This astonishing series of aphorisms, put into the mouth of the Persian sage Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, contains the kernel of Nietzsche`s thought. `God is dead`, he tells us. Christianity is decadent, leading mankind into a slave morality concerned not with this life, but with the next. Nietzsche emphasises the `Ubermensch, or Superman, whose will to power makes him the creator of a new heroic mentality. The intensely felt ideas are expressed in prose-poetry of indefinable beauty.