7 passages
Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and bad of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and bad. No people could live without first valuing; if a…
Zarathustra reports that on his travels he found no greater power than good and bad. Each people values differently in order to maintain itself, and its table of values expresses what it finds hard and what lets it rule.
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“Always shalt thou be the foremost and prominent above others: no one shall thy jealous soul love, except a friend”—that made the soul of a Greek thrill: thereby went he his way to greatness. “To speak truth, and be…
Four tables are quoted: the Greek striving to be foremost, the Persian truth-telling and archery (the people of Zarathustra's name), honouring parents, and fidelity even in evil courses.
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Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven. Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain…
Values did not come from heaven; man assigned them to things in order to maintain himself, and so he is called 'man', the valuator. Valuation is the treasure of valued things, and a change of values requires a creator who destroys.
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Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones!
Zarathustra calls on creators to hear that valuation is creation.
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Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest creation. Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule and love…
Peoples were the first creators, and the individual is the latest creation. Tables of good arose from love that rules and love that obeys, and the loveless ego that seeks only its own advantage ruins the herd.
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Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones—“good” and “bad” are they called. Verily, a prodigy is this power of praising and…
Zarathustra repeats his finding about the creations of the loving ones and asks who will fetter the thousand necks of this animal. There have been a thousand goals for a thousand peoples but no one goal, and without a goal humanity itself may be lacking.
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But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, is there not also still lacking—humanity itself?—
The chapter ends on a question: without a goal, is humanity itself missing?
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What the critics said
Mencken argues, citing Zarathustra's account of the tables of many peoples, that every moral code is a changing expression of a people's expediency and will to power, that a people's god merely reflects its current ideas, and that the Ten Commandments are no more immutable than acts of Parliament.
Mencken argues, citing Zarathustra's account of the tables of many peoples, that every moral code is a changing expression of a people's expediency and will to power, that a people's god merely reflects its current ideas, and that the Ten Commandments are no more immutable than acts of Parliament.
Ludovici says that 'The Thousand and One Goals' opens Zarathustra's doctrine of moral relativity, declaring all morality a means to power, with verses on the Greeks, Persians, Jews and Germans, and that its close diagnoses the root of modern nihilism: man has no goal.