Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In the outline I have provided above, Nietzsche’s recognition of the dual value-optics naturally retains much that is incomprehensible. The reader of Zarathustra must, however, have made it entirely his own from the cited passages of Nietzsche; he must have questioned the entire territory of the moral and plowed through it with the mighty plowshare of the Nietzschean spirit: without this preliminary work, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" would remain for him a hieroglyph that cannot be grasped by the shallow wisdom of the day. I expressly advise taking Zarathustra into one’s hands last among Nietzsche’s books.

Nietzsche considers things, as mentioned, according to their biological, physiological value; he says “yes” and “good” to ascending (Dionysian) life, and “no” and “bad” to declining (Christian) life. To strive for the “good-naturedness” original: "Vergutmüthigung" of man, or even, like Rousseau and all democrats and revolutionaries, to believe in an original good-naturedness of man, is almost a subject for laughter to him . . . But “morality” and “good-naturedness” mean roughly one and the same thing in the present! The question of whether the sight of humanity has gained through this good-naturedness (i.e., diminution of vitality), whether it has become more beautiful, more sublime, more solemn, more delightful, is to be decided in the negative. We have only become more vulnerable, more considerate, more pitying, more self-evasive, more impersonal; the approach and assimilation between man and man has spread more and more; the great lost the courage for the feeling of superiority; the instinct of the herd-animal man became master over the rarer, organizing, directing instincts, which are highly important for the construction and cultural tasks of a people, of the sovereignly gifted individuals:—the ever-approaching result is the “equality of all,” the democratic ideal, the anthill.