I had rather live my own life than any other man's life. My own vision is my home. But every great man's inspiration is a challenge, and until you have mastered it you can not go on.
I speak not of poets, nor of philosophers, but of religious teachers, of prophets; and I speak but my opinion—let every man form his own. I say that I have read all those that men honor, and that a greater prophet than this man has not come upon the earth in centuries. I think of Emerson and Carlyle as the religious teachers, the prophets, of this time; and beside this mighty spirit Emerson is a child and Carlyle a man without a faith or an idea. I call him the John Baptist of the new Dispensation, the first high priest of the Religion of Evolution; and I bid the truth-seeker read well his Bible, for in it lies the future of mankind for ages upon ages to come.
Half that I love in my soul's life I owe to the prophet of Nazareth. The other half I owe,—not to Nietzsche, but to the new Dispensation of which he is a priest. Nietzsche will stand alone; but he is nevertheless the child of his age—he sings what thousands feel.
It is a disadvantage to be the first man. If you are the first man you see but half-truths and you hate your enemies. When you seek truth, truly, all systems and all faiths of men—they are beautiful to you—born of sorrow, and hallowed with love; but they will not satisfy you, and you put them by. You do not let them influence you one way or the other; you can no more find truth while you are bound to them by hatred than while you are bound to them by love. There are dreary places in “Also sprach Zarathustra,” narrownesses and weaknesses too; they come whenever the writer is thinking of the evils of the hour, whenever he is gazing, not on the vision of his soul, but on the half-truths of the men about him.
When I speak of Christ let no man think of Christianity. I speak of a prince of the soul, the boldest, the freest, the noblest of men that I know. With the thousand systems that mankind has made in his memory, I have simply nothing in any way to do.