ex nihilo omne ens qua ens fit

How, if some day or night, a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliness and say to you: “This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy…must return to you—all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, even this moment and I myself”…Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “you are a god and never did I hear anything more godlike!”…The question in each and everything, “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” would weigh upon your actions as the greatest stress. Or how well disposed you would have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation.