ECCE HOMO (_NIETZSCHES AUTOBIOGRAPHY_) BY FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 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_) The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche The First Complete and Authorised English Translation Edited by Dr Oscar Levy Volume Seventeen T.N. FOULIS 13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET EDINBURGH: AND LONDON 1911 CONTENTS TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION AUTHOR'S PREFACE WHY I AM SO WISE WHY I AM SO CLEVER WHY I WRITE SUCH EXCELLENT BOOKS The Birth of Tragedy Thoughts out of Season Human, All-too-Human The Dawn of Day The Joyful Wisdom Thus spake Zarathustra Beyond Good and Evil The Genealogy of Morals The Twilight of the Idols The Case of Wagner WHY I AM A FATALITY EDITORIAL NOTE TO POETRY POETRY-- Songs, Epigrams, etc. Dionysus-Dithyrambs Fragments of Dionysus-Dithyrambs HYMN TO LIFE, COMPOSED BY F. NIETZSCHE 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 Autobiography; but we cannot consider this pamphlet as anything more than a compilation, seeing that it consists entirely of aphorisms drawn from such previous works as _Joyful Wisdom, Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals,_ etc. Coming at the end of a year in which he had produced the _Case of Wagner, The Twilight of the 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 to take 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 invalid, to the man lying on his back, decrepit and exhausted, 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 manhood, 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.