36 Nietzsche
bold that it set him trembling. He felt as though he were impelled into
the distance of a "boundless ocean of ideas" (/ 2,55), with neither
compass nor guide—a pure folly and devastation for "undeveloped
minds." (Nietzsche did not include himself in this category.) He
attempted to brace the outcome of his "youthful brooding" so as not to
be "drawn off course" by the "storms." Nietzsche created an uncom-
monly dramatic atmosphere on an imaginary stage before broaching his
ideas, which centered on the question of how our view of the world
might change if there were no God, immortality, Holy Spirit, or divine
inspiration, and if the tenets of millennia were based on delusions.
Might people have been "led astray by a vision" (/2,55) for such a long
time? What kinds of reality are left behind once religious phantasms
have been taken away? The schoolboy in Pforta trembled with courage
at the very act of posing this question. His answer was nature, in the
form of the natural sciences and a whole universe of natural laws. Also
left behind is history—a succession of events in which causalities and
coincidences occur in the absence of a recognizable larger goal. God
was the essence of meaning and goals; if this essence vanishes, meaning
and goals in nature and history fade accordingly. We are then faced with
an alternative: either we accept the fact that this kind of overarching
meaning of life is altogether unnecessary, or we stop looking for it in
transcendence, where our imaginations situated it for so long. Nietzsche
did not wish to forgo meaning and goals; thus, the first option was not
tenable for him. He was not, however, prepared to go on accepting
meaning and goals as postulates. He now tended to regard them as
assignments delegated to us. He was intent not on faithful acceptance
but on enthusiastic production.
This essay was the young Nietzsche's first attempt to explore the will
to life enhancement as immanent transcendence. His presentation was a
far cry from the pious feelings straining toward the beyond that had typ-
ified his predecessors. The essay underscored his intense desire to struc-
ture life creatively, but how could this desire hold up against the
worldview of what were then called the modern sciences, based on