In all the content and more particularly in the form of this book the reader will find the same voluntary turning away from those instincts which made a Zarathustra possible. The eye which owing to tremendous compulsion has become accustomed to see at a great distance-Zarathustra is even more far-sighted than the Tsar-is here forced to focus sharply on that which is close at hand, on the present time, on the things that lie about us. If you remember that this book comes after Zarathustra you may possibly guess to what dietetic regime it owes its life. All those things of which the age is proud-as for instance its famed "objectivity”, "sympathy with all that suffers”, its "historical sense”, with its subjection to the tastes of others, with its prostration before petits faits and the rage for science-are shown to be contradictions of this type, to be almost as bad manners. In this last respect the book is a school for gentlemen-the term gentleman being understood here in a much more spiritual and radical sense than has been used before. In all its essential points this book (1886) is a criticism of modernity embracing the modern sciences, arts, even polities together with indications as to a type which would be the antithesis of modern man or as little like him as possible a noble and affirmative type. From that time onward all my writings are bait: maybe I understand as much about fishing as most people? If nothing was caught it was not I who was at fault. Meanwhile I had slowly to look about me for my peers, for those who out of strength would offer me a helping hand in my work of destruction. Now that the affirmative part of my life task was accomplished there came the turn of the negating part both in word and deed: the revaluation of all existing values, the great war-the summoning of the day when the fatal outcome of the struggle would be decided. My work for the years that followed was clear.
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