First Part (Zarathustra's Prologue and Speeches)

Zarathustra's Prologue

When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years he did not tire of it. But at last his heart changed; and one morning he rose with the dawn, stepped before the sun, and spoke to it thus:

"You great star! What would your happiness be, if you had not those for whom you shine? For ten years you have come up here to my cave: you would have grown weary of your light and of this road, without me, my eagle and my serpent. But we waited for you every morning, took your overflow from you, and blessed you for it. Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it. Therefore I must descend into the depths, as you do in the evening when you go behind the sea and bring light even to the underworld, you overrich star! Like you, I must go under, as men call it, to whom I want to descend. Bless me then, you quiet eye, that can look without envy even upon too great a happiness! Behold! This cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become man again."

Thus began Zarathustra's going-under.

Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, and no one met him. But when he came into the forest, there stood before him an old man who had left his holy hut to look for roots. The old man knew him: "This wanderer is no stranger to me. Many years ago he passed by here. Zarathustra he was called; but he has changed. Then you carried your ashes to the mountain; will you now carry your fire into the valleys? Zarathustra has become a child, an awakened one. What do you want now among the sleepers?"

"I love mankind," answered Zarathustra.

"Why," said the saint, "did I go into the forest and the wilderness? Was it not because I loved mankind far too much? Now I love God; men I do not love. Man is too imperfect a thing for me. Love of man would kill me." He said that in the forest he made songs and sang them, laughing, weeping and humming, and so praised God. And they parted from each other, laughing like two boys.

But when Zarathustra was alone, he spoke thus to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in his forest has not yet heard that God is dead!"

When Zarathustra came into the next town, which lies at the edge of the forest, he found many people gathered in the market place; for it had been announced that a tightrope walker would perform. And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people:

"I teach you the Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and would rather go back to the beast than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just that shall man be to the Overman. 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.

"Behold, I teach you the Overman! The Overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the Overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poisoners they are, whether they know it or not. Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing."

When Zarathustra had spoken thus, one of the people cried: "We have heard enough about the tightrope walker; now let us see him too!" And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the tightrope walker, thinking the words were meant for him, began his performance.

Zarathustra looked at the people and wondered. Then he spoke thus:

"Man is a rope, tied between beast and Overman — a rope over an abyss. A dangerous going across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and standing 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-over and a going-under. I love those who do not know how to live except as those who go under, for they are those who go across. I love the great despisers, because they are the great reverers, and arrows of longing for the other shore. I love him who lives in order to know, and who wants to know so that the Overman may one day live. I love him whose soul squanders itself, who wants no thanks and gives none back. I love all those who are like heavy drops falling one by one from the dark cloud that hangs over men: they herald the coming of the lightning, and go under as heralds. Behold, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called Overman."

But the people only laughed. "They do not understand me," said Zarathustra to his heart; "I am not the mouth for these ears. I will speak to them of what is most contemptible: that is, the last man."

"Alas! The time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond man. I say to you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star. I say to you: you still have chaos in yourselves. Alas! The time is coming when man will no longer give birth to any star. Behold! I show you the last man.

"'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' — so asks the last man, and blinks. The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last man lives longest. 'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbour and rubs against him, for one needs warmth. A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end, for a pleasant death. One still works, for work is entertainment; but one takes care that the entertainment does not tire. No one grows poor or rich any more: both are too burdensome. No shepherd and one herd! Everyone wants the same, everyone is the same: whoever feels otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse. 'Formerly the whole world was mad,' say the most refined, and blink. One has one's little pleasure for the day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one honours health. 'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and blink."

And here ended Zarathustra's first speech, which is also called the Prologue; for at this point the shouting and delight of the crowd interrupted him. "Give us this last man, O Zarathustra," they cried, "make us into these last men! Then we will make you a present of the Overman!" And Zarathustra grew sad, and said to his heart: "They do not understand me. Now they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh, they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter."

Then something happened that made every mouth dumb. The tightrope walker had begun his walk, out of a little door between two towers, on the rope stretched over the market place and the people. When he was exactly in the middle, the little door opened once more, and a fellow in motley, like a jester, sprang out and went after him with quick steps. "Forward, lame-foot!" he cried. "You are blocking the way for one better than you!" And then he uttered a cry like a devil, and leapt over the man in his way. The tightrope walker, seeing his rival win, lost his head and the rope; he threw away his pole, and fell into the depths. The market place became like the sea when a storm comes: the people fled. But Zarathustra stood still, and the body fell right beside him, badly broken, but not yet dead.

After a while the shattered man recovered consciousness, and saw Zarathustra kneeling beside him. "What are you doing here?" he said at last. "I knew long ago that the devil would trip me up. Now he will drag me to hell: will you prevent him?"

"On my honour, friend," answered Zarathustra, "all that you speak of does not exist: there is no devil and no hell. Your soul will be dead even sooner than your body: fear nothing more!"

The man looked up mistrustfully. "If you speak the truth, then I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal that has been taught to dance by blows and scraps of food."

"Not so," said Zarathustra. "You have made danger your calling; there is nothing contemptible in that. Now you perish by your calling: therefore I will bury you with my own hands." The dying man said nothing more; but he moved his hand as if he sought Zarathustra's hand to thank him.

Evening came, and Zarathustra sat beside the dead man. Then he rose and said to his heart: "Truly, Zarathustra has had a fine catch of fish today! No man has he caught, but a corpse. Uncanny is human existence and still without meaning: a jester can be fatal to it. I want to teach men the meaning of their existence, which is the Overman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man." He took the corpse on his back and set out. The jester stole up and whispered to him to leave the town, for the good and the just and the believers of the true faith hated him; gravediggers mocked him at the gate; a hermit in the forest gave him bread and wine. At last, in the forest, he laid the dead man in a hollow tree, to protect him from the wolves, and himself lay down on the ground and moss, and slept.

He slept long, and when he awoke a new truth had come to him. "A light has dawned on me: I need companions, living ones — not dead companions and corpses that I carry with me wherever I will. I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves. Not to the people shall Zarathustra speak, but to companions! Zarathustra shall not become the shepherd and dog of a herd! Fellow creators the creator seeks, those who write new values on new tablets. Fellow harvesters he seeks, and fellow rejoicers. I will join the creators, the harvesters, the rejoicers: I will show them the rainbow and all the steps to the Overman."

It was noon. Then he looked up, questioning, for he heard the sharp cry of a bird. And behold! An eagle swept through the air in wide circles, and from it hung a serpent, not like prey, but like a friend: for she was coiled round its neck. "They are my animals," said Zarathustra, and rejoiced: "the proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the sun. They have gone out to find out whether Zarathustra still lives."

Zarathustra's Speeches

There follow twenty-two speeches, given in the town called the Motley Cow to the disciples who gathered around him. A selection is condensed here.

Of the Three Metamorphoses. "Three metamorphoses of the spirit I name to you: how the spirit becomes a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. There is much that is heavy for the spirit, the strong, load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwells: it kneels down like the camel and wants to be well loaded, and hastens with its load into the desert. But in the loneliest desert the second metamorphosis happens: here the spirit becomes a lion; it wants to seize freedom and be master in its own desert. Here it seeks its last master, the great dragon on whose every scale glitters, golden, 'Thou shalt.' But the spirit of the lion says 'I will.' To create new values — that even the lion cannot do; but to create freedom for itself for new creation — that the might of the lion can do. To take the right to new values: that is the most terrible taking for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not? Why must the preying lion become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes."

Of the Despisers of the Body. "'Body am I, and soul' — so speaks the child. But the awakened, the knowing one says: body am I entirely, and nothing besides; and soul is only a word for something about the body. The body is a great reason, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd. Your little reason, my brother, which you call 'spirit,' is also an instrument of your body. Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage — he is called Self. In your body he dwells; he is your body. There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom."

Of Reading and Writing. "Of all that is written, I love only what a man has written with his blood. Write with blood, and you will find that blood is spirit. You look upward when you long for elevation. And I look downward, because I am elevated. I would believe only in a god who knew how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, deep, solemn: it was the spirit of gravity — through him all things fall. Not by wrath but by laughter does one kill. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!"

Of the New Idol. "Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brothers: here there are states. State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie creeps from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.' It is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life. Destroyers are they who set traps for many and call them the state: they hang a sword and a hundred appetites over them. Only there, where the state ends, begins the man who is not superfluous. There, where the state ends — look there, my brothers! Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Overman?"

Of the Flies of the Market Place. "Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you deafened by the noise of the great men and stung all over by the stings of the little ones. Where solitude ends, there begins the market place; and where the market place begins, there begins the noise of the great actors and the buzzing of the poisonous flies. Flee into your solitude, and where a rough, strong breeze blows! It is not your lot to be a fly-swatter."

Of the Love of One's Neighbour. "You crowd around your neighbour and have fine words for it. But I say to you: your love of your neighbour is your bad love of yourselves. Do I advise you to love your neighbour? Rather I advise you to flee from the nearest and to love the farthest. Higher than love of the neighbour is love of the farthest and of the one to come."

Of Old and Young Women. In this speech Zarathustra tells how an old woman asked him to speak to her of woman. His speech repeats the prejudices of Nietzsche's age, and of Nietzsche; it ends with the old woman giving him a "little truth" to take with him: "You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!" The line, one of the most quoted in the book, is spoken by her, not by him.

Of Free Death. "Many die too late, and some die too early. Still the doctrine sounds strange: 'Die at the right time!' Die at the right time: thus Zarathustra teaches. Of course, how could he who never lived at the right time die at the right time? Would that he had never been born! Your dying should not be a blasphemy against man and the earth, my friends."

Of the Bestowing Virtue. When Zarathustra had taken leave of the town his heart loved, the Motley Cow, many who called themselves his disciples followed him to a crossroads. There he told them that he wished to go on alone, and his disciples gave him as a parting gift a staff, on whose golden handle a serpent coiled about the sun. He rejoiced in it, and spoke to them of the bestowing virtue, the highest virtue, uncommon and useless, shining and mild in its lustre, like gold. Then he said:

"Now I go alone, my disciples! You too go now, alone! So I will have it. Truly, I advise you: go away from me and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you. The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends. One repays a teacher badly if one always remains only a pupil. You revere me; but what if your reverence should one day fall? Beware that a statue does not slay you! You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what does Zarathustra matter? You had not yet sought yourselves: then you found me. So do all believers; that is why all belief amounts to so little. Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.

"And it is the great noontide, when man stands at the middle of his course between beast and Overman, and celebrates his way to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the way to a new morning. Dead are all the gods: now we want the Overman to live — let this be, one day, at the great noontide, our last will!"

Thus spoke Zarathustra.