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.
What the critics said
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'.