early come to be, he was face to face with such a possibility, and it was one reason for his pessimism. But ever the question surged, could not things be given a meaning—might not the world and human society be so ordered and arranged that things, all things, would move towards an end, and a great, semi-divine one? From this point of view the more or less chaotic character that cleaves to things q ceased to be an objection to him—it became an occasion for the master-hand and mind of man. Amor fati was his motto, but his deeper feeling was ever amor dei (or rather deorum). We do not fathom him till we reach this undercurrent of his thought and aspiration. Let me give some indications of it. "Principal doctrine: In our power lies the turning (Zurechtlegung) of suffering into blessing, of poison into a nourishment." "We must take upon ourselves all the suffering that has been borne by men and animals, and affirm it, and have an aim in which it acquires reason."[1] Rational significance could thus be lent even to animal existence, but it was the human world for which, above all, Nietzsche was concerned. He represents the ugliest, forlornest man declaring after a day with Zarathustra, "It is worth living on the earth. One day, one festival with Zarathustra teaches me to love the earth."[2] "The danger of return to animality exists. We give a posthumous justification to all the dead and a meaning to their life, when we create the superman out of the material bequeathed to us by them (aus diesem Stoff), and give to all the past a goal."[3] The higher aim is represented as one in which all may unite. "We will create a being, we will all have part in it, love it, we will all be heavy with child (schwanger) with it—and honor and revere ourselves on this account. We must have an aim, for whose sake we are all dear to one another."[4] Nothing less than an entire humanity, so far as it can be turned into an organism working to this end, may thus be justified: laborers, farmers, scholars, teachers, women as truly as men, state officials and princes, homines
