Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale Read Free Book Online Page A

ape.
    But he who is the wisest among you, he also is only a discord and hybrid of plant and of ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants?
    Behold, I teach you the Superman.
    The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!
    I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth , and do not believe those who speak to you of superterrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.
    They are despisers of life, atrophying and self-poisoned men, of whom the earth is weary: so let them be gone!
    Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy, but God died, and thereupon these blasphemers died too. To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence, and to esteem the bowels of the Inscrutable more highly than the meaning of the earth.
    Once the soul looked contemptuously upon the body: and then this contempt was the supreme good – the soul wanted the body lean, monstrous, famished. So the soul thought to escape from the body and from the earth.
    Oh, this soul was itself lean, monstrous, and famished: and cruelty was the delight of this soul!
    But tell me, my brothers: What does your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and dirt and a miserable ease?
    In truth, man is a polluted river. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted river and not be defiled.
    Behold, I teach you the Superman: he is this sea, in him your great contempt can go under.
    What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness grows loathsome to you, and your reason and your virtue also.
    The hour when you say: ‘What good is my happiness? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease. But my happiness should justify existence itself!’
    The hour when you say: ‘What good is my reason? Does it long for knowledge as the lion for its food? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease!’
    The hour when you say: ‘What good is my virtue? It has not yet driven me mad! How tired I am of my good and my evil! It is all poverty and dirt and a miserable ease!’
    The hour when you say: ‘What good is my justice? I do not see that I am fire and hot coals. But the just man is fire and hot coals!’
    The hour when you say: ‘What good is my pity? Is not pity the cross upon which he who loves man is nailed? But my pity is no crucifixion!’
    Have you ever spoken thus? Have you ever cried thus? Ah, that I had heard you crying thus!
    It is not your sin, but your moderation that cries to heaven, your very meanness in sinning cries to heaven!
    Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the madness, with which you should be cleansed?
    Behold, I teach you the Superman: he is this lightning, he is this madness!
    When Zarathustra had spoken thus, one of the people cried: ‘Now we have heard enough of the tight-rope walker; let us see him, too!’ And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the tight-rope walker, who thought that the words applied to him, set to work.
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    But Zarathustra looked at the people and marvelled. Then he spoke thus:
    Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman – a rope over an abyss.
    A dangerous going-across, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and staying-still.
    What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across and a down-going . 2
    I love those who do not know how to live except their lives be a down-going, for they are those who are going across.
    I love the great despisers, for they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other bank.
    I love those who do not first seek beyond the stars for reasons to go down and to be sacrifices: but who sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may one day belong to the Superman.
    I love him who lives for knowledge and who wants knowledge that one day the Superman may live. And thus he wills