Setting the Stage for The Will to Power 283to bring all being to the point of being thinkable: because you doubt,
with good reason for your doubts, whether it is already thinkable"
(4,146; Ζ Second Part, "On Self-Transcendence"). Hence there is a
hermeneutical circle of the knowledge of power: the will to power in
knowledge discovers the will to power in the world as we know it.
Nietzsche had attempted an ontological interpretation of the wodd
from the perspective of the "will to power" in his earlier writings. In
1885 and 1886, after completing Zarathustra, he made explicit reference
to these antecedents by composing new prefaces for his earlier works.
The external rationale for these prefaces was his desire to switch pub-
lishers. His current publisher, Ernst Schmeitzner, was facing bankruptcy,
and Nietzsche had long since wanted to get out of what he called
Schmeitzner's "anti-Semitic dump" (B 7,117; Dec. 1885) because it
printed pamphlets from the Bayreuth group. He found a new publisher
in his former publisher E. W. Fritzsch, who had brought out his Birth of
Tragedy and the first two Untimely Meditations.
Fritzsch, who had resolved his economic difficulties, now wanted to
have the "complete" Nietzsche in his publishing program. In the course
of his negotiations to switch publishers, Nietzsche learned that more
than two-thirds of his books were lying unsold in Schmeitzner's ware-
house. He became aware that although he had attained a certain status
in Germany—some still considered him a Wagnerian, and others a dan-
gerous, morally disreputable fellow—he intrigued the public as an
object of gossip, but was barely read. Only about five hundred copies of
his works all told had been sold to date. As Nietzsche was now just
learning, Schmeitzner had barely continued supplying bookstores with
his publications over the course of the last decade. His books were sold
only at the urgent and sustained demands of customers. Aside from
review copies and complimentary copies, Human, All Too Human had
not been shipped out for sale at all. Nietzsche had been writing books
for fifteen years and now had to acknowledge that they had no market
and no readership. He anticipated enjoying a better beginning with his
new (and old) publisher. For this reason, he hoped that his earlier