Friedrich Nietzsche

The new idol

Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not here, my brothers: here there are States.

The State? What is that? Well! Then open your ears, for now I will say something to you concerning the death of peoples.

The State is the coldest of all cold monsters. It also lies coldly; and this lie crawls out of its mouth: “I, the State, am the people.”

It is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith and a love over them: thus, they served life.

Destroyers are they who set traps for many and call them the State: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.

Where there is still a people, there the State is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.

This sign I give to you: every people speak its language of good and evil, which its neighbour does not understand. It has invented its own language in customs and laws.

But the State lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies — and whatever it has, it has stolen it.

Everything in him is false; he bites with his stolen teeth, the biting one. Even his entrails are false.

Confusion of speech of good and evil. I give you this sign as a sign of the State. Truly, this sign signifies the will to die! Truly, it beckons to the preachers of death!

Far too many are born: for the superfluous ones was the State devised!

Look at how it lures them to itself, the many-too-many! How it gobbles them up and chews and ruminates them!

“On earth there is nothing greater than I: it is I who am the regulating finger of God”⁠ — thus roars the monster. And not only the long-eared and shortsighted fall upon their knees!

Oh, even in you, you great souls, he whispers his dark lies! Oh, he guesses the rich hearts that love to spill out!

Yes, he will also betray you, defeaters of the old God! You grew weary in battle, and now your weariness serves the new idol!

The new idol would like to gather heroes and honourable men around him! He likes to bask in the sunshine of a good conscience — the cold monster!

He wants to give you everything if you worship him, the new idol: so, he buys the splendour of your virtues and the look of your proud eyes.

He wants to lure, through you, the many-too-many! Yes, a hellish trick has been devised here, a horse of death jingling with the trappings of divine honours!

Yes, a death for many was invented there, which praises itself as life: truly, a service to the heart of all preachers of death!

I call it State, where all drinks are poisonous, the good and the bad. State where all lose themselves, the good and the bad. State where the slow suicide of all is called “life”.

Just see these superfluous beings! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. They call culture their theft⁠—and everything becomes sickness and misery for them!

Look at these superfluous people! They are always sick; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another and cannot even digest themselves.

Look at these superfluous ones! They acquire wealth and become poorer with it. They want power, and, first of all, the lever of power, a lot of money — these impotent ones!

See them clamber, these nimble monkeys! They climb over each other and drag themselves into the mud and the abyss.

They all want to get to the throne: it's their madness — as if happiness were sitting on the throne! Often the filth sits on the throne — and often the throne sits on the filth.

They are all madmen to me and climbing monkeys and overexcited. Their idol smells bad to me, the cold monster: they all smell bad to me, these idolaters.

My brothers, do you want to suffocate in the darkness of their maws and appetites? Why don't you break the windows and jump into the open air?

Get out of the way of bad odours! Get away from the idolatry of the superfluous!

Get away from the bad odour! Get away from the fumes of these human sacrifices!

Even now the earth remains free for great souls. There are still many empty seats for the lonely and for people together, around which flutters the odour of tranquil seas.

A free life is still available to great souls. Truly, he who possesses little is so much the less possessed: blessed be moderate poverty!

Where the State ends, there begins the human being who is not superfluous. There begins the song of the necessary, the unique and irreplaceable melody.

There, where the State ends — look at me, my brothers! — Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the superhuman?

Thus spoke Zarathustra.