Page:Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche (1921).djvu/10

VI the good luck to encounter for a long time. The friends of Nietzsche and Nietzsche has many friends in all climes and amongst all races will be delighted to see their hero in the light of their own wishes and imagina tions, while the enemies of Nietzsche and he still has many and by no means unworthy enemies will be bound to confess what the Lutheran Pastor Colerus confessed in his Life of the Philosopher Spinoza: "He may have been a man of no strict orthodoxy and an atheist into the bargain, but in the conduct of his life he was wise and good."

There are two other legends which the publication of these letters will successfully destroy. One concerns the great and often ventilated question of Nietzsche s mental condition and responsibility. It has been frequently stated that his final breakdown, which occurred in 1888, and which lasted till his death in 1900, was foreshadowed in his writings long ago, and that his "insanity" was the actual and only excuse for the philosopher s haughty contempt for and bilious criticism of his contemporaries. But where, in the light of these letters, is the insanity? That Nietzsche s nervous system was not as perfectly balanced as that of a boxer or cricketer may be truly conceded; what great writer was exempt from failings of the flesh? What great author has not paid with his nerves for those moments of happy inspiration and intoxication which gave his best work to posterity? "La Névrose est la rançon du génie." ("Nervousness is the penalty of genius.") But throughout these letters, which start in early youth and go to the last moment of his spiritual life, there is not the slightest trace of any lack of