desires, and misled by the
same mistaken tactics on the part of most publishers, all proceed in the
same happy-go-lucky style when "taking him up." They have had it said to
them that he wrote without any system, and they very naturally conclude
that it does not matter in the least whether they begin with his first,
third, or last book, provided they can obtain a few vague ideas as to
what his leading and most sensational principles were.

Now, it is clear that the book with the most mysterious, startling, or
suggestive title, will always stand the best chance of being purchased
by those who have no other criteria to guide them in their choice
than the aspect of a title-page; and this explains why "Thus Spake
Zarathustra" is almost always the first and often the only one of
Nietzsche's books that falls into the hands of the uninitiated.

The title suggests all kinds of mysteries; a glance at the
chapter-headings quickly confirms the suspicions already aroused,
and the sub-title: "A Book for All and None", generally succeeds in
dissipating the last doubts the prospective purchaser may entertain
concerning his fitness for the book or its fitness for him. And what
happens?

"Thus Spake Zarathustra" is taken home; the reader, who perchance may
know no more concerning Nietzsche than a magazine article has told him,
tries to read it and, understanding less than half he reads, probably
never gets further than the second or third part,--and then only to feel
convinced that Nietzsche himself was "rather hazy" as to what he was
talking about. Such chapters as "The Child with the Mirror", "In the
Happy Isles", "The Grave-Song," "Immaculate Perception," "The Stillest
Hour", "The Seven Seals", and many others, are almost utterly devoid of
meaning to all those who do not know something of Nietzsche's life, his
aims and his friendships.

As a matter of fact, "Thus Spake Zarathustra", though it is
unquestionably Nietzsche's opus magnum, is by no means the first of
Nietzsche's works that the beginner ought to undertake to read. The
author himself refers to it as the deepest work ever offered to the
German public, and elsewhere speaks of his other writings as being
necessary for the understanding of it. But when it is remembered that
in Zarathustra we not only have the history of his most intimate
experiences, friendships, feuds, disappointments, triumphs and the like,
but that the very form in which they are narrated is one which ten