In December he wrote to Rée: "Ten times a day I wish to be near you." Nevertheless he finished his book, or, to be more accurate, he did not finish it, for he preserved the attractive freedom of his notes. It was thus that they came to him, one after another, without any connection; and it pleased him that they should thus remain. His deplorable health prevented him from putting a weft across them, from imposing an order upon them. And what did it matter? He recalled those French writers whose loyalty he loved: Pascal, Larochefoucauld, Vauvenargues, Montaigne. He wished to leave, after their example, some disorder and some discontinuity in his thoughts. He wished to write a simple book which should call the most urgent enthusiasts back to prudence. Round Wagner and Bayreuth, "beautiful souls" were innumerable. Friedrich Nietzsche, who had just missed being one of these, wished, by talking in the manner of old Socrates, to make them feel the absurdity of their faith. _Human, All Too Human,_ was the title which he had chosen. Right at the end of his conscious life, he recounted the object of his book. "A torch in my hand," he writes, "and the light not smoky,[1] I have cast a lively light upon this subterranean world of the Ideal. It is war, but war without powder and without smoke, without war-like attitudes, without pathos, without dislocated limbs--all that would still be 'idealism.' Error after error, I took them and placed them on the ice, and the ideal was not even refuted--it froze. Here, for example, freezes 'the Genius'; in this other corner freezes 'the Saint'; beneath a thick stopper of frozen ice 'the Hero'; and, lastly, it is 'the Faith' which freezes, she who is named 'Conviction'; and then here is 'Pity,' which notably grows cold--in fact, nearly everywhere freezes 'the thing in itself.'" Certainly this work is paradoxical. No one is so ardent as Friedrich Nietzsche, no one has such a belief in his work, in his mission, in the sublime ends of life; and yet he labours to scoff at them. He reverses every thesis that he has hitherto upheld. _Pereat Veritas, fiat vita!_--he had once written. Now he writes, _Pereat vita, fiat Veritas!_ Above poetry he places science; above Æschylus, that same Socrates whom he had at other times denounced. No doubt it is only a pretence, and he knows it. The ideas which he expresses are not really his own. He arms himself with irony for a combat which will be short: for he is not an ironist. He wants to find, and is convinced that he will find, an unknown lyricism which shall inspire his great works. _Human, All Too Human,_ is the sign of a time of crisis and of passage, but what a surprising crisis, what a difficult passage! "The book is there," wrote Nietzsche, "to the great astonishment of the prostrate invalid."