least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal of
a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which will often enough
appear INHUMAN, for example, when put alongside of all past seriousness on
earth, and alongside of all past solemnities in bearing, word, tone, look,
morality, and pursuit, as their truest involuntary parody--and WITH which,
nevertheless, perhaps THE GREAT SERIOUSNESS only commences, when the proper
interrogative mark is set up, the fate of the soul changes, the hour-hand
moves, and tragedy begins..."

Although the figure of Zarathustra and a large number of the leading
thoughts in this work had appeared much earlier in the dreams and writings
of the author, "Thus Spake Zarathustra" did not actually come into being
until the month of August 1881 in Sils Maria; and it was the idea of the
Eternal Recurrence of all things which finally induced my brother to set
forth his new views in poetic language. In regard to his first conception
of this idea, his autobiographical sketch, "Ecce Homo", written in the
autumn of 1888, contains the following passage:--

"The fundamental idea of my work--namely, the Eternal Recurrence of all
things--this highest of all possible formulae of a Yea-saying philosophy,
first occurred to me in August 1881. I made a note of the thought on a
sheet of paper, with the postscript: 6,000 feet beyond men and time! That
day I happened to be wandering through the woods alongside of the lake of
Silvaplana, and I halted beside a huge, pyramidal and towering rock not far
from Surlei. It was then that the thought struck me. Looking back now, I
find that exactly two months previous to this inspiration, I had had an
omen of its coming in the form of a sudden and decisive alteration in my
tastes--more particularly in music. It would even be possible to consider
all 'Zarathustra' as a musical composition. At all events, a very
necessary condition in its production was a renaissance in myself of the