Ecce Homo Complete Works, Volume Seventeen · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
5
Zarathustra, as the first psychologist of the good man, is perforce the friend of the evil man. When a degenerate kind of man has succeeded to the highest rank among the human species, his position must have been gained at the cost of the reverse type--at the cost of the strong man who is certain of life. When the gregarious animal stands in the glorious rays of the purest virtue, the exceptional man must be degraded to the rank of the evil. If falsehood insists at all costs on claiming the word "truth" for its own particular standpoint, the really truthful man must be sought out among the despised. Zarathustra allows of no doubt here; he says that it was precisely the knowledge of the good, of the "best," which inspired his absolute horror of men. And it was out of this feeling of repulsion that he grew the wings which allowed him to soar into remote futures. He does not conceal the fact that his type of man is one which is relatively superhuman--especially as opposed to the "good" man, and that the good and the just would regard his superman as the _devil._ "Ye higher men, on whom my gaze now falls, this is the doubt that ye wake in my breast, and this is my secret laughter: methinks ye would call my Superman--the devil! So strange are ye in your souls to all that is great, that the Superman would be terrible in your eyes for his goodness." It is from this passage, and from no other, that you must set out to understand the goal to which Zarathustra aspires--the kind of man that he conceives sees reality _as it is;_ he is strong enough for this--he is not estranged or far removed from it, he is that reality himself, in his own nature can be found all the terrible and questionable character of reality: _only thus can man have greatness._
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.