Who was this ugliest man? What was this ugliest thing which Nietzsche—the great man-spy and life-appraiser—had ever discovered in a human being? Before Nietzsche wrote, _thus spake Zarathustra_, he expresses himself in another work as follows: “Nothing is ugly save the degenerate man.... From the physical standpoint everything ugly weakens and depresses man. It reminds of decay, danger, impotence; he literally loses strength in its presence. The effect of ugliness may be gauged by the dynamometer. Whenever man’s spirits are downcast, it is a sign that he scents the proximity of something ‘ugly.’ His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage and his pride—these things collapse at the sight of what is ugly, and rise at the sight of what is beautiful.... Ugliness is understood to signify a hint or a symptom of degeneration; that which reminds us, however, remotely of degeneracy, impels us to the judgment ‘ugly.’ Every sign of exhaustion, of gravity, of age, of fatigue; every kind of constraint, such as cramp, or paralysis; and above all the smells, colors and forms associated with decomposition and putrefaction, however much they may have been attenuated into symbols,—all these things provoke the same reaction, which is the judgment ‘ugly.’ A certain hatred expresses itself here: who is it that man hates? Without a doubt it is _the decline of his type_. In this regard his hatred springs from the deepest instinct of the race. There is horror, caution, profundity, and far-reaching vision in this hatred,—it is the most profound hatred that exists.” Nowhere has Nietzsche told us of the zenith, who his superman is. But he here tells us of the nadir, who the ugliest man is—and the superman is the exact and august opposite. Thus we could ourselves construct his superman.