Thus Spoke Zarathustra Read Free

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.’…(125).
    Not only is there no God, there is no other ordering principle either:
    Let us beware ! Let us beware of thinking the world is a living being. Whither should it spread itself? What should it nourish itself with? How could it grow and multiply? We know indeed more or less what the organic is: and shall we reinterpret the unspeakably derivative, late, rare, chance phenomena which we perceive only on the surface of the earth into the essential, universal, eternal, as they do who call the universe an organism? I find that disgusting. Let us likewise beware of believing the universe is a machine; it is certainly not constructed so as to perform some operation, we do it far too great honour with the word ‘machine’. Let us beware of presupposing that something so orderly as the cyclical motions of our planetary neighbours are the general and universal case; even a glance at the Milky Way gives rise to doubt whether there may not there exist far more crude and contradictory motions, likewise stars with eternally straight trajectories, and the like. The astral order in which we live is an exception; this order and the apparent permanence which is conditional upon it is in its turn made possible by the exception of exceptions: the formation of the organic. The total nature of the world is, on the other hand, to all eternity chaos, not in the sense that necessity is lacking but in that order, structure, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other human aesthetic notions we may have are lacking. Judged from the viewpoint of our reason, the unsuccessful cases are far and away the rule, the exceptions are not the secret objective, and the whole contraption repeats its theme, which can never be called a melody, over and over again to eternity – and ultimately even the term ‘unsuccessful case’ is already a humanization which contains a reproof. But how can we venture to reprove or praise the universe! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these; it is by no means striving to imitate mankind! It is quite impervious to all our aesthetic and moral judgements! It has likewise no impulse to self-preservationor impulses of any kind; neither does it know any laws. Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress…. Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species…. (109).
    These passages and very many more like them are included in the first three of the four books which constitute the original edition of The Gay Science : they seem to me to mark the end of the road on which Nietzsche set out when he left his forefathers’ faith and went off alone. I do not see how he or anyone could go further in this direction. If he had not found some other direction he would at this time – the second half of 1881 – have reached his end station: and it is his knowledge that this is so that constitutes the intellectual crisis of which Zarathtutra is the resolution.
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    We must now take a look at another aspect of Nietzsche’s authorship. So far as modern Europe is concerned he was very much a pioneer in the demolition of ancient habits of mind and moral prejudices, and he was moreover very little read during his active life: so that to a great degree he had to be his own commentator and critic. There is an element in his work which derives directly from this fact. You will often hear not one voice but two: one asserts, the other objects and qualifies. Or one draws a sombre, the other a happy conclusion from the same