My guests, ye higher men. I will speak plain language and plainly with you. It is not for you that I have waited here in these mountains.

(‘Plain language and plainly?’ Good God! said here the king on the left to himself. One seeth he doth not know the good Occidentals, this sage out of the Orient!

But he meaneth ‘blunt language and bluntly’ — well, that is not the worst taste in these days!)

Ye may, verily, all of you be higher men, continued Zarathustra; but for me — ye are neither high enough, nor strong enough.

For me, that is to say, for the inexorable which is now silent in me, but will not always be silent. And if ye appertain to me, still it is not as my right arm.

For he who himself standeth, like you, on sickly and tender legs, wisheth above all to be treated indulgently, whether he be conscious of it or hide it from himself.

My arms and my legs, however, I do not treat indulgently, I do not treat my warriors indulgently; how then could ye be fit for my warfare?

With you I should spoil all my victories. And many of you would tumble over if ye but heard the loud beating of my drums.

Moreover, ye are not sufficiently beautiful and well-born for me. I require pure, smooth mirrors for my doctrines; on your surface even mine own likeness is distorted.

On your shoulders presseth many a burden, many a recollection; many a mischievous dwarf squatteth in your corners. There is concealed populace also in you.

And though ye be high and of a higher type, much in you is crooked and misshapen. There is no smith in the world that could hammer you right and straight for me.

Ye are only bridges; may higher ones pass over upon you! Ye signify steps; so do not upbraid him who ascendeth beyond you into his height!

Out of your seed there may one day arise for me a genuine son and perfect heir; but that time is distant. Ye yourselves are not those unto whom my heritage and name belong.

Not for you do I wait here in these mountains, not with you may I descend for the last time. Ye have come unto me only as a presage that higher ones are on the way to me—

Not the men of great longing, of great loathing, of great satiety, and that which ye call the remnant of God—

Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! For others do I wait here in these mountains, and will not lift my foot from thence without them—

For higher ones, stronger ones, triumphanter ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in body and soul: laughing lions must come!

O my guests, ye strange ones—have ye yet heard nothing of my children? And that they are on the way to me?

Do speak unto me of my gardens, of my Happy Isles, of my new beautiful race—why do ye not speak unto me thereof?