Unfortunately this book, because of the attractive medium of its style, was one of the first to fall into the hands of English speaking people. For many years it was the principal source of the many false accusations against Nietzsche which gained wide circulation. The figures of speech contained in it and the numerous parables which are used to set forth its ideas lend themselves all too easily to falsities of judgment and erroneous evaluations. Reading the book unpreparedly one may find what appear to be unexplainable contradictions and ethical sophistries. Above all, one may wrongly sense the absence of that higher ethical virtue which is denied Nietzsche in quarters where he is least understood, but which every close student of his works knows to form the basis of his thought. Nietzsche began the writing of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" early in the year 1883, and he did not finish it until the middle of February, 1885. The actual conception of the book came much before this time even, as far back as the summer of 1881. This is when the idea of eternal recurrence first took possession of him. At once he began making notes, using this idea as the basis of Zarathustra's teachings. At this time Nietzsche was just recovering from a siege of ill health which had extended over many years, and no doubt the buoyant and rhapsodic form in which he conceived this work was due to his sudden acquisition of bodily health. The first part was written in ten days, the second part a few months later, and the third part in the autumn of the same year. But it was not until after a lapse of eighteen months that the fourth and last section was completed. Because of this long interval we see a radical difference between the first three parts of the book and the last part. The language remains very much the same throughout--spectacular, poetic and symbolic--but the form is changed. The epigrammatic and non-sequacious mandates give way to a long connected parable. The psalmodie brevity of the utterances of the first three sections is supplanted by description and narrative. A story runs through the entire fourth part; and it is in the obscurities of this fable, rather than in any specific statements, that we must seek the gist of Nietzsche's doctrines. This would be an impossible task were we not more or less familiar with his other books. Yet, once we understand the general trend of his thought, we can penetrate at once to the meanings hidden in the fantastic divagations of his story and can understand the dithyrambic utterances of both Zarathustra and the "higher men" in the cave.