Footnotes
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION.
The publication of _Human, all-too-Human_ extends over the period
1878-1880. Of the two divisions which constitute the Second Part,
“Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions” appeared in 1879, and “The Wanderer
and his Shadow” in 1880, Nietzsche being then in his thirty-sixth year.
The Preface was added in 1886. The whole book forms Nietzsche’s first
lengthy contribution to literature. His previous works comprise only the
philological treatises, _The Birth of Tragedy_, and the essays on Strauss,
Schopenhauer, and Wagner in _Thoughts out of Season_.
With the volumes of _Human, all-too-Human_ Nietzsche appears for the first
time in his true colours as philosopher. His purely scholarly
publications, his essays in literary and musical criticism—especially the
essay on Richard Wagner at Bayreuth—had, of course, foreshadowed his work
as a thinker.
These efforts, however, had been mere fragments, from which hardly any one
could observe that a new philosophical star had arisen on the horizon. But
by 1878 the period of transition had definitely set in. Outwardly, the new
departure is marked by Nietzsche’s resignation in that year of his
professorship at Bâle—a resignation due partly to ill-health, and partly
to his conviction that his was a voice that should speak not merely to
students of philology, but to all mankind.
Nietzsche himself characterises _Human, all-too-Human_ as “the monument of
a crisis.” He might as fitly have called it the first-fruits of a new
harvest. Now, for the first time, he practises the form which he was to
make so peculiarly his own. We are told—and we may well believe—that the
book came as a surprise even to his most intimate friends. Wagner had
already seen how matters stood at the publication of the first part, and
the gulf between the two probably widened on the appearance of the Second
Part.
Several aphorisms are here, varying in length as in subject, and ranging
over the whole human province—the emotions and aspirations, the religions
and cultures and philosophies, the arts and literatures and politics of
mankind. Equally varied is the range of style, the incisive epigram and
the passage of pure poetry jostling each other on the same page. In this
curious power of alternating between cynicism and lyricism, Nietzsche
appears as the prose counterpart of Heine.
One or two of the aphorisms are of peculiar interest to English readers.
The essay (as it may almost be called) on Sterne (p. 60, No. 113) does
ample justice, if not more than justice, to that wayward genius. The
allusion to Milton (p. 77, No. 150) will come as somewhat of a shock to
English readers, especially to those who hold that in Milton Art triumphed
over Puritanism. It should be remembered, however, that Nietzsche’s view
coincides with Goethe’s. The dictum that Shakespeare’s gold is to be
valued for its quantity rather than its quality (p. 81, No. 162) also
betrays a certain exclusiveness—a legacy from that eighteenth-century
France which appealed so strongly to Nietzsche on its intellectual side.
To Nietzsche, as to Voltaire, Shakespeare is after all “the great
barbarian.”
The title of the book may be explained from a phrase in _Thus Spake
Zarathustra_: “Verily, even the greatest I found—all-too-human.” The
keynote of these volumes is indeed disillusion and destruction. Nor is
this to be wondered at, for all men must sweep away the rubbish before
they can build. Hence we find here little of the constructive philosophy
of Nietzsche—so far as he had a constructive philosophy. The Superman
appears but faintly, the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence not at all. For
this very reason, _Human, all-too-Human_ is perhaps the best
starting-point for the study of Nietzsche. The difficulties in style and
thought of the later work—difficulties that at times become well-nigh
insuperable in _Thus Spake Zarathustra_—are here practically absent. The
book may, in fact, almost be described as “popular,” bearing the same
relation to Nietzsche’s later productions as Wagner’s _Tannhäuser_ and
_Lohengrin_ bear to the _Ring_.
The translator’s thanks are due to Mr. Thomas Common for his careful
revision of the manuscript and many valuable suggestions.
P. V. C.
PREFACE.
1.
One should only speak where one cannot remain silent, and only speak of
what one has _conquered_—the rest is all chatter, “literature,” bad
breeding. My writings speak only of my conquests, “I” am in them, with all
that is hostile to me, _ego ipsissimus_, or, if a more haughty expression
be permitted, _ego ipsissimum_. It may be guessed that I have many below
me.... But first I always needed time, convalescence, distance,
separation, before I felt the stirrings of a desire to flay, despoil, lay
bare, “represent” (or whatever one likes to call it) for the additional
knowledge of the world, something that I had lived through and outlived,
something done or suffered. Hence all my writings,—with one exception,
important, it is true,—must be _ante-dated_—they always tell of a
“behind-me.” Some even, like the first three _Thoughts out of Season_,
must be thrown back before the period of creation and experience of a
previously published book (_The Birth of Tragedy_ in the case cited, as
any one with subtle powers of observation and comparison could not fail to
perceive). That wrathful outburst against the Germanism, smugness, and
raggedness of speech of old David Strauss, the contents of the first
_Thought out of Season_, gave a vent to feelings that had inspired me long
before, as a student, in the midst of German culture and cultured
Philistinism (I claim the paternity of the now much used and misused
phrase “cultured Philistinism”). What I said against the “historical
disease” I said as one who had slowly and laboriously recovered from that
disease, and who was not at all disposed to renounce “history” in the
future because he had suffered from her in the past. When in the third
_Thought out of Season_ I gave expression to my reverence for my first and
only teacher, the _great_ Arthur Schopenhauer—I should now give it a far
more personal and emphatic voice—I was for my part already in the throes
of moral scepticism and dissolution, that is, as much concerned with the
criticism as with the study of all pessimism down to the present day. I
already did not believe in “a blessed thing,” as the people say, not even
in Schopenhauer. It was at this very period that an unpublished essay of
mine, “On Truth and Falsehood in an Extra-Moral Sense,” came into being.
Even my ceremonial oration in honour of Richard Wagner, on the occasion of
his triumphal celebration at Bayreuth in 1876—Bayreuth signifies the
greatest triumph that an artist has ever won—a work that bears the
strongest stamp of “individuality,” was in the background an act of homage
and gratitude to a bit of the past in me, to the fairest but most perilous
calm of my sea-voyage ... and as a matter of fact a severance and a
farewell. (Was Richard Wagner mistaken on this point? I do not think so.
So long as we still love, we do not paint such pictures, we do not yet
“examine,” we do not place ourselves so far away as is essential for one
who “examines.” “Examining needs at least a secret antagonism, that of an
opposite point of view,” it is said on page 46 of the above-named work
itself, with an insidious, melancholy application that was perhaps
understood by few.) The composure that gave me the _power_ to speak after
many intervening years of solitude and abstinence, first came with the
book, _Human, All-too Human_, to which this second preface and apologia(1)
is dedicated. As a book for “free spirits” it shows some trace of that
almost cheerful and inquisitive coldness of the psychologist, who has
_behind_ him many painful things that he keeps _under_ him, and moreover
establishes them for himself and fixes them firmly as with a needle-point.
Is it to be wondered at that at such sharp, ticklish work blood flows now
and again, that indeed the psychologist has blood on his fingers and not
_only_ on his fingers?
2.
The _Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions_ were in the first place, like _The
Wanderer and His Shadow_, published separately as continuations and
appendices to the above-mentioned human, all-too human _Book for Free
Spirits_: and at the same time, as a continuation and confirmation of an
intellectual cure, consisting in a course of anti-romantic self-treatment,
such as my instinct, which had always remained healthy, had itself
discovered and prescribed against a temporary attack of the most dangerous
form of romantics. After a convalescence of six years I may well be
permitted to collect these same writings and publish them as a second
volume of _Human, All-too Human_. Perhaps, if surveyed together, they will
more clearly and effectively teach their lesson—a lesson of health that
may be recommended as a _disciplina voluntatis_ to the more intellectual
natures of the rising generation. Here speaks a pessimist who has often
leaped out of his skin but has always returned into it, thus, a pessimist
with goodwill towards pessimism—at all events a romanticist no longer. And
has not a pessimist, who possesses this serpentine knack of changing his
skin, the right to read a lecture to our pessimists of to-day, who are one
and all still in the toils of romanticism? Or at least to show them how it
is—done?
3.
It was then, in fact, high time to bid farewell, and I soon received
proof. Richard Wagner, who seemed all-conquering, but was in reality only
a decayed and despairing romantic, suddenly collapsed, helpless and
broken, before the Christian Cross.... Was there not a single German with
eyes in his head and sympathy in his heart for this appalling spectacle?
Was I the only one whom he caused—suffering? In any case, the unexpected
event illumined for me in one lightning flash the place that I had
abandoned, and also the horror that is felt by every one who is
unconscious of a great danger until he has passed through it. As I went
forward alone, I shuddered, and not long afterwards I was ill, or rather
more than ill—weary: weary from my ceaseless disappointment about all that
remained to make us modern men enthusiastic, at the thought of the power,
work, hope, youth, love, flung to all the winds: weary from disgust at the
effeminacy and undisciplined rhapsody of this romanticism, at the whole
tissue of idealistic lies and softening of conscience, which here again
had won the day over one of the bravest of men: last, and not least, weary
from the bitterness of an inexorable suspicion—that after this
disappointment I was doomed to mistrust more thoroughly, to despise more
thoroughly, to be alone more thoroughly than ever before. My task—whither
had it flown? Did it not look now as if my task were retreating from me
and as if I should for a long future period have no more right to it? What
was I to do to endure this most terrible privation?—I began by entirely
forbidding myself all romantic music, that ambiguous, pompous, stifling
art, which robs the mind of its sternness and its joyousness and provides
a fertile soil for every kind of vague yearning and spongy sensuality.
“Cave musicam” is even to-day my advice to all who are enough of men to
cling to purity in matters of the intellect. Such music enervates,
softens, feminises, its “eternal feminine” draws us—_down_!(2) My first
suspicion, my most immediate precaution, was directed against romantic
music. If I hoped for anything at all from music, it was in the
expectation of the coming of a musician bold, subtle, malignant, southern,
healthy enough to take an immortal revenge upon that other music.
4.
Lonely now and miserably self-distrustful, I took sides, not without
resentment, _against_ myself and _for_ everything that hurt me and was
hard to me. Thus I once more found the way to that courageous pessimism
that is the antithesis of all romantic fraud, and, as it seems to me
to-day, the way to “myself,” to my task. That hidden masterful Something,
for which we long have no name until at last it shows itself as our
task—that tyrant in us exacts a terrible price for every attempt that we
make to escape him or give him the slip, for every premature act of
self-constraint, for every reconciliation with those to whom we do not
belong, for every activity, however reputable, which turns us aside from
our main purpose, yes, even for every virtue that would fain protect us
from the cruelty of our most individual responsibility. “Disease” is
always the answer when we wish to have doubts of our rights to our own
task, when we begin to make it easier for ourselves in any way. How
strange and how terrible! It is our very alleviations for which we have to
make the severest atonement! And if we want to return to health, we have
no choice left—we must load ourselves _more heavily_ than we were ever
laden before.
5.
It was then that I learnt the hermitical habit of speech acquired only by
the most silent and suffering. I spoke without witnesses, or rather
indifferent to the presence of witnesses, so as not to suffer from
silence, I spoke of various things that did not concern me in a style that
gave the impression that they did. Then, too, I learnt the art of showing
myself cheerful, objective, inquisitive in the presence of all that is
healthy and evil—is this, in an invalid, as it seems to me, his “good
taste”? Nevertheless, a more subtle eye and sympathy will not miss what
perhaps gives a charm to these writings—the fact that here speaks one who
has suffered and abstained in such a way as if he had never suffered or
abstained. Here equipoise, composure, even gratitude towards life _shall_
be maintained, here rules a stern, proud, ever vigilant, ever susceptible
will, which has undertaken the task of defending life against pain and
snapping off all conclusions that are wont to grow like poisonous fungi
from pain, disappointment, satiety, isolation and other morasses. Perhaps
this gives our pessimists a hint to self-examination? For it was then that
I hit upon the aphorism, “a sufferer has as yet no right to pessimism,”
and that I engaged in a tedious, patient campaign against the unscientific
first principles of all romantic pessimism, which seeks to magnify and
interpret individual, personal experiences into “general judgments,”
universal condemnations—it was then, in short, that I sighted a new world.
Optimism for the sake of restitution, in order at some time to have the
right to become a pessimist—do you understand that? Just as a physician
transfers his patient to totally strange surroundings, in order to
displace him from his entire “past,” his troubles, friends, letters,
duties, stupid mistakes and painful memories, and teaches him to stretch
out hands and senses towards new nourishment, a new sun, a new future: so
I, as physician and invalid in one, forced myself into an utterly
different and untried zone of the soul, and particularly into an absorbing
journey to a strange land, a strange atmosphere, into a curiosity for all
that was strange. A long process of roaming, seeking, changing followed, a
distaste for fixity of any kind—a dislike for clumsy affirmation and
negation: and at the same time a dietary and discipline which aimed at
making it as easy as possible for the soul to fly high, and above all
constantly to fly away. In fact a minimum of life, an unfettering from all
coarser forms of sensuality, an independence in the midst of all marks of
outward disfavour, together with the pride in being able to live in the
midst of all this disfavour: a little cynicism perhaps, a little of the
“tub of Diogenes,” a good deal of whimsical happiness, whimsical gaiety,
much calm, light, subtle folly, hidden enthusiasm—all this produced in the
end a great spiritual strengthening, a growing joy and exuberance of
health. Life itself rewards us for our tenacious will to life, for such a
long war as I waged against the pessimistic weariness of life, even for
every observant glance of our gratitude, glances that do not miss the
smallest, most delicate, most fugitive gifts.... In the end we receive
Life’s great gifts, perhaps the greatest it can bestow—we regain _our_
task.
6.
Should my experience—the history of an illness and a convalescence, for it
resulted in a convalescence—be only my personal experience? and merely
just my “Human, All-too-human”? To-day I would fain believe the reverse,
for I am becoming more and more confident that my books of travel were not
penned for my sole benefit, as appeared for a time to be the case. May I,
after six years of growing assurance, send them once more on a journey for
an experiment?—May I commend them particularly to the ears and hearts of
those who are afflicted with some sort of a “past,” and have enough
intellect left to suffer even intellectually from their past? But above
all would I commend them to you whose burden is heaviest, you choice
spirits, most encompassed with perils, most intellectual, most courageous,
who must be the _conscience_ of the modern soul and as such be versed in
its _science_:(3) in whom is concentrated all of disease, poison or danger
that can exist to-day: whose lot decrees that you must be more sick than
any individual because you are not “mere individuals”: whose consolation
it is to know and, ah! to walk the path to a new health, a health of
to-morrow and the day after: you men of destiny, triumphant, conquerors of
time, the healthiest and the strongest, you _good Europeans_!
7.
To express finally in a single formula my opposition to the romantic
pessimism of the abstinent, the unfortunate, the conquered: there is a
will to the tragic and to pessimism, which is a sign as much of the
severity as of the strength of the intellect (taste, emotion, conscience).
With this will in our hearts we do not fear, but we investigate ourselves
the terrible and the problematical elements characteristic of all
existence. Behind such a will stand courage and pride and the desire for a
really great enemy. That was _my_ pessimistic outlook from the first—a new
outlook, methinks, an outlook that even at this day is new and strange? To
this moment I hold to it firmly and (if it will be believed) not only
_for_ myself but occasionally _against_ myself.... You would prefer to
have that proved first? Well, what else does all this long preface—prove?
SILS-MARIA, UPPER ENGADINE,
_September, 1886_.