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Who is to be Master of the World?
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche


by
Anthony M. Ludovici

With Introduction by Dr Oscar Levy
Author of "The Revival of Aristocracy," etc.

T. N. Foulis
Edinburgh
1909


- p. v -

To His
Brother George
The Author Affectionately Dedicates
These Lectures

- p. vii -
Abbreviations Used in Referring to Nietzsche's Works.

D.D.  =   Dawn of Day.
Z.  =   Thus Spake Zarathustra.
G.E.  =   Beyond Good and Evil.
G.M.  =   The Genealogy of Morals.
C.W.  =   Volume VIII. in the German Edition, and the English Volume containing:— "The Case of Wagner"; "Nietzsche contra Wagner"; "The Twilight of the Idols"; "The Antichrist."

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Introduction

Dear Mr Ludovici, —
        You want me to write an introduction to your lectures? Well, you may have one — you may have one in this letter, which I allow you to reproduce verbatim in your book.
        To begin with then: I like your lectures — I think them, in their lucidity, even the best I have read in your language — but I hardly like the notion of your giving lectures on Nietzsche, because I think it contrary to the spirit of your great master to do this. I think it wrong to instruct people — if you have something to instruct them with. People ought to be instructed by those who have nothing to say, nothing to give, nothing to teach, nothing to do. These teachers of nothing do more good than you: they make us slaves, and you know that according to your master, all higher culture must be based upon slavery. Why then interfere with the natural process of enslavement, of stultification, of education which is going on around us? Why not act up to your Machiavellian principles, and rather lecture on the drama, socialism, folklore, the sins of the upper

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classes, or the sanitation of Mayfair? Why make a creed popular, which ought to remain esoteric?
        But you wish to gain friends to "the Cause." Do you think to make them in a lecture-room? I doubt it. Were you converted in a lecture-room? I belong to a race whose members, when they wanted to know anything, went into the desert and not to the lecture-room, and you, dear Mr Ludovici, told me yourself that, after a book of Nietzsche's had once fallen into your hands, you found no rest or peace until you had gone to Germany, learnt German, and thought and meditated there — in the solitude of a foreign country — on Nietzsche's teaching until you understood it. I myself have often, and unobserved by you, seen you in the British Museum walking about in the depth of thought, and I liked you for it. You think that many of your audience will be able or willing to undergo the hardships, not to say the danger, of your thought? In an age of comfort, of ease, of peace, of happiness, of humanitarian and Christian ideals, you will look out in vain for an intellectual sportsman like yourself.
        And have you no pity on those few who perhaps love sport and danger, and who perhaps may be willing to follow you? Will they not be like yourself, seamen upon an unknown sea, exposed to all the inclemency of the weather, to frightful fogs and terrible storms, forced to watch, day and night, for dangerous rocks, which are

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marked on no map yet, and only upheld by the feeble hope, that the German Columbus, after all, must have been right: that there must be a new land somewhere beyond, and that the looming coast-line there, upon the horizon, must be that land? Why drag others after you, who perhaps, after a few experiences upon the high sea of the new philosophical thought, will repent and cry for the land and the fleshpots of old England? People who in their despair may jump overboard? People who in their agony may go down on their knees and cry out: "My God, my God, why have I forsaken Thee?" Have you no pity for all their agonies, their doubts, their internal explosions? But I forgot, you have no pity — pity is not a part of your master's creed! After all you are perhaps more of a Nietzschean than I thought, and it may after all be right to lecture on Nietzsche — because it is so cruel.
        Another word! A personal but important word! You are young and the sort of fellow the women, who form the principal part of audiences in your country, will listen to. They will pretend to understand — women are very clever in pretending to understand. Instead of finding yourself upon a new continent you may, therefore, land in matrimony and then get back all your lectures — free of charge — by the lecturing sex par excellence, women. Do not listen to them. Do not condescend. Don't marry yet. Remember that even the

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apostles of the old creed, although followed by women, did not marry them. Remember that you too have to propagate a gospel — and not a race, and that even the propagation of the race, if it is to be worth while, can only take place after the propagation of the gospel. — Yours sincerely,

Oscar Levy.
1 Talbot Mansions,
        Museum Street, W.C.

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