Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of freedom—

Where I also found again mine old devil and arch-enemy, the spirit of gravity, and all that it created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil—

For must there not be that which is danced over, danced beyond? Must there not, for the sake of the nimble, the nimblest—be moles and clumsy dwarfs?

3

There was it also where I picked up from the path the word ‘Superman’, and that man is something that must be surpassed—

That man is a bridge and not a goal—rejoicing over his noontides and evenings, as advances to new rosy dawns—

The Zarathustra word of the great noontide, and whatever else I have hung up over men like purple evening-afterglows.

Verily, also new stars did I make them see, along with new nights; and over cloud and day and night did I spread out laughter like a gay-colour canopy.

I taught them all my poetisation and aspiration: to compose and collect into unity what is fragment in man, and riddle and fearful chance—

As composer, riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance did I teach them to create the future, and all that hath been—to redeem by creating.

The past of man to redeem, and every ‘It was’ to transform, until the Will saith: ‘But so did I will it! So shall I will it’—

This did I call redemption; this alone taught I them to call redemption—

Now do I await my redemption—that I may go unto them for the last time.

For once more will I go unto men: amongst them will my sun set; in dying will I give them my choicest gift!

From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one; gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches—

So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with golden oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it—

Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down; now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables— half-written.

4

Behold, here is a new table; but where are my brethren who will carry it with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?

Thus demandeth my great love to the remotest ones: be not considerate of thy neighbour. Man is something that must be surpassed.