My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others.

There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas.

That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their den, these poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life — is because they would thereby do injury.

To those would they thereby do injury who have power at present; for with those the preaching of death is still most at home.

Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise; and they themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners.

With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaketh justice unto me: ‘Men are not equal.’

And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Superman, if I spake otherwise?

On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and always shall there be more war and inequality among them: thus doth my great love make me speak!

Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities; and with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other the supreme fight!

Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself!

Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs — life itself; into remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties — therefore doth it require elevation!

And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it require steps, and variance of steps and climbers! To rise striveth life, and in rising to surpass itself.

And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula’s den is, riseth aloft an ancient temple’s ruins — just behold it with enlightened eyes!

Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as the wisest ones about the secret of life!

That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable.

How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle; how with light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving ones —

Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely will we strive against one another!

Alas! There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old enemy! Divinely steadfast and beautiful, it hath bit me on the finger!

‘Punishment must there be, and justice’ — so thinketh it; ‘not gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honour of enmity!’

Yea, it hath revenged itself! And alas, now will it make my soul also dizzy with revenge!