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Thus Spake ZarathustraIdeasLibrary

Better songs would they have to sing, for me to believe in their Saviour: more like saved ones would his disciples have to appear unto me!

Naked, would I like to see them: for beauty alone should preach penitence. But whom would that disguised affliction convince!

Verily, their Saviours themselves came not from freedom and freedom’s seventh heaven! Verily, they themselves never trod the carpets of knowledge!

Of defects did the spirit of those Saviours consist; but into every defect had they put their illusion, their stop-gap, which they called God.

In their pity was their spirit drowned; and when they swelled and o’erswelled with pity, there always floated to the surface a great folly.

Zarathustra says the redeemed should look more redeemed, and that beauty alone should preach penitence. The Saviours never knew freedom or knowledge and filled their defects with the illusion called God.

Commentary on this chapter

What the critics said

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Introduction to Thus Spake Zarathustra (1905) — Partisan source: the author shaped Nietzsche's posthumous reputation and is not a reliable interpreter.
The Superman as an early ideal of great individualsElisabeth Förster-Nietzsche · Introduction to Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1905interpretation

Förster-Nietzsche argues that the Superman ideal was already present in Nietzsche's writings of 1873–75 as the hope of rearing great individuals, the youthful view that mankind's object lies in its highest specimens; in Zarathustra this ideal is placed in the future and veiled in becoming, beyond even the Saviour, since 'never yet hath there been a Superman'.