III.

ETERNAL RECURRENCE.

1053.

My philosophy reveals the triumphant thought through which all other systems of thought must ultimately perish. It is the great disciplinary thought: those races that cannot bear it are doomed; those which regard it as the greatest blessing are destined to rule.

1054.

The greatest of all fights: for this purpose a new weapon is required.

A hammer: a terrible alternative must be created. Europe must be brought face to face with the logic of facts, and confronted with the question whether its will for ruin is really earnest.

General levelling down to mediocrity must be avoided. Rather than this it would be preferable to perish.

1055.

A pessimistic attitude of mind and a pessimistic doctrine and ecstatic Nihilism, may in certain circumstances even prove indispensable to the philosopher—that is to say, as a mighty form of pressure, or hammer, with which he can smash up degenerate, perishing races and put them out of existence; with which he can beat a track to a new order of life, or instil a longing for nonentity in those who are degenerate and who desire to perish.

1056.

I wish to teach the thought which gives unto many the right to cancel their existences—the great disciplinary thought.

1057.

Eternal Recurrence. A prophecy.

1. The exposition of the doctrine and its theoretical first principles and results.

2. The proof of the doctrine.

3. Probable results which will follow from its being believed. (It makes everything break open.)

(a) The means of enduring it.

(b) The means of ignoring it.

4. Its place in history is a means.

The period of greatest danger. The foundation of an oligarchy above peoples and their interests: education directed at establishing a political policy for humanity in general.

A counterpart of Jesuitism.

1058.

The two greatest philosophical points of view (both discovered by Germans).

(a) That of becoming and that of evolution.

(b) That based upon the values of existence (but the wretched form of German pessimism must first be overcome!)—

Both points of view reconciled by me in a decisive manner.

Everything becomes and returns for ever, escape is impossible!

Granted that we could appraise the value of existence, what would be the result of it? The thought of recurrence is a principle of selection in the service of power (and barbarity!).

The ripeness of man for this thought.

1059.

1. The thought of eternal recurrence: its first principles which must necessarily be true if it were true. What its result is.

2. It is the most oppressive thought: its probable results, provided it be not prevented, that is to say, provided all values be not transvalued.

3. The means of enduring it: the transvaluation of all values. Pleasure no longer to be found in certainty, but in uncertainty; no longer "cause and effect," but continual creativeness; no longer the will to self-preservation, but to power; no longer the modest expression "it is all only subjective," but "it is all our work! let us be proud of it."

1060.

In order to endure the thought of recurrence, freedom from morality is necessary; new means against the fact pain (pain regarded as the instrument, as the father of pleasure; there is no accretive consciousness of pain); pleasure derived from all kinds of uncertainty and tentativeness, as a counterpoise to extreme fatalism; suppression of the concept "necessity"; suppression of the "will"; suppression of "absolute knowledge."

Greatest elevation of man's consciousness of strength, as that which creates superman.

1061.

The two extremes of thought—the materialistic and the platonic—are reconciled in eternal recurrence: both are regarded as ideals.

1062.

If the universe had a goal, that goal would have been reached by now. If any sort of unforeseen final state existed, that state also would have! been reached. If it were capable of any halting or stability of any being, it would only have possessed this capability of becoming stable for one instant in its development; and again becoming would have been at an end for ages, and with it all thinking and all "spirit." The fact of "intellects" being in a state of development proves that the universe can have no goal, no final state, and is incapable of being. But the old habit of thinking of some purpose in regard to all phenomena, and of thinking of a directing and creating deity in regard to the universe, is so powerful, that the thinker has to go to great pains in order to avoid thinking of the very aimlessness of the world as intended. The idea that the universe intentionally evades a goal, and even knows artificial means wherewith it prevents itself from falling into a circular movement, must occur to all those who would fain attribute to the universe the capacity of eternally regenerating itself—that is to say, they would fain impose upon a finite, definite force which is invariable in quantity, like the universe, the miraculous gift of renewing its forms and its conditions for all eternity. Although the universe is no longer a God, it must still be capable of the divine power of creating and transforming; it must forbid itself to relapse into any one of its previous forms; it must not only have the intention, but also the means, of avoiding any sort of repetition, every second of its existence, even, it must control every single one of its movements, with the view of avoiding goals, final states, and repetitions and all the other results of such an unpardonable and insane method of thought and desire. All this is nothing more than the old religious mode of thought and desire, which, in spite of all, longs to believe that in some way or other the universe resembles the old, beloved, infinite, and infinitely-creative God—that in some way or other "the old God still lives"—that longing of Spinoza's which is expressed in the words "deus sive natura" (what he really felt was "natura sive deus"). Which, then, is the proposition and belief in which the decisive change, the present preponderance of the scientific spirit over the religious and god-fancying spirit, is best formulated? Ought it not to be: the universe, as force, must not be thought of as unlimited, because it cannot be thought of in this way,—we forbid ourselves the concept infinite force, because it is incompatible with the idea of force? Whence it follows that the universe lacks the power of eternal renewal.

1063.

The principle of the conservation of energy inevitably involves eternal recurrence.

1064.

That a state of equilibrium has never been reached, proves that it is impossible, but in infinite space it must have been reached. Likewise in spherical space. The form of space must be the cause of the eternal movement, and ultimately of all imperfection. That "energy" and "stability" and "immutability" are contradictory. The measure of energy (dimensionally) is fixed though it is essentially fluid.

"That which is timeless" must be refuted, any given moment of energy, the absolute conditions for a new distribution of all forces are present, it cannot remain stationary. Change is part of its essence, therefore time is as well; by this means, however, the necessity of change has only been established once more in theory.

1065.

A certain emperor always bore the fleeting nature of all things in his mind, in order not to value them too seriously, and to be able to live quietly in their midst. Conversely, everything seems to me much too important for it to be so fleeting, I seek an eternity for everything: ought one to pour the most precious salves and wines into the sea? My consolation is that everything that has been is eternal: the sea will wash it up again.

1066.

The new concept of the universe. The universe exists; it is nothing that grows into existence and that passes out of existence. Or, better still, it develops, it passes away, but it never began to develop, and has never ceased from passing away; it maintains itself in both states. It lives on itself, its excrements are its nourishment.

We need not concern ourselves for one instant with the hypothesis of a created world. The concept create is to-day utterly indefinable and unrealisable; it is but a word which hails from superstitious ages, nothing can be explained with a word. The last attempt that was made to conceive of a world that began occurred quite recently, in many cases with the help of logical reasoning,—generally, too, as you will guess, with an ulterior theological motive.

Several attempts have been made lately to show that the concept that "the universe has an infinite past (regressus in infinitum) is contradictory, it was even demonstrated, it is true, at the price of confounding the head with the tail. Nothing can prevent me from calculating backwards from this moment of time, and of saying: "I shall never reach the end"; just as I can calculate without end in a forward direction, from the same moment. It is only when I wish to commit the error—I shall be careful to avoid it—of reconciling this correct concept of a regressus in infinitum with the absolutely unrealisable concept of a finite progressus up to the present; only when I consider the direction (forwards or backwards) as logically indifferent, that I take hold of the head—this very moment—and think I hold the tail: this pleasure I leave to you, Mr. Dühring!...

I have come across this thought in other thinkers before me, and every time I found that it was determined by other ulterior motives (chiefly theological, in favour of a creator spiritus). If the universe were in any way able to congeal, to dry up, to perish; or if it were capable of attaining to a state of equilibrium; or if it had any kind of goal at all which a long lapse of time, immutability, and finality reserved for it (in short, to speak metaphysically, if becoming could resolve itself into being or into nonentity), this state ought already to have been reached.

But it has not been reached: it therefore follows.... This is the only certainty we can grasp, which can serve as a corrective to a host of cosmic hypotheses possible in themselves. If, for instance, materialism cannot consistently escape the conclusion of a finite state, which William Thomson has traced out for it, then materialism is thereby refuted.

If the universe may be conceived as a definite quantity of energy, as a definite number of centres of energy,—and every other concept remains indefinite and therefore useless,—it follows therefrom that the universe must go through a calculable number of combinations in the great game of chance which constitutes its existence. In infinity, at some moment or other, every possible combination must once have been realised; not only this, but it must have been realised an infinite number of times. And inasmuch as between every one of these combinations and its next recurrence every other possible combination would necessarily have been undergone, and since every one of these combinations would determine the whole series in the same order, a circular movement of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the universe is thus shown to be a circular movement which has already repeated itself an infinite number of times, and which plays its game for all eternity.—This conception is not simply materialistic; for if it were this, it would not involve an infinite recurrence of identical cases, but a finite state. Owing to the fact that the universe has not reached this finite state, materialism shows itself to be but an imperfect and provisional hypothesis.

1067.

And do ye know what "the universe" is to my mind? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This universe is a monster of energy, without beginning or end; a fixed and brazen quantity o; energy which grows neither bigger nor smaller, which does not consume itself, but only alters its face; as a whole its bulk is immutable, it is a household without either losses or gains, but likewise without increase and without sources of revenue, surrounded by nonentity as by a frontier, it is nothing vague or wasteful, it does not stretch into infinity; but it is a definite quantum of energy located in limited space, and not in space which would be anywhere empty. It is rather energy everywhere, the play of forces and force-waves, at the same time one and many, agglomerating here and diminishing there, a sea of forces storming and raging in itself, for ever changing, for ever rolling back over in calculable ages to recurrence, with an ebb and flow of its forms, producing the most complicated things out of the most simple structures; producing the most ardent, most savage, and most contradictory things out of the quietest, most rigid, and most frozen material, and then returning from multifariousness to uniformity, from the play of contradictions back into the delight of consonance, saying yea unto itself, even in this homogeneity of its courses and ages; for ever blessing itself as something which recurs for all eternity,—a becoming which knows not satiety, or disgust, or weariness:—this, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creation, of eternal self-destruction, this mysterious world of twofold voluptuousness; this, my "Beyond Good and Evil" without aim, unless there is an aim in the bliss of the circle, without will, unless a ring must by nature keep goodwill to itself,—would you have a name for my world? A solution of all your riddles? Do ye also want a light, ye most concealed, strongest and most undaunted men of the blackest midnight?—This world is the Will to Power—and nothing else! And even ye yourselves are this will to power—and nothing besides!