Have a good distrust to-day ye, higher men, ye enheartened ones! Ye open-hearted ones! And keep your reasons secret! For this to-day is that of the populace.
What the populace once learned to believe without reasons, who could--refute it to them by means of reasons?
And on the market-place one convinceth with gestures. But reasons make the populace distrustful.
And when truth hath once triumphed there, then ask yourselves with good distrust: "What strong error hath fought for it?"Be on your guard also against the learned! They hate you, because they are unproductive! They have cold, withered eyes before which every bird is unplumed.
Such persons vaunt about not lying: but inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard!
Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge! Refrigerated spirits I do not believe in. He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.
10.
If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get yourselves CARRIED aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people's backs and heads!
Thou hast mounted, however, on horseback? Thou now ridest briskly up to thy goal? Well, my friend! But thy lame foot is also with thee on horseback!
When thou reachest thy goal, when thou alightest from thy horse: precisely on thy HEIGHT, thou higher man,--then wilt thou stumble!
11.
Ye creating ones, ye higher men! One is only pregnant with one's own child.
Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or put upon! Who then is YOURneighbour? Even if ye act "for your neighbour"--ye still do not create for him!
Unlearn, I pray you, this "for," ye creating ones: your very virtue wisheth you to have naught to do with "for" and "on account of" and "because." Against these false little words shall ye stop your ears.
"For one's neighbour," is the virtue only of the petty people: there it is said "like and like," and "hand washeth hand":--they have neither the right nor the power for YOUR self-seeking!
In your self-seeking, ye creating ones, there is the foresight and foreseeing of the pregnant! What no one's eye hath yet seen, namely, the fruit--this, sheltereth and saveth and nourisheth your entire love.
Where your entire love is, namely, with your child, there is also your entire virtue! Your work, your will is YOUR "neighbour": let no false values impose upon you!
12.
Ye creating ones, ye higher men! Whoever hath to give birth is sick;whoever hath given birth, however, is unclean.
Ask women: one giveth birth, not because it giveth pleasure. The pain maketh hens and poets cackle.
Ye creating ones, in you there is much uncleanliness. That is because ye have had to be mothers.
A new child: oh, how much new filth hath also come into the world! Go apart! He who hath given birth shall wash his soul!
13.
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.
14.
Shy, ashamed, awkward, like the tiger whose spring hath failed--thus, ye higher men, have I often seen you slink aside. A CAST which ye made had failed.
But what doth it matter, ye dice-players! Ye had not learned to play and mock, as one must play and mock! Do we not ever sit at a great table of mocking and playing?
And if great things have been a failure with you, have ye yourselves therefore--been a failure? And if ye yourselves have been a failure, hath man therefore--been a failure? If man, however, hath been a failure: well then! never mind!
15.
The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed. Ye higher men here, have ye not all--been failures?
Be of good cheer; what doth it matter? How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh!
What wonder even that ye have failed and only half-succeeded, ye half-shattered ones! Doth not--man's FUTURE strive and struggle in you?
