have even been led to question whether Nietzsche was capable of humor.a But there is no need to go to this length. Not only does he give a high place to laughter in his books, not only are there special instances of humorous description to be found there, but colleagues of his at Basel, like Burckhardt and Overbeck, testify to his infectious laughter at their frequent meeting place ("Baumannshöhle"), Nietzsche himself owning that he had much to make up for, since he had laughed so little as child and boy.[1] For all this the undercurrent of his life was unquestionably serious, and he cannot be placed among writers who give us much surface cheer. Occasionally he indulges in pleasantries to the very end of relief from graver work—such, for instance, as those which make a part of "The Case of Wagner" (see the preface to this pamphlet, where it is also said that the subject itself is not one to make light about), and those in Twilight of the Idols. In the preface to the latter he remarks that when one has a great task like that of a "turning round (Umwerthung) of all values," one must shake off at times the all too heavy weight of seriousness it brings.
As his motives in philosophizing were personal, so were the results he attained—some of them at least: they were for him, helped him to live, whether they were valuable for others or not. Referring to certain of his writings, he calls them his "recipe and self-prepared medicine against life-weariness."[2] In a posthumous fragment (perhaps from a preface for a possible book), he says, "Here a philosophy—one of my philosophies—comes to expression, which has no wish to be called 'love of wisdom,' but begs, perhaps from pride, for a more modest name: a repulsive name indeed, which may for its part contribute to making it remain what it wishes to be: a philosophy for myself—with the motto: satis sunt mihi pauci, satis est unus, satis est nullus."[3] Sometimes he distrusts writing for the general, saying that the thinker may make himself clearer in this way, but is liable to become flatter also, not expressing his most intimate and best self—he confesses that he is shocked now and then to see how little of his own inmost self is more than hinted
