How could such a man think of Eternal Recurrence?
56.
The Periods of European Nihilism.
The Period of Obscurity: all kinds of groping measures devised to preserve old institutions and not to arrest the progress of new ones.
The Period of Light: men see that old and new are fundamental contraries; that the old values are born of descending life, and that the new ones are born of ascending life—that all old ideals are unfriendly to life (born of decadence and determining it, however much they may be decked out in the Sunday finery of morality). We understand the old, but are far from being sufficiently strong for the new.
The Periods of the Three Great Passions: contempt, pity, destruction.
The Periods of Catastrophes: the rise of a teaching which will sift mankind ... which drives the weak to some decision and the strong also.