And one day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples, and spake these words unto them: “Here are priests: but although they are mine enemies, pass them quietly and with sleeping swords! Even among them there are heroes;…
Zarathustra signals to his disciples to pass the priests quietly. He calls them enemies who have suffered too much and so make others suffer, yet says his blood is related to theirs.
Read in the book →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…
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.
Read in the book →Oh, just look at those tabernacles which those priests have built themselves! Churches, they call their sweet-smelling caves! Oh, that falsified light, that mustified air! Where the soul—may not fly aloft to its height!…
Zarathustra attacks the churches as stale, dim caves that demand kneeling and penitence. He says the priests called God whatever opposed them, loved him by nailing men to the cross, and live like corpses.
Read in the book →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…
Zarathustra says the redeemed should look more redeemed, and that beauty alone should preach penitence. The Saviours never knew freedom or knowledge and filled their defects with the illusion called God.
Read in the book →Eagerly and with shouts drove they their flock over their foot-bridge; as if there were but one foot-bridge to the future! Verily, those shepherds also were still of the flock! Small spirits and spacious souls had those…
The shepherds drive their flock over one bridge to the future and write in blood, teaching that blood proves truth. Zarathustra answers that blood taints a teaching into delusion and hatred.
Read in the book →Sultry heart and cold head; where these meet, there ariseth the blusterer, the “Saviour.” Greater ones, verily, have there been, and higher-born ones, than those whom the people call Saviours, those rapturous…
Zarathustra calls the Saviour a blusterer where a sultry heart meets a cold head. He says greater ones have been, and that his brethren must be saved by still greater ones. He has seen the greatest and the smallest man naked and found them alike.
Read in the book →Never yet hath there been a Superman.
Zarathustra states flatly that no Superman has yet existed.
Read in the book →This is an experiment in interactive reading, and in using AI to help you grow. Thus Spake Zarathustra is notoriously difficult for a modern reader; yet taken as a set of mental exercises, it is guaranteed to transform your thinking by the time you reach the end. Along the way you will have help from the companion, who is always beside the book.
Do you accept the challenge?
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'.