



Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org
(Images generously made available by the Hathi Trust.)





HUMAN

ALL-TOO-HUMAN

_A BOOK FOR FREE SPIRITS_

PART I

By

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE


TRANSLATED BY

HELEN ZIMMERN

WITH INTRODUCTION BY

J. M. KENNEDY


The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche

The First Complete and Authorised English Translation

Edited by Dr Oscar Levy

Volume Six

T.N. FOULIS

13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET

EDINBURGH: AND LONDON

1909




    CONTENTS.


    INTRODUCTION

    AUTHOR'S PREFACE

    FIRST DIVISION: FIRST AND LAST THINGS
    SECOND DIVISION: THE HISTORY OF THE MORAL
        SENTIMENT
    THIRD DIVISION: THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
    FOURTH DIVISION: CONCERNING THE SOUL OF
        ARTISTS AND AUTHORS
    FIFTH DIVISION: THE SIGNS OF HIGHER AND
        LOWER CULTURE
    SIXTH DIVISION: MAN IN SOCIETY
    SEVENTH DIVISION: WIFE AND CHILD
    EIGHTH DIVISION: A GLANCE AT THE STATE
    AN EPODE--AMONG FRIENDS




INTRODUCTION.


Nietzsche's essay, _Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,_ appeared in 1876,
and his next publication was his present work, which was issued in
1878. A comparison of the books will show that the two years of
meditation intervening had brought about a great change in Nietzsche's
views, his style of expressing them, and the form in which they
were cast. The Dionysian, overflowing with life, gives way to an
Apollonian thinker with a touch of pessimism. The long essay form is
abandoned, and instead we have a series of aphorisms, some tinged with
melancholy, others with satire, several, especially towards the end,
with Nietzschian wit at its best, and a few at the beginning so very
abstruse as to require careful study.

Since the Bayreuth festivals of 1876, Nietzsche had gradually come to
see Wagner as he really was. The ideal musician that Nietzsche had
pictured in his own mind turned out to be nothing more than a rather
dilettante philosopher, an opportunistic decadent with a suspicious
tendency towards Christianity. The young philosopher thereupon
proceeded to shake off the influence which the musician had exercised
upon him. He was successful in doing so, but not without a struggle,
just as he had formerly shaken off the influence of Schopenhauer.
Hence he writes in his autobiography:[1] "_Human, all-too-Human,_ is
the monument of a crisis. 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. Idealism 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 understood when it is remembered
that at this period Nietzsche was beginning to suffer from stomach
trouble and headaches. As a cure for his complaints, 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 posthumous writings, date from the period of the
_Thoughts out of Season._

It must be clearly understood, however, that 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 rights
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; _e.g