doctrine The most contemptible man: small, comfortable, content, who has invented happiness and blinks.
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…
He portrays the most despicable man, small, comfortable and content, who says 'We have discovered happiness' and blinks.
Read in the book →“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?”—so asketh the last man and blinketh.
The last man no longer understands love, creation, longing or stars.
Read in the book →When Zarathustra was again on the continent, he did not go straightway to his mountains and his cave, but made many wanderings and questionings, and ascertained this and that; so that he said of himself jestingly: “Lo,…
Zarathustra finds the houses, doorways and rooms shrunken, a sign that men have become smaller.
Read in the book →I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open; they have become SMALLER, and ever become smaller:—THE REASON THEREOF IS THEIR DOCTRINE OF HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE.
States the diagnosis: the doctrine of happiness and virtue is why men keep growing smaller.
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…
Their moderate virtue serves comfort; they want only that no one hurt them.
Read in the book →O my brethren! With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just?— —As those who say and feel in their hearts: “We already know what is good and just, we possess it also;…
He links the danger of the good and just to what he once said of the last man.
Read in the book →LITTLE maketh up the BEST happiness.
His old saying that little suffices for happiness is now called a blasphemy, which sets it apart from the last man's small contentment.
Read in the book →The most careful ask to-day: “How is man to be maintained?” Zarathustra however asketh, as the first and only one: “How is man to be SURPASSED?” The Superman, I have at heart; THAT is the first and only thing to me—and…
The petty people's comfort, small virtues and 'happiness of the greatest number' are named the Superman's greatest danger.
Read in the book →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.
Men's doctrine of contentment makes them ever smaller.
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.
Explicitly identifies Zarathustra's 'good' with the last men.