too the idea that the soul is something distinct and separate from the body. But Nietzsche has a physiological, if not materialistic view of man—"souls are as mortal as bodies," he says, and may even perish "quicker."[1] His "other life" is this life over again—a course of evolution exactly like that which has produced this life producing it a second time. The very solemnity of Nietzsche's ethical injunctions rests on this thought of identity. Make this life over, he in effect says, for as you make it, it will be eternally. And he thinks that after all there are deep instincts binding us to this life. He describes an experience which cannot be altogether strange to any of us. "You feel that you must take farewell—perhaps soon—and the sunset colors of this feeling strike in upon your happiness. Note this witness: it signifies that you love life and yourself, and indeed life as you have hitherto found it and been shaped by it—and that you long for an eternalizing of the same. Non alia sed haec vita, sempiterna." Hence the fortifying influence which he accredits to his doctrine—for change and death "are ever singing their brief song, and with the bearing of the first strophe we almost perish of longing at the thought that things may be gone forever."[2] When a man has nothing with which to offset this experience—the old religion had its way of meeting it—he is inwardly lamed, weakened; he no longer schools himself in striving and enduring, wants present enjoyment, makes things easy for himself. Here is part-explanation, Nietzsche thinks, of the secularist tendency (Verweltlichung) of our time and of the political and socialistic illusions growing out of it—the object is the welfare of the fleeting individual, who has no reason for waiting, as men with eternal souls and eternal possibilities for growing better had in the pasta.[3] Against this whole weakening, laming tendency Nietzsche thinks that his doctrine is a counterpoise—it gives weight, dignity, yes eternity to life. "This life—thy eternal life."[4] "This thought contains more than all religions, which have despised this life as something fleeting and have directed men's attention
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