Fourth and Last Part · LXI. The Honey Sacrifice

Fishing for men with his happiness

Especially the human world, the human sea:—towards IT do I now throw out my golden angle-rod and say: Open up, thou human abyss!

Open up, and throw unto me thy fish and shining crabs! With my best bait shall I allure to myself to-day the strangest human fish!

—My happiness itself do I throw out into all places far and wide ‘twixt orient, noontide, and occident, to see if many human fish will not learn to hug and tug at my happiness;—

Until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they have to come up unto MY height, the motleyest abyss-groundlings, to the wickedest of all fishers of men.

For THIS am I from the heart and from the beginning—drawing, hither-drawing, upward-drawing, upbringing; a drawer, a trainer, a training-master, who not in vain counselled himself once on a time: “Become what thou art!”

He casts his golden angle-rod into the human sea. He wants to lure the strangest, motleyest men up to his height with hidden hooks. He describes himself as a drawer and trainer.

Teacher and disciplesHe casts his happiness as bait to draw the strangest men up to his height, as a trainer and drawer upward.
The higher menThe 'human fish' he hopes to catch anticipate the higher men who will come to his cave.

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

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

'Become what thou art' is esotericAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909interpretation

Ludovici defends the maxim 'Become what thou art' by insisting that Nietzsche's teaching is esoteric, a law only for his own: applied to all it would be vicious, but humanity needs its highest individuals to attain full development, since only through its heroes is the race led upward.

The Hazar taken seriouslyAnthony M. Ludovici · Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1909judgement

Ludovici defends the prophetic seriousness of Zarathustra's thousand-year kingdom against English readers inclined to laugh, arguing that without such earnest belief in their Hazar higher men would have become pessimists, suicides or merchants.