Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another: thus I found it. Much I found here called evil, which was there decked with purple honors.
Never did the one neighbor understand the other: always did his soul marvel at his neighbor’s delusion and wickedness.
A tablet of the good hangs over every people. Behold, it is the tablet of their triumphs; behold, it is the voice of their Will to Power.
Laudable is all they think difficult; what is indispensable and difficult they call good; and what relieves in the direst distress, the unique and most difficult of all,- they extol as sacred.
Whatever makes them rule and conquer and shine, to the dismay and envy of their neighbors, they regard as the highest and most important thing, the test and the meaning of all else.
My brother, if you only knew a people’s need, its land, its sky, and its neighbor, then you would guess the law of its overcomings, and why it climbs up that ladder to its hope.
«Always shall you be the first and excel all others: your jealous soul shall love no one, except the friend»- that made the soul of a Greek thrill: thereby went he his way to greatness.
«To speak truth, and be skilful with bow and arrow»- so it seemed both pleasing and difficult to the people who gave me my name- the name which is both pleasing and difficult for me.
«To honor father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their will»- this tablet of overcoming another people hung over them, and be-came powerful and permanent thereby.
54
«To be loyal, and for the sake of loyalty to risk honor and blood, even for evil and dangerous purposes»- teaching itself so, another people mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.
Men have given to themselves all their good and evil. They did not take it, they did not find it, it did not come to them as a voice from heaven.
Man assigned values to things in order to preserve himself- he alone created the meaning of things, a human meaning! Therefore, calls he himself «man,» that is, the valuator.
Valuing is creating: hear it, you creators! Valuing itself is the treasure and jewel of all valued things.
Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, you creators!
Change of values- that means, change of creators. Always he destroys, he who would be a creator.
Peoples were the first creators, and only in later times individuals; ver-ily, the individual himself is the latest creation.
Peoples once hung over themselves law-tablets of the good. Love which would rule and love which would obey have created for them-selves such law-tablets.
Pleasure in the herd is older than pleasure in the ego: and as long as the good conscience is for the herd, only the evil conscience says: «I».
The crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeks its advantage in the advant-age of many- it is not the origin of the herd, but its downfall.
It was always loving ones and creators that created good and evil. Fire of love glows in the names of all the virtues, and fire of wrath.
Zarathustra saw many lands, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones- «good» and «evil» are their names.
A monster is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me, you broth-ers, who will master it for me? Who will yoke the thousand necks of this beast?
A thousand goals have there been so far, for a there have been a thou-sand peoples. Only the yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. Humanity still has no goal.
But pray tell me, my brothers, if the goal of humanity is still lacking, is humanity itself- not also lacking?
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
55
Chapter 16 Love of the Neighbor
YOU CROWD around your neighbor, and have fine words for it. But I say to you: your love of the neighbor is your bad love of yourselves.
You flee to your neighbor from yourselves, and would rather make a virtue of it: but I fathom your «unselfishness.»
The you is older than the I; the you has been consecrated, but not yet the I: so man presses near to his neighbor.
Do I advise you to love of the neighbor? Rather do I advise you to flight from the neighbor and to love of the farthest!
Higher than love of your neighbor is love of the farthest and future ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms.
The phantom that runs on before you, my brother, is fairer than you; why do you not give to it your flesh and your bones? But you are afraid, and run to your neighbor.
You cannot endure yourselves and do not love yourselves sufficiently: so you seek to mislead your neighbor into love, to gild yourselves with his error.
If only you could not endure any kinds of neighbors; then you would have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves.
You call in a witness when you want to speak well of yourselves; and when you have misled him to think well of you, you also think well of yourselves.
Not only does he lie, who speaks when he knows better, but more so, he who speaks when he knows nothing. And thus you speak of yourselves, and lie to your neighbor with yourselves.
Thus says the fool: «Association with men spoils the character, espe-cially when one has none.»
The one goes to his neighbor because he seeks himself, and the other because he would rather lose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison to you.
56
It is the farthest ones who pay for your love to the near ones; and even when there are five of you together, there is always a sixth who must die. I do not love your festivals either: I found too many actors there, and
even the spectators often behaved like actors.
Not the neighbor do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman.
I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how to be a sponge, if one would be loved by over-flowing hearts.
I teach you the friend in whom the world stands complete, a capsule of the good,- the creating friend, who always has a complete world to give away.
And as the world unrolled itself for him, so rolls it together again for him in rings, as the becoming of good through evil, as the becoming of purpose out of chance.
Let the future and the farthest be the motive of your today; in your friend you shall love the Superman as your motive.
My brothers, I advise you not to love of the neighbor- I advise you to love of the farthest!-
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
57
Chapter 17
The Way of the Creator
WOULD you go into solitude, my brother? would you seek the way to yourself? The wait a moment and listen to me.
«He who seeks may easily get lost himself. All solitude is wrong»: so say the herd. And long did you belong to the herd.
The voice of the herd will still echo in you. And when you say, «I no longer have a conscience in common with you,» then it will be a grief and a pain.
Lo, that same conscience created that pain; and the last gleam of that conscience still glows on your affliction.
But you would go the way of your affliction, which is the way to your-self? Then show me your right and your strength to do so!
Are you a new strength and a new right? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Can you even compel the stars to revolve around you?
Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many convul-sions of the ambitious! Show me that you are not a lusting and ambitious one!
Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than the bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than ever.
Free, do you call yourself? Then I would hear your ruling thought, and not merely that you have escaped from a yoke.
Are you one of those who had the right to escape from a yoke? Many a one has cast away his last worth when he has cast away his servitude.
Free from what? What does that matter to Zarathustra! But your fiery eyes should tell me: free for what?
Can you give yourself your own evil and good, and set up your own will as a law over you? Can you be judge for yourself, and avenger of your law?
Terrible is it to be alone with the judge and avenger of one’s own law. Thus is a star thrown into the void, and into the icy breath of solitude.
58
Today you still suffer from the many, you individual; today your cour-age and hopes are undiminished.
But one day the solitude will weary you; one day your pride will yield, and your courage quail. You will one day cry: «I am alone!»
One day you will no longer see your heights, and
