This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me-I know them only too well. Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops-and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him.... Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philologist, philosopher, cultural critic, poet and composer. He wrote several critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism. He was twenty four when he was appointed to the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, the youngest individual to have held this position.