Note 112 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

"Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any clear conception of what the poets in vigorous ages called inspiration? If not, I will describe it. The slight remnant of superstition by itself would scarcely have sufficed to reject the idea of being merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely the medium of superior forces. The concept revelation in the sense that quite suddenly, with ineffable certainty and delicacy, something is seen, something is heard, something convulsing and breaking into one's inmost self, does but describe the fact. You hear—you do not seek; you accept—asking not who is the giver. Like lightning, flashes the thought, compelling without hesitation as to form—I have had no choice" (Nietzsche's "Works," vol. III., p. 482.).