Although Nietzsche had sought, and found, solitude in Sils Maria, he had not given up on his project for a secular monastery. Before leaving Nice, he had written to Franz Overbeck about his hope, when he returned next winter, to establish “a society” (eine Gesellschaft) in which he would not be completely in hiding: possible members included the poet Paul Lanzky (1852–?), whom Nietzsche had gotten to know in Nice, and Heinrich Köselitz (known as Peter Gast), his trusted friend, perhaps even (as unlikely as it sounds) Paul Rée and Lou von Salomé (KSB 6, 494–95). And in a postcard to his mother and his sister in November 1884, he had envisaged Nice as the site of his “future ‘colony’” (zukünftige “Colonie”), which would consist of “pleasant people to whom I can teach my philosophy” (sympathische Menschen, vor denen ich meine Philosophie doziren kann; KSB 6, 563) — as we shall see, a very different colony from the one his sister had in mind …

But Nietzsche was aware that he needed to create a community of readers for his ideas. For, now that it was complete, Zarathustra was intended to act as “an entrance-way“ (eine Vorhalle; KSB 6, 496 and 499) — or, to use a Goethean term, a propylaeum — to his philosophy as a whole, and in 1883, while he was completing part 3 of Zarathustra, he was working on “a larger philosophical project” (eine gröΒere philosophische Arbeit; KSB 6, 414; cf. KSB 6, 427 and 429), provisionally entitled “The Innocence of Becoming: A Guide to Redemption from Morality” (“Die Unschuld des Werdens: Ein Wegweiser zur Erlösung von der Moral”; KSA 10, 8[26], 343) or “Morality for Moralists” (“Moral für Moralisten”; KSA 10, 7[201], 305—6 and 24[27], 660—61).