This is a poetical epitome of some of the scathing criticism of scholars which appears in the first of the "Thoughts out of Season"--the polemical pamphlet (written in 1873) against David Strauss and his school. He reproaches his former colleagues with being sterile and shows them that their sterility is the result of their not believing in anything. "He who had to create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions--and believed in believing!" (See Note on Chapter LXXVII.) In the last two verses he reveals the nature of his altruism. How far it differs from that of Christianity we have already read in the discourse "Neighbour-Love", but here he tells us definitely the nature of his love to mankind; he explains why he was compelled to assail the Christian values of pity and excessive love of the neighbour, not only because they are slave-values and therefore tend to promote d

Place: Chapter XXXVI. The Land of Culture. · ¶3890
License: Public domain · Source
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Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (WLC), CC BY 4.0

This is a poetical epitome of some of the scathing criticism of schola… — Thus Spake Zarathustra