FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30  
31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   >>   >|  
sity as well as our thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand--alas! that nothing will now any longer satisfy us!-- "How could we still be content with THE MAN OF THE PRESENT DAY after such outlooks, and with such a craving in our conscience and consciousness? Sad enough; but it is unavoidable that we should look on the worthiest aims and hopes of the man of the present day with ill-concealed amusement, and perhaps should no longer look at them. Another ideal runs on before us, a strange, tempting ideal full of danger, to which we should not like to persuade any one, because we do not so readily acknowledge any one's RIGHT THERETO: the ideal of a spirit who plays naively (that is to say involuntarily and from overflowing abundance and power) with everything that has hitherto been called holy, good, intangible, or divine; to whom the loftiest conception which the people have reasonably made their measure of value, would already practically imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal of a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which will often enough appear INHUMAN, for example, when put alongside of all past seriousness on earth, and alongside of all past solemnities in bearing, word, tone, look, morality, and pursuit, as their truest involuntary parody--and WITH which, nevertheless, perhaps THE GREAT SERIOUSNESS only commences, when the proper interrogative mark is set up, the fate of the soul changes, the hour-hand moves, and tragedy begins..." Although the figure of Zarathustra and a large number of the leading thoughts in this work had appeared much earlier in the dreams and writings of the author, "Thus Spake Zarathustra" did not actually come into being until the month of August 1881 in Sils Maria; and it was the idea of the Eternal Recurrence of all things which finally induced my brother to set forth his new views in poetic language. In regard to his first conception of this idea, his autobiographical sketch, "Ecce Homo", written in the autumn of 1888, contains the following passage:-- "The fundamental idea of my work--namely, the Eternal Recurrence of all things--this highest of all possible formulae of a Yea-saying philosophy, first occurred to me in August 1881. I made a note of the thought on a sheet of paper, with the postscript: 6,000 feet beyond men and time! That day I happened to be wandering through the woods alongside
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30  
31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

alongside

 

Recurrence

 

Zarathustra

 

conception

 

things

 

Eternal

 
August
 

danger

 
longer
 
happened

leading

 
number
 
thoughts
 

appeared

 
writings
 

author

 
dreams
 

figure

 
earlier
 

tragedy


SERIOUSNESS

 
wandering
 

truest

 

involuntary

 

parody

 

commences

 

proper

 

begins

 

interrogative

 

Although


occurred

 

philosophy

 

written

 
sketch
 
autobiographical
 

language

 

regard

 

autumn

 

formulae

 

fundamental


highest

 

passage

 
poetic
 

pursuit

 
finally
 
thought
 

induced

 
postscript
 
brother
 

temporary