Be not virtuous beyond your powers! And seek nothing from yourselves opposed to probability!
Walk in the footsteps in which your fathers’ virtue hath already walked! How would ye rise high, if your fathers’ will should not rise with you?
He, however, who would be a firstling, let him take care lest he also become a lastling! And where the vices of your fathers are, there should ye not set up as saints!
He whose fathers were inclined for women, and for strong wine and flesh of wildboar swine; what would it be if he demanded chastity of himself?
A folly would it be! Much, verily, doth it seem to me for such a one, if he should be the husband of one or of two or of three women.
And if he founded monasteries, and inscribed over their portals: “The way to holiness,”—I should still say: What good is it! it is a new folly!
He hath founded for himself a penance-house and refuge-house: much good may it do! But I do not believe in it.
In solitude there groweth what any one bringeth into it—also the brute in one’s nature. Thus is solitude inadvisable unto many.
Hath there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints of the wilderness? AROUND THEM was not only the devil loose—but also the swine.
What the critics said
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.