272 Nietzsche
the "death of God." The Übermensch is free of religion. He has not lost
it, but reclaimed it for himself. The typical nihilist, by contrast, the "last
man," has merely forfeited religion and retained life in all its profane
wretchedness. Nietzsche aspired to salvage sanctifying powers for the
here and now from the nihilistic tendency of vulgarization by means of
his Übermensch.
Nietzsche invoked this idea with powerful imagery, and without
sounding preachy, in The Gay Science: 'There is a lake that forwent flow-
ing off one day and formed a dam where it had been flowing off before:
since then, this lake has been rising higher and higher. Perhaps this very
privation will also grant us the strength to endure privation ourselves;
perhaps from that point on, man will continue to rise up by not flowing
<w/into a god" (3,528; GS§ 285). The Übermensch is the Promethean man
who has discovered his théogonie talents. The God outside of him is
dead, but the God who is known to live through man and in him is alive.
God is a name for the creative power of man. This creative power
enables man to partake of the vast dimensions of existence. The first
book of Zarathustra closes with these words: "All the gods are dead; now
we want the Übermensch to live" (4,102; ZFirst Part, "On the Gift-Giving
Virtue" § 3). The section called "On the Blissful Islands," in the second
book of Zarathustra, expands this idea: "Once you said God when you
looked out onto distant seas; now, however, I have taught you to say:
Übermensch. God is a conjecture, but I do not want your conjectures to
reach beyond your creative will. Could you create a god? Then do not talk
to me about any gods. But you could certainly create the Übermensch"
(4,109). At the very instant that man discovers and affirms his théogo-
nie power and in the process learns to revere himself he stops disparag-
ing his own achievements. When this stage is reached, Zarathustra
exclaims: "Only now is the mountain of man's future in labor" (4,357; Ζ
Fourth Part, "On the Higher Man" § 2). The Übermensch who develops
after the death of God is the person who no longer requires a detour via
God to find faith in himself.
We have yet to reach, however, the aspect of the Übermensch that was