The Higher Men

The Higher Men are a company of weary and despairing figures drawn to Zarathustra’s cave, where their need for hope briefly gives way to fellowship, ritual, and renewed panic. Their story is not a single conversion but a sequence of unstable changes: they arrive as a collective cry, speak of learning to hope from Zarathustra, and later gather around the worship of The Ass, only to flee when the Lions approach. Through them, the promise of a new human possibility appears at once compelling and precarious.

Identity and Arrival

Late in the afternoon, after searching and roaming in vain, Zarathustra returns to his cave. Before reaching it, he hears the great cry of distress again. This time it comes from inside the cave, and its many voices sound at a distance like one throat. The discovery gives the gathering its first defining image: separate voices have become difficult to distinguish, and the group’s distress initially registers as a single, strange sound.

Inside, Zarathustra finds the people he had passed that day seated together. The company includes the King on the Right and the King on the Left, The Sorcerer, The Abdicated Pope, The Voluntary Beggar, The Shadow, The Conscientious Man of the Spirit, The Prophet of the Great Weariness, The Ass, and The Ugliest Man. The Ugliest Man has crowned himself and draped two purple sashes around his body, dressing and embellishing himself. Zarathustra’s Eagle is agitated, its feathers ruffled, while The Serpent hangs around its neck. The guests rise and wait respectfully for Zarathustra to speak.

Zarathustra recognizes the gathering as the answer to the cry he has been seeking, and identifies its members as The Higher Man. He is surprised to find them in his own cave, but immediately recalls that he has drawn them there with honey offerings and the enticing calls of his happiness. Their presence is therefore not simply an accidental convergence: it is also the consequence of Zarathustra’s invitation, even if the manner in which they have assembled exceeds what he expected.

A Company Seeking Hope

Zarathustra addresses them as despairing and strange, then observes that they are ill suited to company, disturbing one another’s hearts when seated together. His greeting recognizes their shared condition without pretending that gathering together has already resolved it. Their closeness is both a source of fellowship and a source of emotional friction.

One of the gathered men gives the assembly a larger meaning. The newcomers are no longer despairing, he says, and this change is a sign that better men are on their way. He describes those still to come as the last remnant of God among human beings: people possessed by great longing, great disgust, and great satiety, who do not want to live unless they can learn to hope again. The hope they seek is to be learned from Zarathustra. The speech thus makes the cave gathering a beginning rather than a completed achievement. The Higher Men’s altered condition is presented as an omen of further arrivals, while the possibility of hope remains dependent on a teacher they have only just approached.

At the meal later called The Last Supper, the conversation turns exclusively to The Higher Man. The King on the Right reflects on the rarity of a philosopher who is both clever and wise rather than an ass; The Ass answers him with its braying assent. The episode places talk about human possibility beside a comic, bodily response from the animal. The gathering’s elevated subject is not insulated from absurdity: even its discussion of wisdom is interrupted by the presence of The Ass, whose role will soon become more consequential.

Fellowship and the Worship of The Ass

The cave’s atmosphere changes abruptly after a period of noise and laughter. Zarathustra hears silence, smells sweet vapour and incense like burning pine-cones, and approaches the entrance unseen. He discovers the company kneeling and worshipping The Ass. The kings, The Abdicated Pope, The Sorcerer, The Voluntary Beggar, The Shadow, The Prophet of the Great Weariness, The Conscientious Man of the Spirit, and The Ugliest Man have all returned to a posture of piety. The Ugliest Man begins to gurgle and snort before speaking in a litany praising the animal.

The scene reverses the apparent direction of their earlier change. They had entered as people seeking to learn hope from Zarathustra; now they are gathered in an act of worship that Zarathustra regards as madness. The transformation is not presented as a settled return to their former despair, however. It exposes how readily this company can form a shared ritual, and how little their new fellowship guarantees agreement with Zarathustra’s outlook. The Ass becomes the focus not of philosophical discussion but of collective devotion, while incense, kneeling, and praise make the cave resemble a place of worship.

The Procession and Flight

The next morning, The Higher Men discover that Zarathustra is no longer among them. They arrange themselves in a procession to offer him their morning greeting. The plan suggests that, despite the previous episode, they remain attached to him and wish to approach him together. But as their footsteps reach the cave entrance, the Lions react violently: one turns from Zarathustra, leaps toward the cave, and roars. The Higher Men cry out as with one throat and flee; in an instant, they have vanished.

Their departure echoes their arrival. The first time, many voices joined in a cry of distress; now a single alarm seems to seize the whole company and scatter it. Zarathustra, left among the animals, raises himself from his seat, looks around, and slowly recalls what has happened between the previous day and that morning. The company’s disappearance leaves him alone, and the scene closes not with a completed reconciliation or a confirmed new order, but with his recognition of the gathering’s sudden end.

Narrative Significance

The Higher Men give visible form to the hope Zarathustra has tried to call toward himself. They are numerous, socially varied, and sufficiently united to arrive in his cave together, yet their unity repeatedly proves unstable: a chorus of distress becomes a company at table, the company turns to worship, and a procession dissolves into flight. Their episodes make fellowship a real possibility without treating it as a guarantee of inner transformation.

Their relation to Zarathustra is similarly double. He has helped summon them, and their speaker presents him as the teacher from whom people might learn to hope; yet he also sees that they disturb one another and watches them adopt a form of devotion he finds astonishing. Their role is consequently less to confirm that his teaching has succeeded than to show what its promise attracts, and how vulnerable that promise remains to old habits of despair, worship, and collective fear.