to an undetermined other life."[1] Nietzsche holds that the old Alexandrian culture went to pieces, because with all its discoveries and love of knowledge, it did not know how to give supreme weight to this life, but regarded the beyond as more important.[2]f He even thinks that his doctrine is the turning-point of history.[3]
The difficulty of course arises (and it is urged by several critics), g that if our action now fixes so far the character of our future existence, it must also be true, according to the terms of the theory, that this action is itself determined by what we (or our counterparts) have done in an earlier existence, so that real self-determination is out of the question. It is a difficulty not unlike at bottom that which the Calvinist has in reconciling free-will with Divine predestination. Indeed, since the influence of our past existence is not direct, but through the medium of a set of causes which have been operating through untold intervals of time and are now at last the immediate antecedents of our present action, the difficulty is the same as that which is connected with any kind of determinist view of human conduct. How can I really decide what my action shall be, when it is but a link in the general causal chain? Nietzsche does not solve the problem, nor does he specially discuss it—but he was perhaps not unaware of it, and once makes a remark, which, I think, shows how he would have approached it. To the question, "But when all is necessary, how can I decide (verfügen) about my actions?" he answers, "Thought and belief are a determining influence along with all the other influences that press upon you, and are more of an influence than they. You say that food, place, air, society change and determine you Now your opinions do it still more, for they determine you to this food, place, air, society. When you incorporate in yourself the thought of thoughts [eternal recurrence], it will transform you."[4] That is, the thought or belief (with which the "I" is practically identical) is itself a part of the deterministic chain; the causal law is not violated by the seemingly free act. In any case Nietzsche is entirely undisturbed by the determinist difficulty when it comes to deciding how he is to act, and as little
