Second Part · XXXV. The Sublime Ones

The pillar, the mirror, the superhero

Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good because they have crippled paws!

The virtue of the pillar shalt thou strive after: more beautiful doth it ever become, and more graceful—but internally harder and more sustaining—the higher it riseth.

Yea, thou sublime one, one day shalt thou also be beautiful, and hold up the mirror to thine own beauty.

Then will thy soul thrill with divine desires; and there will be adoration even in thy vanity!

For this is the secret of the soul: when the hero hath abandoned it, then only approacheth it in dreams—the superhero.—

Zarathustra laughs at weaklings who call themselves good because their paws are crippled. He sets the pillar as the model, more graceful and harder within as it rises, and promises the sublime one that he will one day be beautiful and mirror his own beauty.

Self-overcomingThe hero must be surpassed by the superhero who approaches the soul in dreams once the hero has left it.
The Superman (Übermensch)The 'superhero' that comes when the hero abandons the soul echoes the beyond-man theme.

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

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

The sublime ones stuck at the camel stageAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

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.