The Bicameral System of Culture 181and nourish" (2,389; HH II AOS § 26). Ideas move about like people
and wage their batdes on their inner stage. Nietzsche's pronouncement
about Greek tragedy applies equally to this theater of ideas: "It is the
magic of these batdes that those who watch them must also batde them
out!" (1,102; £Γ§ 15).
For Nietzsche, thinking was an act of extreme emotional intensity. He
thought the way others feel. The passion and excitement that pulsated
through his ideas never allowed their presentation to degenerate into
mere reflex or professional routine: "I am still alive, I can still think; I
have to keep on living because I have to keep thinking" (3,521; GS§
276). Nietzsche was not presenting his ideas simply to fulfill a moral
obligation. For him, thinking was an unparalleled pleasure. He was loath
to renounce it and was grateful to life for bestowing this pleasure on
him. He wanted to live so that he could think and, by doing so, endure
the assaults on his body that would otherwise make life miserable for
him. He honed his words and thoughts so as to create something that
"defies everything" and is even "immortal" (2,391; HH Π AOS § 26),
moving along with the flow of time. Nietzsche dreamed of this glimpse
of eternity and noted that he would do honor to himself with any finely
crafted thought, even if it was quite shocking. We must treat our own
thoughts like "independent forces, as an equal among equals" (2,391). A
passionate love story was being played out between Nietzsche and his
thoughts, with all of the intrigues we expect from love stories; misun-
derstandings, discord, jealousy, desire, revulsion, fury, anxieties, and rap-
ture were all in evidence. Passion for thought inspired him to structure
his life so as to yield food for thought. He was seeking not merely to pro-
duce a series of quotable phrases but rather to render his life a quotable
basis for his thought. Life was a testing ground for thought.
In January 1880, when Nietzsche wrote the letter cited earlier about
the link between the pleasures of work and physical well-being, Human,
All Too Human was complete. In his notebooks, material was already pil-
ing up for Daybreak, which was published a year and a half later. For
Nietzsche, these two works fell into the same creative period because