Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 2

The publication of Human, all-too-Human extends over the period 1878-1880. Of the two divisions which constitute the Second Part, “Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions” appeared in 1879, and “The Wanderer and his Shadow” in 1880, Nietzsche being then in his thirty-sixth year. The Preface was added in 1886. The whole book forms Nietzsche's first lengthy contribution to literature. His previous works comprise only the philological treatises, The Birth of Tragedy, and the essays on Strauss, Schopenhauer, and Wagner in Thoughts out of Season.

With the volumes of Human, all-too-Human Nietzsche appears for the first time in his true colours as philosopher. His purely scholarly publications, his essays in literary and musical criticism—especially the essay on Richard Wagner at Bayreuth—had, of course, foreshadowed his work as a thinker.

These efforts, however, had been mere fragments, from which hardly any one could observe that a new philosophical star had arisen on the horizon. But by 1878 the period of transition had definitely set in. Outwardly, the new departure is marked by Nietzsche's resignation in that year of his professorship [pg viii] at BÂle—a resignation due partly to ill-health, and partly to his conviction that his was a voice that should speak not merely to students of philology, but to all mankind.

Nietzsche himself characterises Human, all-too-Human as “the monument of a crisis.” He might as fitly have called it the first-fruits of a new harvest. Now, for the first time, he practises the form which he was to make so peculiarly his own. We are told—and we may well believe—that the book came as a surprise even to his most intimate friends. Wagner had already seen how matters stood at the publication of the first part, and the gulf between the two probably widened on the appearance of the Second Part.

Several aphorisms are here, varying in length as in subject, and ranging over the whole human province—the emotions and aspirations, the religions and cultures and philosophies, the arts and literatures and politics of mankind. Equally varied is the range of style, the incisive epigram and the passage of pure poetry jostling each other on the same page. In this curious power of alternating between cynicism and lyricism, Nietzsche appears as the prose counterpart of Heine.

One or two of the aphorisms are of peculiar interest to English readers. The essay (as it may almost be called) on Sterne (p. 60, No. 113) does ample justice, if not more than justice, to that wayward genius. The allusion to Milton (p. 77, No. 150) will come as somewhat of a shock to English readers, especially to those who hold that in Milton Art triumphed over Puritanism. It [pg ix] should be remembered, however, that Nietzsche's view coincides with Goethe's. The dictum that Shakespeare's gold is to be valued for its quantity rather than its quality (p. 81, No. 162) also betrays a certain exclusiveness—a legacy from that eighteenth-century France which appealed so strongly to Nietzsche on its intellectual side. To Nietzsche, as to Voltaire, Shakespeare is after all “the great barbarian.”

The title of the book may be explained from a phrase in Thus Spake Zarathustra: “Verily, even the greatest I found—all-too-human.” The keynote of these volumes is indeed disillusion and destruction. Nor is this to be wondered at, for all men must sweep away the rubbish before they can build. Hence we find here little of the constructive philosophy of Nietzsche—so far as he had a constructive philosophy. The Superman appears but faintly, the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence not at all. For this very reason, Human, all-too-Human is perhaps the best starting-point for the study of Nietzsche. The difficulties in style and thought of the later work—difficulties that at times become well-nigh insuperable in Thus Spake Zarathustra—are here practically absent. The book may, in fact, almost be described as “popular,” bearing the same relation to Nietzsche's later productions as Wagner's TannhÄuser and Lohengrin bear to the Ring.

The translator's thanks are due to Mr. Thomas Common for his careful revision of the manuscript and many valuable suggestions.

P. V. C.

[pg 001]

Preface.


Top of Page
Top of Page