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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at http : //books . qooqle . com/| Digitized by Google llMFOMD°WIVERSHY°UBRARY Digitized by VjOOQLC Digitized by LjOOQIC /*• i V Digitized by VjOOQLC THE COMPLETE WORKS OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE First Complete and Authorised English Translation The ; EDITED BY Dr. OSCAR LEVY VOLUME SEVENTEEN ECCE HOMO Digitized by VjOOQLC /*3 t/677U Of the First Edition of Two Thousand Copies this is No. 710 ^L Digitized by Google 1 FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE ECCE HOMO (NIETZSCHES AUTOBIOGRAPHY) TRANSLATED BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI POETRY RENDERED BY PAUL V. COHN FRANCIS BICKLEY HERMAN SCHEFFAUER Dr. G. T. WRENCH HYMN TO LIFE (composed by F. NIETZSCHE) NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 191 Digitized by VjOOQLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 168896 Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limitep, Edinburgh Digitized by VjOOQLC Digitized by Google FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF THE SCULPTOR PROFESSOR KARL DONNDORF in STUTTGART 'N Digitized by VjOOQLC CONTENTS PAGE Translator's Introduction vii Author's Preface - I Why I am so Wise - 9 Why I am so Clever 28 Why I Write such Excellent Books 55 The Birth of Tragedy - 68 Thoughts out of Season 75 Human, A11- too- Human 82 The Dawn of Day 9i Joyful Wisdom - 95 Thus spake Zarathustra 96 Beyond Good and Evil - 114 The Genealogy of Morals 116 The Twilight of the Idols 118 The Case of Wagner - 121 Why I am a Fatality 131 Digitized by VjOOQLC vi CONTENTS PAGE Editorial Note to Poetry - - - 145 Poetry— Songs, Epigrams, etc. - 147 Dionysus-Dithyrambs - - - 173 Fragments of Dionysus-Dithyrambs - - 191 Hymn to Life, composed by F. Nietzsche - 209 id TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION Ecce Homo is the last prose work that Nietzsche wrote. It is true that the pamphlet Nietzsche contra Wagner was prepared a month later than the Auto- biography ; but we cannot consider this pamphlet as anything more than a compilation, seeing that it con- sists entirely of aphorisms drawn from such previous works as Joyful Wisdom, Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy ofMorals, etc. Coming at the end of a year in which he had produced the Case of Wagner, The Twilight ofthe Idols, and The Antichrist, Ecce Homo is not only a coping-stone worthy of the wonderful creations of that year, but also a fitting conclusion to his whole life, in the form of a grand summing up of * his character as a man, his purpose as a reformer, and his achievement as a thinker. As if half conscious of his approaching spiritual end, Nietzsche here bids his friends farewell, just in the manner in which, in the Twilight of the Idols (Aph. 36, Part ix.), he declares that every one should be able totake leave of his circle of relatives and intimates when his time seems to have come—that is to say, while he is still himself while he still knows what he is about, and is able to measure his * own life and life in general, and speak of both in a manner which is not vouchsafed to the groaning in- valid, to the man lying on his back, decrepit and ex- Digitized by Google T viii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION hausted, or to the moribund victim of some wasting disease. Nietzsche's spiritual death, like his whole life, was in singular harmony with his doctrine : he died suddenly and proudly,—sword in hand. War, which he—and he alone among all the philosophers of Christendom—had praised so whole-heartedly, at last struck him down in the full vigour of his man- hood, and left him a victim on the battlefield—the terrible battlefield of thought, on which there is no quarter, and for which no Geneva Convention has yet been established or even thought of. To those who know Nietzsche's life-work, no apol- ogy will be needed for the form and content of this wonderful work. They will know, at least, that a man either is, or is not, aware of his significance and of the significance of what he has accomplished, and that if he is aware of it, then self-realisation, even of the kind which we find in these pages, is neither morbid nor suspicious, but necessary and inevitable. Such chap- ter headings as " Why I am so Wise," " Why I am a Fatality," " Why I write such Excellent Books,"— however much they may have disturbed the equan- imity, and "objectivity" in particular, of certain Nietzsche biographers, can be regarded as patho- logical only in a democratic age in which people have lost all sense of gradjJ^QjRjnfl an ^j and in which the } virtues of modesty and humility have to be preached far and wide as a corrective against the vulgar pre- tensions of thousands of wretched nobodies. For little people can be endured only as modest citizeps or humble Christians. If, however, they demand a like modesty on the part of the truly great ; if they raise their voices against Nietzsche's lack of the very Digitized by Google TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION ix virtue they so abundantly possess or pretend to pos- sess, it is time to remind them of Goethe's famous re- mark: "Nur Lumpe sind bescheiden " (Only nobodies are ever modest). It took Nietzsche barely three weeks to write this story of his life. Begun on the 1 5 th of October 1 888, his four-and-fourtieth birthday, it was finished on the 4th of November of the same year, and, but for a few trifling modifications and additions, is just as Nietz- sche left it. It was not published in Germany until the year 1908, eight years after Nietzsche's death. In a letter dated the 27th of December 1888, addressed to the musical composer Fuchs, the author declares the object of the work to be to dispose of all discus- sion, doubt, and inquiry concerning his own person- ality, in order to leave the public mind freeto consider " merely " the things for the sake of which he existed (" die Dinge> derentwegen ich da bin "). And, true to his intention, Nietzsche's honesty in these pages is certainly one of the most remarkable features about them. From the first chapter, in which he frankly ac- knowledges the decadent elements within him, to the last page, whereon he characterises his mission, his life-task, and his achievement, by means of the one symbol , Dionysus versus Christ,—-everything comes straightirom the shoulder, without hesitation, without fear of consequences, and, above all, without conceal- ment. Only in one place does he appear to conceal something, and then he actually leads one to under- stand that he is doing so. It is in regard to Wagner, the greatest friend of his life.