The assertion that God is dead, but that we have to vanquish his shadow, first occurs in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, iii. 108. At 125 Nietzsche tells of the madman who hails it as the greatest achievement of mankind, to have killed God and turned the churches into tombs and sepulchres of God. But people do not listen to the madman for ‘the deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves’.