The good — they have always been the beginning of the end.

27

O my brethren, have ye also understood this word? And what I once said of the ‘last man’?

With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just?

Break up, break up, I pray you, the good and just! — O my brethren, have ye understood also this word?

28

Ye flee from me? Ye are frightened? Ye tremble at this word?

O my brethren, when I enjoined on you to break up the good, and the tables of the good, then only did I embark man on his high seas.

And now only cometh unto him the great terror, the great outlook, the great sickness, the great nausea, the great sea-sickness.

False shores and false securities did the good teach you; in the lies of the good were ye born and bred. Everything hath been radically contorted and distorted by the good.

But he who discovered the country of ‘man’, discovered also the country of ‘man’s future’. Now shall ye be sailors for me, brave, patient!

Keep yourselves up betimes, my brethren, learn to keep yourselves up! The sea stormeth; many seek to raise themselves again by you.

The sea stormeth; all is in the sea. Well! Cheer up, ye old seaman-hearts!

What of fatherland! Thither striveth our helm where our children’s land is! Thitherwards, stormier than the sea, stormeth our great longing!

29

‘Why so hard!’ — said to the diamond one day the charcoal; ‘are we then not near relatives?’

Why so soft, O my brethren? Thus do I ask you: are ye then not — my brethren?

Why so soft, so submissive and yielding? Why is there so much negation and abnegation in your hearts? Why is there so little fate in your looks?

And if ye will not be fates and inexorable ones, how can ye one day — conquer with me?

And if your hardness will not glance and cut and chip to pieces, how can ye one day — create with me?

For the creators are hard. And blessedness must it seem to you to press your hand upon millenniums as upon wax —

Blessedness to write upon the will of millenniums as upon brass — harder than brass, nobler than brass. Entirely hard is only the noblest.

This new table, O my brethren, put I up over you: Become hard!