Thus Spoke Zarathustra

is insulted, — the crowd laughs at Zarathustra when he preaches his counter-ideal, the Uebermensch Overman/Superman, to them.

"What you desire — all of it is poverty and filth and a miserable comfort. Your ideal I call the last man: for with him, it goes downwards, — toward the ape, and further down, to the fish and worm. Your man is something that must be overcome, not something to strive for! I teach you the man who is above yours, and who is also above the greatest of the great men who have existed so far, — for even these were always still too similar to you. I teach the man of the richest soul, the deepest spirit, the highest religiosity.

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Only those who see the great connection of things can be religious; for only those who survey long chains of
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cause and effect can know, even approximately, what contributes to the salvation or the ruin of humanity, and can know what is good and bad. The short-sighted, the superstitious, the believer cannot be religious, — provided that we do not understand religiosity as sighing and sweet behavior. The short-sighted person babbles about everything, spoils everything, lets everything run as it happens. The fate of humanity lies with him in God's hands. The fate of humanity has hitherto been left to thoughtlessness, to chance. Where this leads, I see in you: your life, as busy as it is, has no meaning, no goal; — if one asks you why, for what purpose, toward what you live, you know only how to answer:

"We strive for happiness, for the well-being of all!"

But is that a goal? Is it worthy of man? — with that, you have not even cast your gaze beyond the horizon of the animal! — —"

— It lies in the nature of the matter that everyone, with the exception of a very few, will unite against a man who asks the most serious, most sacred, and at the same time most unpleasant of all questions of conscience — the question:

"What purpose, beyond the animal one of self-preservation, does your life have? What goal does your culture have?"

— Wherever we look: no one teaches this purpose, this goal. Least of all those from whom one would first expect it: our sociologists.
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These act almost only regarding the more comfortable bedding of the lower classes, the distribution of goods that stirs up less envy in the few, and they let the gap that perhaps arises from the dying out of religion be filled by newspaper reading, popularized science, concerts, theaters, and festivals. The schools do not teach that