Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Alexander Tille - 1896.djvu/20



XVi INTRODUCTION What far more than style or story separates Thus Spake Zarathustra from the Tripitaka and the Gospels, from Piers and the Pilgrim, is the creed contained in it. Thus Spake Zarathustra is a kind of summary of the intellectual life of the nineteenth century, and it is on this fact that its principal significance rests. It unites in itself a number of mental movements which, in literature as well as in various sciences, have made themselves felt separately during the last hundred years, without going far beyond them. By bringing them into contact, although not always into uncontradictory relation, Nietzsche transfers them from mere existence in philosophy, or scientific literature in general, into the sphere of the creed or Weltanschauung of the educated classes, and thus his book becomes capable of influencing the views and strivings of a whole age. His immense rhetorical power and rhapsodic gift give them a stress they scarcely possessed before. His enthusiasm and energy of thought animate them, and his lyrical talent transforms them into "true poetry" for the believers in them. He makes the freest use of traditional wisdom, of proverbs and sayings of poets and philosophers that can easily be traced to their original source, partly by repeating them but slightly altered, partly by transforming them considerably, partly by turning them into their contrary, or even into more than that, by giving them a new point altogether, while keeping nine-tenths of their old form. And this close connection with the wisdom of the century gives a person who is well read in German literature of the present century quite a peculiar pleasure in reading the book. It is almost inconceivable that Nietzsche should have gone through the amount of reading which would be necessary to gather all these things from the places in which individual minds had placed them for the first time. A great number of them indeed belong to the treasury