Nature's Overman
Core Readings of Friedrich Nietzsche
§1. What is greater in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra's Prologue.
§2. Never yet has there been an Overman.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On Priests.
§3. Dead are all gods; now we want the Overman to live. Let this be our last will at the great noon.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Bestowing Virtue.
§4. Once people said “God” when they gazed upon distant seas, but now I have taught you to say "Overman."
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Blessed Isles.
§5. God is a conjecture, but I want your conjecturing not to reach further than your creating will.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Blessed Isles.
§6. Could you create a god? Then be silent about any gods, but you could well create the Overman.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Blessed Isles.
§7. Not you yourselves perhaps, my brothers, but you could recreate yourselves into fathers and forefathers of the Overman, and this shall be your best creating.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Blessed Isles.
§8. I teach you the Overman. Man is something that must be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All creatures so far created something beyond themselves, and you want to be the end of this great flood and would even rather go back to animals than overcome humans. What is the ape to a human? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment? That is precisely what the human shall be to the Overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to human, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now a human is still more ape than any ape. But whoever is wisest among you is also just a conflict and a cross between plant and ghost. But do I implore you to become ghosts or plants? Behold, I teach you the Overman. The Overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say, “The Overman shall be the meaning of the earth.”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra's Prologue.
§9. Have you not yet heard anything of my children and that they are on their way to me? Speak to me of my gardens, of my blessed aisles, of my beautiful new species—why don’t you speak to me of that?
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Welcome.
§10. There, where the state ends, only there begins the human being who is not superfluous. There begins the song of necessity, the unique and irreplaceable melody. There, where the state ends, look there, my brothers. Do you not see it? The rainbow and the bridges of the Overman.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the New Idol.
§11. The Overman's beauty came to me as a shadow. Oh, my brothers, what concern have I anymore for gods?
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Blessed Isles.
§12. Better than a man, woman understands children, but a man is more childish than a woman. In the real man, a child is concealed; it wants to play. Go now, you women, go discover the child in the man. Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine like a gemstone, radiated by the virtues of a world that does not yet exist. Let the ray of a star shine in your love; let your hope be, “May I give birth to the Overman.”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On Little Women Old and Young.
§13. So estranged from greatness are you in your souls that the Overman would seem terrible to you in his kindness. And you, wise and knowing ones, you would flee from the sunburn of wisdom in which the Overman joyfully bathes his nakedness. You highest humans whom I have ever laid eyes on, this is my doubt in you and my secret laughter. I suspect you would call my Overman "devil."
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On Human Prudence.
§14. The increasing dwarfing of man is precisely the driving force that brings to mind the breeding of a stronger race—not merely a master race whose sole task is to rule but a race with its own sphere of life, with an excess of strength for beauty, bravery, culture, manners, to the highest peak of the spirit, an affirming race that may grant itself every great luxury; strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of virtue imperative, rich enough to have no need of thrift and pedantry; beyond good and evil, a hothouse for strange and choice plants.
Nachlass, §898.
§15. Mankind is a rope fastened between animal and Overman—a rope over an abyss, a dangerous crossing, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous shuddering and standing still. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end. What is lovable about man is that he is a crossing over and a going under. I love those who do not know how to live unless by going under, for they are the ones who cross over. I love the great despisers because they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other shore. I love those who do not first seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and be a sacrifice, who instead sacrifice themselves for the earth so that the earth may one day become the Overman’s. I love the one who lives in order to know and who wants to know so that one day the Overman may live, and so he wants his going under. I love the one who works and invents in order to build a house for the Overman and to prepare earth, animals, and plants for him, for thus he wants his going under.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra's Prologue.
§16. Man is beast and super-beast. The higher man is inhuman and over-human (unmensch and Ubermensch), and these belong together. With every increase of greatness and height in man, there is also an increase in depth and terror. One ought not to desire the one without the other—or rather, the more radically one desires the one, the more radically one achieves precisely the other.
Nachlass, §1027.
§17. I do not want to be mixed in with and mistaken for these preachers of equality, for thus justice speaks to me: humans are not equal, and they shouldn't become so either. What would my love for the Overman be if I spoke otherwise?
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Tarantulas.
§18. Those who care most today ask, “How are human beings to be preserved?” But Zarathustra is the only one, and the first one, to ask, “How shall human beings be overcome?” The Overman is in my heart—that is my first and my only concern; not man, not the neighbor, not the poorest, not the most suffering, not the best. Oh my brothers, what I am able to love in human beings is that they are a going over and a going under. And in you too there is much that makes me love and hope—that you despise, you higher men; that makes me hope, for the great despisers are the great reverers; that you have despaired, there is much to revere in that, for you did not learn how to surrender, you did not learn petty prudence. For today, the little people have become rulers. They all preach surrender and resignation and prudence and industry and consideration, and the long etcetera of little virtues.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Higher Man.
§19. What is effeminate? What comes from the servants' ilk and especially the rabble mishmash that now wants to become ruler of all human destiny? Oh nausea, nausea, nausea that asks and asks and does not tire: “How do human beings preserve themselves best, longest, most pleasantly?” These are the rulers of today. Overcome these rulers of today for me, oh my brothers. These little people, they are the Overman’s greatest danger. Overcome for me, you higher men, the little virtues, the little prudence, the sand-grain-sized considerations, the detritus of swarming ants, the pitiful contentedness, the happiness of the greatest number. And despair rather than surrender, and truly, I love you for not knowing how to live today, you higher men, for thus you live best.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Higher Man.
§20. I love all those who are like heavy drops falling individually from the dark cloud that hangs over humanity. They herald the coming of the lightning, and as heralds, they perish. Behold, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud, but this lightning is called Overman.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra's Prologue.
§21. Mankind must become better and more evil; thus I teach. What is most evil is necessary for the Overman’s best.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Higher Man.
§22. Napoleon appeared, that most individual and late-born human being that ever was, and in him the incarnate problem of the noble ideal in itself. Consider well what kind of problem it is: Napoleon, this synthesis of an inhuman and an overhuman.
On the Genealogy of Morality, T1, §16.
§23. It was here in paganism that the luxury of individuals was first permitted; it was here that one first honored the rights of individuals. The invention of gods, heroes, and overmen of all kinds, as well as near men and under men, dwarves, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons, and devils, was the inestimable preliminary exercise for the justification of the egoism and sovereignty of the individual—the freedom that one conceded to a god in his relation to other gods.
The Gay Science, Book 3, §143.
§24. The need to show that, as the consumption of man and mankind becomes more and more economical and the machinery of interests and services is integrated ever more intricately, a counter-movement is inevitable. I designate this as the secretion of a luxury surplus of mankind. It aims to bring to light a stronger species, a higher type that arises and preserves itself under different conditions from those of the average man. My concept, my metaphor for this type, is, as one knows, the word "Overman." Morally speaking, this overall machinery, this solidarity of all gears, represents a maximum in the exploitation of man, but it presupposes those on whose account this exploitation has meaning. It is clear: what I combat is economic optimism, as if increasing expenditure of everyone must necessarily involve the increasing welfare of everyone. The opposite seems to me to be the case; expenditure of everyone amounts to a collective loss—man is diminished so one no longer knows what aim this tremendous process has served. An aim, a new aim—that, that is what humanity needs.
Nachlass, §866.
§25. The word "Overman" as the designation for a type of the highest success, as opposed to modern men, to good men, to Christians, and other nihilists—a word that, in the mouth of a Zarathustra, the destroyer of morality, becomes a very thought-provoking word. This word has been understood almost everywhere with complete innocence in the sense of those values which the figure of Zarathustra was meant to represent, that is to say, as the idealistic type of a higher kind of man, half saint, half genius. Other learned adults have suspected me of Darwinism on that account. Even the hero worship of that great, unwilling, and unknowing swindler Carlyle, which I maliciously dismissed, was recognized in it. Whomever I whispered to that he had better look around for a Caesar Borgia rather than a Parsifal would not believe his ears.
Ecce Homo, Why I Write Such Good Books, §1.
§26. Mankind does not represent a development towards something better, or stronger, or higher in the way it is believed today. Progress is merely a modern idea—that is, a false idea. The European of today stands far below the European of the Renaissance. Further development is not by any necessity a toll, an exaltation, an elevation, or a strengthening. In another sense, there is a continuous success story of individual cases in various places and from the most various cultures, in which a high type does indeed appear—something which, in relation to all of mankind, is a kind of Overman. Such lucky incidents of great success have always been possible and will perhaps always be possible, and even entire races, tribes, and peoples can, under certain circumstances, bring off such a lucky hit.
The Antichrist, §4.
§27. Only now is the mountain in labor with humanity's future. God died; now we want the Overman to live.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Higher Man.