eternity of all things."[1] It is a kind of theodicy. Nietzsche thinks that the doctrine of recurrence redeems us from a sense of the transitoriness of life: "I teach you redemption from the eternal flux."[2] "Let us impress the image of eternity on our life," he says;[3] and he quotes Dante's line,
"Come l'uom s'eterna …" (Inf. XV, 85).[4]
But the eternalization which comes to man comes finally to all things. Affirm as he might against Schopenhauer the reality of time and change, he felt the poignant elements in those conceptions, the tears in perishing things, and once gives a moving expression of his mood. "That Emperor [referring doubtless to Marcus Aurelius] kept continually before his mind the perishability of all things, so that he might not attach too much importance to them and be able to remain at rest. On me this perishability has a quite different effect—to me everything appears of too much value to be so fleeting: it is as if the most precious wines and ointments were poured into the sea."[5] In repeating the paragraph later, he adds, "My consolation is, that everything that was, is eternal:—the sea washes it up again."[6] The theodicy, if I may so speak of it, covers the whole world, and the eternal repetition of it. Yes, in the eternal repetition of things he finds an approximation to the old idea of being, which, as opposed to change, he had felt obliged to renounce. "That everything comes again is the nearest approach of a world of becoming to a world of being—summit of the view."[7] If time and numerical difference are left out of account, the world in its totality—the different successions of the same world and also the successions of different worlds—is the same identical changeless thing.
III
I have already referred to the contrast between Nietzsche's view and the ordinary idea of immortality. The latter presupposes a different life from this one—happier, better. It implies
