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As a matter of fact, “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, though it is unquestionably Nietzsche’s opus magnum, is by no means the first of Nietzsche’s works that the beginner ought to undertake to read. The author himself refers to it as the deepest work ever offered to the German public, and elsewhere speaks of his other writings as being necessary for the understanding of it. But when it is remembered that in Zarathustra we not only have the history of his most intimate experiences, friendships, feuds, disappointments, triumphs and the like, but that the very form in which they are narrated is one which tends rather to obscure than to throw light upon them, the difficulties which meet the reader who starts quite unprepared will be seen to be really formidable.

Zarathustra, then,—this shadowy, allegorical personality, speaking in allegories and parables, and at times not even refraining from relating his own dreams—is a figure we can understand but very imperfectly if we have no knowledge of his creator and counterpart, Friedrich Nietzsche; and it were therefore well, previous to our study of the more abstruse parts of this book, if we were to turn to some authoritative book on Nietzsche’s life and works and to read all that is there said on the subject. Those who can read German will find an excellent guide, in this respect, in Frau Foerster-Nietzsche’s exhaustive and highly interesting biography of her brother: “Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche’s” (published by Naumann); while the works of Deussen, Raoul Richter, and Baroness Isabelle von Unger-Sternberg, will be found to throw useful and necessary light upon many questions which it would be difficult for a sister to touch upon.

In regard to the actual philosophical views expounded in this work, there is an excellent way of clearing up any difficulties they may present, and that is by an appeal to Nietzsche’s other works. Again and again, of course, he will be found to express himself so clearly that all reference to his other writings may be dispensed with; but where this is not the case, the advice he himself gives is after all the best to be followed here, viz.:—to regard such works as: “Joyful Science”, “Beyond Good and Evil”, “The Genealogy of Morals”, “The Twilight of the Idols”, “The Antichrist”, “The Will to Power”, etc., etc., as the necessary preparation for “Thus Spake Zarathustra”.

These directions, though they are by no means simple to carry out, seem at least to possess the quality of definiteness and straightforwardness. “Follow them and all will be clear,” I seem to imply. But I regret to say that this is not really the case. For my experience tells me that even after the above directions have been followed with the greatest possible zeal, the student will still halt in perplexity before certain passages in the book before us, and wonder what they mean. Now, it is with the view of giving a little additional help to all those who find themselves in this position that I proceed to put forth my own personal interpretation of the more abstruse passages in this work.

In offering this little commentary to the Nietzsche student, I should like it to be understood that I make no claim as to its infallibility or indispensability. It represents but an attempt on my part—a very feeble one perhaps—to give the reader what little help I can in surmounting difficulties which a long study of Nietzsche’s life and works has enabled me, partially I hope, to overcome.

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Perhaps it would be as well to start out with a broad and rapid sketch of Nietzsche as a writer on Morals, Evolution, and Sociology, so that the reader may be prepared to pick out for himself, so to speak, all passages in this work bearing in any way upon Nietzsche’s views in those three important branches of knowledge.

(A.) Nietzsche and Morality.

In morality, Nietzsche starts out by adopting the position of the relativist. He says there are no absolute values “good” and “evil”; these are mere means adopted by all in order to acquire power to maintain their place in the world, or to become supreme. It is the lion’s good to devour an antelope. It is the dead-leaf butterfly’s good to tell a foe a falsehood. For when the dead-leaf butterfly is in danger, it clings to the side of a twig, and what it says to its foe is practically this: “I am not a butterfly, I am a dead leaf, and can be of no use to thee.” This is a lie which is good to the butterfly, for it preserves it. In nature every species of organic being instinctively adopts and practises those acts which most conduce to the prevalence or supremacy of its kind. Once the most favourable order of conduct is found, proved efficient and established, it becomes the ruling morality of the species that adopts it and bears them along to victory. All species must not and cannot value alike, for what is the lion’s good is the antelope’s evil and vice versa.

Concepts of good and evil are therefore, in their origin, merely a means to an end, they are expedients for acquiring power.

Applying this principle to mankind, Nietzsche attacked Christian moral values. He declared them to be, like all other morals, merely an expedient for protecting a certain type of man. In the case of Christianity this type was, according to Nietzsche, a low one.

Conflicting moral codes have been no more than the conflicting weapons of different classes of men; for in mankind there is a continual war between the powerful, the noble, the strong, and the well-constituted on the one side, and the impotent, the mean, the weak, and the ill-constituted on the other. The war is a war of moral principles. The morality of the powerful class, Nietzsche calls NOBLE- or MASTER-MORALITY; that of the weak and subordinate class he calls SLAVE-MORALITY. In the first morality it is the eagle which, looking down upon a browsing lamb, contends that “eating lamb is good.” In the second, the slave-morality, it is the lamb which, looking up from the sward, bleats dissentingly: “Eating lamb is evil.”

(B.) The Master- and Slave-Morality Compared.

The first morality is active, creative, Dionysian. The second is passive, defensive,—to it belongs the “struggle for existence.”

Where attempts have not been made to reconcile the two moralities, they may be described as follows:—All is GOOD in the noble morality which proceeds from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness, and awfulness; for, the motive force behind the people practising it is “the struggle for power.” The antithesis “good and bad” to this first class means the same as “noble” and “despicable.” “Bad” in the master-morality must be applied to the coward, to all acts that spring from weakness, to the man with “an eye to the main chance,” who would forsake everything in order to live.