"I have energetically employed these last days, which were better," he wrote. "I have drawn up a little piece of work which, as I think, puts the problem of my last book in a clear light. Every one has complained of not having understood me; and the hundred copies sold do not permit me to doubt that in effect I am not understood. You know that for three years I have spent about 500 thalers to defray the cost of my books; no honorarium, it goes without saying, and I am 43 years old, and I have written fifteen books! Further: experience, and many applications, more painful to me than I care to say, force me to certify, as a fact, that no German editor wants to have anything to do with me (even if I abandon my author's rights). Perhaps this little book which I am completing to-day will help to sell some copies of my last book (it always pains me to think of the poor Fritzsch on whom all the weight of my work rests). Perhaps my publishers will some day benefit from me. As for myself, I know only too well that when people begin to understand me, _I shall not benefit from it._" On the 20th of July, he despatched the manuscript to the publisher. On the 24th July, he called it back by telegram in order to add a few features, a few pages. All his summer was spent in discomfort, melancholy, and the correction of his book, which he never ceased to touch up, to draw out, to render more violent and more alive. Towards the end of August, perceiving an empty space on the last page of the first section, Nietzsche added this curious note, in which he indicated the unstudied problems which he was to have neither strength nor time to attack. "_Remark._--I take the opportunity presented by this essay to express publicly and formally a wish which, so far, I have only mentioned occasionally to certain scholars, in chance conversations. Some Faculty of Philosophy ought, by a series of academical prize-dissertations, to further studies in the _history of morality;_ perhaps this book will serve to give a vigorous impetus in this direction. I would propose the following question: "_What hints are furnished by philology, more especially by etymological research, with reference to the history of the development of moral concepts?_