theme The mass, the market-place, the flies; the good and just; the many-too-many for whom the state was invented.
When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he again looked at the people, and was silent. “There they stand,” said he to his heart; “there they laugh: they understand me not; I am not the mouth for these ears. Must one…
'No shepherd, and one herd!' Everyone wants the same and is equal.
Read in the book →Meanwhile the evening came on, and the market-place veiled itself in gloom. Then the people dispersed, for even curiosity and terror become fatigued. Zarathustra, however, still sat beside the dead man on the ground,…
The buffoon warns that the good and just and the orthodox believers hate Zarathustra.
Read in the book →Respect and modesty in presence of sleep! That is the first thing! And to go out of the way of all who sleep badly and keep awake at night! Modest is even the thief in presence of sleep: he always stealeth softly…
The ideal is comfortable accommodation to neighbours, government, good name and small company, all for the sake of rest.
Read in the book →My brother, when thou hast a virtue, and it is thine own virtue, thou hast it in common with no one. To be sure, thou wouldst call it by name and caress it; thou wouldst pull its ears and amuse thyself with it. And lo!…
To call the virtue by the common name is to become one of the people and the herd.
Read in the book →But this will not enter your ears; it hurteth your good people, ye tell me. But what doth it matter to me about your good people! Many things in your good people cause me disgust, and verily, not their evil. I would…
The 'good people' practise virtue only to live long in wretched self-complacency.
Read in the book →Noble thou feelest thyself still, and noble others also feel thee still, though they bear thee a grudge and cast evil looks. Know this, that to everybody a noble one standeth in the way. Also to the good, a noble one…
The good and the many resent the noble one as an obstacle in their way.
Read in the book →There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom desistance from life must be preached. Full is the earth of the superfluous; marred is life by the many-too-many. May they be decoyed out of this life…
The 'many-too-many' and 'superfluous' are named as those for whom the preaching of death exists.
Read in the book →And ye also, to whom life is rough labour and disquiet, are ye not very tired of life? Are ye not very ripe for the sermon of death? All ye to whom rough labour is dear, and the rapid, new, and strange—ye put up with…
The many who cannot wait or idle are counted among those to whom death has to be preached.
Read in the book →Many too many are born: for the superfluous ones was the state devised! See just how it enticeth them to it, the many-too-many! How it swalloweth and cheweth and recheweth them! “On earth there is nothing greater than…
The state was devised for the superfluous many-too-many, whom it swallows and chews.
Read in the book →Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft—and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them! Just see these superfluous…
Portrait of the superfluous as sick, grasping, and clambering over one another toward the throne.
Read in the book →Flee, my friend, into thy solitude! I see thee deafened with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones. Admirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with thee. Resemble…
The market-place is the realm of noise, great actors and poison-flies.
Read in the book →In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those representers, the people call great men. Little do the people understand what is great—that is to say, the creating agency. But…
The people admire representers and actors, who believe whatever makes others believe most strongly.
Read in the book →Flee, my friend, into thy solitude: I see thee stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee thither, where a rough, strong breeze bloweth! Flee into thy solitude! Thou hast lived too closely to the small and the…
The innumerable small and pitiable ones wear down a proud structure like raindrops and weeds.
Read in the book →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…
The pleasure in the herd is older than the pleasure in the ego, and the calculating ego is the herd's ruin, not its origin.
Read in the book →I love not your festivals either: too many actors found I there, and even the spectators often behaved like actors.
Even the spectators behave like actors, a picture of the crowd's pretence.
Read in the book →Wouldst thou go into isolation, my brother? Wouldst thou seek the way unto thyself? Tarry yet a little and hearken unto me. “He who seeketh may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong”: so say the herd. And long…
The herd condemns all isolation, and its conscience still lingers in the one who leaves it.
Read in the book →To-day sufferest thou still from the multitude, thou individual; to-day hast thou still thy courage unabated, and thy hopes. But one day will the solitude weary thee; one day will thy pride yield, and thy courage quail.…
The many resent the one who rises above them, and Zarathustra tells him to shine for them regardless.
Read in the book →And be on thy guard against the good and just! They would fain crucify those who devise their own virtue—they hate the lonesome ones. Be on thy guard, also, against holy simplicity! All is unholy to it that is not…
The good and just and 'holy simplicity' hate and would punish those who devise their own virtue.
Read in the book →Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones—ah, what shall I call it? Ah, the poverty of soul in the twain! Ah, the filth of soul in…
The many-too-many, the superfluous, are the ones who call their poor unions marriage.
Read in the book →My friends, there hath arisen a satire on your friend: “Behold Zarathustra! Walketh he not amongst us as if amongst animals?” But it is better said in this wise: “The discerning one walketh amongst men AS amongst…
Man is the animal with red cheeks, whose history is shame.
Read in the book →Eagerly and with shouts drove they their flock over their foot-bridge; as if there were but one foot-bridge to the future! Verily, those shepherds also were still of the flock! Small spirits and spacious souls had those…
The shepherds drive their flock over a single foot-bridge and are themselves still of the flock.
Read in the book →But sure enough there are those to whom virtue meaneth writhing under the lash: and ye have hearkened too much unto their crying! And others are there who call virtue the slothfulness of their vices; and when once their…
The swamp-sitters and the believers in policemen follow ready-made opinions and conformity.
Read in the book →Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all fountains are poisoned. To everything cleanly am I well disposed; but I hate to see the grinning mouths and the thirst of the unclean. They cast…
The rabble spoil whatever they touch, including fountain, flame and fruit, and drive some to turn away from life itself.
Read in the book →But I asked once, and suffocated almost with my question: What? is the rabble also NECESSARY for life?
He sees the rabble in power, in scribbling and in pleasure, and shuns them all.
Read in the book →For this is OUR height and our home: too high and steep do we here dwell for all uncleanly ones and their thirst. Cast but your pure eyes into the well of my delight, my friends! How could it become turbid thereby! It…
The rabble are shut out and promised the wind that will one day take their breath.
Read in the book →Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low places; and this counsel counselleth he to his enemies, and to whatever spitteth and speweth: “Take care not to spit AGAINST the wind!”—
It states his stance toward the spitting rabble in a single image.
Read in the book →Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. “Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance”—thus do they talk to one another. “Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all…
The levelling 'will to equality' is a pledge of vengeance against all who are not like them or who have power.
Read in the book →The people have ye served and the people’s superstition—NOT the truth!—all ye famous wise ones! And just on that account did they pay you reverence. And on that account also did they tolerate your unbelief, because it…
The people honour their wise men and hound the free spirit, believing truth lies wherever the people are.
Read in the book →And often have they been good servants and worthy of their hire. For thus saith virtue: “If thou must be a servant, seek him unto whom thy service is most useful! The spirit and virtue of thy master shall advance by…
Even when they serve well and advance with the people's spirit and virtue, the wise ones remain the purblind people who do not know what spirit is.
Read in the book →For men are NOT equal: so speaketh justice.
Against levelling, he claims that justice itself says men are unequal and that what he wills the scholars may not will.
Read in the book →When Zarathustra went one day over the great bridge, then did the cripples and beggars surround him, and a hunchback spake thus unto him: “Behold, Zarathustra! Even the people learn from thee, and acquire faith in thy…
Zarathustra refuses to flatter the crowd's demand for a miracle and mocks their worship of 'great men'.
Read in the book →This, however, is mine other manly prudence: I am more forbearing to the VAIN than to the proud. Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies? Where, however, pride is wounded, there groweth up something better…
The vain, the small men who live on others' glances, are valued as actors who keep him attached to man.
Read in the book →And verily, ye good and just! In you there is much to be laughed at, and especially your fear of what hath hitherto been called “the devil!” So alien are ye in your souls to what is great, that to you the Superman would…
The good and just are laughed at for their fear of the 'devil' and their alienness to greatness.
Read in the book →And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee! The passing clouds I detest—those stealthy cats of prey: they take from thee…
The soft-treaders and mediators among men are the human counterpart of the clouds.
Read in the book →I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open: they do not forgive me for not envying their virtues. They bite at me, because I say unto them that for small people, small virtues are necessary—and because it is…
The small people gossip, fear him as a gloomy cloud, cough at him and have no time for him.
Read in the book →For they are moderate also in virtue,—because they want comfort. With comfort, however, moderate virtue only is compatible. To be sure, they also learn in their way to stride on and stride forward: that, I call their…
Tame, round and considerate like grains of sand, they have made man his own best domestic animal.
Read in the book →Ye ever become smaller, ye small people! Ye crumble away, ye comfortable ones! Ye will yet perish— —By your many small virtues, by your many small omissions, and by your many small submissions! Too tender, too yielding:…
Their small virtues, omissions and submissions will destroy them.
Read in the book →O Zarathustra, here is the great city: here hast thou nothing to seek and everything to lose. Why wouldst thou wade through this mire? Have pity upon thy foot! Spit rather on the gate of the city, and—turn back! Here is…
The city is pictured as a mass of hounding, inflamed, public-opinion-sick souls, with newspapers made from their rags.
Read in the book →Ah, lieth everything already withered and grey which but lately stood green and many-hued on this meadow! And how much honey of hope did I carry hence into my beehives! Those young hearts have already all become old—and…
The faint-hearted majority are named as the common-place, the superfluous, the far too many.
Read in the book →But down there—there speaketh everything, there is everything misheard. If one announce one’s wisdom with bells, the shopmen in the market-place will out-jingle it with pennies! Everything among them talketh; no one…
The market-place noise of shopmen and street-trumpeters out-jingles wisdom and betrays all secrets.
Read in the book →With suppressed truths, with fool’s hand and befooled heart, and rich in petty lies of pity:—thus have I ever lived among men. Disguised did I sit amongst them, ready to misjudge MYSELF that I might endure THEM, and…
The 'good' are the most poisonous flies, stinging and lying in all innocence.
Read in the book →And then it happened also,—and verily, it happened for the first time!—that his word blessed SELFISHNESS, the wholesome, healthy selfishness, that springeth from the powerful soul:— —From the powerful soul, to which the…
It spits at servile, submissive, all-enduring slaves and the world-weary cowards who prized selflessness.
Read in the book →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…
He rejects spitters, lickspittles, parasites, traders and shopkeepers.
Read in the book →It is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is abandoned,— —Abandoned to the favour, the spirit and the madness of every generation that cometh, and reinterpreteth all that hath been as its bridge! A great…
The populace would drown time in shallow waters, so a nobility is needed against populace and potentate rule.
Read in the book →I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swordsman,—one must also know WHEREON to use swordsmanship! And often is it greater bravery to keep quiet and pass by, that THEREBY one may reserve oneself for a worthier…
The rabble with their noise about peoples are to be passed by; traders now rule.
Read in the book →“Good manners?” replied angrily and bitterly the other king: “what then do we run out of the way of? Is it not ‘good manners’? Our ‘good society’? Better, verily, to live among anchorites and goatherds, than with our…
The king rails against the populace-hodgepodge, where everything is mixed with everything and no one knows how to reverence.
Read in the book →Immediately thereupon, Zarathustra, who had opened ears and eyes to this talk, rose from his hiding-place, advanced towards the kings, and thus began: “He who hearkeneth unto you, he who gladly hearkeneth unto you, is…
When rulers are not the first men, the populace rises in honour and claims 'I alone am virtue'.
Read in the book →—And here there arose a long silence between them: Zarathustra, however, became profoundly absorbed in thought, so that he shut his eyes. But afterwards coming back to the situation, he grasped the hand of the magician,…
Zarathustra says that today belongs to the populace, who no longer know great from small.
Read in the book →Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looketh over the backs of thronging flocks of sheep. They are petty, good-wooled, good-willed, grey people. As the heron looketh contemptuously at shallow pools, with backward-bent…
The petty, grey, good-willed people have been given power and now define good as what they call good.
Read in the book →“What do I here seek?” answered he: “the same that thou seekest, thou mischief-maker; that is to say, happiness upon earth. To that end, however, I would fain learn of these kine. For I tell thee that I have already…
The cows are held up as models of contented, untroubled living, a parody of the kingdom of heaven.
Read in the book →“Especially nowadays,” answered the voluntary beggar: “at present, that is to say, when everything low hath become rebellious and exclusive and haughty in its manner—in the manner of the populace. For the hour hath…
The beggar finds the same rabble in both rich and poor, so the old distinction no longer holds.
Read in the book →When I came unto men for the first time, then did I commit the anchorite folly, the great folly: I appeared on the market-place. And when I spake unto all, I spake unto none. In the evening, however, rope-dancers were…
The populace believes in no higher men and insists that all are equal before God, so the higher men must leave the market-place.
Read in the book →Do not will anything beyond your power: there is a bad falseness in those who will beyond their power. Especially when they will great things! For they awaken distrust in great things, these subtle false-coiners and…
The populace is crooked and convinced by gestures, not reasons.
Read in the book →Brandes explains Nietzsche's 'Culture-Philistine': the self-satisfied educated man who mistakes uniform conventional opinion for culture, which Nietzsche calls fortified barbarism, a morass in which all endeavour languishes and into which we are all born.
An early form of Nietzsche's contempt for collective opinion: the educated herd that takes its uniformity for culture.
Brandes argues that the young person who would become himself needs an educator who liberates rather than imposes dogma, contrasting this with Kierkegaard, whose call to become an individual still ended in a 'Thou shalt believe' and the return of the herd.
Individualism that leads back to 'one flock, one shepherd' is no escape from the herd.
Brandes sets out the young Nietzsche's view that the goal of humanity lies in its highest specimens, that culture means working to produce single great men, and that a life acquires its highest value by being lived for the rarest examples of the race; he aligns this with Renan and Flaubert and opposes it to Hartmann's negative world process and to the happiness of the greatest number.
A state in which the many unite to resist the appearance of genius is farther from culture than barbarism.
Brandes reports Nietzsche's aristocratic objection to history written from the standpoint of the masses: the masses are only bad copies, foils or tools of great individuals, and the highest never affects them, so a religion's mass success testifies against its founder's greatness.
The mass is valued only in relation to the great individuals it copies, sets off or serves.
Brandes reports Nietzsche's argument that pleasure and pain are so intertwined that great joys require great sufferings, and his aristocratic attack on happiness for the greatest number; Brandes objects that common miseries such as hunger and exhausting labour bring no compensating joys.
Nietzsche prefers inequality that goads culture upward to moderate well-being for the many.
Brandes judges that Nietzsche brought no fresh proof against the derivation of justice from resentment, that his excess of passion comes from its link with modern democracy, and that, ignoring feud among equals, he scorns the slave caste's morality while revelling in and excusing the ruling caste's delight in power.
Brandes sees temperament rather than philosophy in Nietzsche's contempt for the down-trodden.
Brandes argues that Nietzsche, loving struggle for its own sake, counts as progress only the rearing of a higher, stronger species, the Superman, even at the sacrifice of masses, and that this vision so resembles Renan's half-jesting dream of a manufactory of gods that Renan's influence can scarcely be doubted, though Nietzsche turned it into dogma and never credited him.
Mediocre happiness for the majority is no progress to Nietzsche.
Brandes reports Nietzsche's account of the ascetic ideal as a sick life's device for self-preservation: the sick ascetic priest herds the despairing, redirects their resentment inward by reinterpreting suffering as sin, and drugs them with apathy, labour, small joys and congregation; as yet the ideal has no real assailant, though a new ideal is forming that sees suffering as a condition of happiness.
The priest organises the weak into a mass that feels strong in its cohesion.
Brandes summarises Zarathustra's disgust with the petty virtues that make men smaller, his being called godless, the apostasy of his former companions, and his loathing of the great city and of the State.
Small virtue is cowardice that calls itself goodness and bravery.
Brandes restates Zarathustra's teaching that the State is the coldest of monsters whose lie is that it is the people, whereas creators made peoples; the State is for the many-too-many, and only where it ceases does the man who is a bridge to the Superman begin.
The State exists for the many-too-many, 'the slow suicide of all'.
Mencken argues that under minimal government, free of communistic levelling, such a man would stand forth from the herd, that church and king oppose progress, and that Nietzsche was therefore an anarchist in the true sense, like Spencer and Schopenhauer.
Contrasts the healthy-instincted individual with the priest-ridden, levelled masses.
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.
Holds that the masses exist only as tools for a select aristocracy.
Mencken argues, quoting Zarathustra's reply to the market-place crowd that God is dead, that belief in equality and brotherhood is the mob-morality of the ancient Jews credited to their god, and that since educated men no longer believe in that god it is ridiculous to keep the ethics grounded on him.
Attributes the doctrine of equality to the under-dog and the market-place mob.
Mencken explains Nietzsche's later teaching that each man should pit his own feelings against majority law and that chronic skepticism is the proper attitude, quoting 'Zarathustra is a skeptic.... Convictions are prisons', and that the need for belief is a sign of weakness.
The party man and man of belief are dependent, belonging to the author of the idea rather than himself.
Mencken argues that Nietzsche's loathing of the masses follows from their incapacity for original thought, so that whatever the majority believes aroused his suspicion ('What everybody believes is never true'), a view Mencken says historians of ideas share.
Grounds contempt for the herd in its intellectual dependence and conservatism.
Mencken argues that self-sacrifice based frankly on expediency is compatible with Nietzsche's philosophy, but that it is almost always corrupted by sentimentality, which exalts the unfit ('Blessed are the poor') and turns charity into an agent of decay.
Frames the masses as to be exploited and managed by their betters.
Mencken argues that critics err in assuming Nietzsche wanted all men to abandon Christian morality; he addressed only the commanding minority, wished to restore Hume's dualism by dignifying self-interest against sympathy, and was content for the masses to keep their narcotic morality, envisioning only supermen at the top.
The herd is to keep its Christian-like morality; the Socialist who stirs its envy is hated.
Mencken argues that Nietzsche's philosophy was wholly aristocratic: he sought to free superior men from false notions of duty and sin, to 'make man innocent', but meant by man only the higher man of tomorrow, holding the masses in contempt and writing 'for the lords of the earth'.
The masses deserve notice only as copies, opposition, or tools.
Ludovici explains that for Nietzsche master-morality is active and creative, calling good whatever springs from strength and bad whatever springs from weakness, while slave-morality is passive and defensive, prizing pity, patience and humility and fearing the strong; Nietzsche advocated the former because it leads to the ascent of life and the latter to degeneration.
Slave-morality is the morality of an oppressed and weary community bent on mere survival.
Ludovici says that as a sociologist Nietzsche aimed at an aristocratic order of society and the rearing of an ideal race, holding that men are not equal and that every elevation of the type man has been the work of an aristocratic society with a long scale of ranks.
Sets Nietzsche against the preachers of equality in favour of rank and difference.
Ludovici explains that Zarathustra's nicknames stand for whole classes: the 'herdsmen' of the Prologue are today's advocates of gregariousness, who call Zarathustra a robber because he would rear a higher aristocracy, and 'the good and just' are the self-righteous moderns sure that their inherited values must rule forever.
Identifies the herdsmen with advocates of the ant-hill and the good and just with self-righteous traditionalists.
Ludovici argues that hostility to Nietzsche's views on women is a misunderstanding: his doctrine is that the sexes are fundamentally antagonistic and should be kept so, against the democratic levelling that would masculinise women and feminise men, a view Ludovici judges right and just; he adds that the discourse's notorious last line was suggested by a woman.
Frames the target as the democratic movement to level all differences.
Ludovici identifies the tarantulas with Socialists and Democrats whose criticism of society from below is suppressed envy, and says Nietzsche refuses to be confused with them, including the 'Nietzschean Socialists' who preach his doctrine together with equality.
Names the democratic and socialist movements as the target.
Ludovici holds that paragraphs 11–12 of 'Old and New Tables' express Nietzsche's principle of rearing a select race, and endorses it by appeal to Gobineau on the evils of promiscuous marriages and Darwin on the degeneration of cultivated types through promiscuous breeding.
Nobility is to be preserved against mixing with the mass.
This is an experiment in interactive reading, and in using AI to help you grow. Thus Spake Zarathustra is notoriously difficult for a modern reader; yet taken as a set of mental exercises, it is guaranteed to transform your thinking by the time you reach the end. Along the way you will have help from the companion, who is always beside the book.
Do you accept the challenge?
Nietzsche elsewhere
Nietzsche says that as immoralist he denies both the 'good' man and Christian morality; the good exist through falsehood, refusing to see reality and treating distress as an objection, and Zarathustra therefore calls them the last men and the beginning of the end, who crucify the writer of new values and are the most detrimental of men.
Goodness secures the paltry happiness of the gregarious animal.