9 passages
My mouthpiece—is of the people: too coarsely and cordially do I talk for Angora rabbits. And still stranger soundeth my word unto all ink-fish and pen-foxes. My hand—is a fool’s hand: woe unto all tables and walls, and…
Zarathustra describes his coarse mouth, fool's hand, horse-foot and eagle's stomach. He says he is made for flying and hostile to gravity, and that he will sing of this even to himself.
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He who one day teacheth men to fly will have shifted all landmarks; to him will all landmarks themselves fly into the air; the earth will he christen anew—as “the light body.” The ostrich runneth faster than the fastest…
Whoever teaches men to fly will shift all landmarks and rename the earth. The man who cannot yet fly, like the ostrich, thrusts his head into the heavy earth; to become light one must love oneself.
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One must learn to love oneself—thus do I teach—with a wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving about. Such roving about christeneth itself “brotherly love”; with these words…
Self-love must be healthy, not sick, so that one can bear one's own company. It is the finest and last of arts. Children are taught early to burden themselves with 'good' and 'evil', and man like a camel loads himself with extraneous weights until life seems a desert.
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He, however, hath discovered himself who saith: This is MY good and evil: therewith hath he silenced the mole and the dwarf, who say: “Good for all, evil for all.”
He who says 'This is my good and evil' has found himself and silenced the voice of a universal morality.
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Verily, neither do I like those who call everything good, and this world the best of all. Those do I call the all-satisfied. All-satisfiedness, which knoweth how to taste everything,—that is not the best taste! I honour…
Zarathustra lists what suits and offends his taste. He dislikes those who call everything good, the swine-like who chew everything, and the ass who only says Ye-a. He also dislikes mummy- and phantom-lovers, lickspittles, parasites and those who must always wait.
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Ever to say YE-A—that hath only the ass learnt, and those like it!
Chewing and digesting everything is swine-nature; constant assent is the ass's.
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Verily, I learned waiting also, and thoroughly so,—but only waiting for MYSELF. And above all did I learn standing and walking and running and leaping and climbing and dancing. This however is my teaching: he who…
Zarathustra says he learned only to wait for himself, and then to stand, walk, run, leap, climb and dance. Whoever wants to fly must learn these first.
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With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss;— —To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light,…
Zarathustra recalls climbing masts and reaching his truth by many windings, questioning the ways rather than asking directions. To those who ask 'the way' he answers: this is my way, where is yours? For the way does not exist.
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“This—is now MY way,—where is yours?” Thus did I answer those who asked me “the way.” For THE way—it doth not exist!
Zarathustra's reply to those who ask the way, and the chapter's closing line.
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What the critics said
Mencken argues that Nietzsche offers a gospel of intelligent selfishness and absolute individualism, citing Zarathustra on loving oneself rather than one's neighbour, and an aristocracy that sacrifices the masses as scaffolding for a higher race under the law of natural selection.
Ludovici says the sublime ones are a type Nietzsche did not wholly dislike but who take life too seriously and never surmount the camel stage; real greatness is to speak of lofty things without being oppressed by them, and Nietzsche breaks old things not with the anarchist's irreverence but with the fingers of an artist at ease with beauty, guided by his own taste.
Ludovici explains the doctrine of self-love in 'The Spirit of Gravity' as a response to modern man's terror of being alone with himself, which betrays self-contempt, so that learning to love oneself requires a slow inner transformation; and he notes that Nietzsche does not coerce but says 'This is my way, where is yours?'
Ludovici explains the doctrine of self-love in 'The Spirit of Gravity' as a response to modern man's terror of being alone with himself, which betrays self-contempt, so that learning to love oneself requires a slow inner transformation; and he notes that Nietzsche does not coerce but says 'This is my way, where is yours?'