On the Higher Human
1
When I came to human beings for the first time, I committed the hermit’s folly, the great folly: I placed myself in the marketplace.
And when I spoke to all, I spoke to none. But in the evening tightrope walkers were my companions, and corpses; and I myself almost a corpse.
But with the new morning a new truth came to me: then I learned to say, “What are the marketplace and the rabble and the rabble’s noise and the rabble’s long ears to me!”
You higher humans, learn this from me: in the marketplace no one believes in higher humans. And if you want to speak there, well then! But the rabble blinks: “We are all equal.”
“You higher humans,”—so the rabble blinks—“there are no higher humans, we are all equal, a human being is a human being, before God—we are all equal!”
Before God!—But now this God has died. And before the rabble we do not want to be equal. You higher humans, go away from the marketplace!
2
Before God!—But now this God has died! You higher humans, this God was your greatest danger.
Only since he has lain in the grave have you risen again. Only now does the great noon come, only now does the higher human become—master!
Have you understood this word, O my brothers? You are startled: are your hearts growing dizzy? Does the abyss yawn here for you? Does the hellhound yowl here at you?
Well then! Up! You higher humans! Only now is the mountain of the human future in labor. God died: now we want—the Übermensch to live.
3
The most careful ask today: “How is the human being to be preserved?” But Zarathustra asks, as the only one and the first: “How is the human being to be overcome?”
The Übermensch lies close to my heart, he is my first and only concern,—and not the human being: not the neighbor, not the poorest, not the one who suffers most, not the best—
O my brothers, what I can love in the human being is that he is a crossing and a going under. And in you too there is much that makes me love and hope.
That you have despised, you higher humans, makes me hope. For the great despisers are the great reverers.
That you have despaired, in that there is much to honor. For you did not learn how to resign yourselves, you did not learn the little prudences.
For today the little people have become master: they all preach resignation and modesty and prudence and diligence and consideration and the long and-so-forth of the little virtues.
Whatever is womanish, whatever stems from the servile kind, and especially the rabble hodgepodge: that now wants to become master of all human fate—oh disgust! disgust! disgust!
That asks and asks and does not grow tired: “How is the human being preserved, 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 humans, the little virtues, the little prudences, the grain-of-sand considerations, the antlike swarming trifles, the pitiful contentment, the “happiness of the greatest number”—!
And rather despair than resign yourselves. And, truly, I love you for not knowing how to live today, you higher humans! For so you live—best!
4
Do you have courage, O my brothers? Are you stouthearted? Not courage before witnesses, but the courage of hermits and eagles, which not even a god watches anymore?
Cold souls, mules, the blind, the drunken I do not call stouthearted. He has heart who knows fear but masters fear; who sees the abyss, but with pride.
Whoever sees the abyss, but with the eyes of an eagle; whoever grasps the abyss with the talons of an eagle: he has courage.—
5
“The human being is evil”—so all the wisest told me, to comfort me. Alas, if only it is still true today! For evil is the human being’s best strength.
“The human being must become better and more evil”—so I teach. The most evil is necessary for the Übermensch’s best.
It may have been good for that preacher of the little people that he suffered and bore the sin of the human being. But I rejoice in great sin as my great comfort.—
But such things are not said for long ears. Nor does every word belong in every mouth. These are subtle, distant things: sheep’s hooves shall not reach for them!
6
You higher humans, do you think I am here to make good what you made bad?
Or that from now on I wanted to bed you sufferers more comfortably? Or to show you unsettled ones, you who have lost your way and climbed astray, new and easier footpaths?
No! No! Three times No! Ever more, ever better ones of your kind shall perish,—for you shall have it ever worse and harder. Only so—
—only so does the human being grow up to that height where lightning strikes him and breaks him: high enough for the lightning!
My mind and my longing go out to the few, the long, the distant: what would your little, many, short misery be to me!
You do not yet suffer enough for me! For you suffer from yourselves, you have not yet suffered from the human being. You would be lying if you said otherwise! None of you suffers from what I suffered from.—
7
It is not enough for me that the lightning no longer does harm. I do not want to conduct it away: it shall learn to—work for me.—
My wisdom has long been gathering like a cloud; it is growing stiller and darker. So does every wisdom that shall one day give birth to lightning.—
To these human beings of Today I do not want to be light, nor to be called light. Them—I want to blind: lightning of my wisdom! put out their eyes!
8
Will nothing beyond your means: there is a wicked falseness among those who will beyond their means.
Especially when they will great things! For they awaken mistrust of great things, these subtle counterfeiters and actors:—
—until at last they are false before themselves, squint-eyed, whitewashed worm-rot, cloaked by strong words, by shop-window virtues, by glittering false works.
Take good care there, you higher humans! For nothing counts as more precious and rarer to me today than integrity.
Is this Today not the rabble’s? But the rabble 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 humans, you stouthearted ones! You openhearted ones! And keep your reasons secret! For this Today belongs to the rabble.
What the rabble once learned to believe without reasons, who could overthrow that for it—with reasons?
And in the marketplace one convinces with gestures. But reasons make the rabble mistrustful.
And if truth has for once carried the victory there, then ask yourselves with good mistrust: “What strong error fought for it?”
Beware of the scholars too! They hate you: for they are unfruitful! They have cold, dried-up eyes; before them every bird lies plucked.
Such men boast that they do not lie: but inability to lie is far from being love of truth. Beware!
Freedom from fever is far from being knowledge! I do not believe chilled spirits. Whoever 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 strangers’ backs and heads!
But you have mounted a horse? You are riding swiftly up to your goal now? Well then, my friend! But your lame foot is riding the horse with you!
When you are at your goal, when you jump down from your horse: precisely on your height, you higher human—you will stumble!
11
You creators, you higher humans! One is pregnant only with one’s own child.
Do not let anyone talk you into anything, or talk anything into you! Who, then, is your neighbor? And even if you act “for the neighbor,”—still you do not create for him!
Unlearn this “for,” you creators: your very virtue wills that you do nothing with “for” and “in order to” and “because.” Against these false little words you shall stop up your ears.
“For the neighbor” is the virtue only of the little people: there it is said, “like for like” and “one hand washes the other”:—they have neither the right nor the strength for your self-interest!
In your self-interest, you creators, is the caution and providence of the pregnant! What no one has yet seen with his eyes, the fruit: that your whole love shelters and spares and nourishes.
Where your whole love is, with your child, there is your whole virtue too! Your work, your will is your “neighbor”: do not let anyone talk you into false values!
12
You creators, you higher humans! Whoever must give birth is sick; but whoever has given birth is unclean.
Ask women: one does not give birth because it is a pleasure. Pain makes hens and poets cackle.
You creators, there is much that is unclean in you. That is because you had to be mothers.
A new child: oh, how much new filth has come into the world too! Step aside! And whoever has given birth shall wash his soul clean!
13
Do not be virtuous beyond your strength! And want nothing of yourselves against probability!
Walk in the footsteps where your fathers’ virtue already walked! How would you climb high if your fathers’ will did not climb with you?
But whoever wants to be a firstling, let him see to it that he does not also become a lastling! And where your fathers’ vices are, there you shall not want to pass for saints!
If someone’s fathers kept company with women and with strong wines and wild boar: what would it be if he wanted chastity of himself?
It would be folly! It would be much, truly, it seems to me, for such a one to be the husband of one or two or three women.
And if he founded monasteries and wrote over the door: “The way to holiness,”—I would still say: what for! it is a new folly!
He would be founding for himself a house of correction and refuge: much good may it do him! But I do not believe in it.
In solitude whatever one brings into it grows, the inner beast too. That is why solitude is inadvisable for many.
Has there ever been anything filthier on earth than the desert saints? Around them not only the devil was loose,—but the swine too.
14
Shy, ashamed, awkward, like a tiger whose leap has failed: thus, you higher humans, I have often seen you slink aside. A throw had failed you.
But, you dice players, what does it matter! You have not learned to play and to mock as one must play and mock! Do we not always sit at a great table of mockery and play?
And if great things have failed you, are you yourselves therefore—failures? And if you yourselves have failed, has the human being therefore—failed? But if the human being has failed: well then! up!
15
The higher its kind, the more rarely a thing succeeds. You higher humans here, have you not all—turned out badly?
Be of good courage, what does it matter! How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves as one must laugh!
And what wonder that you failed and half succeeded, you half-broken ones! Is not—the human being’s future thronging and jostling in you?
The human being’s farthest, deepest, star-highest, his monstrous strength: is not all that foaming against one another in your pot?
What wonder that many a pot breaks! Learn to laugh at yourselves as one must laugh! You higher humans, oh, how much is still possible!
And truly, how much has already succeeded! How rich this earth is in little, good, perfect things, in things that have turned out well!
Place little, good, perfect things around you, you higher humans! Their golden ripeness heals the heart. What is perfect teaches hope.
16
What has been the greatest sin here on earth so far? Was it not the word of him who said: “Woe to those who laugh here!”
Did he find no reasons for laughing on the earth itself? Then he only searched badly. Even a child finds reasons here.
He—did not love enough: otherwise he would have loved us too, the laughing ones! But he hated and mocked us; howling and gnashing of teeth he promised us.
Must one curse at once where one does not love? That—seems to me bad taste. But so he did, this unconditional one. He came from the rabble.
And he himself just did not love enough: otherwise he would have been less angry that he was not loved. All great love does not want love:—it wants more.
Get out of the way of all such unconditional ones! That is a poor, sick kind, a rabble kind: they look upon this life with ill will, they have the evil eye for this earth.
Get out of the way of all such unconditional ones! They have heavy feet and sultry hearts:—they do not know how to dance. How could the earth be light for such as these!
17
Crookedly all good things approach their goal. Like cats they arch their backs, they purr inwardly at their approaching happiness,—all good things laugh.
The stride betrays whether someone is already striding on his own path: so watch me walk! But whoever comes near his goal dances.
And, truly, I have not become a statue, nor do I stand there, rigid, dull, stony, a pillar; I love swift running.
And even if there are moors and thick gloom on earth: whoever has light feet runs even over mud and dances as on swept ice.
Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high! higher! And do not forget your legs either! Lift up your legs too, you good dancers, and better still: stand on your heads too!
18
This crown of the laughing one, this crown of roses: I myself have set this crown on my head, I myself have pronounced my laughter holy. I found no one else strong enough for it today.
Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one, who beckons with his wings, one ready for flight, beckoning to all birds, ready and prepared, a blissfully light-minded one:—
Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, no impatient one, no unconditional one, one who loves leaps and side-leaps; I myself have set this crown on my head!
19
Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high! higher! And do not forget your legs either! Lift up your legs too, you good dancers, and better still: stand on your heads too!
There are heavy beasts in happiness too, there are clumsy-footed ones from the very beginning. Strangely they toil away, like an elephant toiling to stand on its head.
But better to be foolish from happiness than foolish from unhappiness, better to dance clumsily than to walk lamely. So learn this wisdom from me: even the worst thing has two good reverse sides,—
—even the worst thing has good legs for dancing: so learn, you higher humans, to set yourselves on your proper legs!
So unlearn moping and all rabble sadness! Oh, how sad the rabble’s clowns seem to me even today! But this Today belongs to the rabble.
20
Do as the wind does when it rushes out of its mountain caves: it wants to dance to its own pipe; the seas tremble and leap beneath its footsteps.
He who gives donkeys wings, who milks lionesses, praised be this good, unruly spirit, who comes like a storm wind to all Today and all rabble,—
—who is an enemy to thistle-heads and puzzle-heads and to all wilted leaves and weeds: praised be this wild, good, free storm spirit, who dances on moors and gloom as on meadows!
Who hates the rabble’s consumptive curs and all the botched, gloomy brood: praised be this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing storm, who blows dust into the eyes of all the dark-sighted and the sore-ridden!
You higher humans, the worst thing about you is: none of you has learned to dance as one must dance—to dance beyond yourselves! What does it matter that you failed!
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 either!
This crown of the laughing one, this crown of roses: to you, my brothers, I throw this crown! Laughter I have pronounced holy; you higher humans, learn—to laugh!