The Bicameral System of Culture 179Nietzsche struggled through the following semesters by holding lec-
tures and seminars on topics that did not require undue creative effort,
and he was excused from his supplementary teaching at the Pädagogium
(a public school loosely affiliated with the university). His friends were
quite concerned. Ida Overbeck's diary contains an account of a conver-
sation she had with Nietzsche's sister, which lists a few of the reasons
"that would probably land her brother in a mental institution" (15,76;
Chronik). Nietzsche himself was worried now that he was approaching
the age at which his father died of brain disease. He feared that a simi-
lar fate was awaiting him. In Bayreuth, where people were horrified by
the changes in Nietzsche, Dr. Eiser's diagnosis was the talk of the town.
In his view, Nietzsche's most recent publication indicated "the onset of
softening of the brain" (15,86; Chronik).
Nietzsche made every effort to meet his professional obligations until
eady 1879, but managed at the same time to forge ahead on supple-
mentary volumes of Human, All Too Human. On March 1, 1879, after
completing work on the page proofs of the second part, he wrote to
Peter Gast: "Good heavens! Perhaps this is my last production. It strikes
me as having an audacious tranquillity" (Β 5,389). In the collection of
aphorisms in the second part of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche was
clearly attempting to create a mental counterbalance to his oppressive
physical woes. "All good things, even every good book that is written
against life, are strong stimulants to life" (2,386; HH II AOS § 16).
This remark is an indication of what Nietzsche expected from the
thought process. Thinking had to go beyond merely prepositional
truths. Another criterion of truth stemming from his batde against
physical ailments was what we might call existential and pragmatic An
idea has truth value if it demonstrates a sufficiendy imaginative and
stimulating power to posit something in opposition to the tyranny of
pain, which would otherwise claim all of one's attention. This autosug-
gestive aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy later assumed great signifi-
cance in his doctrine of eternal recurrence. The idea of eternal
recurrence cannot be grasped fully if it is shrugged off as cosmologica!