His life, barring his friendship with Wagner, and its sad conclusion, is rather barren of interest or incident. It was a fiery soul tragedy; outwardly the world saw a quiet, very reserved, almost timid man of cultivated bearing and disinclined to the pursuits of the ambitious. He was born at Röcken, near Lützen, October 15, 1844. His father was a clergyman; indeed he descended from a long line of clerical ancestors, which possibly accounts for the austere strain in the man. This philosopher with a hammer, this demolisher of Antichrist, this writer who outraged all religious Europe, was a man of pure, upright life, a scholar, a gentleman, a poet. Taking up philology mainly as a makeshift, he occupied the chair of classical philology at the University of Basle. His weak eyesight—his life long he was a sufferer from headaches, a weak stomach, and crabbed nerves—drove him to a retirement, during which he busied himself with art and philosophy. The Birth of Tragedy in 1872 attracted Richard Wagner’s attention, for here was a partisan not to be despised. In 1876 Nietzsche published Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, and Wagnerism had found its philosophical exponent. A friendship, ideal in its quality, grew up between composer and thinker. But the sensitive nature of Nietzsche could brook no rivals, and he soon fell away from Wagner and Bayreuth. Many have sought to explain this defection. Nietzsche’s devoted sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, accused Richard and Cosima Wagner of treachery, while Wagner, on his part, found this intense young disciple a trifle irksome. He could not stir, could not talk sportively—as was his wont—could not make bad puns, could not associate with others without a sorrowful apparition warning him that he was not true to himself, not true to his higher nature. Wagner, being a natural man, sometimes a coarse and worldly man, resented this spiritual caretaker’s solicitude, and so in the rush and excitement of Bayreuth in 1876 he was forced to forget his Nietzsche. Then the usual thing happened: the other one went off in a sulk, and Wagnerism had lost its most fanatical adherent.