6 passages
In my dream, in my last morning-dream, I stood to-day on a promontory— beyond the world; I held a pair of scales, and WEIGHED the world. Alas, that the rosy dawn came too early to me: she glowed me awake, the jealous…
Zarathustra recounts a dream in which he stood on a promontory with scales and weighed the world. It appeared to him as a golden apple, a tree and an open casket, and he thanks the dream for it.
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And that I may do the like by day, and imitate and copy its best, now will I put the three worst things on the scales, and weigh them humanly well.— He who taught to bless taught also to curse: what are the three best…
He resolves to weigh the three worst-reputed things by day as the dream weighed the world. He sets up the scales over the sea, with the tree as witness.
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Voluptuousness: unto all hair-shirted despisers of the body, a sting and stake; and, cursed as “the world,” by all backworldsmen: for it mocketh and befooleth all erring, misinferring teachers. Voluptuousness: to the…
Voluptuousness means different things to different people: torment to the hair-shirted and the rabble, innocent garden-happiness to the free. He guards his words from swine and libertines.
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Passion for power: the glowing scourge of the hardest of the heart-hard; the cruel torture reserved for the cruellest themselves; the gloomy flame of living pyres. Passion for power: the wicked gadfly which is mounted…
Passion for power breaks what is rotten, teaches man contempt for himself, and in the lonely height becomes a longing to give itself to the valleys.
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And then it happened also,—and verily, it happened for the first time!—that his word blessed SELFISHNESS, the wholesome, healthy selfishness, that springeth from the powerful soul:— —From the powerful soul, to which the…
Zarathustra blesses selfishness springing from a powerful soul and body, which calls cowardly, servile and submissive things bad. The priests and the world-weary abused selfishness and made 'selfless' a virtue.
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BEHOLD, IT COMETH, IT IS NIGH, THE GREAT NOONTIDE!
Zarathustra proclaims that the day of the sword of judgment is near, and that he who declares the ego holy foretells the great noontide.
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What the critics said
Ludovici argues that in weighing voluptuousness, lust of power and selfishness Nietzsche sought to give healthy men back innocence and a clean conscience in their desires, not to license the vulgar or the weak, and that his teaching is esoteric, meant to save higher men from compromising their genius with traditional values.