Human, All Too Human 159was interested in an implicit rather than an explicit system. "Do you
think it has to be piecework because it is (and must be) given to you in
pieces?" (2,432; HH Π AOS § 128). The aphorisms, he insisted, must
not be misunderstood as "piecework," but they would have to show that
the time, or at least his time, was not yet ripe for a closed systematic
work. Nietzsche demanded this avowal from himself and discerned how
difficult it was for him. He longed for a work expansive enough for one
to stretch out in; his aesthetic sense demanded it. Had he not felt this
temptation so strongly in himself, he would not have been impelled to
warn so passionately about "the systematizers" who "want to fill out a
system and round off the horizon surrounding it... —they want to
impersonate complete and uniformly strong natures" (3,228; D § 318).
For the time being, Nietzsche was still resisting the temptation to pose
as a "strong nature."
Before traveling to Sorrento in the fall of 1876, Nietzsche completed
his set of notes in the form of aphorisms ('The Plowshare"), which
correspond roughly to part 1 of Human, All Too Human. Over the next
year and a half, additional chapters followed Their tides indicate that
topics from the planned series of "Meditations" had found their way in.
The first book of Human, All Too Human, entided "Of the First and
Last Things," was the clearest reflection of Nietzsche's crisis-ridden
radical change of 1875—the triumph of the will to knowledge over the
will to art and to myth. The problem of truth was a primary focus,
treated in a highly imaginative manner, from varied points of view. In
this chapter, Nietzsche created a stage from which his thoughts would
have no need to exit. He would use this stage to try out various postures
and perspectives.
Let us recall once again the memorable image that Nietzsche had
introduced in his essay "On Truth and Falsehood in an Extramoral
Sense" for the precarious situation of a consciousness that is exposed to
the truth of being: "hanging on the back of a tiger in dreams" (1,877;
TF). Our curiosity will pay the price if we look down from the "cham-
ber of consciousness" and discover "that man rests on the merciless, the