SECOND PERIOD
CHAPTER IX
GENERAL MARKS OF THE SECOND PERIOD
I
Nietzsche (now at the age of thirty-two) was not only ill, but self-distrustful—he scarcely knew whether he had a task any more or the right to one.[1] And as a physician on occasion sends his patients into new surroundings, so he, physician and patient in one, now sends himself to a new climate, in both the spiritual and physical senses of that word.[2] He had been living, he felt, in an atmosphere overcharged with idealism and emotion; a cold water-cure was necessary.[3] He found himself with an uncommon desire to see men and their motives as they actually were.[4] He also wanted to see himself more objectively—was ready to take sides against himself, if need be, and to be hard with himself; he had had his fill of illusions. Even the emotional attitude to objects in nature went against him.[5] He understood the mental evolution of Sophocles—the aversion he in time acquired to pomp and show.[6] In other words, the craving for knowledge, for a cool, clear view of things, became uppermost in him; ideals, ideal aims, great expectations took a subordinate place. "Unmercifully I strode over wished-for and dreamed-of things which up to that time my youth had loved, unmercifully I went on my way, the way of knowledge at any cost."[7] "I took sides against myself, and for all that gave me pain and was hard."[8]
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