IF YOU ARE AN ABYSS THE FEEBLE-MINDED WILL STARE INTO YOU:

To the acolytes Nietzsche began to attract in the 1890s, he was a prophet. By this time, he had become insane, following a mental collapse in Turin in January 1889. In his followers' eyes, it was precisely this madness that afforded him mystical status. It was held up as proof that he had perceived the hideous reality of mankind's bleak fate, now that he had killed God. As Nietzsche himself had put it: 'If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.' Never mind that his madness may have had a more prosaic origin in syphilis.

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