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."