# Nietzsche the thinker/Preface

PREFACE
Criticism of Nietzsche is rife, understanding rare; this book is a contribution to the understanding of him. At the same time I have tried not merely to restate his thoughts, but to re-think them, using more or less my own language. To enable those interested to judge of the correctness of the interpretation, the original passages are referred to almost constantly. I limit myself to his fundamental points of view — noting only in passing or not at all his thoughts on education, his later views of art and music, his conception of woman, his interpretation of Christianity and attitude to religion.
If I differ from some who have written in English upon him, it is partly in a sense of the difficulty and delicacy of the undertaking. Few appear to have thought it worth while to study Nietzsche — the treatment he commonly receives is (to use an expressive German word, for which I know no good short equivalent) " plump. " If I should be myself found — by those who know — to have simplified him at times too much and not done justice to all his nuances, I should not protest and only hope that some day some one will do better.
The book was in substance written before the present European War, and without a thought of such a monstrous possibility. It has become the fashion to connect Nietzsche closely with it. One American professor has even called it — the German side of it — "Nietzsche in Action" and an early book by a group of Oxford scholars, Why We Are at War, was advertised under the heading "The Euro-Nietzschean (or Anglo-Nietzschean) War." But as matter of fact, the war would probably have arisen about as it did and been conducted about as it has been, had he never existed; and so far as I can find him touching it in any special way, it is as a diagnostician of the general conditions which appear to have given birth to it — i.e., what he calls "Europe's system of small states and small politics" (in contrast to a united Europe and a ​great politics, on which he set his heart), "this névrose nationale with which Europe is sick," "this sickness and unreason which is the strongest force against culture that exists, nationalism," for perpetuating which he holds Germans largely [perhaps too much] responsible, and "which with the founding of the German Empire passed into a critical state" (Ecce Homo, XII, x, § 2; Twilight of the Idols, ix, § 39). These last words may perhaps be said to suggest some such catastrophe as has now taken place, and I know of no other passage that foreshadows it more particularly. I have dealt with the subject in a special article elsewhere ("Nietzsche and the War," International Journal of Ethics, April, 1917). That our own country has now been drawn—forced—into the maelstrom does not alter its essential character.
As to the final disposition of Nietzsche, I offer no counsels now, and really, as intimated, counsels—criticism, such as it is—abound. Even one's newspaper will usually put him in his place! Or, if one wishes a book, Mr. Paul Elmer More's Nietzsche, "compact as David's pebble," will serve, the Harvard Graduates' Magazine tells us, "to slay the Nietzschean giant," and if we desire heavier blows,—I will not say they are more skilful—we may take up Dr. Paul Carus's Nietzsche and Other Exponents of Individualism. What, however, does not seem to abound is knowledge of the object slain, or to be slain, i.e., some elementary and measurably clear idea of who, or rather what, Nietzsche was, particularly in his underlying points of view. And even the present fresh attempt in this direction—for others have preceded me, notably Dr. Dolson, Mr. Ludovici, Miss Hamblen, Dr. Chatterton-Hill, Dr. A. Wolf, author of the best extant monograph on Nietzsche, and Professor H. L. Stewart, whose eye, however, is rather too much on present controversial issues for scientific purposes—would be a work of supererogation, had Nietzsche ever given us an epitome of his thinking himself, or were Professor Raoul Richter's masterly Friedrich Nietzsche, sein Leben and sein Werk translated into English, or were Professor Henri Lichtenberger's admirable La Philosophie de Nietzsche, which has been translated, a little more extended and thoroughgoing—at least, my book could then only beg consideration from Americans as a piece of "home industry." ​As for criticism—unquestionably the thing of final moment in relation to every thinker—if I can only help to make it in this case a little more intelligent in the future, I shall for the present be satisfied.
I owe thanks to Mr. Thomas Common of Corstorphine, Scotland—perhaps the first English—speaking Nietzsche scholar of our day, "first" in both senses of the word—for help in locating passages from the Works, which I omitted to note the source of in first coming upon them and could not afterward find, or which I came upon in other writers on Nietzsche. Unfortunately a few remain unlocated—also some from the Briefe. Acknowledgments are due to the editors of The Hibbert Journal, The International Journal of Ethics, The Journal of Philosophy, and Mind for permission to use material which originally appeared as articles in those periodicals.
Though gratefully recognizing the enterprise of Dr. Oscar Levy in making possible an English translation of the greater part of Nietzsche's Werke, I have used the original German editions, making my own translations or versions—save of poetical passages, where I have been glad to follow, with his permission, Mr. Common. I cite, however, as far as possible, by paragraph or section, the same in the Werke (both octavo and pocket editions) and the English, French, and other translations; the posthumous material, except Will to Power and Ecce Homo, I am obliged to cite by volume and page of the German octavo edition (vols. IX-XIV inclusive—the second eds. of IX to XII), where alone it appears in full. I have also drawn on Nietzsche's Briefe (6 vols.). The recently published Philologica (3 vols.), principally records of his University teaching, I have practically left unutilized. The numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) in the text refer to the bottom of the page, the letters (a, b, c, etc.) to notes at the end of the book. "Werke" means the octavo edition, unless otherwise stated.
W. M. S.
Silver Lake, New Hampshire, June, 1917.