The General Journey Of The Philosopher Without Affectation

Émile Faguet, On Reading Nietzsche, tr. George Raaffalovich (New York, 1918), ch. I., Nietzsche Seeks Himself, pp. 1-2:

Often, if not always, while expressing his ideas, a philosopher merely analyzes his own character. Often, if not always, the philosopher's starting point is his own feelings. Then, gifted with the faculty of putting his feelings into thoughts, because he is a philosopher, he turns his feelings into ideas. Then, gifted with the synthetic faculty, he gathers all his ideas, which are but transformed feelings, into one general idea. Then perhaps, he looks around, perceives everything which, in the domain of ideas, thwarts and hampers his own general idea and criticizes it. His criticism is minute because he is a dialectician. It is bitter and bold because his general idea is at bottom nothing but a personal feeling to which he clings and even a passion which dominates him. Then, in the course of his critical operation, he discovers ideas which confirm his general thought and he welcomes them. His general thought becomes a system. Again, because he is honest, ideas come to him which contradict his system. He does not dismiss them, because he loves ideas for their own sake but he throws them on the margin of his intellect, or at least he does his best more or less to bring them into his own system. Finally, he reaches the conception—which most of the time, he cannot realize nor even embrace—of a system which would exceed his own and could include in its greater breadth all the ideas that have come to him, those that were hostile and those that were dear to him. He conceives a system beyond his own system, a general idea beyond his own general idea. This system he sketches. Of this idea he gets a glimpse. As a rule, especially if he dies young, he remains on the threshold of this Promised Land, which he leaves to others.