I Love the Great Despisers
Fragments from Friedrich Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"
Fragments
Zarathustra’s Prologue
Zarathustra’s Discourses
Part Two
Part Three
A New Nobility Is Needed to Overcome the Material and Spiritual Despotism of Mob Rule
New Nobility: Begetters, Cultivators and Sowers of the Future
Modern Morality is a Sermon Preaching Slavery: Will to Power of the Weak
In the Earthquakes of Ancient Peoples New Springs Break Forth
Part Four
Zarathustra’s Prologue
Three Loves
I love the great despisers, because they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other shore.
I love the one who justifies people of the future and redeems those of the past: for he wants to perish by the men of the present.
I love all those who are like heavy drops falling individually from the dark cloud that hangs over humanity: they herald the coming of the lightning, and as heralds they perish. Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called overman. (§ 4)
The Last Man
When Zarathustra had spoken these words he looked again at the people and fell silent. “There they stand,” he said to his heart, “they laugh, they do not understand me, I am not the mouth for these ears.
Must one first smash their ears so that they learn to hear with their eyes? Must one rattle like kettle drums and penitence preachers? Or do they believe only a stutterer?
They have something of which they are proud. And what do they call that which makes them proud? Education they call it, it distinguishes them from goatherds.
For that reason they hate to hear the word ‘contempt’ applied to them.
So I shall address their pride instead. Thus I shall speak to them of the most contemptible person: but he is the last human being.” And thus spoke Zarathustra to the people:
“It is time that mankind set themselves a goal. It is time that mankind plant the seed of their highest hope.
Their soil is still rich enough for this. But one day this soil will be poor and tame, and no tall tree will be able to grow from it anymore.
Beware! The time approaches when human beings no longer launch the arrow of their longing beyond mankind, and the string of their bow will have forgotten how to whir!
I say to you: one must still have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star. I say to you: you still have chaos in you.
Beware! The time approaches when human beings will no longer give birth to a dancing star. Beware! The time of the most contemptible human is coming, the one who can no longer have contempt for himself.” (§ 5)
The Creative Free Spirit Requires Distance from the "Good"
Look at the good and the just! Whom do they hate most? The one who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker – but he is the creative one.
Look at the faithful of all faiths! Whom do they hate most? The one who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker – but he is the creative one.
Companions the creative one seeks and not corpses, nor herds and believers. Fellow creators the creative one seeks, who will write new values on new tablets.
Companions the creative one seeks, and fellow harvesters; for to him everything stands ready for harvest. But he lacks the hundred scythes, and so he plucks out spikes and is angry.
Companions the creative one seeks, and those who know how to whet their scythes. They shall be called annihilators and despisers of good and evil. But they are the harvesters and the celebrators.
Fellow creators seeks Zarathustra, fellow harvesters and fellow celebrators Zarathustra seeks: what need does he have of herds and shepherds and corpses!
I shall not be a shepherd, nor a gravedigger. I do not want to even speak again with the people – for the last time have I spoken to a dead person.
I shall join the creators, the harvesters, the celebrators: I shall show them the rainbow and all the steps to the overman.
I shall sing my song to lonesome and twosome hermits, and for him who still has ears for the unheard of, I shall make his heart heavy with my happiness.
I want to go to my goal, and I go my own way; over the hesitating and dawdling I shall leap. Thus let my going be their going under!” (§ 9)
Zarathustra’s Discourses
Third Metamorphoses: Creative Spirit - The Child
But tell me, my brothers, of what is the child capable that even the lion is not? Why must the preying lion still become a child?
The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling out of itself, a first movement, a sacred yes-saying.
Yes, for the game of creation my brothers a sacred yes-saying is required. The spirit wants its will, the one lost to the world now wins its own world.
Three metamorphoses of the spirit I named for you: how the spirit became a camel, and the camel a lion, and finally the lion a child. – (§ Of the Three Metamorphoses)
The Afterworldsmen
But to them it is a sickly thing, and gladly would they jump out of their skin. Hence they listen to the preachers of death and they preach of hinterworlds themselves.
Hear my brothers, hear the voice of the healthy body: a more honest and purer voice is this.
More honestly and more purely speaks the healthy body, the perfect and perpendicular body, and it speaks of the meaning of the earth. (§ The Afterworldsmen)
Of the Despisers of the Body
No longer is it capable of that which it wants most: to create beyond itself. This it wants most of all, this is its entire fervor.
But now it is too late for that, and so your self wants to go under, you despisers of the body.
Your self wants to perish, and for this reason you became despisers of the body! For you no longer are capable of creating beyond yourselves.
And that is why you are angry now at life and earth. There is an unknown envy in the looking askance of your contempt.
I will not go your way, you despisers of the body! You are not my bridges to the overman! – (§ Of the Despisers of the Body)
Do Not Deny the Hero in Your Soul
You still feel noble, and the others who grudge you and give you the evil eye, they still feel your nobility too. Know that a noble person stands in everyone’s way.
A noble person also stands in the way of the good: and even when they call him a good man, they do so in order to get rid of him.
The noble person wants to create new things and a new virtue. The good person wants old things, and for old things to be preserved.
But it is not the danger of the noble one that he will become a good person, but a churl, a mocker, an annihilator.
Oh, I knew noble people who lost their highest hope. And then they slandered all high hopes. Then they lived churlishly in brief pleasures, scarcely casting their goals beyond the day.
‘Spirit is lust too’ – so they spoke. Then the wings of their spirit broke, and now it crawls around and soils what it gnaws.
Once they thought of becoming heroes: now they are libertines. To them the hero is grief and ghastliness. But by my love and hope I beseech you: do not throw away the hero in your soul! Hold holy your highest hope!” – (§ Of The Tree and Mountainside)
Of the Preachers of Death
Everywhere sounds the voice of those who preach death: and the earth is full of people to whom departure from life must be preached.
Or “the eternal life.” It’s all the same to me – if only they pass away quickly! (§ Of The Preachers of Death)
Of War and Warriors
I do not recommend work to you, but battle instead. I do not recommend peace to you, but victory instead. Your work shall be a battle, your peace shall be a victory!
…
You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I tell you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.
War and courage have done more great things than love of one’s neighbor. Not your pity but your bravery has rescued the unfortunate so far.
…
Rebellion – that is the nobility of slaves.
…
Let your love for life be love for your highest hope, and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life!
But you shall have your highest thought commanded by me – and it says: human being is something that shall be overcome.
So live your life of obedience and war! What matters living long! Which warrior wants to be spared!
I spare you not, I love you thoroughly, my brothers in war! (§ Of War and Warriors)
Insufficient Ends: Wealth
Just look at these superfluous [men]! They acquire riches and yet they become poorer. They want power and first of all the crowbar of power, much money – these impotent, impoverished ones! (§ Of the New Idol)
Where the State Ends
An open life still stands open for great souls. Indeed, whoever possesses little is possessed all the less: praised be a small poverty!
There, where the state ends, only there begins the human being who is not superfluous; there begins the song of necessity, the unique and irreplaceable melody.
There, where the state ends – look there, my brothers! Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the overman? (§ Of the New Idol)
Of the Flies of the Market-Place
For all deep wells experience is slow; they must wait long before they know what fell into their depth.
Away from the market place and fame all greatness takes place; away from the market place and fame the inventors of new values have lived all along.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung by poisonous flies. Flee where raw, strong air blows! Flee into your solitude!
You have lived too long near the small and the pitiful. Flee their invisible revenge! Against you they are nothing but revenge.
Do not raise your arm against them anymore! They are innumerable, and it is not your destiny to be a fly-swat. (§ Of the Flies of the Market-Place)
Of the Thousand and One Goals
Many lands Zarathustra saw and many peoples; thus he discovered many peoples’ good and evil. No greater market place on earth did Zarathustra find than good and evil.
No people could live that did not first esteem; but if they want to preserve themselves, then they must not esteem as their neighbor esteems. Much that was called good by this people was called scorn and disgrace by another: thus I found.
Much I found that was called evil here and decked in purple honors there. Never did one neighbor understand the other: always his soul was amazed at his neighbor’s delusion and malice.
A tablet of the good hangs over every people. Observe, it is the tablet of their overcomings; observe, it is the voice of their will to power.
Praiseworthy to them is whatever they consider difficult; what is indispensable and difficult, is called good, and whatever stems from the highest need and still liberates, the rarest, the most difficult – that is praised as holy.
Whatever lets them rule and triumph and shine, to the dread and envy of their neighbor, that they consider as the high, the first, the measuring, the meaning of all things.
…
It was always lovers and creators who created good and evil. The fire of love glows in the names of all virtues and the fire of wrath.
Zarathustra saw many lands and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the works of the lovers: “good” and “evil” are their names.
Truly, a behemoth is the power of this praising and blaming. Tell me, who will conquer it for me, you brothers? Tell me, who will throw the fetters over the thousand necks of this beast?
A thousand goals there have been until now, for there have been a thousand peoples. Only the fetters for the thousand necks are still missing, the one goal is missing. Humanity still has no goal. But tell me, my brothers: if humanity still lacks a goal, does it not also still lack – humanity itself? (§ Of the Thousand and One Goals)
Of the Way of the Creator — Facing Nihilism
You call yourself free? Your dominating thought I want to hear, and not that you escaped from a yoke.
Are you the kind of person who had the right to escape from a yoke?
There are some who threw away their last value when they threw away their servitude.
Free from what? What does Zarathustra care! But brightly your eyes should signal to me: free for what?
Can you give yourself your own evil and good and hang your will above yourself like a law? Can you be your own judge and the avenger of your law?
It is terrible to be alone with the judge and avenger of one’s own law.
Thus does a star get thrown out into desolate space and into the icy breath of solitary being. Today you suffer still from the many, you lonely one: for today you still have your courage and your hopes intact.
But one day solitude will make you weary, one day your pride will cringe and your courage will gnash its teeth.
One day you will cry “I am alone!” One day will you will no longer see your high, and your low will be all too near; your sublimity itself will frighten you like a ghost. One day you will cry: “Everything is false!”
…
Injustice and filth they throw at the lonely one. But my brother, if you want to be a star then you must shine through for them all the more!
And beware of the good and the just! They like to crucify those who invent their own virtue – they hate the lonely one. (§ Of the Way of the Creator)
Don’t Just Passively Heal, Actively Wound
And be angry rather than shaming someone! And if you are cursed at, I do not like it that you want to bless. Better to curse along a bit!
And if a great wrong befell you, then quickly add five small ones to it! Ghastly to behold is a person who suffers a wrong all by himself. (§ The Adder's Bite)
Of Marriage and Children
That man sought a handmaiden with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the handmaiden of a woman, and how he needs to become an angle too. (§ Of Marriage and Children)
Of Voluntary Death
Everyone regards dying as important; but death is not yet a festival. As of yet people have not learned how to consecrate the most beautiful festivals.
I show you the consummating death that becomes a goad and a promise to the living.
The consummated one dies his death, victorious, surrounded by those who hope and promise.
Thus one should learn to die; and there should be no festival where such a dying person does not swear oaths to the living!
To die thus is best; second best, however, is to die fighting and to squander a great soul.
But your grinning death, the one that creeps up like a thief and yet comes as master – it is hated as much by the fighter as by the victor.
My death I praise to you, the free death that comes to me because I want.
And when will I want it? – Whoever has a goal and an heir wants death at the right time for his goal and heir.
And out of reverence for his goal and heir he will no longer hang withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life.
Indeed, I do not want to be like the rope makers: they stretch out their threads and in doing so always walk backwards.
Some become too old even for their truths and victories; a toothless mouth no longer has the right to every truth.
And everyone who wants to have fame must take leave of honor from time to time and practice the difficult art of leaving – at the right time.
One must stop letting oneself be eaten when one tastes best; this is known by those who want to be loved for a long time.
There are sour apples, to be sure, whose lot demands that they wait for the last day of autumn; and immediately they become ripe, yellow and wrinkled.
With some the heart ages first and with others the mind. A few are hoary in their youth, but the late young stay long young.
For some life fails: a poisonous worm eats its way to their heart. Let them see to it that their dying succeeds all the more.
Some never become sweet, they rot already in summer. It is cowardice that keeps them clinging to the branch.
Far too many live and far too long they hang on their branches.
Would that a storm came to shake all this rot and worm-food from the tree! Would that preachers of the quick death came! They would be the right storms and shakers of the trees of life for me! But I hear only preaching of the slow death and patience with all things “earthly.”
Indeed, you preach patience with earthly things? It is the earthly things that have too much patience with you, you slanderers! (§ Of Voluntary Death)
Die Well
Free for death and free in death, a sacred nay-sayer when it is no longer time for yes: thus he knows about death and life.
Do not allow your death to be a slander against mankind and earth, my friends: that I beseech of the honey of your soul.
In your dying your spirit and your virtue should still glow, like a sunset around the earth; or else your dying has failed you.
Thus I myself want to die, so that you my friends love the earth more for my sake; and I want to become earth again, so that I may have peace in the one who bore me.
Truly, Zarathustra had a goal, he threw his ball. Now you my friends are the heirs of my goal, to you I throw the golden ball.
More than anything I like to see you, my friends, throwing the golden ball! And so I linger yet a bit on earth: forgive me that! (§ Of Voluntary Death)
Part Two
Of the Compassionate
But if you have a suffering friend, then be a resting place to his suffering, yet at the same time a hard bed, a camp bed: thus you will be most useful to him.
And if a friend does evil to you, then say: “I forgive you what you have done to me; but that you did it to yourself – how could I forgive that!”
Thus speaks all great love; it overcomes even forgiveness and pitying. (§ Of the Compassionate)
Of the Virtuous
But Zarathustra has not come to say to all these liars and fools: “What do you know about virtue! What could you know about virtue!” –
Instead, my friends, I wish you would grow weary of the old words you have learned from the fools and liars: Grow weary of the words “reward,” “retribution,” “punishment,” “revenge in justice” –
Grow weary of saying: “What makes a deed good is that it is selfless.”
Oh my friends! I wish your self were in the deed like the mother is in the child: let that be your word on virtue!
Indeed, I may have taken from you a hundred words and your virtue’s favorite toys; and now you are angry with me as children become angry.
They played by the sea – then the wave came and tore their toys into the deep: now they weep. But the same wave shall bring them new toys and lavish new colorful shells before them!
Thus will they be consoled; and like them you, too, my friends shall have your consolations – and new colorful shells! (§ Of the Virtuous)
Of the Rabble
For it is our height and our homeland; too high and steep we live here for all the unclean and their thirst.
Cast your pure eyes into the wellspring of my joy, you friends! How could it become murky from that! It shall laugh back at you with its purity.
We build our nest in the tree called future; eagles shall bring us solitary ones food in their beaks!
Truly, no food in which the unclean are allowed to share! They would think they were devouring fire and burn their snouts!
Truly, we keep no homesteads ready here for the unclean! To their bodies and to their minds our happiness would seem a cave of ice!
And like strong winds we want to live above them, neighbors to eagles, neighbors to snow, neighbors to the sun: thus live strong winds.
And some day I want to blow among them like a wind and steal their breath away with my spirit: thus my future wills it.
Indeed, Zarathustra is a strong wind to all lowlands; and this counsel he gives to his enemies and to everything that spits and spews: “Beware of spitting against the wind!" (§ Of the Rabble)
Of the Tarantulas
But the tarantulas want it otherwise, to be sure. “That the world become full of the thunderstorms of our revenge, precisely that we would regard as justice,” – thus they speak with one another.
“We want to exact revenge and heap insult on all whose equals we are not” – thus vow the tarantula hearts.
“And ‘will to equality’ – that itself from now on shall be the name for virtue; and against everything that has power we shall raise our clamor!”
You preachers of equality, the tyrant’s madness of impotence cries thus out of you for “equality”: your secret tyrant’s cravings mask themselves thus in your words of virtue!
Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy, perhaps the conceit and envy of your fathers: it erupts from you like a flame and the madness of revenge.
…
From each of their laments revenge sounds, in each of their praisings there is harm, and being the judge is bliss to them.
But thus I counsel you my friends: mistrust all in whom the drive to punish is strong!
Those are people of bad kind and kin; in their faces the hangman and the bloodhound are visible.
Mistrust all those who speak much of their justice! Indeed, their souls are lacking not only honey.
And when they call themselves “the good and the just,” then do not forget that all they lack to be pharisees is – power!
…
I do not want to be mixed in with and mistaken for these preachers of equality. For thus justice speaks to me: “humans are not equal.”
And they shouldn’t become so either! What would my love for the overman be if I spoke otherwise?
On a thousand bridges and paths they shall throng to the future, and ever more war and inequality shall be set between them: thus my great love commands me to speak!
Inventors of images and ghosts shall they become in their hostility, and with their images and ghosts they shall yet fight the highest fight against each other!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and trifling, and all the names of values: they shall be weapons and clanging signs that life must overcome itself again and again!
Life itself wants to build itself into the heights with pillars and steps; it wants to gaze into vast distances and out upon halcyon beauties – therefore it needs height!
And because it needs height, it needs steps and contradiction between steps and climbers! Life wants to climb and to overcome itself by climbing. (§ Of the Tarantulas)
Of Self-Overcoming
And whoever must be a creator in good and evil – truly, he must first be an annihilator and break values.
Thus the highest evil belongs to the highest goodness, but this is the creative one. –
Let us speak of this, you wisest ones, even if it is bad to do so. Keeping silent is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.
And may everything break that can possibly be broken by our truths! Many a house has yet to be built. (§ Of Self-Overcoming)
Perish for the Sake of New Strength
I tender, however, this advice to kings and churches and to all that is weak with age and virtue - only let yourselves be overthrown! That you may return to life, and that virtue - may return to you! (§ Of Great Events)
Inverse Cripples
I see and have seen worse, and some of it so hideous that I do not want to speak of everything, and of a few things I do not even want to remain silent; namely human beings who were missing everything except the one thing they have too much of – human beings who are nothing more than one big eye, or one big maw or one big belly or some other big thing – inverse cripples I call such types.
And as I came out of my solitude and crossed over this bridge the first time, then I didn’t believe my eyes and I looked and I looked again and said at last: ‘That is an ear! An ear as big as a person!’ And I looked more closely, and really, beneath the ear something was moving that was pitifully small and pathetic and thin. And, in truth, the gigantic ear sat upon a little slender stalk – but the stalk was a human being! If one used a magnifying glass one could even recognize a tiny, envious miniature face; even a bloated little soul dangling on the stalk. But the people told me that the big ear was not only a human being, but a great human being, a genius. But I have never believed the people when they speak of great human beings – and I maintained my belief that it was an inverse cripple who had too little of everything and too much of one thing. (§ Of Redemptions)
Good Hunter Requires a Good Hunt
Indeed, even for evil there is still a future! And the hottest south has not yet been discovered for mankind.
How much is regarded today as the most egregious malice when in fact it is only twelve shoes wide and three months long! But some day bigger dragons will come into the world.
For in order for the overman to not lack his dragon, the overdragon that is worthy of him, much hot sun must yet glow on humid jungle!
Your wild cats must first have turned to tigers and your poisonous toads to crocodiles; for the good hunter shall have a good hunt! (§ Of Manly Prudence)
Part Three
New Virtue and Nobility Will Come From the Depths
Where did the highest mountains come from? Thus I once asked. Then I learned that they come from the sea.
This testimony is written into their stone and onto the walls of their peaks. From the deepest the highest must come into its height. (§ The Wanderer)
The "Man" in Modern Men is Lacking
There is little manliness here: therefore their women make themselves manly. For only he who is sufficiently a man will redeem the woman in woman. (§ Of the Virtue That Makes Small)
Modern Man is a Golden Retriever Dog
At bottom these simple ones want one simple thing: that no one harm them. And so they beat everyone to it by doing them a good deed.
But this is cowardice, even if it is called “virtue.” –
And if they ever speak gruffly, these small people, I hear only their hoarseness – for every puff of wind makes them hoarse.
They are clever, and their virtues have clever fingers. But they lack fists; their fingers do not know how to form into fists.
To them virtue is whatever makes modest and tame; this is how they made the wolf into a dog and mankind himself into mankind’s favorite pet.
“We place our chair in the middle” – that is what their grinning says to me – “and just as far away from dying fighters as from contented sows.” But this is – mediocrity: even if it is called moderation. – (§ Of the Virtue That Makes Small)
Modern Men Will Perish by their Small Virtues
But why do I speak where no one has my ears! And so I want to shout it out to the four winds: You are becoming smaller and smaller, you small people! You are crumbling, you contented ones!
You will yet perish — of your many small virtues, of your many small abstentions, of your many small resignations!
Too sparing, too yielding — that is your soil! But in order for a tree to grow tall, it needs to put down hard roots amid hard rock!
And even what you abstain from weaves at the web of all future humanity; even your nothing is a spider web and a spider that lives off the blood of the future.
And when you take, it’s like stealing, you small-virtued ones; and even among rogues honor says: “One should only steal where one can not rob.”
“It will give” — that too is a teaching of resignation. But I say to you contented people: it will take and it will take more and more from you! (§ Of the Virtue That Makes Small)
Grand Politics and the Art of Landscaping
But their hour is coming! And mine will come too! By the hour they become smaller, poorer, more sterile – poor weeds! Poor soil!
And soon they shall stand there before me like parched grass and steppe, and truly, weary of themselves – and yearning for fire more than for water! Oh blessed hour of lightning!
Oh secret before noon! – Wild fires I want to make of them some day and heralds with tongues of fire –
– some day they shall proclaim with tongues of fire: It is coming, it is near, the great noon!
Resentful Leftists Require a Good Soul-Shaking Sneeze
The gravediggers dig themselves diseases. Under ancient ruins rest noxious fumes. One should not stir up the morass. One should live on mountains.
With blissful nostrils I once again breathe mountain freedom! My nose is finally redeemed of the odor of all human nature!
Tickled by sharp breezes as if by sparkling wines, my soul sneezes – sneezes and jubilates to itself: Gesundheit! (§ The Homecoming)
Only Creators Understand Good and Evil
When I came to mankind, I found them sitting on an old conceit: they all conceited to have known for a long time what is good and evil for humanity.
To them all talk of virtue seemed an old worn out thing; and whoever wanted to sleep well even spoke about “good” and “evil” before going to bed.
I disturbed this sleepiness when I taught: what is good and evil no one knows yet – except for the creator!
He, however, is the one who creates a goal for mankind and gives the earth its meaning and its future: This one first creates the possibility that something can be good and evil.
I told them to overthrow their old professorial chairs wherever that old conceit had sat; I told them to laugh at their great masters of virtue and their saints and poets and world redeemers.
I told them to laugh at their gloomy wise men and at any who ever perched in warning, like black scarecrows, in the tree of life.
I sat down alongside their great road of graves and even among carrion and vultures – and I laughed at all their yesteryear and its rotting, decaying glory.
Indeed, like preachers of repentance and fools I screamed bloody murder about all their great and small – that their best is so very small! that their most evil is so very small!–I had to laugh. (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
Shatter the Old Law Tables!
Hitherto all knowledge has grow up beside the bad conscience! Shatter, you enlightened men, shatter the old law-tables!
…
Yes my brothers, is everything not now in flux? Have all railings and footbridges not fallen into the water? Who could still hang on to “good” and “evil”? (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
A New Nobility Is Needed to Overcome the Material and Spiritual Despotism of Mob Rule
But this is the other danger and my other pity: whoever is of the rabble, their remembrance goes no further back than their grandfather — and with their grandfather time ends.
Thus all the past is abandoned; because it could happen one day that the rabble would become ruler and in its shallow water all time would drown.
Therefore, my brothers, we need a new nobility, which is the adversary of all rabble and all despotic rule and which writes anew the word “noble” on new tablets.
Many noble ones are needed, to be sure, and many kinds of noble ones for nobility to exist! Or, as I once spoke in parables: “Precisely that is godliness, that there are gods but no God!" (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
New Nobility: Begetters, Cultivators and Sowers of the Future
Oh my brothers, I consecrate and conduct you to a new nobility: you shall be my begetters and growers and sowers of the future.
Oh my brothers, your nobility should not look backward, but outward! You should be exiles from all father- and forefatherlands!
You should love your children’s land; let this love be your new nobility – the undiscovered land in the furthest sea! For that land I command your sails to seek and seek!
You should make it up in your children that you are the children of your fathers; thus you should redeem all that is past! This new tablet I place above you!
…
What fatherland! There our helm wants to steer, where our children’s land is! Out there, stormier than the sea, storms our great longing! – (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
Modern Morality is a Sermon Preaching Slavery: Will to Power of the Weak
Break, my brothers, break me this new tablet too! The world-weary hung it there and the preachers of death, and the jailers as well; just look, it too is a sermon for slavery!
The reason they have such ruined stomachs is because they learned badly and not what was best, and everything too early and everything too fast; and they ate badly –
– you see, their spirit is a ruined stomach: it recommends death! Because truly, my brothers, the spirit is a stomach!
Life is a well of joy; but all wells are posioned for him from whom an aching stomach, the father of affliction, speaks. (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
Do Not Be A Physician for the Incurable
One should not try to be a physician for the incurable: thus Zarathustra teaches – and so you should pass away!
But it takes more courage to make an end than to make a new verse: that all physicians and poets know. (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
The Languishing Man an Inch Away From His Goal
See this languishing specimen here! He is merely one span away from his goal, but out of weariness he has laid himself defiantly here in the dust – this valiant man!
Out of weariness he yawns at the road and the earth and the goal and himself; not one more step will he take – this valiant one!
Now the sun burns on him and the dogs lick at his sweat; but he lies there in his defiance and would rather die of thirst — die of thirst one span away from his goal! Truly, you will yet have to drag him to his heaven by the hair – this hero!
Better still, just let him lie where he has laid himself so that sleep can come to him, the comforter, with its cooling rushing rain:
Let him lie until he awakens on his own – until he renounces all weariness on his own and whatever weariness taught through him!
Only, my brothers, chase the dogs away from him, the lazy creepers and the whole raving rout –
– the whole raving rout of “the educated” that feasts on the sweat of every hero. (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
Right-Wing Grifters Are Like Parasites
I draw circles around me and sacred borders; ever fewer climb with me on ever higher mountains–I build a range of mountains out of ever more sacred mountains.
But wherever you may climb with me, my brothers, see to it that a parasite does not climb with you!
Parasite: that is a worm, a crawling writhing worm that wants to glut itself on your infected nicks and niches.
And its art consists in guessing where climbing souls are weary; in your grief and dismay, in your tender modesty it builds its disgusting nest.
Where the strong is weak, the noble one all too mild – in that place it builds its disgusting nest; the parasite lives where the great person has little nicks and niches.
What is the highest species of all being and what is the least? The parasite is the least of species, but whoever is of the highest species nourishes the most parasites.
After all, the soul that has the longest ladder and reaches down farthest – how could it not have the most parasites clinging to it?
The most encompassing soul, which can run and stray and roam farthest within itself; the most necessary soul, which out of joy plunges itself into chance –
– the soul that loves being, but submerges into becoming; the having soul that wants to rise to willing and desiring –
– the soul that flees itself and catches up to itself in the widest circle; the wisest soul which folly persuades most sweetly –
– the one that loves itself most, in which all things have their current and recurrent and ebb and flow – indeed, how could the highest soul not have the worst parasites? (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
If Something Is Wobbling, Give it a Push
Oh my brothers, am I perhaps cruel? But I say: if something is falling, one should also give it a push!
Everything of today – it is falling, it is failing: who would want to stop it! But I–I want to push it too!
Do you know the kind of lust that rolls stones down into steep depths? – These people of today; just look at how they roll into my depths!
I am a prelude of better players, my brothers! An exemplary play! Act according to my example!
And whomever you cannot teach to fly, him you should teach – to fall faster! (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
Old Value: Be A Good Neighbor | New Value: Be A Good Master
Go your ways! And let folk and peoples go theirs! – dark ways, to be sure, on which not a single hope flashes anymore!
Let the shopkeeper rule where all that is left to glitter – is shopkeepers’ gold! The time of kings is no more; what calls itself a people today deserves no kings.
Just look at how these peoples themselves do the same as the shopkeepers; they pluck themselves the tiniest advantage from any dustpan!
They lie in wait for one another, they look in hate at one another – this they call “good neighbors.” Oh happy distant time when a people said to themselves: “I want to be ruler over peoples!”
For the best should rule, my brothers, and the best also want to rule! And wherever the teaching says differently, there – the best are missing. (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
In the Earthquakes of Ancient Peoples New Springs Break Forth
Whoever has become wise about ancient origins will surely, in the end, seek new wells of the future and new origins.
Yes my brothers, it will not be overly long and new peoples will originate and new wells will roar down into new depths.
An earthquake, after all – it buries many wells, it causes much dying of thirst: it also brings to light inner powers and secrets.
An earthquake reveals new wells. In an earthquake of ancient peoples new wells break out.
And whoever cries out there: “Look, here is a fountain for many who thirst, a heart for many who long, a will for many tools” – around him gathers a people, that is: many who try. (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
Human Society Searches for Commanders
Who can command, who must obey – here it is tried! Indeed, with what long searching and guessing and lack of success and learning and trying again!
Human society: it is an experiment, this I teach – a long search: but it searches for the commander! –
– an experiment, oh my brothers! And not a “contract!” Break, break me such words of the soft hearted and half-and-halfs! (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
Conservatives Always Represent the Beginning of the End
My brothers! In whom does the greatest danger lie for all of future humanity? Is it not in the good and the just?
– is it not in those who speak and feel in their hearts: “We already know what is good and just, and we have it too; woe to any who still search here!”
And whatever harm the evil may do, the harm of the good is the most harmful harm!
And whatever harm the world slanderers may do, the harm of the good is the most harmful harm!
My brothers, there was a man who once looked into the hearts of the good and the just, and he spoke: “They are Pharisees.” But he was not understood.
The good and the just themselves were not permitted to understand him: their spirit is imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably clever.
But this is the truth: the good must be Pharisees – they have no choice! The good must crucify the one who invents his own virtue! This is the truth!
The second one, however, who discovered their land, the land, hearts and soil of the good and just: he was the one who asked: “Whom do they hate the most?”
The creator they hate the most; he who breaks tablets and old values, the breaker – him they call the lawbreaker.
Because the good, you see – they can not create: they are always the beginning of the end –
– they crucify the one who writes new values on new tablets, they sacrifice the future to themselves – they crucify all future humanity!
The good – they were always the beginning of the end. – (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
Solution to Nihilism: Become Hard
“Why so hard!” – the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. “Are we not close relatives?”
Why so soft? Oh my brothers, this I ask you: for are you not – my brothers?
Why so soft, so retiring and yielding? Why is there so much denying and denial in your hearts? And so little destiny in your gazes?
And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable, how could you triumph with me?
And if your hardness does not want to flash and undo and cut through, how could you one day create with me?
The creators are hard after all. And it must seem like bliss to you to press your hand upon millennia as if upon wax –
– bliss to write upon the will of millennia as if upon bronze – harder than bronze, more noble than bronze. Only the most noble is perfectly hard.
This new tablet, my brothers, I place above you: become hard! – (§ Of Old and New Law Tables)
Part Four
Nothing is Worse Than the Will to Power of the Weak
There is no harder misfortune in all human destiny than when the powerful of the earth are not also the first human beings. Then everything becomes fake and crooked and monstrous.
And should they even be last and more beast than human; then the rabble rises and rises in price, until finally even rabble virtue speaks: ‘Behold, I alone am virtue!’” (§ Conversation with Kings)
Today Belongs to the Mob
Today belongs to the rabble; who knows anymore what is great, what is small! Who could successfully search for greatness! Only a fool – fools would succeed. (§ The Sorcerer)
All it Takes is One Robust Will
Nothing more gladdening grows on earth, O Zarathustra, than an exalted, robust will: it is the earth's fairest growth. A whole landscape is refreshed by one such tree. (§ The Greeting)
The Bugman is Master of the Present
That you have despaired, there is much to revere in that.
For you did not learn how to surrender, you did not learn petty prudence. For today the little people have become ruler: they all preach surrender and resignation and prudence and industry and consideration and the long etcetera of little virtues.
What is effeminate, what comes from the servant’s ilk and especially the rabble mishmash: that now wants to become ruler of all human destiny – oh nausea! Nausea! Nausea!
That asks and asks and does not tire: “How do human beings preserve themselves best, longest, most pleasantly?” With that – they are the rulers of today.
Overcome these rulers of today for me, oh my brothers – these little people: they are the overman’s greatest danger!
Overcome for me, you higher men, the little virtues, the little prudence, the sand-grain sized considerations, the detritus of swarming ants, the pitiful contentedness, the “happiness of the greatest number”!
And despair rather than surrender. And truly, I love you for not knowing how to live today, you higher men! For thus you live – best! (§ Of the Higher Men)
To Distinguish Oneself From Good Conservatives
I do not call cold-spirited, mulish, blind, or intoxicated men stout-hearted. He possesses heart who knows fear but masters fear; who sees the abyss, but sees it with pride.
He who sees the abyss, but with an eagle's eyes - he who grasps the abyss with an eagle's claws: he possesses courage. (§ Of the Higher Men)
Evil is Man's Best Strength Against the Decadence Now Called "Good"
“Human beings are evil” – thus spoke all the wisest to comfort me. Oh, if only it were still true today! Because evil is a human being’s best power.
“Mankind must become better and more evil” – thus I teach. What is most evil is necessary for the overman’s best.
It may have been good for that preacher of the little people that he suffered and labored under the sins of mankind. But I enjoy the greatest sin as my greatest comfort. —
But such things are not said for long ears. Every word does not belong in every snout. These are fine and faraway things: sheeps’ hooves should not reach for them! (§ Of the Higher Men)
Life Must Become Harder for the Bugman
You higher men, do you think I am here to make good what you made bad?
Or that I have come henceforth to bed you suffering ones more comfortably? Or to show new, easier paths to those of you who are unsteady, lost, and have climbed astray?
No! No! Three times no! Ever more, ever better of your kind shall perish – for you shall have it ever worse and ever harder. Only thus –
– only thus do human beings grow into that height, where lightning strikes and breaks them: high enough for lightning!
My mind and my longing are trained on the few, the long, the distant: what do I care about your many little brief miseries?
You do not suffer enough in my opinion! For you suffer from yourselves, you haven’t yet suffered from human beings. And you would be lying if you said otherwise! All of you do not suffer from what I suffered. – (§ Of the Higher Men)
Faction of Truth Must Remain Honest
Will nothing beyond your capacity: there is a wicked falseness among those who will beyond their capacity.
Especially when they will great things! For they arouse mistrust against great things, these fine counterfeiters and actors –
– until at last they are false before themselves, cross-eyed, white-washed worm food, cloaked by strong words, by showy virtues, by gleaming false works.
Be very careful there, you higher men! For I regard nothing more precious and rare today than honesty.
Is this today not of the rabble? But rabble does not know what is great, what is small, what is straight and honest: it is innocently crooked, it always lies. (§ Of the Higher Men)
Maintain Healthy Mistrust of the Present
Have a good mistrust today, you higher men, you brave-hearted, you open-hearted ones! And keep your grounds secret! For this today is of the rabble.
Who could overturn with reasons what the mob has once learned to believe without reasons?
In the market place one convinces with gestures. But grounds make the rabble mistrustful.
And if ever truth was victorious there, then ask yourselves with good mistrust: “Which strong error fought for it?”
And beware also of the scholars! They hate you, because they are sterile! They have cold, dried up eyes; before them every bird lies plucked.
Such types boast that they do not lie: but powerlessness to lie is by no means love for the truth. Beware!
Freedom from fever is by no means knowledge! I do not believe spirits that have cooled down. Whoever cannot lie does not know what truth is. (§ Of the Higher Men)
Avoid All Uncompromising Men
Avoid all such uncompromising men! They are a poor, sick type: they look upon this life with an ill will, they have an evil eye for this earth.
Avoid all such uncompromising men! They have heavy feet and sultry hearts - they do not know how to dance. How could the earth be light to such men! (§ Of the Higher Men)