Must we not also be
I deceivers ?
I deceivers ?
Nietzsche - v06 - Human All-Too-Human - a
It is entitled: 'A
book for free spirits,' and almost every line in it
represents a victory—in its pages I freed myself
from everything foreign to my real nature. Ideal-
ism is foreign to me: the title says,' Where you see
ideal things, I see things which are only—human,
alas! all-too-human! ' I know man better—the
term ' free spirit' must here be understood in no
other sense than this: a. freed man, who has once
more taken possession of himself. "
The form of this book will be better under-
stood when it is remembered that at this period
Nietzsche was beginning to suffer from stomach
trouble and headaches. As a cure for his com-
plaints, he spent his time in travel when he could
get a few weeks' respite from his duties at Basel
University; and it was in the course of his solitary
walks and hill-climbing tours that the majority of
these thoughts occurred to him and were jotted
down there and then. A few of them, however,
date further back, as he tells us in the preface to
the second part of this work. Many of them, he
says, occupied his mind even before he published
his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, and several
others, as we learn from his notebooks and post-
humous writings, date from the period of the
Thoughts out of Season.
It must be clearly understood, however, that
* Ecce Homo, p. 75.
## p. ix (#17) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. IX
Nietzsche's disease must not be looked upon in
the same way as that of an ordinary man. People
are inclined to regard a sick man as rancorous;
but any one who fights with and conquers his
disease, and even exploits it, as Nietzsche did,
benefits thereby to an extraordinary degree. In
the first place, he has passed through several stages
of human psychology with which a healthy man
is entirely unacquainted; for he has learnt by
introspection the spiteful and revengeful spirit of
the sick man and his religion. Secondly, in his
moments of freedom from pain and gloom his
thoughts will be all the more brilliant.
In support of this last statement, one instance
may be selected out of hundreds that could be
adduced. Heinrich Heine spent the greater
part of his life in exile from his native country,
tortured by headaches, and finally dying in a
foreign land as the result of a spinal disease.
His splendid works were composed in his moments
of respite from illness, and during the last years
of his life, when his health was at its worst, he
gave to the world his famous Romancero. We
would likewise do well to recollect Goethe's
saying:
Zart Gedicht, wie Regenbogen,
Wird nur auf dunkelm Grund gezogen.
Previously to writing this book, then, Nietzsche
had travelled a great deal. He had come into
contact with men and women of many nation-
* " Tender poetry, like rainbows, can appear only on a
dark and sombre background. "—J. M. K.
## p. x (#18) ###############################################
X INTRODUCTION.
alities, and had surveyed many human institu-
tions: states, religions, schools, parliaments, stand-
ing armies; he had weighed modern problems on
the scales of Hellenic thought, and had, by a
strong effort of will, raised himself above what
were, in his opinion, the petty squabbles of politics,
whether local or international. Hence in the
following pages all matters pertaining to the State
are judged merely in the abstract, and without
reference to any particular country.
The reader of these aphorisms can hardly fail
to be struck by their remarkable exactness; and
it says much for the breadth and keenness of
Nietzsche's psychological insight that the book was
published before he was thirty-four years of age.
It would be well to point out that the present
work—like all Nietzsche's writings—is not in-
tended for those who are gradually becoming
exhausted by the modern commercial death-and-
life struggle for existence. The aphorisms in this
volume are essentially for minds of a higher
order. Nietzsche's dislike of modern time-serving
institutions may be seen, to take one instance,
from aphorism 442. Here he complains that
national armies, so large and important at the
present day, are, philosophically speaking, a
waste; for they absorb intellects of a calibre fit
for something better than the drilling of troops.
Applying this principle a little further, we can
see that it gives us an answer to a question which
is often asked: Why is England so poor in great
artists of all kinds? May it not be because such
## p. xi (#19) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. XI
men are earlly in life caught in the net of politics,
and waste lives which might be devoted to philo-
sophy, art, and literature, in the much less con-
genial tasks of administering Egyptian finance or
governing Hindoos?
The reader will be amply repaid if he submits
every aphorism to a similar analysis, and gives it
the practical application which Nietzsche had in
mind.
Again, take aphorism 434, containing the now
celebrated dictum that women always intrigue in
secret against the higher souls of their husbands.
While this statement is correct as applied to artists,
it is obviously not intended for business-men, whose
wives in many instances spur them on—not to
philosophy or art, but to money, comfort, and
worldly success.
Even politicians and statesmen will find much
to interest them here. Socialists will be especially
pleased with and interested in aphorism 451.
The ruling classes, says Nietzsche, can, if they
choose, treat all men as equals, and proclaim the
establishment of equal rights:
so far a socialistic mode of thought which is based on
justice is possible ; but, as has been said, only within the
ranks of the governing classes. . . . On the other hand, to
demand equality of rights, as do the Socialists of the subject
caste, is by no means the outcome of justice, but of covetous-
ness. If you expose bloody pieces of flesh to a beast, and
withdraw them again until it finally begins to roar, do you
think that the roaring implies justice?
Theologians, to mention another example of
Nietzsche's acuteness, will also find much to in-
## p. xii (#20) #############################################
Xll INTRODUCTION.
i
terest them—though possibly not to please them
— in aphorism 630, dealing with convictions and
their origin. In fact, there is no paragraph in the
book that does not deserve careful siudy by all
serious thinkers.
Those who are accustomed to Nietzsche the
classical scholar, and those who are, on the other
hand, accustomed to Nietzsche the outspoken Im-
moralist, may be somewhat astonished at the calm
tone of the present volume. The explanation is
that Nietzsche was now just beginning to walk on
his own philosophical path. His lifelong aim, the
uplifting of the type man, was still in view, but
the way leading towards it was once more un-
certain. Hence the peculiarly calm, even melan-
cholic, and what Nietzsche himself would call
Apollonian, tinge of many of these aphorisms, so
different from the style of his earlier and later
writings. For this very reason, however, the book
may appeal all the more to English readers, who
are of course more Apollonian than Dionysian.
Nietzsche is feeling his way, and these aphorisms
represent his first steps. As such—besides having
a high intrinsic value of themselves—they are
enormous aids to the study of his character and
temperament.
J. M. KENNEDY.
## p. xiii (#21) ############################################
PREFACE.
i.
I HAVE been told frequently, and always with
great surprise, that there is something common
and distinctive in all my writings, from the Birth
of Tragedy to the latest published Prelude to a
Philosophy of the Future. They all contain, I have
been told, snares and nets for unwary birds, and
an almost perpetual unconscious demand for. the
inversion of customary valuations''and valued
customs. ( What? Everything only — human —
all-too-human? ) People lay down my writings
with this sigh, not without a certain dread and
distrust of morality itself, indeed almost tempted
and encouraged to become advocates of the worst
things: as being perhaps only the best dis-
paraged? My writings have been called a school
of suspicion and especially of disdain, more happily,
also, a school of courage and even of audacity.
Indeed, I myself do not think that any one has
ever looked at the world with such a profound
suspicion; and not only as occasional Devil's
Advocate, but equally also, to speak theologically,
as enemy and impeacher of God; and he who
realises something of the consequences involved,
## p. xiv (#22) #############################################
xii INTRODUCTION.
terest them—though possibly not to please them
—in aphorism 630, dealing with convictions and
their origin. In fact, there is no paragraph in the
book that does not deserve careful study by all
serious thinkers.
Those who are accustomed to Nietzsche the
classical scholar, and those who are, on the other
hand, accustomed to Nietzsche the outspoken Im-
moralist, may be somewhat astonished at the calm
tone of the present volume. The explanation is
that Nietzsche was now just beginning to walk on
his own philosophical path. His lifelong aim, the
uplifting of the type man, was still in view, but
the way leading towards it was once more un-
certain. Hence the peculiarly calm, even melan-
cholic, and what Nietzsche himself would call
Apollonian, tinge of many of these aphorisms, so
different from the style of his earlier and later
writings. For this very reason, however, the book
may appeal all the more to English readers, who
are of course more Apollonian than Dionysian.
Nietzsche is feeling his way, and these aphorisms
represent his first steps. As such—besides having
a high intrinsic value of themselves—they are
enormous aids to the study of his character and
temperament
.
J. M. KENNEDY.
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
PREFACE.
I HAVE been told frequently, and always with
great surprise, that there is something common
and distinctive in all my writings, from the Birth
of Tragedy to the latest published Prelude to a
Philosophy of the Future. They all contain, I have
been told, snares and nets for unwary birds, and
an almost perpetual unconscious demand for the
inversion of customary valuations and valued
customs. ( What? Everything only — human —
all-too-human? ) People lay down my writings
with this sigh, not without a certain dread and
distrust of morality itself, indeed almost tempted
and encouraged to become advocates of the worst
things: as being perhaps only the best dis-
paraged? My writings have been called a school
of suspicion and especially of disdain, more happily,
also, a school of courage and even of audacity.
Indeed, I myself do not think that any one has
ever looked at the world with such a profound
suspicion; and not only as occasional Devil's
Advocate, but equally also, to speak theologically,
as enemy and impeacher of God; and he who
realises something of the consequences involved,
vOl. I. A
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2 PREFACE.
in every profound suspicion, something of the
chills and anxieties of loneliness to which every
uncompromising difference of outlook condemns
him who is affected therewith, will also understand
how often I sought shelter in some kind of
reverence or hostility, or scientificality or levity
or stupidity, in order to recover from myself, and,
as it were, to obtain temporary self-forgetfulness;
also why, when I did not find what I needed, I
was obliged to manufacture it, to counterfeit and
to imagine it in a suitable manner (and what else
have poets ever done? And for what purpose
has all the art in the world existed ? ). What I
always required most, however, for my cure and
self-recovery, was the belief that I was not isolated
in such circumstances, that I did not see in an
isolated manner—a magic suspicion of relationship
and similarity to others in outlook and desire, a
repose in the confidence of friendship, a blindness
in both parties without suspicion or note of inter-
rogation, an enjoyment of foregrounds, and surfaces
of the near and the nearest, of all that has colour,
epidermis, and outside appearance. Perhaps I
might be reproached in this respect for much " art"
and fine false coinage; for instance, for voluntarily
and knowingly shutting my eyes to Schopenhauer's
blind will to morality at a time when I had become
sufficiently clear-sighted about morality; also for
deceiving myself about Richard Wagner's incurable
romanticism, as if it were a beginning and not an
end ; also about the Greeks, also about the Germans
and their future—and there would still probably
be quite a long list of such alsos? Supposing,
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE. 3
however, that this were all true and that I were
reproached with good reason, what do you know,
what could you know as to how much artifice of
self-preservation, how much rationality and higher
protection there is in such self-deception,—and
how much falseness I still require in order to allow
myself again apd again the luxury of my sincerity?
. . . In short, I still live; and life, in spite of
ourselves, is not devised by morality; it demands
illusion, it lives by illusion . . . but There!
I am already beginning again and doing what I
have always done, old immoralist and bird-catcher
that I am,—I am talking un-morally, ultra-morally,
"beyond good and evil "? . . .
Thus then, when I found it necessary, I invented
once on a time the " free spirits," to whom this
discouragingly encouraging book with the title
Human, all-too-Human, is dedicated. There are
no such ". free spirits" nor have there been such,
but, as already said, I then required them for
company to keep me cheerful in the midst of evils
(sickness, loneliness, foreignness, — acedia, inac-
tivity) as brave companions and ghosts with whom
I could laugh and gossip when so inclined and send
to the devil when they became bores,—as com-
pensation for the lack of friends. That such free
spirits will be possible some day, that our Europe
will have such bold and cheerful wights amongst
her sons of to-morrow and the day after to-morrow,
actually and bodily, and not merely, as in my case,
## p. 4 (#26) ###############################################
4 PREFACE.
as the shadows of a hermit's phantasmagoria—
/ should be the last to doubt thereof. Already
I see them coming, slowly, slowly; and perhaps I
am doing something to hasten their coming when
I describe in advance under what auspices I see
them originate, and upon what paths I see them
come.
One may suppose that a spirit in which the
type "free spirit" is to become fully mature and
sweet, has had its decisive event in a great emanci-
pation, and that it was all the more fettered pre-
viously and apparently bound for ever to its corner
and pillar. What is it that binds most strongly?
What cords are almost unrendable? In men of
a lofty and select type it will be their duties; the
reverence which is suitable to youth, respect and
tenderness for all that is time-honoured and worthy,
gratitude to the land which bore them, to the hand
which led them, to the sanctuary where they learnt
to adore,—their most exalted moments themselves
will bind them most effectively, will lay upon them
the most enduring obligations. For those who are
thus bound the great emancipation comes suddenly,
like an earthquake; the young soul is all at once
convulsed, unloosened and extricated—it does not
itself know what is happening. An impulsion
and compulsion sway and over-master it like a
command; a will and a wish awaken, to go forth
on their course, anywhere, at any cost; a violent,
dangerous curiosity about an undiscovered world
flames and flares in every sense. "Better to
## p. 5 (#27) ###############################################
PREFACE. 5
die than live here "—says the imperious voice and
seduction, and this "here," this "at home" is all
that the soul has hitherto loved! A sudden fear
and suspicion of that which it loved, a flash of
disdain for what was called its " duty," a rebellious,
arbitrary, volcanically throbbing longing for travel,
foreignness, estrangement, coldness, disenchant-
ment, glaciation, a hatred of love, perhaps a sacri-
legious clutch and look backwards, to where it
hitherto adored and loved, perhaps a glow of
shame at what it was just doing, and at the same
time a rejoicing that it was doing it, an intoxicated,
internal, exulting thrill which betrays a triumph
—a triumph? Over what? Over whom? An
enigmatical, questionable, doubtful triumph, but
the first triumph nevertheless ;—such evil and
painful incidents belong to . the history of the great
emancipation. It is, at the same time, a disease
which may destroy the man, this first outbreak of
power and will to self-decision, self-valuation, this
will to free will; and how much disease is mani-
fested in the wild attempts and eccentricities by
which the liberated and emancipated one now
seeks to demonstrate his mastery over things! He
roves about raging with unsatisfied longing; what-
ever he captures has to suffer for the dangerous
tension of his pride; he tears to pieces whatever
attracts him. With a malicious laugh he twirls'
round whatever he finds veiled or guarded by a
sense of shame; he tries how these things look
when turned upside down. It is a matter of
arbitrariness with him, and pleasure in arbitrariness,
if he now perhaps bestow his favour on what
## p. 6 (#28) ###############################################
6 PREFACE.
had hitherto a bad repute,—if he inquisitively
and temptingly haunt what is specially forbidden.
In the background of his activities and wanderings
—for he is restless and aimless in his course as in
a desert—stands the note of interrogation of an
increasingly dangerous curiosity. "Cannot all
valuations be reversed? And is good perhaps
evil? And God only an invention and artifice
of the devil? Is everything, perhaps, radically
false? And if we are the deceived, are we not
thereby also deceivers? Must we not also be
|__deceivers ? "—Such thoughts lead and mislead
r<" him more and more, onward and away. Solitude
li=- encircles and engirdles him, always more threaten-
ing, more throttling, more heart-oppressing, that
terrible goddess and mater sceva cupidinum—but
who knows nowadays what solitude is? . . .
From this morbid solitariness, from the desert
of such years of experiment, it is still a long way
to the copious, overflowing safety and soundness
which does not care to dispense with disease
itself as an instrument and angling-hook of
knowledge;—to that mature freedom of spirit
which is equally self-control and discipline of
the heart, and gives access to many and opposed
modes of thought;—to that inward comprehen-
siveness and daintiness of superabundance, which
excludes any danger of the spirit's becoming
enamoured and lost in its own paths, and
## p. 7 (#29) ###############################################
PREFACE. 7
lying intoxicated in some corner or other; to that
excess of plastic, healing, formative, and restorative
powers, which is exactly the sign of splendid
health, that excess which gives the free spirit
the dangerous prerogative of being entitled to
live by experiments and offer itself to adventure;
the free spirit's prerogative of mastership! Long
years of convalescence may lie in between, years
full of many-coloured, painfully-enchanting magi-
cal transformations, curbed and led by a tough
will to health, which often dares to dress and
disguise itself as actual health. There is a middle
condition therein, which a man of such a fate
never calls to mind later on without emotion; a
pale, delicate light and a sunshine-happiness are
peculiar to him, a feeling of bird-like freedom,
prospect, and haughtiness, a tertium quid in
which curiosity and gentle disdain are combined.
A "free spirit"—this cool expression does good
in every condition, it almost warms. One no
longer lives, in the fetters of love and hatred,
without Yea, without Nay, voluntarily near,
voluntarily distant, preferring to escape, to turn
aside, to flutter forth, to fly up and away; one
is fastidious like every one who has once seen
an immense variety beneath him,—and one has
become the opposite of those who trouble them-
selves about things which do not concern them.
In fact, it is nothing but things which now
concern the free spirit,—and how many things ! —
which no longer trouble him!
## p. 7 (#30) ###############################################
6 PREFACE.
I
had hitherto a bad repute,—if he inquisitively
and temptingly haunt what is specially forbidden.
In the background of his activities and wanderings
—for he is restless and aimless in his course as in
a desert—stands the note of interrogation of an
increasingly dangerous curiosity. "Cannot all
valuations be reversed? And is good perhaps
evil? And God only an invention and artifice
of the devil? Is everything, perhaps, radically
false? And if we are the deceived, are we not
thereby also deceivers? Must we not also be
I deceivers ? "—Such thoughts lead and mislead
him more and more, onward and away. Solitude
encircles and engirdles him, always more threaten-
ing, more throttling, more heart-oppressing, that
terrible goddess and mater s<Eva cupidinunt—but
who knows nowadays what solitude is? . . .
From this morbid solitariness, from the desert
of such years of experiment, it is still a long way
to the copious, overflowing safety and soundness
which does not care to dispense with disease
itself as an instrument and angling-hook of
knowledge;—to that mature freedom of spirit
which is equally self-control and discipline of
the heart, and gives access to many and opposed
modes of thought ;—to that inward comprehen-
siveness and daintiness of superabundance, which
excludes any danger of the spirit's becoming
enamoured and lost in its own paths, and
## p. 7 (#31) ###############################################
PREFACE. 7
lying intoxicated in some corner or other; to that
excess of plastic, healing, formative, and restorative
powers, which is exactly the sign of splendid
health, that excess which gives the free spirit
the dangerous prerogative of being entitled to
live by experiments and offer itself to adventure;
the free spirit's prerogative of mastership! Long
years of convalescence may lie in between, years
full of many-coloured, painfully-enchanting magi-
cal transformations, curbed and led by a tough
will to health, which often dares to dress and
disguise itself as actual health. There is a middle
condition therein, which a man of such a fate
never calls to mind later on without emotion; a
pale, delicate light and a sunshine-happiness are
peculiar to him, a feeling of bird-like freedom,
prospect, and haughtiness, a tertium quid in
which curiosity and gentle disdain are combined.
A "free spirit"—this cool expression does good
in every condition, it almost warms. One no
longer lives, in the fetters of love and hatred,
without Yea, without Nay, voluntarily near,
voluntarily distant, preferring to escape, to turn
aside, to flutter forth, to fly up and away; one
is fastidious like every one who has once seen
an immense variety beneath him,—and one has
become the opposite of those who trouble them-
selves about things which do not concern them.
In fact, it is nothing but things which now
concern the free spirit,—and how many things ! —
which no longer trouble him!
## p. 7 (#32) ###############################################
6 PREFACE.
I
L
had hitherto a bad repute,—if he inquisitively
and temptingly haunt what is specially forbidden.
In the background of his activities and wanderings
—for he is restless and aimless in his course as in
a desert—stands the note of interrogation of an
increasingly dangerous curiosity. "Cannot all
valuations be reversed? And is good perhaps
evil? And God only an invention and artifice
of the devil? Is everything, perhaps, radically
false? And if we are the deceived, are we not
thereby also deceivers?
Must we not also be
I deceivers ? "—Such thoughts lead and mislead
him more and more, onward and away. Solitude
encircles and engirdles him, always more threaten-
ing, more throttling, more heart-oppressing, that
terrible goddess and mater sceva cupidinum—but
who knows nowadays what solitude is? . . .
4.
From this morbid solitariness, from the desert
of such years of experiment, it is still a long way
to the copious, overflowing safety and soundness
which does not care to dispense with disease
itself as an instrument and angling-hook of
knowledge;—to that mature freedom of spirit
which is equally self-control and discipline of
the heart, and gives access to many and opposed
modes of thought ;—to that inward comprehen-
siveness and daintiness of superabundance, which
excludes any danger of the spirit's becoming
enamoured and lost in its own paths, and
## p. 7 (#33) ###############################################
PREFACE. 7
lying intoxicated in some corner or other; to that
excess of plastic, healing, formative, and restorative
powers, which is exactly the sign of splendid
health, that excess which gives the free spirit
the dangerous prerogative of being entitled to
live by experiments and offer itself to adventure;
the free spirit's prerogative of mastership! Long
years of convalescence may lie in between, years
full of many-coloured, painfully-enchanting magi-
cal transformations, curbed and led by a tough
will to health, which often dares to dress and
disguise itself as actual health. There is a middle
condition therein, which a man of such a fate
never calls to mind later on without emotion; a
pale, delicate light and a sunshine-happiness are
peculiar to him, a feeling of bird-like freedom,
prospect, and haughtiness, a tertium quid in
which curiosity and gentle disdain are combined.
A "free spirit"—this cool expression does good
in every condition, it almost warms. One no
longer lives, in the fetters of love and hatred,
without Yea, without Nay, voluntarily near,
voluntarily distant, preferring to escape, to turn
aside, to flutter forth, to fly up and away; one
is fastidious like every one who has once seen
an immense variety beneath him,—and one has
become the opposite of those who trouble them-
selves about things which do not concern them.
In fact, it is nothing but things which now
concern the free spirit,—and how many things ! —
which no longer trouble him!
## p. 8 (#34) ###############################################
PREFACE.
5-
A step further towards recovery, and the free
spirit again draws near to life; - slowly, it is
true, and almost stubbornly, almost distrustfully.
Again it grows warmer around him, and, as it
were, yellower; feeling and sympathy gain depth,
thawing winds of every kind pass lightly over him.
He almost feels as if his eyes were now first opened
to what is near. He marvels and is still; where
has he been? The near and nearest things, how
changed they appear to him! What a bloom and
magic they have acquired meanwhile! He looks
back gratefully,—grateful to his wandering, his
austerity and self-estrangement, his far-sightedness
and his bird-like flights in cold heights. What a
good thing that he did not always stay " at home,"
"by himself," like a sensitive, stupid tenderling.
He has been beside himself, there is no doubt. He
now sees himself for the first time,—and what sur-
prises he feels thereby! What thrills unexperienced
hitherto! What joy even in the weariness, in the
old illness, in the relapses of the convalescent!
How he likes to sit still and suffer, to practise
patience, to lie in the sun! Who is as familiar as
he with the joy of winter, with the patch of sun-
shine upon the wall! They are the most grateful
animals in the world, and also the most un-
assuming, these lizards of convalescents with
their faces half-turned towards life once more:—
there are those amongst them who never let a
day pass without hanging a little hymn of praise
on its trailing fringe. And, speaking seriously, it
## p. 9 (#35) ###############################################
PREFACE. 9
is a radical cure for all pessimism (the well-known
disease of old idealists and falsehood-mongers) to
become ill after the manner of these free spirits,
to remain ill a good while, and then grow well (I
mean "better") for a still longer period. It is
wisdom, practical wisdom, to prescribe even health
for one's self for a long time only in small doses.
About this time it may at last happen, under
the sudden illuminations of still disturbed and
changing health, that the enigma of that great
emancipation begins to reveal itself to the free,
and ever freer, spirit,—that enigma which had
hitherto lain obscure, questionable, and almost
intangible, in his memory. If for a long time he
scarcely dared to ask himself, "Why so apart?
So alone? denying everything that I revered?
denying reverence itself? Why this hatred, this
suspicion, this severity towards my own virtues? "
—he now dares and asks the questions aloud, and
already hears something like an answer to them—
"Thou shouldst become master over thyself and
master also of thine own virtues. Formerly they
were thy masters; but they are only entitled to
be thy tools amongst other tools. Thou shouldst
obtain power over thy pro and contra, and learn
how to put them forth and withdraw them again
in accordance with thy higher purpose. Thou
shouldst learn how to take the proper perspective
of every valuation—the shifting, distortion, and
apparent teleology of the horizons and everything
## p. 10 (#36) ##############################################
IO PREFACE.
/
that belongs to perspective; also the amount of
stupidity which opposite values involve, and all
the intellectual loss with which every pro and every
contra has to be paid for. /Thou shouldst learn
how much necessary injustice there is in every for
and against, injustice as inseparable from life, and,
life itself as conditioned by the perspective and its
injustice. ) Above all thou shouldst see clearly
where the injustice is always greatest:—namely,
where life has developed most punily, restrictedly,
necessitously, and incipiently, and yet cannot help
regarding itself as the purpose and standard of
things, and for the sake of self-preservation, secretly,
basely, and continuously wasting away and calling
in question the higher, greater, and richer,—thou
shouldst see clearly the problem of gradation of
rank, and how power and right and amplitude of
perspective grow up together. Thou shouldst"
"But enough; the free spirit knows henceforth
which " thou shalt" he has obeyed, and also what
he can now do, what he only now—may do. . . .
7-
Thus doth the free spirit answer himself with
regard to the riddle of emancipation, and ends
therewith, while he generalises his case, in order
thus to decide with regard to his experience. "As
it has happened to me," he says to himself," so must
it happen to every one in whom a mission seeks
to embody itself and to ' come into the world. '"
The secret power and necessity of this mission will
operate in and upon the destined individuals like
## p. 11 (#37) ##############################################
PREFACE. 11
an unconscious pregnancy,—long before they have
had the mission itself in view and have known its
name. Our destiny rules over us, even when we
are not yet aware of it; it is the future that makes
laws for our to-day. Granted that it is the problem
of the gradations of rank, of which we may say
that it is our problem, we free spirits; now only
in the midday of our life do we first understand
what preparations, detours, tests, experiments,
and disguises the problem needed, before it was
permitted to rise before us, and how we had first
to experience the most manifold and opposing
conditions of distress and happiness in soul
and body, as adventurers and circumnavigators of
the inner world called "man," as surveyors of all
the "higher" and the "one-above-another," also
called "man "—penetrating everywhere, almost
without fear, rejecting nothing, losing nothing,
tasting everything, cleansing everything from all
that is accidental, and, as it were, sifting it out
—until at last we could say, we free spirits,
"Here—a new problem! Here a long ladder,
the rungs of which we ourselves have sat upon
and mounted,—which we ourselves at some time
have been! Here a higher place, a lower place,
an under-us, an immeasurably long order, a
hierarchy which we see; here—our problem! "
No psychologist or augur will be in doubt for a
moment as to what stage of the development just
described the following book belongs (or is assigned
## p. 12 (#38) ##############################################
12 v-'- PREFACE.
to). But where are these psychologists nowa-
days? In France, certainly; perhaps in Russia;
assuredly not in Germany. Reasons are not lack-
ing why the present-day Germans could still even
count this as an honour to them—bad enough,
surely, for one who in this respect is un-German
in disposition and constitution! This German
book, which has been able to find readers in a
wide circle of countries and nations—it has been
about ten years going its rounds—and must
understand some sort of music and piping art,
by means of which even coy foreign ears are
seduced into listening,—it is precisely in Germany
that this book has been most negligently read, and
worst listened to; what is the reason ? " It de-
mands too much," I have been told, " it appeals to
men free from the pressure of coarse duties, it wants
refined and fastidious senses, it needs superfluity—
superfluity of time, of clearness of sky and heart,
of otium in the boldest sense of the term :—purely
good things, which we Germans of to-day do not
possess and therefore cannot give. " After such a
polite answer my philosophy advises me to be
silent and not to question further; besides, in cer-
tain cases, as the proverb points out, one only
remains a philosopher by being—silent. *
Nice, Spring 1886.
* An allusion to the mediaeval Latin distich:
O si tacuisses,
Philosophus mansisses. —J. M. K.
## p. 13 (#39) ##############################################
HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
FIRST DIVISION.
FIRST AND LAST THINGS.
Chemistry of Ideas and Sensations. —Philo-
sophical problems adopt in almost all matters the
same form of question as they did two thousand
years ago; how can anything spring from its
opposite? for instance, reason out of unreason, the
sentient out of the dead, logic out of unlogic, dis-
interested contemplation out of covetous willing,
life for others out of egoism, truth out of error?
Metaphysical philosophy has helped itself over
those difficulties hitherto by denying the origin of
one thing in another, and assuming a miraculous
origin for more highly valued things, immediately
out of the kernel and essence of the "thing in
itself. " ") Historical philosophy, on the contrary,
which is no longer to be thought of as separate
from physical science, the youngest of all philo-
sophical methods, has ascertained in single cases
(and presumably this will happen in everything)
## p. 14 (#40) ##############################################
14 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
that there are no opposites except in the usual
exaggeration of the popular or metaphysical point
of view, and that an error of reason lies at the
bottom of the opposition: according to this ex-
planation, strictly understood, there is neither an
unegoistical action nor an entirely disinterested
point of view, they are both only sublimations in
which the fundamental element appears almost
evaporated, and is only to be discovered by the
closest observation. All that we require, and which
can only be given us by the present advance of
the single sciences, is a chemistry of the moral,
religious, aesthetic ideas and sentiments, as also of
those emotions which we experience in ourselves
both in the great and in the small phases of social
and intellectual intercourse, and even in solitude;
but what if this chemistry should result in the fact
that also in this case the most beautiful colours
have been obtained from base, even despised
materials? Would" many be inclined to pursue
such examinations? Humanity likes to put all
questions as to origin and beginning out of its
mind; must one not be almost dehumanised to
feel a contrary tendency in one's self?
2.
Inherited Faults of Philosophers. —All
philosophers have the common fault that they
start from man in his present state and hope to
attain their end by an analysis of him. Uncon-
sciously they look upon " man " as an (Sterna Veritas,
as a thing unchangeable in all commotion, as a sure
## p. 15 (#41) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 15
standard of things. But everything that the philo-
sopher says about man is really nothing more than
testimony about the man of a very limited space
of time. A lack of the historical sense is the
hereditary fault of all philosophers; many, indeed,
unconsciously mistake the very latest variety of man,
such as has arisen under the influence of certain
religions, certain political events, for the permanent
form from which one must set out. They will
not learn that man has developed, that his faculty
of knowledge has developed also; whilst for some
of them the entire world is spun out of this faculty
of knowledge. Now everything essential in human! '
development happened in pre-historic times, long,
before those four thousand years which we know|
something of; man may not have changed much
during this time. But the philosopher sees " in-
stincts " in the present man and takes it for granted
that this is one of the unalterable facts of man-
kind, and, consequently, can furnish a key to the
understanding of the world; the entire teleology
is so constructed that man of the last four thousand
years is spoken of as an eternal being, towards
which all things in the world have from the be-
ginning a natural direction. But everything has
evolved; there are no eternal facts, as there are
likewise no absolute truths. Therefore, historical
philosophising is henceforth necessary, and with it
the virtue of diffidence.
3-
Appreciation of Unpretentious Truths. It is a mark of a higher culture to value the
## p. 16 (#42) ##############################################
l6 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
little unpretentious truths, which have been found
by means of strict method, more highly than the
joy-diffusing and dazzling errors which spring from
metaphysical and artistic times and peoples. First
of all one has scorn on the lips for the former, as
if here nothing could have equal privileges with
anything else, so unassuming, simple, bashful,
apparently discouraging are they, so beautiful,
stately, intoxicating, perhaps even animating, are
the others. But the hardly attained, the certain,
the lasting, and therefore of great consequence for
all wider knowledge, is still the higher; to keep
one's self to that is manly and shows bravery, sim-
plicity, and forbearance. Gradually not only single
individuals but the whole of mankind will be
raised to this manliness, when it has at last
accustomed itself to the higher appreciation of
durable, lasting knowledge, and has lost all belief
in inspiration and the miraculous communication
of truths. Respecters of forms, certainly, with
their standard of the beautiful and noble, will first
of all have good reasons for mockery, as soon as
the appreciation of unpretentious truths, and the
scientific spirit, begin to obtain the mastery; but
only because their, eye has either not yet recog-
nised the charm of the simplest form, or because
men educated in that spirit are not yet completely
and inwardly saturated by it, so that they still
thoughtlessly imitate old forms (and badly enough,
as one does who no longer cares much about the
matter). Formerly the spirit was not occupied
with strict thought, its earnestness then lay in
the spinning out of symbols and forms. This is
## p. 17 (#43) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 17
changed; that earnestness in the symbolical has
become the mark of a lower culture. As our arts
themselves grow evermore intellectual, our senses
more spiritual, and as, for instance, people now
judge concerning what sounds well to the senses
quite differently from how they did a hundred
years ago, so the. forms of our life grow ever
more spiritual, to the eye of older ages perhaps
uglier, but only because it is incapable of perceiv-
ing how the kingdom of the inward, spiritual
beauty constantly grows deeper and wider, and to
what extent the inner intellectual look may be of
more importance to us all than the most beautiful
bodily frame and the. noblest architectural structure.
4-
Astrology and the Like. —It is probable
that the objects of religious, moral, aesthetic and
logical sentiment likewise belong only to the sur-
face of things, while man willingly believes that
here, at least, he has touched the heart of the
world; he deceives himself, because those things
enrapture him so profoundly, and make him so pro-
foundly unhappy, and he therefore shows the same
pride here as in astrology. For astrology believes
that the firmament moves round the destiny of
man; the moral man, however, takes it for granted
that what he has essentially at heart must also be
the essence and heart of things.
Misunderstanding of Dreams. —In the ages i
of a rude and primitive civilisation man believed I
VOL. i. B
## p. 18 (#44) ##############################################
18 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
that in dreams he became acquainted with a second
actual world; herein lies the origin of all meta-
physics. Without dreams there could have been
found no reason for a division of the world. The
distinction, too, between soul and body is connected
with the most ancient comprehension of dreams,
also the supposition of an imaginary soul-body,
therefore the origin of all belief in spirits, and
probably also the belief in gods. "The dead
continues to live, for he appears to the living
in a dream": thus men reasoned of old for
thousands and thousands of years.
The Scientific Spirit partially but not
wholly Powerful. —The smallest subdivisions
of science taken separately are dealt with purely
in relation to themselves,—the general, great
sciences, on the contrary, regarded as a whole, call
up the question—certainly a very non-objective
one—" Wherefore? To what end? " It is this
utilitarian consideration which causes them to be
dealt with less impersonally when taken as a
whole than when considered in their various parts.
In philosophy, above all, as the apex of the entire
pyramid of science, the question as to the utility of
knowledge is involuntarily brought forward, and
every philosophy has the unconscious intention of
ascribing to it the greatest usefulness. For this
reason there is so much high-flying metaphysics
in all philosophies and such a shyness of the
apparently unimportant solutions of physics; for
*
## p. 19 (#45) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 19
the importance of knowledge for life must appear
as great as possible. Here is the antagonism
between the separate provinces of science and
philosophy, The latter desires, what art does, to
give the greatest possible depth and meaning to
life and actions; in the former one seeks know-
ledge and nothing further, whatever may emerge
thereby. So far there has been no philosopher in
whose hands philosophy has not grown into an
apology for knowledge; on this point, at least,
every one is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness
must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all
tyrannised over by logic, and this is optimism—in
its essence.
7-
The Kill-joy in Science. — Philosophy
separated from science when it asked the question,
"Which is the knowledge of the world and of life
which enables man to live most happily? " This
happened in the Socratic schools; the veins of
scientific investigation were bound up by the
point of view of happiness,—and are so still.
Pneumatic Explanation of Nature. —
Metaphysics explains the writing of Nature, so to
speak,pneumatically, as the Church and her learned
men formerly did with the Bible. A great deal
of understanding is required to apply to Nature
the same method of strict interpretation as the
philologists have now established for all books,
## p. 20 (#46) ##############################################
20 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
with the intention of clearly understanding what
the text means, but not suspecting a double sense
or even taking it for granted. Just, however, as
with regard to books, the bad art of interpretation
is by no means overcome, and in the most
cultivated society one still constantly comes across
the remains of allegorical and mystic interpretation,
so it is also with regard to Nature, indeed it is
even much worse.
9-.
The Metaphysical World. —It is true that
there might be a metaphysical world; the absolute
possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We
look at everything through the human head and
cannot cut this head off; while the question
remains, What would be left of the world if it had
been cut off? This is a purely scientific problem,
and one not very likely to trouble mankind;
but everything which has hitherto made meta-
physical suppositions valuable, terrible, delightful
for man, what has produced them, is passion, error,
and self-deception; the very worst methods of
knowledge, not the best, have taught belief therein.
When these methods have been discovered as the
foundation of all existing religions and meta-
physics, they have been refuted. Then there still
always remains that possibility; but there is
nothing to be done with it, much less is it possible
to let happiness, salvation, and life depend on the
spider-thread of such a possibility. For nothing
could be said of the metaphysical world but that
it would be a different condition, a condition in-
## p. 21 (#47) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 21
accessible and incomprehensible to us; it would
be a thing of negative qualities. Were the
existence of such a world ever so well proved, the
fact would nevertheless remain that it would be
precisely the most irrelevant of all forms of
knowledge: more irrelevant than the knowledge
of the chemical analysis of water to the sailor in
danger in a storm.
IO.
The Harmlessness of Metaphysics in the
Future. —Directly the origins of religion, art,
and morals have been so described that one can
perfectly explain them without having recourse to
metaphysical concepts at the beginning and in the
course of the path, the strongest interest in the
purely theoretical problem of the " thing-in-itself"
and the "phenomenon" ceases. For however it
may be here, with religion, art, and morals we do
not touch the "essence of the world in itself" ; we
are in the domain of representation, no " intuition"
can carry us further. With the greatest calmness
we shall leave the question as to how our own
conception of the world can differ so widely from
the revealed essence of the world, to physiology
and the history of the evolution of organisms and
ideas.
11.
'Language as a Presumptive Science. —
The importance of language for the development
of culture lies in the fact that in language man has
## p. 22 (#48) ##############################################
22 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
placed a world of his own beside the other, a
position which he deemed so fixed that he might
therefrom lift the rest of the world off its hinges,
and make himself master of it. Inasmuch as
man has believed in the ideas and names of things
as aterncB veritates for a great length of time, he
has acquired that pride by which he has raised
himself above the animal; he really thought that
in language he possessed the knowledge of the
world. The maker of language was not modest
enough to think that he only gave designations to
things, he believed rather that with his words he
expressed the widest knowledge of the things; in
reality language is the first step in the endeavour
after science. Here also it is belief in ascertained
truth, from which the mightiest sources of strength
have flowed. Much later—only now—it is dawn-
ing upon men that they have propagated a
tremendous error in their belief in language.
Fortunately it is now too late to reverse the
development of reason, which is founded upon that
belief. Logic, also, is founded upon suppositions
to which nothing in the actual world corresponds,—
for instance, on the supposition of the equality of
things, and the identity of the same thing at
different points of time,—but that particular
science arose out of the contrary belief (that such
things really existed in the actual world). It is
the same with mathematics, which would certainly
not have arisen if it had been known from the
beginning that in Nature there are no exactly
straight lines, no real circle, no absolute standard
of size.
## p. 23 (#49) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 23
12.
Dream and Culture. —The function of the
brain which is most influenced by sleep is the
memory; not that it entirely ceases; but it is
brought back to a condition of imperfection, such as
everyone may have experienced in pre-historic times,
whether asleep or awake. Arbitrary and confused
as it is, it constantly confounds things on the
ground of the most fleeting resemblances; but
with the same arbitrariness and confusion the
ancients invented their mythologies, and even at
the present day travellers are accustomed to
remark how prone the savage is to forgetfulness,
how, after a short tension of memory, his mind
begins to sway here and there from sheer weariness
and gives forth lies and nonsense. But in dreams
we all resemble the savage; bad recognition and
erroneous comparisons are the reasons of the bad
conclusions, of which we are guilty in dreams: so
that, when we clearly recollect what we have
dreamt, we are alarmed at ourselves at harbour-
ing so much foolishness within us. The perfect
distinctness of all dream-representations, which
pre-suppose absolute faith in their reality, recall
the conditions that appertain to primitive man,
in whom hallucination was extraordinarily frequent,
and sometimes simultaneously seized entire com-
munities, entire nations. Therefore, in sleep and
in dreams we once more carry out the task of
early humanity.
/
## p. 24 (#50) ##############################################
24 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
13-
The Logic of Dreams. —In sleep our nervous
system is perpetually excited by numerous inner
occurrences; nearly all the organs are disjointed
and in a state of activity, the blood runs its
turbulent course, the position of the sleeper causes
pressure on certain limbs, his coverings influence
his sensations in various ways, the stomach digests
and by its movements it disturbs other organs,
the intestines writhe, the position of the head
occasions unaccustomed play of muscles, the feet,
unshod, not pressing upon the floor with the soles,
occasion the feeling of the unaccustomed just as
does the different clothing of the whole body:
all this, according to its daily change and extent,
excites by its extraordinariness the entire system
to the very functions of the brain;, and thus there
are a hundred occasions for the spirit to be sur-
prised and to seek for the reasons of this excita-
tion ;—the dream, however, is the seeking and
representing of the causes of those excited sensa-
tions,—that is, of the supposed causes. A person
who, for instance, binds his feet with two straps
will perhaps dream that two serpents are coiling
round his feet; this is first hypothesis, then a
belief, with an accompanying mental picture and
interpretation—" These serpents must be the causa
of those sensations which I, the sleeper, experi-
ence,"—so decides the mind of the sleeper. The
immediate past, so disclosed, becomes to him the
present through his excited imagination. Thus
every one knows from experience how quickly the
## p. 25 (#51) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 2$
dreamer weaves into his dream a loud sound that
he hears, such as the ringing of bells or the firing
of cannon, that is to say, explains it from after-
wards so that he first thinks he experiences the
producing circumstances and then that sound.
But how does it happen that the mind of the
dreamer is always so mistaken, while the same
mind when awake is accustomed to be so tem-
perate, careful, and sceptical with regard to its
hypotheses? so that the first random hypo-
thesis for the explanation of a feeling suffices for
him to believe immediately in its truth?
book for free spirits,' and almost every line in it
represents a victory—in its pages I freed myself
from everything foreign to my real nature. Ideal-
ism is foreign to me: the title says,' Where you see
ideal things, I see things which are only—human,
alas! all-too-human! ' I know man better—the
term ' free spirit' must here be understood in no
other sense than this: a. freed man, who has once
more taken possession of himself. "
The form of this book will be better under-
stood when it is remembered that at this period
Nietzsche was beginning to suffer from stomach
trouble and headaches. As a cure for his com-
plaints, he spent his time in travel when he could
get a few weeks' respite from his duties at Basel
University; and it was in the course of his solitary
walks and hill-climbing tours that the majority of
these thoughts occurred to him and were jotted
down there and then. A few of them, however,
date further back, as he tells us in the preface to
the second part of this work. Many of them, he
says, occupied his mind even before he published
his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, and several
others, as we learn from his notebooks and post-
humous writings, date from the period of the
Thoughts out of Season.
It must be clearly understood, however, that
* Ecce Homo, p. 75.
## p. ix (#17) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. IX
Nietzsche's disease must not be looked upon in
the same way as that of an ordinary man. People
are inclined to regard a sick man as rancorous;
but any one who fights with and conquers his
disease, and even exploits it, as Nietzsche did,
benefits thereby to an extraordinary degree. In
the first place, he has passed through several stages
of human psychology with which a healthy man
is entirely unacquainted; for he has learnt by
introspection the spiteful and revengeful spirit of
the sick man and his religion. Secondly, in his
moments of freedom from pain and gloom his
thoughts will be all the more brilliant.
In support of this last statement, one instance
may be selected out of hundreds that could be
adduced. Heinrich Heine spent the greater
part of his life in exile from his native country,
tortured by headaches, and finally dying in a
foreign land as the result of a spinal disease.
His splendid works were composed in his moments
of respite from illness, and during the last years
of his life, when his health was at its worst, he
gave to the world his famous Romancero. We
would likewise do well to recollect Goethe's
saying:
Zart Gedicht, wie Regenbogen,
Wird nur auf dunkelm Grund gezogen.
Previously to writing this book, then, Nietzsche
had travelled a great deal. He had come into
contact with men and women of many nation-
* " Tender poetry, like rainbows, can appear only on a
dark and sombre background. "—J. M. K.
## p. x (#18) ###############################################
X INTRODUCTION.
alities, and had surveyed many human institu-
tions: states, religions, schools, parliaments, stand-
ing armies; he had weighed modern problems on
the scales of Hellenic thought, and had, by a
strong effort of will, raised himself above what
were, in his opinion, the petty squabbles of politics,
whether local or international. Hence in the
following pages all matters pertaining to the State
are judged merely in the abstract, and without
reference to any particular country.
The reader of these aphorisms can hardly fail
to be struck by their remarkable exactness; and
it says much for the breadth and keenness of
Nietzsche's psychological insight that the book was
published before he was thirty-four years of age.
It would be well to point out that the present
work—like all Nietzsche's writings—is not in-
tended for those who are gradually becoming
exhausted by the modern commercial death-and-
life struggle for existence. The aphorisms in this
volume are essentially for minds of a higher
order. Nietzsche's dislike of modern time-serving
institutions may be seen, to take one instance,
from aphorism 442. Here he complains that
national armies, so large and important at the
present day, are, philosophically speaking, a
waste; for they absorb intellects of a calibre fit
for something better than the drilling of troops.
Applying this principle a little further, we can
see that it gives us an answer to a question which
is often asked: Why is England so poor in great
artists of all kinds? May it not be because such
## p. xi (#19) ##############################################
INTRODUCTION. XI
men are earlly in life caught in the net of politics,
and waste lives which might be devoted to philo-
sophy, art, and literature, in the much less con-
genial tasks of administering Egyptian finance or
governing Hindoos?
The reader will be amply repaid if he submits
every aphorism to a similar analysis, and gives it
the practical application which Nietzsche had in
mind.
Again, take aphorism 434, containing the now
celebrated dictum that women always intrigue in
secret against the higher souls of their husbands.
While this statement is correct as applied to artists,
it is obviously not intended for business-men, whose
wives in many instances spur them on—not to
philosophy or art, but to money, comfort, and
worldly success.
Even politicians and statesmen will find much
to interest them here. Socialists will be especially
pleased with and interested in aphorism 451.
The ruling classes, says Nietzsche, can, if they
choose, treat all men as equals, and proclaim the
establishment of equal rights:
so far a socialistic mode of thought which is based on
justice is possible ; but, as has been said, only within the
ranks of the governing classes. . . . On the other hand, to
demand equality of rights, as do the Socialists of the subject
caste, is by no means the outcome of justice, but of covetous-
ness. If you expose bloody pieces of flesh to a beast, and
withdraw them again until it finally begins to roar, do you
think that the roaring implies justice?
Theologians, to mention another example of
Nietzsche's acuteness, will also find much to in-
## p. xii (#20) #############################################
Xll INTRODUCTION.
i
terest them—though possibly not to please them
— in aphorism 630, dealing with convictions and
their origin. In fact, there is no paragraph in the
book that does not deserve careful siudy by all
serious thinkers.
Those who are accustomed to Nietzsche the
classical scholar, and those who are, on the other
hand, accustomed to Nietzsche the outspoken Im-
moralist, may be somewhat astonished at the calm
tone of the present volume. The explanation is
that Nietzsche was now just beginning to walk on
his own philosophical path. His lifelong aim, the
uplifting of the type man, was still in view, but
the way leading towards it was once more un-
certain. Hence the peculiarly calm, even melan-
cholic, and what Nietzsche himself would call
Apollonian, tinge of many of these aphorisms, so
different from the style of his earlier and later
writings. For this very reason, however, the book
may appeal all the more to English readers, who
are of course more Apollonian than Dionysian.
Nietzsche is feeling his way, and these aphorisms
represent his first steps. As such—besides having
a high intrinsic value of themselves—they are
enormous aids to the study of his character and
temperament.
J. M. KENNEDY.
## p. xiii (#21) ############################################
PREFACE.
i.
I HAVE been told frequently, and always with
great surprise, that there is something common
and distinctive in all my writings, from the Birth
of Tragedy to the latest published Prelude to a
Philosophy of the Future. They all contain, I have
been told, snares and nets for unwary birds, and
an almost perpetual unconscious demand for. the
inversion of customary valuations''and valued
customs. ( What? Everything only — human —
all-too-human? ) People lay down my writings
with this sigh, not without a certain dread and
distrust of morality itself, indeed almost tempted
and encouraged to become advocates of the worst
things: as being perhaps only the best dis-
paraged? My writings have been called a school
of suspicion and especially of disdain, more happily,
also, a school of courage and even of audacity.
Indeed, I myself do not think that any one has
ever looked at the world with such a profound
suspicion; and not only as occasional Devil's
Advocate, but equally also, to speak theologically,
as enemy and impeacher of God; and he who
realises something of the consequences involved,
## p. xiv (#22) #############################################
xii INTRODUCTION.
terest them—though possibly not to please them
—in aphorism 630, dealing with convictions and
their origin. In fact, there is no paragraph in the
book that does not deserve careful study by all
serious thinkers.
Those who are accustomed to Nietzsche the
classical scholar, and those who are, on the other
hand, accustomed to Nietzsche the outspoken Im-
moralist, may be somewhat astonished at the calm
tone of the present volume. The explanation is
that Nietzsche was now just beginning to walk on
his own philosophical path. His lifelong aim, the
uplifting of the type man, was still in view, but
the way leading towards it was once more un-
certain. Hence the peculiarly calm, even melan-
cholic, and what Nietzsche himself would call
Apollonian, tinge of many of these aphorisms, so
different from the style of his earlier and later
writings. For this very reason, however, the book
may appeal all the more to English readers, who
are of course more Apollonian than Dionysian.
Nietzsche is feeling his way, and these aphorisms
represent his first steps. As such—besides having
a high intrinsic value of themselves—they are
enormous aids to the study of his character and
temperament
.
J. M. KENNEDY.
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
PREFACE.
I HAVE been told frequently, and always with
great surprise, that there is something common
and distinctive in all my writings, from the Birth
of Tragedy to the latest published Prelude to a
Philosophy of the Future. They all contain, I have
been told, snares and nets for unwary birds, and
an almost perpetual unconscious demand for the
inversion of customary valuations and valued
customs. ( What? Everything only — human —
all-too-human? ) People lay down my writings
with this sigh, not without a certain dread and
distrust of morality itself, indeed almost tempted
and encouraged to become advocates of the worst
things: as being perhaps only the best dis-
paraged? My writings have been called a school
of suspicion and especially of disdain, more happily,
also, a school of courage and even of audacity.
Indeed, I myself do not think that any one has
ever looked at the world with such a profound
suspicion; and not only as occasional Devil's
Advocate, but equally also, to speak theologically,
as enemy and impeacher of God; and he who
realises something of the consequences involved,
vOl. I. A
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2 PREFACE.
in every profound suspicion, something of the
chills and anxieties of loneliness to which every
uncompromising difference of outlook condemns
him who is affected therewith, will also understand
how often I sought shelter in some kind of
reverence or hostility, or scientificality or levity
or stupidity, in order to recover from myself, and,
as it were, to obtain temporary self-forgetfulness;
also why, when I did not find what I needed, I
was obliged to manufacture it, to counterfeit and
to imagine it in a suitable manner (and what else
have poets ever done? And for what purpose
has all the art in the world existed ? ). What I
always required most, however, for my cure and
self-recovery, was the belief that I was not isolated
in such circumstances, that I did not see in an
isolated manner—a magic suspicion of relationship
and similarity to others in outlook and desire, a
repose in the confidence of friendship, a blindness
in both parties without suspicion or note of inter-
rogation, an enjoyment of foregrounds, and surfaces
of the near and the nearest, of all that has colour,
epidermis, and outside appearance. Perhaps I
might be reproached in this respect for much " art"
and fine false coinage; for instance, for voluntarily
and knowingly shutting my eyes to Schopenhauer's
blind will to morality at a time when I had become
sufficiently clear-sighted about morality; also for
deceiving myself about Richard Wagner's incurable
romanticism, as if it were a beginning and not an
end ; also about the Greeks, also about the Germans
and their future—and there would still probably
be quite a long list of such alsos? Supposing,
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
PREFACE. 3
however, that this were all true and that I were
reproached with good reason, what do you know,
what could you know as to how much artifice of
self-preservation, how much rationality and higher
protection there is in such self-deception,—and
how much falseness I still require in order to allow
myself again apd again the luxury of my sincerity?
. . . In short, I still live; and life, in spite of
ourselves, is not devised by morality; it demands
illusion, it lives by illusion . . . but There!
I am already beginning again and doing what I
have always done, old immoralist and bird-catcher
that I am,—I am talking un-morally, ultra-morally,
"beyond good and evil "? . . .
Thus then, when I found it necessary, I invented
once on a time the " free spirits," to whom this
discouragingly encouraging book with the title
Human, all-too-Human, is dedicated. There are
no such ". free spirits" nor have there been such,
but, as already said, I then required them for
company to keep me cheerful in the midst of evils
(sickness, loneliness, foreignness, — acedia, inac-
tivity) as brave companions and ghosts with whom
I could laugh and gossip when so inclined and send
to the devil when they became bores,—as com-
pensation for the lack of friends. That such free
spirits will be possible some day, that our Europe
will have such bold and cheerful wights amongst
her sons of to-morrow and the day after to-morrow,
actually and bodily, and not merely, as in my case,
## p. 4 (#26) ###############################################
4 PREFACE.
as the shadows of a hermit's phantasmagoria—
/ should be the last to doubt thereof. Already
I see them coming, slowly, slowly; and perhaps I
am doing something to hasten their coming when
I describe in advance under what auspices I see
them originate, and upon what paths I see them
come.
One may suppose that a spirit in which the
type "free spirit" is to become fully mature and
sweet, has had its decisive event in a great emanci-
pation, and that it was all the more fettered pre-
viously and apparently bound for ever to its corner
and pillar. What is it that binds most strongly?
What cords are almost unrendable? In men of
a lofty and select type it will be their duties; the
reverence which is suitable to youth, respect and
tenderness for all that is time-honoured and worthy,
gratitude to the land which bore them, to the hand
which led them, to the sanctuary where they learnt
to adore,—their most exalted moments themselves
will bind them most effectively, will lay upon them
the most enduring obligations. For those who are
thus bound the great emancipation comes suddenly,
like an earthquake; the young soul is all at once
convulsed, unloosened and extricated—it does not
itself know what is happening. An impulsion
and compulsion sway and over-master it like a
command; a will and a wish awaken, to go forth
on their course, anywhere, at any cost; a violent,
dangerous curiosity about an undiscovered world
flames and flares in every sense. "Better to
## p. 5 (#27) ###############################################
PREFACE. 5
die than live here "—says the imperious voice and
seduction, and this "here," this "at home" is all
that the soul has hitherto loved! A sudden fear
and suspicion of that which it loved, a flash of
disdain for what was called its " duty," a rebellious,
arbitrary, volcanically throbbing longing for travel,
foreignness, estrangement, coldness, disenchant-
ment, glaciation, a hatred of love, perhaps a sacri-
legious clutch and look backwards, to where it
hitherto adored and loved, perhaps a glow of
shame at what it was just doing, and at the same
time a rejoicing that it was doing it, an intoxicated,
internal, exulting thrill which betrays a triumph
—a triumph? Over what? Over whom? An
enigmatical, questionable, doubtful triumph, but
the first triumph nevertheless ;—such evil and
painful incidents belong to . the history of the great
emancipation. It is, at the same time, a disease
which may destroy the man, this first outbreak of
power and will to self-decision, self-valuation, this
will to free will; and how much disease is mani-
fested in the wild attempts and eccentricities by
which the liberated and emancipated one now
seeks to demonstrate his mastery over things! He
roves about raging with unsatisfied longing; what-
ever he captures has to suffer for the dangerous
tension of his pride; he tears to pieces whatever
attracts him. With a malicious laugh he twirls'
round whatever he finds veiled or guarded by a
sense of shame; he tries how these things look
when turned upside down. It is a matter of
arbitrariness with him, and pleasure in arbitrariness,
if he now perhaps bestow his favour on what
## p. 6 (#28) ###############################################
6 PREFACE.
had hitherto a bad repute,—if he inquisitively
and temptingly haunt what is specially forbidden.
In the background of his activities and wanderings
—for he is restless and aimless in his course as in
a desert—stands the note of interrogation of an
increasingly dangerous curiosity. "Cannot all
valuations be reversed? And is good perhaps
evil? And God only an invention and artifice
of the devil? Is everything, perhaps, radically
false? And if we are the deceived, are we not
thereby also deceivers? Must we not also be
|__deceivers ? "—Such thoughts lead and mislead
r<" him more and more, onward and away. Solitude
li=- encircles and engirdles him, always more threaten-
ing, more throttling, more heart-oppressing, that
terrible goddess and mater sceva cupidinum—but
who knows nowadays what solitude is? . . .
From this morbid solitariness, from the desert
of such years of experiment, it is still a long way
to the copious, overflowing safety and soundness
which does not care to dispense with disease
itself as an instrument and angling-hook of
knowledge;—to that mature freedom of spirit
which is equally self-control and discipline of
the heart, and gives access to many and opposed
modes of thought;—to that inward comprehen-
siveness and daintiness of superabundance, which
excludes any danger of the spirit's becoming
enamoured and lost in its own paths, and
## p. 7 (#29) ###############################################
PREFACE. 7
lying intoxicated in some corner or other; to that
excess of plastic, healing, formative, and restorative
powers, which is exactly the sign of splendid
health, that excess which gives the free spirit
the dangerous prerogative of being entitled to
live by experiments and offer itself to adventure;
the free spirit's prerogative of mastership! Long
years of convalescence may lie in between, years
full of many-coloured, painfully-enchanting magi-
cal transformations, curbed and led by a tough
will to health, which often dares to dress and
disguise itself as actual health. There is a middle
condition therein, which a man of such a fate
never calls to mind later on without emotion; a
pale, delicate light and a sunshine-happiness are
peculiar to him, a feeling of bird-like freedom,
prospect, and haughtiness, a tertium quid in
which curiosity and gentle disdain are combined.
A "free spirit"—this cool expression does good
in every condition, it almost warms. One no
longer lives, in the fetters of love and hatred,
without Yea, without Nay, voluntarily near,
voluntarily distant, preferring to escape, to turn
aside, to flutter forth, to fly up and away; one
is fastidious like every one who has once seen
an immense variety beneath him,—and one has
become the opposite of those who trouble them-
selves about things which do not concern them.
In fact, it is nothing but things which now
concern the free spirit,—and how many things ! —
which no longer trouble him!
## p. 7 (#30) ###############################################
6 PREFACE.
I
had hitherto a bad repute,—if he inquisitively
and temptingly haunt what is specially forbidden.
In the background of his activities and wanderings
—for he is restless and aimless in his course as in
a desert—stands the note of interrogation of an
increasingly dangerous curiosity. "Cannot all
valuations be reversed? And is good perhaps
evil? And God only an invention and artifice
of the devil? Is everything, perhaps, radically
false? And if we are the deceived, are we not
thereby also deceivers? Must we not also be
I deceivers ? "—Such thoughts lead and mislead
him more and more, onward and away. Solitude
encircles and engirdles him, always more threaten-
ing, more throttling, more heart-oppressing, that
terrible goddess and mater s<Eva cupidinunt—but
who knows nowadays what solitude is? . . .
From this morbid solitariness, from the desert
of such years of experiment, it is still a long way
to the copious, overflowing safety and soundness
which does not care to dispense with disease
itself as an instrument and angling-hook of
knowledge;—to that mature freedom of spirit
which is equally self-control and discipline of
the heart, and gives access to many and opposed
modes of thought ;—to that inward comprehen-
siveness and daintiness of superabundance, which
excludes any danger of the spirit's becoming
enamoured and lost in its own paths, and
## p. 7 (#31) ###############################################
PREFACE. 7
lying intoxicated in some corner or other; to that
excess of plastic, healing, formative, and restorative
powers, which is exactly the sign of splendid
health, that excess which gives the free spirit
the dangerous prerogative of being entitled to
live by experiments and offer itself to adventure;
the free spirit's prerogative of mastership! Long
years of convalescence may lie in between, years
full of many-coloured, painfully-enchanting magi-
cal transformations, curbed and led by a tough
will to health, which often dares to dress and
disguise itself as actual health. There is a middle
condition therein, which a man of such a fate
never calls to mind later on without emotion; a
pale, delicate light and a sunshine-happiness are
peculiar to him, a feeling of bird-like freedom,
prospect, and haughtiness, a tertium quid in
which curiosity and gentle disdain are combined.
A "free spirit"—this cool expression does good
in every condition, it almost warms. One no
longer lives, in the fetters of love and hatred,
without Yea, without Nay, voluntarily near,
voluntarily distant, preferring to escape, to turn
aside, to flutter forth, to fly up and away; one
is fastidious like every one who has once seen
an immense variety beneath him,—and one has
become the opposite of those who trouble them-
selves about things which do not concern them.
In fact, it is nothing but things which now
concern the free spirit,—and how many things ! —
which no longer trouble him!
## p. 7 (#32) ###############################################
6 PREFACE.
I
L
had hitherto a bad repute,—if he inquisitively
and temptingly haunt what is specially forbidden.
In the background of his activities and wanderings
—for he is restless and aimless in his course as in
a desert—stands the note of interrogation of an
increasingly dangerous curiosity. "Cannot all
valuations be reversed? And is good perhaps
evil? And God only an invention and artifice
of the devil? Is everything, perhaps, radically
false? And if we are the deceived, are we not
thereby also deceivers?
Must we not also be
I deceivers ? "—Such thoughts lead and mislead
him more and more, onward and away. Solitude
encircles and engirdles him, always more threaten-
ing, more throttling, more heart-oppressing, that
terrible goddess and mater sceva cupidinum—but
who knows nowadays what solitude is? . . .
4.
From this morbid solitariness, from the desert
of such years of experiment, it is still a long way
to the copious, overflowing safety and soundness
which does not care to dispense with disease
itself as an instrument and angling-hook of
knowledge;—to that mature freedom of spirit
which is equally self-control and discipline of
the heart, and gives access to many and opposed
modes of thought ;—to that inward comprehen-
siveness and daintiness of superabundance, which
excludes any danger of the spirit's becoming
enamoured and lost in its own paths, and
## p. 7 (#33) ###############################################
PREFACE. 7
lying intoxicated in some corner or other; to that
excess of plastic, healing, formative, and restorative
powers, which is exactly the sign of splendid
health, that excess which gives the free spirit
the dangerous prerogative of being entitled to
live by experiments and offer itself to adventure;
the free spirit's prerogative of mastership! Long
years of convalescence may lie in between, years
full of many-coloured, painfully-enchanting magi-
cal transformations, curbed and led by a tough
will to health, which often dares to dress and
disguise itself as actual health. There is a middle
condition therein, which a man of such a fate
never calls to mind later on without emotion; a
pale, delicate light and a sunshine-happiness are
peculiar to him, a feeling of bird-like freedom,
prospect, and haughtiness, a tertium quid in
which curiosity and gentle disdain are combined.
A "free spirit"—this cool expression does good
in every condition, it almost warms. One no
longer lives, in the fetters of love and hatred,
without Yea, without Nay, voluntarily near,
voluntarily distant, preferring to escape, to turn
aside, to flutter forth, to fly up and away; one
is fastidious like every one who has once seen
an immense variety beneath him,—and one has
become the opposite of those who trouble them-
selves about things which do not concern them.
In fact, it is nothing but things which now
concern the free spirit,—and how many things ! —
which no longer trouble him!
## p. 8 (#34) ###############################################
PREFACE.
5-
A step further towards recovery, and the free
spirit again draws near to life; - slowly, it is
true, and almost stubbornly, almost distrustfully.
Again it grows warmer around him, and, as it
were, yellower; feeling and sympathy gain depth,
thawing winds of every kind pass lightly over him.
He almost feels as if his eyes were now first opened
to what is near. He marvels and is still; where
has he been? The near and nearest things, how
changed they appear to him! What a bloom and
magic they have acquired meanwhile! He looks
back gratefully,—grateful to his wandering, his
austerity and self-estrangement, his far-sightedness
and his bird-like flights in cold heights. What a
good thing that he did not always stay " at home,"
"by himself," like a sensitive, stupid tenderling.
He has been beside himself, there is no doubt. He
now sees himself for the first time,—and what sur-
prises he feels thereby! What thrills unexperienced
hitherto! What joy even in the weariness, in the
old illness, in the relapses of the convalescent!
How he likes to sit still and suffer, to practise
patience, to lie in the sun! Who is as familiar as
he with the joy of winter, with the patch of sun-
shine upon the wall! They are the most grateful
animals in the world, and also the most un-
assuming, these lizards of convalescents with
their faces half-turned towards life once more:—
there are those amongst them who never let a
day pass without hanging a little hymn of praise
on its trailing fringe. And, speaking seriously, it
## p. 9 (#35) ###############################################
PREFACE. 9
is a radical cure for all pessimism (the well-known
disease of old idealists and falsehood-mongers) to
become ill after the manner of these free spirits,
to remain ill a good while, and then grow well (I
mean "better") for a still longer period. It is
wisdom, practical wisdom, to prescribe even health
for one's self for a long time only in small doses.
About this time it may at last happen, under
the sudden illuminations of still disturbed and
changing health, that the enigma of that great
emancipation begins to reveal itself to the free,
and ever freer, spirit,—that enigma which had
hitherto lain obscure, questionable, and almost
intangible, in his memory. If for a long time he
scarcely dared to ask himself, "Why so apart?
So alone? denying everything that I revered?
denying reverence itself? Why this hatred, this
suspicion, this severity towards my own virtues? "
—he now dares and asks the questions aloud, and
already hears something like an answer to them—
"Thou shouldst become master over thyself and
master also of thine own virtues. Formerly they
were thy masters; but they are only entitled to
be thy tools amongst other tools. Thou shouldst
obtain power over thy pro and contra, and learn
how to put them forth and withdraw them again
in accordance with thy higher purpose. Thou
shouldst learn how to take the proper perspective
of every valuation—the shifting, distortion, and
apparent teleology of the horizons and everything
## p. 10 (#36) ##############################################
IO PREFACE.
/
that belongs to perspective; also the amount of
stupidity which opposite values involve, and all
the intellectual loss with which every pro and every
contra has to be paid for. /Thou shouldst learn
how much necessary injustice there is in every for
and against, injustice as inseparable from life, and,
life itself as conditioned by the perspective and its
injustice. ) Above all thou shouldst see clearly
where the injustice is always greatest:—namely,
where life has developed most punily, restrictedly,
necessitously, and incipiently, and yet cannot help
regarding itself as the purpose and standard of
things, and for the sake of self-preservation, secretly,
basely, and continuously wasting away and calling
in question the higher, greater, and richer,—thou
shouldst see clearly the problem of gradation of
rank, and how power and right and amplitude of
perspective grow up together. Thou shouldst"
"But enough; the free spirit knows henceforth
which " thou shalt" he has obeyed, and also what
he can now do, what he only now—may do. . . .
7-
Thus doth the free spirit answer himself with
regard to the riddle of emancipation, and ends
therewith, while he generalises his case, in order
thus to decide with regard to his experience. "As
it has happened to me," he says to himself," so must
it happen to every one in whom a mission seeks
to embody itself and to ' come into the world. '"
The secret power and necessity of this mission will
operate in and upon the destined individuals like
## p. 11 (#37) ##############################################
PREFACE. 11
an unconscious pregnancy,—long before they have
had the mission itself in view and have known its
name. Our destiny rules over us, even when we
are not yet aware of it; it is the future that makes
laws for our to-day. Granted that it is the problem
of the gradations of rank, of which we may say
that it is our problem, we free spirits; now only
in the midday of our life do we first understand
what preparations, detours, tests, experiments,
and disguises the problem needed, before it was
permitted to rise before us, and how we had first
to experience the most manifold and opposing
conditions of distress and happiness in soul
and body, as adventurers and circumnavigators of
the inner world called "man," as surveyors of all
the "higher" and the "one-above-another," also
called "man "—penetrating everywhere, almost
without fear, rejecting nothing, losing nothing,
tasting everything, cleansing everything from all
that is accidental, and, as it were, sifting it out
—until at last we could say, we free spirits,
"Here—a new problem! Here a long ladder,
the rungs of which we ourselves have sat upon
and mounted,—which we ourselves at some time
have been! Here a higher place, a lower place,
an under-us, an immeasurably long order, a
hierarchy which we see; here—our problem! "
No psychologist or augur will be in doubt for a
moment as to what stage of the development just
described the following book belongs (or is assigned
## p. 12 (#38) ##############################################
12 v-'- PREFACE.
to). But where are these psychologists nowa-
days? In France, certainly; perhaps in Russia;
assuredly not in Germany. Reasons are not lack-
ing why the present-day Germans could still even
count this as an honour to them—bad enough,
surely, for one who in this respect is un-German
in disposition and constitution! This German
book, which has been able to find readers in a
wide circle of countries and nations—it has been
about ten years going its rounds—and must
understand some sort of music and piping art,
by means of which even coy foreign ears are
seduced into listening,—it is precisely in Germany
that this book has been most negligently read, and
worst listened to; what is the reason ? " It de-
mands too much," I have been told, " it appeals to
men free from the pressure of coarse duties, it wants
refined and fastidious senses, it needs superfluity—
superfluity of time, of clearness of sky and heart,
of otium in the boldest sense of the term :—purely
good things, which we Germans of to-day do not
possess and therefore cannot give. " After such a
polite answer my philosophy advises me to be
silent and not to question further; besides, in cer-
tain cases, as the proverb points out, one only
remains a philosopher by being—silent. *
Nice, Spring 1886.
* An allusion to the mediaeval Latin distich:
O si tacuisses,
Philosophus mansisses. —J. M. K.
## p. 13 (#39) ##############################################
HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
FIRST DIVISION.
FIRST AND LAST THINGS.
Chemistry of Ideas and Sensations. —Philo-
sophical problems adopt in almost all matters the
same form of question as they did two thousand
years ago; how can anything spring from its
opposite? for instance, reason out of unreason, the
sentient out of the dead, logic out of unlogic, dis-
interested contemplation out of covetous willing,
life for others out of egoism, truth out of error?
Metaphysical philosophy has helped itself over
those difficulties hitherto by denying the origin of
one thing in another, and assuming a miraculous
origin for more highly valued things, immediately
out of the kernel and essence of the "thing in
itself. " ") Historical philosophy, on the contrary,
which is no longer to be thought of as separate
from physical science, the youngest of all philo-
sophical methods, has ascertained in single cases
(and presumably this will happen in everything)
## p. 14 (#40) ##############################################
14 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
that there are no opposites except in the usual
exaggeration of the popular or metaphysical point
of view, and that an error of reason lies at the
bottom of the opposition: according to this ex-
planation, strictly understood, there is neither an
unegoistical action nor an entirely disinterested
point of view, they are both only sublimations in
which the fundamental element appears almost
evaporated, and is only to be discovered by the
closest observation. All that we require, and which
can only be given us by the present advance of
the single sciences, is a chemistry of the moral,
religious, aesthetic ideas and sentiments, as also of
those emotions which we experience in ourselves
both in the great and in the small phases of social
and intellectual intercourse, and even in solitude;
but what if this chemistry should result in the fact
that also in this case the most beautiful colours
have been obtained from base, even despised
materials? Would" many be inclined to pursue
such examinations? Humanity likes to put all
questions as to origin and beginning out of its
mind; must one not be almost dehumanised to
feel a contrary tendency in one's self?
2.
Inherited Faults of Philosophers. —All
philosophers have the common fault that they
start from man in his present state and hope to
attain their end by an analysis of him. Uncon-
sciously they look upon " man " as an (Sterna Veritas,
as a thing unchangeable in all commotion, as a sure
## p. 15 (#41) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 15
standard of things. But everything that the philo-
sopher says about man is really nothing more than
testimony about the man of a very limited space
of time. A lack of the historical sense is the
hereditary fault of all philosophers; many, indeed,
unconsciously mistake the very latest variety of man,
such as has arisen under the influence of certain
religions, certain political events, for the permanent
form from which one must set out. They will
not learn that man has developed, that his faculty
of knowledge has developed also; whilst for some
of them the entire world is spun out of this faculty
of knowledge. Now everything essential in human! '
development happened in pre-historic times, long,
before those four thousand years which we know|
something of; man may not have changed much
during this time. But the philosopher sees " in-
stincts " in the present man and takes it for granted
that this is one of the unalterable facts of man-
kind, and, consequently, can furnish a key to the
understanding of the world; the entire teleology
is so constructed that man of the last four thousand
years is spoken of as an eternal being, towards
which all things in the world have from the be-
ginning a natural direction. But everything has
evolved; there are no eternal facts, as there are
likewise no absolute truths. Therefore, historical
philosophising is henceforth necessary, and with it
the virtue of diffidence.
3-
Appreciation of Unpretentious Truths. It is a mark of a higher culture to value the
## p. 16 (#42) ##############################################
l6 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
little unpretentious truths, which have been found
by means of strict method, more highly than the
joy-diffusing and dazzling errors which spring from
metaphysical and artistic times and peoples. First
of all one has scorn on the lips for the former, as
if here nothing could have equal privileges with
anything else, so unassuming, simple, bashful,
apparently discouraging are they, so beautiful,
stately, intoxicating, perhaps even animating, are
the others. But the hardly attained, the certain,
the lasting, and therefore of great consequence for
all wider knowledge, is still the higher; to keep
one's self to that is manly and shows bravery, sim-
plicity, and forbearance. Gradually not only single
individuals but the whole of mankind will be
raised to this manliness, when it has at last
accustomed itself to the higher appreciation of
durable, lasting knowledge, and has lost all belief
in inspiration and the miraculous communication
of truths. Respecters of forms, certainly, with
their standard of the beautiful and noble, will first
of all have good reasons for mockery, as soon as
the appreciation of unpretentious truths, and the
scientific spirit, begin to obtain the mastery; but
only because their, eye has either not yet recog-
nised the charm of the simplest form, or because
men educated in that spirit are not yet completely
and inwardly saturated by it, so that they still
thoughtlessly imitate old forms (and badly enough,
as one does who no longer cares much about the
matter). Formerly the spirit was not occupied
with strict thought, its earnestness then lay in
the spinning out of symbols and forms. This is
## p. 17 (#43) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 17
changed; that earnestness in the symbolical has
become the mark of a lower culture. As our arts
themselves grow evermore intellectual, our senses
more spiritual, and as, for instance, people now
judge concerning what sounds well to the senses
quite differently from how they did a hundred
years ago, so the. forms of our life grow ever
more spiritual, to the eye of older ages perhaps
uglier, but only because it is incapable of perceiv-
ing how the kingdom of the inward, spiritual
beauty constantly grows deeper and wider, and to
what extent the inner intellectual look may be of
more importance to us all than the most beautiful
bodily frame and the. noblest architectural structure.
4-
Astrology and the Like. —It is probable
that the objects of religious, moral, aesthetic and
logical sentiment likewise belong only to the sur-
face of things, while man willingly believes that
here, at least, he has touched the heart of the
world; he deceives himself, because those things
enrapture him so profoundly, and make him so pro-
foundly unhappy, and he therefore shows the same
pride here as in astrology. For astrology believes
that the firmament moves round the destiny of
man; the moral man, however, takes it for granted
that what he has essentially at heart must also be
the essence and heart of things.
Misunderstanding of Dreams. —In the ages i
of a rude and primitive civilisation man believed I
VOL. i. B
## p. 18 (#44) ##############################################
18 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
that in dreams he became acquainted with a second
actual world; herein lies the origin of all meta-
physics. Without dreams there could have been
found no reason for a division of the world. The
distinction, too, between soul and body is connected
with the most ancient comprehension of dreams,
also the supposition of an imaginary soul-body,
therefore the origin of all belief in spirits, and
probably also the belief in gods. "The dead
continues to live, for he appears to the living
in a dream": thus men reasoned of old for
thousands and thousands of years.
The Scientific Spirit partially but not
wholly Powerful. —The smallest subdivisions
of science taken separately are dealt with purely
in relation to themselves,—the general, great
sciences, on the contrary, regarded as a whole, call
up the question—certainly a very non-objective
one—" Wherefore? To what end? " It is this
utilitarian consideration which causes them to be
dealt with less impersonally when taken as a
whole than when considered in their various parts.
In philosophy, above all, as the apex of the entire
pyramid of science, the question as to the utility of
knowledge is involuntarily brought forward, and
every philosophy has the unconscious intention of
ascribing to it the greatest usefulness. For this
reason there is so much high-flying metaphysics
in all philosophies and such a shyness of the
apparently unimportant solutions of physics; for
*
## p. 19 (#45) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 19
the importance of knowledge for life must appear
as great as possible. Here is the antagonism
between the separate provinces of science and
philosophy, The latter desires, what art does, to
give the greatest possible depth and meaning to
life and actions; in the former one seeks know-
ledge and nothing further, whatever may emerge
thereby. So far there has been no philosopher in
whose hands philosophy has not grown into an
apology for knowledge; on this point, at least,
every one is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness
must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all
tyrannised over by logic, and this is optimism—in
its essence.
7-
The Kill-joy in Science. — Philosophy
separated from science when it asked the question,
"Which is the knowledge of the world and of life
which enables man to live most happily? " This
happened in the Socratic schools; the veins of
scientific investigation were bound up by the
point of view of happiness,—and are so still.
Pneumatic Explanation of Nature. —
Metaphysics explains the writing of Nature, so to
speak,pneumatically, as the Church and her learned
men formerly did with the Bible. A great deal
of understanding is required to apply to Nature
the same method of strict interpretation as the
philologists have now established for all books,
## p. 20 (#46) ##############################################
20 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
with the intention of clearly understanding what
the text means, but not suspecting a double sense
or even taking it for granted. Just, however, as
with regard to books, the bad art of interpretation
is by no means overcome, and in the most
cultivated society one still constantly comes across
the remains of allegorical and mystic interpretation,
so it is also with regard to Nature, indeed it is
even much worse.
9-.
The Metaphysical World. —It is true that
there might be a metaphysical world; the absolute
possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We
look at everything through the human head and
cannot cut this head off; while the question
remains, What would be left of the world if it had
been cut off? This is a purely scientific problem,
and one not very likely to trouble mankind;
but everything which has hitherto made meta-
physical suppositions valuable, terrible, delightful
for man, what has produced them, is passion, error,
and self-deception; the very worst methods of
knowledge, not the best, have taught belief therein.
When these methods have been discovered as the
foundation of all existing religions and meta-
physics, they have been refuted. Then there still
always remains that possibility; but there is
nothing to be done with it, much less is it possible
to let happiness, salvation, and life depend on the
spider-thread of such a possibility. For nothing
could be said of the metaphysical world but that
it would be a different condition, a condition in-
## p. 21 (#47) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 21
accessible and incomprehensible to us; it would
be a thing of negative qualities. Were the
existence of such a world ever so well proved, the
fact would nevertheless remain that it would be
precisely the most irrelevant of all forms of
knowledge: more irrelevant than the knowledge
of the chemical analysis of water to the sailor in
danger in a storm.
IO.
The Harmlessness of Metaphysics in the
Future. —Directly the origins of religion, art,
and morals have been so described that one can
perfectly explain them without having recourse to
metaphysical concepts at the beginning and in the
course of the path, the strongest interest in the
purely theoretical problem of the " thing-in-itself"
and the "phenomenon" ceases. For however it
may be here, with religion, art, and morals we do
not touch the "essence of the world in itself" ; we
are in the domain of representation, no " intuition"
can carry us further. With the greatest calmness
we shall leave the question as to how our own
conception of the world can differ so widely from
the revealed essence of the world, to physiology
and the history of the evolution of organisms and
ideas.
11.
'Language as a Presumptive Science. —
The importance of language for the development
of culture lies in the fact that in language man has
## p. 22 (#48) ##############################################
22 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
placed a world of his own beside the other, a
position which he deemed so fixed that he might
therefrom lift the rest of the world off its hinges,
and make himself master of it. Inasmuch as
man has believed in the ideas and names of things
as aterncB veritates for a great length of time, he
has acquired that pride by which he has raised
himself above the animal; he really thought that
in language he possessed the knowledge of the
world. The maker of language was not modest
enough to think that he only gave designations to
things, he believed rather that with his words he
expressed the widest knowledge of the things; in
reality language is the first step in the endeavour
after science. Here also it is belief in ascertained
truth, from which the mightiest sources of strength
have flowed. Much later—only now—it is dawn-
ing upon men that they have propagated a
tremendous error in their belief in language.
Fortunately it is now too late to reverse the
development of reason, which is founded upon that
belief. Logic, also, is founded upon suppositions
to which nothing in the actual world corresponds,—
for instance, on the supposition of the equality of
things, and the identity of the same thing at
different points of time,—but that particular
science arose out of the contrary belief (that such
things really existed in the actual world). It is
the same with mathematics, which would certainly
not have arisen if it had been known from the
beginning that in Nature there are no exactly
straight lines, no real circle, no absolute standard
of size.
## p. 23 (#49) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 23
12.
Dream and Culture. —The function of the
brain which is most influenced by sleep is the
memory; not that it entirely ceases; but it is
brought back to a condition of imperfection, such as
everyone may have experienced in pre-historic times,
whether asleep or awake. Arbitrary and confused
as it is, it constantly confounds things on the
ground of the most fleeting resemblances; but
with the same arbitrariness and confusion the
ancients invented their mythologies, and even at
the present day travellers are accustomed to
remark how prone the savage is to forgetfulness,
how, after a short tension of memory, his mind
begins to sway here and there from sheer weariness
and gives forth lies and nonsense. But in dreams
we all resemble the savage; bad recognition and
erroneous comparisons are the reasons of the bad
conclusions, of which we are guilty in dreams: so
that, when we clearly recollect what we have
dreamt, we are alarmed at ourselves at harbour-
ing so much foolishness within us. The perfect
distinctness of all dream-representations, which
pre-suppose absolute faith in their reality, recall
the conditions that appertain to primitive man,
in whom hallucination was extraordinarily frequent,
and sometimes simultaneously seized entire com-
munities, entire nations. Therefore, in sleep and
in dreams we once more carry out the task of
early humanity.
/
## p. 24 (#50) ##############################################
24 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
13-
The Logic of Dreams. —In sleep our nervous
system is perpetually excited by numerous inner
occurrences; nearly all the organs are disjointed
and in a state of activity, the blood runs its
turbulent course, the position of the sleeper causes
pressure on certain limbs, his coverings influence
his sensations in various ways, the stomach digests
and by its movements it disturbs other organs,
the intestines writhe, the position of the head
occasions unaccustomed play of muscles, the feet,
unshod, not pressing upon the floor with the soles,
occasion the feeling of the unaccustomed just as
does the different clothing of the whole body:
all this, according to its daily change and extent,
excites by its extraordinariness the entire system
to the very functions of the brain;, and thus there
are a hundred occasions for the spirit to be sur-
prised and to seek for the reasons of this excita-
tion ;—the dream, however, is the seeking and
representing of the causes of those excited sensa-
tions,—that is, of the supposed causes. A person
who, for instance, binds his feet with two straps
will perhaps dream that two serpents are coiling
round his feet; this is first hypothesis, then a
belief, with an accompanying mental picture and
interpretation—" These serpents must be the causa
of those sensations which I, the sleeper, experi-
ence,"—so decides the mind of the sleeper. The
immediate past, so disclosed, becomes to him the
present through his excited imagination. Thus
every one knows from experience how quickly the
## p. 25 (#51) ##############################################
FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 2$
dreamer weaves into his dream a loud sound that
he hears, such as the ringing of bells or the firing
of cannon, that is to say, explains it from after-
wards so that he first thinks he experiences the
producing circumstances and then that sound.
But how does it happen that the mind of the
dreamer is always so mistaken, while the same
mind when awake is accustomed to be so tem-
perate, careful, and sceptical with regard to its
hypotheses? so that the first random hypo-
thesis for the explanation of a feeling suffices for
him to believe immediately in its truth?
