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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._ 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.[2]

Thus neither the form of this book--so startling at first to those who
have been brought up in the traditions of our own school--nor the
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, which in this case
    _practises_ justice with sacrifices and abnegations. 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 covetousness. If you expose bloody pieces
    of flesh to a beast, and then withdraw them again until
    it finally begins to roar, do you think that the roaring
    implies justice?

Theologians on the other hand, as may be expected, will find no such
ready help in their difficulties from Nietzsche. They must, on the
contrary, be on their guard against so alert an adversary--a duty
which they are apparently not going to shirk; for theologians are
amongst the most ardent students of Nietzsche in this country. Their
attention may therefore be drawn to aphorism 630 of this book, dealing
with convictions and their origin, which will no doubt be successfully
refuted by the defenders of the true faith. In fact, there is not a
single paragraph in the book that does not deserve careful study by all
serious thinkers.

On the whole, however, this is a calm book, and those who are
accustomed to Nietzsche the out-spoken Immoralist, 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 life-long aim, the uplifting of the type man, was still in
view, but the way leading towards it was once more uncertain. Hence the
peculiarly calm, even melancholic, 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.


[Footnote 1: _Ecce <DW25>,_ p. 75.]

[Footnote 2: "Tender poetry, like rainbows, can appear only on a dark
and sombre background."--J.M.K.]




PREFACE


1.


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_ disparaged? 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, 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 interrogation, 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 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 and 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"?...


2.

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,_ inactivity) 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 compensation
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, as the shadows of
a hermit's phantasmagoria--_I_ 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.


3.

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
emancipation,_ and that it was all the more fettered previously 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 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,
disenchantment, glaciation, a hatred of love, perhaps a sacrilegious
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 manifested 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; whatever
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 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 him more and
more, onward and away. Solitude encircles and engirdles him, always
more threatening, more throttling, more heart-oppressing, that terrible
goddess and _mater sæva 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
comprehensiveness and daintiness of superabundance, which excludes any
danger of the spirit's becoming enamoured and lost in its own paths,
and 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-, painfully-enchanting magical 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 haught