In the face of these constantly repeated assertions from abroad, I may be permitted to make it clear once more--as I have already shown in _Tilskueren_ in 1890 (p. 259)--that my principles have not been in the slightest way modified through contact with Nietzsche. When I became acquainted with him I was long past the age at which it is possible to change one's fundamental view of life. Moreover, I maintained many years ago, in reply to my Danish opponents, that my first thought with regard to a philosophical book was by no means to ask whether what it contains is right or wrong: "I go straight through the book to the man behind it. And my first question is this: What is the value of this man, is he interesting, or not? If he is, then his books are undoubtedly worth knowing. Questions of right or wrong are seldom applicable in the highest intellectual spheres, and their answering is not unfrequently of relatively small importance. The first lines I wrote about Nietzsche were therefore to the effect that he deserved to be studied and _contested_. I rejoiced in him, as I rejoice in every powerful and uncommon individuality." And three years later I replied to the attack of a worthy and able Swiss professor, who had branded Nietzsche as a reactionary and a cynic, in these words, amongst others: "No mature reader studies Nietzsche with the latent design of adopting his opinions, still less with that of propagating them. We are not children in search of instruction, but sceptics in search of men, and we rejoice when we have found a man--the rarest thing there is." It seems to me that this is not exactly the language of an adherent, and that my critics might spare some of their powder and shot as regards my renunciation of ideas. It is a nuisance to be forced now and then to reply in person to all the allegations that are accumulated against one year by year in the European press; but when others never write a sensible word about one, it becomes an obligation at times to stand up for one's self. My personal connection with Nietzsche began with his sending me his book, _Beyond Good and Evil_. I read it, received a strong impression, though not a clear or decided one, and did nothing further about it--for one reason, because I receive every day far too many books to be able to acknowledge them. But as in the following year _The Genealogy of Morals_ was sent me by the author, and as this book was not only much clearer in itself, but also threw new light on the earlier one, I wrote Nietzsche a few lines of thanks, and this led to a correspondence which was interrupted by Nietzsche's attack of insanity thirteen months later. The letters he sent me in that last year of his conscious life appear to me to be of no little psychological and biographical interest. [1] See _Tilskueren_ (Copenhagen) for August and November-December 1889, January, February-March, April and May 1890. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND GEORGE BRANDES