Do not will anything beyond your power: there is a bad falseness in those who will beyond their power.
Especially when they will great things! For they awaken distrust in great things, these subtle false-coiners and stage-players:—
—Until at last they are false towards themselves, squint-eyed, whited cankers, glossed over with strong words, parade virtues and brilliant false deeds.
Take good care there, ye higher men! For nothing is more precious to me, and rarer, than honesty.
Is this to-day not that of the populace? The populace however knoweth not what is great and what is small, what is straight and what is honest: it is innocently crooked, it ever lieth.
Have a good distrust to-day ye, higher men, ye enheartened ones! Ye open-hearted ones! And keep your reasons secret! For this to-day is that of the populace.
What the populace once learned to believe without reasons, who could— refute it to them by means of reasons?
And on the market-place one convinceth with gestures. But reasons make the populace distrustful.
And when truth hath once triumphed there, then ask yourselves with good distrust: “What strong error hath fought for it?”
Be on your guard also against the learned! They hate you, because they are unproductive! They have cold, withered eyes before which every bird is unplumed.
Such persons vaunt about not lying: but inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard!
Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge! Refrigerated spirits I do not believe in. He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.
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!'