The Story of My Life
GA 28
Chapter XVIII
[ 2 ] My first acquaintance with Nietzsche's writings belongs to the year 1889. Previous to that I had never read a line of his. Upon the substance of my ideas as these find expression in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, Nietzsche's thought had not the least influence. I read what he had written with the feeling of being drawn on by the style which he had developed out of his relation to life. I felt that his soul was a being that was impelled by reason of inheritance and attraction to give attention to everything which the spiritual life of his age had brought forth, but which always felt within: “What has this spiritual life to do with me? There must be another world in which I can live; so much does life in this world jar upon me.” This feeling made him a spiritually incensed critic of his time; but a critic who was by his own criticism reduced to illness – who had to experience illness and could only dream of health – of his own health. At first he sought for means to make his dream of health the content of his own life; and thus he sought with Richard Wagner, with Schopenhauer, with modern positivism to dream as if he wished to make the dream in his soul into a reality. One day he discovered that he had only dreamed. Then he began with every power belonging to his spirit to seek for realities – realities which must lie “somewhere or other.” He found no roads to these realities, but only yearnings. Then these yearnings became to him realities. He dreamed again, but the mighty power of his soul created out of these dreams realities of the inner man which, without that heaviness which had so long characterized the ideas of humanity, floated within him in a mood of soul joyful but resting upon foundations contrary to the spirit of the age, the “Zeitgeist.”
[ 3 ] It was thus that I viewed Nietzsche. The freely floating weightless character of his ideas attracted me. I found that this free-floating element in him had brought to maturity many thoughts that bore a resemblance to those which had shaped themselves in me by ways quite unlike those of Nietzsche's mind.
[ 4 ] Thus it was possible for me to write in 1895 in the preface to my book Nietzsche, ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit.1Nietzsche as the Adversary of His Age. “As early as 1886 in my little volume, The Theory of Knowledge in Goethe's World-Conception, the same sentiment is expressed” – that is, the same as appears in certain works of Nietzsche. But what attracted me particularly was that one could read Nietzsche without coming upon anything which strove to make the reader a “dependant” of Nietzsche's. One could gladly experience without reserve his spiritual illumination; in this experience one felt oneself to be wholly free; for one had the impression that his words began to laugh if one had attributed to them the intention of being assented to, as is the case when one reads Haeckel or Spencer.
[ 5 ] Thus I ventured to explain my relationship to Nietzsche in the book mentioned above by using the words which he himself had used in his book on Schopenhauer: “I belong among those readers of Nietzsche, who, after having read their first page from him, know for a certainty that they will read every page and listen to every word which he has ever uttered. My confidence in him continued from that time on ... I understood him as if he had written for me, in order to express me intelligibly, but immodestly, foolishly.” [ 6 ] Shortly before I began the actual writing of that book, Nietzsche's sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, appeared one day at the Goethe and Schiller Institute. She was taking the preliminary steps toward the establishment of a Nietzsche Institute, and wished to learn how the Goethe and Schiller Institute was managed. Soon afterward there came to Weimar the editor of Nietzsche's works, Fritz Koegel, and I made his acquaintance.
[ 7 ] Later I got into a serious disagreement with Frau Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Her emotional and lovable spirit claimed at that time my deepest sympathy. I suffered inexpressibly by reason of the disagreement. A complicated situation had brought this to pass; I was compelled to defend myself against accusations; I know that it was all necessary, that the happy hours I was permitted to spend among the Nietzsche archives in Naumburg and Weimar should now lie under a veil of bitter memories; yet I am grateful to Frau Förster-Nietzsche for having taken me, on the first of many visits I made to her, into the chamber of Friedrich Nietzsche. There he lay on a lounge enveloped in darkness, with his beautiful forehead-artist's and thinker's forehead in one. It was early afternoon. Those eyes which in their blindness yet revealed the soul, now merely mirrored a reflection of the surroundings which could find no longer any way to reach the soul. One stood there and Nietzsche knew it not. And yet one could have believed, looking upon that brow permeated by the spirit, that this was the expression of a soul which had all the forenoon long been shaping thoughts within, and which now would fain rest a while. An inner shudder which seized my soul may have signified that this also underwent a change in sympathy with the genius whose gaze was directed toward me and yet failed to rest upon me. The passivity of my gaze so long fixed won in return a comprehension of his own gaze: his longing always in vain to enable the soul-forces of the eye to work.
[ 8 ] And so there appeared before my soul the soul of Nietzsche, hovering above his head, boundless in its spiritual light; surrendered wholly to the spiritual worlds, longing after its environment but failing to discover it; and yet chained to the body, which would have to do with the soul only so long as the soul longed for this present world. Nietzsche's soul was still there, but only from without could it hold to the body, that body which so long as the soul remained within it had offered resistance to the full unfolding of its light.
[ 9 ] I had ere this read the Nietzsche who had written; now I perceived the Nietzsche who bore within his body ideas drawn from widely extended spiritual regions – ideas which still sparkled in their beauty even though they had lost on the way their primal illuminating powers. A soul which from previous earthly lives bore rich wealth of light, but which could not in this life cause all its light to shine. I had admired what Nietzsche wrote; but now I saw a luminous form behind that which I had admired.
[ 10 ] In my thoughts I could only stammer over what I then beheld; and this stammering is in effect my book, Nietzsche as the Adversary of His Age. That the book is no more than a stammering conceals what is none the less true, that the form of Nietzsche I beheld inspired the book.
[ 11 ] Frau Förster-Nietzsche then requested me to set Nietzsche's library in order. In this way I was enabled to spend several weeks in the Nietzsche archives at Naumburg. In this way also I formed an intimate friendship with Fritz Koegel. It was a beautiful task which placed before my eyes the books in which Nietzsche himself had read. His spirit lived in the impressions which these volumes made upon me – a volume of Emerson's filled throughout with marginal comments showing all the signs of an absorbing study; Guyau's writing bearing the same indications; books containing violent critical comments from his hand – a great number of marginal comments in which one could see his ideas in germinal form.
[ 12 ] A penetrating conception of Nietzsche's final creative period shone clearly before me as I read his marginal comments on Eugen Dühring's chief philosophical work. Dühring there develops the thought that one can conceive the cosmos at a single moment as a combination of elementary parts. Thus the history of the world would be the series of all such possible combinations. When once these should have been formed, then the first would have to return, and the whole series would be repeated. If anything thus exists in reality, it must have occurred innumerable times in the past, and must occur again innumerable times in future. Thus we should arrive at the conception of the eternal repetition of similar states of the cosmos. Dühring rejects this thought as an impossibility Nietzsche reads this; he receives from it an impression, which works further in the depths of his soul and finally take form within him as “the return of the similar,” which, together with the idea of the “superman,” dominates his final creative period.
[ 13 ] I was profoundly impressed – indeed shocked – by the impression which I received from thus following Nietzsche in his reading. For I saw what an opposition there was between the character of Nietzsche's spirit and that of his contemporaries. Dühring, the extreme positivist, who rejects everything which is not the result of a system of reasoning directed with cold and mathematical regularity, considers “the eternal repetition of the similar” as an absurdity, and sets up the idea only to show its impossibility; but Nietzsche must take this up as his solution of the world-riddle, as an intuition , arising from the depths of his own soul.
[ 14 ] Thus Nietzsche stands in absolute opposition to much which pressed in upon him as the content of the thought and feeling of his age. This driving pressure he so receives that it pains him deeply, and it is in grief, in inexpressible sorrow of spirit, that he shapes the content of his own soul. This was the tragedy of his creative work.
This reached its climax while he was sketching the outlines for his last work, Willen zur Macht, eine Umwertung aller Werte.2The Will to Power, a Transvaluation of all Values. Nietzsche was impelled to bring up in purely spiritual fashion everything which he thought or experienced in the depth of his soul. To create a world-concept from the spiritual events in which the soul itself participates – this was the tendency of his thought. But the positivistic world conception of his age, the age of natural science, swept in upon him. In this conception there was nothing but the purely materialistic world, void of spirit. What remained of the spiritual way of thought in the conception was only the remains of ancient ways of thinking, and these no longer found him. Nietzsche's unlimited sense for truth would expunge all this. In this way he came to think as an extreme positivist. A spiritual world behind the material became to him a lie. But he could create only out of his own soul – so create that true creation seemed to him to have meaning only when it holds before itself in idea the content of the spiritual world. Yet this content he rejected. The natural-scientific world-content had so firmly gripped his soul he would create this as if in spiritual fashion. Lyrically, in dionysiac rush of soul, does his mind soar aloft in Zarathustra. In wonderful fashion does the spiritual hover there, but it is a wonderful spiritual dream woven out of the stuff of material reality. The spirit strews this about in its effort to escape because it does not find itself but can only live in a seeming reality in that dream reflected from the material.
[ 15 ] In my own mind I dwelt much during those Weimar days in the contemplation of Nietzsche's type of mind. In my own spiritual experience this type of mind had also its place. My spiritual experience could enter sympathetically into Nietzsche's struggles, into his tragedy. What had this to do with the positivistic forms in which Nietzsche proclaimed the conclusions of his thought?
[ 16 ] Others looked upon me as a “Nietzschean,” merely because I could unreservedly admire what was entirely opposed to my own way of thinking. I was impressed by the way in which Nietzsche's mind revealed itself; in just this aspect I felt myself close to him, for in the content of his thought he was close to no one; as to the experience of the spiritual way of thought he felt himself isolated both from men and from his age.
[ 17 ] For a long time I was in frequent intercourse with the editor of Nietzsche's works, Fritz Koegel. We discussed in detail many things pertaining to the publication of Nietzsche's works. I never had any official relation to the Nietzsche archives or the publication of his works. When Frau Förster Nietzsche wished to offer me such a relationship, this led to a conflict with Fritz Koegel which at once rendered it impossible that I should have any share in the Nietzsche archives.
[ 18 ] My connection with the Nietzsche archives constituted a very stimulating episode in my life at Weimar, and the final rupture of this relationship caused me deep regret.
[ 19 ] Out of the various activities in connection with Nietzsche, there remained with me a view of his personality – that of one whose fate it was to share tragically in the life of the age of natural science covering the latter half of the nineteenth century and finally to be shattered by his impact with that age. He sought in that age, but nothing could he find. As to myself, I was only confirmed by my experience with him in the conviction that all seeking for reality in the data of natural science would be vain except as it directed its view, not within these data, but through them into the world of spirit.
[ 20 ] It was thus that Nietzsche's work brought the problem of natural science before my mind in a new form. Goethe and Nietzsche stood in perspective before me. Goethe's strong sense for reality directed him toward the essential being and processes of nature. He desired to remain within nature He restricted himself to pure perceptions of the plant, animal, and human forms. But, while he kept his mind moving among these forms, he came everywhere upon spirit. For within the material he found everywhere dominant the spirit. All the way to the actual perception of the spirit living and controlling he would not advance. A spiritual sort of natural science was what he constructed, but he paused before arriving at the knowledge of pure spirit lest he should lose his hold upon reality.
[ 21 ] Nietzsche proceeded from the vision of the spiritual after the manner of myths. Apollo and Dionysos were spiritual forms which he experienced in vital fashion. The history of the human spiritual seemed to him to have been a history of co-operation and also of conflict between Dionysos and Apollo. But he got only as far as the mythical conception of such spiritual forms. He did not press forward to the perception of real spiritual being. Beginning with the spiritual in myth, he made a path for himself to nature. In Nietzsche's thought Apollo had to represent the material after the manner of natural science; Dionysos had to be conceived as symbolizing the forces of nature. But thus was Apollo's beauty dimmed; thus was the world-emotion of Dionysos paralysed into the regularity of natural law.
[ 22 ] Goethe found the spirit in the reality of nature; Nietzsche lost the spirit-myth in the dream of nature in which he lived.
[ 23 ] I stood between these two opposites. The experiences of soul through which I had passed in writing my book Nietzsche as the Adversary of His Age could at first make no advance; on the contrary, in the last period of my life in Weimar, Goethe became once more dominant in my reflections. I wished to indicate the road by which the life of humanity had expressed itself in philosophy up to the time of Goethe, in order to conceive the philosophy of Goethe as proceeding out of this life. This endeavour I made in the book Goethes Weltanschauung3Goethe's World-Conception. which was published in 1897. [ 24 ] In this book it was my purpose to bring to light how Goethe, wherever he directed his eyes to the understanding of nature, saw shining forth everywhere the spiritual; but I did not touch upon the manner in which Goethe related himself to spirit as such. My purpose was to characterize that part of Goethe's philosophy which expressed itself vitally in a spiritual view of nature.
[ 25 ] Nietzsche's ideas of the “eternal repetition” and of “supermen” remained long in my mind. For in these was reflected that which a personality must feel concerning the evolution and essential being of humanity when this personality is kept back from grasping the spiritual world by the restricted thought in the philosophy of nature characterizing the end of the nineteenth century. Nietzsche perceived the evolution of humanity in such a way that whatever happened at any moment has already happened innumerable times in precisely the same form, and will happen again innumerable times in future. The atomistic conception of the cosmos makes the present moment seem a certain definite combination of the smallest entities; this must be followed by another, and this in turn by yet another – until, when all possible combinations have been formed, the first must again appear. A human life with all its individual details has been present innumerable times; it will return with all its details in innumerable times.
[ 26 ] The “repeated earth-lives” of humanity shone darkly in Nietzsche's subconsciousness. These lead the individual human life through human evolution to life-stages at which overruling destiny causes men to pass, not to a repetition of the earth-life, but by ways spiritually determined to a traversing in many forms through the course of the world. Nietzsche was fettered by the natural-scientific conception. What this conception could make of repeated earth-lives – this exercised a fascination upon his mind. This he vitally experienced; for he felt his own life to be a tragedy filled with the bitterest experiences, weighed down by grief. To live such a life countless times – this was what he dwelt upon instead of the liberating experience which is to follow upon such a tragedy in the further unfolding of future lives.
[ 27 ] Nietzsche felt also that in the man who is living through one earthly existence another man is revealed, a superman, who is able to form but a fragment of his whole life in a bodily existence on earth. The natural-scientific conception of evolution caused him to view this superman, not as the spirit dominant within the sense-physical, but as that which is shaping itself through a merely natural process of evolution. As man has evolved out of the animal, so will the “superman” evolve out of man. The natural scientific view drew Nietzsche's eyes away from the spiritual man to the natural man, and dazzled him with the thought of a higher “natural man.”
[ 28 ] What Nietzsche had experienced in this way of thought was present in the utmost vividness in my mind during the summer of 1896. At that time Fritz Koegel gave me his collection of Nietzsche's aphorisms concerning the “eternal repetition” to look through. The opinions I formed at that time of this process of Nietzsche's thought were expressed in an article published in 1900 in the Magazin für Literatur. Certain statements occurring in that article fix definitely my reactions at that time to Nietzsche and to natural science. I will transcribe those thoughts of mine here, freed from the polemics with which they were there associated.
[ 29 ] “There is no doubt that Nietzsche wrote these single aphorisms in a series without any order ... I still maintain the conviction I then expressed, that Nietzsche grasped this idea when reading Eugen Dühring's Kursus der Philosophie als streng Wissenschaftlicher Weltanschauung und Lebensgestaltung4The Course of Philosophy as a Strictly Scientific World-Conception and Shaping of Life (Leipzig, 1875) and under the influence of this book. On page 84 of this work the thought is quite clearly expressed; but it is there as energetically opposed as Nietzsche defends it. This book is in Nietzsche's library. It was read very eagerly by Nietzsche, as is evident from numerous pencil marks on the margins ... Dühring says: ‘The profound’ logical basis of all conscious life demands in the strongest sense of the word an inexhaustibleness of forms. Is this endlessness, by virtue of which ever new forms will appear, a possibility? The mere number of the parts and of the force elements would in itself preclude the unending multiplication of combinations but for the fact that the perpetual medium of space and time promises a limitlessness in variations. Moreover, of that which can be counted only a limited number of combinations is possible. But from that which cannot according to its nature be conceived as enumerable it must be possible for a limitless number of states and relationships to come to pass. This limitlessness, which we are considering with reference to the destiny of forms in the universe, is compatible with any sort of change and even with intervals of approximation to fixity or precise repetitions (italics are mine) but not with the cessation of all variation. Whoever would cherish the conception of an existence which contradicts the primal state of things ought to reflect that the evolution in time has but a single true tendency, and that causality is always in line with this tendency. It is easier to abandon the distinction than to maintain it, and it then requires but little effort to leap over the chasm and imagine the end as analogous with the beginning. But we ought to guard against such superficial haste; for the once given existence of the universe is not merely an unimportant episode between two states of night, but rather the sole firm and illuminated ground from which we may infer the past and forecast the future ... ‘Dühring feels also that an everlasting repetition of states holds no incentive for living.’ He says: ‘Now it is self-evident that the principle of an incentive for living is incompatible with the eternal repetition of the same form ...’”
[ 30 ] Nietzsche was forced by the logic of the natural-scientific conception to a conclusion from which Dühring turned back because of mathematical considerations and the repellent prospect which these represented for human life.
[ 31 ] To quote further from my article: “... if we set up the postulate that with the material parts and the force-elements a limited number of combinations is possible, then we have the Nietzschean ideal of the ‘return of the similar. Nothing less than a defence of a contradictory idea taken from Dühring's view of the matter occurs in Aphorism 203 (Vol. XII in Koegel's edition, and Aphorism in Horneffer's work, Nietzsche's Lehre von der ewigen Wiederkunft.5Nietzsche's Doctrine of the Eternal Repetition. The amount of the all-force is definite, not something endless: we must beware of such prodigality in conceptions! Accordingly the number of stages, modifications, combinations, and evolutions of this force, though vast and practically immeasurable, is yet always definite and not endless: that is, the force is eternally the same and eternally active – even to this very moment already an endlessness has passed, which means that all possible evolutions must already have occurred. Therefore, the momentary evolution must be a repetition, and likewise that which brought it forth and that which arises from it, and so on both forwards and backwards! Everything has been innumerable times insofar as the sum total of the stages of all forces is repeated ...’ And Nietzsche's feeling in regard to these thoughts is precisely the opposite of that which Dühring experienced. To Nietzsche this thought is the loftiest formula in which life can be affirmed. Aphorism 43 (in Horneffer; 234 in Koegel's edition) runs: ‘Future history will ever more combat this thought, and never believe it, for according to its nature it must die forever! Only he remains who considers his existence capable of endless repetitions: among such, however, a state is possible to which no Utopian has ever attained.’ It can be proven that many of Nietzsche's thoughts originated in a manner similar to that of the eternal repetition. Nietzsche formed an idea opposite to any idea then present before him. At length this same tendency led to the production of his masterpiece, Umwertung aller Werte.”6The Will to Power, a Transvaluation of all Values.
[ 32 ] It was then clear to me that in certain of his thoughts which strove to reach the world of spirit Nietzsche was a prisoner of his conception of nature. For this reason I was strongly opposed to the mystical interpretation of his thought of repetition. I agreed with Peter Gast, who wrote in his edition of Nietzsche's work: “The doctrine – to be understood in a purely mechanical sense – of limitedness and consequent repetition in cosmic molecular combinations.” Nietzsche believed that a lofty thought must be brought up from the foundations of natural science. That was the way in which he had to sorrow because of his age.
[ 33 ] Thus in my glimpse of Nietzsche's soul in 1896 there appeared before me what one who looked toward the spirit had to suffer from the conception of nature prevailing at the end of the nineteenth century.
Chapter XVIII
[ 1 ] In diese Zeit fällt mein Hineintreten in die Kreise des geistigen Erlebens, in denen Nietzsche geweilt hat.
[ 2 ] Meine erste Bekanntschaft mit Nietzsches Schriften fallt in das Jahr 1889. Vorher hatte ich keine Zeile von ihm gelesen. Auf den Inhalt meiner Ideen, wie sie in der «Philosophie der Freiheit» zum Ausdruck kamen, haben die seinigen keinen Einfluß gehabt. Ich las, was er geschrieben hatte, mit der Empfindung des Angezogenwerdens von dem Stil, den ihm sein Verhältnis zum Leben gegeben hatte. Ich empfand seine Seele als ein Wesen, das mit vererbter und anerzogener Aufmerksamkeit auf alles hinhorchen mußte, was das Geistesleben seiner Zeit hervorgebracht hatte, das aber stets fühlte, was geht mich doch dieses Geistesleben an: es muß eine andere Welt geben, in der ich leben kann; in dieser stört mich so vieles am Leben. Dieses Gefühl machte ihn zum geistbefeuerten Kritiker seiner Zeit; aber zu einem Kritiker, den die eigene Kritik krank machte. Der die Krankheit erleben mußte, und der von der Gesundheit, von seiner Gesundheit nur träumen konnte. Er suchte zuerst nach Möglichkeiten, seinen Traum von der Gesundheit zum Inhalt seines Lebens zu machen; und so suchte er mit Richard Wagner, mit Schopenhauer, mit dem modernen «Positivismus» so zu träumen, als ob er den Traum in seiner Seele zur Wirklichkeit machen wollte. Eines Tages entdeckte er, daß er nur geträumt hatte. Da fing er an, mit jeglicher Kraft, die seinem Geiste eigen war, nach Wirklichkeiten zu suchen. Wirklichkeiten, die «irgendwo» liegen mußten; er fand nicht «Wege» zu diesen Wirklichkeiten, aber Sehnsuchten. Da wurden die Sehnsuchten in ihm Wirklichkeiten. Er träumte weiter: aber die gewaltige Kraft seiner Seele schuf aus den Träumen innermenschliche Wirklichkeiten, die ohne die Schwere, die den Menschenideen seit lange eigen war, frei in einer geistfrohen, aber von dem «Zeitgeist» widerlich berührten Seelenstimmung schwebten.
[ 3 ] So empfand ich Nietzsche. Das Freischwebende, Schwerelose seiner Ideen riß mich hin. Ich fand, daß dieses Freischwebende in ihm manche Gedanken gezeitigt hatte, die Ähnlichkeit mit denen hatten, die in mir selbst auf Wegen, die den seinigen ganz unähnlich waren, sich gebildet hatten.
[ 4 ] So konnte ich 1895 in der Vorrede zu meinem Buche «Nietzsche, ein Kämpter gegen seine Zeit» schreiben: «Schon iin meinem 1886 erschienenen kleinen Buche «Erkenntnistheorie der Goethe’schen Weltanschauung» kommt dieselbe Gesinnung zum Ausdruck, wie in einigen Werken Nietzsches.» Was mich aber besonders anzog, war, daß man Nietzsche lesen durfte, ohne irgendwie bei ihm selbst auf etwas zu stoßen, das den Leser zu seinem «Anhänger» machen wollte. Man konnte mit hingebender Freude seine Geisteslichter empfinden; man fühlte sich in diesem Empfinden ganz frei; denn man fühlte, seine Worte fingen an zu lachen, wenn man ihnen zugemutet hätte, man solle ihnen zustimmen, wie Haeckel oder Spencer dies voraussetzten.
[ 5 ] So durfte ich auch, um mein Verhältnis zu Nietzsche auszusprechen, in dem genannten Buche dies mit Worten tun, die er über das seinige zu Schopenhauer geformt hat: «Ich gehöre zu den Lesern Nietzsches, welche, nachdem sie die erste Seite von ihm gelesen, mit Bestimmtheit wissen, daß sie alle Seiten lesen und auf jedes Wort hören werden, das er überhaupt gesagt hat. Mein Vertrauen zu ihm war sofort da ... Ich verstand ihn, als ob er für mich geschrieben hätte, um mich verständlich, aber unbescheiden und töricht auszudrücken.»
[ 6 ] Kurz bevor ich an die Niederschrift dieses Buches ging, erschien eines Tages Nietzsches Schwester, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche im Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv. Sie machte eben die ersten Schritte zur Gründung eines Nietzsche-Archives und wollte erfahren, wie das Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv eingerichtet war. Bald darauf erschien auch der Herausgeber von Nietzsches Werken, Fritz Koegel, in Weimar, und ich lernte ihn kennen.
[ 7 ] Ich bin später mit Frau Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in schwere Konflikte gekommen. Damals forderte ihr beweglicher, liebenswürdiger Geist meine tiefste Sympathie heraus. Ich habe unter den Konflikten unsäglich gelitten; eine verwickelte Situation hat es dazu kommen lassen: ich wurde genötigt, mich gegen Anschuldigungen zu verteidigen; ich weiß, daß das alles notwendig war, daß mir dadurch schöne Stunden, die ich im Nietzsche-Archiv in Naumburg und Weimar verleben durfte, mit einem Schleier der Bitternis in der Erinnerung überzogen sind; aber ich bin Frau Förster-Nietzsche doch dankbar, daß sie mich bei dem ersten der vielen Besuche, die ich bei ihr machen durfte, in das Zimmer Friedrich Nietzsches führte. Da lag der Umnachtete mit der wunderbar schönen Stirne, Künstler- und Denkerstirne zugleich, auf einem Ruhesofa. Es waren die ersten Nachmittagsstunden. Diese Augen, die im Erloschensein noch durchseelt wirkten, nahmen nur noch ein Bild der Umgebung auf, das keinen Zugang zur Seele mehr hatte. Man stand da, und Nietzsche wußte nichts davon. Und doch hätte man von dem durchgeistigten Antlitz noch glauben können, daß es der Ausdruck einer Seele wäre, die den ganzen Vormittag Gedanken in sich gebildet hatte, und die nun eine Weile ruhen wollte. Eine innere Erschütterung, die meine Seele ergriff, durfte meinen, daß sie sich in Verständnis für den Genius verwandle, dessen Blick auf mich gerichtet war, mich aber nicht traf. Die Passivität dieses lange Zeit verharrenden Blickes löste das Verständnis des eigenen Blickes aus, der die Seelenkraft des Auges wirken lassen durfte, ohne daß ihlm begegnet wurde.
[ 8 ] Und so stand vor meiner Seele: Nietzsches Seele wie schwebend über seinem Haupte, unbegrenzt schön in ihrem Geisteslichte; frei hingegeben geistigen Welten, die sie vor der Umnachtung ersehnt, aber nicht gefunden; aber gefesselt noch an den Leib, der nur so lange von ihr wußte, als diese Welt noch Sehnsucht war. Nietzsches Seele war noch da: aber sie konnte nur noch von außen den Körper halten, der ihr Widerstand bot, sich in ihrem vollen Lichte zu entfalten, so lange sie in seinem Innern war.
[ 9 ] Ich hatte vorher den Nietzsche gelesen, der geschrieben hatte; jetzt hatte ich den Nietzsche geschaut, der aus weit entlegenen Geistgebieten Ideen in seinen Leib trug, die noch in Schönheit schimmerten, trotzdem sie auf dem Wege ihre ursprüngliche Leuchtkraft verloren hatten. Eine Seele, die aus früheren Erdenleben reiches Lichtgold brachte, es aber nicht ganz in diesem Leben zum Leuchten bringen konnte. Ich bewunderte, was Nietzsche geschrieben; aber ich schaute jetzt hinter meiner Bewunderung ein hellstrahlendes Bild.
[ 10 ] Ich konnte in meinen Gedanken nur stammeln, von dem, was ich damals geschaut; und das Stammeln ist der Inhalt meines Buches «Nietzsche, ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit». Daß das Buch nur ein solches Stammeln geblieben ist, verbirgt die aber doch wahre Tatsache, daß das Bild Nietzsches es mir inspiriert hat.
[ 11 ] Frau Förster-Nietzsche hat mich dann aufgefordert, Nietzsches Bibliothek zu ordnen. Ich habe dadurch mehrere Wochen im Nietzsche-Archiv in Naumburg zubringen dürfen. Ich wurde dabei auch mit Fritz Koegel sehr befreundet. Es war eine schöne Aufgabe, die die Bücher vor meine Augen stellte, in denen Nietzsche gelesen hatte. Sein Geist lebte in den Eindrükken auf, welche diese Bücher machten. Ein ganz mit Randbemerkungen versehenes, alle Spuren hingebendster Durcharbeitung tragendes Exemplar eines Emerson’schen Buches. Guyaus Schriften mit ebensolchen Spuren. Bücher mit leidenschaftlich kritisierenden Bemerkungen von seiner Hand. Eine große Anzahl von Randbemerkungen, aus denen man die Keime seiner Ideen aufschießen sieht.
[ 12 ] Eine durchgreifende Idee der letzten Schaffensperiode Nietzsches konnte ich aufleuchten sehen, indem ich seine Randbemerkung in Eugen Dührings philosophischem Hauptwerk las. Dühring konstruiert da den Gedanken, daß man das Weltall in einem Augenblick als eine Kombination von Elementarteilen vorstellen könne. Dann wäre das Weltgeschehen der Ablauf aller möglichen solcher Kombinationen. Wären diese erschöpft, dann müßte die allererste wiederkehren und der ganze Ablauf sich wiederholen. Stellte so etwas die Wirklichkeit vor, so müßte es unzählige Male schon geschehen sein und weiter in die Zukunft hinein unzählige Male geschehen. Man käme zu der Idee der ewigen Wiederholung gleicher Zustände des Weltalls. Dühring weist diesen Gedanken als einen unmöglichen zurück. Nietzsche liest das; er nimmt davon einen Eindruck auf: der arbeitet in den Untergründen seiner Seele weiter; und er formt sich dann in ihm als «die Wiederkunft des Gleichen», die mit der Idee vom «Übermenschen» zusammen seine letzte Schaffensperiode beherrscht.
[ 13 ] Ich war tief ergriffen, Ja erschüttert von dem Eindruck, den ich durch ein solches Nachgehen von Nietzsches Lektüre bekam. Denn ich sah, welch ein Gegensatz zwischen Nietzsches Geistesart und der seiner Zeitgenossen war. Dühring, der extreme Positivist, der alles ablehnt, was sich nicht aus einer ganz nüchtern orientierten, mathematisch verfahrenden Schematik ergibt, findet den Gedanken der «ewigen Wiederkunft des Gleichen» absurd, konstruiert ihn nur, um seine Unmöglichkeit darzutun: Nietzsche muß ihn als seine Welträtsellösung wie eine aus den Tiefen der eigenen Seele kommende Intuition aufnehmen.
[ 14 ] So steht Nietzsche in vollem Gegensatz zu vielem, was als Inhalt des Denkens und Fühlens seiner Zeit auf ihn einstürmt. Er nimmt diese Stürme so auf, daß er tief durch sie leidet, und im Leiden, in unsäglichen Seelenschmerzen den Inhalt der eigenen Seele schafft. Das war Sie erreichte ihren Höhepunkt, als er die Gedankenskizzen zu seinem letzten Werke notierte, zum «Willen zur Macht», oder der «Umwertung aller Werte». Nietzsche war dazu veranlagt, alles, was er dachte und empfand, aus den Tiefen seiner Seele in rein geistiger Art heraufzuholen. Das Weltbild zu schaffen aus dem Geistgeschehen, das die Seele miterlebt, das lag in seiner Richtung. Das positivistische Weltbild seines, des naturwissenschaftlichen Zeitalters, floß aber auf ihn ein. Darinnen war nur die rein materielle geistlose Welt. Was in diesem Bild noch auf geistige Art gedacht war, das war der Überrest alter Denkweisen, die nicht mehr zu ihm paßten. Nietzsches unbegrenzter Wahrheitssinn wollte alles das ausmerzen. So kam er dazu, den Positivismus ganz extrem zu denken. Eine Geistwelt hinter der materiellen ward ihm zur Lüge. Er konnte aber nur aus der eigenen Seele heraus schaffen. So schaffen, wie ein wahres Schaffen nur Sinn erhält, wenn es den Inhalt der Geistwelt in Ideen vor sich hinstellt. Diesen Inhalt lehnte er ab. Der naturwissenschaftliche Weltinhalt hatte seine Seele so stark ergriffen, daß er ihn wie auf Geistwegen schaffen wollte. Lyrisch, in dionysischem Seelenfluge, schwingt sich seine Seele im «Zarathustra» auf. Wunderbar webt da das Geistige, aber es träumt in Geistwundern von materiellem Wirklichkeitsgehalt. Es zerstäubt der Geist in seiner Entfaltung, weil er nicht sich finden, sondern nur den erträumten Abglanz des Materiellen als seine Schein-Wesenheit erleben kann.
[ 15 ] Ich lebte in der eigenen Seele damals in Weimar viel in dem Anschauen von Nietzsches Geistesart. In meinem eigenen Geist-Erleben hatte diese Geistesart ihren Platz. Dieses Geist-Erleben konnte mit Nietzsches Ringen, mit Nietzsches Tragik leben; was gingen es die positivistisch gestalteten Gedankenergebnisse Nietzsches an!
[ 16 ] Andere haben mich für einen «Nietzscheaner» gehalten, weil ich restlos bewundern konnte auch, was meiner eigenen Geistesrichtung entgegengesetzt war. Mich fesselte, wie der Geist in Nietzsche sich offenbarte: ich gelaubte, ihm gerade dadurch nahe zu sein, denn er stand niemand nahe durch Gedanken-Inhalte: er fand sich allein mit Menschen und Zeiten im Mit-Erleben der Geist- Wege zusammen.
[ 17 ] Eine Zeitlang habe ich mit dem Herausgeber von Nietzsches Werken, Fritz Koegel, viel verkehrt. Manches auf die Nietzsche-Ausgabe Bezügliche haben wir durchgesprochen. Eine offizielle Stellung im Nietzsche-Archiv oder zur Nietzsche-Ausgabe habe ich nie gehabt. Als Frau Förster-Nietzsche mir eine solche anbieten wollte, führte gerade das zu Konflikten mit Fritz Koegel, die fortan mir jede Gemeinsamkeit mit dem NietzscheArchiv unmöglich machten.
[ 18 ] Mein Verhältnis zum Nietzsche-Archiv stellte sich in mein Weimarer Leben als eine Episode starker Anregungen hinein, die mir zuletzt im Zerbrechen des Verhältnisses tiefes Leid brachte.
[ 19 ] Aus der weitgehenden Beschäftigung mit Nietzsche verblieb mir die Anschauung von seiner Persönlichkeit, deren Schicksal war, das naturwissenschaftliche Zeitalter der letzten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts in Tragik mitzuerleben, und an der Berührung mit ihm zu zerbrechen. Er suchte in diesem Zeitalter, konnte aber in ihm nichts finden. Mich konnte das Erleben an ihm nur festigen in der Anschauung, daß alles Suchen in den Ergebnissen der Naturwissenschaft das Wesentliche nicht in ihnen, sondern durch sie im Geiste finden müsse.
[ 20 ] So trat gerade durch Nietzsches Schaffen das Problem der Naturwissenschaft in erneuerter Gestalt vor meine Seele. Goethe und Nietzsche standen in meiner Perspektive. Goethes energischer Wirklichkeitssinn nach den Wesen und Vorgängen der Natur gerichtet. Er wollte in der Natur bleiben. Er hielt sich in reinen Anschauungen von Pflanzen-, Tier- und Menschenformen. Aber indem er sich mit der Seele in diesen bewegte, kam er überall zum Geiste. Den in der Materie waltenden Geist fand er. Bis zu der Anschauung des in sich selbst lebenden und waltenden Geistes wollte er nicht gehen. Eine «geistgemäße» Naturerkenntnis bildete er aus. Vor einer reinen Geist-Erkenntnis machte er Halt, um die Wirklichkeit nicht zu verlieren.
[ 21 ] Nietzsche ging vom Geist-Anschauen in mythischer Form aus. Apollo und Dionysos waren Geistgestalten, die er erlebte. Der Ablauf der menschlichen Geistgeschichte erschien ihm wie ein Zusammenwirken, oder auch wie ein Kampf zwischen Apollo und Dionysos. Aber er brachte es nur zu dem mythischen Vorstellen solcher Geistgestalten. Er drang nicht vor zu der Anschauung wirklicher geistiger Wesenheit. Vom Geist-Mythos aus drang er zur Natur vor. Apollo sollte in Nietzsches Seele das Materielle nach dem Muster der Naturwissenschaft vorstellen; Dionysos sollte wirken wie Naturkräfte. Aber da verfinsterte sich Apollos Schönheit; da ward des Dionysos Weltemotion durch die Naturgesetzmäßigkeit gelähmt.
[ 22] Goethe fand den Geist in der Naturwirklichkeit; Nietzsche verlor den Geist-Mythos in dem Naturtraum, in dem er lebte.
[ 23 ] Ich stand zwischen diesen beiden Gegensätzen. Die seelischen Erlebnisse, die sich in meiner Schrift «Nietzsche, ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit» ausgelebt hatten, fanden zunächst keine Fortsetzung; dagegen stellte sich in meiner letzten Weimarer Zeit Goethe wieder beherrschend vor meine Betrachtung. Ich wollte den Weg kennzeichnen, den das Weltanschauungsleben der Menschheit bis zu Goethe genommen hat, um dann Goethes Anschauungsart in ihrem Hervorgehen aus diesem Leben darzustellen. Ich habe das versucht in dem Buche «Goethes Weltanschauung», das 1897 erschienen ist.
[ 24 ] Ich wollte da zur Anschauung bringen, wie Goethe an der reinen Naturerkenntnis überall, wo er hinblickt, den Geist aufblitzend erblickt; aber ich habe die Art, wie Goethe sich zum Geist als solchem stellte, ganz unberührt gelassen. Ich wollte den Teil von Goethes Weltanschauung charakterisieren, der in einer «geistgemäßen» Naturanschauung lebt.
[ 25 ] Nietzsches Ideen von der «ewigen Wiederkunft» und dem «Übermenschen» standen lange vor mir. Denn in ihnen spiegelte sich, was eine Persönlichkeit über die Entwickelung der Menschheit und über das Wesen des Menschen erleben mußte, die von der Erfassung der geistigen Welt durch die festgezimmerten Gedanken der Naturanschauung vom Ende des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts zurückgehalten wurde. Nietzsche sah die Entwickelung der Menschheit so, daß sich, was in einem Augenblick geschieht, unzählige Male in ganz gleicher Gestalt schon ereignet hat und unzählige Male sich in der Zukunft ereignen werde. Die atomistische Gestaltung des Weltalls läßt den gegenwärtigen Augenblick als eine bestimmte Kombination der kleinsten Wesenheiten erscheinen; an diese muß sich eine andere anschließen, an diese wieder eine andere; und wenn alle möglichen Kombinationen erschöpft sind, so muß die anfängliche wieder erscheinen. — Ein menschliches Leben mit allen seinen Einzelheiten war unzählige Male da; es wird unzählige Male mit all diesen selben Einzelheiten wiederkehren.
[ 26 ] Die «wiederholten Erdenleben» des Menschen dämmerten im Unterbewußtsein Nietzsches. Sie führen das Menschenleben durch die Menschheitsentwickelung zu Lebensetappen, in denen das waltende Schicksal auf geistgestaltenden Bahnen den Menschen nicht zu einer Wiederholung des gleichen Erlebens, sondern zu einem vielgestalteten Hindurchgehen durch den Weltenlauf kommen läßt. Nietzsche war umklammert von den Fesseln der Naturanschauung. Was diese aus den wiederholten Erdenleben machen konnte, das zauberte sich vor seine Seele. Und er lebte das. Denn er empfand sein Leben als ein tragisches, erfüllt mit schmerzvollsten Erfahrungen, niedergedrückt von Leid. — Dieses Leben noch unzählige Male zu erfahren — das stand vor seiner Seele statt der Perspektive auf die befreienden Erfahrungen, die eine solche Tragik in der Weiterentfaltung kommender Leben zu erfahren hat.
[ 27 ] Und Nietzsche empfand, daß in dem Menschen, der sich in Einem Erdendasein erlebt, ein anderer sich offenbart — ein «Ubermensch», der aus sich nur die Fragmente seines Gesamtlebens im leiblichen Erdendasein ausgestalten kann. Die naturalistische Entwickelungs-Idee ließ ihn diesen «UÜbermenschen» nicht als das geistig Waltende innerhalb des Sinnlich-Physischen schauen, sondern als das durch bloß naturgemäße Entwickelung sich Ausgestaltende. Wie aus dem Tier der Mensch sich entfaltet hat, wird sich aus dem Menschen der «Übermensch» entfalten. Die Naturanschauung entriß Nietzsche den Ausblick auf den «Geistmenschen» im «Naturmenschen» und blendete ihn mit einem höheren Naturmenschen.
[ 28 ] Was nach dieser Richtung Nietzsche erlebt hat, das stand in vollster Lebhaftigkeit im Sommer 1896 vor meiner Seele. Damals gab mir Fritz Koegel seine Zusammenstellung von Nietzsches Aphorismen zur «ewigen Wiederkunft» zur Durchsicht. Ich habe, was ich damals über das Hervorgehen von Nietzsches Ideen gedacht habe, 1900 in einem Aufsatze im «Magazin für Literatur» niedergeschrieben. — In einzelnen Sätzen dieses Aufsatzes ist festgehalten, was ich 1896 an Nietzsche und der Naturwissenschaft erlebt habe. Ich werde diese meine Gedanken von damals hier wiederholen, losgelöst von der Polemik, in die sie damals gekleidet waren.
[ 29 ] «Es ist kein Zweifel, daß Nietzsche diese einzelnen Aphorismen in zwangloser Reihenfolge aufgeschrieben hat ... Ich habe meine damals ausgesprochene Überzeugung auch heute noch: daß Nietzsche bei Gelegenheit der Lektüre von Eugen Dührings «Kursus der Philosophie als streng wissenschaftlicher Weltanschauung und Lebensgestaltung» (Leipzig 1875) und unter dem Einflusse dieses Buches die Idee gefaßt hat. Auf S. 84 dieses Werkes findet sich nämlich dieser Gedanke ganz klar ausgesprochen; nur wird er da ebenso energisch bekämpft, wie ihn Nietzsche verteidigt. Das Buch ist in Nietzsches Bibliothek vorhanden. Es ist, wie zahlreiche Bleistiftstriche am Rande zeigen, von Nietzsche eifrig gelesen worden ... Dühring sagt: «Der tiefere logische Grund alles bewußten Lebens fordert daher im strengsten Sinne des Worts eine Unerschöpflichkeit der Gebilde. Ist diese Unendlichkeit, vermöge deren immer neue Formen hervorgetrieben werden, an sich möglich? Die bloße Zahl der materiellen Teile und Kraftelemente würde an sich die unendliche Häufung der Kombinationen ausschließen, wenn nicht das stetige Medium des Raumes und der Zeit eine Unbeschränktheit der Variationen verbürgte. Aus dem, was zählbar ist, kann auch nur eine erschöpfbare Anzahl von Kombinationen folgen. Aus dem aber, was seinem Wesen nach ohne Widerspruch gar nicht als etwas Zählbares konzipiert werden darf, muß auch die unbeschränkte Mannigfaltigkeit der Lagen und Beziehungen hervorgehen können. Diese Unbeschränktheit, die wir für das Schicksal der Gestaltungen des Universums in Anspruch nehmen, ist nun mit jeder Wandlung und selbst mit dem Eintreten eines Intervalls der annähernden Beharrung oder der vollständigen Sichselbstgleichheit (von mir unterstrichen), aber nicht mit dem Aufhören alles Wandels verträglich. Wer die Vorstellung von einem Sein kultivieren möchte, welches dem Ursprungszustande entspricht, sei daran erinnert, daß die zeitliche Entwickelung nur eine einzige reale Richtung hat, und daß die Kausalität ebenfalls dieser Richtung gemäß ist. Es ist leichter, die Unterschiede zu verwischen, als sie festzuhalten, und es kostet daher wenig Mühe, mit Hinwegsetzung über die Kluft das Ende nach Analogie des Anfangs zu imaginieren. Hüten wir uns jedoch vor solchen oberflächlichen Voreiligkeiten; denn die einmal gegebene Existenz des Universums ist keine gleichgültige Episode zwischen zwei Zuständen der Nacht, sondern der einzige feste und lichte Grund, von dem aus wir unsere Rückschlüsse und Vorwegnahmen bewerkstelligen ...> Dühring findet auch, daß eine immerwährende Wiederholung der Zustände keinen Reiz für das Leben hat. Er sagt: ‹Nun versteht es sich von selbst, daß die Prinzipien des Lebensreizes mit ewiger Wiederholung derselben Formen nicht verträglich sind...›»
[ 30 ] Nietzsche wird mit der Naturanschauung in eine Konsequenz hineingetrieben, vor der Dühring durch die mathematische Betrachtung und durch das Schreckbild, das sie vor dem Leben darstellt, zurückschauert.
[ 31 ] In meinem Aufsatze heißt es weiter: «... machen wir die Voraussetzung, daß mit den materiellen Teilen und Kraftelementen eine zählbare Anzahl von Kombinationen möglich sei, so haben wir die Nietzsche’sche Idee der «Wiederkunft des Gleichen». Nichts anderes als die Verteidigung einer aus der Dühring’schen Ansicht genommenen Gegen-Idee haben wir in dem Aphorismus 203 (Band XI in Koegels Ausgabe und Aphorismus 22 in Horneffers Schrift: ‹Nietzsches Lehre von der ewigen Wiederkunft»): «Das Maß der All-Kraft ist bestimmt, nichts ‹Unendliches›: hüten wir uns vor solchen Ausschweifungen des Begriffs! Folglich ist die Zahl der Lagen, Veränderungen, Kombinationen und Entwickelungen dieser Kraft zwar ungeheuer groß und praktisch ‹unermeßlich›, aber jedenfalls auch bestimmt und nicht unendlich, das heißt: die Kraft ist ewig gleich und ewig tätig: — bis zu diesem Augenblick ist schon eine Unendlichkeit abgelaufen, das heißt, alle möglichen Entwickelungen müssen schon dagewesen sein. Folglich muß die augenblickliche Entwickelung eine Wiederholung sein und so die, welche sie gebar, und die, welche aus ihr entsteht, und so vorwärts und rückwärts weiter! Alles ist unzähligemal dagewesen, insofern die Gesamtlage aller Kräfte immer wiederkehrt...» Und Nietzsches Gefühl gegenüber diesem Gedanken ist genau das Gegenteilige von dem, das Dühring bei ihm hat. Nietzsche ist dieser Gedanke die höchste Formel der Lebensbejahung. Aphorismus 43 (bei Horneffer, 234 in Koegels Ausgabe) lautet: ‹die zukünftige Geschichte: immer mehr wird dieser Gedanke siegen — und die nicht daran glauben, die müssen ihrer Natur nach endlich aussterben! — Nur wer sein Dasein für ewig wiederholungsfähig hält, bleibt übrig: unter solchen aber ist ein Zustand möglich, an den kein Utopist gereicht hat! Es ist der Nachweis möglich, daß viele der Nietzsche’schen Gedanken auf dieselbe Art entstanden sind wie der Ewige-Wiederkunfts-Gedanke. Nietzsche bildete zu irgend einer vorhandenen Idee die Gegen-Idee. Schließlich führte ihn dieselbe Tendenz auf sein Hauptwerk: ‹Umwertung aller Werte›.»
[ 32 ] Mir war damals klar: Nietzsche ist mit gewissen seiner nach der Geist-Welt strebenden Gedanken ein Gefangener der Naturanschauung. Deshalb lehnte ich die mystische Interpretation seines Wiederkunftsgedankens streng ab. Und ich stimmte Peter Gast zu, der in seiner Ausgabe von Nietzsches Werken geschrieben hat: «Die rein mechanisch zu verstehende Lehre von der Erschöpfbarkeit, also Repetition, der kosmischen Molekularkombinationen.» — Nietzsche glaubte einen Höhe-Gedanken aus den Grundlagen der Naturanschauung holen zu müssen. Das war die Art, wie er an seiner Zeit leiden mußte.
[ 33] So stand, was man — nach dem Geiste ausblickend — an der Naturanschauung vom Ende des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts zu leiden hatte, in dem Anblicke von Nietzsches Seele 1896 vor mir.
Chapter XVIII
[ 1 ] At this time I entered the circles of spiritual experience in which Nietzsche had dwelt.
[ 2 ] My first acquaintance with Nietzsche's writings was in 1889. Before that, I had not read a single line of his work. His writings had no influence on the content of my ideas as expressed in the "Philosophy of Freedom". I read what he had written with the feeling of being attracted by the style that his relationship to life had given him. I perceived his soul as a being who had to listen with inherited and acquired attention to everything that the intellectual life of his time had produced, but who always felt, what is this intellectual life to me: there must be another world in which I can live; in this one so much about life disturbs me. This feeling made him a spiritually fired critic of his time; but a critic who was made ill by his own criticism. He had to experience illness and could only dream of health, of his own health. He first looked for ways to make his dream of health the content of his life; and so he tried to dream with Richard Wagner, with Schopenhauer, with modern "positivism", as if he wanted to make the dream in his soul a reality. One day he discovered that he had only been dreaming. Then he began to search for realities with all the strength his spirit possessed. Realities that had to lie "somewhere"; he did not find "paths" to these realities, but longings. Then the longings became realities in him. He continued to dream: but the powerful force of his soul created inner-human realities from his dreams, which floated freely in a spiritually joyful mood that was disgustingly affected by the "spirit of the age", without the heaviness that had long been inherent in human ideas.
[ 3 ] This is how I felt about Nietzsche. The free-floating, weightlessness of his ideas swept me away. I found that this free-floating had given rise to many thoughts in him that were similar to those that had formed in me along paths quite unlike his own.
[ 4 ] So I was able to write in 1895 in the preface to my book "Nietzsche, a Fighter against his Time": "Already in my small book "Erkenntnistheorie der Goethe'schen Weltanschauung", published in 1886, the same attitude is expressed as in some of Nietzsche's works." What particularly attracted me, however, was that one was allowed to read Nietzsche without somehow encountering anything in him that would make the reader his "follower". One could feel his spiritual lights with surrendering joy; one felt completely free in this feeling; for one felt that his words began to make one laugh when one would have expected them to be agreed with, as Haeckel or Spencer presupposed.
[ 5 ] So, in order to express my relationship to Nietzsche, I was also allowed to do so in the aforementioned book with words that he formed about his own to Schopenhauer: "I am one of those readers of Nietzsche who, after reading the first page of him, know with certainty that they will read all the pages and listen to every word he has ever said. My trust in him was immediate ... I understood him as if he had written for me to express myself intelligibly but immodestly and foolishly."
[ 6 ] Shortly before I started writing this book, Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, appeared one day at the Goethe and Schiller Archive. She had just taken the first steps towards founding a Nietzsche Archive and wanted to know how the Goethe and Schiller Archive was organized. Soon afterwards, the editor of Nietzsche's works, Fritz Koegel, also appeared in Weimar, and I got to know him.
[ 7 ] I later came into serious conflict with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. At the time, her agile, amiable spirit challenged my deepest sympathy. I suffered unspeakably from the conflicts; a complicated situation brought it about: I was forced to defend myself against accusations; I know that it was all necessary, that it covered the beautiful hours I was allowed to spend in the Nietzsche Archive in Naumburg and Weimar with a veil of bitterness in my memory; but I am grateful to Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche that she led me into Friedrich Nietzsche's room during the first of the many visits I was allowed to make to her. There lay the deranged man with the wonderfully beautiful forehead, artist's and thinker's forehead at the same time, on a reclining sofa. It was the early hours of the afternoon. These eyes, which still seemed to be transfixed in their extinguished state, only took in an image of the surroundings that no longer had access to the soul. One stood there and Nietzsche knew nothing of it. And yet one could still have believed from the spiritualized face that it was the expression of a soul that had been forming thoughts within itself all morning and now wanted to rest for a while. An inner shock that gripped my soul might have meant that it would turn into understanding for the genius whose gaze was directed at me but did not meet mine. The passivity of this gaze, which lingered for a long time, triggered the understanding of my own gaze, which was allowed to let the soul power of the eye work without being met.
[ 8 ] And so there stood before my soul: Nietzsche's soul as if hovering above his head, infinitely beautiful in its spiritual light; freely devoted to spiritual worlds that it longed for before the derangement, but did not find; but still bound to the body, which only knew of it as long as this world was still a longing. Nietzsche's soul was still there: but it could only hold the body from the outside, which offered it resistance to unfold in its full light as long as it was inside it.
[ 9 ] I had previously read the Nietzsche who had written; now I had seen the Nietzsche who carried ideas into his body from distant spiritual realms, ideas that still shimmered with beauty, even though they had lost their original luminosity along the way. A soul that brought rich gold of light from earlier lives on earth, but could not make it shine fully in this life. I admired what Nietzsche wrote; but I now saw a brightly shining picture behind my admiration.
[ 10 ] I could only stammer in my thoughts about what I saw then; and that stammering is the content of my book "Nietzsche, a Fighter against his Time". The fact that the book remained just such a stammer conceals the true fact that Nietzsche's image inspired it.
[ 11 ] Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche then asked me to organize Nietzsche's library. This allowed me to spend several weeks in the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg. I also became very friendly with Fritz Koegel. It was a wonderful task that brought the books Nietzsche had read before my eyes. His spirit came alive in the impressions that these books made. A copy of one of Emerson's books, completely annotated in the margins and bearing all the traces of the most dedicated workmanship. Guyau's writings with similar traces. Books with passionately critical remarks in his hand. A large number of marginal notes from which one can see the germs of his ideas sprouting.
[ 12 ] I was able to see a pervasive idea of Nietzsche's last creative period light up by reading his marginal note in Eugen Dühring's philosophical magnum opus. Dühring constructs the idea that the universe can be imagined in an instant as a combination of elementary parts. Then world events would be the sequence of all possible such combinations. If these were exhausted, then the very first one would have to return and the whole process would have to repeat itself. If such a thing represented reality, it would have to have happened countless times already and continue to happen countless times into the future. One would arrive at the idea of the eternal repetition of the same states of the universe. Dühring rejects this idea as impossible. Nietzsche reads this; he absorbs an impression of it: it continues to work in the depths of his soul; and it then forms itself in him as "the return of the same", which, together with the idea of the "superman", dominates his last creative period.
[ 13 ] I was deeply moved, indeed shaken, by the impression I got from reading Nietzsche in this way. For I saw what a contrast there was between Nietzsche's way of thinking and that of his contemporaries. Dühring, the extreme positivist, who rejects everything that does not result from a completely soberly oriented, mathematically proceeding schema, finds the idea of the "eternal return of the same" absurd, constructs it only to demonstrate its impossibility: Nietzsche must accept it as his solution to the world puzzle like an intuition coming from the depths of his own soul.
[ 14 ] In this way, Nietzsche stands in complete opposition to much of what storms upon him as the content of the thinking and feeling of his time. He absorbs these storms in such a way that he suffers deeply through them, and in suffering, in unspeakable pain of the soul, creates the content of his own soul. It reached its climax when he wrote the sketches for his last work, the "Will to Power", or the "Revaluation of All Values". Nietzsche was inclined to bring up everything he thought and felt from the depths of his soul in a purely spiritual way. Creating the world view from the spiritual events that the soul experiences was his direction. However, the positivistic world view of his age, the age of natural science, influenced him. In it was only the purely material, spiritless world. What was still thought of in a spiritual way in this picture was the remnant of old ways of thinking that no longer suited him. Nietzsche's unlimited sense of truth wanted to eradicate all that. Thus he came to think positivism in a very extreme way. A spiritual world behind the material one became a lie to him. But he could only create out of his own soul. To create in the way that true creation only makes sense when it presents the content of the spiritual world in ideas. He rejected this content. The scientific content of the world had seized his soul so strongly that he wanted to create it as if through the spirit. Lyrically, in a Dionysian flight of the soul, his soul soars in "Zarathustra". The spiritual weaves wonderfully there, but it dreams in spiritual wonders of material reality. The spirit atomizes in its unfolding because it cannot find itself, but can only experience the dreamed reflection of the material as its illusory essence.
[ 15 ] I lived a lot in my own soul at that time in Weimar in the contemplation of Nietzsche's way of thinking. This way of thinking had its place in my own spiritual experience. This spiritual experience could live with Nietzsche's struggle, with Nietzsche's tragedy; what business was it of Nietzsche's positivistically shaped thought results!
[ 16 ] Others thought I was a "Nietzschean" because I could completely admire even what was contrary to my own school of thought. I was fascinated by how the spirit revealed itself in Nietzsche: I believed that I was close to him precisely because he was not close to anyone through the content of his thoughts: he found himself alone with people and times in the co-experience of the paths of the spirit.
[ 17 ] For some time I had a lot of dealings with the editor of Nietzsche's works, Fritz Koegel. We discussed many things related to the Nietzsche edition. I never had an official position in the Nietzsche Archive or on the Nietzsche edition. When Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche wanted to offer me such a position, this led to conflicts with Fritz Koegel, which from then on made it impossible for me to have any common ground with the Nietzsche Archive.
[ 18 ] My relationship with the Nietzsche Archive turned out to be an episode of strong stimulation in my Weimar life, which ultimately brought me deep suffering in the break-up of the relationship.
[ 19 ] From my extensive preoccupation with Nietzsche, I was left with an impression of his personality, whose fate was to experience the tragedy of the scientific age of the last half of the nineteenth century and to break from contact with it. He searched in this age, but could find nothing in it. Experiencing it could only strengthen my view that all searching in the results of natural science must find the essential not in them, but through them in the spirit.
[ 20 ] So it was precisely through Nietzsche's work that the problem of natural science came before my soul in a renewed form. Goethe and Nietzsche were in my perspective. Goethe's energetic sense of reality was directed towards the essence and processes of nature. He wanted to remain in nature. He kept himself in pure views of plant, animal and human forms. But by moving with his soul in these, he came everywhere to the spirit. He found the spirit reigning in matter. He did not want to go as far as the view of the spirit living and ruling in itself. He developed a "spiritual" knowledge of nature. He stopped short of a pure knowledge of the spirit so as not to lose reality.
[ 21 ] Nietzsche proceeded from a mythical way of looking at the spirit. Apollo and Dionysus were spirit figures that he experienced. The course of human spiritual history appeared to him to be a collaboration, or even a battle between Apollo and Dionysus. But he only managed to imagine such spiritual figures in mythical terms. He did not penetrate to the contemplation of real spiritual beings. From the spirit-myth he advanced to nature. In Nietzsche's soul, Apollo was supposed to represent the material according to the pattern of natural science; Dionysus was supposed to work like natural forces. But then Apollo's beauty darkened; then Dionysus' worldly emotion was paralyzed by the laws of nature.
[ 22] Goethe found the spirit in the reality of nature; Nietzsche lost the spirit-myth in the dream of nature in which he lived.
[ 23 ] I stood between these two opposites. The emotional experiences that had been expressed in my writing "Nietzsche, a Fighter against his Time" were not continued at first; in contrast, Goethe once again dominated my contemplation during my last Weimar period. I wanted to characterize the path that the worldview of humanity had taken up to Goethe in order to then depict Goethe's way of looking at things in its emergence from this life. I attempted this in the book "Goethe's Weltanschauung", which was published in 1897.
[ 24 ] I wanted to show how Goethe saw the spirit flashing through pure knowledge of nature wherever he looked; but I left the way in which Goethe viewed the spirit as such completely untouched. I wanted to characterize the part of Goethe's world view that lives in a "spirit-like" view of nature.
[ 25 ] Nietzsche's ideas of the "eternal return" and the "superman" stood before me for a long time. For they reflected what a personality had to experience about the development of humanity and about the nature of man, who was held back from grasping the spiritual world by the fixed thoughts of the view of nature from the end of the nineteenth century. Nietzsche saw the development of humanity in such a way that what happens in one moment has already happened countless times in quite the same form and will happen countless times in the future. The atomistic organization of the universe makes the present moment appear as a certain combination of the smallest entities; this must be followed by another, this by yet another; and when all possible combinations are exhausted, the initial one must reappear. - A human life with all its details has existed innumerable times; it will reappear innumerable times with all these same details.
[ 26 ] The "repeated earth lives" of man dawned in Nietzsche's subconscious. They lead human life through the development of mankind to stages of life in which the ruling fate on spirit-forming paths does not lead man to a repetition of the same experience, but to a multifaceted passage through the course of the world. Nietzsche was bound by the fetters of the view of nature. What this could make of repeated earthly lives conjured up before his soul. And he lived it. For he perceived his life as a tragic one, filled with the most painful experiences, weighed down by suffering. - To experience this life countless more times - that was in front of his soul instead of the perspective of the liberating experiences that such tragedy has to experience in the further unfolding of future lives.
[ 27 ] And Nietzsche felt that in the human being who experiences himself in one earthly existence, another is revealed - a "Ubermensch", who can only develop the fragments of his entire life in his bodily earthly existence. The naturalistic idea of development made him see this "superhuman" not as the spiritually active within the sensual-physical, but as that which forms itself through merely natural development. Just as man has unfolded from the animal, the "superman" will unfold from man. The view of nature snatched away Nietzsche's view of the "spirit man" in the "natural man" and blinded him with a higher natural man.
[ 28 ] What Nietzsche experienced in this direction stood before my soul in full vividness in the summer of 1896. At that time, Fritz Koegel gave me his compilation of Nietzsche's aphorisms on the "eternal return" for my perusal. I wrote down what I thought at the time about the emergence of Nietzsche's ideas in an essay in the "Magazin für Literatur" in 1900. - The individual sentences of this essay record what I experienced in 1896 about Nietzsche and natural science. I will repeat my thoughts from that time here, detached from the polemic in which they were clothed at the time.
[ 29 ] "There is no doubt that Nietzsche wrote down these individual aphorisms in an unconstrained order ... I still have the conviction I expressed then: that Nietzsche conceived the idea on the occasion of reading Eugen Dühring's "Kursus der Philosophie als streng wissenschaftlicher Weltanschauung und Lebensgestaltung" (Leipzig 1875) and under the influence of this book. On p. 84 of this work this idea is expressed quite clearly; only there it is fought against just as vigorously as Nietzsche defends it. The book is in Nietzsche's library. As numerous pencil marks in the margins show, Nietzsche read it avidly ... Dühring says: "The deeper logical ground of all conscious life therefore demands, in the strictest sense of the word, an inexhaustibility of entities. Is this infinity, by virtue of which ever new forms are driven forth, possible in itself? The mere number of material parts and elements of force would in itself exclude the infinite accumulation of combinations if the constant medium of space and time did not guarantee an unlimited number of variations. Only an exhaustible number of combinations can follow from that which is countable. But from that which by its very nature cannot be conceived without contradiction as something countable, the unlimited multiplicity of positions and relationships must also be able to emerge. This unlimitedness, which we claim for the fate of the formations of the universe, is now compatible with every change and even with the occurrence of an interval of approximate persistence or complete self-sameness (underlined by me), but not with the cessation of all change. Those who wish to cultivate the idea of a being that corresponds to the original state should remember that temporal development has only one real direction, and that causality is also in accordance with this direction. It is easier to blur the differences than to retain them, and it therefore costs little effort to imagine the end by analogy with the beginning, ignoring the gap. Let us, however, beware of such superficial hastiness; for the existence of the universe, once given, is not an indifferent episode between two states of the night, but the only firm and clear ground from which we make our inferences and anticipations ...> Dühring also finds that a perpetual repetition of states has no charm for life. He says: 'Now it goes without saying that the principles of the stimulus of life are not compatible with eternal repetition of the same forms...'"
[ 30 ] Nietzsche's view of nature is driven into a consistency from which Dühring recoils by the mathematical observation and by the horror it presents to life.
[ 31 ] My essay continues: "... If we make the assumption that a countable number of combinations is possible with the material parts and elements of force, then we have Nietzsche's idea of the "return of the same". We have nothing other than the defense of a counter-idea taken from Dühring's view in aphorism 203 (volume XI in Koegel's edition and aphorism 22 in Horneffer's writing: 'Nietzsche's Doctrine of the Eternal Second Coming"): "The measure of the All-Power is determined, nothing 'infinite': let us beware of such excesses of the concept! Consequently, the number of positions, changes, combinations and developments of this force is indeed immense and practically 'immeasurable', but in any case also determined and not infinite, that is: the force is eternally the same and eternally active: - up to this moment an infinity has already elapsed, that is, all possible developments must already have occurred. Consequently, the instantaneous development must be a repetition, and so the one that gave birth to it, and the one that arises from it, and so on forwards and backwards! Everything has been there countless times, inasmuch as the total situation of all forces always returns..." And Nietzsche's feeling towards this thought is exactly the opposite of Dühring's. For Nietzsche, this thought is the highest formula for the affirmation of life. Aphorism 43 (in Horneffer, 234 in Koegel's edition) reads: 'future history: more and more this thought will triumph - and those who do not believe in it must by their nature finally die out! - Only those who consider their existence capable of eternal repetition remain: among such, however, a state is possible to which no utopian has reached! It is possible to prove that many of Nietzsche's thoughts arose in the same way as the idea of eternal return. Nietzsche formed the counter-idea to some existing idea. Ultimately, the same tendency led him to his main work: 'The Revaluation of All Values'."
[ 32 ] I realized at the time that Nietzsche, with certain of his thoughts striving for the spiritual world, was a prisoner of the view of nature. That is why I strictly rejected the mystical interpretation of his idea of the Second Coming. And I agreed with Peter Gast, who wrote in his edition of Nietzsche's works: "The purely mechanical doctrine of the exhaustibility, i.e. repetition, of cosmic molecular combinations." - Nietzsche believed he had to extract a high thought from the foundations of the view of nature. That was the way he had to suffer from his time.
[ 33] So what one had to suffer from the view of nature at the end of the nineteenth century - looking at the spirit - stood before me in the sight of Nietzsche's soul in 1896.