The Portable Nietzsche

by Friedrich Nietzsche

ON LOVE OF THE NEIGHBOR You crowd around your neighbor and have fine words for it. But I say unto you: your love of the neighbor is your bad love of yourselves. You flee to your neighbor from yourselves and would like to make a virtue out of that: but I see through your “selflessness.” The you is older than the I; the you has been pronounced holy, but not yet the I: so man crowds toward his neighbor. Do I recommend love of the neighbor to you? Sooner I should even recommend flight from the neighbor and love of the farthest. Higher than love of the neighbor is love of the farthest and the future; higher yet than the love of human beings I esteem the love of things and ghosts. This ghost that runs after you, my brother, is more beautiful than you; why do you not give him your flesh and your bones? But you are afraid and run to your neighbor. You cannot endure yourselves and do not love yourselves enough: now you want to seduce your neighbor to love, and then gild yourselves with his error. Would that you could not endure all sorts of neighbors and their neighbors; then you would have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves. You invite a witness when you want to speak well of yourselves; and when you have seduced him to think well of you, then you think well of yourselves. Not only are they liars who speak when they know better, but even more those who speak when they know nothing. And thus you speak of yourselves to others and deceive the neighbor w...