On the New Idol
Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brothers: here there are states.
The state? What is that? Well then! Now open your ears to me, for now I will tell you my word about the death of peoples.
State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.”
It is a lie! It was creators who created the peoples and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.
It is destroyers who set traps for the many and call them the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.
Where there is still a people, it does not understand the state and hates it as the evil eye and as a sin against customs and rights.
This sign I give you: every people speaks its own tongue of good and evil: the neighbor does not understand it. It invented its language for itself in customs and rights.
But the state lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies—and whatever it has, it has stolen.
Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth, the biter. False are even its entrails.
Confusion of tongues of good and evil: this sign I give you as the sign of the state. Truly, this sign points to the will to death! Truly, it beckons to the preachers of death!
Far too many are born: for the superfluous the state was invented!
Just look how it lures them to itself, the many-too-many! How it gulps them down and chews them and chews them again!
“On earth there is nothing greater than I: I am the ordering finger of God”—thus roars the monster. And not only the long-eared and the short-sighted sink to their knees!
Ah, even into you, you great souls, it whispers its somber lies! Ah, it divines the rich hearts that like to squander themselves!
Yes, it divines you too, you vanquishers of the old god! You grew weary in the battle, and now your weariness serves even the new idol!
Heroes and honorable men it would like to set up around itself, the new idol! It likes to bask in the sunshine of good consciences,—the cold monster!
It will give you everything if you worship it, the new idol: thus it buys for itself the luster of your virtue and the look of your proud eyes.
It wants to use you as bait for the many-too-many! Yes, a hellish trick has been invented there, a horse of death clattering in the finery of divine honors!
Yes, a dying for many has been invented there that praises itself as life: truly, a service after the heart of all preachers of death!
State I call it where all are poison drinkers, the good and the bad: state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: state, where the slow suicide of all is called—“life.”
Just look at these superfluous ones! They steal for themselves the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise: culture they call their theft—and everything turns to sickness and trouble for them!
Just look at these superfluous ones! They are always sick; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another and cannot even digest themselves.
Just look at these superfluous ones! They acquire riches and become poorer with them. They want power, and first of all the crowbar of power, much money,—these impotent ones!
See them climb, these nimble apes! They climb over one another and so drag each other into the mud and the depths.
They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness,—as if happiness sat on the throne! Often mud sits on the throne—and often the throne on the mud, too.
Madmen they all are to me, and climbing apes, and overheated. Their idol smells bad to me, the cold monster: they all smell bad to me together, these idolaters.
My brothers, do you want to suffocate in the fumes of their snouts and cravings? Rather break the windows and leap into the open air!
Get out of the way of the bad smell! Go away from the idolatry of the superfluous!
Get out of the way of the bad smell! Go away from the steam of these human sacrifices!
The earth still stands free for great souls even now. Many seats are still empty for the solitary and for those who are solitary in twos, seats around which the scent of quiet seas wafts.
A free life still stands free for great souls. Truly, whoever possesses little is all the less possessed: praised be a little poverty!
There, where the state ends, there first begins the human being who is not superfluous: there begins the song of the necessary, the unique and irreplaceable melody.
There, where the state ends,—look there, my brothers! Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Übermensch?—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.