For THIS am I from the heart and from the beginning—drawing, hither-drawing, upward-drawing, upbringing; a drawer, a trainer, a training-master, who not in vain counselled himself once on a time: “Become what thou art!”
He recalls the counsel he once gave himself.
- Self-overcomingThe maxim he once gave himself is the aim of his drawing-upward of men.
What the critics said
Ludovici defends the maxim 'Become what thou art' by insisting that Nietzsche's teaching is esoteric, a law only for his own: applied to all it would be vicious, but humanity needs its highest individuals to attain full development, since only through its heroes is the race led upward.
Ludovici defends the prophetic seriousness of Zarathustra's thousand-year kingdom against English readers inclined to laugh, arguing that without such earnest belief in their Hazar higher men would have become pessimists, suicides or merchants.