Although there is now scarcely a European language into which _Zarathustra_ has not been translated, although the fame of the work, at present, is almost universal, the reception it met with at the time of its publication was so unsatisfactory, and misunderstanding relative to its teaching became so general, that within a year of the issue of its first part, Nietzsche was already beginning to see the necessity of bringing his doctrines before the public in a more definite and unmistakable form. During the years that followed--that is to say, between 1883 and 1886--this plan was matured, and between 1886 and 1889--the year of our author's final breakdown, three important books were published which may be regarded as prose-sequels to the poem _Zarathustra_. These books are: _Beyond Good and Evil_ (1886), _The Genealogy of Morals_ (1887), and _The Twilight of the Idols_ (1889); while the posthumous works _The Will to Power_ (1901) and the little volume Antichrist, published in 1895, when its author was lying hopelessly ill at Naumburg, also belong to the period in which Nietzsche wished to make his _Zarathustra_ clear and comprehensible to his fellows. In the ensuing chapters it will be my endeavour to state briefly all that is vital in the works just referred to. What remains to be related of Nietzsche's life is sad enough, and is almost common knowledge. When his sister Elizabeth married Dr. Förster and went to Paraguay with her spouse, Nietzsche was practically without a friend, and, had it not been for Peter Gast's devotion and help, he would probably have succumbed to his constitutional and mental troubles much sooner than he actually did. Before his last breakdown in Turin, in January 1889, the only real encouragement he is ever known to have received in regard to his philosophical works came to him from Copenhagen and Paris. In the latter city it was Taine who committed himself by praising Nietzsche, and in the former it was Dr. George Brandes, a clever and learned professor, who delivered a series of lectures on the new message of the German philosopher. The news of Brandes' success in Copenhagen in 1888 greatly brightened Nietzsche's last year of authorship, and he corresponded with the Danish professor until the end. It has been rightly observed that these lectures were the dawn of Nietzscheism in Europe. As the result of over-work, excessive indulgence in drugs, and a host of disappointments and anxieties, Nietzsche's great mind at last collapsed on the 2nd or 3rd of January 1889, never again to recover. The last words he wrote, which were subsequently found on a slip of paper in his study, throw more light upon the tragedy of his breakdown than all the learned medical treatises that have been written about his case. "I am taking narcotic after narcotic," he said, "in order to drown my anguish; but still I cannot sleep. To-day I will certainly take such a quantity as will drive me out of my mind."