THE PHILOSOPHY OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
BY
H. L. MENCKEN
I shall be told, I suppose, that my philosophy is comfortless—becauseI speak the truth; and people prefer to believe thateverything the Lord made is good. If you are one such, go tothe priests, and leave philosophers in peace!
Arthur Schopenhauer.
Third Edition
BOSTON
LUCE AND COMPANY
1913
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
When this attempt to summarize and interpret the principal ideas ofFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was first published, in the early part of1908, several of his most important books were yet to be translatedinto English and the existing commentaries were either fragmentaryand confusing or frankly addressed to the specialist in philosophy.It was in an effort to make Nietzsche comprehensible to the generalreader, at sea in German and unfamiliar with the technicalities ofthe seminaries, that the work was undertaken. It soon appeared thata considerable public had awaited that effort, for the first editionwas quickly exhausted and there was an immediate demand for a specialedition in England. The larger American edition which followed hassince gone the way of its predecessor, and so the opportunity offersfor a general revision, eliminating certain errors in the first draftand introducing facts and opinions brought forward by the publicationof Dr. Oscar Levy's admirable complete edition of Nietzsche in Englishand by the appearance of several new and informative biographicalstudies, and a large number of discussions and criticisms. The whole ofthe section upon Nietzsche's intellectual origins has been rewritten,as has been the[Pg viii] section on his critics, and new matter has been addedto the biographical chapters. In addition, the middle portion of thebook has been carefully revised, and a final chapter upon the study ofNietzsche, far more extensive than the original bibliographical note,has been appended. The effect of these changes, it is believed, hasbeen to increase the usefulness of the book, not only to the readerwho will go no further, but also to the reader who plans to proceed toNietzsche's own writings and to the arguments of his principal criticsand defenders.
That Nietzsche has been making progress of late goes without saying.No reader of current literature, nor even of current periodicals, canhave failed to notice the increasing pressure of his ideas. When hisname was first heard in England and America, toward the end of thenineties, he suffered much by the fact that few of his advocates hadbeen at any pains to understand him. Thus misrepresented, he took onthe aspect of an horrific intellectual hobgoblin, half Bakúnin and halfByron, a sacrilegious and sinister fellow, the father of all the wilderribaldries of the day. In brief, like Ibsen before him, he had to bearmany a burden that was not his. But in the course of time the truthabout him gradually precipitated itself from this cloud of unorderedenthusiasm, and his principal ideas began to show themselves clearly.Then the discovery was made that the report of them had been far moreappalling than the substance. Some of them, indeed, had already slippedinto respectable society in disguise, as the original inspirationsof lesser sages, and others, on examination, turned out to...