The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through their
streets. And just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man
abroad long before sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us:
Where goeth the thief?

  Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why
not be like me- a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?"

  "And what doeth the saint in the forest?" asked Zarathustra.

  The saint answered: "I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns
I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God.

  With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God
who is my God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift?"

  When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and
said: "What should I have to give thee! Let me rather hurry hence lest
I take aught away from thee!"- And thus they parted from one
another, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys.

  When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: "Could it
be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it,
that God is dead!"

                            3.

  When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoineth the
forest, he found many people assembled in the market-place; for it had
been announced that a rope-dancer would give a performance. And
Zarathustra spake thus unto the people:

  I teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be
surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man?

  All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye
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 Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of
shame.

  Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is
still worm. Once were ye 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?

  Lo, I teach you the Superman!

  The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The
Superman shall he the meaning of the earth!

  I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the earth, and believe
not those who speak unto 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!

  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 ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth 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 Superman: he is that sea; in him can your
great contempt be submerged.

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

  The hour when ye say: "What good is my happiness! It is poverty
and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should
justify existence itself!"

  The hour when ye say: "What good is my reason! Doth it long for
knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and
wretched self-complacency!"

  The hour when ye say: "What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not
made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all