponsible for this poor opinion of wine in general.
In order to believe that wine was exhilarating, I
should have had to be a Christian—in other words,
I should have had to believe in what, to my mind, is
an absurdity. Strange to say, whereas small quan-
tities of alcohol, taken with plenty of water, suc-
ceed in making me feel out of sorts, large quanti-
ties turn me almost into a rollicking tar. Even as
a boy I showed my bravado in this respect. To
compose a long Latin essay in one night, to revise
and recopy it, to aspire with my pen to emulating
the exactitude and the terseness of my model,
Sallust, and to pour a few very strong grogs over
it all—this mode of procedure, while I was a pupil
at the venerable old school of Pforta, was not in the
least out of keeping with my physiology, nor per-
haps with that of Sallust, however much it may have
been alien to dignified Pforta. Later on, towards
the middle of my life, I grew more and more op-
posed to alcoholic drinks: I, an opponent of vege-
tarianism, who have experienced what vegetarian-
ism is,—just as Wagner, who converted me back
to meat, experienced it,—cannot with sufficient
earnestness advise all more spiritual natures to ab-
stain absolutely from alcohol. Water answers the
purpose. . . . I have a predilection in favour of
## p. 32 (#58) ##############################################
32 ECCE HOMO
those places where in all directions one has oppor-
tunities of drinking from running brooks (Nice,
Turin, Sils). In vino Veritas: it seems that here
once more I am at variance with the rest of the
world about the concept " Truth "—with me spirit
moves on the face of the waters. . . . Here are a
few more indications as to my morality. A heavy
meal is digested more easily than an inadequate one.
The first principle of a good digestion is that the
stomach should become active as a whole. A man
ought, therefore, to know the size of his stomach.
For the same reasons all those interminable meals,
which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which
are to be had at any table d'hdte, are strongly
to be deprecated. Nothing should be eaten be-
tween meals, coffee should be given up—coffee
makes one gloomy. Tea is beneficial only in the
morning. It should be taken in small quantities,
but very strong. It may be very harmful, and indis-
pose you for the whole day, if it be taken the least
bit too weak. Everybody has his own standard
in this matter,often between the narrowest and most
delicate limits. In an enervating climate tea is not
a good beverage with which to start the day: an
hour before taking it an excellent thing is to drink
a cup of thick cocoa, freed from oil. Remain seated
as little as possible, put no trust in any thought
that is not born in the open, to the accompaniment
of free bodily motion—nor in one in which even
the muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices
take their origin in the intestines. A sedentary life,
as I have already said elsewhere, is the real sin
against the Holy Spirit.
## p. 33 (#59) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO CLEVER 33
To the question of nutrition, that of locality and
climate is next of kin. Nobody is so constituted
as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere;
and he who has great duties to perform, which lay
claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very
limited choice. The influence of climate upon the
bodily functions, affecting their acceleration or re-
tardation, extends so far, that a blunder in the
choice of locality and climate is able not only to
alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to
withhold it from him altogether, so that he never
even comes face to face with it. Animal vigour
never acquires enough strength in him in order to
reach that pitch of artistic freedom which makes
his own soul whisper to him: I, alone, can do
that. . . . Ever so slight a tendency to laziness in
the intestines, once it has become a habit, is quite
sufficient to make something mediocre, something
"German " out of a genius; the climate of Germany,
alone, is enough to discourage the strongest and
most heroically disposed intestines. The tempo of
the body's functions is closely bound up with the
agility or the clumsiness of the spirit's feet; spirit
itself is indeed only a form of these organic func-
tions. Let anybody make a list of the places in
which men of great intellect have been found, and
are still found; where wit, subtlety, and malice
constitute happiness ; where genius is almost neces-
sarily at home: all of them rejoice in exceptionally
dry air. Paris, Provence, Florence, Jerusalem,
Athens—these names prove something, namely:
c
## p. 34 (#60) ##############################################
34 ECCE HOMO
that genius is conditioned by dry air, by a pure
sky—that is to say, by rapid organic functions, by
the constant and ever-present possibility of procur-
ing for one's self great and even enormous quantities
of strength. I have a certain case in mind in which
a man of remarkable intellect and independent
spirit became a narrow, craven specialist and a
grumpy old crank,simply owing to a lack of subtlety
in his instinct for climate. And I myself might
have been an example of the same thing, if illness
had not compelled me to reason, and to reflect upon
reason realistically. Now that I have learnt through
long practice to read the effects of climatic and
meteorological influences, from my own body, as
though from a very delicate and reliable instrument,
and that I am able to calculate the change in de-
grees of atmospheric moisture by means of physio-
logical observations upon myself, even on so short
a journey as that from Turin to Milan; I think with
horror of the ghastly fact that my whole life, until
the last ten years,—the most perilous years,—has
always been spent in the wrong, and what to me
ought to have been the most forbidden, places.
Naumburg, Pforta, Thuringia in general, Leipzig,
Bale, Venice—so many ill-starred places for a con-
stitution like mine. If I cannot recall one single
happy reminiscence of my childhood and youth, it
is nonsense to suppose that so-called "moral"
causes could account for this—as, for instance, the
incontestable fact that I lacked companions that
could have satisfied me; for this fact is the same
to-day as it ever was, and it does not prevent me
from being cheerful and brave. But it was ignor-
## p. 35 (#61) ##############################################
WHY I AM SO CLEVER 35
ance in physiological matters—that confounded
"Idealism "—that was the real curse of my life.
This was the superfluous and foolish element in my
existence; something from which nothing could
spring, and for which there can be no settlement
and no compensation. As the outcome of this
"Idealism" I regard all the blunders, the great ab-
errations of instinct, and the "modest specialisa-
tions" which drew me aside from the task of my
life; as, for instance, the fact that I became a philo-
logist—why not at least a medical man or anything
else which might have opened my eyes? My days
at Bale, the whole of my intellectual routine, in-
cluding my daily time-table, was an absolutely
senseless abuse of extraordinary powers, without
the slightest compensation for the strength that I
spent, without even a thought of what I was squan-
dering and how its place might be filled. I lacked
all subtlety in egoism, all the fostering care of an
imperative instinct; I was in a state in which one
is ready to regard one's self as anybody's equal, a
state of " disinterestedness," a forgetting of one's
distance from others—something,in short, for which
I can never forgive myself. When I had well-nigh
reached the end of my tether, simply because I had
almost reached my end, I began to reflect upon the
fundamental absurdity of my life—" Idealism. " It
was illness that first brought me to reason.
After the choice of nutrition,the choice of climate
and locality, the third matter concerning which one
## p. 36 (#62) ##############################################
36 ECCE HOMO
must not on any account make a blunder, is the
choice of the manner in which one recuperates one's
strength. Here, again, according to the extent to
which a spirit is suigeneris, the limits of that which
he can allow himself—in other words, the limits of
that which is beneficial to him—become more and
more confined. As far as I in particular am con-
cerned, reading in general belongs to my means
of recuperation; consequently it belongs to that
which rids me of myself, to that which enables me
to wander in strange sciences and strange souls—
to that,in fact,about which I am no longer in earnest.
Indeed, it is while reading that I recover from my
earnestness. During the time that I am deeply
absorbed in my work, no books are found within my
reach; it would never occur to me to allow any one
to speak or even to think in my presence. For that
is what reading would mean. . . . Has any one ever
actually noticed, that, during the period of profound
tension to which the state of pregnancy condemns
not only the mind, but also, at bottom, the whole
organism, accident and every kind of external
stimulus acts too acutely and strikes too deep? Ac-
cident and external stimuli must, as far as possible,
be avoided: a sort of walling-of-one's-self-in is one
of the primary instinctive precautions of spiritual
pregnancy. Shall I allow a strange thought to steal
secretly over the wall? For that is what reading
would mean. . . . The periods of work and fruit-
fulness are followed by periods of recuperation:
come hither, ye delightful, intellectual, intelligent
books! Shall I read German books?
