Nietzsche & Great Britain
To the Editor of T.P.’s WEEKLY.
Sir,—Is not the honour of being the first to bring Friedrich Nietzsche before British and American readers held by Dr. Alexander Tille, who when lecturer in the German language and literature at Glasgow University gave a lecture on the subject “ Friedrich Nietzsche, the Herald of Modern Germany,” on December 10th, 1894, to the Glasgow Goethe Society? Dr. Tille published at Leipzig in 1895 “Von Darwin bis Nietzsche, Ein Buch Entwicklungsethik.”
He was the editor of Messrs. H. Henry’s (J. T. Grein) edition, the translator of volume, “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” If my memory was right, Dr. Alex. Tille’s resignation was called for, on account of some pro-Boer expressions in a book, written in Ger man and published in Germany.
I have before me a curious publication. (The Zarathustra number of “Egoism,” Vol. III., No. 19, Oakland, California, November 28th, 1896. (Price five cents fortnightly, 50 cents a year.) The only number I have kept is devoted to the anonymous editor’s remarks and disagreements and extracts from Dr. Alex. Tille’s translation of “Thus Spake Zarathustra” (New York: The Macmillan Company)—e.g., “I protest against any consecration of myself and mine to the more finished man, except as incident to my pleasure.—Therefore I shriek ‘fanatical devotion to Beyond-man’ at Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s introspective power is to such Indian skulled perception-chasers as myself a spell bound wonder—a grotto of home-driven discoveries, surprises and delights. Egoism’s’ purpose is to gain general recognition for a standard of Ethics and a Social Polity based on a logical extension of biological order into the social realm. Ethically, the Egoist knows nothing except the direct or ultimate satisfaction of the Ego. Politically the consistent Egoist can sanction no government of man by man save in the sense of defence. He is in short an anarchist—a Philosophic Anarchist.”
I wonder whether “Egoism ” is still published or went under before the Earthquake and Fire?
Messrs. Fisher Unwin, by taking over Tille’s edition, publishing works on Nietzsche by Mencken, Mügge, etc., have rendered service second only to the publishers of Dr. Oscar Levy’s edition. Prof. Andrew Seth (now Pringle-Pattison) had an article on Friedrich Nietzsche, his life and works in “Blackwood’s Magazine,” October, 1897.
— Yours, etc.,
HAROLD HILLER.
38, Jakeman Road, Birmingham.
