Second Part · XXIV. In the Happy Isles

God as conjecture limited to the conceivable

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God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond your creating will.

Could ye CREATE a God?—Then, I pray you, be silent about all Gods! But ye could well create the Superman.

Not perhaps ye yourselves, my brethren! But into fathers and forefathers of the Superman could ye transform yourselves: and let that be your best creating!—

God is a conjecture: but I should like your conjecturing restricted to the conceivable.

Could ye CONCEIVE a God?—But let this mean Will to Truth unto you, that everything be transformed into the humanly conceivable, the humanly visible, the humanly sensible! Your own discernment shall ye follow out to the end!

And what ye have called the world shall but be created by you: your reason, your likeness, your will, your love, shall it itself become! And verily, for your bliss, ye discerning ones!

And how would ye endure life without that hope, ye discerning ones? Neither in the inconceivable could ye have been born, nor in the irrational.

But that I may reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends: IF there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God! THEREFORE there are no Gods.

Yea, I have drawn the conclusion; now, however, doth it draw me.—

Zarathustra asks whether they could create or conceive a God and restricts their guessing to what is conceivable. He argues that if gods existed he could not bear not being one, therefore there are none.

The death of GodGod is called a conjecture that must not exceed the creating will, and Zarathustra concludes that there are no gods.
Creation and the creatorKnowing means making everything humanly conceivable, so that the world is created by the knowers in their own image.
The Superman (Übermensch)Men cannot create a God, but they can become fathers and forefathers of the Superman.
Intellectual conscience (truthfulness)Turns the will to truth against God: follow your discernment to the end and allow only what is humanly conceivable, which rules out God.

Commentary on this passage

What the critics said

Anthony M. Ludovici, Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra (1909)

Creating as salvation from godless pessimismAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici says that in 'In the Happy Isles' Nietzsche overcomes the pessimism that godlessness brings by pointing to creating as salvation from suffering, the Superman supplying the cheerfulness to face a world without God.

Commentary on this chapter

Nietzsche elsewhere

The hammer and the image in the stoneFriedrich Nietzsche · Ecce Homo, 1888Nietzsche

Nietzsche says that for Zarathustra man is neither an object of love nor of pity but raw material, an ugly stone for the sculptor's chisel, quoting the passage where the creative will drives the hammer against the stone to free the Superman's image; a Dionysian task needs the hardness of the hammer and the joy even of destruction, 'all creators are hard'.

What the critics said

Anthony M. Ludovici, Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra (1909)

Zarathustra is not the place to beginAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici argues that Zarathustra, though Nietzsche's opus magnum, should not be read first: many chapters are nearly meaningless without knowledge of Nietzsche's life and friendships, and its philosophical views are best clarified by his other works, which he himself regarded as preparation for it.