saying toward the close of his life that he had difficulty in citing one case of literary ill-will, though he had been overwhelmed by ignorance.[1] I do not mean that his language is not severe at times, unwarrantably so; but he tells us almost pathetically in one place that we must not underscore these passages and that the severity and presumption come partly from his isolation. A lonely thinker, who finds no sympathy or echo for his ideas, involuntarily, he says, raises his pitch, and falls easily into irritated speech.k
Perhaps I should add that the aphoristic form of much of his later writing has partly a physical explanation.l He was able to write only at intervals, and would put down his thoughts at auspicious moments, oftenest when he was out walking or climbing; one year he had, he tells us, two hundred sick days.m Such ill fortune was extreme—afterward he fared better—but he was more or less incapacitated every year. He undoubtedly made a virtue of necessity and brought his aphoristic style of writing to a high degree of perfection—sometimes he almost seems to make it his ideal; it is noticeable, however, that in Genealogy of Morals, in The Antichristian, and in Ecce Homo he writes almost as connectedly as in his first treatises, and he appears to have projected Will to Power as a systematic work. The aphorisms are often extremely pregnant, Professor Richter remarking that Nietzsche can in this way give more to the reader in minutes than systematic writers in hours.[2]
