I.
Like the history of most great thinkers, like the history of Kant and Schopenhauer, the biography of Nietzsche is totally barren of incident, and can be disposed of in a few lines. Born in 1844, apparently of noble Polish extraction (“Nizky” in Polish means humble), the son of a clergyman, and the descendant on both sides of a long line of clergymen, the future “Anti-Christ” spent an exemplary, studious, and strenuous youth. After serving his time in the army—he was considered one of the best riders of his regiment—and after a brilliant University career at Bonn and Leipzig, he was appointed, at twenty-four years of age, Professor of Greek in the University of Bale. His academic activity extended over eleven years, and was only interrupted in 1870 by a few months’ service in the Ambulance Corps, during the Franco-German War.
His first book, “The Birth of Tragedy,” appeared in 1871. Like most of his books, it was published at his own expense, and, like most of his books, it did not find a public. The three first parts of his masterpiece, “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” were such a desperate failure that Nietzsche only ventured to print fifty copies of the fourth and concluding part, and he printed them merely for private circulation amongst his friends, but he only disposed of seven copies!
In 1879 he resigned, owing to ill-health, with a pension of £120. After his retirement he spent a nomadic life wandering from Nice to Venice, and from the Engadine to Sicily, ever in quest of health and sunshine, racked by neuralgia and insomnia, still preaching in the desert, still plunging deeper and deeper into solitude. And as the world refused to listen to him, Nietzsche became more and more convinced of the value of his message. His last book, “Ecce Homo,” an autobiography, contains all the premonitory symptoms of the threatening tragedy. It is mainly composed of such headings as the following: “Why I am so Wise,” “Why I am so Clever,” “Why I write such Excellent Books,” and “Why I am a Fatalist.”
Alas! fatality was soon to shatter the wise and clever man who wrote those excellent books. In 1889 Nietzsche went mad. For eleven years he lingered on in private institutions and in the house of his old mother at Naumburg. He died in 1900, when his name and fame had radiated over the civilized world, and when the young generation in Germany was hailing him as the herald of a new age. England, as usually happens in the case of Continental thinkers, was the last European country to feel his influence; but in recent years that influence has been rapidly gaining ground, even in England, a fact abundantly proved by the great and startling success of the complete edition of his works.