He will realize that love was simply an evolutionary reaction to the body's need for warmth. The people still laugh at him, so Zarathustra decides to tell them of 'the last human being.' The last human being upon the earth will realize that human beings invented happiness. The overman is a person who lives in order to know, who lives to create virtue, and who seeks no thanks for his virtue. He tells them that, as human beings, they can 'cross over' and 'go under.' This, he says, is the true way to sacrifice one's self to the earth and become an overman. Zarathustra is shocked at the response he gets, and he continues to preach to the people.

When Zarathustra finishes, the crowd thinks he's been talking about the tightrope walker, and they laugh at him. The overman's greatest hour is when he overcomes feelings and states such as happiness, reason, virtue, and justice. The people should no longer listen to anyone who tells them that their soul must escape their body to go to heaven, because God has died. He says that as they laugh at the apes, so the overman will laugh at a regular human being. He begins to tell them about the 'overman,' a state of being that they are capable of entering. Zarathustra enters a town, and he begins speaking to a crowd of people waiting to watch a tightrope walker. As they part, Zarathustra is surprised that the old man, as wise as he is, has not heard the news that Zarathustra has come to bring: 'God is dead!' He prefers to commune with God in the wilderness away from humanity. The old man himself lives in the woods to get away from human beings, saying that they are 'too imperfect' for him.

The old man asks him why he doesn't want to stay in the woods with the birds and the bears. Zarathustra replies that he loves mankind.

He warns Zarathustra not to return to civilization with the fire of his knowledge, for anyone who starts a fire will be punished as an arsonist. The old man can tell that Zarathustra has been transformed. The old man tells Zarathustra that he saw him pass by ten years ago. He tells the sun that the reason he wants to return to humanity is so that he can spread the wisdom he has attained to all people.Īs Zarathustra is coming down from the mountain, he encounters an old man. He first has a conversation with the sun and tells the sun that he has tired of all the wisdom he has accumulated during his time alone. He leaves the world to live as a hermit in the mountains, but one day his heart is 'transformed' and he feels the need to go back into the world of humanity. Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra begins with the line: 'When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains.' Zarathustra is a kind of modern day prophet.

Thus spoke zarathustra kaufmann