—Unto all of you, who like me suffer FROM THE GREAT LOATHING, to whom the old God hath died, and as yet no new God lieth in cradles and swaddling clothes—unto all of you is mine evil spirit and magic-devil favourable.


I know you, ye higher men, I know him,—I know also this fiend whom I love in spite of me, this Zarathustra: he himself often seemeth to me like the beautiful mask of a saint,


—Like a new strange mummery in which mine evil spirit, the melancholy devil, delighteth:—I love Zarathustra, so doth it often seem to me, for the sake of mine evil spirit.—


But already doth IT attack me and constrain me, this spirit of melancholy, this evening-twilight devil: and verily, ye higher men, it hath a longing—


—Open your eyes!—it hath a longing to come NAKED, whether male or female, I do not yet know: but it cometh, it constraineth me, alas! open your wits!


The day dieth out, unto all things cometh now the evening, also unto the best things; hear now, and see, ye higher men, what devil—man or woman—this spirit of evening-melancholy is!"


Thus spake the old magician, looked cunningly about him, and then seized his harp.


In evening's limpid air, What time the dew's soothings Unto the earth downpour, Invisibly and unheard— For tender shoe-gear wear The soothing dews, like all that's kind-gentle—: Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart, How once thou thirstedest For heaven's kindly teardrops and dew's down-droppings, All singed and weary thirstedest, What time on yellow grass-pathways Wicked, occidental sunny glances Through sombre trees about thee sported, Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting?


"Of TRUTH the wooer? Thou?"—so taunted they— "Nay! Merely poet! A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling, That aye must lie, That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie: For booty lusting, Motley masked, Self-hidden, shrouded, Himself his booty— HE—of truth the wooer? Nay! Mere fool! Mere poet! Just motley speaking, From mask of fool confusedly shouting, Circumambling on fabricated word-bridges, On motley rainbow-arches, 'Twixt the spurious heavenly, And spurious earthly, Round us roving, round us soaring,— MERE FOOL! MERE POET!


HE—of truth the wooer? Not still, stiff, smooth and cold, Become an image, A godlike statue, Set up in front of temples, As a God's own door-guard: Nay! hostile to all such truthfulness-statues, In every desert homelier than at temples, With cattish wantonness, Through every window leaping Quickly into chances, Every wild forest a-sniffing, Greedily-longingly, sniffing, That thou, in wild forests, 'Mong the motley-speckled fierce creatures, Shouldest rove, sinful-sound and fine-coloured, With longing lips smacking, Blessedly mocking, blessedly hellish, blessedly bloodthirsty, Robbing, skulking, lying—roving:—


Or unto eagles like which fixedly, Long adown the precipice look, Adown THEIR precipice:— Oh, how they whirl down now, Thereunder, therein, To ever deeper profoundness whirling!— Then, Sudden, With aim aright, With quivering flight, On LAMBKINS pouncing, Headlong down, sore-hungry, For lambkins longing, Fierce 'gainst all lamb-spirits, Furious-fierce 'gainst all that look Sheeplike, or lambeyed, or crisp-woolly, —Grey, with lambsheep kindliness!


Even thus, Eaglelike, pantherlike, Are the poet's desires, Are THINE OWN desires 'neath a thousand guises, Thou fool! Thou poet! Thou who all mankind viewedst— So God, as sheep—: The God TO REND within mankind, As the sheep in mankind, And in rending LAUGHING—


THAT, THAT is thine own blessedness! Of a panther and eagle—blessedness! Of a poet and fool—the blessedness!—


In evening's limpid air, What time the moon's sickle, Green, 'twixt the purple-glowings, And jealous, steal'th forth: —Of day the foe, With every step in secret, The rosy garland-hammocks Downsickling, till they've sunken Down nightwards, faded, downsunken:—


Thus had I sunken one day From mine own truth-insanity, From mine own fervid day-longings, Of day aweary, sick of sunshine, —Sunk downwards, evenwards, shadowwards: By one sole trueness All scorched and thirsty: —Bethinkst thou still, bethinkst thou, burning heart, How then thou thirstedest?— THAT I SHOULD BANNED BE FROM ALL THE TRUENESS! MERE FOOL! MERE POET!


Thus sang the magician; and all who were present went like birds unawares into the net of his artful and melancholy voluptuousness. Only the spiritually conscientious one had not been caught: he at once snatched the harp from the magician and called out: "Air! Let in good air! Let in Zarathustra! Thou makest this cave sultry and poisonous, thou bad old magician!


Thou seducest, thou false one, thou subtle one, to unknown desires and deserts. And alas, that such as thou should talk and make ado about the TRUTH!


Alas, to all free spirits who are not on their guard against SUCH magicians! It is all over with their freedom: thou teachest and temptest back into prisons,—


—Thou old melancholy devil, out of thy lament soundeth a lurement: thou resemblest those who with their praise of chastity secretly invite to voluptuousness!"


Thus spake the conscientious one; the old magician, however, looked about him, enjoying his triumph, and on that account put up with the annoyance which the conscientious one caused him. "Be still!" said he with modest voice, "good songs want to re-echo well; after good songs one should be long silent.


Thus do all those present, the higher men. Thou, however, hast perhaps understood but little of my song? In thee there is little of the magic spirit."


"Thou praisest me," replied the conscientious one, "in that thou separatest me from thyself; very well! But, ye others, what do I see? Ye still sit there, all of you, with lusting eyes—:


Ye free spirits, whither hath your freedom gone! Ye almost seem to me to resemble those who have long looked at bad girls dancing naked: your souls themselves dance!


In you, ye higher men, there must be more of that which the magician calleth his evil spirit of magic and deceit:—we must indeed be different.


And verily, we spake and thought long enough together ere Zarathustra came home to his cave, for me not to be unaware that we ARE different.


We SEEK different things even here aloft, ye and I. For I seek more SECURITY; on that account have I come to Zarathustra. For he is still the most steadfast tower and will—


—To-day, when everything tottereth, when all the earth quaketh. Ye, however, when I see what eyes ye make, it almost seemeth to me that ye seek MORE INSECURITY,


—More horror, more danger, more earthquake. Ye long (it almost seemeth so to me—forgive my presumption, ye higher men)—


—Ye long for the worst and dangerousest life, which frighteneth ME most,—for the life of wild beasts, for forests, caves, steep mountains and labyrinthine gorges.


And it is not those who lead OUT OF danger that please you best, but those who lead you away from all paths, the misleaders. But if such longing in you be ACTUAL, it seemeth to me nevertheless to be IMPOSSIBLE.


For fear—that is man's original and fundamental feeling; through fear everything is explained, original sin and original virtue. Through fear there grew also MY virtue, that is to say: Science.


For fear of wild animals—that hath been longest fostered in man, inclusive of the animal which he concealeth and feareth in himself:—Zarathustra calleth it 'the beast inside.'


Such prolonged ancient fear, at last become subtle, spiritual and intellectual—at present, me thinketh, it is called SCIENCE."—


Thus spake the conscientious one; but Zarathustra, who had just come back into his cave and had heard and divined the last discourse, threw a handful of roses to the conscientious one, and laughed on account of his "truths." "Why!" he exclaimed, "what did I hear just now? Verily, it seemeth to me, thou art a fool, or else I myself am one: and quietly and quickly will I put thy 'truth' upside down.


For FEAR—is an exception with us. Courage, however, and adventure, and delight in the uncertain, in the unattempted—COURAGE seemeth to me the entire primitive history of man.


The wildest and most courageous animals hath he envied and robbed of all their virtues: thus only did he become—man.


THIS courage, at last become subtle, spiritual and intellectual, this human courage, with eagle's pinions and serpent's wisdom: THIS, it seemeth to me, is called at present—"


"ZARATHUSTRA!" cried all of them there assembled, as if with one voice, and burst out at the same time into a great laughter; there arose, however, from them as it were a heavy cloud. Even the magician laughed, and said wisely: "Well! It is gone, mine evil spirit!


And did I not myself warn you against it when I said that it was a deceiver, a lying and deceiving spirit?


Especially when it showeth itself naked. But what can I do with regard to its tricks! Have I created it and the world?


Well! Let us be good again, and of good cheer! And although Zarathustra looketh with evil eye—just see him! he disliketh me—:


—Ere night cometh will he again learn to love and laud me; he cannot live long without committing such follies.


HE—loveth his enemies: this art knoweth he better than any one I have seen. But he taketh revenge for it—on his friends!"


Thus spake the old magician, and the higher men applauded him; so that Zarathustra went round, and mischievously and lovingly shook hands with his friends,—like one who hath to make amends and apologise to every one for something. When however he had thereby come to the door of his cave, lo, then had he again a longing for the good air outside, and for his animals,—and wished to steal out.


"Go not away!" said then the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra's shadow, "abide with us—otherwise the old gloomy affliction might again fall upon us.


Now hath that old magician given us of his worst for our good, and lo! the good, pious pope there hath tears in his eyes, and hath quite embarked again upon the sea of melancholy.


Those kings may well put on a good air before us still: for that have THEY learned best of us all at present! Had they however no one to see them, I wager that with them also the bad game would again commence,—


—The bad game of drifting clouds, of damp melancholy, of curtained heavens, of stolen suns, of howling autumn-winds,


—The bad game of our howling and crying for help! Abide with us, O Zarathustra! Here there is much concealed misery that wisheth to speak, much evening, much cloud, much damp air!


Thou hast nourished us with strong food for men, and powerful proverbs: do not let the weakly, womanly spirits attack us anew at dessert!


Thou alone makest the air around thee strong and clear! Did I ever find anywhere on earth such good air as with thee in thy cave?


Many lands have I seen, my nose hath learned to test and estimate many kinds of air: but with thee do my nostrils taste their greatest delight!


Unless it be,—unless it be—, do forgive an old recollection! Forgive me an old after-dinner song, which I once composed amongst daughters of the desert:—


For with them was there equally good, clear, Oriental air; there was I furthest from cloudy, damp, melancholy Old-Europe!


Then did I love such Oriental maidens and other blue kingdoms of heaven, over which hang no clouds and no thoughts.


Ye would not believe how charmingly they sat there, when they did not dance, profound, but without thoughts, like little secrets, like beribboned riddles, like dessert-nuts—


Many-hued and foreign, forsooth! but without clouds: riddles which can be guessed: to please such maidens I then composed an after-dinner psalm."


Thus spake the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra's shadow; and before any one answered him, he had seized the harp of the old magician, crossed his legs, and looked calmly and sagely around him:—with his nostrils, however, he inhaled the air slowly and questioningly, like one who in new countries tasteth new foreign air. Afterward he began to sing with a kind of roaring.


—Ha! Solemnly! In effect solemnly! A worthy beginning! Afric manner, solemnly! Of a lion worthy, Or perhaps of a virtuous howl-monkey— —But it's naught to you, Ye friendly damsels dearly loved, At whose own feet to me, The first occasion, To a European under palm-trees, A seat is now granted. Selah.


Wonderful, truly! Here do I sit now, The desert nigh, and yet I am So far still from the desert, Even in naught yet deserted: That is, I'm swallowed down By this the smallest oasis—: —It opened up just yawning, Its loveliest mouth agape, Most sweet-odoured of all mouthlets: Then fell I right in, Right down, right through—in 'mong you, Ye friendly damsels dearly loved! Selah.


Hail! hail! to that whale, fishlike, If it thus for its guest's convenience Made things nice!—(ye well know, Surely, my learned allusion?) Hail to its belly, If it had e'er A such loveliest oasis-belly As this is: though however I doubt about it, —With this come I out of Old-Europe, That doubt'th more eagerly than doth any Elderly married woman. May the Lord improve it! Amen!


Here do I sit now, In this the smallest oasis, Like a date indeed, Brown, quite sweet, gold-suppurating, For rounded mouth of maiden longing, But yet still more for youthful, maidlike, Ice-cold and snow-white and incisory Front teeth: and for such assuredly, Pine the hearts all of ardent date-fruits. Selah.


To the there-named south-fruits now, Similar, all-too-similar, Do I lie here; by little Flying insects Round-sniffled and round-played, And also by yet littler, Foolisher, and peccabler Wishes and phantasies,— Environed by you, Ye silent, presentientest Maiden-kittens, Dudu and Suleika, —ROUNDSPHINXED, that into one word I may crowd much feeling: (Forgive me, O God, All such speech-sinning!) —Sit I here the best of air sniffling, Paradisal air, truly, Bright and buoyant air, golden-mottled, As goodly air as ever From lunar orb downfell— Be it by hazard, Or supervened it by arrogancy? As the ancient poets relate it. But doubter, I'm now calling it In question: with this do I come indeed Out of Europe, That doubt'th more eagerly than doth any Elderly married woman. May the Lord improve it! Amen.


This the finest air drinking, With nostrils out-swelled like goblets, Lacking future, lacking remembrances Thus do I sit here, ye Friendly damsels dearly loved, And look at the palm-tree there, How it, to a dance-girl, like, Doth bow and bend and on its haunches bob, —One doth it too, when one view'th it long!— To a dance-girl like, who as it seem'th to me, Too long, and dangerously persistent, Always, always, just on SINGLE leg hath stood? —Then forgot she thereby, as it seem'th to me, The OTHER leg? For vainly I, at least, Did search for the amissing Fellow-jewel —Namely, the other leg— In the sanctified precincts, Nigh her very dearest, very tenderest, Flapping and fluttering and flickering skirting. Yea, if ye should, ye beauteous friendly ones, Quite take my word: She hath, alas! LOST it! Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu! It is away! For ever away! The other leg! Oh, pity for that loveliest other leg! Where may it now tarry, all-forsaken weeping? The lonesomest leg? In fear perhaps before a Furious, yellow, blond and curled Leonine monster? Or perhaps even Gnawed away, nibbled badly— Most wretched, woeful! woeful! nibbled badly! Selah.


Oh, weep ye not, Gentle spirits! Weep ye not, ye Date-fruit spirits! Milk-bosoms! Ye sweetwood-heart Purselets! Weep ye no more, Pallid Dudu! Be a man, Suleika! Bold! Bold! —Or else should there perhaps Something strengthening, heart-strengthening, Here most proper be? Some inspiring text? Some solemn exhortation?— Ha! Up now! honour! Moral honour! European honour! Blow again, continue, Bellows-box of virtue! Ha! Once more thy roaring, Thy moral roaring! As a virtuous lion Nigh the daughters of deserts roaring! —For virtue's out-howl, Ye very dearest maidens, Is more than every European fervour, European hot-hunger! And now do I stand here, As European, I can't be different, God's help to me! Amen!


After the song of the wanderer and shadow, the cave became all at once full of noise and laughter: and since the assembled guests all spake simultaneously, and even the ass, encouraged thereby, no longer remained silent, a little aversion and scorn for his visitors came over Zarathustra, although he rejoiced at their gladness. For it seemed to him a sign of convalescence. So he slipped out into the open air and spake to his animals.


"Whither hath their distress now gone?" said he, and already did he himself feel relieved of his petty disgust—"with me, it seemeth that they have unlearned their cries of distress!


—Though, alas! not yet their crying." And Zarathustra stopped his ears, for just then did the YE-A of the ass mix strangely with the noisy jubilation of those higher men.


"They are merry," he began again, "and who knoweth? perhaps at their host's expense; and if they have learned of me to laugh, still it is not MY laughter they have learned.


But what matter about that! They are old people: they recover in their own way, they laugh in their own way; mine ears have already endured worse and have not become peevish.


This day is a victory: he already yieldeth, he fleeth, THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY, mine old arch-enemy! How well this day is about to end, which began so badly and gloomily!


And it is ABOUT TO end. Already cometh the evening: over the sea rideth it hither, the good rider! How it bobbeth, the blessed one, the home-returning one, in its purple saddles!


The sky gazeth brightly thereon, the world lieth deep. Oh, all ye strange ones who have come to me, it is already worth while to have lived with me!"


Thus spake Zarathustra. And again came the cries and laughter of the higher men out of the cave: then began he anew:


"They bite at it, my bait taketh, there departeth also from them their enemy, the spirit of gravity. Now do they learn to laugh at themselves: do I hear rightly?


My virile food taketh effect, my strong and savoury sayings: and verily, I did not nourish them with flatulent vegetables! But with warrior-food, with conqueror-food: new desires did I awaken.


New hopes are in their arms and legs, their hearts expand. They find new words, soon will their spirits breathe wantonness.


Such food may sure enough not be proper for children, nor even for longing girls old and young. One persuadeth their bowels otherwise; I am not their physician and teacher.


The DISGUST departeth from these higher men; well! that is my victory. In my domain they become assured; all stupid shame fleeth away; they empty themselves.


They empty their hearts, good times return unto them, they keep holiday and ruminate,—they become THANKFUL.


THAT do I take as the best sign: they become thankful. Not long will it be ere they devise festivals, and put up memorials to their old joys.


They are CONVALESCENTS!" Thus spake Zarathustra joyfully to his heart and gazed outward; his animals, however, pressed up to him, and honoured his happiness and his silence.


All on a sudden however, Zarathustra's ear was frightened: for the cave which had hitherto been full of noise and laughter, became all at once still as death;—his nose, however, smelt a sweet-scented vapour and incense-odour, as if from burning pine-cones.


"What happeneth? What are they about?" he asked himself, and stole up to the entrance, that he might be able unobserved to see his guests. But wonder upon wonder! what was he then obliged to behold with his own eyes!


"They have all of them become PIOUS again, they PRAY, they are mad!"—said he, and was astonished beyond measure. And forsooth! all these higher men, the two kings, the pope out of service, the evil magician, the voluntary beggar, the wanderer and shadow, the old soothsayer, the spiritually conscientious one, and the ugliest man—they all lay on their knees like children and credulous old women, and worshipped the ass. And just then began the ugliest man to gurgle and snort, as if something unutterable in him tried to find expression; when, however, he had actually found words, behold! it was a pious, strange litany in praise of the adored and censed ass. And the litany sounded thus:


Amen! And glory and honour and wisdom and thanks and praise and strength be to our God, from everlasting to everlasting!


—The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.


He carrieth our burdens, he hath taken upon him the form of a servant, he is patient of heart and never saith Nay; and he who loveth his God chastiseth him.


He speaketh not: except that he ever saith Yea to the world which he created: thus doth he extol his world. It is his artfulness that speaketh not: thus is he rarely found wrong.


Uncomely goeth he through the world. Grey is the favourite colour in which he wrappeth his virtue. Hath he spirit, then doth he conceal it; every one, however, believeth in his long ears.


What hidden wisdom it is to wear long ears, and only to say Yea and never Nay! Hath he not created the world in his own image, namely, as stupid as possible?


Thou goest straight and crooked ways; it concerneth thee little what seemeth straight or crooked unto us men. Beyond good and evil is thy domain. It is thine innocence not to know what innocence is.


Lo! how thou spurnest none from thee, neither beggars nor kings. Thou sufferest little children to come unto thee, and when the bad boys decoy thee, then sayest thou simply, YE-A.


Thou lovest she-asses and fresh figs, thou art no food-despiser. A thistle tickleth thy heart when thou chancest to be hungry. There is the wisdom of a God therein.


At this place in the litany, however, Zarathustra could no longer control himself; he himself cried out YE-A, louder even than the ass, and sprang into the midst of his maddened guests. "Whatever are you about, ye grown-up children?" he exclaimed, pulling up the praying ones from the ground. "Alas, if any one else, except Zarathustra, had seen you:


Every one would think you the worst blasphemers, or the very foolishest old women, with your new belief!


And thou thyself, thou old pope, how is it in accordance with thee, to adore an ass in such a manner as God?"—


"O Zarathustra," answered the pope, "forgive me, but in divine matters I am more enlightened even than thou. And it is right that it should be so.


Better to adore God so, in this form, than in no form at all! Think over this saying, mine exalted friend: thou wilt readily divine that in such a saying there is wisdom.


He who said 'God is a Spirit'—made the greatest stride and slide hitherto made on earth towards unbelief: such a dictum is not easily amended again on earth!


Mine old heart leapeth and boundeth because there is still something to adore on earth. Forgive it, O Zarathustra, to an old, pious pontiff-heart!—"


—"And thou," said Zarathustra to the wanderer and shadow, "thou callest and thinkest thyself a free spirit? And thou here practisest such idolatry and hierolatry?


Worse verily, doest thou here than with thy bad brown girls, thou bad, new believer!"


"It is sad enough," answered the wanderer and shadow, "thou art right: but how can I help it! The old God liveth again, O Zarathustra, thou mayst say what thou wilt.


The ugliest man is to blame for it all: he hath reawakened him. And if he say that he once killed him, with Gods DEATH is always just a prejudice."


—"And thou," said Zarathustra, "thou bad old magician, what didst thou do! Who ought to believe any longer in thee in this free age, when THOU believest in such divine donkeyism?


It was a stupid thing that thou didst; how couldst thou, a shrewd man, do such a stupid thing!"


"O Zarathustra," answered the shrewd magician, "thou art right, it was a stupid thing,—it was also repugnant to me."


—"And thou even," said Zarathustra to the spiritually conscientious one, "consider, and put thy finger to thy nose! Doth nothing go against thy conscience here? Is thy spirit not too cleanly for this praying and the fumes of those devotees?"


"There is something therein," said the spiritually conscientious one, and put his finger to his nose, "there is something in this spectacle which even doeth good to my conscience.


Perhaps I dare not believe in God: certain it is however, that God seemeth to me most worthy of belief in this form.


God is said to be eternal, according to the testimony of the most pious: he who hath so much time taketh his time. As slow and as stupid as possible: THEREBY can such a one nevertheless go very far.


And he who hath too much spirit might well become infatuated with stupidity and folly. Think of thyself, O Zarathustra!


Thou thyself—verily! even thou couldst well become an ass through superabundance of wisdom.


Doth not the true sage willingly walk on the crookedest paths? The evidence teacheth it, O Zarathustra,—THINE OWN evidence!"


—"And thou thyself, finally," said Zarathustra, and turned towards the ugliest man, who still lay on the ground stretching up his arm to the ass (for he gave it wine to drink). "Say, thou nondescript, what hast thou been about!


Thou seemest to me transformed, thine eyes glow, the mantle of the sublime covereth thine ugliness: WHAT didst thou do?


Is it then true what they say, that thou hast again awakened him? And why? Was he not for good reasons killed and made away with?


Thou thyself seemest to me awakened: what didst thou do? why didst THOU turn round? Why didst THOU get converted? Speak, thou nondescript!"


"O Zarathustra," answered the ugliest man, "thou art a rogue!


Whether HE yet liveth, or again liveth, or is thoroughly dead—which of us both knoweth that best? I ask thee.


One thing however do I know,—from thyself did I learn it once, O Zarathustra: he who wanteth to kill most thoroughly, LAUGHETH.


'Not by wrath but by laughter doth one kill'—thus spakest thou once, O Zarathustra, thou hidden one, thou destroyer without wrath, thou dangerous saint,—thou art a rogue!"


Then, however, did it come to pass that Zarathustra, astonished at such merely roguish answers, jumped back to the door of his cave, and turning towards all his guests, cried out with a strong voice:


"O ye wags, all of you, ye buffoons! Why do ye dissemble and disguise yourselves before me!


How the hearts of all of you convulsed with delight and wickedness, because ye had at last become again like little children—namely, pious,—


—Because ye at last did again as children do—namely, prayed, folded your hands and said 'good God'!


But now leave, I pray you, THIS nursery, mine own cave, where to-day all childishness is carried on. Cool down, here outside, your hot child-wantonness and heart-tumult!


To be sure: except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into THAT kingdom of heaven." (And Zarathustra pointed aloft with his hands.)


"But we do not at all want to enter into the kingdom of heaven: we have become men,—SO WE WANT THE KINGDOM OF EARTH."


And once more began Zarathustra to speak. "O my new friends," said he,— "ye strange ones, ye higher men, how well do ye now please me,—


—Since ye have again become joyful! Ye have, verily, all blossomed forth: it seemeth to me that for such flowers as you, NEW FESTIVALS are required.


—A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and ass-festival, some old joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow your souls bright.


Forget not this night and this ass-festival, ye higher men! THAT did ye devise when with me, that do I take as a good omen,—such things only the convalescents devise!


And should ye celebrate it again, this ass-festival, do it from love to yourselves, do it also from love to me! And in remembrance of me!"


Meanwhile one after another had gone out into the open air, and into the cool, thoughtful night; Zarathustra himself, however, led the ugliest man by the hand, that he might show him his night-world, and the great round moon, and the silvery water-falls near his cave. There they at last stood still beside one another; all of them old people, but with comforted, brave hearts, and astonished in themselves that it was so well with them on earth; the mystery of the night, however, came nigher and nigher to their hearts. And anew Zarathustra thought to himself: "Oh, how well do they now please me, these higher men!"—but he did not say it aloud, for he respected their happiness and their silence.—


Then, however, there happened that which in this astonishing long day was most astonishing: the ugliest man began once more and for the last time to gurgle and snort, and when he had at length found expression, behold! there sprang a question plump and plain out of his mouth, a good, deep, clear question, which moved the hearts of all who listened to him.


"My friends, all of you," said the ugliest man, "what think ye? For the sake of this day—I am for the first time content to have lived mine entire life.


And that I testify so much is still not enough for me. It is worth while living on the earth: one day, one festival with Zarathustra, hath taught me to love the earth.


'Was THAT—life?' will I say unto death. 'Well! Once more!'


My friends, what think ye? Will ye not, like me, say unto death: 'Was THAT—life? For the sake of Zarathustra, well! Once more!'"—


Thus spake the ugliest man; it was not, however, far from midnight. And what took place then, think ye? As soon as the higher men heard his question, they became all at once conscious of their transformation and convalescence, and of him who was the cause thereof: then did they rush up to Zarathustra, thanking, honouring, caressing him, and kissing his hands, each in his own peculiar way; so that some laughed and some wept. The old soothsayer, however, danced with delight; and though he was then, as some narrators suppose, full of sweet wine, he was certainly still fuller of sweet life, and had renounced all weariness. There are even those who narrate that the ass then danced: for not in vain had the ugliest man previously given it wine to drink. That may be the case, or it may be otherwise; and if in truth the ass did not dance that evening, there nevertheless happened then greater and rarer wonders than the dancing of an ass would have been. In short, as the proverb of Zarathustra saith: "What doth it matter!"


When, however, this took place with the ugliest man, Zarathustra stood there like one drunken: his glance dulled, his tongue faltered and his feet staggered. And who could divine what thoughts then passed through Zarathustra's soul? Apparently, however, his spirit retreated and fled in advance and was in remote distances, and as it were "wandering on high mountain-ridges," as it standeth written, "'twixt two seas,


—Wandering 'twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud." Gradually, however, while the higher men held him in their arms, he came back to himself a little, and resisted with his hands the crowd of the honouring and caring ones; but he did not speak. All at once, however, he turned his head quickly, for he seemed to hear something: then laid he his finger on his mouth and said: "COME!"


And immediately it became still and mysterious round about; from the depth however there came up slowly the sound of a clock-bell. Zarathustra listened thereto, like the higher men; then, however, laid he his finger on his mouth the second time, and said again: "COME! COME! IT IS GETTING ON TO MIDNIGHT!"—and his voice had changed. But still he had not moved from the spot. Then it became yet stiller and more mysterious, and everything hearkened, even the ass, and Zarathustra's noble animals, the eagle and the serpent,—likewise the cave of Zarathustra and the big cool moon, and the night itself. Zarathustra, however, laid his hand upon his mouth for the third time, and said:


Ye higher men, it is getting on to midnight: then will I say something into your ears, as that old clock-bell saith it into mine ear,—


—As mysteriously, as frightfully, and as cordially as that midnight clock-bell speaketh it to me, which hath experienced more than one man:


—Which hath already counted the smarting throbbings of your fathers' hearts—ah! ah! how it sigheth! how it laugheth in its dream! the old, deep, deep midnight!


Hush! Hush! Then is there many a thing heard which may not be heard by day; now however, in the cool air, when even all the tumult of your hearts hath become still,—


—Now doth it speak, now is it heard, now doth it steal into overwakeful, nocturnal souls: ah! ah! how the midnight sigheth! how it laugheth in its dream!


—Hearest thou not how it mysteriously, frightfully, and cordially speaketh unto THEE, the old deep, deep midnight?


Woe to me! Whither hath time gone? Have I not sunk into deep wells? The world sleepeth—


Ah! Ah! The dog howleth, the moon shineth. Rather will I die, rather will I die, than say unto you what my midnight-heart now thinketh.


Already have I died. It is all over. Spider, why spinnest thou around me? Wilt thou have blood? Ah! Ah! The dew falleth, the hour cometh—


—The hour in which I frost and freeze, which asketh and asketh and asketh: "Who hath sufficient courage for it?


—Who is to be master of the world? Who is going to say: THUS shall ye flow, ye great and small streams!"


—The hour approacheth: O man, thou higher man, take heed! this talk is for fine ears, for thine ears—WHAT SAITH DEEP MIDNIGHT'S VOICE INDEED?


It carrieth me away, my soul danceth. Day's-work! Day's-work! Who is to be master of the world?


The moon is cool, the wind is still. Ah! Ah! Have ye already flown high enough? Ye have danced: a leg, nevertheless, is not a wing.


Ye good dancers, now is all delight over: wine hath become lees, every cup hath become brittle, the sepulchres mutter.


Ye have not flown high enough: now do the sepulchres mutter: "Free the dead! Why is it so long night? Doth not the moon make us drunken?"


Ye higher men, free the sepulchres, awaken the corpses! Ah, why doth the worm still burrow? There approacheth, there approacheth, the hour,—


—There boometh the clock-bell, there thrilleth still the heart, there burroweth still the wood-worm, the heart-worm. Ah! Ah! THE WORLD IS DEEP!


Sweet lyre! Sweet lyre! I love thy tone, thy drunken, ranunculine tone!—how long, how far hath come unto me thy tone, from the distance, from the ponds of love!


Thou old clock-bell, thou sweet lyre! Every pain hath torn thy heart, father-pain, fathers'-pain, forefathers'-pain; thy speech hath become ripe,—


—Ripe like the golden autumn and the afternoon, like mine anchorite heart—now sayest thou: The world itself hath become ripe, the grape turneth brown,


—Now doth it wish to die, to die of happiness. Ye higher men, do ye not feel it? There welleth up mysteriously an odour,


—A perfume and odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, brown, gold-wine-odour of old happiness,


—Of drunken midnight-death happiness, which singeth: the world is deep, AND DEEPER THAN THE DAY COULD READ!


Leave me alone! Leave me alone! I am too pure for thee. Touch me not! Hath not my world just now become perfect?


My skin is too pure for thy hands. Leave me alone, thou dull, doltish, stupid day! Is not the midnight brighter?


The purest are to be masters of the world, the least known, the strongest, the midnight-souls, who are brighter and deeper than any day.


O day, thou gropest for me? Thou feelest for my happiness? For thee am I rich, lonesome, a treasure-pit, a gold chamber?


O world, thou wantest ME? Am I worldly for thee? Am I spiritual for thee? Am I divine for thee? But day and world, ye are too coarse,—


—Mine unhappiness, my happiness is deep, thou strange day, but yet am I no God, no God's-hell: DEEP IS ITS WOE.


—A midnight-lyre, a bell-frog, which no one understandeth, but which MUST speak before deaf ones, ye higher men! For ye do not understand me!


Gone! Gone! O youth! O noontide! O afternoon! Now have come evening and night and midnight,—the dog howleth, the wind:


—Is the wind not a dog? It whineth, it barketh, it howleth. Ah! Ah! how she sigheth! how she laugheth, how she wheezeth and panteth, the midnight!


How she just now speaketh soberly, this drunken poetess! hath she perhaps overdrunk her drunkenness? hath she become overawake? doth she ruminate?


—Her woe doth she ruminate over, in a dream, the old, deep midnight—and still more her joy. For joy, although woe be deep, JOY IS DEEPER STILL THAN GRIEF CAN BE.


Thou grape-vine! Why dost thou praise me? Have I not cut thee! I am cruel, thou bleedest—: what meaneth thy praise of my drunken cruelty?


"Whatever hath become perfect, everything mature—wanteth to die!" so sayest thou. Blessed, blessed be the vintner's knife! But everything immature wanteth to live: alas!


Woe saith: "Hence! Go! Away, thou woe!" But everything that suffereth wanteth to live, that it may become mature and lively and longing,


—Longing for the further, the higher, the brighter. "I want heirs," so saith everything that suffereth, "I want children, I do not want MYSELF,"—


Joy, however, doth not want heirs, it doth not want children,—joy wanteth itself, it wanteth eternity, it wanteth recurrence, it wanteth everything eternally-like-itself.


Woe saith: "Break, bleed, thou heart! Wander, thou leg! Thou wing, fly! Onward! upward! thou pain!" Well! Cheer up! O mine old heart: WOE SAITH: "HENCE! GO!"


Ye higher men, what think ye? Am I a soothsayer? Or a dreamer? Or a drunkard? Or a dream-reader? Or a midnight-bell?


Or a drop of dew? Or a fume and fragrance of eternity? Hear ye it not? Smell ye it not? Just now hath my world become perfect, midnight is also midday,—


Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun,—go away! or ye will learn that a sage is also a fool.


Said ye ever Yea to one joy? O my friends, then said ye Yea also unto ALL woe. All things are enlinked, enlaced and enamoured,—


—Wanted ye ever once to come twice; said ye ever: "Thou pleasest me, happiness! Instant! Moment!" then wanted ye ALL to come back again!


—All anew, all eternal, all enlinked, enlaced and enamoured, Oh, then did ye LOVE the world,—


—Ye eternal ones, ye love it eternally and for all time: and also unto woe do ye say: Hence! Go! but come back! FOR JOYS ALL WANT—ETERNITY!


All joy wanteth the eternity of all things, it wanteth honey, it wanteth lees, it wanteth drunken midnight, it wanteth graves, it wanteth grave-tears' consolation, it wanteth gilded evening-red—


—WHAT doth not joy want! it is thirstier, heartier, hungrier, more frightful, more mysterious, than all woe: it wanteth ITSELF, it biteth into ITSELF, the ring's will writheth in it,—


—It wanteth love, it wanteth hate, it is over-rich, it bestoweth, it throweth away, it beggeth for some one to take from it, it thanketh the taker, it would fain be hated,—


—So rich is joy that it thirsteth for woe, for hell, for hate, for shame, for the lame, for the WORLD,—for this world, Oh, ye know it indeed!


Ye higher men, for you doth it long, this joy, this irrepressible, blessed joy—for your woe, ye failures! For failures, longeth all eternal joy.


For joys all want themselves, therefore do they also want grief! O happiness, O pain! Oh break, thou heart! Ye higher men, do learn it, that joys want eternity.


—Joys want the eternity of ALL things, they WANT DEEP, PROFOUND ETERNITY!


Have ye now learned my song? Have ye divined what it would say? Well! Cheer up! Ye higher men, sing now my roundelay!


Sing now yourselves the song, the name of which is "Once more," the signification of which is "Unto all eternity!"—sing, ye higher men, Zarathustra's roundelay!


O man! Take heed! What saith deep midnight's voice indeed? "I slept my sleep—, "From deepest dream I've woke, and plead:— "The world is deep, "And deeper than the day could read. "Deep is its woe—, "Joy—deeper still than grief can be: "Woe saith: Hence! Go! "But joys all want eternity—, "—Want deep, profound eternity!"


In the morning, however, after this night, Zarathustra jumped up from his couch, and, having girded his loins, he came out of his cave glowing and strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains.


"Thou great star," spake he, as he had spoken once before, "thou deep eye of happiness, what would be all thy happiness if thou hadst not THOSE for whom thou shinest!


And if they remained in their chambers whilst thou art already awake, and comest and bestowest and distributest, how would thy proud modesty upbraid for it!


Well! they still sleep, these higher men, whilst I am awake: THEY are not my proper companions! Not for them do I wait here in my mountains.


At my work I want to be, at my day: but they understand not what are the signs of my morning, my step—is not for them the awakening-call.


They still sleep in my cave; their dream still drinketh at my drunken songs. The audient ear for ME—the OBEDIENT ear, is yet lacking in their limbs."


—This had Zarathustra spoken to his heart when the sun arose: then looked he inquiringly aloft, for he heard above him the sharp call of his eagle. "Well!" called he upwards, "thus is it pleasing and proper to me. Mine animals are awake, for I am awake.


Mine eagle is awake, and like me honoureth the sun. With eagle-talons doth it grasp at the new light. Ye are my proper animals; I love you.


Thus spake Zarathustra; then, however, it happened that all on a sudden he became aware that he was flocked around and fluttered around, as if by innumerable birds,—the whizzing of so many wings, however, and the crowding around his head was so great that he shut his eyes. And verily, there came down upon him as it were a cloud, like a cloud of arrows which poureth upon a new enemy. But behold, here it was a cloud of love, and showered upon a new friend.


"What happeneth unto me?" thought Zarathustra in his astonished heart, and slowly seated himself on the big stone which lay close to the exit from his cave. But while he grasped about with his hands, around him, above him and below him, and repelled the tender birds, behold, there then happened to him something still stranger: for he grasped thereby unawares into a mass of thick, warm, shaggy hair; at the same time, however, there sounded before him a roar,—a long, soft lion-roar.


"THE SIGN COMETH," said Zarathustra, and a change came over his heart. And in truth, when it turned clear before him, there lay a yellow, powerful animal at his feet, resting its head on his knee,—unwilling to leave him out of love, and doing like a dog which again findeth its old master. The doves, however, were no less eager with their love than the lion; and whenever a dove whisked over its nose, the lion shook its head and wondered and laughed.


When all this went on Zarathustra spake only a word: "MY CHILDREN ARE NIGH, MY CHILDREN"—, then he became quite mute. His heart, however, was loosed, and from his eyes there dropped down tears and fell upon his hands. And he took no further notice of anything, but sat there motionless, without repelling the animals further. Then flew the doves to and fro, and perched on his shoulder, and caressed his white hair, and did not tire of their tenderness and joyousness. The strong lion, however, licked always the tears that fell on Zarathustra's hands, and roared and growled shyly. Thus did these animals do.—


All this went on for a long time, or a short time: for properly speaking, there is NO time on earth for such things—. Meanwhile, however, the higher men had awakened in Zarathustra's cave, and marshalled themselves for a procession to go to meet Zarathustra, and give him their morning greeting: for they had found when they awakened that he no longer tarried with them. When, however, they reached the door of the cave and the noise of their steps had preceded them, the lion started violently; it turned away all at once from Zarathustra, and roaring wildly, sprang towards the cave. The higher men, however, when they heard the lion roaring, cried all aloud as with one voice, fled back and vanished in an instant.


Zarathustra himself, however, stunned and strange, rose from his seat, looked around him, stood there astonished, inquired of his heart, bethought himself, and remained alone. "What did I hear?" said he at last, slowly, "what happened unto me just now?"


But soon there came to him his recollection, and he took in at a glance all that had taken place between yesterday and to-day. "Here is indeed the stone," said he, and stroked his beard, "on IT sat I yester-morn; and here came the soothsayer unto me, and here heard I first the cry which I heard just now, the great cry of distress.


O ye higher men, YOUR distress was it that the old soothsayer foretold to me yester-morn,—


—Unto your distress did he want to seduce and tempt me: 'O Zarathustra,' said he to me, 'I come to seduce thee to thy last sin.'


To my last sin?" cried Zarathustra, and laughed angrily at his own words: "WHAT hath been reserved for me as my last sin?"


—And once more Zarathustra became absorbed in himself, and sat down again on the big stone and meditated. Suddenly he sprang up,—


"FELLOW-SUFFERING! FELLOW-SUFFERING WITH THE HIGHER MEN!" he cried out, and his countenance changed into brass. "Well! THAT—hath had its time!


My suffering and my fellow-suffering—what matter about them! Do I then strive after HAPPINESS? I strive after my WORK!


Well! The lion hath come, my children are nigh, Zarathustra hath grown ripe, mine hour hath come:—


This is MY morning, MY day beginneth: ARISE NOW, ARISE, THOU GREAT NOONTIDE!"—


Thus spake Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains.


I have had some opportunities of studying the conditions under which Nietzsche is read in Germany, France, and England, and I have found that, in each of these countries, students of his philosophy, as if actuated by precisely similar motives and desires, and misled by the same mistaken tactics on the part of most publishers, all proceed in the same happy-go-lucky style when "taking him up." They have had it said to them that he wrote without any system, and they very naturally conclude that it does not matter in the least whether they begin with his first, third, or last book, provided they can obtain a few vague ideas as to what his leading and most sensational principles were.


Now, it is clear that the book with the most mysterious, startling, or suggestive title, will always stand the best chance of being purchased by those who have no other criteria to guide them in their choice than the aspect of a title-page; and this explains why "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is almost always the first and often the only one of Nietzsche's books that falls into the hands of the uninitiated.


The title suggests all kinds of mysteries; a glance at the chapter-headings quickly confirms the suspicions already aroused, and the sub-title: "A Book for All and None", generally succeeds in dissipating the last doubts the prospective purchaser may entertain concerning his fitness for the book or its fitness for him. And what happens?


"Thus Spake Zarathustra" is taken home; the reader, who perchance may know no more concerning Nietzsche than a magazine article has told him, tries to read it and, understanding less than half he reads, probably never gets further than the second or third part,—and then only to feel convinced that Nietzsche himself was "rather hazy" as to what he was talking about. Such chapters as "The Child with the Mirror", "In the Happy Isles", "The Grave-Song," "Immaculate Perception," "The Stillest Hour", "The Seven Seals", and many others, are almost utterly devoid of meaning to all those who do not know something of Nietzsche's life, his aims and his friendships.


As a matter of fact, "Thus Spake Zarathustra", though it is unquestionably Nietzsche's opus magnum, is by no means the first of Nietzsche's works that the beginner ought to undertake to read. The author himself refers to it as the deepest work ever offered to the German public, and elsewhere speaks of his other writings as being necessary for the understanding of it. But when it is remembered that in Zarathustra we not only have the history of his most intimate experiences, friendships, feuds, disappointments, triumphs and the like, but that the very form in which they are narrated is one which tends rather to obscure than to throw light upon them, the difficulties which meet the reader who starts quite unprepared will be seen to be really formidable.


Zarathustra, then,—this shadowy, allegorical personality, speaking in allegories and parables, and at times not even refraining from relating his own dreams—is a figure we can understand but very imperfectly if we have no knowledge of his creator and counterpart, Friedrich Nietzsche; and it were therefore well, previous to our study of the more abstruse parts of this book, if we were to turn to some authoritative book on Nietzsche's life and works and to read all that is there said on the subject. Those who can read German will find an excellent guide, in this respect, in Frau Foerster-Nietzsche's exhaustive and highly interesting biography of her brother: "Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's" (published by Naumann); while the works of Deussen, Raoul Richter, and Baroness Isabelle von Unger-Sternberg, will be found to throw useful and necessary light upon many questions which it would be difficult for a sister to touch upon.


In regard to the actual philosophical views expounded in this work, there is an excellent way of clearing up any difficulties they may present, and that is by an appeal to Nietzsche's other works. Again and again, of course, he will be found to express himself so clearly that all reference to his other writings may be dispensed with; but where this is not the case, the advice he himself gives is after all the best to be followed here, viz.:—to regard such works as: "Joyful Science", "Beyond Good and Evil", "The Genealogy of Morals", "The Twilight of the Idols", "The Antichrist", "The Will to Power", etc., etc., as the necessary preparation for "Thus Spake Zarathustra".


These directions, though they are by no means simple to carry out, seem at least to possess the quality of definiteness and straightforwardness. "Follow them and all will be clear," I seem to imply. But I regret to say that this is not really the case. For my experience tells me that even after the above directions have been followed with the greatest possible zeal, the student will still halt in perplexity before certain passages in the book before us, and wonder what they mean. Now, it is with the view of giving a little additional help to all those who find themselves in this position that I proceed to put forth my own personal interpretation of the more abstruse passages in this work.


In offering this little commentary to the Nietzsche student, I should like it to be understood that I make no claim as to its infallibility or indispensability. It represents but an attempt on my part—a very feeble one perhaps—to give the reader what little help I can in surmounting difficulties which a long study of Nietzsche's life and works has enabled me, partially I hope, to overcome.


Perhaps it would be as well to start out with a broad and rapid sketch of Nietzsche as a writer on Morals, Evolution, and Sociology, so that the reader may be prepared to pick out for himself, so to speak, all passages in this work bearing in any way upon Nietzsche's views in those three important branches of knowledge.


(A.) Nietzsche and Morality.


In morality, Nietzsche starts out by adopting the position of the relativist. He says there are no absolute values "good" and "evil"; these are mere means adopted by all in order to acquire power to maintain their place in the world, or to become supreme. It is the lion's good to devour an antelope. It is the dead-leaf butterfly's good to tell a foe a falsehood. For when the dead-leaf butterfly is in danger, it clings to the side of a twig, and what it says to its foe is practically this: "I am not a butterfly, I am a dead leaf, and can be of no use to thee." This is a lie which is good to the butterfly, for it preserves it. In nature every species of organic being instinctively adopts and practises those acts which most conduce to the prevalence or supremacy of its kind. Once the most favourable order of conduct is found, proved efficient and established, it becomes the ruling morality of the species that adopts it and bears them along to victory. All species must not and cannot value alike, for what is the lion's good is the antelope's evil and vice versa.


Concepts of good and evil are therefore, in their origin, merely a means to an end, they are expedients for acquiring power.


Applying this principle to mankind, Nietzsche attacked Christian moral values. He declared them to be, like all other morals, merely an expedient for protecting a certain type of man. In the case of Christianity this type was, according to Nietzsche, a low one.


Conflicting moral codes have been no more than the conflicting weapons of different classes of men; for in mankind there is a continual war between the powerful, the noble, the strong, and the well-constituted on the one side, and the impotent, the mean, the weak, and the ill-constituted on the other. The war is a war of moral principles. The morality of the powerful class, Nietzsche calls NOBLE- or MASTER-MORALITY; that of the weak and subordinate class he calls SLAVE-MORALITY. In the first morality it is the eagle which, looking down upon a browsing lamb, contends that "eating lamb is good." In the second, the slave-morality, it is the lamb which, looking up from the sward, bleats dissentingly: "Eating lamb is evil."


(B.) The Master- and Slave-Morality Compared.


The first morality is active, creative, Dionysian. The second is passive, defensive,—to it belongs the "struggle for existence."


Where attempts have not been made to reconcile the two moralities, they may be described as follows:—All is GOOD in the noble morality which proceeds from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness, and awfulness; for, the motive force behind the people practising it is "the struggle for power." The antithesis "good and bad" to this first class means the same as "noble" and "despicable." "Bad" in the master-morality must be applied to the coward, to all acts that spring from weakness, to the man with "an eye to the main chance," who would forsake everything in order to live.


With the second, the slave-morality, the case is different. There, inasmuch as the community is an oppressed, suffering, unemancipated, and weary one, all THAT will be held to be good which alleviates the state of suffering. Pity, the obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, and humility—these are unquestionably the qualities we shall here find flooded with the light of approval and admiration; because they are the most USEFUL qualities—; they make life endurable, they are of assistance in the "struggle for existence" which is the motive force behind the people practising this morality. To this class, all that is AWFUL is bad, in fact it is THE evil par excellence. Strength, health, superabundance of animal spirits and power, are regarded with hate, suspicion, and fear by the subordinate class.


Now Nietzsche believed that the first or the noble-morality conduced to an ascent in the line of life; because it was creative and active. On the other hand, he believed that the second or slave-morality, where it became paramount, led to degeneration, because it was passive and defensive, wanting merely to keep those who practised it alive. Hence his earnest advocacy of noble-morality.


Nietzsche as an evolutionist I shall have occasion to define and discuss in the course of these notes (see Notes on Chapter LVI., par. 10, and on Chapter LVII.). For the present let it suffice for us to know that he accepted the "Development Hypothesis" as an explanation of the origin of species: but he did not halt where most naturalists have halted. He by no means regarded man as the highest possible being which evolution could arrive at; for though his physical development may have reached its limit, this is not the case with his mental or spiritual attributes. If the process be a fact; if things have BECOME what they are, then, he contends, we may describe no limit to man's aspirations. If he struggled up from barbarism, and still more remotely from the lower Primates, his ideal should be to surpass man himself and reach Superman (see especially the Prologue).


Nietzsche as a sociologist aims at an aristocratic arrangement of society. He would have us rear an ideal race. Honest and truthful in intellectual matters, he could not even think that men are equal. "With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaketh justice unto ME: 'Men are not equal.'" He sees precisely in this inequality a purpose to be served, a condition to be exploited. "Every elevation of the type 'man,'" he writes in "Beyond Good and Evil", "has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society—and so will it always be—a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings."


Those who are sufficiently interested to desire to read his own detailed account of the society he would fain establish, will find an excellent passage in Aphorism 57 of "The Antichrist".


In Part I. including the Prologue, no very great difficulties will appear. Zarathustra's habit of designating a whole class of men or a whole school of thought by a single fitting nickname may perhaps lead to a little confusion at first; but, as a rule, when the general drift of his arguments is grasped, it requires but a slight effort of the imagination to discover whom he is referring to. In the ninth paragraph of the Prologue, for instance, it is quite obvious that "Herdsmen" in the verse "Herdsmen, I say, etc., etc.," stands for all those to-day who are the advocates of gregariousness—of the ant-hill. And when our author says: "A robber shall Zarathustra be called by the herdsmen," it is clear that these words may be taken almost literally from one whose ideal was the rearing of a higher aristocracy. Again, "the good and just," throughout the book, is the expression used in referring to the self-righteous of modern times,—those who are quite sure that they know all that is to be known concerning good and evil, and are satisfied that the values their little world of tradition has handed down to them, are destined to rule mankind as long as it lasts.


In the last paragraph of the Prologue, verse 7, Zarathustra gives us a foretaste of his teaching concerning the big and the little sagacities, expounded subsequently. He says he would he were as wise as his serpent; this desire will be found explained in the discourse entitled "The Despisers of the Body", which I shall have occasion to refer to later.


Chapter I. The Three Metamorphoses.


This opening discourse is a parable in which Zarathustra discloses the mental development of all creators of new values. It is the story of a life which reaches its consummation in attaining to a second ingenuousness or in returning to childhood. Nietzsche, the supposed anarchist, here plainly disclaims all relationship whatever to anarchy, for he shows us that only by bearing the burdens of the existing law and submitting to it patiently, as the camel submits to being laden, does the free spirit acquire that ascendancy over tradition which enables him to meet and master the dragon "Thou shalt,"—the dragon with the values of a thousand years glittering on its scales. There are two lessons in this discourse: first, that in order to create one must be as a little child; secondly, that it is only through existing law and order that one attains to that height from which new law and new order may be promulgated.


Chapter II. The Academic Chairs of Virtue.


Almost the whole of this is quite comprehensible. It is a discourse against all those who confound virtue with tameness and smug ease, and who regard as virtuous only that which promotes security and tends to deepen sleep.


Chapter IV. The Despisers of the Body.


Here Zarathustra gives names to the intellect and the instincts; he calls the one "the little sagacity" and the latter "the big sagacity." Schopenhauer's teaching concerning the intellect is fully endorsed here. "An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which thou callest 'spirit,'" says Zarathustra. From beginning to end it is a warning to those who would think too lightly of the instincts and unduly exalt the intellect and its derivatives: Reason and Understanding.


Chapter IX. The Preachers of Death.


This is an analysis of the psychology of all those who have the "evil eye" and are pessimists by virtue of their constitutions.


Chapter XV. The Thousand and One Goals.


In this discourse Zarathustra opens his exposition of the doctrine of relativity in morality, and declares all morality to be a mere means to power. Needless to say that verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 refer to the Greeks, the Persians, the Jews, and the Germans respectively. In the penultimate verse he makes known his discovery concerning the root of modern Nihilism and indifference,—i.e., that modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals (see Note A).


Chapter XVIII. Old and Young Women.


Nietzsche's views on women have either to be loved at first sight or they become perhaps the greatest obstacle in the way of those who otherwise would be inclined to accept his philosophy. Women especially, of course, have been taught to dislike them, because it has been rumoured that his views are unfriendly to themselves. Now, to my mind, all this is pure misunderstanding and error.


German philosophers, thanks to Schopenhauer, have earned rather a bad name for their views on women. It is almost impossible for one of them to write a line on the subject, however kindly he may do so, without being suspected of wishing to open a crusade against the fair sex. Despite the fact, therefore, that all Nietzsche's views in this respect were dictated to him by the profoundest love; despite Zarathustra's reservation in this discourse, that "with women nothing (that can be said) is impossible," and in the face of other overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Nietzsche is universally reported to have mis son pied dans le plat, where the female sex is concerned. And what is the fundamental doctrine which has given rise to so much bitterness and aversion?—Merely this: that the sexes are at bottom ANTAGONISTIC—that is to say, as different as blue is from yellow, and that the best possible means of rearing anything approaching a desirable race is to preserve and to foster this profound hostility. What Nietzsche strives to combat and to overthrow is the modern democratic tendency which is slowly labouring to level all things—even the sexes. His quarrel is not with women—what indeed could be more undignified?—it is with those who would destroy the natural relationship between the sexes, by modifying either the one or the other with a view to making them more alike. The human world is just as dependent upon women's powers as upon men's. It is women's strongest and most valuable instincts which help to determine who are to be the fathers of the next generation. By destroying these particular instincts, that is to say by attempting to masculinise woman, and to feminise men, we jeopardise the future of our people. The general democratic movement of modern times, in its frantic struggle to mitigate all differences, is now invading even the world of sex. It is against this movement that Nietzsche raises his voice; he would have woman become ever more woman and man become ever more man. Only thus, and he is undoubtedly right, can their combined instincts lead to the excellence of humanity. Regarded in this light, all his views on woman appear not only necessary but just (see Note on Chapter LVI., par. 21.)


It is interesting to observe that the last line of the discourse, which has so frequently been used by women as a weapon against Nietzsche's views concerning them, was suggested to Nietzsche by a woman (see "Das Leben F. Nietzsche's").


Chapter XXI. Voluntary Death.


In regard to this discourse, I should only like to point out that Nietzsche had a particular aversion to the word "suicide"—self-murder. He disliked the evil it suggested, and in rechristening the act Voluntary Death, i.e., the death that comes from no other hand than one's own, he was desirous of elevating it to the position it held in classical antiquity (see Aphorism 36 in "The Twilight of the Idols").


Chapter XXII. The Bestowing Virtue.


An important aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy is brought to light in this discourse. His teaching, as is well known, places the Aristotelian man of spirit, above all others in the natural divisions of man. The man with overflowing strength, both of mind and body, who must discharge this strength or perish, is the Nietzschean ideal. To such a man, giving from his overflow becomes a necessity; bestowing develops into a means of existence, and this is the only giving, the only charity, that Nietzsche recognises. In paragraph 3 of the discourse, we read Zarathustra's healthy exhortation to his disciples to become independent thinkers and to find themselves before they learn any more from him (see Notes on Chapters LVI., par. 5, and LXXIII., pars. 10, 11).


Chapter XXIII. The Child with the Mirror.


Nietzsche tells us here, in a poetical form, how deeply grieved he was by the manifold misinterpretations and misunderstandings which were becoming rife concerning his publications. He does not recognise himself in the mirror of public opinion, and recoils terrified from the distorted reflection of his features. In verse 20 he gives us a hint which it were well not to pass over too lightly; for, in the introduction to "The Genealogy of Morals" (written in 1887) he finds it necessary to refer to the matter again and with greater precision. The point is this, that a creator of new values meets with his surest and strongest obstacles in the very spirit of the language which is at his disposal. Words, like all other manifestations of an evolving race, are stamped with the values that have long been paramount in that race. Now, the original thinker who finds himself compelled to use the current speech of his country in order to impart new and hitherto untried views to his fellows, imposes a task upon the natural means of communication which it is totally unfitted to perform,—hence the obscurities and prolixities which are so frequently met with in the writings of original thinkers. In the "Dawn of Day", Nietzsche actually cautions young writers against THE DANGER OF ALLOWING THEIR THOUGHTS TO BE MOULDED BY THE WORDS AT THEIR DISPOSAL.


Chapter XXIV. In the Happy Isles.


While writing this, Nietzsche is supposed to have been thinking of the island of Ischia which was ultimately destroyed by an earthquake. His teaching here is quite clear. He was among the first thinkers of Europe to overcome the pessimism which godlessness generally brings in its wake. He points to creating as the surest salvation from the suffering which is a concomitant of all higher life. "What would there be to create," he asks, "if there were—Gods?" His ideal, the Superman, lends him the cheerfulness necessary to the overcoming of that despair usually attendant upon godlessness and upon the apparent aimlessness of a world without a god.


Chapter XXIX. The Tarantulas.


The tarantulas are the Socialists and Democrats. This discourse offers us an analysis of their mental attitude. Nietzsche refuses to be confounded with those resentful and revengeful ones who condemn society FROM BELOW, and whose criticism is only suppressed envy. "There are those who preach my doctrine of life," he says of the Nietzschean Socialists, "and are at the same time preachers of equality and tarantulas" (see Notes on Chapter XL. and Chapter LI.).


Chapter XXX. The Famous Wise Ones.


This refers to all those philosophers hitherto, who have run in the harness of established values and have not risked their reputation with the people in pursuit of truth. The philosopher, however, as Nietzsche understood him, is a man who creates new values, and thus leads mankind in a new direction.


Chapter XXXIII. The Grave-Song.


Here Zarathustra sings about the ideals and friendships of his youth. Verses 27 to 31 undoubtedly refer to Richard Wagner (see Note on Chapter LXV.).


Chapter XXXIV. Self-Surpassing.


In this discourse we get the best exposition in the whole book of Nietzsche's doctrine of the Will to Power. I go into this question thoroughly in the Note on Chapter LVII.


Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from choice. Those who hastily class him with the anarchists (or the Progressivists of the last century) fail to understand the high esteem in which he always held both law and discipline. In verse 41 of this most decisive discourse he truly explains his position when he says: "...he who hath to be a creator in good and evil—verily he hath first to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces." This teaching in regard to self-control is evidence enough of his reverence for law.


Chapter XXXV. The Sublime Ones.


These belong to a type which Nietzsche did not altogether dislike, but which he would fain have rendered more subtle and plastic. It is the type that takes life and itself too seriously, that never surmounts the camel-stage mentioned in the first discourse, and that is obdurately sublime and earnest. To be able to smile while speaking of lofty things and NOT TO BE OPPRESSED by them, is the secret of real greatness. He whose hand trembles when it lays hold of a beautiful thing, has the quality of reverence, without the artist's unembarrassed friendship with the beautiful. Hence the mistakes which have arisen in regard to confounding Nietzsche with his extreme opposites the anarchists and agitators. For what they dare to touch and break with the impudence and irreverence of the unappreciative, he seems likewise to touch and break,—but with other fingers—with the fingers of the loving and unembarrassed artist who is on good terms with the beautiful and who feels able to create it and to enhance it with his touch. The question of taste plays an important part in Nietzsche's philosophy, and verses 9, 10 of this discourse exactly state Nietzsche's ultimate views on the subject. In the "Spirit of Gravity", he actually cries:—"Neither a good nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy."


Chapter XXXVI. The Land of Culture.


This is a poetical epitome of some of the scathing criticism of scholars which appears in the first of the "Thoughts out of Season"—the polemical pamphlet (written in 1873) against David Strauss and his school. He reproaches his former colleagues with being sterile and shows them that their sterility is the result of their not believing in anything. "He who had to create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions—and believed in believing!" (See Note on Chapter LXXVII.) In the last two verses he reveals the nature of his altruism. How far it differs from that of Christianity we have already read in the discourse "Neighbour-Love", but here he tells us definitely the nature of his love to mankind; he explains why he was compelled to assail the Christian values of pity and excessive love of the neighbour, not only because they are slave-values and therefore tend to promote degeneration (see Note B.), but because he could only love his children's land, the undiscovered land in a remote sea; because he would fain retrieve the errors of his fathers in his children.


Chapter XXXVII. Immaculate Perception.


An important feature of Nietzsche's interpretation of Life is disclosed in this discourse. As Buckle suggests in his "Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge", the scientific spirit of the investigator is both helped and supplemented by the latter's emotions and personality, and the divorce of all emotionalism and individual temperament from science is a fatal step towards sterility. Zarathustra abjures all those who would fain turn an IMPERSONAL eye upon nature and contemplate her phenomena with that pure objectivity to which the scientific idealists of to-day would so much like to attain. He accuses such idealists of hypocrisy and guile; he says they lack innocence in their desires and therefore slander all desiring.


Chapter XXXVIII. Scholars.


This is a record of Nietzsche's final breach with his former colleagues—the scholars of Germany. Already after the publication of the "Birth of Tragedy", numbers of German philologists and professional philosophers had denounced him as one who had strayed too far from their flock, and his lectures at the University of Bale were deserted in consequence; but it was not until 1879, when he finally severed all connection with University work, that he may be said to have attained to the freedom and independence which stamp this discourse.


People have sometimes said that Nietzsche had no sense of humour. I have no intention of defending him here against such foolish critics; I should only like to point out to the reader that we have him here at his best, poking fun at himself, and at his fellow-poets (see Note on Chapter LXIII., pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20).


Chapter XL. Great Events.


Here we seem to have a puzzle. Zarathustra himself, while relating his experience with the fire-dog to his disciples, fails to get them interested in his narrative, and we also may be only too ready to turn over these pages under the impression that they are little more than a mere phantasy or poetical flight. Zarathustra's interview with the fire-dog is, however, of great importance. In it we find Nietzsche face to face with the creature he most sincerely loathes—the spirit of revolution, and we obtain fresh hints concerning his hatred of the anarchist and rebel. "'Freedom' ye all roar most eagerly," he says to the fire-dog, "but I have unlearned the belief in 'Great Events' when there is much roaring and smoke about them. Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values, doth the world revolve; INAUDIBLY it revolveth."


Chapter XLI. The Soothsayer.


This refers, of course, to Schopenhauer. Nietzsche, as is well known, was at one time an ardent follower of Schopenhauer. He overcame Pessimism by discovering an object in existence; he saw the possibility of raising society to a higher level and preached the profoundest Optimism in consequence.


Chapter XLII. Redemption.


Zarathustra here addresses cripples. He tells them of other cripples—the GREAT MEN in this world who have one organ or faculty inordinately developed at the cost of their other faculties. This is doubtless a reference to a fact which is too often noticeable in the case of so many of the world's giants in art, science, or religion. In verse 19 we are told what Nietzsche called Redemption—that is to say, the ability to say of all that is past: "Thus would I have it." The in ability to say this, and the resentment which results therefrom, he regards as the source of all our feelings of revenge, and all our desires to punish—punishment meaning to him merely a euphemism for the word revenge, invented in order to still our consciences. He who can be proud of his enemies, who can be grateful to them for the obstacles they have put in his way; he who can regard his worst calamity as but the extra strain on the bow of his life, which is to send the arrow of his longing even further than he could have hoped;—this man knows no revenge, neither does he know despair, he truly has found redemption and can turn on the worst in his life and even in himself, and call it his best (see Notes on Chapter LVII.).


Chapter XLIII. Manly Prudence.


This discourse is very important. In "Beyond Good and Evil" we hear often enough that the select and superior man must wear a mask, and here we find this injunction explained. "And he who would not languish amongst men, must learn to drink out of all glasses: and he who would keep clean amongst men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water." This, I venture to suggest, requires some explanation. At a time when individuality is supposed to be shown most tellingly by putting boots on one's hands and gloves on one's feet, it is somewhat refreshing to come across a true individualist who feels the chasm between himself and others so deeply, that he must perforce adapt himself to them outwardly, at least, in all respects, so that the inner difference should be overlooked. Nietzsche practically tells us here that it is not he who intentionally wears eccentric clothes or does eccentric things who is truly the individualist. The profound man, who is by nature differentiated from his fellows, feels this difference too keenly to call attention to it by any outward show. He is shamefast and bashful with those who surround him and wishes not to be discovered by them, just as one instinctively avoids all lavish display of comfort or wealth in the presence of a poor friend.


Chapter XLIV. The Stillest Hour.


This seems to me to give an account of the great struggle which must have taken place in Nietzsche's soul before he finally resolved to make known the more esoteric portions of his teaching. Our deepest feelings crave silence. There is a certain self-respect in the serious man which makes him hold his profoundest feelings sacred. Before they are uttered they are full of the modesty of a virgin, and often the oldest sage will blush like a girl when this virginity is violated by an indiscretion which forces him to reveal his deepest thoughts.


This is perhaps the most important of all the four parts. If it contained only "The Vision and the Enigma" and "The Old and New Tables" I should still be of this opinion; for in the former of these discourses we meet with what Nietzsche regarded as the crowning doctrine of his philosophy and in "The Old and New Tables" we have a valuable epitome of practically all his leading principles.


Chapter XLVI. The Vision and the Enigma.


"The Vision and the Enigma" is perhaps an example of Nietzsche in his most obscure vein. We must know how persistently he inveighed against the oppressing and depressing influence of man's sense of guilt and consciousness of sin in order fully to grasp the significance of this discourse. Slowly but surely, he thought the values of Christianity and Judaic traditions had done their work in the minds of men. What were once but expedients devised for the discipline of a certain portion of humanity, had now passed into man's blood and had become instincts. This oppressive and paralysing sense of guilt and of sin is what Nietzsche refers to when he speaks of "the spirit of gravity." This creature half-dwarf, half-mole, whom he bears with him a certain distance on his climb and finally defies, and whom he calls his devil and arch-enemy, is nothing more than the heavy millstone "guilty conscience," together with the concept of sin which at present hangs round the neck of men. To rise above it—to soar—is the most difficult of all things to-day. Nietzsche is able to think cheerfully and optimistically of the possibility of life in this world recurring again and again, when he has once cast the dwarf from his shoulders, and he announces his doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of all things great and small to his arch-enemy and in defiance of him.


That there is much to be said for Nietzsche's hypothesis of the Eternal Recurrence of all things great and small, nobody who has read the literature on the subject will doubt for an instant; but it remains a very daring conjecture notwithstanding and even in its ultimate effect, as a dogma, on the minds of men, I venture to doubt whether Nietzsche ever properly estimated its worth (see Note on Chapter LVII.).


What follows is clear enough. Zarathustra sees a young shepherd struggling on the ground with a snake holding fast to the back of his throat. The sage, assuming that the snake must have crawled into the young man's mouth while he lay sleeping, runs to his help and pulls at the loathsome reptile with all his might, but in vain. At last, in despair, Zarathustra appeals to the young man's will. Knowing full well what a ghastly operation he is recommending, he nevertheless cries, "Bite! Bite! Its head off! Bite!" as the only possible solution of the difficulty. The young shepherd bites, and far away he spits the snake's head, whereupon he rises, "No longer shepherd, no longer man—a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as he laughed!"


In this parable the young shepherd is obviously the man of to-day; the snake that chokes him represents the stultifying and paralysing social values that threaten to shatter humanity, and the advice "Bite! Bite!" is but Nietzsche's exasperated cry to mankind to alter their values before it is too late.


Chapter XLVII. Involuntary Bliss.


This, like "The Wanderer", is one of the many introspective passages in the work, and is full of innuendos and hints as to the Nietzschean outlook on life.


Chapter XLVIII. Before Sunrise.


Here we have a record of Zarathustra's avowal of optimism, as also the important statement concerning "Chance" or "Accident" (verse 27). Those who are familiar with Nietzsche's philosophy will not require to be told what an important role his doctrine of chance plays in his teaching. The Giant Chance has hitherto played with the puppet "man,"—this is the fact he cannot contemplate with equanimity. Man shall now exploit chance, he says again and again, and make it fall on its knees before him! (See verse 33 in "On the Olive-Mount", and verses 9–10 in "The Bedwarfing Virtue").


Chapter XLIX. The Bedwarfing Virtue.


This requires scarcely any comment. It is a satire on modern man and his belittling virtues. In verses 23 and 24 of the second part of the discourse we are reminded of Nietzsche's powerful indictment of the great of to-day, in the Antichrist (Aphorism 43):—"At present nobody has any longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of domination, for a feeling of reverence for himself and his equals,—FOR PATHOS OF DISTANCE.... Our politics are MORBID from this want of courage!—The aristocracy of character has been undermined most craftily by the lie of the equality of souls; and if the belief in the 'privilege of the many,' makes revolutions and WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE them, it is Christianity, let us not doubt it, it is CHRISTIAN valuations, which translate every revolution merely into blood and crime!" (see also "Beyond Good and Evil", pages 120, 121). Nietzsche thought it was a bad sign of the times that even rulers have lost the courage of their positions, and that a man of Frederick the Great's power and distinguished gifts should have been able to say: "Ich bin der erste Diener des Staates" (I am the first servant of the State.) To this utterance of the great sovereign, verse 24 undoubtedly refers. "Cowardice" and "Mediocrity," are the names with which he labels modern notions of virtue and moderation.


In Part III., we get the sentiments of the discourse "In the Happy Isles", but perhaps in stronger terms. Once again we find Nietzsche thoroughly at ease, if not cheerful, as an atheist, and speaking with vertiginous daring of making chance go on its knees to him. In verse 20, Zarathustra makes yet another attempt at defining his entirely anti-anarchical attitude, and unless such passages have been completely overlooked or deliberately ignored hitherto by those who will persist in laying anarchy at his door, it is impossible to understand how he ever became associated with that foul political party.


The last verse introduces the expression, "THE GREAT NOONTIDE!" In the poem to be found at the end of "Beyond Good and Evil", we meet with the expression again, and we shall find it occurring time and again in Nietzsche's works. It will be found fully elucidated in the fifth part of "The Twilight of the Idols"; but for those who cannot refer to this book, it were well to point out that Nietzsche called the present period—our period—the noon of man's history. Dawn is behind us. The childhood of mankind is over. Now we KNOW; there is now no longer any excuse for mistakes which will tend to botch and disfigure the type man. "With respect to what is past," he says, "I have, like all discerning ones, great toleration, that is to say, GENEROUS self-control.... But my feeling changes suddenly, and breaks out as soon as I enter the modern period, OUR period. Our age KNOWS..." (See Note on Chapter LXX.).


Chapter LI. On Passing-by.


Here we find Nietzsche confronted with his extreme opposite, with him therefore for whom he is most frequently mistaken by the unwary. "Zarathustra's ape" he is called in the discourse. He is one of those at whose hands Nietzsche had to suffer most during his life-time, and at whose hands his philosophy has suffered most since his death. In this respect it may seem a little trivial to speak of extremes meeting; but it is wonderfully apt. Many have adopted Nietzsche's mannerisms and word-coinages, who had nothing in common with him beyond the ideas and "business" they plagiarised; but the superficial observer and a large portion of the public, not knowing of these things,—not knowing perhaps that there are iconoclasts who destroy out of love and are therefore creators, and that there are others who destroy out of resentment and revengefulness and who are therefore revolutionists and anarchists,—are prone to confound the two, to the detriment of the nobler type.


If we now read what the fool says to Zarathustra, and note the tricks of speech he has borrowed from him: if we carefully follow the attitude he assumes, we shall understand why Zarathustra finally interrupts him. "Stop this at once," Zarathustra cries, "long have thy speech and thy species disgusted me.... Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; BUT NOT OUT OF THE SWAMP!" It were well if this discourse were taken to heart by all those who are too ready to associate Nietzsche with lesser and noiser men,—with mountebanks and mummers.


Chapter LII. The Apostates.


It is clear that this applies to all those breathless and hasty "tasters of everything," who plunge too rashly into the sea of independent thought and "heresy," and who, having miscalculated their strength, find it impossible to keep their head above water. "A little older, a little colder," says Nietzsche. They soon clamber back to the conventions of the age they intended reforming. The French then say "le diable se fait hermite," but these men, as a rule, have never been devils, neither do they become angels; for, in order to be really good or evil, some strength and deep breathing is required. Those who are more interested in supporting orthodoxy than in being over nice concerning the kind of support they give it, often refer to these people as evidence in favour of the true faith.


Chapter LIII. The Return Home.


This is an example of a class of writing which may be passed over too lightly by those whom poetasters have made distrustful of poetry. From first to last it is extremely valuable as an autobiographical note. The inevitable superficiality of the rabble is contrasted with the peaceful and profound depths of the anchorite. Here we first get a direct hint concerning Nietzsche's fundamental passion—the main force behind all his new values and scathing criticism of existing values. In verse 30 we are told that pity was his greatest danger. The broad altruism of the law-giver, thinking over vast eras of time, was continually being pitted by Nietzsche, in himself, against that transient and meaner sympathy for the neighbour which he more perhaps than any of his contemporaries had suffered from, but which he was certain involved enormous dangers not only for himself but also to the next and subsequent generations (see Note B., where "pity" is mentioned among the degenerate virtues). Later in the book we shall see how his profound compassion leads him into temptation, and how frantically he struggles against it. In verses 31 and 32, he tells us to what extent he had to modify himself in order to be endured by his fellows whom he loved (see also verse 12 in "Manly Prudence"). Nietzsche's great love for his fellows, which he confesses in the Prologue, and which is at the root of all his teaching, seems rather to elude the discerning powers of the average philanthropist and modern man. He cannot see the wood for the trees. A philanthropy that sacrifices the minority of the present-day for the majority constituting posterity, completely evades his mental grasp, and Nietzsche's philosophy, because it declares Christian values to be a danger to the future of our kind, is therefore shelved as brutal, cold, and hard (see Note on Chapter XXXVI.). Nietzsche tried to be all things to all men; he was sufficiently fond of his fellows for that: in the Return Home he describes how he ultimately returns to loneliness in order to recover from the effects of his experiment.


Chapter LIV. The Three Evil Things.


Nietzsche is here completely in his element. Three things hitherto best cursed and most calumniated on earth, are brought forward to be weighed. Voluptuousness, thirst of power, and selfishness,—the three forces in humanity which Christianity has done most to garble and besmirch,—Nietzsche endeavours to reinstate in their former places of honour. Voluptuousness, or sensual pleasure, is a dangerous thing to discuss nowadays. If we mention it with favour we may be regarded, however unjustly, as the advocate of savages, satyrs, and pure sensuality. If we condemn it, we either go over to the Puritans or we join those who are wont to come to table with no edge to their appetites and who therefore grumble at all good fare. There can be no doubt that the value of healthy innocent voluptuousness, like the value of health itself, must have been greatly discounted by all those who, resenting their inability to partake of this world's goods, cried like St Paul: "I would that all men were even as I myself." Now Nietzsche's philosophy might be called an attempt at giving back to healthy and normal men innocence and a clean conscience in their desires—NOT to applaud the vulgar sensualists who respond to every stimulus and whose passions are out of hand; not to tell the mean, selfish individual, whose selfishness is a pollution (see Aphorism 33, "Twilight of the Idols"), that he is right, nor to assure the weak, the sick, and the crippled, that the thirst of power, which they gratify by exploiting the happier and healthier individuals, is justified;—but to save the clean healthy man from the values of those around him, who look at everything through the mud that is in their own bodies,—to give him, and him alone, a clean conscience in his manhood and the desires of his manhood. "Do I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel to innocence in your instincts." In verse 7 of the second paragraph (as in verse I of paragraph 19 in "The Old and New Tables") Nietzsche gives us a reason for his occasional obscurity (see also verses 3 to 7 of "Poets"). As I have already pointed out, his philosophy is quite esoteric. It can serve no purpose with the ordinary, mediocre type of man. I, personally, can no longer have any doubt that Nietzsche's only object, in that part of his philosophy where he bids his friends stand "Beyond Good and Evil" with him, was to save higher men, whose growth and scope might be limited by the too strict observance of modern values from foundering on the rocks of a "Compromise" between their own genius and traditional conventions. The only possible way in which the great man can achieve greatness is by means of exceptional freedom—the freedom which assists him in experiencing HIMSELF. Verses 20 to 30 afford an excellent supplement to Nietzsche's description of the attitude of the noble type towards the slaves in Aphorism 260 of the work "Beyond Good and Evil" (see also Note B.)


Chapter LV. The Spirit of Gravity.


(See Note on Chapter XLVI.) In Part II. of this discourse we meet with a doctrine not touched upon hitherto, save indirectly;—I refer to the doctrine of self-love. We should try to understand this perfectly before proceeding; for it is precisely views of this sort which, after having been cut out of the original context, are repeated far and wide as internal evidence proving the general unsoundness of Nietzsche's philosophy. Already in the last of the "Thoughts out of Season" Nietzsche speaks as follows about modern men: "...these modern creatures wish rather to be hunted down, wounded and torn to shreds, than to live alone with themselves in solitary calm. Alone with oneself!—this thought terrifies the modern soul; it is his one anxiety, his one ghastly fear" (English Edition, page 141). In his feverish scurry to find entertainment and diversion, whether in a novel, a newspaper, or a play, the modern man condemns his own age utterly; for he shows that in his heart of hearts he despises himself. One cannot change a condition of this sort in a day; to become endurable to oneself an inner transformation is necessary. Too long have we lost ourselves in our friends and entertainments to be able to find ourselves so soon at another's bidding. "And verily, it is no commandment for to-day and to-morrow to LEARN to love oneself. Rather is it of all arts the finest, subtlest, last, and patientest."


In the last verse Nietzsche challenges us to show that our way is the right way. In his teaching he does not coerce us, nor does he overpersuade; he simply says: "I am a law only for mine own, I am not a law for all. This—is now MY way,—where is yours?"


Chapter LVI. Old and New Tables. Par. 2.


Nietzsche himself declares this to be the most decisive portion of the whole of "Thus Spake Zarathustra". It is a sort of epitome of his leading doctrines. In verse 12 of the second paragraph, we learn how he himself would fain have abandoned the poetical method of expression had he not known only too well that the only chance a new doctrine has of surviving, nowadays, depends upon its being given to the world in some kind of art-form. Just as prophets, centuries ago, often had to have recourse to the mask of madness in order to mitigate the hatred of those who did not and could not see as they did; so, to-day, the struggle for existence among opinions and values is so great, that an art-form is practically the only garb in which a new philosophy can dare to introduce itself to us.


Pars. 3 and 4.


Many of the paragraphs will be found to be merely reminiscent of former discourses. For instance, par. 3 recalls "Redemption". The last verse of par. 4 is important. Freedom which, as I have pointed out before, Nietzsche considered a dangerous acquisition in inexperienced or unworthy hands, here receives its death-blow as a general desideratum. In the first Part we read under "The Way of the Creating One", that freedom as an end in itself does not concern Zarathustra at all. He says there: "Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra? Clearly, however, shall thine eye answer me: free FOR WHAT?" And in "The Bedwarfing Virtue": "Ah that ye understood my word: 'Do ever what ye will—but first be such as CAN WILL.'"


Here we have a description of the kind of altruism Nietzsche exacted from higher men. It is really a comment upon "The Bestowing Virtue" (see Note on Chapter XXII.).


This refers, of course, to the reception pioneers of Nietzsche's stamp meet with at the hands of their contemporaries.


Nietzsche teaches that nothing is stable,—not even values,—not even the concepts good and evil. He likens life unto a stream. But foot-bridges and railings span the stream, and they seem to stand firm. Many will be reminded of good and evil when they look upon these structures; for thus these same values stand over the stream of life, and life flows on beneath them and leaves them standing. When, however, winter comes and the stream gets frozen, many inquire: "Should not everything—STAND STILL? Fundamentally everything standeth still." But soon the spring cometh and with it the thaw-wind. It breaks the ice, and the ice breaks down the foot-bridges and railings, whereupon everything is swept away. This state of affairs, according to Nietzsche, has now been reached. "Oh, my brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX? Have not all railings and foot-bridges fallen into the water? Who would still HOLD ON to 'good' and 'evil'?"


This is complementary to the first three verses of par. 2.


So far, this is perhaps the most important paragraph. It is a protest against reading a moral order of things in life. "Life is something essentially immoral!" Nietzsche tells us in the introduction to the "Birth of Tragedy". Even to call life "activity," or to define it further as "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations," as Spencer has it, Nietzsche characterises as a "democratic idiosyncracy." He says to define it in this way, "is to mistake the true nature and function of life, which is Will to Power.... Life is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation and at least, putting it mildest, exploitation." Adaptation is merely a secondary activity, a mere re-activity (see Note on Chapter LVII.).


Pars. 11, 12.


These deal with Nietzsche's principle of the desirability of rearing a select race. The biological and historical grounds for his insistence upon this principle are, of course, manifold. Gobineau in his great work, "L'Inegalite des Races Humaines", lays strong emphasis upon the evils which arise from promiscuous and inter-social marriages. He alone would suffice to carry Nietzsche's point against all those who are opposed to the other conditions, to the conditions which would have saved Rome, which have maintained the strength of the Jewish race, and which are strictly maintained by every breeder of animals throughout the world. Darwin in his remarks relative to the degeneration of CULTIVATED types of animals through the action of promiscuous breeding, brings Gobineau support from the realm of biology.


The last two verses of par. 12 were discussed in the Notes on Chapters XXXVI. and LIII.


This, like the first part of "The Soothsayer", is obviously a reference to the Schopenhauerian Pessimism.


Pars. 14, 15, 16, 17.


These are supplementary to the discourse "Backworld's-men".