Part 16

The history of the future: this thought will tend to triumph ever more and more, and those who disbelieve in it will be forced, according to their nature, ultimately to die out.

He, alone, who will regard his existence as capable of eternal recurrence will remain over: but among such as these a state will be possible of which the imagination of no utopist has ever dreamt!

Ye fancy that ye will have a long rest ere your second birth takes place,—but do not deceive yourselves! ’Twixt your last moment of consciousness and the first ray of the dawn of your new life no time will elapse,—as a flash of lightning will the space go by, even though living creatures think it is billions of years, and are not even able to reckon it. Timelessness and immediate re-birth are compatible, once intellect is eliminated!

Thou feelest that thou must soon take thy leave perhaps—and the sunset glow of this feeling pierces through thy happiness. Give heed to this sign: it means that thou lovest life and thyself, and life as it has hitherto affected thee and moulded thee,—and that thou cravest for its eternity—Non alia sed hac vita sempiterna!

Know also, that transiency singeth its short song for ever afresh and that at the sound of the first verse thou wilt almost die of longing when thou thinkest that it might be for the last time.

Let us stamp the impress of eternity upon our lives! This thought contains more than all the religions which taught us to contemn this life as a thing ephemeral, which bade us squint upwards to another and indefinite existence.—

We must not strive after distant and unknown states of bliss and blessings and acts of grace, but we must live so that we would fain live again and live for ever so, to all eternity!—Our duty is present with us every instant.

The leading tendencies: (1) We must implant the love of life, the love of every man’s own life in every conceivable way! However each individual may understand this love of self his neighbour will acquiesce, and will have to learn great tolerance towards it: however much it may often run counter to his taste,—provided the individual in question really helps to increase his joy in his own life!

(2) We must all be one in our hostility towards everything and everybody who tends to cast a slur upon the value of life: towards all gloomy, dissatisfied and brooding natures. We must prevent these from procreating! But our hostility itself must be a means to our joy! Thus we shall laugh; we shall mock and we shall exterminate without bitterness I Let this be our mortal combat

This life is thy eternal life!

What was the cause of the downfall of the Alexandrian culture? With all its useful discoveries and its desire to investigate the nature of this world, it did not know how to lend this life its ultimate importance, the thought of a Beyond was more important to it! To teach anew in this regard is still the most important thing of all:—perhaps if metaphysics are applied to this life in the most emphatic way,—as in the case of my doctrine!

This doctrine is lenient towards those who do not believe in it It speaks of no hells and it contains no threats. He who does not believe in it has but a fleeting life in his consciousness.

It would be terrible if we still believed in sin, but whatever we may do, however often we may repeat it, it is all innocent. If the thought of the eternal recurrence of all things does not overwhelm thee, then it is not thy fault: and if it does overwhelm thee, this does not stand to thy merit either.—We think more leniently of our forebears than they themselves thought of themselves; we mourn over the errors which were to them constitutional; but we do not mourn over their evil.

Let us guard against teaching such a doctrine as if it were a suddenly discovered religion! It must percolate through slowly, and whole generations must build on it and become fruitful through it,—in order that it may grow into a large tree which will shelter all posterity. What are the two thousand years in which Christianity has maintained its sway? For the mightiest thought of all many millenniums will be necessary,—long, long, long will it have to remain puny and weak!

For this thought we do not require thirty years of glory with drums and fifes, and thirty years of grave-digging followed by an eternity of macaberesque stillness, as is the case with so many other famous thoughts.

Simple and well-nigh arid as it is, this thought must not even require eloquence to uphold it.

Are ye now prepared? Ye must have experienced every form of scepticism and ye must have wallowed with voluptuousness in ice-cold baths,—otherwise ye have no right to this thought; I wish to protect myself against those who are over-ready to believe, likewise against those who gush over anything! I would defend my doctrine in advance. It must be the religion of the freest, most cheerful and most sublime souls, a delightful pastureland somewhere between golden ice and a pure heaven!

EXPLANATORY NOTES TO “THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA”

All goals have been annihilated: valuations are turning against each other:

People call him good who hearkens to the dictates of his own heart, but they also call him good who merely does his duty;

People call the mild and conciliating man good, but they also call him good who is brave, inflexible and severe;

People call him good who does not do violence to himself, but they also call the heroes of self-mastery good;

People call the absolute friend of truth good-, but they also call him good who is pious and a transfigurer of things;

People call him good who can obey his own voice, but they also call the devout man good;

People call the noble and the haughty man good, but also him who does not despise and who does not assume condescending airs.

People call him good who is kindhearted and who steps out of the way of broils, but he who thirsts for fight and triumph is also called good;

People call him good who always wishes to be first, but they also call him good who does not wish to be ahead of anybody in anything.

We possess a powerful store of moral feelings, but we have no goal for them all. They mutually contradict each other: they have their origin in different tables of values.