In this book Nietzsche challenges the three presuppositions of Kantian/Christian morality -- freedom, immortality, and god.
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AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
In this book we find a “subterrestrial” at work, digging, mining,
undermining. You can see him, always provided that you have eyes for such
deep work,—how he makes his way slowly, cautiously, gently but surely,
without showing signs of the weariness that usually accompanies a long
privation of light and air. He might even be called happy, despite his
labours in the dark. Does it not seem as if some faith were leading him
on, some solace recompensing him for his toil? Or that he himself desires
a long period of darkness, an unintelligible, hidden, enigmatic something,
knowing as he does that he will in time have his own morning, his own
redemption, his own rosy dawn?—Yea, verily he will return: ask him not
what he seeketh in the depths; for he himself will tell you, this apparent
Trophonius and subterrestrial, whensoever he once again becomes man. One
easily unlearns how to hold one’s tongue when one has for so long been a
mole, and all alone, like him.—
. . .
575.
WE AERONAUTS OF THE INTELLECT.—All those daring birds that soar far and
ever farther into space, will somewhere or other be certain to find
themselves unable to continue their flight, and they will perch on a mast
or some narrow ledge—and will be grateful even for this miserable
accommodation! But who could conclude from this that there was not an
endless free space stretching far in front of them, and that they had
flown as far as they possibly could? In the end, however, all our great
teachers and predecessors have come to a standstill, and it is by no means
in the noblest or most graceful attitude that their weariness has brought
them to a pause: the same thing will happen to you and me! but what does
this matter to either of us? Other birds will fly farther! Our minds and
hopes vie with them far out and on high; they rise far above our heads and
our failures, and from this height they look far into the distant horizon
and see hundreds of birds much more powerful than we are, striving whither
we ourselves have also striven, and where all is sea, sea, and nothing but
sea!
And where, then, are we aiming at? Do we wish to cross the sea? whither
does this over-powering passion urge us, this passion which we value more
highly than any other delight? Why do we fly precisely in this direction,
where all the suns of humanity have hitherto set? Is it possible that
people may one day say of us that we also steered westward, hoping to
reach India—but that it was our fate to be wrecked on the infinite? Or, my
brethren? or—?