demurs at speaking of virtue as its own reward—he dislikes the latter word altogether. When, Zarathustra asks, was it ever heard that a mother would be repaid for her love? and a man should love his virtue as his child.[1]
"Who will be paid?
The saleable."[2]
"You are too pure for the soil of the words revenge, punishment, reward, requital."[3] And yet sacrifice (for he does not eschew the word) may go far. Virtue, in the great sense, is an arrow of yearning and a willingness to disappear.[4] To be free in any great way is to be indifferent to hardship, severity, privation, even to life; to be ready to sacrifice men for a cause, oneself not excepted.[5] Nietzsche's mind goes back to ancient customs, and he says, "whoever is the first-born, he is ever sacrificed. Now we are the first-born. But so wills it our kind and species; and I love those who will not hold themselves back."[6]
With perspectives like these Nietzsche criticises "love of neighbors." Higher than love to those near us is love to those far away. Yes, higher than love to men is love to things (Sachen) and ghosts (Gespenster). "This ghost that follows thee, my brother, is more beautiful than thou; why givest thou not to it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou art afraid and fleest to thy neighbor.… Let the future and what is furthest off be the motive of thy to-day."[7] More prosaically he puts his idea and demand thus: "to bring beings to existence who shall stand elevated above the whole species 'man'; and to sacrifice ourselves and our neighbors to this end."[8] The motive is still love, but love with distant instead of near perspectives. He formulates the "new problem" in this way: whether a part of mankind might not by training be developed
