An Introductory Word on Nietzsche

According to Professor Riehl of Berlin, the most widely read of serious writers in Germany today is Nietzsche. German ideas require time to cross the Channel and still more time to reach America; but already translations of Nietzsche’s numerous works are appearing in England, and within three or four years three books have been devoted to him in this country. Probably erelong the thoughtful among us will have to attend to him, as we have had to attend to other German writers in the past. As yet very confused ideas are current about him; his disciples are more or less confused themselves. Nietzsche once half-humorously remarked that the first disciples of a doctrine really prove nothing against it.

Moreover, Nietzsche was a lonely, markedly individual thinker, caring more to express himself than to be comprehended by the ordinary reader, soliloquizing much; and he said many things that, unless we carefully, patiently attend, may mislead, have misled. I could easily quote passages from him that would offend you, as they did me when I first came upon them. No one needs to be studied more before he is judged. No one lends himself less to impressionist treatment, which is all he ordinarily gets from non-Continental writers. Indeed, I sometimes think that Nietzsche is a philosopher for philosophers and a moralist for moralists rather than for the common run of us, so subtle is his thinking, such an acquaintance with the history and refinements of philosophical and ethical speculation does he presuppose.

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