Lines which Mr. Cyril Bailey in his translation of Lucretius[6] admirably renders as follows: “For when you look back over all the lapse of immeasurable time that now is gone, and think how manifold are the motions of matter, you could easily believe this too, that these same seeds, whereof we now are made, have often been placed in the same order as they are now; and yet we cannot recall that in our life’s memory; for in between lies a break in life, and all the motions have wandered everywhere far astray from sense.” The character of Nietzsche’s thinking appears in his application of this idea. It is for him “the great disciplinary thought,” and he leaps the gulf between determinism and free will in the most careless manner, to remark: “The question which thou shalt have to answer before every deed that thou doest--Is this such a deed as I am prepared to perform an infinite number of times?--is the best ballast.” It does not matter to him at all that a determinist idea is to be used as a standard of choice by a being whose free will he assumes. His thoughts are all thoughts for himself to live with. He is conscious of them not as abstractions, but particularly, as concrete things, combinations of ideas with their effects. He is able to speak of Eternal Recurrence as “the most oppressive thought,” and to consider “the means of enduring it.” I cannot imagine Kant or Berkeley speaking so of their ideas. Moving now in a smaller circle of consciousness, let us examine Nietzsche’s view of the world and man and man’s activity within this eternally recurring universe. “The world,” he says, “as we know it, is representation and erroneous representation: the world, if we could know it, might well give us a sensation of disillusion, ‘so full of meaning, so deep, so wonderful, bearing happiness and unhappiness in its bosom,’ is the world that we unconsciously create.” In Nietzsche’s world we come at once to the third of his ruling ideas (the first being his idea of truth, the second, Eternal Recurrence). A regiment of artillery, galloping to war, filled Nietzsche (who was at the time serving as assistant to the field surgeon) with disgust at the conception of a dull struggle for life that dictated most nineteenth century thought. Schopenhauer, at that time still his master, had supposed that the motive of man was the will to live. But, as the regiment of artillery thundered to battle, Nietzsche answered, No; the will to power, in which that other will may or may not be included. Men are willing to risk existence; they are not ready to risk power, unless in hope of increased intensity of power, or of an increased area over which to exercise it.