The Prologue of Thus Spake Zarathustra starts with these words:

"When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it.

Introspection, Meditation & Contemplation

We are introduced here to the Zoroastrian ideal of achieving ushta through good thoughts, words and deeds. The process starts with introspection, meditation and contemplation. Zoroastrians seek to create the mental space for the thinking process on the nature of existence, truth and falsehood, as well as beneficence and harm to take place in quietude while reciting a manthra and facing a source of light. The thinking process includes deciding how we can best use our lives. Seeking an enlightened (sucha) and wise mind and a beneficent spirit (spenta mainyu) provides the foundation for the good word well spoken, and the good deed well done. Ushta means abiding spiritual resplendence, happiness, and peace.

But at last his heart changed - and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the sun, and spake thus to it:

"You great star! What would be your happiness if you had not those for whom you shine!

"For ten years have you climbed hither unto my cave: you would have wearied of your light and of the journey, had it not been for me, my eagle and my serpent.

"But we awaited you every morning, took from you your overflow and blessed you for it.

"Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that had gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.

"I would happily bestow and distribute, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.

"Therefore must I descend into the deep: as you do in the evening when you go behind the sea, and give light also to the nether-world, you exuberant star!

"Like you must I go down, as people say, to whom I shall descend.

"Bless me, then, you tranquil eye that can behold even the greatest happiness without envy!

"Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow golden out of it and carry everywhere the reflection of your bliss!

The Sun - Zoroastrian & Mithraic Symbolism

When Nietzsche has his Zarathustra turning and speaking to the sun - seeking blessings in a prayer-like manner - he uses strong Zoroastrian-Mithraic imagery.

"Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again going to be a man.

"Thus began Zarathustra's down-going."

Down-Going - Descent from the Mountain

Some authors see Zarathustra's descent from the mountain as symbolizing his leaving the exalted and return to the mundane. Zoroastrians do not see any virtue in living the life of a hermit. Contemplation is only a means to an end. Perhaps this notion is reflected in Zarathustra not heeding the hermit's advice below.

From the opening words of the Prologue we read above, Nietzsche has Zarathustra descending from a mountain where he had spent ten years thinking and meditating. Now ripe in wisdom, Nietzsche's Zarathustra wants to share his ideas with humankind. The prologue continues to tell us that coming down from the mountain, Zarathustra meets a saintly hermit, someone who had been living in the forest at the foot of the mountain.

A portrait of Zarathushtra
- an artist's impression

The hermit recognises Zarathustra having seen him on his way up and says, "Then (on your way up) you carried your ashes into the mountains: will you now carry your fire into the valleys? Fear you not the incendiary's doom?"

The Fire

This brief reference to a fire, symbolic or otherwise, carried by Nietzsche's Zarathustra once again invokes Zoroastrian imagery. The golden water in the cup that Zarathustra had sought to be blessed by the sun is now a flame and the cup has become a censer.

The hermit tries to persuade Zarathustra not to go down amongst men. He says, "Altered is Zarathustra..., an awakened one is Zarathustra: what will you do in the land of the sleepers?" Zarathustra answered: "I love humankind." He then added, "What spoke I of love! I am bringing gifts to people."

The saintly hermit persists: "Go not to people, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not be like me - a bear among bears, a bird among birds?"

But Zarathustra is not dissuaded from his mission and he takes his leave of the hermit. During his descent from the mountain, Zarathustra says to himself, "Could it be possible that this old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead?"

God is Dead

The statement "God is dead" is pure Nietzsche, filled with hyperbole, and a good example of how his provocative language can obfuscate his real message.

Through the expression Nietzsche meant to say that the values and doctrines of the majority religion of society around him - values and doctrines pronounced in the name of God - had been corrupted and were no longer relevant in a modern age. The concept of humans as disobedient, fallen beings who needed grace to redeem themselves was 'dead'.

Society now had access to knowledge and values that would enable it to advance into a Post-Christian Age. And he Nietzsche was heralding that the time had come. But the old order had to go. As an advocate of this proposition Nietzsche called himself the Anti-Christ.

Nietzsche felt that religion had imprisoned human beings by telling people what they should believe as well as their place in life. Religion had stifled a person's ability to explore other ideas and use reason rather than dogma to understand that person's purpose and goal in life. As a result religion had robbed individuals of their individuality and sovereignty.

If people no longer saw religion as relevant, if they had rejected prevailing concepts of a Biblical God and humankind's place in the order of things, then people would have to develop a fresh understanding of themselves. They would also have to redefine themselves afresh. They could only ask themselves because there was nobody else to give them answers. They would have to rely on their own wisdom and ability to reason rather than religious dogma. This last concept is Zoroastrian. However, as is Nietzsche's want, he layers central Zoroastrian concepts with his own ideas some of which conflict, prima facie, with Zoroastrian thinking.

With the old answers to the nature of God and humankind 'dead', people would have to find new answers, and if they were to find these answers they would need to rise above the mundane and take risks, risks that would require human beings to abandon the comfort and safety of group imposed norms and possibly get hurt in the process.

It was not that Nietzsche was advocating the 'death' of 'god'. He was merely giving voice to a new reality: the old 'god' was 'dead', that is irrelevant to a modern world. Ironically, Nietzsche had found a replacement in the teachings one of the oldest known religious thinkers whose 'god' was a very ancient 'god'.

As we have stated above, it can be argued that Nietzsche's use of inflammatory language detracted from his central message - that it was the cause of much misuse of his ideas or resentment towards him. When Nietzsche talks about destruction, however, he is not an anarchist motivated by anger and revenge wantonly seeking to destroy. Rather, the use of such language is meant to convey the concept that in order to progress in our thinking, at times we need to engage in zero-based thinking - thinking free of old biases and restrictions. When he advocates the destruction of the old order it is only to emphatically and dramatically state that the old order was no longer relevant and that we need to remove preconceptions from or mind in order to provide the space for the building of a new and more relevant order.

The Parable of the Madman

At this juncture, we can note here The Parable of the Madman from The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125:

THE MADMAN---Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"---As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?---Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

The Prologue of Thus Spake Zarathustra continues:

"When Zarathustra arrived at a town that adjoined the forest, he found many people assembled in the market-place; for it had been announced that a rope-dancer would give a performance."

The Gathering

The gathering in the town square represents all of humanity; the reason for the gathering represents their mundane interests; the spectacle of the performance represents the spectacle of the church that holds the attention of people and prevents them from turning their attention to high ideals; the reception that Zarathustra receives represents the level of general human thought.

"And Zarathustra spake thus unto the people:

"I teach you the overman. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have you done to surpass man? All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?

"What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the overman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. You have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were you apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

"Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?

Übermensch

Übermensch is the original German word we have translated as overman. There is no consensus regarding the English word for übermensch or its precise meaning.

The German word über translates as over, across, beyond, above. When used as a prefix, über can have connotations of superiority, transcendence, excessiveness, or intensity, depending on the words to which it is appended. Mensch means person or man as in humankind. The adjective übermenschlich means beyond-human or superhuman, in the sense of beyond human strength.

The first translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra into English, by Alexander Tille, was in 1896, where he translated übermensch as beyond-man. Inspired by Nietzsche, George Bernard Shaw, named his 1903 stage play Man and Superman, leading to übermensch being translated by Thomas Common as superman in his 1909 translation. Fifty years later, Walter Kaufmann criticized this translation for failing to capture the nuance of the German über. His preference was overman, the word we use in this page.

The Overman

Every being has given birth to something higher than itself in the evolutionary scale. Nietzsche says that the ape created human and now human must create the overman by overcoming itself. The human must rise above mediocrity. This rise will not be part of the ordinary evolutionary process and the overman will not be produced automatically as part of the evolutionary process. Human beings do not automatically becoming better with the passage of time. They have to do something about it - they have to choose to make themselves better. Man becomes overman by the process of self-overcoming (see below).

From the Introduction by Mrs. Forster-Nietzsche:

"The ideal of the overman is put forth quite clearly in all his (Nietzsche's) writings during the years 1873-75; and in We Philologists, the following remarkable observations occur (also see Individualism vs. Nationalism below):

" 'I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of the individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing to the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evil instincts.' "

Note: The following comments on the 'rearing' of the overman are no longer commentary about the writing process (as are the rest of Nietzsche's notes), but an exposition of ideas not contained in Nietzsche's works. They could very well be a corruption of Nietzsche's ideas by his sister.

" 'With the help of favourable measures great individuals might be reared who would be both different from and higher than those who heretofore have owed their existence to mere chance? Here we may still be hopeful: in the rearing of exceptional men.'

"The notion of rearing the overman is only a new form of an ideal Nietzsche already had in his youth, that "the object of mankind should lie in its highest individuals" (or, as he writes in Schopenhauer as Educator: "Mankind ought constantly to be striving to produce great men - this and nothing else is its duty.") But the ideals he most revered in those days are no longer held to be the highest types of men. No, around this future ideal of a coming humanity - the overman - the poet spread the veil of becoming. Who can tell to what glorious heights man can still ascend? That is why, after having tested the worth of our noblest ideal - that of the Saviour, in the light of the new valuations, the poet cries with passionate emphasis in Zarathustra:

" 'Never yet has there been an overman. Naked have I seen both of them, the greatest and the smallest man:

" 'All-too-similar are they still to each other. Verily even the greatest found I - all-too-human!'

"The phrase 'the rearing of the overman, has very often been misunderstood. By the word 'rearing,' in this case, is meant the act of modifying by means of new and higher values - values which, as laws and guides of conduct and opinion, are now to rule over mankind. In general the doctrine of the overman can only be understood correctly in conjunction with other ideas of the author's, such as the Order of Rank, the Will to Power, and the Transvaluation of All Values. He assumes that Christianity, as a product of the resentment of the botched and the weak, has put in ban all that is beautiful, strong, proud, and powerful, in fact all the qualities resulting from strength, and that, in consequence, all forces which tend to promote or elevate life have been seriously undermined. Now, however, a new table of valuations must be placed over mankind - namely, that of the strong, mighty, and magnificent man, overflowing with life and elevated to his zenith - the overman, who is now put before us with overpowering passion as the aim of our life, hope, and will. And just as the old system of valuing, which only extolled the qualities favourable to the weak, the suffering, and the oppressed, has succeeded in producing a weak, suffering, and 'modern' race, so this new and reversed system of valuing ought to rear a healthy, strong, lively, and courageous type, which would be a glory to life itself. Stated briefly, the leading principle of this new system of valuing would be: 'All that proceeds from power is good, all that springs from weakness is bad.'

"This type must not be regarded as a fanciful figure: it is not a nebulous hope which is to be realised at some indefinitely remote period, thousands of years hence; nor is it a new species (in the Darwinian sense) of which we can know nothing, and which it would therefore be somewhat absurd to strive after. But it is meant to be a possibility which men of the present could realise with all their spiritual and physical energies, provided they adopted the new values."

Mrs. Forster-Nietzsche continues: "In his private notes on the subject the author uses the expression 'overman' (always in the singular, by-the-bye), as signifying 'the most thoroughly well-constituted type,' as opposed to 'modern man'; above all, however, he designates Zarathustra himself as an example of the overman."

Prerequisite for the Overman - Great Healthiness

Mrs. Forster-Nietzsche in her Introduction adds: "In Ecco Homo he is careful to enlighten us concerning the precursors and prerequisites to the advent of this highest type, in referring to a certain passage in the Gaya Scienza:

" 'In order to understand this type, we must first be quite clear in regard to the leading physiological condition on which it depends: this condition is what I call 'Great Healthiness'. I know not how to express my meaning more plainly or more personally than I have done already in one of the last chapters (Aphorism 382) of the fifth book of the Gaya Scienza."

" 'We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand,' - it says there - 'we firstlings of a yet untried future - we require for a new end also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier than all healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longs to experience the whole range of hitherto recognised values and desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all the coasts of this ideal 'Mediterranean Sea', who, from the adventures of his most personal experience, wants to know how it feels to be a conqueror, and discoverer of the ideal - as likewise how it is with the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the devotee, the prophet, and the godly non-conformist of the old style: requires one thing above all for that purpose, 'Great Healthiness' - such healthiness as one not only possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire, because one unceasingly sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice it! - And now, after having been long on the way in this fashion, we Argonauts of the ideal, more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often enough shipwrecked and brought to grief, nevertheless dangerously healthy, always healthy again - it would seem as if, in recompense for it all, that we have a still undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known hitherto, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand - alas! That nothing will now any longer satisfy us!' "

Individualism vs. Nationalism

The development of the concept of the overman followed Nietzsche's determination that nationalism suppressed the full potential of individuals by demanding conformity and mediocrity. From the Introduction by Mrs. Forster-Nietzsche:

"In We Philologists, the following remarkable observations occur:

" 'How can one praise and glorify a nation as a whole? Even among the Greeks, it was the individuals that counted.

" 'The Greeks are interesting and extremely important because they reared such a vast number of great individuals. How was this possible? The question is one which ought to be studied.

" 'I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of the individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing to the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evil instincts.' "

Nietzsche's Zarathustra continues:

"Lo, 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!

"I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak to you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.

"Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!

Meaning of the Earth. Goal of Life. The Lie

Nietzsche tries to tell the people that the goal of life is the overman - overcoming mediocrity and seeking excellence on this earth. Further, that promises of the reward of heavenly existence for those who conform to church dictated morality, or making residence in heaven as the goal of life, are a lie - a conspiracy of mass deception.

Also see Morality and the Lie above.

"Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!

"Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing - the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth. Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul! But you, also, my brethren, tell me: What does your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency?

"Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

"Lo, I teach you the overman: he is that sea; in him can your great contempt be submerged.

"What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome to you, and so also your reason and virtue.

Overcoming

Overcoming means that human beings must learn to look down on themselves, to despise themselves, to be dissatisfied and discontented and disgruntled with themselves, because it is only when they begins to look down on themselves that they can begin to rise above themselves and be something higher, greater and nobler than themselves. Any improvement in a person is made at the expense of what that person used to be.

Nietzsche's Zarathustra continues:

"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the overman - a rope over an abyss.

"A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.

"What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal. What is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going."

Man as Rope & Bridge

Nietzsche isn't very clear at times on this point, but he seems to say that whereas lower evolution is collective, higher evolution is individual. Nietzsche says there is a rope that is stretched between the beast and the overman over an abyss. Man is that rope and it is dangerous to be a man in transition. But man is not just the rope, he is the tight rope walker. And man is not just a rope he is also a bridge - a bridge and not an end. As such man must live for something other than himself, and this something is the overman. Nietzsche adds that the majority of men are not men. Rather the majority of men are animals and have not yet achieved humanity. According to Nietzsche, the turning point of the evolutionary process, is not as between animal and man, it is between man who is still an animal and man who is no longer an animal - man who is truly human.

Kaufmann, expounding Nietzsche, says that the gulf which separates Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and the chimpanzee. This is not a flattering view of the average man. When Zarathustra spoke to the people in the market place about the overman the people just laughed at him. They were much more interested in watching the tightrope-walker.

"And thus spake Zarathustra unto the people:

"It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope. Still is his soil rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon. Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man - and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!

"I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you. Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.

"Lo! I show you the last man.

" 'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' - so asks the last man and blinks. The earth hath then become small, and on it there hops the last man who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man lives longest. 'We have discovered happiness' say the last men, and blink thereby.

"They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loves one's neighbour and rubs against him; for one needs warmth. Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or men!

"A little poison now and then that makes pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death.

"One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one. One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome. No shepherd, and one herd! Every one wants the same; every one is equal: he who has other sentiments goes voluntarily into the madhouse. 'Formerly all the world was insane,' say the subtlest of them, and blink thereby.

"They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon reconciled - otherwise it spoils their stomachs. They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.

" 'We have discovered happiness,' say the last men, and blink thereby.

"And here ended the first discourse of Zarathustra, which is also called "The Prologue". for at this point the shouting and mirth of the multitude interrupted him. 'Give us this last man, O Zarathustra,' they called out. 'Make us into these last men! Then will we make you a present of the overman!' And all the people exulted and smacked their lips. Zarathustra, however, turned sad, and said to his heart, "They understand me not: I am not the mouth for these ears.' "

And with this lament, Nietzsche seems to bring to a close the Prologue which he calls the first discourse. However, the Prologue continues for another five sections. What follows are eighty parabolic discourses divided into four parts.