Corpus · The Gay Science · Full-text route

The Herd’s Conscience, the Open Sea, and the Madman

Optional full-text route · Station 14 of 35

Read: Book III, §§117–125, in full, from the original 1882 edition. Begin at §117 and stop before §126.
Allow: About 50–70 minutes, including the passages, this guide, rereading, and a short written response. This is an editorial estimate, not a measured reading time. The nine sections total about 2,150 words in the free edition; §125 is the longest, followed by §123. If you need two sittings, stop after §122.

Preferred translation: Walter Kaufmann. Free alternative (Thomas Common, The Joyful Wisdom): begin at §117 · §120 · §122 · §124 · §125.

Quotations on this page follow Common’s free translation, including his section titles. Kaufmann’s wording differs, and none of it is quoted here; this lesson has not been compared with Kaufmann’s text. Where a word drives the interpretation, this page notes the German, from the Projekt Gutenberg-DE text.

Before you read

Station 13 ended with morality as “the herd-instinct in the individual.” This station begins by giving that instinct a history and ends with the madman in the market-place. Between them come short studies of benevolence, health, and error, a section on what Christianity taught, a section on knowledge as a passion, and a ship that has left the land.

§125 is the second assignment of Reading 4, which gives it a full close reading as a gap between disbelief and understanding. This station does not repeat that reading. It asks what the eight sections before §125 tell you about the madman’s audience.

The main question: Why does the madman’s audience fail to hear him—and do §§117–124 describe that audience, or the book’s own “we”?

Keep using the marks: P, H, V, and ? for Nietzsche’s own hedge only. Watch the pronouns as well. Several of these sections speak as “we,” and §125’s speaker says “you and I.”

What to notice

1. The sea. §124 says, “We have left the land and have gone aboard ship!” In §125 the mockers ask whether God has “taken a sea-voyage.” The German uses the same phrase in both places, zu Schiff gegangen; Common’s wording hides the echo.
2. Superiority. §122 describes the “pleasurable superiority” with which “we” now read ancient moral books, and then Christian ones. Ask whether the laughing crowd of §125 feels the same.
3. Who is “we”? Mark each “we” in §§117, 121, 122, and 124. Compare them with the madman’s “We have killed him,—you and I!”

Close reading

One way to group the sections

These groups are this guide’s, not Nietzsche’s.

• Conscience, benevolence, and function: §§117, 118, 119.
• Health, error, and life: §§120, 121.
• Christianity and knowledge: §§122, 123.
• The open sea and the madman: §§124, 125.

The herd’s conscience

§117 continues §116 with a history of conscience in two stages. Now, “one only feels responsible for what one intends and for what one does.” But through “the longest period in the life of mankind there was nothing more terrible to a person than to feel himself independent.” To be alone was a punishment: one was condemned “to be an individual.” “Freedom of thought was regarded as discomfort personified.” The more the herd-instinct, rather than personal character, showed in a person’s conduct, “so much the more moral did he esteem himself.” Mark it H: a conjectural history, like station 13’s, offered without evidence. The last sentence is flat: “It is in this respect that we have most changed our mode of thinking.” §117, the individual as punishment

Keep this section in view for §125. If the old herd felt independence as a punishment, a crowd that has just given up God may not yet feel what it has done. The section does not say so; that connection is this guide’s.

§§118 and 119 look at benevolence from below. §118 begins with cells: “Is it virtuous when a cell transforms itself into the function of a stronger cell? It must do so.” Benevolence divides into “the instinct of appropriation, and the instinct of submission,” depending on whether the stronger or the weaker feels it. Pity belongs to the first: “a pleasant excitation of the instinct of appropriation at the sight of the weaker” (German Mitleid). The section then qualifies itself: “‘strong’ and ‘weak’ are relative conceptions.” Mark it P. §118, benevolence

§119, “No Altruism!,” finds in many people “an excessive impulse and delight in wanting to be a function.” Common writes “many men,” but the German is Menschen, human beings. Among them the section names “those women who transform themselves into just that function of a man that is but weakly developed in him, and then become his purse, or his politics, or his social intercourse.” State it plainly: it is an unflattering sketch of a type of woman (jene Frauen, “those women”), not a statement about all women. Station 8 distinguished such type sketches from general statements, and the distinction applies here. Mark it P and V. §119, wanting to be a function

Health and error

§120 revises a formula it attributes to Ariston of Chios. “Virtue is the health of the soul” would have to become “Thy virtue is the health of thy soul,” because “there is no such thing as health in itself.” From medicine the section moves to politics: “the more one unlearns the dogma of the ‘Equality of men,’” the more the idea of a normal health, a normal diet, and a normal course of disease must be given up. The quotation marks around “Equality of men” are Nietzsche’s (Gleichheit der Menschen). Do not soften the step: the section treats equality as a dogma to be unlearned. Mark it V. §120, no health in itself

It ends with a question that it leaves open: “whether we could do without sickness, even for the development of our virtue,” and “whether the mere will to health is not a prejudice, a cowardice, and perhaps an instance of the subtlest barbarism and unprogressiveness.” The “perhaps” (vielleicht) hedges only the last item; mark it ?. Book V’s “great health” (station 33) and the 1887 preface (station 35) return to sickness and health.

§121 is four sentences. “We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live,” with bodies, lines, surfaces, causes and effects, and “without these articles of faith no one could manage to live at present!” “But for all that they are still unproved. Life is no argument; error might be among the conditions of life.” The last clause says only that error might be among those conditions (German könnte); mark it ?. Compare station 13’s §§110–112: the same articles, now given a religious name. §121, life no argument

What Christianity taught

§122 is the station’s first section on Christianity, and it is not a simple attack. Its title is “The Element of Moral Scepticism in Christianity.” Christianity, it says, “has made a great contribution to enlightenment”: it taught moral scepticism, “accusing and embittering, but with untiring patience and subtlety,” and “annihilated in every individual the belief in his virtues.” The German puts “virtues” in quotation marks (“Tugenden”); Common drops them. Trained in that school, “we” now read Seneca and Epictetus with “a pleasurable superiority”: “we know better what virtue is!” The same scepticism is then turned on sin, repentance, grace, and sanctification, until “we know also the religious feelings better!” §122, Christian scepticism

Read the section two ways. As history (H), it claims that the scepticism now dissolving Christian feelings was learned from Christianity. Book V’s §357, added in 1887 (station 29), makes a related claim. As psychology (P), it describes a feeling of superiority, and describes it with an image of decay: “we” have “allowed the worm to burrow so well.” Whether that “we” is praised or mocked is for you to decide. The last sentence changes the tone: “the pious ones of the old belief die out also; let us save their likeness and type, at least for the sake of knowledge.”

§123, “Knowledge more than a Means,” says that science has grown without “the passion for knowledge.” For many, curiosity, vanity, or habit suffice: “their ‘scientific impulse’ is their ennui.” Common omits one word here. The German speaks of diese neue Leidenschaft, this new passion, and the last sentence explains the novelty: “It is something new in history that knowledge claims to be more than a means.” §123, knowledge as a passion

Between those claims stands Pope Leo X, who in a letter “sang the praise of science.” Notice who speaks. The section reports the Pope’s praise, then puts in quotation marks a judgment the Pope never states: “Science is something of secondary rank, nothing ultimate or unconditioned, no object of passion.” That sentence is the section’s reconstruction of what “was kept back in Leo’s soul: the truly Christian judgment concerning science!” Mark it H and V: an inference about a hidden thought, not a report of the Pope’s words.

The open sea

§124 speaks to a “little ship.” “We have left the land and have gone aboard ship! We have broken down the bridge behind us,—nay, more, the land behind us!” The sea is sometimes calm, “like silk and gold and a gentle reverie,” but “there is nothing more frightful than infinity.” Then the image turns: “Oh, the poor bird that felt itself free, and now strikes against the walls of this cage!” The last warning is against homesickness, “as if there had been more freedom there,—and there is no ‘land’ any longer!” Mark it V: the section urges rather than argues. Notice that the freedom it celebrates is also called a cage. §124, the horizon of the infinite

The madman and his hearers

§125 is Reading 4’s central passage; read that lesson for its full analysis. On this route, notice four things that §§117–124 make visible.

• The frame. The section begins by asking you, “Have you ever heard of the madman,” and ends with a further report: “It is further stated” (German Man erzählt noch, literally: one also tells). The speech is the madman’s, passed on by a narrator. Do not assign every sentence to Nietzsche.
• The sea again. Among the mockers’ jokes: “Has he taken a sea-voyage? Has he emigrated?” The German is Ist er zu Schiff gegangen?, the words §124 used for “we” who “have gone aboard ship.” The crowd jokes about the voyage that the previous section took seriously. Soon the madman asks how “we” were able to drink up the sea. §125, the mockers
• The pronouns. The speech begins, “We have killed him,—you and I! We are all his murderers!” It ends, “This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star,—and yet they have done it!” Between the two, “we” becomes “they.” The madman first counts himself among the killers, then stands apart from his hearers. §125, too early
• The silence. After the speech “they also were silent and looked at him in surprise” (German befremdet, estranged or taken aback). The laughter has stopped; understanding has not arrived. The madman’s explanation is that “deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard.”

Two further notes. Common varies his English, “madman” and “The insane man,” where the German repeats der tolle Mensch. And the questions in the middle of the speech remain questions: “Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it?” Do not turn them into a programme.

A difficulty

Is the reader in the market-place?

The madman addresses “many people standing about who did not believe in God.” The sections before §125 speak for a “we” that has also given up the old beliefs. It reads Christian books with “a pleasurable superiority” (§122), and it has “left the land” (§124).

Three readings are possible.

• The crowd is not the book’s “we.” It disbelieves out of indifference, while §§122–124 describe a “we” that disbelieves out of a passion for knowledge and knows what it has lost.
• The crowd is the “we” of §122. Its laughter is the same pleasurable superiority, and §125 turns the book’s confidence against itself.
• The madman’s pronouns decide it. He says “you and I,” so every hearer, the book’s “we” included, is among those who have done the deed without yet hearing of it.

Decide which the text best supports. Name one sentence from §122 or §124 and one from §125.

Check your understanding

Try answering before opening each suggested response.

Writing prompt

Write 200–250 words answering:

Choose one section from §§117–124. How does it help explain why the madman’s hearers cannot yet hear him?

• Quote no more than two short phrases.
• Say whether the obstacle is one of knowledge, feeling, or habit.
• Keep the madman’s words distinct from the narrator’s report.

A successful response connects a specific claim to a specific moment in §125, marks the connection as an interpretation, and does not treat the madman’s questions as the book’s settled doctrine.

Continue

Optional checkpoint: Readings 3 and 4. You have now read all four sections that the two readings assign: §§110 and 116 for Reading 3, and §§108 and 125 for Reading 4. Take them together: begin with Reading 3 and follow its own Next link to Reading 4. Together they take about 90–120 minutes, an editorial estimate. Both belong to the ten-session introduction, so Reading 4’s own Next link leads to Reading 5, not back to this route. Return here afterward.

Continue to station 15: Will, Prayer, Sin, and the Many Gods →

Read next: Book III, §§126–143. Its question: how should the religious and Jewish/Christian polemics be tested?

Previous station: station 13, §§108–116. Return to the route list in the book guide.

A reading guide from Reading Nietzsche · Revised September 27, 2026.

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