On the Thousand and One Goals
Many lands Zarathustra saw, and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and evil of many peoples. Zarathustra found no greater power on earth than good and evil.
No people could live that did not first esteem; but if it wants to preserve itself, it may not esteem as its neighbor esteems.
Much that was called good by this people was called scorn and disgrace by another: so I found it. Much I found called evil here and there decked out with purple honors.
Never did one neighbor understand the other: always his soul marveled at the neighbor’s delusion and malice.
A tablet of goods hangs over every people. Behold, it is the tablet of its overcomings; behold, it is the voice of its will to power.
Praiseworthy is what it considers hard; what is indispensable and hard is called good; and what frees it even from the direst need, the rare, the hardest of all,—that it praises as holy.
Whatever makes it rule and conquer and shine, to the horror and envy of its neighbor: that it considers the high, the first, the measure, the meaning of all things.
Truly, my brother, once you have come to know a people’s need and land and sky and neighbor, you can surely guess the law of its overcomings, and why it climbs to its hope on this ladder.
“You shall always be the first and excel the others: your jealous soul shall love no one, unless it be the friend”—this made the soul of a Greek tremble: with it he walked his path of greatness.
“To speak the truth and to handle bow and arrow well”—so it seemed both dear and hard to that people from whom my name comes1—the name that is both dear and hard to me.
“To honor father and mother and to do their will down to the root of the soul”: this tablet of overcoming another people hung up over itself and became mighty and eternal with it.
“To practice loyalty and for loyalty’s sake to stake honor and blood even on evil and dangerous things”: teaching itself thus, another people mastered itself, and mastering itself thus, it became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.
Truly, human beings gave themselves all their good and evil. Truly, they did not take it, they did not find it, it did not fall to them as a voice from heaven.
The human being first put values into things in order to preserve himself,—he first created a meaning for things, a human meaning! That is why he calls himself “human,” that is: the esteemer.
Esteeming is creating: hear it, you creators! Esteeming itself is the treasure and jewel of all esteemed things.
Only through esteeming is there value: and without esteeming the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, you creators!
Change of values,—that is change of the creators. Whoever must be a creator always destroys.
Creators were first peoples and only later individuals; truly, the individual himself is still the youngest creation.
Peoples once hung a tablet of the good over themselves. Love that wants to rule and love that wants to obey created such tablets for themselves together.
Joy in the herd is older than joy in the I: and as long as the good conscience is called herd, only the bad conscience says: I.
Truly, the sly I, the loveless one, that wants its own advantage in the advantage of many: that is not the origin of the herd but its going under.
It was always lovers and creators who created good and evil. Fire of love glows in the names of all the virtues, and fire of wrath.
Many lands Zarathustra saw, and many peoples: Zarathustra found no greater power on earth than the works of the lovers: “good” and “evil” is their name.
Truly, the power of this praising and blaming is a monster. Tell me, brothers, who will subdue it for me? Tell me, who will throw the fetter over the thousand necks of this beast?
A thousand goals there have been so far, for there have been a thousand peoples. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; the one goal is lacking. Humanity still has no goal.
But tell me, my brothers: if humanity still lacks a goal, is there not also still lacking—humanity itself?—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Notes
1. Zarathustra is the Persian prophet known in the West as Zoroaster; the people meant are the ancient Persians.