THE HIGHER MAN

1

WHEN I CAME TO men for the first time, I committed the folly of hermits, the great folly: I appeared in the marketplace.

And when I spoke to all, I spoke to none. In the evening, however, tightrope walkers were my companions, and corpses; and I myself was almost a corpse.

With the new morning, however, there came to me a new truth: then I learned to say: “What are the marketplace and the mob and the mob’s noise and long mob ears to me!”

You higher men, learn this from me: in the marketplace no one believes in higher men. And if you want to speak there, very well! But the mob blinks: “We are all equal.”

“You higher men,”—so the mob blink—“there are no higher men, we are all equal, man is but man, before God—we are all equal!”

Before God!-But now this god has died. Before the mob, however, we will not be equal. You higher men, go away from the marketplace!

2

Before God!-But now this god has died! You higher men, this god was your greatest danger.

Only since he lay in the grave have you again arisen. Only now comes the great noon, only now does the higher man become—master!

Have you understood this word, O my brothers? You are frightened: do your hearts turn giddy? Does the abyss here yawn for you? Does the dog of hell here yelp at you?

Well! Take heart! you higher men! Only now is the mountain of man’s future at labor. God has died: now we want—the Übermensch to live.

3

The most careful ask today: “How is man to be preserved?” But Zarathustra asks as the first and only one: “How is man to be overcome?”

I have the Übermensch at heart, he is the first and only thing to me—and not man: not the nearest, not the poorest, not the most suffering, not the best.-O my brothers, what I can love in man is that he is an over-going and a going under. And in you too there is much that makes me love and hope.

That you have despised, you higher men, that makes me hope. For the great despisers are the great reverers.

That you have despaired, there is much honor in that. For you have not learned to submit, you have not learned petty prudence.

For today the petty have become master: they all preach submission and humility and prudence and diligence and consideration and the long et cetera of petty virtues.

What is of womanish, what stems from the slavishness and especially the hodgepodge of the mob: that now wants to be master of all human destiny—O disgust! disgust! disgust!

That asks and asks and never tires: “How is man to preserve himself best, longest, most pleasantly?” With that-they are the masters of today.

Overcome these masters of today, O my brothers-these little people: they are the Übermensch’s greatest danger!

Overcome, you higher men, the petty virtues, the petty prudences, the sand-grain discretion, the ant’s pretensions, the wretched contentment, the “happiness of the greatest number”—!

And rather despair than submit. And truly, I love you, because you do not know today how to live, you higher men! For thus you live-the best!

4

Do you have courage, O my brothers? Are you brave? Not courage before witnesses but hermit and eagle courage, which not even a god observes any more?

I do not call brave the cold souls, the mulish, the blind and the drunken. He has heart who knows fear but conquers it; who sees the abyss, but with pride.

He who sees the abyss, but with eagle’s eyes—he who grasps the abyss with eagle’s talons: he has courage.____

5

“Man is evil”—all the wisest have told me that to comfort me. Ah, if only it were still true today! For evil is man’s best strength.

“Man must become better and more evil”—thus I teach. The most evil is necessary for the Übermensch’s best.

It may have been good for that preacher of the little people to suffer and be burdened by men’s sin. But I rejoice in great sin as my great consolation.—

But such things are not said for long ears. Neither does every word suit every mouth. These are subtle remote things: sheep’s hooves should not reach for them!

6

You higher men, do you think that I am here to put right what you have put wrong?

Or that I wished henceforth to make cozier beds for you sufferers? Or show you restless, erring, straying ones new and easier footpaths?

No! No! Three times No! Always more, always better ones of your kind must perish-for life must be harder and harder for you. Thus alone—

—Thus alone man grows to the height where the lightning strikes and shatters him: high enough for the lightning!

My soul and my seeking go forth towards the few, the long, the remote: what are your many little brief miseries to me!

You do not yet suffer enough for me! For you suffer from yourselves, you have not yet suffered from man. You would lie if you said otherwise! None of you suffers from what I have suffered.____

7

It is not enough for me that the lightning no longer does any harm. I do not want to conduct it away: it shall learn-to work for me.-My wisdom has long accumulated like a cloud, it becomes stiller and darker. So does all wisdom which shall one day bear lightnings.—

To these men of today I will not be light, nor be called light. Them—I will blind: lightning of my wisdom! put out their eyes!

8

Will nothing beyond your power: there is a wicked falseness in those who will beyond their power.

Especially when they will great things! For they awaken distrust in great things, these subtle counterfeiters and actors:—

—until at last they are false to themselves, squint-eyed, whitewashed worm-eaten decay, cloaked with strong words, pretended virtues and glittering false deeds.

Take good care there, you higher men! For nothing today is more precious to me and rarer than honesty.

Is this today not the mob’s? But the mob does not know what is great, what is small, what is straight and honest: it is innocently crooked, it always lies.

9

Have a good mistrust today you higher men, you stouthearted! You openhearted! And keep your reasons secret! For this today is the mob’s.

What the mob once learned to believe without reasons, who could-refute it with reasons?

And in the marketplace one convinces with gestures. But reasons make the mob mistrustful.

And if truth triumphed there for once, then ask yourselves with good mistrust: “What strong error fought for it?”

Be on your guard too against the learned! They hate you: for they are sterile! They have cold, desiccated eyes, before which all birds lie unplumed.

Such people brag that they do not lie: but the inability to lie is far from the love of truth. Beware!

Freedom from fever is far from being knowledge! I do not believe frozen spirits. He who cannot lie does not know what truth is.

10

If you want to rise high, use your own legs! Do not let yourselves be carried up, do not sit on the backs and heads of strangers!

But you mounted a horse? You are now riding briskly up to your goal? Well, my friend! But your lame foot is also with you on horseback!

When you reach your goal, when you jump from your horse: precisely on your height, you higher man—you will stumble!

11

You creators, you higher men! One is pregnant only with one’s own child.

Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or beguiled! For who is your neighbor? Even if you do things “for your neighbor”—you still do not create for him!

Unlearn this “for,” you creators: your very virtue wants you to have nothing to do with “for” and “for the sake of” and “because.” You should stop your ears against these false little words.

“For one’s neighbor,” is the virtue only of petty people: there they say “like attracts like” and “one hand washes the other”—they have neither the right nor the strength for your selfishness!

In your selfishness, you creators, is the caution and providence of the pregnant! What no one’s eye has yet seen, the fruit: that is sheltered and indulged and nourished by your whole love.

Where your whole love is, with your child, there too is your whole virtue! Your work, your will is your “neighbor”: let no false values beguile you!

12

You creators, you higher men! Whoever must give birth is sick; but whoever has given birth is unclean.

Ask women: one does not give birth for pleasure. The pain makes hens and poets cackle.

You creators, there is much in you that is unclean. That is because you had to be mothers.

A new child: oh, how much new filth has also come into the world! Go aside! And whoever has given birth should wash his soul clean!

13

Do not be virtuous beyond your strength! And do not ask anything improbable from yourselves!

Follow in the footsteps of your fathers’ virtue! How would you climb high if the will of your fathers did not climb with you?

But he who wants to be a firstborn should see that he does not also become a lastborn! And where the vices of your fathers are you should not pretend to be saints!

If your fathers were for women, strong wine and wild boars, what would it be if you demanded chastity of yourself?

It would be folly! Truly, I think it would be much if such a one were the husband of one or of two or of three women.

And if he founded monasteries and wrote above their doors: “The way to holiness,” I should still say: What of it! it is a new folly!

He founded a reformatory and a refuge for himself: much good may it do! But I do not believe in it.

In solitude there grows what anyone brings into it, the inner beast too. Therefore solitude is inadvisable to many.

Has there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints of the wilderness? Around them not only the devil was loose-but also the swine.

14

Shy, ashamed, awkward, like a tiger whose spring has failed: thus, you higher men, I have often seen you slink aside. A throw you made had failed.

But what does it matter, you dice players! You have not learned to play and mock as one ought to play and mock! Don’t we always sit at a great table of mocking and playing?

And if you have failed at great things, does that mean you yourselves are-failures? And if you yourselves have been failures, has another failure therefore been—man? But if man has been a failure: well then! come on!

15

The higher its type the less often a thing succeeds. You higher men here, are you not all-failures?

Be of good cheer; what does it matter! How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves as you ought to laugh!

No wonder that you have failed and only half succeeded, you half-broken ones! Does there not strive and struggle in you—man’s future?

Man’s greatest distance and depth and what in him is lofty as the stars, his prodigious strength: does not all that foam together in your pot?

No wonder many a pot is shattered! Learn to laugh at yourselves as you ought to laugh! You higher men, oh how much is still possible!

And truly, how much has already succeeded! How rich this earth is in small good perfect things, in what has turned out well!

Set small good perfect things around you, you higher men! Their golden ripeness heals the heart. What is perfect teaches hope.

16

What has so far been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the word of him who said: “Woe to them who laugh here!”

Did he himself find no reasons on earth for laughter? Then he sought badly. Even a child finds reasons here.

He-did not love enough: otherwise he would have also loved us who laugh! But he hated and jeered at us, he promised us wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Must one then curse right away when one does not love? That—seems bad taste to me. But thus he acted, being unconditional. He sprang from the mob.

And he himself simply did not love enough: otherwise he would have raged less that he was not loved. All great love does not want love-it wants more.

Avoid all such unconditional ones! They are a poor sickly type, a mob-type: they look sourly at this life, they have an evil eye for this earth.

Avoid all such unconditional ones! They have heavy feet and sultry hearts-they do not know how to dance. How could the earth be light to such as these!

17

All good things approach their goal crookedly. Like cats they arch their backs, they purr inwardly at their approaching happiness—all good things laugh.

His step betrays whether a man walks his own way: behold me walking! But whoever approaches his goal dances.

And truly, I have not become a statue, not yet do I stand there stiff, stupid, stony, like a pillar; I love to run swiftly.

And although there are swamps and dense afflictions on earth, he who has light feet runs even across mud and dances as on swept ice.

Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And do not forget your legs! Lift up your legs too, you good dancers, and better still, stand on your heads!

18

This laugher’s crown, this rose garlanded crown.9 I myself have put on this crown, I myself have consecrated my laughter. I found none other today strong enough for that.

Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light, who beckons with his wings, ready for flight, beckoning to all birds, ready and prepared, blissfully light-spirited one:—

Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the soothlaugher, no impatient one, no unconditional one, one who loves leaps and side-leaps; I myself have put on this crown!

19

Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And do not forget your legs! Lift up your legs too, you good dancers: and better still, stand on your heads!

In happiness too there are heavy animals in a state of happiness, there are club-foots through and through. They exert themselves strangely, like an elephant trying to stand on its head.

But better to be foolish with happiness than foolish with misfortune, better to dance awkwardly than to walk lamely. So learn from me my wisdom: even the worst thing has two good sides,—

—even the worst thing has good dancing legs: so learn, you higher men, to stand on your own proper legs!

So unlearn nursing melancholy and all the mob sorrow! Oh, how sad the jesters of the mob seem to me today! But this today is the mob’s.

20

Be like the wind when it rushes forth from its mountain caves: it dances to its own piping, the seas tremble and leap under its footsteps.

That which gives wings to asses10 and milks lionesses, all praise to that good, unruly spirit which comes like a hurricane to all the present and to all the mob—

—which is enemy to all thistle-heads and casuists’ heads and to all withered leaves and weeds: all praise to that wild, good, free spirit of the storm, which dances upon swamps and afflictions as upon meadows!

Which hates the consumptive dogs of the mob, and all the ill-constituted, sullen brood:—praised be this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing storm, which blows dust into the eyes of all the melanopic and melancholic!

You higher men, the worst thing in you is: none of you has learned to dance as you ought to dance-to dance beyond yourselves! What does it matter that you are failures!

How much is still possible! So learn to laugh beyond yourselves! Lift up your hearts, you good dancers, high! higher! And do not forget good laughter!

This crown of laughter, this rose garlanded crown: I cast this crown to you my brothers! I have consecrated laughter; you higher men, learn—to laugh!