All this, however, implies that though shaken and depressed he was not disheartened. The strong will for life was still in him. He afterward realized that he had simply passed from one stage of his life to another, and that the new was as natural, and, in a way, as healthful as the old. As early as 1878 he could write: "I feel as if I had recovered from an illness; I think with unspeakable sweet emotion of Mozart Requiem. I relish simple foods again."[1] Again, after referring to his having taken sides against himself and his predilection, "A much greater piece of good fortune thereby came to me than that on which I willingly turned my back."[2] Later he makes the general observation: "The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. Even so with spirits hindered from changing their opinions—they cease to be spirit."[3]
II
It is only summing this up formally to say that Nietzsche now passes into a new period—one which, though unintelligible apart from the first, is strongly contrasted with it. It lasts, roughly speaking, five or six years (from 1876 to 1881 or 1882). The literary output of it is fragmentary; at least it is made up of fragments—we have no longer connected treatises like The Birth of Tragedy, or "The Use and Harm of History for Life." Aside from the demands of his university work, he seems unable to write connectedly. He notes down his thoughts at odd moments—often when out on his walks or climbing. As the jottings accumulate, he selects from them, works them over, gives them a semblance of order, and makes a book. The three books which belong wholly to this period, and two more, which may be said to make the transition to the next, consist of aphorisms, sometimes covering three or four pages, but for the most part so brief that several of them appear on a page. They are Human, All-too-Human (1878), Mixed Opinions and Sayings (1879), The Wanderer and his Shadow (1879),[4] the transi-
