Zarathustra was thirty years old when he left his homeland and the lake of Urmi and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years he did not tire of them. But at last his heart changed — and one morning, rising with the dawn, he stood before the sun and spoke thus to it: "You, great star! What would your happiness be, if you did not have those whom you shine upon! For ten years you have climbed here to my cave: you would have grown weary of your light and of your journey without me, my eagle and my serpent. But we awaited you each morning, we took from you your overflow and blessed you for it. Behold, I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to receive it, I would fain bestow and distribute until the wise have once more become joyous and the poor once more rich. Therefore I must descend into the deep: that is what I offer you, great star. Go hence, that I may rejoice in my ending!" Thus began Zarathustra's going-under.

Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, and no one met him but an old saint who had left his forest shrine to dig roots for his animals. And thus spoke the old saint to Zarathustra, welcoming him. And they spoke of many things. But when Zarathustra had come to the nearest town lying on the edge of the forest, he found many people gathered in the marketplace, for it had been promised that a tightrope walker would perform. And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people: "Behold, I teach you the Overman! The Overman is that being who shall be of the earth. Let your will say: the Overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! They are despisers of life, dying and poisoned, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go their way! Once man blasphemed God, but now, since God is dead, man blasphemes against himself. Behold, I teach you the Overman!

Man is a rope stretched between animal and Overman — a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a trembling and a halt. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going-under. I love those who do not know how to live except by going under, for they are the crossing-over ones. I love the great despisers, because they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other shore. I love those who do not first seek beyond the stars a reason to go under and be sacrificed, but who devote themselves to the earth, that it may one day become the earth of the Overman. I love him who lives in order to know, and seeks to know in order that the Overman may live: and thus he wills his own going-under. Behold, I teach you the Overman!

But the people laughed at Zarathustra in the marketplace and mocked him, as if a buffoon from a fair had been speaking to them. Meanwhile the tightrope walker, believing the performance had begun, started his work: he stepped out of the small door and walked over the rope, suspended high above the square and the crowd. And Zarathustra, watching him too, said within himself: "Behold, what a wondrous thing man is! What I love in him is that he is a bridge and not a goal. And what I can love in him is that he is an overture and a going-under. I love him who wills to create beyond himself, and thereby perishes."

But suddenly, while all watched the tightrope walker, there came a jester, who leapt forward behind him and cried out to him with a devilish voice: "To go! Forward! Ugly limper!" And the tightrope walker, hearing this voice, lost his footing and his balance, and fell. And the crowd threw themselves upon the falling body with lances and broken sticks. Zarathustra, however, remained standing beside the dying man and said: "You have made your vocation into a danger, and now there is nothing left of it. You have risked your calling, and now you must be buried. You made man more than he has been hitherto: you, however, must pay for it with yourself." Then the dying man said: "I have risked my calling, as you have risked yours. He to whom the people say 'You are going down' — for that is man!" And Zarathustra said within himself: "But man is that which must be overcome.