If it is true that much in the old moral codes is based upon ignorance, and cultivated by greed, it is also true that much in the old moral codes is based upon facts which will not change so long as man is what he is—­a creature of impulses, good and bad, wise and foolish, selfish and generous, and compelled to make choice between these impulses; so long as he is a material body and a personal consciousness, obliged to live in society and adjust himself to the rights of others.  What I would like to say to young radicals—­if there is any way to say it without seeming a prig—­is that in choosing their own path through life, they will need not merely enthusiasm and radical fervor, but wisdom and judgment and hard study.

It is our fundamental demand that society shall cease to repeat over and over the blunders of the past, the blunders of tyranny and slavery, of luxury and poverty, which wrecked the ancient societies; and surely it is a poor way to begin by repeating in our own persons the most ancient blunders of the moral life.  To light the fires of lust in our hearts, and let them smoulder there, and imagine we are trying new experiments in psychology!  Who does not know the radical woman who demonstrates her emancipation from convention by destroying her nerves with nicotine?  Who does not know the genius of revolt who demonstrates his repudiation of private property by permitting his lady loves to support him?  Who does not know the man who finds in the phrases of revolution the most effective devices for the seducing of young girls?

You will have read this book to ill purpose if you draw the conclusion that there is anything in it to spare you the duty of getting yourself moral standards and holding yourself to them.  On the contrary, because your task is the highest and hardest that man has yet undertaken—­for this reason you will need standards the most exacting ever formulated.  Let me quote some words from a teacher you will not accuse of holding to the slave-moralities: 

     Free dost thou call thyself?  Thy ruling thoughts will I
     hear, and not that thou hast escaped a yoke.

     Art thou such a one that can escape a yoke?  Free from what? 
     What is that to Zarathustra!  Clear shall your eye tell me: 
     free to what?

     Canst thou give to thyself thy good and thine evil, and hang
     thy will above thee as thy law?  Canst thou be thine own
     judge, and avenger of thy law?

     Fearful it is to be alone with the judge and the avenger of
     thy law.  So is a stone flung out into empty space and into
     the icy breath of isolation.