Introduction

At thirty Zarathustra left his home and went into the mountains, where for ten years he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude. One morning, overflowing like the sun, he resolved to go down and give his wisdom to mankind. In the marketplace he proclaims to the crowd that 'God is dead' and 'I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome.' Man is a rope tied between beast and overman, a rope over an abyss. But the people only laugh at him, preferring to be the 'last men' who seek only comfort and ease and 'have invented happiness'. He wanders, speaks to his disciples, and returns again and again to the solitude of the mountains, until at last he faces his heaviest thought, 'eternal recurrence': would you will your life to return, exactly the same, countless times? Written in poetic language reminiscent of the Bible, it was, Nietzsche said, 'the greatest gift that has ever been made to mankind'.