We are no longer animals, we are not yet supermen, and God, being dead, cannot help us: “Man is a rope, fas- tened between animal and Superman—a rope over an abyss. A dangerous going-across, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and staying-still” (Nietzsche, 1883– 1885/1969). The problems characterizing the human condition are solved one person at a time. If every individual strove to be all that he or she could be, more general human problems would solve themselves. A prerequisite, then, for an improvement in the human condition is self-improvement:
Physician, heal yourself: Thus you will heal your patient too. Let his best healing- aid be to see with his own eyes him who makes himself well. There are a thousand paths that have never yet been trodden, a thousand forms of health and hidden islands of life. Man and man’s earth are still unexhausted and undiscovered. … Truly, the earth shall yet become a house of healing! And already a new odour floats about it, an odour that brings health—and a new hope! (Nietzsche, 1883–1885/1969)