"The misery of those who live by labour must be made yet more rigorous, in order that a very few Olympian men may create a world of art." (Unnecessary to say that the son of the Pastor of Naumburg was to have a life membership of Olympus.) "At their expense, by the artifice of unpaid labour, the privileged classes should be relieved from the struggle for life, and given such new conditions that they can create, and satisfy a new order of needs.... And if it is true to say that the Greeks were destroyed by slavery, this other affirmation is most certainly even truer; for lack of slavery, we are perishing."
The reader can but be astonished at the modesty of the slightly impecunious professor from Basel. Why did he not call himself a god? Why a mere superman?
On the subject of God and gods, however, he had views of his own. Just as Fichte used to say to his philosophical students at a certain point in the course: "To-morrow, gentlemen, I will proceed to create God!" so Nietzsche was never tired of repeating: "I have killed God!" His argument is very simple—
"If there did exist gods, how could I bear not to be a god? Consequently, there are no gods."
As to that special mode of worship called Christianity, upon which all justice, love, pity, and help of our neighbours, is in the tradition of Europe,
