One Must Still Have Chaos In

From the Prologue of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Section 5, in Zarathustra's first speech to the crowd assembled to watch a tightrope walker. Zarathustra urges the people to aspire to the Übermensch — the self-overcoming individual who creates new values — warning that the coming age would produce instead the "Last Man," who has eliminated all inner tension and settled for comfort. "Chaos" in Nietzsche's usage is not mere disorder but the raw, unresolved creative energy of competing drives and passions; the "dancing star" is the brilliant individual born of that tension. The crowd's response is telling: they cheer for the Last Man and demand to be shown him.