Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche deeds require time after they have been done before they can be seen
(1844-1900)
From: A Nietzsche Reader, ed. R.J. Hollingdale (Penguin, 1977)
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 am looking for God! I am looking for God!’—As many of those who
did not believe in God were standing together there he excited consider-
able laughter. Have you lost him then? said one. Did he lose his way like
a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on
a voyage? Or emigrated—Thus they shouted and laughed.
The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his
glances. ‘Where has God gone?’ he cried. ‘I shall tell you. We have killed
him—you and I. We are all his murderers. But how have we done this?
How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe
away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth
from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now?
Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward,
forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not
straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of
empty space? Has it not become colder? Is more and more night not
coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we
not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying
God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition?—gods,
too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed
him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, console ourselves?
That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet pos-
sessed has bled to death under our knives—who will wipe this blood off
us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of
atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the great-
ness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods
simply to seem worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed—and
whoever shall be born after us, for the sake of this deed he shall be part
of a higher history than all history hitherto.’ Here the madman fell silent
and again regarded his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at
him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground and it
broke and went out. ‘I come too early,’ he said then; ‘my time has not
yet come. This tremendous event is still on its way, still traveling—it has
not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time,
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“God is Dead”
and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most dis-
tant stars—and yet they have it themselves.’
It has been related further that on that same day the madman
entered divers churches and there sang a requiem aeternam deo. Led out
and quieted, he is said to have retorted each time: ‘What are these
churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?’
The Gay Science, 1882
What our cheerfulness signifies. —The greatest recent event—that ‘God is
dead’, that belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable—is al-
ready beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe. For the few, at
least, whose eyes, the suspicion in whose eyes is strong and subtle
enough for this spectacle, it seems as though some sun had just gone
down, some ancient profound trust had been turned round into doubt:
to them our old world must appear daily more crepuscular, untrust-
worthy, stranger, ‘older’. On the whole, however, one has to say that the
event itself is much too great, too distant, too remote from the compre-
hension of many for news of it even to has really taken place—and
what, now that this belief has been undermined, must now fall in be-
cause it was built on this belief, leaned on it, had grown into it: for ex-
ample, our entire European morality. This protracted abundance and
succession of demolition, destruction, decline, overturning which now
stands before us: who today could divine enough of this to feel obli-
gated to be the teacher and herald of this tremendous logic of terror, the
prophet of a darkening and eclipse of the sun such as there has probably
never yet been on earth?...Even we born readers of riddles, who wait, as
it were, on the mountains, set between today and tomorrow, we first-
born and premature-born of the coming century, to whom the shadows
which must soon envelop Europe ought already to have come into sight:
why is it that even we lack any real participation in this darkening, above
all behold its advent without any care or fear for ourselves? Do we per-
haps still stand too much within the immediate consequences of this event—
and these immediate consequences, its consequences for us, are, con-
versely from what one could expect, in no way sad and light, happiness,
alleviation, encouragement, dawn...We philosophers and ‘free spirits’ in
fact feel at the news that the overflows with gratitude, astonishment,
presentiment, expectation—at last the horizon seems to us again free,
even if it is not bright, at last our ships can put out again, no matter
what the danger, every daring venture of knowledge is again permitted,
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 Friedrich Nietzsche
the sea, our sea again lies there open before us, perhaps there has never
yet been such an ‘open sea’.
The Gay Science, 1882
The four errors. —Man has been reared by his errors: first he never saw
himself other than imperfectly, second he attributed to himself imagi-
nary qualities, third he felt himself in a false order of rank with animal
and nature, fourth he continually invented new tables of values and for a
time took each of them to be eternal and unconditional, so that now
this, now that human drive and state took first place and was, as a con-
sequence of this evaluation, ennobled. If one deducts the effect of these
four errors, one has also deducted away humanity, humaneness and
‘human dignity’.
The Gay Science, 1882
Preparatory human beings. —I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike;
age is about to begin, which will restore honor to courage above all. For
this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the
strength that this higher age will require some day-the age that will carry
heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the
sake of ideas and their consequences. To this end we now need many
preparatory courageous human beings who cannot very well leap out of
nothing, any more than out of the sand and slime of present-day civiliza-
tion and metropolitanism—human beings who know how to be silent,
lonely, resolute, and content and constant in invisible activities; human
beings who are bent on seeking in all things for what in them must be
overcome; human beings distinguished as much by cheerfulness, pa-
tience, unpretentiousness, and contempt for all great vanities as by mag-
nanimity in victory and forbearance regarding the small vanities of the
vanquished; human beings whose judgment concerning all victors and
the share of chance in every victory and fame is sharp and free; human
beings with their own festivals, their own working days, and their own
periods of mourning, accustomed to command with assurance but in-
stantly ready to obey when that is called for-equally proud, equally serv-
ing their own cause in both cases; more endangered human beings,
more fruitful human beings, happier beings! For believe me: the secret for
harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is - to live
dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships
into un-charted seas. Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be rob-
bers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you
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“God is Dead”
seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be con-
tent to live hidden in forests like shy deer. At long last the search for
knowledge will reach out for its due; it will want to rule and possess, and
you with it!
The Gay Science, 1882
Zarathustra’s prologue. —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 his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of
it. But at last his heart changed,- and rising one morning with the rosy
dawn, he went before the sun, and spake thus unto it:
Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not
those for whom thou shinest! For ten years hast thou climbed hither
unto my cave: thou wouldst have wearied of thy light and of the journey,
had it not been for me, mine eagle, and my serpent. But we awaited thee
every morning, took from thee thine overflow, and blessed thee for it.
Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered
too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.
I would fain bestow and distribute, until the wise have once more be-
come joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches. Therefore
must I descend into the deep: as thou doest in the evening, when thou
goest behind the sea, and givest light also to the nether-world, thou exu-
berant star! Like thee must I go down, as men say, to whom I shall de-
scend.
Bless me, then, thou tranquil eye, that canst 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 re-
flection of thy bliss! Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself, and
Zarathustra is again going to be a man.
Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going.
Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1891
The Three Metamorphoses. —THREE metamorphoses of the spirit do I
designate to you: how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and
the lion at last a child.
Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-
bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heavi-
est longeth its strength. What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit;
then kneeleth it down like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden. What
is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit, that I may
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 Friedrich Nietzsche “God is Dead”

take it upon me and rejoice in my strength. Is it not this: To humiliate rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea. Aye, for the game of creat-
oneself in order to mortify one’s pride? To exhibit one’s folly in order to ing, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: its own will, wil-
mock at one’s wisdom? Or is it this: To desert our cause when it cele- leth now the spirit; his own world winneth the world’s outcast.
brateth its triumph? To ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter? Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you:
Or is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a
sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul? Or is it this: To be sick and dis- child.
miss comforters, and make friends of the deaf, who never hear thy re- Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1891
quests? Or is it this: To go into foul water when it is the water of truth,
and not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads? Or is it this: To love those
who despise us, and give one’s hand to the phantom when it is going to
frighten us? All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon
itself: and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilder-
ness, so hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness.
But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamor-
phosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lord-
ship in its own wilderness. Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be
to him, and to its last God; for victory will it struggle with the great
dragon. What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to
call Lord and God? “Thou-shalt,” is the great dragon called. But the
spirit of the lion saith, “I will.” “Thou-shalt,” lieth in its path, sparkling
with gold—a scale-covered beast; and on every scale glittereth golden,
“Thou shalt!” The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and
thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: “All the values of things—
glitter on me. All values have already been created, and all created val-
ues—do I represent. Verily, there shall be no ‘I will’ any more. Thus
speaketh the dragon.
My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit?
Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is rever-
ent? To create new values—that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish:
but to create itself freedom for new creating—that can the might of the
lion do. To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty:
for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion. To assume the ride to
new values—that is the most formidable assumption for a load-bearing
and reverent spirit. Verily, unto such a spirit it is preying, and the work
of a beast of prey. As its holiest, it once loved “Thou shalt”: now is it
forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it
may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture.
But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion
could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child? Inno-
cence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-

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