Ecce Homo

How One Becomes

What One Is
Nietzsche

Why I am So Wise
1

The happiness of my existence, its unique character perhaps, lies in

its fatefulness: expressing it in the form of a riddle, as my own father
I am already dead, as my own mother I still live and, grow old. This
double origin, taken as it were from the highest and lowest rungs of
the ladder of life, at once a decadence and a beginning, this, if
anything, explains that neutrality, that freedom from partisanship
with regard to the general problem of life, which perhaps
distinguishes me. I am more sensitive to the first indications of
ascent and descent than any man that has yet lived. In this domain I
am a master par excellence-I know both sides, for I am both sides. My
father died in his thirty-sixth year: he was delicate, lovable, and
morbid, like one fated for but a short life-a gracious reminder of life
rather than life itself. In the same year that his life declined mine also
declined: in my thirty-sixth year my vitality reached its lowest point-I
still lived, but I could not see three paces before me. At that time-it
was the year i879-1 resigned my professorship at Base], lived
through the summer like a shadow in St. Moritz, and spent the
following winter, the most sunless of my life, like a shadow in
Naumburg. I was then at my lowest ebb. The Wanderer and His
Shadow was the product of this period. There is no doubt that I was
familiar with shadows then. The following winter, my first winter in
Genoa, brought with it that sweetness and spirituality which is almost
inseparable from extreme poverty of blood and muscle, in the shape
of The Dawn of Day. The perfect brightness and cheerfulness, the
intellectual exuberance even, that this work reflects, coincide, in my
case, not only with the most profound bodily weakness, but also with
an excess of suffering. In the midst of the agony caused by a seventy-
two hour headache and violent attacks of nausea, I was possessed of
extraordinary dialectical clearness, and in utter cold blood I then
thought out things, for which, in my more healthy moments, I am not
enough of a climber, not subtle enough, not cold enough. My readers
may know to what extent I consider dialectic a symptom of
decadence, as, for example, in the most famous case of all-that of
Socrates. All the morbid disturbances of the intellect, even that semi-
stupor which follows fever, are to this day strangers to me; and to
inform myself concerning their nature and frequency, I had to resort
to learned works. My circulation is slow. No one has ever been able to
detect fever in me. A doctor who treated me for some time as a nerve
patient finally declared: "No! there's nothing the matter with your
nerves; I myself am the nervous one." They have been unable to
discover any local degeneration in me, or any organic stomach
trouble, however much I may have suffered from profound weakness
of the gastric system as the result of general exhaustion. Even my
eye trouble, which at times approached dangerously near blinding,
was only an effect and not a cause; for, with every improvement of
my general bodily health came a corresponding increase in my power
of vision. An all too long series of years meant recovery to me. But,
sad to say, it also meant relapse, breakdown, periods of decadence.
After this, need I say that I am experienced in questions of
decadence? I know them inside and out. Even that filigree art of
apprehension and comprehension in general, that feeling for
nuances, that psychology of "seeing what is around the comer," and
whatever else I may be able to do, was first learnt then, and is the
specific gift of that period during which everything in me was
subtilized-observation itself, together with all the organs of
observation. To view healthier concepts and values from the
standpoint of the sick, and conversely to view the secret work of the
instinct of decadence out of the abundance and self-confidence of a
rich life-this has been my principal experience, what I have been
longest trained in. If in anything at all, it was in this that I became a
master. To-day my hand is skillful; it has the knack of reversing
perspectives: the first reason perhaps why a Transvaluation of all
Values has been possible to me alone.

Agreed that I am a decadent, I am also the very reverse. Among other

things there is this proof: I always instinctively select the proper
remedy in preference to harmful ones; whereas the decadent, as
such, invariably chooses those remedies which are bad for him. As a
whole I was healthy, but in certain details I was a decadent. The
2
energy with which I forced myself to absolute solitude, and to an
alienation from my customary habits of life; the self-discipline that
forbade me to be pampered, waited on, and doctored-all this betrays
the absolute certainty of my instincts in regard to what at that time
was most needful to me. I placed myself in my own hands, I restored
myself to health: to do this, the first condition of success, as every
physiologist will admit, is that the man be basically sound. A typically
morbid nature cannot become healthy at all, much less by his own
efforts. On the other hand, to an intrinsically sound nature, illness
may even act as a powerful stimulus to life, to an abundance of life. It
is thus that I now regard my long period of illness: it seemed then as
if I had discovered life afresh, my own self included. I tasted all/ good
and even trifling things in a way in which others could not very well
taste them-out of my Will to Health and to Life I made my philosophy.
. . . For I wish this to be understood; it was during those, years of
most lowered vitality that I ceased from being a pessimist: the
instinct of self-recovery bade a philosophy of poverty and
desperation. Now, how are we to recognize Nature's most excellent
human products? They are recognized by the fact that an excellent
man of this sort gladdens our senses; he is carved from a single
block, which is hard, sweet, and fragrant. He enjoys only what is good
for him; his pleasure, his desire, ceases when the limits of what is
good for him are overstepped. He divines remedies against injuries;
he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own advantage;
whatever does not kill him makes him stronger. He instinctively
gathers his material from all he sees, hears, and experiences. He is a
selective principle; he rejects much. He is always in his own company,
whether his intercourse be with books, men or natural scenery; he
honors the things he chooses, the things he acknowledges, the
thing7s he trusts. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that
tardiness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him-he
tests the approaching stimulus - would not think of going toward it.
He believes in neither "ill-fortune" nor "guilt"; he can digest himself
and others; he knows how to forget-he is strong enough to make
everything turn to his own advantage.

Lo then! I am the very reverse of a decadent, for he whom I have just

described is none other than myself.

This double series of experiences, this means of access to two worlds

that seem so far asunder, finds an exact reflection in my own nature-I
have an alter ego: I have a "second" sight, as well as a first. Perhaps I

3
even have a third sight. The very nature of my origin allowed me an
outlook transcending merely local, merely national and limited
horizons; it cost me no effort to be a "good European." On the other
hand, I am perhaps more German than modern Germans-mere
Imperial Germans - can possibly be-I, the last anti-political German.
And yet my ancestors were Polish noblemen: it is owing to them that I
have so much race instinct in my blood-who knows? perhaps even the
liberum veto. When I think of how often I have been accosted as a
Pole when traveling, even by Poles themselves, and how seldom I
have been taken for a German, it seems to me as if I belonged to
those who have but a sprinkling of German in them. But my mother,
Franziska Oehler, is at any rate something very German; as is also my
paternal grandmother, Erdmuthe Krause. The latter spent the whole
of her youth in good old Weimar, not without coming into contact
with Goethe's circle. Her brother, Krause, Professor of Theology in
K6nigsberg, was called to the post of General Superintendent at
Weimar after Herder's death. It is not unlikely that her mother, my
great-grandmother, appears in young Goethe's diary under the name
of "Muthgen." The husband of her second marriage was
Superintendent Nietzsche of Eilenburg. On the 10th of October, 1813,
the year of the great war, when Napoleon with his general staff
entered Eilenburg, she gave birth to a son. As a Saxon, she was a
great admirer of Napoleon, and perhaps I too am so still. My father,
born in 1813, died in 1849. Before taking over the pastorship of the
parish of R6cken, not far from Liltzen, he had lived for some years at
the Castle of Altenburg, where he had charge of the education of the
four princesses. His pupils are the Queen of Hanover, the Grand-
Duchess Constantine, the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, and the
Princess Theresa Of Saxe-Altenburg. He was full of pious respect for
the Prussian King, Frederick William the Fourth, from whom he
obtained his living at Rocken; the events of 1848 caused him great
sorrow. As I was born on the 15th of October, the birthday of the king
above mentioned, I naturally received the Hohenzollern names of
Frederick William. There was at all events one advantage in the
choice of this day: my birthday throughout my entire childhood was a
public holiday. I regard it as a great privilege to have had such a
father: it even seems to me that this exhausts all that I can claim in
the matter of privileges-life, the great yea to life, excepted. What I
owe to him above all is this, that I do not need any special intention,
but merely patience, in order to enter involuntarily into a world of
higher and finer things. There I am at home, there alone does my
profoundest passion have free play. The fact that I almost paid for
this privilege with my life, certainly does not make it a bad bargain.

4
In order to understand even a little of my Zarathustra, perhaps a man
must be situated much as I am myself with one foot beyond life.

I have never understood the art of arousing antagonism (and for this,
too, I may thank my incomparable father), even when it seemed to
me most ,worth while to do so. However unchristian it may seem, I do
not even bear any ill-feeling towards myself. Examine my life as you
may, you will find but seldom-perhaps indeed only once-any trace of
some one's having shown me ill-will; but you might perhaps discover
too many traces of good-will. My experiences even with those with
whom every other man's relations have been disastrous, speak
without exception in their favor; I tame every bear, I can make even
clowns behave well. During the seven years in which I taught Greek
to the upper class of the College at Basel, I never had occasion to
administer a punishment; even the laziest youths were diligent in my
class. Accident has always found me ready for it; I must be
unprepared in order to keep my self-command. I could take any
instrument, even if it be as out of tune as only the instrument "man"
can possibly be and - except when I was ill-I could always succeed in
coaxing from it something worth hearing. And how often have I not
been told by the "instruments" themselves, that they had never
before heard such utterances. . . . Perhaps the most charming
expression of this feeling was that of young Heinrich von Stein, who
died at such an unpardonably early age, and who, after having
considerately secured permission, once appeared in Sils-Maria for a
three days' stay, explaining to every one there that he had not come
because of the Engadine. This excellent person, who with all the
impetuous simplicity of a young Prussian nobleman, had waded deep
into the Wagnerian swamp (and into that of Duhringism besides! ),
seemed during these three days almost transformed by a hurricane of
freedom, like one who has been suddenly raised to his full height and
given wings. Again and again I told him that this was merely the
result of the bracing air; everybody felt the same - one could not
stand 6ooo feet above Bayreuth without feeling it - but he would not
believe me. All this notwithstanding, if I have been the victim of many
a small or even great offense, it was not "will," least of all ill-will, that
caused it; rather, as I have already indicated, it was good-will that
gave me cause to complain, that goodwill which is responsible for no
small amount of mischief in my life. My experience gave me a right to
feel suspicious in regard to all so-called "unselfish" tendencies, in
regard to the whole of "neighborly love" which is ever ready and
waiting with deeds or with advice. It seems to me that they are signs
5
of weakness, examples of the inability to withstand an incitement-it
is only among decedents that this pity is called a virtue. What I
reproach the pitiful with is, that they are too ready to forget
modesty, reverence, and the delicacy of feeling which knows how to
keep at a distance; they forget that this sentimental pity stinks of the
mob, and that it is but a step removed from bad manners-that pitiful
hands may be thrust with destructive results into a great destiny,
into a wounded isolation, and into the privileges that go with great
guilt. The overcoming of pity I reckon among the noble virtues. In the
"Temptation of Zarathustra" I have imagined a case, in which he
hears a great cry of distress, in which pity swoops down upon him like
a last sin, seeking to make him break faith with himself. To remain in
aster over one's self in such circumstances, to keep the sublimity of
one's mission free from the many ignoble and more short-sighted
impulses which so-called unselfish actions excite-this is the test, the
last test perhaps, which a Zarathustra has to undergo-the real proof
of his power.

In yet another respect I am simply my father over again, and as it

were the continuation of his life after an all-too-early death. Like
every man who has never been able to meet his equal, and to whom
the notion of "retaliation" is just as incomprehensible as the notion of
"equal rights," I have forbidden myself all measures of security or
protection and also, naturally, of defense and "justification" in all
cases where I have encountered foolishness, whether trifling or very
great. My form of retaliation is this: as soon as possible I follow up
my encounter with stupidity with a piece of cleverness; by this means
perhaps one may still overtake it. To use an image: I swallow a pot of
jam in order to get rid of a sour taste. . . . just let anybody give me
offense-I shall "retaliate," he may be assured of That: before long I
shall find an opportunity of expressing my thanks to the "offender"
(among other things even for the offense)-or of asking him for
something, which can be more courteous even than giving. It also
seems to me that the rudest word, the rudest letter, is more good-
natured, more honest, than silence. Those who keep silent are almost
always lacking in delicacy and refinement of heart; silence is an
objection; to swallow a grievance necessarily produces a bad temper-
it even upsets the stomach. All silent people are dyspeptic. You may
note that I do not care to see rudeness undervalued; it is by far the
most humane form of contradiction, and, amid modern effeminacy, it
is one of our first virtues. If one is sufficiently rich for it, it may even
be a joy to be wrong. A god descending to this earth could do nothing
6
but wrong -for to take upon one's self guilt, not punishment, is the
first sign of divinity.

Freedom from resentment and the understanding of resentment-who

knows after all how greatly I am indebted to my long illness for these
things? The problem is not exactly simple: a man must have
experienced through both his strength and his weakness. If we are to
bear any grudge against illness and weakness, it is the fact that
along with it there decays the very instinct of recovery, which is the
instinct of defense and of war in man. He does not know how to get
rid of anything, how to finish anything, how to cast anything behind
him. Everything wounds him. People and things obtrude too closely,
all experiences strike too deep, memory is a festering sore. Illness is
a sort of resentment in itself. Against it the invalid has only one great
remedy-I call it Russian fatalism, that unrebellious fatalism with
which the Russian soldier, when a campaign becomes unbearable,
finally lies down in the snow. To accept nothing more-to cease
entirely from reacting. The high sagacity of this fatalism, which is not
always mere courage in the face of death, but which in the most
dangerous circumstances may work toward self-preservation, is
tantamount to a reduction of activity in the vital functions, the
slowing down of which is like a sort of will to hibernate. A few steps
farther in this direction we have the fakir, who will sleep for weeks in
a tomb. . . . Since one would be used up too quickly if one reacted,
one no longer reacts at all: this is the principle. And nothing
consumes a man more quickly than the emotion of resentment.
Mortification, morbid susceptibility, the inability to revenge oneself,
the desire, the thirst for revenge, the concoction of every kind of
poison-for an exhausted man this is surely the most injurious manner
of reacting. It involves a rapid using up of nervous energy, an
abnormal increase of harmful secretions, as, for instance, that of bile
into the stomach. Resentment should above all be forbidden the sick
man -it Is his special danger: unfortunately, however, it is also his
most natural propensity. This was perfectly understood by that
profound physiologist Buddha. His "religion," which it would be better
to call a system of hygiene, to avoid confounding it with so wretched
a thing as Christianity, depended for its effect upon the triumph over
resentment: to free the soul from it-that was the first step towards
recovery. "Not through hostility does hostility end; through friendship
does hostility end": this stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching
this is not the voice of morality, but of physiology. Resentment born
of weakness is harmful to no one more than to the weak man himself-
7
conversely, with a fundamentally rich nature, resentment is a
superfluous feeling, which, if one remains master of it, is almost a
proof of riches. Those readers who know the earnestness with which
my philosophy wages war against the feelings of revenge and rancor,
even to the extent of attacking the doctrine of "free will" (my conflict
with Christianity is only a particular instance of it), will understand
why I wish to emphasize my own personal attitude and the certainty
of my practical instincts precisely in this matter. In my decadent
period, I forbade myself these feelings, because they were harmful;
but as soon as my life had recovered enough riches and pride, I still
forbade myself them, but now because they were beneath me. That
"Russian fatalism" of which I spoke manifested itself in me in such a
way that for years I clung tenaciously to almost unbearable
conditions, places, habitations, and companions,

once chance had placed them in my way-it was better than changing
them, than feeling that they could be changed, than revolting against
them. He who disturbed this fatalism, who tried by force to awaken
me, seemed to me then a mortal enemy in fact, there was danger of
death each time this was done. To think of one's self as a destiny, not
to wish one's self "different"-this, in such circumstances, is the very
highest wisdom.

But war is another thing. I am essentially a warrior. To attack is

instinctive with me. To be able to be an enemy, to be an enemy-this,
perhaps, presupposes a strong nature; in any case it is bound up with
all strong natures. They need resistance, accordingly they seek for it:
the pathos of aggression belongs of necessity to strength as much as
the feelings of revenge and rancor belong to weakness. Woman, for
instance, is revengeful; her weakness involves this passion, just as it
involves her susceptibility to others' distress. The strength of the
aggressor is in a manner determined by the opposition he needs;
every increase of strength betrays itself by a search for a more
formidable opponent - or problem: for a philosopher who is combative
will challenge even problems to a duel. The task is not to overcome
opponents in general, but only those against whom one must pit all
one's strength, skill, and swordsmanship-opponents who are one's
equals. To be the equal of the enemy-this is the first condition of an
honorable duel. Where one despises, one cannot wage war. Where
one commands, where one sees something beneath one, one ought
not to wage war. My war tactics are comprised in four principles:
First, I attack only things that are triumphant-if necessary I wait until

8
they become so. Secondly, I attack only those things against which I
find no allies, against which I stand alone-against which I compromise
only myself. . . . I have never publicly taken a single step which did
not compromise me: that is my criterion of the proper mode of action.
Thirdly, I never attack persons-I make use of a personality merely as
a powerful magnifying-glass,, by means of which I render a general,
but elusive and hardly tangible, evil more visible. In this way I
attacked David Strauss, or more exactly the successful reception
given to a senile book by the cultured classes of Germany thereby
catching this culture red-handed. In this way I attacked Wagner, or
more exactly the falsity or mongrel instincts of our "culture" which
confounds super-refinement with abundance, and decadence with
greatness. Fourthly, I attack only those things from which all
personal differences are excluded, in which any background of
disagreeable experiences is lacking. Indeed, attacking is to me a
proof of good-will and, in certain circumstances, of gratitude. By
means of it, I honor a thing, I distinguish a thing; it is all the same to
me whether I associate my name with that of an institution or a
person, whether I am against or for either. If I wage war against
Christianity, I do so because I have met with no fatalities and
difficulties from that quarter-the most earnest Christians have always
been favorably disposed to me. 1, personally, the severest opponent
of Christianity, am far from holding the individual responsible for
what is the inevitable outcome of long ages.

May I venture to indicate one last trait of my nature, which has

caused me no little difficulty in my intercourse with men? I am gifted
with an utterly uncanny instinct of cleanliness; so that I can ascertain
physiologically-that is to say, smell-the proximity, I may say, the
inmost core, the "entrails" of every human soul. . . . This
sensitiveness has psychological antennae, with which I feel and
handle every secret: the hidden filth at the base of many a human
character which may be the result of base blood, but which may be
superficially overlaid by education, is revealed to me at the first
glance. If my observation has been correct, such people, unbearable
to my sense of cleanliness, also become conscious, on their part, of
the cautiousness resulting from my loathing: and this does not make
them any more fragrant. A rigid attitude of cleanliness towards
myself is the first condition of my existence; I would die in unclean
surroundings-and so I have always accustomed myself to swim,
bathe, and splash about, as it were, incessantly in water, in any kind
of perfectly transparent and shining element. That is why social
9
intercourse is no small trial to my patience; my humanity does not
consist in the fact that I sympathize with the feelings of my fellows,
but that I can endure that very sympathy. . . . My humanity is a
continual self-mastery. But I need solitude-that is to say, recovery,
return to myself, the breathing of free, light, bracing air. . . . The
whole of my Zarathustra is a dithyramb of solitude, or, rightly
understood, of purity. Fortunately, it is not one of "pure foolery"! He
who has an eye for color will call- them diamonds. The loathing of
mankind, of the rabble, was always my greatest danger. . . . Would
you hearken to the words in which Zarathustra speaks concerning
deliverance from loathing?

"What hath happened unto me? How have I freed myself from
loathing? Who hath rejuvenated mine eye? How have I flown to the
height, where no rabble any longer sit at the wells?

"Did my loathing itself create for me wings and fountain-divining

powers? Verily to the loftiest height had I to fly, to find again the well
of delight!

"Oh, I have found it, my brethren! Here, on the loftiest height

bubbleth up for me the well of delight. And there is a life at whose
waters none of the rabble drink with me!

"Almost too violently dost thou flow for me, thou fountain of delight!
And often emptiest thou the goblet again in wanting to fill it

"And yet must I learn to approach thee more modestly: far too
violently doth my heart still flow towards thee:-

"My heart, on which my summer burneth, my short, hot, melancholy,

over-happy summer: how my summer heart longeth for thy coolness

"Past, the lingering distress of my spring! Past, the wickedness of my

snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely, and summer-
noontide!

"A summer on the loftiest height, with cold fountains and blissful
stillness: oh, come, my friends, that the stillness may become more
blissful!

"For this is our height and our home: too high and steep do we here
dwell for all uncleanly ones and their thirst.

10
"Cast but your pure eyes into the well of my delight, my friends! How
could it become turbid thereby! It shall laugh back to you with its
purity.

"On the tree of the future build we our nest; eagles shall bring us
lone ones food in their beaks!

"Verily, no food of which the impure could be fellow-partakers! Fire

would they think they devoured and bum their mouths!

"Verily, no abodes do we here keep ready for the impure! An ice-cave

to their bodies would our happiness be, and to their spirits!

"And as strong winds will we live above them, neighbors to the

eagles, neighbors to the snow, neighbors to the sun: thus live the
strong winds.

"And like a wind will I one day blow amongst them, and with my
spirit, take the breath from their spirit: thus willeth my future.

"Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low places; and this

counsel counseleth he to his enemies and to whatever spitteth and
speweth: 'Take care not to spit against the wind!'"

Why I am So Clever
1

Why do I know more than other people? Why, in general, am I so

clever? I have never pondered over questions that are not really
questions. I have never wasted my strength. I have no experience, for
instance, of actual religious difficulties. I am quite unfamiliar with the
feeling of "sinfulness." Similarly I lack a reliable criterion for
determining a prick of conscience: from what one hears, a prick of
conscience does not seem to me anything very worthy of veneration. .
. . I dislike to leave an action of mine in the lurch; I prefer to omit
utterly the bad result, the consequences, from any problem involving
values. In the face of evil . consequences it is too easy to lose the
proper standpoint from which to view an action. A prick of conscience

11
seems to me a sort of "evil eye." Something that has failed should be
all the more honored just because it has failed-this agrees much
better with my morality.-"God," "the immortality of the soul,"
tcsalvation," a "beyond"-these are mere notions, to which I paid no
attention, on which I never wasted any time, even as a child-though
perhaps I was never enough of a child for that-I am quite
unacquainted with atheism as a result, and still less as an event: with
me it is instinctive. I am too inquisitive, too skeptical, too arrogant ',
to let myself be satisfied with an obvious and crass solution of things.
God is such an obvious and crass solution; a solution which is a sheer
indelicacy to us thinkers-at bottom He is really nothing but a coarse
commandment against us: ye shall not think! . . . I am much more
interested in another question@n which the "salvation of humanity"
depends much more than upon any piece of theological curiosity: the
question of nutrition. For ordinary purposes, it may be formulated
thus: "How precisely must thou nourish thyself in order to attain to
thy maximum of power, or virt@ in the Renaissance style of virtue
free from moralism?" Here my experiences -have been the worst
possible; I am surprised that it took me so long to become aware of
this question and to derive "understanding" from my experiences.
Only the utter worthlessness of our German culture-its "idealism"-can
to some extent explain how it was that precisely in this matter I was
so baclzward that my ignorance was almost saintly. For this "culture"
from first to last teaches one to lose sight of realities and instead to
hunt after thoroughly problematic, so-called ideal goals, as, for
instance, "classical culture"-as if we were not doomed from the start
in our endeavor to unite "classical" and "German" in one concept! It is
even a little comicaljust try to picture a "classically cultured" citizen
of Leipzigl-Indeed, I confess that up to a very mature age, my food
was quite bad@xpressed in moral terms, it was "impersonal,"
"selfless," "altruistic," to the glory of cooks and other fellow-
Christians. For example, it was the Leipzig cookery, together with my
first study of Schopenhauer (i865), that made me gravely renounce
my "Will to Live." To become a malnutritient and to spoil one's
stomach in the process-this problem seemed to me to be admirably
solved by the above-mentioned cookery. (It is said that the year i866
introduced changes into this department.) But as to German cookery
in general-what has it not got on its conscience! Soup before the
meal (still called alla tedesca in the sixteenth century Venetian cook-
books; meat cooked till the flavor is gone, vegetables cooked with fat
and flour; the degeneration of pastries into paper-weights! Add to
this the utterly bestial postprandial habits of the ancients, not merely
of the ancient Germans, and you will begin to understand where
German intellect had its origin-in a disordered intestinal tract. . . .
12
German intellect is indigestion; it can assimilate nothing. But even
English, which, as against German, and indeed French, diet, seems to
me to be a "return to Nature"-that is to say, to cannibalism-is
basically repugnant to my own instincts. It seems to me that it gives
the intellect heavy feet, Englishwomen's feet. . . . The best cooking is
that of Piedmont. Alcohol does not agree with me; one glass of wine
or beer a day is enough to turn life into a valley of tears for me; in
Munich live my antipodes. Admitting that I came to understand this
rationally rather late, yet I had experienced it as a mere child. As a
boy I believed that wine-drinking and tobacco-smoking were at first
but youthful vanities, and later simply bad habits. Perhaps the wine
of Naumburg was partly responsible for this harsh judgment. To
believe that wine was exhilarating, I should have had to be a
Christian-in other words, I should have had to believe in what, for me,
is an absurdity. Strangely enough, whereas small largely diluted
quantities of alcohol depressed me, great quantities made me act
almost like a sailor on shore leave. Even as a boy I showed my
bravado in this respect. To compose and transcribe a long Latin essay
in one night, ambitious of emulating with my pen the austerity and
terseness of my model, Sallust, and to sprinkle the exercise with a
few strong hot toddiesthis procedure, while I was a pupil at the
venerable old school of Pforta, did not disagree in the least with my
physiology, nor perhaps with that of Sallust-however badly it may
have agreed with dignified Pforta. Later on, towards the middle of my
life, I grew more and more decisive in my opposition to spirituous
drinks: 1, an opponent of vegetarianism from experience-like Richard
Wagner, who reconverted in annot with sufficient earnest-ness advise
all more spiritual natures to abstain absolutely from alcohol. Water
answers the same purpose. I prefer those places where there are
numerous opportunities of drinking from running brooks as at Nice,
Turin, Sils, where water follows me wherever I turn. In vino veritas: it
seems that here too I disagree with the rest of the world about the
concept "Truth"-with me spirit moves on the face of the waters. Here
are a few more bits of advice taken from my morality. A heavy meal is
digested more easily than one that is too meager. The first condition
of a good digestion is that the stomach should be active as a whole.
Therefore a man ought to know the size of his stomach. For the sanae
reasons I advise against all those interminable meals, which I call
interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which are to be had at any table
d'hdte. Nothing between meals, no coffee-coffee makes onLgloomy.
Tea is advisable only in the morning-in small quantities, but very
strong. It may be very harmful, and indispose you for the whole day,
if it is the least bit too weak. Here each one has his own standard,
often between the narrowest and most delicate limits. In a very
13
enervating climate it is, inadvisable to begin the day with tea: an
hour before, it is a good thing to have a cup of thick cocoa, free from
oil. Remain seated as little as possible; trust no thought that is not
born in the open, to the accompaniment of free bodily motion-nor one
in which your very muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices
may be traced back to the intestines. A sedentary life, as I have
already said elsewhere, is the real sin against the Holy Ghost.

The question of nutrition is closely related to that of locality and

climate. None of us can live anywhere; and he who has great tasks to
perform, which demand all his energy, has, in this respect, a very
limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodil functions,
affecting their retardation or acceleration, is so great, that a blunder
in the choice of locality and climate may not merely alienate a man
from his duty, but may withhold it from him altogether, so that he
never comes face to face with it. Animal vigor never preponderates in
him to the extent that it lets him attain that exuberant freedom in
which he may say to himself: I, alone, can do that. . . . The slightest
torpidity of the intestines, once it has become a habit, is quite
sufficient to turn a genius into something mediocre, something
"German"; the climate of Germany, alone, is more than enough to
discourage the strongest and most heroic intestines. Upon the tempo
of the body's functions closely depend the agility or the slowness of
the spirit's feet; indeed spirit itself is only a form of these bodily
functions. Enumerate the places in which men of great intellect have
been and are still found; where wit, subtlety, and malice are a part ,of
happiness; where genius is almost necessarily athome: all of them
have an unusually dry atmosphere. Paris, Provence, Florence,
Jerusalem, Athens-these names prove this: that genius is dependent
on dry air, on clear skies-in other words, on rapid organic functions,
on the possibility of contenuously securing for one's self great and
even s quantities of energy. I have a case in mind where a man of
significant and independent mentality became a narrow, craven
specialist, an d a crank, simply because he had no feeling for climate.
I myself might have come to the same end, if illness had not forced
me to reason, and to reflect upon reason realistically. Now long
practice has taught me to read the effects of climatic and
meteorological influences, from self-observation, as though from a
very delicate and reliable instrument, so that I can calculate the
change in the degree of at MOSpheric moisture by means of this
physiological selfobservation, even on so short a journey as that from
Turin to Milan; accordingly I think with horror of the ghastly fact that
14
my whole life, up to the last ten years-the most dangerous years-has
always been spent in the wron- places, places that should have been
precisely forbidden to me. Naumburg, Pforta, Thuringia in general,
Leipzig, Basel, Venice -so many disastrous places for my constitution.
if I have not a single happy memory of my childhood and youth, it
would be foolish to account for this by so-called "moral" causes-as,
for instance, the incontestable lack of sufficient companionship; f or
this lack is present to-day as it was before and it does not prevent me
from being cheerful and brave. But it was ignorance of physiology-
that confounded "Idealism"-that was the real curse of my life, the
superfluous and stupid element in it; from which nothing good could
develop, for which there can be no settlement and no compensation.
The consequences of this "Idealism" explain all the blunders, the
great aberrations of instinct, and the modest specializations" which
diverted me from my life-task; as, for instance, the fact that I became
a philologist-why not at least a doctor or anything else that might
have opened my eyes? During my stay at Basel, my whole intellectual
routine, including my daily schedule, was an utterly senseless abuse
of extraordinary powers, without any sort of compensation for the
strength I spent, without even a thought of its exhaustion and the
problem of replacement. I lacked that subtle egoism, the protection
that an imperative instinct gives; I regarded all men as my equals, I
was 4@disinterested," I forgot my distance from others-in short, I was
in a condition for which I can never forgive myself. When I had almost
reached the end, simply because I had almost reached it, I began to
reflect upon the basic absurdity of my life-'tldealism.3) It was illness
that first brought me to reason.

The choice of nutrition; the choice of climate and locality; the third
thing in which one must not on any account make a blunder, concerns
the method of recuperation or recreation. Here, again, according to
the extent to which a spirit is sui generis, the limits of what is
perrriitted-that is, beneficial to him-become more and more narrow.
In my case, reading in general is one of my methods of recuperation;
consequently it is a part of that which enables me to escape from
myself, to wander in strange sciences and strange souls@f that,
about which I am no longer in earnest. Indeed, reading allows me to
recover from my earnestness. When I am deep in work, no books are

15
to be seen near me; I carefully guard against allowing any one to
speak or even to think in my presence. For that is what reading
amounts to. . . . Has any one ever actually noticed, that, during that
profound tension to which the state of pregnancy condemns the
mind, and fundamentally, the whole organism, accident and every
kind of external stimulus acts too vigorouslv and penetrates too
deeply? One must avoid accident and external stimuli as far as
possible: a sort of self-circumvallation is one of the first instinctive
precautions of spiritual pregnancy. Shall I permit a strange thought
to climb secretly over the wall? For that is just what reading would
mean.The periods of work and productivity are followed by periods of
recuperation: to me, ye pleasant, intellectual, intelligent books! Shall
it be a German book? I must go back six months to catch myself with
a book in my hand. What was it? An excellent study by Victor
Brochard, Les Seeptiques Grecques, in reading which my Laertiana I
was of great help to me. The skeptics! the only honorable types
among that double-faced, aye, quintuple-faced race, the
philosophers! . . . Otherwise I almost always take refuge in the same
books, few in number, books exactly fitting my needs. Perhaps it is
not in my nature to read much, or variously: a library makes me ill.
Neither is it my nature to love much or many kinds of things.
Suspicion, even hostility towards new books is nearer to my instinct
than "toleration," largeur de cteur, and other forms of "neighborly
love." . . . Ultimately it is to a few old French authors that I return
again and again; I believe only in French culture, and regard
everything else in Europe which calls itself "culture" as pure
misunderstanding. It is hardly necessary to speak of the German
variety. . . . The few instances of higher culture I have encountered in
Germany were all French in their origin, above all, Madame Cosima
Wagner, who had by far the most superior judgment in matters of
taste that I have ever heard. Even if I do not read, but literally love
Pascal, as the most instructive sacrifice to Christianity, killing himself
slowly, first in body, then in mind in accord with the logic of this most
horrible form of inhuman cruelty; even if I have something of
Montaigne's malice in my soul, and-who knows?-perhaps in my body,
too; even if my artist's taste endeavors to protect the names of
Moli6re, Comeille, and Racine, not without bitterness, against a wild
genius like Shakespear -all this does not prevent me from regarding
everr e the modem Frenchmen as charming companions also. I can
imagine no century in history in which a netful of more inquisitive and
at the same time more subtle psychologists could be drawn up to,
gether than in present-day Paris. I will name a few at random-for
their number is by no means small -Paul Bourget, Pierre Loti, Gyp,
Meilhac, Anatole France, Jules LemoCitre; or, singling out one of
16
strong race, a genuine Latin, of whom I am particularly fond, Guy de
Maupassant. Between ourselves, I prefer this generation even to its
great masters, all of whom were corrupted by German philosophy
(Taine, for instance, by Hegel, whom he has to thank for his
misunderstanding of great men and great ages). Wherever Germany
penetrates, she corrupts culture. It was the war which first
"redeemed" the spirit of France. . . . Stendhal is one of the happiest
accidents of my life-for everything epochal in that life came to me by
accident, never by recommendation-Stendhal is quite priceless, with
his anticipatory psychologist's eye; with his grasp of facts,
reminiscent of the greatest of all masters of facts (ex ungue
Napoleoneum); and, last, but not least, as an honest atheist-a
specimen both rare and difficult to discover in France- honor to
Prosper M6rim6e! . . . Perhaps I am even envious of Stendhal? He
robbed me of the best atheistic joke I of all people could have made:
"God's only excuse is that He does not exist." . . . I myself have said
somewhere-What hitherto has been the greatest objection to Life?-
God. . . .

It was Heinrich Heine who gave me the highest -conception of a

lyrical poet. I search vainly through the kingdoms of all the ages for
anything to equal his sweet and passionate music. He possessed that
divine wickedness, without which I cannot conceive ,of perfection; I
value men and races, according to the necessity they have to imagine
a god partaking of the nature of the satyr. And how masterfully he
handles German! Some day men will declare of Heine and myself that
we were by far the greatest of all artists in the German language;
that we outstripped incalculably all that pure Germans could do with
this language. I must be profoundly related to Byron's Manfred: I
discovered all his abysses in my own soul-at thirteen I was ripe for
this book. Words fail me, I have merely a glance of contempt for
those who dare to mention Faust in the presence of Manfred. The
Germans are incapable of a conception of greatness-witness
Schuniann! Angry at this cloying Saxon, I once composed a counter-
overture to Manfred, of which Hans von Billow declared he had never
seen the like@ before on paper: it was a sheer violation of Euterpe.
Seeking for my highest formula for Shakespeare, I invariably find only
this: he conceived the type of CTsar. Such things a man cannot guess-
he either is the thing, or he is not. The great poet draws only from his
own experience-to such an extent that later he can no longer endure
his own work. After glancing at my ZarathWtra, I pace to and fro in
my room for a half hour, unable to control an unbearable fit of
17
sobbing. I know of no more, heart-rending reading than Shakespeare:
what he must have suffered to be so much in need of playing the
clown! Is Hamlet understood? Not doubt but certainty drives one
mad. But to feel this,. one must be profound, abysmal, a
philosopher.We all fear the truth. And, to make a confession: I feel
instinctively certain that Lord Bacon is the originator, the self-
torturer, of this most appalling literature: what do I care about the
wretched gabble of American fools and half-wits? But the power for
the greatest realism in vision is not only compatible with the greatest
realism in deeds, with the monstrous, with crime-it actually
presupposes the latter. . . . We hardly know enough about Lord
Bacon-the first realist in the, highest sense of the word-to be sure of
everything he did, everything he willed, and everything he
experienced in himself. To the devil with the critics! Suppose I had
christened my Zaratkustra with a name not my own-with Richard
Wagner's, for instance -the insight of two thousand years would not
have sufficed to guess that the author of Human, all-tooHuman was
the visionary of Zaratkustra.

In speaking of the recreations of my life, I must express a word or two

of gratitude for the one which has afforded me by far the greatest
and heartiest refreshment. This was undoubtedly my intimate
relationship with Richard Wagner. I pass over my other relationships
with men quite lightly; but at no price would I have my life deprived
of those days at Tribschen-days of confidence, of cheerfulness, of
sublime flashes, and of profound moments. I know not what Wagner
may have been for others; but no cloud ever obscured our sky. And
this brings me back again to France-I have no quarrel with
Wagnerites, and hoc genus omne, who think to honor Wagner by
believing him to be like themselves; for such people I have only a
contemptuous curl of my lip. With my nature, so alien to everything
Teutonic that the mere presence of a German retards my digestion,
my first contact with Wagner was also the first moment in my life in
which I breathed freely: I felt him, I honored him, as a foreigner, as
the antithesis of and incarnate protest against all "German virtues."
We who as children breathed the marshy atmosphere of the fifties,
are necessarily pessimists with regard to the idea "German"; we can
be nothing else but revolutionaries-we can give our assent to no state
of affairs in which a hypocrite is at the top. It is a matter of
indifference to me whether this hypocrite acts in different colors to-
day, whether he dresses in scarlet or dons the uniform of a hussar.'
Very good, then! Wagner, too, was a revolutionary-he Red from the
18
Germans. The artist has no home in Europe except in Paris; that
subtlety of all the five senses which is the condition of Wagner's art,
that sensitivity to the nuance, to psychological morbiditythese are to
be found only in Paris. Nowhere else is there this passion for
problems of form, this seriousness about the mise-en-sc@ne, which is
the Parisian seriousness par excellence. In Germany one can have no
notion of the tremendous ambition that lives in the soul of a Parisian
artist. The German is good-natured. IVagner was by no means good-
natured. . . . But I have already said enough on the subject of
Wagner's attachments (see Be, yond Good and Evil, Aphorism 2 69),
and about those to whom he is most closely related. He is one of the
late French ronianticists, that high-soaring and heaven-aspiring band
of artists, like Delacroix and Berlioz, who are essentially sick and
incurable, pure fanatics of expression, virtuosos through and
through. . . Who was the first intelligent follower of Wagner? Charles
Baudelaire, the same man who was the first to understand Delacroix-
that typical decadent, in whom a whole generation of artists has
recognized itself; he was perhaps the last of them too. . . . What is it
that I have never forgiven Wagner? The fact that he condescended to
the Germans-that he became a German Imperialist. . . . IN'herever
Germany spreads, she corrupts culture.

All things considered, I could never have survived my youth without

Wagnerian music. For I seemed condemned to the society of
Germans. If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable
oppression., he may have to take to hashish. Well, I had to@ take to
Wagner. Wagner is the counterpoison to everything essentially
German-he is a poison, I do not, deny it. From the moment that
Tristan was arranged for the piano-my compliments, Herr von Biilow!-
I was a Wagnerite. I deemed Wagner's previous works beneath
m@they were too common, too "German.77 . . . But to this day l,am
still looking for a work to equal Tristan in dangerous fascination, that
gruesome yet sweet quality of infinity; I seek among all the arts in
vain. All the bizarreries of Leonardo da Vinci lose their charm with the
first note of Tristan. It is absolutely Wagner's non plifs idtra; the
Mastersingers and the Ring were mere relaxation to him. To become
more healthy-this is a step backwards for a nature like Wagner's. I
regard it as a first-class bit of good luck to have lived at the right
time, and to have lived precisely among Germans, in order to be ripe
for this work: so strongly in me works the curiosity of the
psychologist. The world must be a poor thing for him who has never
been unhealthy enough for this "voluptuousness of Hell": it is
19
allowable, it is even imperative, that one here employ a mystic
formula. I suppose I know better than any one else the prodigies of
which Wagner was capable, the fifty worlds of strange ecstasies to
reach which no one but he had win,-s strong enough; and as I'am
today sufficiently powerful to turn even the most dubious and
dangerous things to my own advantage, and thus to grow more
powerful, I name Wagner as the greatest benefactor of my life. The
bond which unites us is the fact that we have suff ered greater
agony, even at each other's hands, than most -men of this century
are able to bear; and this will associate our names forever. For, just
as Wagner is merely a misunderstanding among Germans, so surely
am I, and ever will be. You must first have two centuries of
psychological and artistic discipline, my dear countrymen! But you
can never turn back the hands of the clock.

To the most exceptional of my readers I should like to say just a word

as to what I really demand of music. It should be cheerful and yet
profound, like an October afternoon. It should be unique, wanton, and
tender, and like a dainty, sweet woman in roguishness and grace. . . .
I shall never admit that a German can understand what music is.
Those musicians, the greatest of them, who are called German, are all
foreigners, Slavs, Croats, Italians, Dutchmen-or Jews; or else, like
Heinrich Schiitz, Bach, and Hdndel, they are Germans of a strong
race, a type now extinct. I myself have still enough of the Pole in me
to let all other music go, if only Chopin is left to me. For three
reasons I would except '"7agner's Siegfried Idyll, and perhaps also a
few things of Liszt, who excelled all other musicians in the noble
accent of his orchestration; and finally everything that has come from
beyond the Alps-this side of the Alps. I would not know how to
dispense with Rossini, and still less with my Southern counterpart in
music, my Venetian maestro, Pietro Gasti. And when I say beyond the
Alps, I really mean only Venice. Seeking to find another word for
music, I inevitably come back to Venice. I do not know how to make a
distinction between tears and music. I do not know how to think of
joy, or of the south, without a shudder of fear.
On the bridge I stood
But lately, in the dark night.
From far away came the sound of singing;
In golden drops it rolled away
Over the glittering rim.
Gondolas, lights, music
Drunk, swam far out in the darkness...
20
My soul, a stringed instrument,
Invisibly moved,
Sang a gondola song secretly,
Gleaming in bright happiness.
-Did any hearken?

In all these things-the choice of food, locality, climate, and

recreation-the instinct of self-preservation dominates, expressing
itself with least ambiguity in the form of an instinct of self-defense.
To limit what one hears and sees, to detach one's self from many
things-this is elementary prudence, the first proof that a man is not
an accident but a necessity. The customary word for this instinct of
self-defense is taste. It is imperative not only to say ig no" where
"yes" would indicate "disinterestedness," but even to say "no" as
seldom as Possible. One must separate from anything that forces one
to repeat "no," again and again. The reason for this is that all
expenditures of defensive energy, however slight, involve enormous
and absolutely superfluous losses when they become regular and
habitual. Our greatest expenditure of energy is comprised of these
small frequent discharges of it. To preserve one's self intact, to hold
things at a dis. tanc@o not deceive yourselves on this point!-is an
expenditure of energy and one directed towards purely negative
ends. The mere constant necessity of being on his guard may weaken
a man so much that he can no longer defend himself. Suppose I were
to step out of my house, and, instead of the quiet and aristocratic city
of Turin, I were to find a German provincial town; my instinct would
have to pull itself together to repel everything that would invade it
from this downtrodden cowardly world. Or suppose I found a German
y metropoli@that structure of vice in which nothing grows, but where
every single thing, good or bad, is imported. Would I not have to
become a hedgehog? ' But to have quills amounts to a squandering of
strength; a twofold luxury, for, if we chose, we could dispense with
them and open our hands instead. . . . Another form of prudence and
self-defense consists in reacting as seldom as possible, and in
detaching one's self from those circumstances and conditions which
condemn one, as it were, to suspend one's "liberty" and initiative,
and become a mere bundle of reactions. A good type of this is
furnished by intercourse with books. The scholar who actually does
little else than welter in @ sea of books-the average philologist may
handle two hundred a da@finally loses completely the ability to think

21
for himself. He cannot think unless he has a book in his hands. When
he thinks, he responds to a stimulus (a thought he has read)-and
finally all he does is react. The scholar devotes all his energy to
affirming or denying or criticizing matter which has already been
thought out-he no longer thinks himself. . . . In him the instinct of
selfdefense has decayed, otherwise he would defend himself against
books. The scholar is a decadent. With my own eyes I have seen
gifted, richly-endowed, free-spirited natures already "read to pieces"
at thirty-nothing but matches that have to be struck before they can
emit any sparks-or "thoughts." To read a book early in the morning,
at daybreak, in the vigor and dawn of one's strength -this is sheer
viciousness!

At this point I can no longer evade a direct answer to the question,

kow one becomes wkat one is. And here I touch upon the master
stroke of the art of self-preservation-selfiskness. If we assume that
one's life-task-the determination and the fate of one's life-task-
appreciably surpasses the average measure, nothing would be more
dangerous than to come face to face with one's self by the side of this
life-task. The fact that one becomes what one is, presupposes that
one has not the remotest suspicion ,of what one is. From this
standpoint a unique meaning and value is given to even the blunders
of one's life, the temporary deviations and aberrations, the
hesitations, the timidities, the earnestness wasted upon tasks remote
from the central one. In these matters there is opportunity for great
wisdom, perhaps even the highest wisdom; in circumstances, where
nosce teipsum would be the passport to ruin, the forgetting of one's
self, the misunderstanding, the belittling, the narrowing and the
mediocratizing of one's self, amount to reason itself. In moral terms:
to love one's neighbor and to live,for others and for other thin-s may
be the means of protection for the maintenance of the most rigorous
egoism. This is the exceptional case in which I, contrary to my custom
and conviction, take the side of the "selfless" tendencies, for here
they are engaged in the service of selfishness and self-discipline. The
whole surface of consciousness-for consciousness is a surface-must
be kept free of any of the great imperatives. Beware even of every
striking word, of every striking gesture! They all lead to the
dangerous possibility that the instinct may "understand itself" too
soon. Meanwhile the organizing "idea," destined to mastery,
continues to grow in the depths-it begins to command, it leads you
slowly back from your deviations and aberrations, it makes ready
individual qualities and capacities, which will some day make
22
themselves felt as indispensable to the whole of your task-gradually
it cultivates all the serviceable faculties before it ever whispers a
word concerning the dominant task, the "goal," the "purpose," and
the "meaning." Viewed from this angle, my life is simply amazing. For
the task of transvaluing values, more abilities were necessary
perhaps than could ever be found combined in one individual; and
above all, opposed abilities which must yet not be mutually inimical
and destructive. An order of rank among capacities; distance; the art
of separating without creating hostility; to confuse nothing; to
reconcile nothing; to be tremendously various and yet to be the
reverse of chaos-all this was the first condition, the long secret work
and artistry of my instinct. Its superior guardianship manifested itself
so powerfully that at no time did I have any intimation of what was
growing within me-until suddenly all my capacities were ripe, and one
day burst forth in full perfection. I can recall no instance of my ever
having exerted myself, there is no evidence of struggle in my life; I
am the reverse of a heroic nature. To "will" something, to "strive"
after something, to have a "purpose" or a "desire" in my mind - I
know none of these things from experience. At this very moment I
look out upon my future-a broad future!-as upon a calm sea: no
longing disturbs its serenity. I have not the slightest wish that
anything should be, different than it is: I myself do not wish to be
different. I have always been this way. I have never had a desire. A
man who, after his forty-fourth year, can say that he has never
troubled himself about honors, women, or money!not that they were
lacking to me. . . . It was in this way, for example, that one day I
became a University Professor-such an idea had never even entered
my head, for I was hardly twenty-four. In the same way, two years
before, I had one day become a philologist, in the sense that my first
philological work,' my start in every way, was requested by my
master, Ritschl, for publication in his Rheinisckes Museum. (Ritschl-I
say it in all reverence-was the only genial scholar I have ever known.
He possessed that engaging depravity which distinguishes us
Thuringians, and which can make even a German sympathetic-even to
arrive at truth we prefer roundabout ways. These words should not
be taken as a deprecation in any sense of my Thuringian co-dweller,
the intelligent Leopold von Ranke.

10

The question will be raised why I should actually have related all
these trivial and, judged according to ordinary standards,
insignificant details. I would seem to be hurting my own cause, more
particularly if I am destined to assume great tasks. I rep ly that these
23
trivial details-diet, locality, climate, recreation, the whole casuistry of
self-love-are inconceivably more important than everything men have
hitherto considered essential. It is just here that we must begin to
learn afresh. All the things men have valued with such earnestness
heretofore are not even realities; they are mere fantasies, or, more
strictly speaking, lies arising from the evil instincts of diseased and,
in the deepest sense, harmful natures-all the concepts, "God," "soul,"
"virtue, "sin," "Beyond," "truth," "eternal life." And yet men sought in
them for the greatness of human nature, its "divinity. All questions of
politics, of the social order, of education, have been falsified from top
to bottom, because the most harmful men have been taken for great
men, and because people were taught to despise the "details," more
properly, the fundamentals of life. If I now compare myself with those
creatures who have hitherto been honored as the first among men,
the difference becomes obvious. I do not consider these so-called
"first" men as human beings-for me they are the excrement of
mankind, the products of disease and the instinct of revenge: they
are so many monsters, rotten, utterly incurable, avenging themselves
on life. . . . I would be their very opposite. It is my privilege to be
extremely sensitive to any sign of healthy instincts. There is not a
morbid trait in me; even in times of serious illness I have never
become morbid; you will look in vain for a trace of fanaticism in my
nature. No one can point out -I single moment of my life in which I
have assumed either an arrogant or a pathetic attitude. Pathetic
attitudes do not belong to greatness; he who needs attitudes is false.
. . . Beware of all picturesque men t Life came most easily to me when
it demanded the greatest labor from me. Whoever could have seen
me during the seventy days of this autumn, when, without
interruption, with a sense of responsibility to posterity, I performed
so much work of the highest type-work no man did before or will do
after m@would have noticed no sign of tension in me, but on the
contrary exuberant freshness and gayety. Never have my meals been
more enjoyable, never has my sleep been better. I know of no other
manner of dealing with great tasks than as play: this, as a sign of
greatness, is an essential prerequisite. The slightest constraint, a
gloomy appearance, anv hard accent in the voice -all these things are
objections to a man, but how much more to his work! . . . One must
have no nerves. . . . Even to suffer from solitude is an objection-the
only thing I have always suffered from is "multitude," the infinite
variety of my own soul. At the absurdly tender age of seven, I already
knew that no human speech would ever reach me: did any one ever
see me disconsolate therefor? To-day I still possess the same
affability towards everybody, I am even full of consideration for the
humblest: in all this there is not an ounce of arrogance or contempt.
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He whom I despise divines the fact that I despise him; my mere
existence angers those who have bad blood in their veins. My formula
for greatness in man is amor fati: that a man should wish to have
nothing altered, either in the future, the past, or for all eternity. Not
only must he endure necessity, and on no account conceal it-all
idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity-but he must love it. . . .

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