At length he found it, the idea, the presentiment of which had agitated him with such violence. One day, when he was going across the wood of Sils-Maria as far as Silvaplana, he sat down not far from Surlei at the foot of a pyramidal rock; at this moment and in this place he conceived the Eternal Return. He thought: Time, whose duration is infinite, must bring back, from period to period, an identical disposition of things. This is necessary; therefore it is necessary that all things return. In a number of days that is unforeseeable, immense, yet limited, a man like to me in everything, myself in fact, seated in the shade of this rock, will again find in this very place this very idea. And this very idea will be rediscovered by this man not once only, but an infinite number of times, for this movement which brings things back is infinite. Therefore we must throw all hope aside and think resolutely: no celestial world will receive men, no better future will console them. We are the shadows of a blind and monotonous nature, the prisoners of every moment. But beware! this redoubtable idea which forbids hope ennobles and exalts every minute of our lives; the moment is no longer a passing thing, if it come back eternally; the least thing is an eternal monument endowed with infinite value, and, if the word "divine" has any sense, divine. "Let everything return ceaselessly," he wrote, "it is the extreme _rapprochement_ of a world of becoming with a world of being: summit of meditation."[1] The emotion of the discovery was so strong that he wept, and remained for a long time bathed in tears. So his effort had not been in vain. Without weakening before reality, without withdrawing from pessimism, but, on the contrary, leading the pessimistic idea to its final consequences, Nietzsche had discovered this doctrine of the Return, which, by conferring eternity on the most fugitive things, restores in each of them the lyrical power, the religious value necessary to the soul. In a few lines he formulated the idea, and dated it: "the beginning of August, 1881, at Sils-Maria, 6,500 feet above the sea and far more than that above all human things!" He lived for some weeks in a condition of rapture and of anguish: no doubt the mystics knew similar emotions, and their vocabulary suits his case. He experienced a divine pride; but simultaneously recoiled in fear and trembling, like those prophets of Israel before God receiving from Him the function of their mission. The unhappy man, who had been so wounded by life, faced with an indescribable horror the perpetuity of the Return. It was an insupportable expectation, a torment; but he loved this torment, and he forced this idea of the Eternal Return on himself as an ascetic does martyrdom. "Lux mea crux," he wrote in his notes, "crux mea lux! Light my cross, cross my light!" His agitation, which time did not appease, became extreme. He grew alarmed, for he was not unaware of the danger which lay over his life.