Ye creating ones, ye higher men! One is only pregnant with one’s own child.
Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or put upon! Who then is YOUR neighbour? Even if ye act “for your neighbour”—ye still do not create for him!
Unlearn, I pray you, this “for,” ye creating ones: your very virtue wisheth you to have naught to do with “for” and “on account of” and “because.” Against these false little words shall ye stop your ears.
“For one’s neighbour,” is the virtue only of the petty people: there it is said “like and like,” and “hand washeth hand”:—they have neither the right nor the power for YOUR self-seeking!
In your self-seeking, ye creating ones, there is the foresight and foreseeing of the pregnant! What no one’s eye hath yet seen, namely, the fruit—this, sheltereth and saveth and nourisheth your entire love.
Where your entire love is, namely, with your child, there is also your entire virtue! Your work, your will is YOUR “neighbour”: let no false values impose upon you!
Ye creating ones, ye higher men! Whoever hath to give birth is sick; whoever hath given birth, however, is unclean.
Ask women: one giveth birth, not because it giveth pleasure. The pain maketh hens and poets cackle.
Ye creating ones, in you there is much uncleanliness. That is because ye have had to be mothers.
A new child: oh, how much new filth hath also come into the world! Go apart! He who hath given birth shall wash his soul!
What the critics said
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.
Mencken argues that the superman will be perfect in body and mind, delight in combat, say yes to life's pleasures and ills, be scornful, merciless and free of fear of gods and laws, owe nothing to his neighbours and sacrifice himself only for generations unborn; he will distinguish instinct from passion and renounce from expediency, as Zarathustra's sayings to the brethren and to the higher men are taken to show.
Ludovici argues that depriving a higher man of his so-called wickedness may do violence to the greatest in him, and that the noblest wickedness, that of courage and determination, is vanishing under slave-moralities, which is why Nietzsche cried that man's baddest is so small and that to be brave is good.
Ludovici holds that Zarathustra's greeting confirms his thesis that the philosophy aims to give higher men the great hope, but harshly: Nietzsche would be a hard bed to higher men, making them harder, not easing their way.
Ludovici calls Nietzsche's principle that the higher the type the seldomer it succeeds very important: the most deplorable waste is among higher individuals, because highly organised beings rarely reach full development, so the blind will to power in nature needs direction by man.
Ludovici explains that the closing paragraphs of 'The Higher Man' protest against democratic seriousness: all that is good is cheerful, being able to joke about one's deepest feelings tests their value, and the greatest sin was the word 'Woe unto them that laugh now!'
Ludovici explains that the closing paragraphs of 'The Higher Man' protest against democratic seriousness: all that is good is cheerful, being able to joke about one's deepest feelings tests their value, and the greatest sin was the word 'Woe unto them that laugh now!'