Download The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche Free PDF Book by H. L. Mencken ( 1908)





, the speculation and theorizing, the politics and superstition of the time. He reigns as king in the German universities where, since Luther's day, all the world's most painful thinking has been done and his echoes tinkle, harshly or faintly, from Chicago to Mesopotamia. His ideas appear in the writings of men as unlike as Roosevelt and Bernard Shaw; even the newspapers are aware of him. He is praised and berated, accepted and denounced, canonized and damned. Pythag- ours had no more devout disciples and Spinoza had no more murderous and violent foes. Wherefore it may be a toil of some profit to examine his ideas a bit closely; to differentiate between what he said in his books and what his apostles and interpreters and enemies say or think he said; and in the end, perhaps, to find out what he meant.there is nothing cryptic or mysterious about Nietzsche.Curiously enough, the popular comprehension of his philosophy suffers by this very fact, for the world has come to regard the metaphysic as something properly and necessarily occult and to expect its expounders, if they would seem truly wise, to show the abysmal turgidity of a Kant and the wild, cabalistic imbecility of Revelations. When there arises a prophet like Nietzsche, who thinks his thoughts accurately and puts them into the vulgar tongue, he is commonly suspected to be some sort of fantastic and preposterous joker. Instead of accepting his prophecy in its surface sense, his audience sees, in its very obviousness, a new and extraordinarily confusing form of a riddle. Such is the curse that Rabbinism, in and out of the church, has laid upon the propagation of ideas.Author: H. L. MenckenPublication Date:1908