In January, 1889, an apoplectic fit, which rendered Nietzsche unconscious for two days, marked the beginning of the end. His manner suddenly became alarming. He exhibited numerous eccentricities, so grave as to mean but one thing: his mind was seriously affected. There has long been a theory extant that his insanity was of gradual growth. Nordau holds that he was unbalanced from birth. But there is no evidence to substantiate these two theories. For seven years Nietzsche's physical condition had been improving, and his mind up to the end of 1888 was perfectly clear and gave no indication of what his end would be. During this period his books were thought out in his most clarified manner; in all his intercourse with his friends he was restrained and normal; and his voluminous correspondence showed no change either in sentiment or in tone. The theory advanced in some quarters that his books, and especially his later ones, were the work of a madman, is entirely without foundation. His insanity was sudden; it came without warning; and it is puerile to point to his state of mind during the last years of his life as a criticism of his work. His books must stand or fall on internal evidence—and on nothing else. Judged from that standpoint they are scrupulously sane.
The direct cause of Nietzsche's mental breakdown is not known. As a matter of fact, there was probably no direct cause. It was due to a number of influences—his excessive use of chloral which he took for insomnia, the tremendous strain to which he put his intellect, his constant disappointments and deprivations, his mental solitude, his prolonged physical suffering. We know little of his last days before he went insane. He was living alone in Turin and working desperately. Then suddenly to Professor Burckhardt at Bale he wrote a letter which was obviously the work of a madman. "I am Ferdinand de Lesseps," he wrote. "I am Prado. I am Schambige.[1] I have been buried twice this autumn." This was the first indication of his insanity. Immediately after he wrote a similar letter to his old friend, Professor Overbeck. Other of Nietzsche's friends received disquieting and indecipherable notes. To Georg Brandes he sent a letter signed "The Crucified." To Peter Gast he wrote, "Sing me a new song. The world is clear and all the skies rejoice." To Cosima Wagner: "Ariadne, I love you."
There was now no doubt of his condition. Overbeck went immediately to Turin. He found the philosopher playing wildly on the piano, and crying blasphemies to the empty room. Nietzsche was taken back to Bâle, and then placed in a private psychiatric institution at Jena. Here he stayed until the following spring when he was permitted to be taken to the home of his mother at Naumburg. It was three years later that his sister returned from Paraguay, where her husband had died, and Nietzsche was sufficiently recovered to meet her when she arrived. But though he lived for another seven years, his mind was irretrievably ruined. When his mother died in 1897, his sister removed him to a villa at Weimar. There on a great veranda, overlooking the hills and the river valley, he remained until the end, receiving a few of his friends and taking his old delight in music. His sister watched over him tenderly, and though he was never strong enough to resume work, he would often talk of his books. When shown a portrait of Wagner, he said, "Him I loved dearly." He was all tenderness toward the end. The mighty yea-sayer had become as a little child. "Elizabeth," he would say, "do not cry. Are we not happy?"
Nietzsche died on the 25th of August, 1900, and was buried at Röcken, his native village.
[1] Schambige and Prado were two assassins whose exploits were then occupying the French journals.