Page:Complete works of Nietzsche vol 10.djvu/17

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 5

sickness has not been the motive which inspired the philosopher. The unconscious disguising of physio- logical requirements under the cloak of the objective, the ideal, the purely spiritual, is carried on to an alarming extent, — and I have often enough asked myself, whether on the whole philosophy hitherto has not generally been merely an interpreta- tion of the body, and a misunderstanding of the body. Behind the loftiest estimates of value by which the history of thought has hitherto been governed, misunderstandings of the bodily constitution, either of individuals, classes, or entire races are concealed. One may always primarily consider these audacious freaks of metaphysic, and especially its answers to the question of the worth of existence, as symptoms of certain bodily constitutions; and if, on the whole, when scientifically determined, not a particle of significance attaches to such affirmations and denials of the world, they nevertheless furnish the historian and psychologist with hints so much the more valuable (as we have said) as symptoms of the bodily constitution, its good or bad condition, its fullness, powerfulness, and sovereignty in history ; or else of its obstructions, exhaustions, and impoverishments, its premonition of the end, its will to the end. I still expect that a philo- sophical physician, in the exceptional sense of the word — one who applies himself to the problem of the collective health of peoples, periods, races, and mankind generally — will some day have the courage to follow out my suspicion to its ultimate con- clusions, and to venture on the judgment that in all philosophising it has not hitherto been a question