“Why so hard!”—said the diamond once unto the charcoal; “are we then not next of kin?” “Why so soft? O my brethren; this is my question to you. For are ye not—my brothers? “Why so soft, so servile and yielding? Why are your hearts so fond of denial and self-denial? How is it that so little fate looketh out from your eyes? “And if ye will not be men of fate and inexorable, how can ye hope one day to conquer with me? “And if your hardness will not sparkle, cut and divide, how can ye hope one day to create with me? “For all creators are hard. And it must seem to you blessed to stamp your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,— —Blessed to write upon the will of millenniums as upon brass,—harder than brass, nobler than brass.—Hard through and through is only the noblest. This new table of values, O my brethren, I set over your heads: Become hard.” —“Thus Spake Zarathustra,” III., 29. THE ANTICHRIST An Attempted Criticism of Christianity PREFACE This book belongs to the very few. Maybe not one of them is yet alive; unless he be of those who understand my Zarathustra. How _can_ I confound myself with those who to-day already find a hearing?—Only the day after to-morrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously. I am only too well aware of the conditions under which a man understands me, and then _necessarily_ understands. He must be intellectually upright to the point of hardness, in order even to endure my seriousness and my passion. He must be used to living on mountain-tops,—and to feeling the wretched gabble of politics and national egotism _beneath_ him. He must have become indifferent; he must never inquire whether truth is profitable or whether it may prove fatal.... Possessing from strength a predilection for questions for which no one has enough courage nowadays; the courage for the _forbidden;_ his predestination must be the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for the most remote things. A new conscience for truths which hitherto have remained dumb. And the will to economy on a large scale: to husband his strength and his enthusiasm.... He must honour himself, he must love himself; he must be absolutely free with regard to himself.... Very well then! Such men alone are my readers, my proper readers, my preordained readers: of what account are the rest?—the rest are simply—humanity.—One must be superior to humanity in power, in loftiness of soul,—in contempt. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. 1