Page:Complete works of Nietzsche vol 10.djvu/15

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 3

Incipit tragedia, it is said at the conclusion of this seriously frivolous book; let people be on their guard! Something or other extraordinarily bad and wicked announces itself: zncipit parodia, there is no doubt. . .

2.

—But let us leave Herr Nietzsche; what does it matter to people that Herr Nietzsche has got well again? ... A psychologist knows few questions so attractive as those concerning the relations of health to philosophy, and in the case when he himself falls sick, he carries with him all his scientific curiosity into his sickness. For, granting that one is a person, one has necessarily also the philosophy of one’s personality ; there is, however, an important distinction here. With the one it is his defects which philosophise, with the other it is his riches and powers. The former requires his philosophy, whether it be as support, sedative, or medicine, as salvation, elevation, or self-alienation : with the latter it is merely a fine luxury, at best the voluptuousness of a triumphant gratitude, which must inscribe itself ultimately in cosmic capitals on the heaven of ideas. In the other more usual case, however, when states of distress occupy them- selves with philosophy (as is the case with all sickly thinkers—and perhaps the sickly thinkers pre- ponderate in the history of philosophy), what will happen to the thought itself which is brought under the pressure of sickness? This is the im- portant question for psychologists: and here experiment is possible. We philosophers do just