HKB
the foremost and prominent above others: no one shall thy jealous soul love, except a 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 seemed it alike pleasing and hard to the people from whom cometh my name—the name which is alike pleasing and hard to me.
“To honour father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their will”—this table of surmounting hung another people over them, and became powerful and permanent thereby.
“To have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honour and blood, even in evil and dangerous courses”—teaching itself so, another people mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.
Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven.
Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself—he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself “man,” that is, the valuator.
Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of the valued things.
Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, ye creating ones!
Change of values—that is, change of the creating ones. Always doth he destroy who hath to be a creator.
Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest creation.
Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule and love which would obey, created for themselves such tables.
Older is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the ego: and as long as the good conscience is for the herd, the bad conscience only saith: ego.
Verily, the crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeketh its advantage in the advantage of many—it is not the origin of the herd, but its ruin.
Loving ones, was it always, and creating ones, that created good and bad. Fire of love gloweth in the names of all the virtues, and fire of wrath.
Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones—“good” and “bad” are they called.
Verily, a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me, ye brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put a fetter upon the thousand necks of this animal?
A thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples have there been. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity hath not a goal.
But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, is there not also still lacking—humanity itself?—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XVI. NEIGHBOUR-LOVE.
Ye crowd around your neighbour, and have fine words for it. But I say unto you: your neighbour-love is your bad love of yourselves.
Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a virtue thereof: but I fathom your “unselfishness.”
The THOU is older than the I; the THOU hath been consecrated, but not yet the I: so man presseth nigh unto his neighbour.
Do I advise you to neighbour-love? Rather do I advise you to neighbour-flight and to furthest love!
Higher than love to your neighbour is love to the furthest and future ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms.
The phantom that runneth on before thee, my brother, is fairer than thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou fearest, and runnest unto thy neighbour.
Ye cannot endure it with yourselves, and do not love yourselves sufficiently: so ye seek to mislead your neighbour into love, and would fain gild yourselves with his error.