Second Part · XXVI. The Priests

Prisoners of false values and the monster-isle

And when they had passed, a pain attacked Zarathustra; but not long had he struggled with the pain, when he began to speak thus:

It moveth my heart for those priests. They also go against my taste; but that is the smallest matter unto me, since I am among men.

But I suffer and have suffered with them: prisoners are they unto me, and stigmatised ones. He whom they call Saviour put them in fetters:—

In fetters of false values and fatuous words! Oh, that some one would save them from their Saviour!

On an isle they once thought they had landed, when the sea tossed them about; but behold, it was a slumbering monster!

False values and fatuous words: these are the worst monsters for mortals—long slumbereth and waiteth the fate that is in them.

But at last it cometh and awaketh and devoureth and engulfeth whatever hath built tabernacles upon it.

After they pass, Zarathustra is struck by pain and speaks of the priests as prisoners fettered by their Saviour. He compares false values to a slumbering monster mistaken for an isle, which will wake and devour whatever is built on it.

Revaluation of values (old and new tables)False values and fatuous words are named the worst monsters, in whose fetters the priests are held.
PityZarathustra feels pain and suffers with the priests as with prisoners.
Christianity, priests and the need to worshipDescribes the priests as prisoners whom their Saviour chained with false values and fatuous words: 'that some one would save them from their Saviour!'

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'.