65
Of the Despisers of the Body
65
I WISH to speak to the despisers of the body. Let them not learn differently nor teach differently, but only bid farewell to their own bodies – and so become dumb.
‘I am body and soul’ – so speaks the child. And why should one not speak like children?
But the awakened, the enlightened man says: I am body entirely, and nothing beside; and soul is only a word for something in the body.
65
The body is a great intelligence, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a herdsman.
Your little intelligence, my brother, which you call ‘spirit’, is also an instrument of your body, a little instrument and toy of your great intelligence.
You say ‘I’ and you are proud of this word. But greater than this – although you will not believe in it – is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say ‘I’ but performs ‘I’.
65
What the sense feels, what the spirit perceives, is never an end in itself. But sense and spirit would like to persuade you that they are the end of all things: they are as vain as that.
Sense and spirit are instruments and toys: behind them still lies the Self. The Self seeks with the eyes of the sense, it listens too with the ears of the spirit.
The Self is always listening and seeking: it compares, subdues, conquers, destroys. It rules and is also the Ego’s ruler.
Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage – he is called Self. He lives in your body, he is your body.
There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. And who knows for what purpose your body requires precisely your best wisdom?
Your Self laughs at your Ego and its proud leapings. ‘What are these leapings and flights of thought to me?’ it says to itself. ‘A by-way to my goal. I am the Ego’s leading-string and I prompt its conceptions.’
The Self says to the Ego: ‘Feel pain!’ Thereupon it suffers and gives thought how to end its suffering – and it is meant to think for just that purpose.
The Self says to the Ego: ‘Feel joy!’ Thereupon it rejoices and gives thought how it may often rejoice – and it is meant to think for just that purpose.
66
I want to say a word to the despisers of the body. It is their esteem that produces this disesteem. What is it that created esteem and disesteem and value and will?
The creative Self created for itself esteem and disesteem, it created for itself joy and sorrow. The creative body created spirit for itself, as a hand of its will.
Even in your folly and contempt, you despisers of the body, you serve your Self. I tell you: your Self itself wants to die and turn away from life.
Your Self can no longer perform that act which it most desires to perform: to create beyond itself. That is what it most wishes to do, that is its whole ardour.
But now it has grown too late for that: so your Self wants to perish, you despisers of the body.
Your Self wants to perish, and that is why you have become despisers of the body! For no longer are you able to create beyond yourselves.
And therefore you are now angry with life and with the earth. An unconscious envy lies in the sidelong glance of your contempt.
I do not go your way, you despisers of the body! You are not bridges to the Superman!
67
Of Joys and Passions
67
MY brother, if you have a virtue and it is your own virtue, you have it in common with no one.
To be sure, you want to call it by a name and caress it; you want to pull its ears and amuse yourself with it.
And behold! Now you have its name in common with the people and have become of the people and the herd with your virtue!
You would do better to say: ‘Unutterable and nameless is that which torments and delights my soul and is also the hunger of my belly.’
Let your virtue be too exalted for the familiarity of names: and if you have to speak of it, do not be ashamed to stammer.
Thus say and stammer: ‘This is my good, this I love, just thus do I like it, only thus do I wish the good.
‘I do not want it as a law of God, I do not want it as a human statute: let it be no sign-post to superearths and paradises.
‘It is an earthly virtue that I love: there is little prudence in it, and least of all common wisdom.
‘But this bird has built its nest beneath my roof: therefore I love and cherish it – now it sits there upon its golden eggs.’
Thus should you stammer and praise your virtue.
67
Once you had passions and called them evil. But now you have only your virtues: they grew from out your passions.
You laid your highest aim in the heart of these passions: then they became your virtues and joys.
And though you came from the race of the hot-tempered or of the lustful or of the fanatical or of the vindictive:
At last all your passions have become virtues and all your devils angels.
Once you had fierce dogs in your cellar: but they changed at last into birds and sweet singers.
From your poison you brewed your balsam; you milked your cow, affliction, now you drink the sweet milk of her udder.
And henceforward nothing evil shall come out of you, except it be the evil that comes from the conflict of your virtues.
67
My brother, if you are lucky you will have one virtue and no more: thus you will go more easily over the bridge.
To have many virtues is to be distinguished, but it is a hard fate; and many a man has gone into the desert and killed himself because he was tired of being a battle and battleground of virtues.
My brother, are war and battle evil? But this evil is necessary, envy and mistrust and calumny among your virtues is necessary.
Behold how each of your virtues desires the highest place: it wants your entire spirit, that your spirit may be its herald, it wants your entire strength in anger, hate, and love.
68
Every virtue is jealous of the others, and jealousy is a terrible thing. Even virtues can be destroyed through jealousy.
He whom the flames of jealousy surround at last turns his poisoned sting against himself, like the scorpion.
Ah my brother, have you never yet seen a virtue turn upon itself and stab itself?
Man is something that must be overcome: and for that reason you must love your virtues – for you will perish by them.
43
ZARATHUSTRA’S PROLOGUE
1
45
I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and do you want to be the ebb of this great tide, and return to the animals rather than overcome man?
45
What is the ape to men? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just so shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.
You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now man is more of an ape than any ape.
45
Behold, I teach you the Superman.
The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!
I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of superterrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.
They are despisers of life, atrophying and self-poisoned men, of whom the earth is weary: so let them be gone!
45
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy, but God died, and thereupon these blasphemers died too. To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence, and to esteem the bowels of the Inscrutable more highly than the meaning of the earth.
Once the soul looked contemptuously upon the body: and then this contempt was the supreme good – the soul wanted the body lean, monstrous, famished. So the soul thought to escape from the body and from the earth.
Oh, this soul was itself lean, monstrous, and famished: and cruelty was the delight of this soul!
46
But tell me, my brothers: What does your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and dirt and a miserable ease?
In truth, man is a polluted river. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted river and not be defiled.
Behold, I teach you the Superman: he is this sea, in him your great contempt can go under.
What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness grows loathsome to you, and your reason and your virtue also.
The hour when you say: ‘What good is my happiness? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease. But my happiness should justify existence itself!’
The hour when you say: ‘What good is my reason? Does it long for knowledge as the lion for its food? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease!’
The hour when you say: ‘What good is my virtue? It has not yet driven me mad! How tired I am of my good and my evil! It is all poverty and dirt and a miserable ease!’
The hour when you say: ‘What good is my justice? I do not see that I am fire and hot coals. But the just man is fire and hot coals!’
The hour when you say: ‘What good is my pity? Is not pity the cross upon which he who loves man is nailed? But my pity is no crucifixion!’
46
Have you ever spoken thus? Have you ever cried thus? Ah, that I had heard you crying thus!
It is not your sin, but your moderation that cries to heaven, your very meanness in sinning cries to heaven!
Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the madness, with which you should be cleansed?
Behold, I teach you the Superman: he is this lightning, he is this madness!
47
Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman – a rope over an abyss.
A dangerous going-across, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and staying-still.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across and a down-going.2
334
- Übergang und Untergang. The antithesis über (over) and unter (under) is very frequently employed. It is not always possible to bring this out fully in translation.
47
I love those who do not know how to live except their lives be a down-going, for they are those who are going across.
I love the great despisers, for they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other bank.
I love those who do not first seek beyond the stars for reasons to go down and to be sacrifices: but who sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may one day belong to the Superman.
I love him who lives for knowledge and who wants knowledge that one day the Superman may live. And thus he wills his own downfall.
I love him who works and invents that he may build a house for the Superman and prepare earth, animals, and plants for him: for thus he wills his own downfall.
I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is will to downfall and an arrow of longing.
I love him who keeps back no drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be the spirit of his virtue entirely: thus he steps as spirit over the bridge.
I love him who makes a predilection and a fate of his virtue: thus for his virtue’s sake he will live or not live.
I love him who does not want too many virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for fate to cling to.
I love him whose soul is lavish, who neither wants nor returns thanks: for he always gives and will not preserve himself.
I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat? – for he wants to perish.
I love him who throws golden words in advance of his deeds and always performs more than he promised: for he wills his own downfall.
I love him who justifies the men of the future and redeems the men of the past: for he wants to perish by the men of the present.
I love him who chastises his God because he loves his God: for he must perish by the anger of his God.
I love him whose soul is deep even in its ability to be wounded, and whom even a little thing can destroy: thus he is glad to go over the bridge.
I love him whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself and all things are in him: thus all things become his downfall.
I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus his head is only the bowels of his heart, but his heart drives him to his downfall.
I love all those who are like heavy drops falling singly from the dark cloud that hangs over mankind: they prophesy the coming of the lightning and as prophets they perish.
Behold, I am a prophet of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called Superman.
48
I shall speak to them of the most contemptible man: and that is the Ultimate man.
48
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope.
His soil is still rich enough for it. But this soil will one day be poor and weak; no longer will a high tree be able to grow from it.
Alas! The time is coming when man will no more shoot the arrow of his longing out over mankind, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to twang!
I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you.
Alas! The time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars. Alas! The time of the most contemptible man is coming, the man who can no longer despise himself.
Behold! I shall show you the Ultimate Man,
‘What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?’ thus asks the Ultimate Man and blinks.
The earth has become small, and upon it hops the Ultimate Man, who makes everything small. His race is as inextermin-able as the flea; the Ultimate Man lives longest.
‘We have discovered happiness,’ say the Ultimate Men and blink.
They have left the places where living was hard: for one needs warmth. One still loves one’s neighbour and rubs oneself against him: for one needs warmth.
Sickness and mistrust count as sins with them: one should go about warily. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or over men!
A little poison now and then: that produces pleasant dreams. And a lot of poison at last, for a pleasant death.
They still work, for work is entertainment. But they take care the entertainment does not exhaust them.
Nobody grows rich or poor any more: both are too much of a burden. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both are too much of a burden.
No herdsman and one herd. Everyone wants the same thing, everyone is the same: whoever thinks otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse.
‘Formerly all the world was mad,’ say the most acute of them and blink.
They are clever and know everything that has ever happened: so there is no end to their mockery. They still quarrel, but they soon make up – otherwise indigestion would result.
They have their little pleasure for the day and their little pleasure for the night: but they respect health.
‘We have discovered happiness,’ say the Ultimate Men and blink.
54
A light has dawned for me: I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish.
But I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves – and who want to go where I want to go.
A light has dawned for me: Zarathustra shall not speak to the people but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be herdsman and dog to the herd!
To lure many away from the herd – that is why I have come. The people and the herd shall be angry with me: the herdsmen shall call Zarathustra a robber.
I say herdsmen, but they call themselves the good and the just. I say herdsmen: but they call themselves the faithful of the true faith.
55
Behold the good and the just! Whom do they hate most? Him who smashes their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker4 – but he is the creator.
Behold the faithful of all faiths! Whom do they hate the most? Him who smashes their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker – but he is the creator.
55
The creator seeks companions, not corpses or herds or believers. The creator seeks fellow-creators, those who inscribe new values on new tables.
The creator seeks companions and fellow-harvesters: for with him everything is ripe for harvesting. But he lacks his hundred sickles: so he tears off the ears of corn and is vexed.
The creator seeks companions and such as know how to whet their sickles. They will be called destroyers and despisers of good and evil. But they are harvesters and rejoicers.
Zarathustra seeks fellow-creators, fellow-harvesters, and fellow-rejoicers: what has he to do with herds and herdsmen and corpses!
55
I will make company with creators, with harvesters, with rejoicers: I will show them the rainbow and the stairway to the Superman.
I shall sing my song to the lone hermit and to the hermits in pairs; and I will make the heart of him who still has ears for unheard-of things heavy with my happiness.
I make for my goal, I go my way; I shall leap over the hesitating and the indolent. Thus may my going-forward be their going-down!
117
Of the Compassionate
117
MY friends, your friend has heard a satirical saying: ‘Just look at Zarathustra! Does he not go among us as if among animals?’
But it is better said like this: ‘The enlightened man goes among men as among animals.’
The enlightened man calls man himself: the animal with red cheeks.
How did this happen to man? Is it not because he has had to be ashamed too often?
Oh my friends! Thus speaks the enlightened man: ‘Shame, shame, shame – that is the history of man!’
And for that reason the noble man resolves not to make others ashamed: he resolves to feel shame before all sufferers.
117
Truly, I do not like them, the compassionate who are happy in their compassion: they are too lacking in shame.
If I must be compassionate I still do not want to be called compassionate; and if I am compassionate then it is preferably from a distance.
And I should also prefer to cover my head and flee away before I am recogni2ed: and thus I bid you do, my friends!
May my destiny ever lead across my path only those who, like you, do not sorrow or suffer, and those with whom I can have hope and
117
Truly, I did this and that for the afflicted; but it always seemed to me I did better things when I learned to enjoy myself better.
As long as men have existed, man has enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin!
And if we learn better to enjoy ourselves, we best unlearn how to do harm to others and to contrive harm.
Therefore I wash my hand when it has helped a sufferer, therefore I wipe my soul clean as well.
For I saw the sufferer suffer, and because I saw it I was ashamed on account of his shame; and when I helped him, then I sorely injured his pride.
117
Great obligations do not make a man grateful, they make him resentful; and if a small kindness is not forgotten it becomes a gnawing worm.
‘Be reserved in accepting! Honour a man by accepting from him!’ – thus I advise those who have nothing to give.
I, however, am a giver: I give gladly as a friend to friends. But strangers and the poor may pluck the fruit from my tree for themselves: it causes less shame that way.
118
Beggars, however, should be entirely abolished! Truly, it is annoying to give to them and annoying not to give to them.
And likewise sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: stings of conscience teach one to sting.
But worst of all are petty thoughts. Truly, better even to have done wickedly than to have thought pettily!
To be sure, you will say: ‘Delight in petty wickedness spares us many a great evil deed.’ But here one should not wish to be spared.
The evil deed is like a boil: it itches and irritates and breaks forth – it speaks honourably.
‘Behold, I am disease’ – thus speaks the evil deed; that is its honesty.
But the petty thought is like a canker: it creeps and hides and wants to appear nowhere – until the whole body is rotten and withered by little cankers.
But I whisper this advice in the ear of him possessed of a devil: ‘Better for you to rear your devil! There is a way to greatness even for you!’
118
Ah, my brothers! One knows a little too much about everybody! And many a one who has become transparent to us is still for a long time invulnerable.
It is hard to live with men, because keeping silent is so hard.
And we are the most unfair, not towards him whom we do not like, but towards him for whom we feel nothing at all.
But if you have a suffering friend, be a resting-place for his suffering, but a resting-place like a hard bed, a camp-bed: thus you will serve him best.
And should your friend do you a wrong, then say: ‘I forgive you what you did to me; but that you did it to yourself – how could I forgive that?’
Thus speaks all great love: it overcomes even forgiveness and pity.
One should hold fast to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, how soon one loses one’s head, too!
119
Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate?
Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity!
Thus spoke the Devil to me once: ‘Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.’
And I lately heard him say these words: ‘God is dead; God has died of his pity for man.’
So be warned against pity: thence shall yet come a heavy cloud for man! Truly, I understand weather-signs!
But mark, too, this saying: All great love is above pity: for it wants – to create what is loved!
‘I offer myself to my love, and my neighbour as myself’ – that is the language of all creators.
All creators, however, are hard.
5
Of the Higher Man
143
Of Self-Overcoming
143
WHAT urges you on and arouses your ardour, you wisest of men, do you call it ‘will to truth’?
Will to the conceivability of all being: that is what I call your will!
You first want to make all being conceivable: for, with a healthy mistrust, you doubt whether it is in fact conceivable.
But it must bend and accommodate itself to you! Thus will your will have it. It must become smooth and subject to the mind as the mind’s mirror and reflection.
That is your entire will, you wisest men; it is a will to power; and that is so even when you talk of good and evil and of the assessment of values.
You want to create the world before which you can kneel: this is your ultimate hope and intoxication.
143
The ignorant, to be sure, the people – they are like a river down which a boat swims: and in the boat, solemn and disguised, sit the assessments of value.
You put your will and your values upon the river of becoming; what the people believe to be good and evil betrays to me an ancient will to power.
It was you, wisest men, who put such passengers in this boat and gave them splendour and proud names – you and your ruling will!
Now the river bears your boat along: it has to bear it. It is of small account if the breaking wave foams and angrily opposes its keel!
It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and evil, you wisest men, it is that will itself, the will to power, the unexhausted, procreating life-will.
143
But that you may understand my teaching about good and evil, I shall relate to you my teaching about life and about the nature of all living creatures.
I have followed the living creature, I have followed the greatest and the smallest paths, that I might understand its nature.
I caught its glance in a hundredfold mirror when its mouth was closed, that its eye might speak to me. And its eye did speak to me.
But wherever I found living creatures, there too I heard the language of obedience. All living creatures are obeying creatures.
And this is the second thing: he who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.
But this is the third thing I heard: that commanding is more difficult than obeying. And not only because the commander bears the burden of all who obey, and that this burden can easily crush him.
In all commanding there appeared to me to be an experiment and a risk: and the living creature always risks himself when he commands.
Yes, even when he commands himself: then also must he make amends for his commanding. He must become judge and avenger and victim of his own law.
144
How has this come about? thus I asked myself. What persuades the living creature to obey and to command and to practise obedience even in commanding?
Listen now to my teaching, you wisest men! Test in earnest whether I have crept into the heart of life itself and down to the roots of its heart!
Where I found a living creature, there I found will to power; and even in the will of the servant I found the will to be master.
The will of the weaker persuades it to serve the stronger; its will wants to be master over those weaker still: this delight alone it is unwilling to forgo.
And as the lesser surrenders to the greater, that it may have delight and power over the least of all, so the greatest, too, surrenders and for the sake of power stakes – life.
The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger and play dice for death.
And where sacrifice and service and loving glances are, there too is will to be master. There the weaker steals by secret paths into the castle and even into the heart of the more powerful – and steals the power.
144
And life itself told me this secret: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that which must overcome itself again and again.
‘To be sure, you call it will to procreate or impulse towards a goal, towards the higher, more distant, more manifold: but all this is one and one secret.
‘I would rather perish than renounce this one thing; and truly, where there is perishing and the falling of leaves, behold, there life sacrifices itself – for the sake of power!
‘That I have to be struggle and becoming and goal and conflict of goals: ah, he who divines my will surely divines, too, along what crooked paths it has to go!
‘Whatever I create and however much I love it – soon I have to oppose it and my love: thus will my will have it.
‘And you too, enlightened man, are only a path and footstep of my will: truly, my will to power walks with the feet of your will to truth!
145
‘He who shot the doctrine of “will to existence” at truth certainly did not hit the truth: this will – does not exist!
‘For what does not exist cannot will; but that which is in existence, how could it still want to come into existence?
‘Only where life is, there is also will: not will to life, but – so I teach you – will to power!
‘The living creature values many things higher than life itself; yet out of this evaluation itself speaks – the will to power!’
145
Thus life once taught me: and with this teaching do I solve the riddle of your hearts, you wisest men.
Truly, I say to you: Unchanging good and evil does not exist! From out of themselves they must overcome themselves again and again.
You exert power with your values and doctrines of good and evil, you assessors of values; and this is your hidden love and the glittering, trembling, and overflowing of your souls.
But a mightier power and a new overcoming grow from out your values: egg and egg-shell break against them.
And he who has to be a creator in good and evil, truly, has first to be a destroyer and break values.
Thus the greatest evil belongs with the greatest good: this, however, is the creative good.
Let us speak of this, you wisest men, even if it is a bad thing. To be silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous.
And let everything that can break upon our truths – break! There is many a house still to build!
5
Of Old and New Law – Tables