Towards the Ubermensch
"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 do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment...
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! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.
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, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth...
What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue.
The hour when you say, 'What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself.'
The hour when you say, 'What matters my reason? Does it crave knowledge as the lion his food? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.'
The hour when you say, 'What matters my virtue? As yet it has not made me rage. How weary I am of my good and my evil! All that is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.'
"Man is a rope,
tied between beast and overman--a rope over an abyss...
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what
can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going
under...
"I say unto you: one
must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a
dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in
yourselves.
Alas, the time is coming when man
will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most
despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise
himself. Behold, I show you the last man.
'What is love? What is creation? What
is longing? What is a star?' thus 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 they blink. They have left the regions where it was
hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor
and rubs against him, for one needs warmth...
One still works, for work is a form
of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too
harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too
much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too
much exertion.
No shepherd and one herd! Everybody
wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes
voluntarily into a madhouse.
'Formerly, all the world was mad,'
say the most refined, and they blink...
One has one's little pleasure for the
day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard
for health.
'We have invented happiness,' say the
last men, and they blink."
from Nietzsche's Thus spoke Zarathustra, p.3,4,5, Walter Kaufmann transl.
ON THE THREE METAMORPHOSES OF THE SPIRIT
Of the three
metamorphoses of the spirit I tell you: how the spirit becomes a
camel; and the camel, a lion; and the lion, finally, a child.
There is much that is difficult for
the spirit, the strong, reverent spirit that would bear much: but
the difficult and the most difficult are what its strength
demands.
What is difficult? asks the spirit
that would bear much, and kneels down like a camel wanting to be
well loaded. What is most difficult, O heroes, asks the spirit that
would bear much, that I may take it upon myself and exult in my
strength? Is it not humbling oneself to wound one's haughtiness?
Letting one's folly shine to mock one's wisdom?...
Or is it this: stepping into filthy
waters when they are the waters of truth, and not repulsing cold
frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: loving those that
despise us and offering a hand to the ghost that would frighten
us?
All these most difficult things the
spirit that would bear much takes upon itself: like the camel that,
burdened, speeds into the desert, thus the spirit speeds into its
desert.
In the loneliest desert, however, the
second metamorphosis occurs: here the spirit becomes a lion who
would conquer his freedom and be master in his own desert. Here he
seeks out his last master: he wants to fight him and his last god;
for ultimate victory he wants to fight with the great dragon.
Who is the great dragon whom the
spirit will no longer call lord and god? "Thou shalt" is the name
of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, "I will."
"Thou shalt" lies in his way, sparkling like gold, an animal
covered with scales; and on every scale shines a golden "thou
shalt."
Values, thousands of years old, shine
on these scales; and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: "All
value has long been created, and I am all created value. Verily,
there shall be no more 'I will.'" Thus speaks the dragon.
My brothers, why is there a need in
the spirit for the lion? Why is not the beast of burden, which
renounces and is reverent, enough?
To create new values -- that even the
lion cannot do; but the creation of freedom for oneself and a
sacred "No" even to duty -- for that, my brothers, the lion is
needed. To assume the right to new values -- that is the most
terrifying assumption for a reverent spirit that would bear much.
Verily, to him it is preying, and a matter for a beast of prey. He
once loved "thou shalt" as most sacred: now he must find illusion
and caprice even in the most sacred, that freedom from his love may
become his prey: the lion is needed for such prey.
But say, my brothers, what can the
child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion
still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new
beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a
sacred "Yes." For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred "Yes"
is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been
lost to the world now conquers the world.
from Nietzsche's Thus spoke Zarathustra, part I, Walter Kaufmann transl.