Thus Spoke Zarathustra

THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA
A BOOK FOR ALL AND NONE


  

















FIRST PART ZARATHUSTRA’S DISCOURSES












ZARATHUSTRA’S PROLOGUE
1.
  



When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed,—and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the sun, and spoke thus to it:
You great star! What would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine!
For ten years you have climbed here to my cave: you would have wearied of your light and of the journey, had it not been for me, my eagle, and my serpent.
But we awaited you every morning, took from you your overflow and blessed you for it.
Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.
I would like to bestow and distribute it, until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.
Therefore I must descend into the deep: as you do in the evening, when you go behind the sea, and give light also to the underworld, you exuberant star!
Like you I must GO DOWN, as men say, to whom I shall descend.
Bless me, then, you tranquil eye, that can behold even the greatest happiness without envy!
Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow golden out of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of your bliss!
Behold! This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again going to be a man.
Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going.






2.
  



Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, with no one meeting him. When he entered the forest, however, there suddenly stood before him an old man, who had left his holy hut to seek roots. And thus spoke the old man to Zarathustra:
“This wanderer is no stranger to me: he passed by here many years ago. He was called Zarathustra; but he has changed.
Then you carried your ashes into the mountains: will you now carry your fire into the valleys? Do you not fear the incendiary’s doom?
Yes, I recognize Zarathustra. His eyes are pure, and no loathing lurks on his mouth. Does he not move along like a dancer?
Zarathustra is transformed; he has become a child; Zarathustra is an awakened one: what will you do in the land of the sleeping?
You have lived in solitude, as in the sea, and it has carried you. Alas, will you now go ashore? Alas, will you again drag your body yourself?”
Zarathustra answered: “I love mankind.”
“Why,” said the saint, “did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved men far too well?
Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is a thing too imperfect for me. Love to man would be fatal to me.”
Zarathustra answered: “What did I speak of love! I am bringing gifts to men.”[a][b]
“Give them nothing,” said the saint. “Rather take part of their load, and carry it along with them—that will be most agreeable to them: if only it be agreeable to you!
If, however, you will give to them, give them no more than an alms, and let them also beg for it!”[c][d][e]
“No,” replied Zarathustra, “I give no alms. I am not poor enough for that.”
The saint laughed at Zarathustra, and spoke thus: “Then see to it that they accept your treasures! They are distrustful of anchorites, and do not believe that we come with gifts.
The fall of our footsteps rings too hollow through their streets. And just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man go by long before sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: Where goes the thief?
Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not be like me—a bear among bears, a bird among birds?”
“And what does the saint do in the forest?” asked Zarathustra.
The saint answered: “I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus I praise God.
With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling I praise the God who is my God. But what do you bring us as a gift?”
When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said: “What should I have to give you! Let me rather hurry off, lest I take anything away from you!”—And thus they parted from one another, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing like two boys.
When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest has not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!”






3.
  



When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoined the forest, he found many people assembled in the marketplace; for it had been announced that a rope-dancer would give a performance. And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people:
I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have you done to surpass man?
Thus far all beings have created something beyond themselves: and you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.
You have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were you apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.
Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I tell you to become phantoms or plants?
Behold, I teach you the Superman!
The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman SHALL BE the meaning of the earth!
I implore you, my brothers, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and do not believe those who speak to you of super-earthly hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.
They are despisers of life, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and with him also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!
Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing:—the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth.
Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul!
But you, also, my brothers, tell me: What does your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency?
Truly, man is a polluted stream. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.
Behold, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him your great contempt can be submerged.
What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome to you, and so also your reason and virtue.
The hour when you say: “What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!”
The hour when you say: “What good is my reason! Does it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”
The hour when you say: “What good is my virtue! As yet it has not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”
The hour when you say: “What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fire and brimstone. The just, however, are fire and brimstone!”
The hour when you say: “What good is my pity! Is pity not the cross on which he is nailed who loves man? But my pity is not a crucifixion.”
Have you ever spoken thus? Have you ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus!
It is not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that cries to heaven; your very sparingness in sin cries to heaven!
Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which you should be inoculated?
Behold, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!—
When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of the people called out: “We have now heard enough of the rope-dancer; it is time now for us to see him!” And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the rope-dancer, who thought the words applied to him, began his performance.




4.
  



Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spoke thus:
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss.
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING[f][g][h][i][j][k][l].
I love those who do not know how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.
I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.
I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may one day arrive.
I love him who lives in order to know, and seeks to know in order that the Superman may one day live. Thus he seeks his own down-going.
I love him who labors and invents, that he may build the house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus he seeks his own down-going.
I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing.
I love him who reserves no share of spirit for himself, but wants to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus he walks as spirit over the bridge.
I love him who makes his virtue his inclination and destiny: thus, for the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more.
I love him who does not desire too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one’s destiny to cling to.
I love him whose soul is lavish, who wants no thanks and does not give back: for he always bestows, and desires not to keep for himself.
I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favor, and who then asks: “Am I a dishonest player?”—for he is willing to succumb.
I love him who scatters golden words in advance of his deeds, and always does more than he promises: for he seeks his own down-going.
I love him who justifies the future ones, and redeems the past ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present ones.
I love him who chastens his God, because he loves his God: for he must succumb through the wrath of his God.
I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus he goes willingly over the bridge.
I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.
I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causes his down-going.
I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud that lowers over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and succumb as heralds.
Behold, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN.—


  















5.
  



When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he again looked at the people, and was silent. “There they stand,” he said to his heart; “there they laugh: they do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears.
Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers? Or do they only believe the stammerer?
They have something of which they are proud. What do they call it, that which makes them proud? Culture, they call it; it distinguishes them from the goatherds.
They dislike, therefore, to hear of ‘contempt’ of themselves. So I will appeal to their pride.
I will speak to them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is THE LAST MAN!”
And thus spoke Zarathustra to the people:
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope.
His soil is still rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow on it.
Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man—and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you.
Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Behold! I show you THE LAST MAN.
“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?”—so asks the last man and blinks.
The earth has then become small, and on it there hops the last man who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man lives longest.
“We have discovered happiness”—say the last men, and blink.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loves one’s neighbor and rubs against him; for one needs warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that makes pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death.
One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is equal: he who has other sentiments goes voluntarily into the madhouse.
“Formerly all the world was insane,”—say the subtlest of them, and blink.
They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their mockery. People still fall out, but are soon reconciled—otherwise it spoils their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.
“We have discovered happiness,”—say the last men, and blink.—
And here ended the first discourse of Zarathustra, which is also called “The Prologue”: for at this point the shouting and mirth of the multitude interrupted him. “Give us this last man, O Zarathustra,”—they called out—“make us into these last men! Then will we make you a present of the Superman!” And all the people exulted and smacked their lips. Zarathustra, however, turned sad, and said to his heart:
“They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for these ears.
Too long, perhaps, have I lived in the mountains; I have listened too much to the brooks and trees: now I speak to them as to the goatherds.
My soul is calm, and clear, like the mountains in the morning. But they think me cold, and a mocker with terrible jests.
And now they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter.”










6.
  



Then, however, something happened which made every mouth mute and every eye fixed. In the meantime, of course, the rope-dancer had commenced his performance: he had come out at a little door, and was going along the rope which was stretched between two towers, so that it hung above the marketplace and the people. When he was just midway across, the little door opened once more, and a gaudily-dressed fellow like a buffoon sprang out, and went rapidly after the first one. “Go on, halt-foot,” cried his frightful voice, “go on, lazy-bones, interloper, sallow-face!—lest I tickle you with my heel! What are you doing, here between the towers? In the tower is the place for you, you should be locked up; to one better than yourself you block the way!”—And with every word he came nearer and nearer the first one. When, however, he was but a step behind, there happened the frightful thing which made every mouth mute and every eye fixed—he uttered a yell like a devil, and jumped over the other who was in his way. The latter, however, when he thus saw his rival triumph, lost at the same time his head and his footing on the rope; he threw his pole away, and shot downwards faster than it, like an eddy of arms and legs, into the depth. The marketplace and the people were like the sea when the storm comes on: they all flew apart and in disorder, especially where the body was about to fall.
Zarathustra, however, remained standing, and just beside him fell the body, badly injured and disfigured, but not yet dead. After a while consciousness returned to the shattered man, and he saw Zarathustra kneeling beside him. “What are you doing there?” he said at last, “I knew long ago that the devil would trip me up. Now he drags me to hell: will you prevent him?”
“On my honor, my friend,” answered Zarathustra, “there is nothing of all that which you speak: there is no devil and no hell. Your soul will be dead even sooner than your body: fear, therefore, nothing any more!”
The man looked up distrustfully. “If you speak the truth,” he said, “I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal which has been taught to dance by blows and scraps of food.”
“Not at all,” said Zarathustra, “you have made danger your calling; in that there is nothing contemptible. Now you perish by your calling: therefore I will bury you with my own hands.”
When Zarathustra had said this the dying one did not reply further; but he moved his hand as if he sought the hand of Zarathustra in gratitude.




7.
Meanwhile the evening came on, and the marketplace veiled itself in gloom. Then the people dispersed, for even curiosity and terror become fatigued. Zarathustra, however, still sat beside the dead man on the ground, absorbed in thought: so he forgot the time. But at last it became night, and a cold wind blew upon the lonely one. Then Zarathustra arose and said to his heart:
Truly, a fine catch of fish has Zarathustra made today! It is not a man he has caught, but a corpse.
Somber is human life, and as yet without meaning: a buffoon may be fateful to it.
I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud—man.
But still I am far from them, and my sense does not speak to their sense. To men I am still something between a fool and a corpse.
Gloomy is the night, gloomy are the ways of Zarathustra. Come, you cold and stiff companion! I carry you to the place where I shall bury you with my own hands.




8.
When Zarathustra had said this to his heart, he put the corpse on his shoulders and set out on his way. Yet he had not gone a hundred steps, when a man crept up to him and whispered in his ear—and behold! he that spoke was the buffoon from the tower. “Leave this town, O Zarathustra,” he said, “there are too many here who hate you. The good and just hate you, and call you their enemy and despiser; the believers in the orthodox belief hate you, and call you a danger to the multitude. It was your good fortune to be laughed at: and truly you spoke like a buffoon. It was your good fortune to associate with the dead dog; by so humiliating yourself you have saved your life today. Depart, however, from this town,—or tomorrow I shall jump over you, a living man over a dead one.” And when he had said this, the buffoon vanished; Zarathustra, however, went on through the dark streets.
At the gate of the town the grave-diggers met him: they shined their torch on his face, and, recognizing Zarathustra, they sorely derided him. “Zarathustra is carrying away the dead dog: a fine thing that Zarathustra has turned a grave-digger! For our hands are too cleanly for that roast. Will Zarathustra steal the bite from the devil? Well then, good luck to the meal! If only the devil is not a better thief than Zarathustra!—he will steal them both, he will eat them both!” And they laughed among themselves, and put their heads together.
Zarathustra made no answer to them, but went on his way. When he had gone on for two hours, past forests and swamps, he had heard too much of the hungry howling of the wolves, and he himself became hungry. So he halted at a lonely house in which a light was burning.
“Hunger attacks me,” said Zarathustra, “like a robber. Among forests and swamps my hunger attacks me, and late in the night.
“My hunger has strange humors. Often it comes to me only after a meal, and all day it has failed to come: where has it been?”
And then Zarathustra knocked at the door of the house. An old man appeared, who carried a light, and asked: “Who comes to me and my bad sleep?”
“A living man and a dead one,” said Zarathustra. “Give me something to eat and drink, I forgot it during the day. He that feeds the hungry refreshes his own soul, says wisdom.”
The old man withdrew, but came back immediately and offered Zarathustra bread and wine. “A bad country for the hungry,” he said; “that is why I live here. Animal and man come to me, the anchorite. But bid your companion eat and drink also, he is wearier than you.” Zarathustra answered: “My companion is dead; I shall hardly be able to persuade him to eat.” “That does not concern me,” said the old man sullenly; “he that knocks at my door must take what I offer him. Eat, and fare you well!”—
After that Zarathustra again went on for two hours, trusting to the path and the light of the stars: for he was an experienced night-walker, and liked to look into the face of all that slept. When the morning dawned, however, Zarathustra found himself in a thick forest, and no path was any longer visible. He then put the dead man in a hollow tree at his head—for he wanted to protect him from the wolves—and laid himself down on the ground and moss. And immediately he fell asleep, tired in body, but with a tranquil soul.




9.
  



Zarathustra slept long; and not only the rosy dawn passed over his head, but also the morning. At last, however, his eyes opened, and amazedly he gazed into the forest and the stillness, amazedly he gazed into himself. Then he arose quickly, like a seafarer who all at once sees the land; and he shouted for joy: for he saw a new truth. And he spoke thus to his heart:
A light has dawned on me: I need companions—living ones; not dead companions and corpses, which I carry with me where I will.
But I need living companions, who will follow me because they want to follow themselves—and to the place where I will.
A light has dawned on me. Zarathustra is not to speak to the people, but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be the herd’s herdsman and hound!
To allure many from the herd—for that purpose I have come. The people and the herd must be angry with me: Zarathustra shall be called a robber by the herdsmen.
I say herdsmen, but they call themselves the good and just. I say herdsmen, but they call themselves the believers in the orthodox belief.
Behold the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaks up their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker:—he, however, is the creator.
Behold the believers of all beliefs! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaks up their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker—he, however, is the creator.
The creator seeks companions, not corpses—and not herds or believers either. The creator seeks fellow-creators—those who engrave new values on new tables.
The creator seeks companions, and fellow-reapers: for everything is ripe for the harvest with him. But he lacks the hundred sickles: so he plucks the ears of corn and is vexed.
The creator seeks companions, and such as know how to whet their sickles. Destroyers, they will be called, and despisers of good and evil. But they are the reapers and rejoicers.
Zarathustra seeks fellow-creators; Zarathustra seeks fellow-reapers and fellow-rejoicers: what has he to do with herds and herdsmen and corpses!
And you, my first companion, rest in peace! I have buried you well in your hollow tree; I have hid you well from the wolves.
But I part from you; the time has arrived. Between rosy dawn and rosy dawn there came to me a new truth.
I am not to be a herdsman, I am not to be a grave-digger. I will not discourse to the people any more; I have spoken to the dead for the last time.
I will associate with the creators, the reapers, and the rejoicers: I will show them the rainbow, and all the stairs to the Superman.
To the lone-dwellers I will sing my song, and to the twain-dwellers; and to him who has still ears for the unheard, I will make the heart heavy with my happiness.
I make for my goal, I follow my course; over the loitering and tardy I will leap. Thus let my on-going be their down-going!




10.
Zarathustra had said this to his heart when the sun stood at noon-tide. Then he looked inquiringly aloft,—for he heard above him the sharp call of a bird. And behold! An eagle swept through the air in wide circles, and on it hung a serpent, not like a prey, but like a friend: for it kept itself coiled round the eagle’s neck.
“They are my animals,” said Zarathustra, and rejoiced in his heart.
“The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the sun,—they have come out to reconnoitre.
They want to know whether Zarathustra still lives. Truly, do I still live?
I have found it more dangerous among men than among animals; Zarathustra goes in dangerous paths. Let my animals lead me!
When Zarathustra had said this, he remembered the words of the saint in the forest. Then he sighed and spoke thus to his heart:
“Would that I were wiser! Would that I were wise from the very heart, like my serpent!
But I am asking the impossible. Therefore I ask my pride to always go with my wisdom!
And if my wisdom should some day forsake me:—alas! it loves to fly away!—may my pride then fly with my folly!”
Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going.
















ZARATHUSTRA’S DISCOURSES








I. THE THREE METAMORPHOSES
  



I name to you three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit becomes a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.
There are many heavy things for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwells: its strength longs for the heavy and the heaviest.
What is heavy? so the load-bearing spirit asks; then it kneels down like the camel, and wants to be well loaded.
What is the heaviest thing, you heroes? asks the load-bearing spirit, that I may take it on me and rejoice in my strength.
Is it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one’s pride? To exhibit one’s folly in order to mock one’s wisdom?
Or is it this: To desert our cause when it celebrates its triumph? To ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter?
Or is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul?
Or is it this: To be sick and dismiss comforters, and make friends of the deaf, who never hear your requests?
Or is it this: To go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: To love those who despise us, and give one’s hand to the phantom when it is going to frighten us?
All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit takes on itself: and like the camel, which, when loaded, hurries into the wilderness, so the spirit hurries into its wilderness.
But in the loneliest wilderness the second metamorphosis happens: here the spirit becomes a lion; it will capture freedom, and lordship in its own wilderness.
Here it seeks its last Lord: it will be hostile to him, and to its last God; it will struggle for victory with the great dragon.
What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call Lord and God? 
“You shall,” the great dragon is called. But the spirit of the lion says, “I will.”
“You shall,” lies in its path, sparkling with gold—a scale-covered beast; and on every scale glitters golden, “You shall!”
The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: “All the values of things—glitter on me.
All values have already been created, and all created values—I represent. Truly, there shall be no ‘I will’ any more. Thus speaks the dragon.
My brothers, why is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why does the beast of burden not suffice, which renounces and is reverent?
To create new values—that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create for itself freedom for new creating—the might of the lion can do that.
To create for itself freedom, and give a holy No even to duty: for that, my brothers, there is need of the lion.
To assume the right to new values—that is the most formidable assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Truly, to such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.
As its holiest, it once loved “You shall”: now it is forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture.
But tell me, my brothers, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why has the preying lion still to become a child?
Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yes.
Aye, for the game of creating, my brothers, there is needed a holy Yes to life: the spirit now wills ITS OWN will; the world’s outcast wins HIS OWN world.
I have named to you three metamorphoses of the spirit: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra. And at that time he stayed in the town which is called The Colorful Cow.










II. THE ACADEMIC CHAIRS OF VIRTUE
  



A wise man was praised to Zarathustra, as one who could discourse well about sleep and virtue: he was greatly honored and rewarded for it, and all the youths sat before his chair. Zarathustra went to him, and sat among the youths before his chair. And thus spoke the wise man:
Respect and modesty in presence of sleep! That is the first thing! And to keep away from all who sleep badly and keep awake at night!
Even the thief is modest in presence of sleep: he always creeps softly through the night. The night-watchman, however, is immodest; immodestly, he carries his horn.
It is no small art to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.
Ten times a day you must overcome yourself: that causes fine weariness, and is opium to the soul.
Ten times you must reconcile again with yourself; for overcoming is bitterness, and the unreconciled sleep badly.
Ten truths you must find during the day; otherwise you will seek truth during the night, and your soul will have been hungry.
Ten times you must laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise your stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb you in the night.
Few people know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery?
Shall I covet my neighbor’s maidservant? All that would accord poorly with good sleep.
And even if one has all the virtues, there is still one thing needful: to send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time.
That they may not quarrel with one another, the good females! And about you, you unhappy one!
Peace with God and your neighbor: such is wanted by good sleep. And peace also with your neighbor’s devil! Otherwise it will haunt you in the night.
Honor to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked government! Such is wanted by good sleep. How can I help it, if power likes to walk on crooked legs?
He who leads his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for me the best shepherd: so it accords with good sleep.
I do not want many honors, nor great treasures: they excite the spleen. But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little treasure.
A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come and go at the right time. So it accords with good sleep.
The poor in spirit also please me well: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always gives in to them.
Thus the day passes to the virtuous. When night comes, then I take good care not to summon sleep. It dislikes to be summoned—sleep, the lord of the virtues!
But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were your ten overcomings?
And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself?
Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtakes me all at once—sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues.
Sleep taps on my eyes, and they turn heavy. Sleep touches my mouth, and it remains open.
Truly, on soft soles it comes to me, the dearest of thieves, and steals from me my thoughts: I then stand stupid, like this academic chair.
But then I do not stand much longer: I already lie.—
When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his heart: for then a light had dawned on him. And he spoke thus to his heart:
This wise man seems a fool with his forty thoughts: but I believe he knows well how to sleep.
Even he who lives near this wise man is happy! Such sleep is contagious—even through a thick wall it is contagious.
A magic resides even in his academic chair. And the youths did not sit in vain before the preacher of virtue.
His wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well. And truly, if life had no sense, and I had to choose nonsense, this would be the most desirable nonsense for me also.
Now I know well what formerly people sought above all else when they sought teachers of virtue. They sought good sleep for themselves, and opiate virtues to induce it!
To all those belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life.
Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honorable: but their time is past. And they do not stand much longer: there they already lie.
Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod off.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








III. BACKWORLDSMEN
  



Once upon a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. The world then seemed to me the work of a suffering and tortured God.
The world then seemed to me the dream—and diction—of a God; colored vapors before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one.
Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and you—they seemed to me colored vapors before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away from himself,—then he created the world.
It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, the world once seemed to me.
This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction’s image and imperfect image—an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:—thus the world once seemed to me.
Thus, once upon a time, I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. Beyond man, truly?
Ah, you brothers, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!
He was a man, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego. Out of my own ashes and glow it came to me, that phantom. And truly, it did not come to me from the beyond!
What happened, my brothers? I surpassed myself, the suffering one; I carried my own ashes to the mountain; I contrived for myself a brighter flame. And behold! Then the phantom WITHDREW from me!
To me the convalescent it would now be suffering and torment to believe in such phantoms: it would now be suffering to me, and humiliation. Thus I speak to backworldsmen.
It was suffering, and impotence—that created all backworlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experiences.
Weariness, which seeks to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body which despaired of the body—it groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body which despaired of the earth—it heard the bowels of existence speaking to it.
And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head—and not only with its head—into “the other world.”
But that “other world” is well concealed from man, that dehumanised, inhuman world, which is a celestial Nothing; and the bowels of existence do not speak to man, except as man.
Truly, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak. Yet tell me, you brothers, is not the most wondrous of all things best proved?
Yes, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaks most uprightly of its being—this creating, willing, evaluating ego, which is the measure and value of things.
And this most upright existence, the ego—it speaks of the body, and still implies the body, even when it muses and raves and flutters with broken wings.
Always more uprightly it learns to speak, the ego; and the more it learns, the more it finds titles and honors for the body and the earth.
My ego taught me a new pride, and that I teach to men: no longer to thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which gives meaning to the earth!
I teach to men a new will: to choose that path which man has followed blindly, and to approve of it—and no longer to slink aside from it, like the sick and perishing!
The sick and perishing—it was they who despised the body and the earth, and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming blood-drops; but even those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth!
They sought escape from their misery, and the stars were too remote for them. Then they sighed: “O that there were heavenly paths by which to sneak into another existence and into happiness!” Then they contrived for themselves their back-roads and drinks of blood!
Now they imagined themselves transported beyond the sphere of their body and this earth, these ungrateful ones. But to what did they owe the convulsion and rapture of their transport? To their body and this earth.
Zarathustra is gentle to the sickly. Truly, he is not indignant at their modes of consolation and ingratitude. May they become convalescents and overcomers, and create higher bodies for themselves!
Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looks tenderly on his delusions, and at midnight sneaks around the grave of his God; but sickness and a sick frame remain even in his tears.
There have always been many sickly ones among those who muse, and languish for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the latest of virtues, which is uprightness.
They always gaze backward toward dark ages: then, indeed, were delusion and faith something different. Raving of the reason was likeness to God, and doubt was sin.
I know those godlike ones all too well: they insist on being believed in, and that doubt is sin. Too well, also, I know what they themselves most believe in.
Truly, not in backworlds and redeeming blood-drops: but in the body do they also believe most; and their own body is for them the thing-in-itself.
But it is a sickly thing to them, and they would gladly get out of their skin. Therefore they listen to the preachers of death, and themselves preach backworlds.
Listen rather, my brothers, to the voice of the healthy body; it is a more upright and pure voice.
More uprightly and purely speaks the healthy body, perfect and square-built; and it speaks of the meaning of the earth.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








IV. THE DESPISERS OF THE BODY




To the despisers of the body I will speak my word. I wish them neither to learn afresh, nor teach anew, but only to bid farewell to their own bodies,—and thus be silent.
“I am body and soul”—so says the child. And why should one not speak like children?
But the awakened one, the knowing one, says: “I am body entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body.”
The body is a big intelligence, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd.
An instrument of your body is also your little intelligence, my brother, which you call “spirit”—a little instrument and plaything of your big intelligence.
“Ego,” you say, and are proud of that word. But the greater thing—in which you are unwilling to believe—is your body with its big intelligence; it does not say “ego,” but does it.
What the sense feels, what the spirit discerns, never has its end in itself. But sense and spirit would gladly persuade you that they are the end of all things: so vain are they.
Sense and spirit are instruments and playthings: behind them there is still the Self. The Self seeks with the eyes of the senses, it also listens with the ears of the spirit.
The Self ever listens, and seeks; it compares, masters, conquers, and destroys. It rules, and is also the ego’s ruler.
Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage—it is called Self; it dwells in your body, it is your body.
There is more intelligence in your body than in your best wisdom. And who then knows why your body requires just your best wisdom?
Your Self laughs at your ego, and its proud prancings. “What are these prancings and flights of thought to me?” it says to itself. “A back-road to my purpose. I am the leading-string of the ego, and the prompter of its notions.”
The Self says to the ego: “Feel pain!” And then it suffers, and thinks how it might put an end to its suffering—and for that very purpose it IS MEANT to think.
The Self says to the ego: “Feel pleasure!” Then it rejoices, and thinks how it might often rejoice—and for that very purpose it IS MEANT to think.
To the despisers of the body I will speak a word. That they despise is caused by their esteem. What is it that created esteeming and despising and worth and will?
The creating Self created for itself esteeming and despising, it created for itself joy and woe. The creating body created for itself spirit, as a hand to its will.
Even in your folly and despising you each serve your Self, you despisers of the body. I tell you, your very Self wants to die, and turns away from life.
No longer can your Self do that which it desires most:—create beyond itself. That is what it desires most; that is all its fervour.
But it is now too late to do so:—so your Self wishes to succumb, you despisers of the body.
To succumb—so wishes your Self; and therefore you have become despisers of the body. For you can no longer create beyond yourselves.
And for that you are now angry with life and with the earth. And unconscious envy is in the sidelong look of your contempt.
I do not go your way, you despisers of the body! You are no bridges for me to the Superman!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








V. JOYS AND PASSIONS


My brother, when you have a virtue, and it is your own virtue, you have it in common with no one.
To be sure, you would call it by name and caress it; you would pull its ears and amuse yourself with it.
And behold! Then you have its name in common with the people, and have become of the people and the herd with your virtue!
Better for you to say: “It is ineffable, and nameless, that which is pain and sweetness to my soul, and also the hunger of my bowels.”
Let your virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if you must speak of it, do not be ashamed to stammer about it.
Thus speak and stammer: “This is MY good, this I love, thus it pleases me entirely, only thus do I desire the good.
Not as the law of a God do I desire it, not as a human law or a human need do I desire it; it is not to be a guide-post for me to super-earths and paradises.
It is an earthly virtue that I love: little prudence is in it, and the least everyday wisdom.
But that bird built its nest beside me: therefore, I love and cherish it—now it sits beside me on its golden eggs.”
Thus you should stammer, and praise your virtue.
Once you had passions and called them evil. But now you have only your virtues: they grew out of your passions.
You implanted your highest aim into the heart of those passions: then they became your virtues and joys.
And though you were of the race of the hot-tempered, or of the voluptuous, or of the fanatical, or the vindictive;
All your passions in the end became virtues, and all your devils angels.
Once you had wild dogs in your cellar: but they changed at last into birds and sweet singers.
Out of your poisons you brewed balsam for yourself; your cow, affliction, you milked—now you drink the sweet milk of her udder.
And nothing evil grows in you any longer, unless it be the evil that grows out of the conflict of your virtues.
My brother, if you are fortunate, then you will have one virtue and no more: thus you go easier over the bridge.
To have many virtues is illustrious, but a hard lot; and many a one has gone into the wilderness and killed himself, because he was weary of being the battle and battlefield of virtues.
My brother, are war and battle evil? Necessary, however, is the evil; necessary are the envy and the distrust and the back-biting among the virtues.
Behold! how each of your virtues is covetous of the highest place; it wants your whole spirit to be ITS herald, it wants your whole power, in wrath, hatred, and love.
Every virtue is jealous of the others, and a dreadful thing is jealousy. Even virtues may succumb by jealousy.
He whom the flame of jealousy encompasses, at last like the scorpion, turns the poisoned sting against himself.
Ah! my brother, have you never seen a virtue backbite and stab itself?
Man is something that has to be surpassed: and therefore you shall love your virtues,—for you will succumb by them.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.






VI. THE PALE CRIMINAL


You do not mean to slay, you judges and sacrificers, until the animal has bowed its head? Behold! the pale criminal has bowed his head: out of his eye speaks the great contempt.
“My ego is something which is to be surpassed: my ego is to me the great contempt of man”: so it speaks out of that eye.
When he judged himself—that was his supreme moment; do not let the exalted one relapse again into his low estate!
There is no salvation for him who thus suffers from himself, unless it be speedy death.
Your slaying, you judges, shall be pity, and not revenge; and in that you slay, see to it that you yourselves justify life!
It is not enough that you should reconcile with him whom you slay. Let your sorrow be love to the Superman: thus you will justify your own survival!
“Enemy” shall you say but not “villain;” “invalid” shall you say but not “wretch;” “fool” shall you say but not “sinner.”
And you, red judge, if you would say aloud all you have done in thought, then everyone would cry: “Away with this filth and poisonous snake!”
But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality does not roll between them.
An idea made this pale man pale. He was adequate for his deed when he did it, but when it was done, he could not endure the idea of it.
Evermore he now saw himself as the doer of one deed. Madness, I call this: the exception reversed itself to the essential in him.
The streak of chalk bewitches the hen; the stroke he struck bewitched his weak reason. Madness AFTER the deed, I call this.
Listen, you judges! There is yet another madness, and it is BEFORE the deed. Ah! you have not gone deep enough into this soul!
Thus speaks the red judge: “Why did this criminal commit murder? He meant to rob.” I tell you, however, that his soul wanted blood, not booty: he thirsted for the joy of the knife!
But his weak reason did not understand this madness, and it persuaded him. “What matter about blood!” it said; “do you not wish, at least, to make booty by it? Or take revenge?”
And he listened to his weak reason: its words lay upon him like lead—then he robbed when he murdered. He did not mean to be ashamed of his madness.
And now once more the lead of his guilt lies upon him, and once more his weak reason is so numbed, so paralysed, and so dull.
If he could only shake his head, then his burden would roll off; but who shakes that head?
What is this man? A mass of diseases that reach out into the world through the spirit; there they want to get their prey.
What is this man? A coil of wild serpents that are seldom at peace among themselves—so they go forth apart and seek prey in the world.
Look at that poor body! What it suffered and craved, the poor soul interpreted to itself—it interpreted it as murderous desire, and eagerness for the joy of the knife.
Him who now turns sick, is overtaken by the evil which is now the evil: he seeks to cause pain with that which causes him pain. But there have been other ages, and another evil and good.
Once doubt was evil, and the will to Self. Then the invalid became a heretic or sorcerer; as heretic or sorcerer he suffered, and sought to cause suffering.
But this will not enter your ears; it hurts your good people, you tell me. But what does it matter to me about your good people!
Many things in your good people cause me disgust, and truly, not their evil. I wish that they had a madness by which they succumbed, like this pale criminal!
Truly, I wish that their madness were called truth, or fidelity, or justice: but they have their virtue in order to live long, and in wretched self-complacency.
I am a railing alongside the torrent; grasp me, whoever can grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








VII. READING AND WRITING
  



Of all that is written, I love only what one has written with his blood. Write with blood, and you will find that blood is spirit.
It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers.
He who knows the reader, does nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers—and spirit itself will stink.
Everyone being allowed to learn to read, ruins in the long run not only writing but also thinking.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becomes populace.
He who writes in blood and proverbs does not want to be read, but learned by heart.
In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route you must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall.
The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of a joyful wickedness: so are things well suited to each other.
I want to have goblins around me, for I am courageous. The courage that scares away ghosts, creates for itself goblins—it wants to laugh.
I no longer feel in common with you; the very cloud which I see beneath me, the blackness and heaviness at which I laugh—that is your thunder-cloud.
You look up when you long for elevation; and I look down because I am elevated.
Who among you can at the same time laugh and be elevated?
He who climbs on the highest mountains, laughs at all tragic plays and tragic realities.
Courageous, unconcerned, mocking, violent—so wisdom wishes us; she is a woman, and ever loves only a warrior.
You tell me, “Life is hard to bear.” But for what purpose should you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?
Life is hard to bear: but do not pretend to be so delicate! We are all of us fine, loaded asses and assesses.
What do we have in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew has formed on it?
It is true: we love life; not because we are inclined to live, but because we are inclined to love.
There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some reason in madness.
And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them among us, seem most to enjoy happiness.
To see these light, foolish, pretty, lively little sprites flit about—that moves Zarathustra to tears and songs.
I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.
And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the Spirit of Gravity—through him all things fall.
We slay, not by anger, but by laughter. Come, let us slay the Spirit of Gravity!
I learned to walk; since then have I let myself run. I learned to fly; since then I do not need pushing in order to move.
Now am I light, now I fly; now I see myself under myself. Now a God dances in me.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.












VIII. THE TREE ON THE HILL
  



Zarathustra had perceived that a certain youth avoided him. And as he walked alone one evening over the hills surrounding the town called “The Colorful Cow,” behold, there he found the youth sitting leaning against a tree, and gazing with a wearied look into the valley. Zarathustra then took hold of the tree beside which the youth sat, and spoke thus:
“If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I would not be able to do so.
But the wind, which we do not see, torments and bends it as it wishes. We are worst bent and tormented by invisible hands.”
Then the youth arose disconcerted, and said: “I hear Zarathustra, and just now I was thinking of him!” Zarathustra answered:
“Why are you frightened on that account?—But it is the same with man as with the tree.
The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep—into the evil.”
“Yes, into the evil!” cried the youth. “How is it possible that you have discovered my soul?”
Zarathustra smiled, and said: “Many a soul one will never discover, unless one first invent it.”
“Yes, into the evil!” cried the youth once more.
“You said the truth, Zarathustra. I trust myself no longer since I sought to rise into the height, and nobody trusts me any longer; how does that happen?
I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday. I often over-leap the steps when I climb; for so doing, none of the steps pardons me.
When aloft, I find myself always alone. No one speaks to me; the frost of solitude makes me tremble. What do I seek on the height?
My contempt and my longing increase together; the higher I climb, the more I despise him who climbs. What does he seek on the height?
How ashamed I am of my climbing and stumbling! How I mock at my violent panting! How I hate the man who flies! How tired I am on the height!”
Here the youth was silent. And Zarathustra contemplated the tree beside which they stood, and spoke thus:
“This tree stands lonely here on the hills; it has grown up high above man and beast.
And if it wanted to speak, it would have none who could understand it: so high has it grown.
Now it waits and waits,—for what does it wait? It dwells too close to the seat of the clouds; it waits perhaps for the first lightning?”
When Zarathustra had said this, the youth called out with violent gestures: “Yes, Zarathustra, you speak the truth. I longed for my destruction, when I desired to be on the height, and you are the lightning for which I waited! Behold! what have I been since you have appeared among us? It is my envy of you that has destroyed me!”—Thus spoke the youth, and wept bitterly. Zarathustra, however, put his arm around him, and led the youth away with him.
And when they had walked a while together, Zarathustra began to speak thus:
It rends my heart. Better than your words express it, your eyes tell me all your danger.
As yet you are not free; you still SEEK freedom. Too unslept has your seeking made you, and too wakeful.
You will to the open height; your soul thirsts for the stars. But your bad impulses also thirst for freedom.
Your wild dogs want liberty; they bark for joy in their cellar when your spirit endeavours to open all prison doors.
You are still a prisoner—it seems to me—who devises liberty for himself: ah! the soul of such prisoners becomes sharp, but also deceitful and wicked.
To purify himself, is still necessary for the freedman of the spirit. Much of the prison and the mold still remains in him: his eyes still have to become pure.
Yes, I know your danger. But by my love and hope I implore you: do not cast your love and hope away!
You still feel yourself noble, and others also still feel you noble, though they bear you a grudge and cast evil looks. Know this, that to everybody a noble one stands in the way.
Also to the good, a noble one stands in the way: and even when they call him a good man, they want by that to push him aside.
The noble man would create the new, and a new virtue. The good man wants the old, and that the old should be conserved.
But it is not the danger of the noble man to turn a good man, but lest he should become a blusterer, a scoffer, or a destroyer.
Ah! I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope. And then they disparaged all high hopes.
Then they lived shamelessly in temporary pleasures, and beyond the day had hardly an aim.
“Spirit is also voluptuousness,”—they said. Then broke the wings of their spirit; and now it creeps about, and defiles where it gnaws.
Once they thought of becoming heroes; but they are sensualists now. The hero is a trouble and a terror to them.
But by my love and hope I implore you: do not cast away the hero in your soul! Maintain holy your highest hope!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.










IX. THE PREACHERS OF DEATH
  



There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom desistance from life must be preached.
The earth is full of the superfluous; life is marred by the many-too-many. May they be decoyed out of this life by the “life eternal”!
“The yellow ones”: so the preachers of death are called, or “the black ones.” But I will show them to you in other colors besides.
There are the terrible ones who carry around in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration.
They have not yet become men, those terrible ones: may they preach desistance from life, and pass away themselves!
There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of fatigue and renunciation.
They would gladly be dead, and we should approve of their wish! Let us beware of awakening those dead ones, and of damaging those living coffins!
They meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse—and immediately they say: “Life is refuted!”
But only they are refuted, they and their eye, which sees only one aspect of existence.
Shrouded in thick melancholy, and eager for the little accidents that bring death: thus they wait, and clench their teeth.
Or else, they grasp at sweets, and mock at their childishness by it: they cling to their straw of life, and mock at their still clinging to it.
Their wisdom speaks thus: “He is a fool, who remains alive; but so far we are fools! And that is the most foolish thing in life!”
“Life is only suffering”: so say others, and do not lie. Then see to it that YOU cease! See to it that the life ceases which is only suffering!
And let this be the teaching of your virtue: “You shall kill yourself! You shall steal away from yourself!”—
“Lust is sin,”—so say some who preach death—“let us go apart and beget no children!”
“Giving birth is troublesome,”—say others—“why still give birth? One bears only the unfortunate!” And they also are preachers of death.
“Pity is necessary,”—so says a third party. “Take what I have! Take what I am! So much less does life bind me!”
Were they consistently pitying, then they would make their neighbors sick of life. To be wicked—that would be their true goodness.
But they want to be rid of life; what do they care if they bind others still tighter with their chains and gifts!—
And you also, to whom life is rough labor and disquiet, are you not very tired of life? Are you not very ripe for the sermon of death?
All you to whom rough labor is dear, and the rapid, new, and strange—you put up with yourselves badly; your diligence is escape, and the will to forget yourselves.
If you believed more in life, then you would devote yourselves less to the momentary. But for waiting, you have not enough capacity in you—nor even for idling!
Everywhere resound the voices of those who preach death; and the earth is full of those to whom death has to be preached.
Or “life eternal”; it is all the same to me—if only they pass away quickly!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.






X. WAR AND WARRIORS
By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth!
My brothers in war! I love you from the very heart. I am, and was ever, your counterpart. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth!
I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. You are not great enough not to know of hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them!
And if you cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship.
I see many soldiers; could I but see many warriors! “Uniform” one calls what they wear; may it not be uniform what they hide with it!
You shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy—for YOUR enemy. And with some of you there is hatred at first sight.
You shall seek your enemy; you shall wage your war, and for the sake of your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb, your uprightness shall still shout triumph for it!
You shall love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more than the long.
You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory!
One can only be silent and sit peacefully when one has arrow and bow; otherwise one prats and quarrels. Let your peace be a victory!
You say it is the good cause which hallows even war? I say to you: it is the good war which hallows every cause.
War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your sympathy, but your bravery has always saved the victims.
“What is good?” you ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: “To be good is what is pretty, and at the same time touching.”
They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the bashfulness of your goodwill. You are ashamed of your flow, and others are ashamed of their ebb.
You are ugly? Well then, my brothers, take the sublime about you, the mantle of the ugly!
And when your soul becomes great, then it becomes haughty, and in your sublimity there is wickedness. I know you.
In wickedness the haughty man and the weakling meet. But they misunderstand one another. I know you.
You shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised. You must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies are also your successes.
Resistance—that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying!
To the good warrior “you shall” sounds pleasanter than “I will.” And all that is dear to you, you shall first have it commanded to you.
Let your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life!
Your highest thought, however, you shall have it commanded to you by me—and it is this: man is something that is to be surpassed.
So live your life of obedience and of war! What matter about long life! What warrior wishes to be spared!
I do not spare you, I love you from the very heart, my brothers in war!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XI. THE NEW IDOL
  



Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brothers: here there are states.
A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears to me, for now I will say to you my word concerning the death of peoples.
The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies also; and this lie creeps from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.”
It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.
Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.
Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.
This sign I give to you: every people speaks its language of good and evil: this its neighbor does not understand. It has devised its language for itself in laws and customs.
But the state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says it lies; and whatever it has it has stolen.
Everything in it is false; it bites with stolen teeth, the biting one. Even its bowels are false.
Confusion of language of good and evil; this sign I give to you as the sign of the state. Truly, the will to death, indicates this sign! Truly, it beckons to the preachers of death!
Many too many are born: the state was devised for the superfluous ones!
See just how it entices them to it, the many-too-many! How it swallows and chews and re-chews them!
“On earth there is nothing greater than I: it is I who am the regulating finger of God”—thus roars the monster. And not only the long-eared and short-sighted fall upon their knees!
Ah! even in your ears, you great souls, it whispers its gloomy lies! Ah! it finds out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves!
Yes, it finds you out too, you conquerors of the old God! You became weary of the conflict, and now your weariness serves the new idol!
It would gladly set up around it heroes and honorable ones, the new idol! Gladly it basks in the sunshine of good consciences,—the cold monster!
It will give YOU everything, if YOU worship it, the new idol: thus it purchases the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes.
It seeks to allure by means of you, the many-too-many! Yes, a hellish artifice has here been devised, a death-horse jingling with the trappings of divine honors!
Yes, a dying for many has here been devised, which glorifies itself as life: truly, a hearty service to all preachers of death!
The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all—is called “life.”
Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft—and everything becomes sickness and trouble to them!
Just see these superfluous ones! They are always sick; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves.
Just see these superfluous ones! They acquire wealth and become poorer by it. They seek for power, and above all, the lever of power, much money—these impotent ones!
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss.
They all strive toward the throne: it is their madness—as if happiness sat on the throne! Often filth sits on the throne.—and often also the throne on filth.
They all seem to me madmen, and clambering apes, and too eager. Their idol smells badly to me, the cold monster: they all smell badly to me, these idolaters.
My brothers, will you suffocate in the fumes of their animal mouths and appetites! Better to break the windows and jump into the open air!
Get away from the bad odor! Withdraw from the idolatry of the superfluous!
Get away from the bad odor! Withdraw from the steam of these human sacrifices!
The earth still remains open for great souls. Many sites are still empty for lone ones and twain ones, around which float the odor of tranquil seas.
A free life still remains open for great souls. Truly, he who possesses little is so much the less possessed: blessed be moderate poverty!
There, where the state ceases—only there commences the man who is not superfluous: there commences the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody.
There, where the state CEASES—pray look there, my brothers! Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman?—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XII. THE FLIES IN THE MARKETPLACE
  



Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you deafened by the noise of the great men, and pricked all over by the stings of the small ones.
Admirably, forest and rock know how to be silent with you. Resemble again the tree which you love, the broad-branched one—silently and attentively it overhangs the sea.
Where solitude ends, there begins the marketplace; and where the marketplace begins, there also begins the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.
In the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those representers, the people call great men.
The people have little idea of what is great—that is to say, the creating agency. But they have a taste for all representers and actors of great things.
The world revolves around the devisers of new values:—invisibly it revolves. But the people and the glory revolve around the actors: such is the course of things.
The actor has spirit, but little conscience of the spirit. He always believes in that with which he makes believe most strongly—in HIMSELF!
Tomorrow he has a new belief, and the day after, one still newer. He has sharp perceptions, like the people, and changeable humours.
To overturn—with him that means to prove. To drive mad—with him that means to convince. And blood is to him the best of all arguments.
A truth which only glides into fine ears, he calls falsehood and trumpery. Truly, he believes only in Gods that make a great noise in the world!
The marketplace is full of clattering buffoons,—and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour.
But the hour presses them; so they press you. And also from you they want Yes or No. Alas! you would set your chair between For and Against?
Do not be jealous, on account of those unconditional and impatient ones, you lover of truth! Never yet did truth cling to the arm of an unconditional one.
On account of those abrupt ones, return into your security: only in the marketplace is one assailed by Yes? or No?
The experience of all deep wells is slow: they have long to wait until they know WHAT has fallen into their depths.
All that is great takes place away from the marketplace and from fame: the devisers of new values have always dwelt away from the marketplace and from fame.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee there, where a rough, strong breeze blows!
Flee into your solitude! You have lived too closely to the small and the pitiable. Flee from their invisible vengeance! Toward you they have nothing but vengeance.
No longer raise an arm against them! They are innumerable, and it is not your fate to be a fly-swat.
The small and pitiable are innumerable; and of many a proud structure, rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin.
You are not stone; but already you have become hollow by the numerous drops. You will yet break and burst by the numerous drops.
I see you exhausted, by poisonous flies; I see you bleeding, and torn at a hundred spots; and your pride will not even be angry.
They would have blood from you in all innocence; their bloodless souls thirst for blood—and they sting, therefore, in all innocence.
But you, profound one, you suffer too profoundly even from small wounds; and before you have recovered, the same poison-worm crawls again over your hand.
You are too proud to kill these sweet-tooths. But take care lest it be your fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice!
They buzz around you also with their praise: their praise is obtrusiveness. They want to be close to your skin and your blood.
They flatter you, as one flatters a God or devil; they whimper before you, as before a God or devil. What does it come to! They are flatterers, and whimperers, and nothing more.
Often, also, they show themselves to you as amiable ones. But that has always been the prudence of the cowardly. Yes! the cowardly are wise!
They think much about you with their petty souls—you are always suspected by them! Whatever is much thought about is eventually thought suspicious.
They punish you for all your virtues. They pardon you in their inmost hearts only—for your errors.
Because you are gentle and of upright character, you say: “They are guiltless for their small existence.” But their petty souls think: “Guilty is all great existence.”
Even when you are gentle toward them, they still feel themselves despised by you; and they repay your kindness with secret cruelty.
Your silent pride is always offends their taste; they rejoice if once you are humble enough to be frivolous.
What we recognize in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on your guard against the small ones!
In your presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleams and glows against you in invisible vengeance.
Did you not see how often they became silent when you approached them, and how their energy left them like smoke from a dying fire?
Yes, my friend, you are the bad conscience of your neighbors; for they are unworthy of you. Therefore they hate you, and would gladly suck your blood.
Your neighbors will always be poisonous flies; what is great in you—that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude—and there, where a rough strong breeze blows. It is not your fate to be a fly-swat.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.






XIII. CHASTITY


I love the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there, there are too many of the lustful.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the dreams of a lustful woman?
And just look at these men: their eyes say it—they know nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman.
Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and worse! if their filth still has spirit in it!
Would that you were perfect—at least as animals! But to animals belongs innocence.
Do I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel you to innocence in your instincts.
Do I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many almost a vice.
They abstain, to be sure: but the bitch, sensuality, looks enviously out of all that they do.
Even into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit this beast follows them, with her discord.
And how nicely the bitch, sensuality, can beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece of flesh is denied to her!
You love tragedies and all that breaks the heart? But I am distrustful of your bitch, sensuality.
Your eyes are too cruel, and you look lustfully toward the sufferers. Has your lust not just disguised itself and taken the name of fellow-suffering?
And I give to you also this parable: Not a few who meant to cast out their devil, went by that into the swine themselves.
To whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded: lest it become the road to hell—to filth and lust of soul.
Do I speak of filthy things? That is not the worst thing for me to do.
Not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, does the discerning one go unwillingly into its waters.
Truly, there are chaste ones from their very nature; they are gentler of heart, and laugh better and more often than you.
They also laugh at chastity, and ask: “What is chastity?
Is chastity not folly? But the folly came to us, and not we to it.
We offered that guest harbor and heart: now it dwells with us—let it stay as long as it will!”—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XIV. THE FRIEND


“One, is always one too many around me”—thinks the anchorite. “Always once one—that makes two in the long run!”
I and me are always too earnestly in conversation: how could it be endured, if there were not a friend?
The friend of the anchorite is always the third one: the third one is the cork which prevents the conversation of the two sinking into the depth.
Ah! there are too many depths for all anchorites. Therefore, they long so much for a friend, and for his elevation.
Our faith in others betrays in where we would like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.
“Be at least my enemy!”—thus speaks the true reverence, which does not venture to solicit friendship.
If one would have a friend, then one must also be willing to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be CAPABLE of being an enemy.
One ought still to honor the enemy in one’s friend. Can you go near to your friend, and not go over to him?
In one’s friend one shall have one’s best enemy. You shall be closest to him with your heart when you withstand him.
You would wear no garment before your friend? It is in honor of your friend that you show yourself to him as you are? But he wishes you to the devil for that!
He who makes no secret of himself shocks: you have so much reason to fear nakedness! Aye, if you were Gods, then you could be ashamed of clothing!
You can not adorn yourself fine enough for your friend; for you shall be to him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.
Have you ever seen your friend asleep—to know how he looks? What is usually the face of your friend? It is your own face, in a coarse and imperfect mirror.
Have you ever seen your friend asleep? Were you not dismayed at your friend looking so? O my friend, man is something that has to be surpassed.
The friend shall be a master in divining and keeping silence: not everything must you wish to see. Your dream shall disclose to you what your friend does when awake.
Let your pity be a divining: to know first if your friend wants pity. Perhaps he loves in you the unmoved eye, and the look of eternity.
Let your pity for your friend be hid under a hard shell; you shall bite out a tooth on it. Thus it will have delicacy and sweetness.
Are you pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to your friend? Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend’s emancipator.
Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.
For far too long there has been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman. For that reason, woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.
In woman’s love there is injustice and blindness to all she does not love. And even in woman’s conscious love, there is still always surprise and lightning and night, along with the light.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship: women are still cats, and birds. Or at best, cows.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, who of you are capable of friendship?
Oh! your poverty, you men, and your sordidness of soul! As much as you give to your friend, I will give even to my enemy, and will not have become poorer by it.
There is comradeship: may there be friendship!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.






XV. THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS


Zarathustra saw many lands, and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and bad of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and bad.
No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbor values.
Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another: thus I found it. I found much here called bad, which was there decked with purple honors.
Never did the one neighbor understand the other: his soul always marveled at his neighbor’s delusion and wickedness.
A table of excellencies hangs over every people. Behold! it is the table of their triumphs; behold! it is the voice of their Will to Power.
What they think hard, they call laudable; what is indispensable and hard they call good; and what relieves in the direst distress, the unique and hardest of all,—they extol as holy.
Whatever makes them rule and conquer and shine, to the dismay and envy of their neighbors, they regard as the high and foremost thing, the test and the meaning of all else.
Truly, my brother, if you knew but a people’s need, its land, its sky, and its neighbor, then you would identify the law of its surmountings, and why it climbs up that ladder to its hope.
“Always you shall be the foremost and prominent above others: your jealous soul shall love no one, except a friend”—that made the soul of a Greek shake: by that he went his way to greatness.
“To speak truth, and be skillful with bow and arrow”—so it seemed alike pleasing and hard to the people from whom my name comes—the name which is alike pleasing and hard to me.
“To honor father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their will”—this table of surmounting, another people hung over themselves, and became powerful and permanent by it.
“To have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honor and blood, even in evil and dangerous courses”—teaching itself so, another people mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.
Truly, men have given to themselves all their good and bad. Truly, they did not take it, they did not find it, it did not come to them as a voice from heaven.
Man only assigned values to things in order to maintain himself—only he created the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, he called himself “man,” that is, the valuator.
Valuing is creating: hear it, you creating ones! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of the valued things.
Only through valuation is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, you creating ones!
Change of values—that is, change of the creating ones. He always destroys, who has to be a creator.
Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times individuals; truly, the individual himself is still the latest creation.
Peoples once hung over themselves tables of the good. Love which would rule and love which would obey, created for themselves such tables.
Joy in the herd is older than joy in the ego: and as long as the good conscience is for the herd, only the bad conscience says: I.
Truly, the crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeks its advantage in the advantage of many—it is not the origin of the herd, but its ruin.
It was always loving ones, and creating ones, that created good and bad. Fire of love glows in the names of all the virtues, and fire of wrath.
Zarathustra saw many lands, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones—“good” and “bad” they are called.
Truly, a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me, you brothers, who will master it for me? Who will put a fetter on the thousand necks of this animal?
There have so far been a thousand goals, for there have been a thousand peoples. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity has not a goal.
But pray tell me, my brothers, if the goal of humanity is still lacking, is there not also still lacking—humanity itself?—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XVI. NEIGHBOR-LOVE


You crowd around your neighbor, and have fine words for it. But I say to you: your neighbor-love is your bad love of yourselves.
You flee to your neighbor from yourselves, and would gladly make a virtue of it: but I fathom your “unselfishness.”
The YOU is older than the I; the YOU has been consecrated, but not yet the I: so man presses near to his neighbor.
Do I advise you to neighbor-love? Rather I advise you to neighbor-flight and to furthest love!
Higher than love to your neighbor is love to the furthest and future ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms.
The phantom that runs on before you, my brother, is fairer than you; why do you not give to it your flesh and your bones? But you fear, and run to your neighbor.
You cannot endure it with yourselves, and do not love yourselves sufficiently: so you seek to mislead your neighbor into love, and would gladly gild yourselves with his error.
Would that you could not endure it with any kind of near ones, or their neighbors; then you would have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves.
You call in a witness when you want to speak well of yourselves; and when you have misled him to think well of you, you also think well of yourselves.
Not only does he lie, who speaks contrary to his knowledge, but more so, he who speaks contrary to his ignorance. And thus you speak of yourselves in your intercourse, and belie your neighbor with yourselves.
Thus says the fool: “Association with men spoils the character, especially when one has none.”
The one goes to his neighbor because he seeks himself, and the other because he would gladly lose himself. Your bad love to yourselves makes solitude a prison to you.
The furthest ones are they who pay for your love to the near ones; and when there are but five of you together, a sixth must always die.
I do not love your festivals either: There I found too many actors, and even the spectators often behaved like actors.
Not the neighbor do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman.
I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how to be a sponge, if one would be loved by overflowing hearts.
I teach you the friend in whom the world stands complete, a capsule of the good,—the creating friend, who always has a complete world to bestow.
And as the world unrolled itself for him, so it rolls together again for him in rings, as the growth of good through evil, as the growth of purpose out of chance.
Let the future and the furthest be the motive of your today; in your friend you shall love the Superman as your motive.
My brothers, I advise you not to neighbor-love—I advise you to furthest love!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.






XVII. THE WAY OF THE CREATING ONE
  



Would you go into isolation, my brother? Would you seek the way to yourself? Tarry yet a little and listen to me.
“He who seeks may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong”: so say the herd. And long did you belong to the herd.
The voice of the herd will still echo in you. And when you say, “I no longer have a conscience in common with you,” then it will be a lament and a pain.
Behold, the same conscience produced that pain itself; and the last gleam of that conscience still glows on your affliction.
But you would go the way of your affliction, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your authority and your strength to do so!
Are you a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Can you also compel stars to revolve around you?
Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that you are not a lusting and ambitious one!
Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than the bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than ever.
Free, do you call yourself? I would hear of your ruling thought, and not that you have escaped from a yoke.
Are you one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one has cast away his final worth when he has cast away his servitude.
Free from what? What does that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, your eyes shall show to me: free FOR WHAT?
Can you give to yourself your bad and your good, and set up your will as a law over you? Can you be judge for yourself, and avenger of your law?
Terrible is aloneness with the judge and avenger of one’s own law. Thus a star is projected into desert space, and into the icy breath of aloneness.
Today you still suffer from the multitude, you individual; today you still have your courage unabated, and your hopes.
But one day the solitude will weary you; one day your pride will bend, and your courage break. You will one day cry: “I am alone!”
One day you will no longer see your loftiness, and see too closely your lowliness; your sublimity itself will frighten you as a phantom. You will one day cry: “All is false!”
There are feelings which seek to slay the lonesome one; if they do not succeed, then they themselves must die! But are you capable of it—to be a murderer?
Have you ever known, my brother, the word “disdain”? And the anguish of your justice in being just to those that disdain you?
You force many to think differently about you; that, they charge heavily to your account. You came near to them, and yet went past: for that they never forgive you.
You go beyond them: but the higher you rise, the smaller the eye of envy sees you. Most of all, however, the flying one is hated.
“How could you be just to me!”—you must say—“I choose your injustice as my allotted portion.”
Injustice and filth they cast at the lonesome one: but, my brother, if you would be a star, you must shine for them no less on that account!
And be on your guard against the good and just! They would gladly crucify those who devise their own virtue—they hate the lonesome ones.
Be on your guard, also, against holy simplicity! To it, all that is not simple is unholy; gladly, likewise, it would play with the fire—of the fagot and stake.
And be on your guard, also, against the assaults of your love! Too readily the recluse reaches his hand to anyone who meets him.
To many a one, may you not give your hand, but only your paw; and I wish your paw also to have claws.
But the worst enemy you can meet, will always be you yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests.
You lonesome one, you go the way to yourself! And past yourself and your seven devils lead your way!
You will be a heretic to yourself, and a wizard and a soothsayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain.
You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you become new if you have not first become ashes!
You lonesome one, you go the way of the creating one: you will create for yourself a God out of your seven devils!
You lonesome one, you go the way of the loving one: you love yourself, and on that account you despise yourself, as only the loving ones despise.
The loving one desires to create, because he despises! What does he know of love, who has not been obliged to despise just what he loved!
With your love, go into your isolation, my brother, and with your creating; and only later will justice limp after you.
With my tears, go into your isolation, my brother. I love him who seeks to create beyond himself, and thus succumbs.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.










XVIII. OLD AND YOUNG WOMEN


“Why do you slink along so shyly in the twilight, Zarathustra? And what do you hide so carefully under your cloak?
Is it a treasure that has been given to you? Or a child that has been born to you? Or do you go yourself on a thief’s errand, you friend of the evil?”—
Truly, my brother, said Zarathustra, it is a treasure that has been given to me: it is a little truth which I carry.
But it is naughty, like a young child; and if I do not hold its mouth, it screams too loudly.
As I went on my way alone today, at the hour when the sun sets, there an old woman met me, and she spoke thus to my soul:
“Zarathustra has spoken much also to us women, but he never spoke to us concerning woman.”
And I answered her: “Concerning woman, one should only talk to men.”
“Talk also to me of woman,” she said; “I am old enough to soon forget it.”
And I obliged the old woman and spoke thus to her:
Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman has one solution—it is called pregnancy.
Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man?
The true man wants two things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly.
The warrior does not like fruits that are too sweet. Therefore he likes woman;—even the sweetest woman is still bitter.
Woman understands children better than man does, but man is more childlike than woman.
In the true man there is a child hidden: it wants to play. Up then, you women, and discover the child in man!
Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine like the precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come.
Let the beam of a star shine in your love! Let your hope say: “May I bear the Superman!”
In your love let there be valor! You shall assail with your love him who inspires you with fear!
Let your honor be in your love! Little does woman understand otherwise about honor. But let this be your honor: always to love more than you are loved, and never to be the second.
Let man fear woman when she loves: then she makes every sacrifice, and everything else she regards as worthless.
Let man fear woman when she hates: for man in his innermost soul is merely evil; woman, however, is mean.
Whom does woman hate most?—Thus spoke the iron to the loadstone: “I hate you most, because you attract, but are too weak to draw to you.”
The happiness of man is, “I will.” The happiness of woman is, “He will.”
“Behold! now the world has become perfect!”—thus thinks every woman when she obeys with all her love.
The woman must obey, and find a depth for her surface. Surface, is woman’s soul, a mobile, stormy film on shallow water.
Man’s soul, however, is deep, its current gushes in subterranean caverns: woman surmises its force, but does not comprehend it.—
Then the old woman answered me: “Zarathustra has said many fine things, especially for those who are young enough for them.
Strange! Zarathustra knows little about women, and yet he is right about them! Does this happen, because with women nothing is impossible?
And now accept a little truth by way of thanks! I am old enough for it!
Swaddle it up and hold its mouth: otherwise it will scream too loudly, the little truth.”
“Give me, woman, your little truth!” said I. And thus spoke the old woman:
“You go to women? Do not forget your whip!”—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XIX. THE BITE OF THE ADDER
  



One day Zarathustra had fallen asleep under a fig-tree, owing to the heat, with his arms over his face. And there came an adder and bit him in the neck, so that Zarathustra screamed with pain. When he had taken his arm from his face he looked at the serpent; and then it recognized the eyes of Zarathustra, wriggled awkwardly, and tried to get away. “Not at all,” said Zarathustra, “as yet you have not received my thanks! You have awakened me in time; my journey is yet long.” “Your journey is short,” said the adder sadly; “my poison is fatal.” Zarathustra smiled. “When did a dragon ever die of a serpent’s poison?”—he said. “But take your poison back! You are not rich enough to present it to me.” Then the adder fell again on his neck, and licked his wound.
When Zarathustra once told this to his disciples they asked him: “And what, O Zarathustra, is the moral of your story?” And Zarathustra answered them thus:
The destroyer of morality, the good and just call me: my story is immoral.
When, however, you have an enemy, then return him not good for evil: for that would shame him. But prove that he has done something good to you.
And rather be angry than shame any one! And when you are cursed, it does not please me that you should then want to bless. Rather curse a little also!
And should a great injustice befall you, then quickly do five small ones besides. He who bears injustice alone is hideous to behold.
Did you ever know this? Shared injustice is half justice. And he who can bear it, should take the injustice upon himself!
A small revenge is more human than no revenge at all. And if the punishment is not also a right and an honor to the transgressor, I do not like your punishing.
It is nobler to own oneself in the wrong than to establish one’s right, especially if one is in the right. Only, one must be rich enough to do so.
I do not like your cold justice; out of the eyes of your judges there always glances the executioner and his cold steel.
Tell me: where do we find justice, which is love with seeing eyes?
Devise for me, then, the love which not only bears all punishment, but also all guilt!
Devise for me, then, the justice which acquits everyone except the judge!
And would you hear this too? To him who seeks to be just from the heart, even the lie becomes philanthropy.
But how could I be just from the heart! How can I give everyone what is his! Let this be enough for me: I give to everyone what is mine.
Finally, my brothers, guard against doing wrong to any anchorite. How could an anchorite forget! How could he repay!
An anchorite is like a deep well. It is easy to throw in a stone: if it should sink to the bottom, however, tell me, who will bring it out again?
Guard against injuring the anchorite! If you have done so, however, well then, kill him also!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.






XX. CHILD AND MARRIAGE


I have a question for you alone, my brother: like a sounding-lead, I cast this question into your soul, that I may know its depth.
You are young, and desire child and marriage. But I ask you: Are you a man ENTITLED to desire a child?
Are you the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of your passions, the master of your virtues? Thus I ask you.
Or do the animal and necessity speak in your wish? Or isolation? Or discord within you?
I would have your victory and freedom long for a child. You shall build living monuments to your victory and emancipation.
You shall build beyond yourself. But first of all you must be built yourself, right-angled in body and soul.
You shall propagate yourself, not only onward, but upward! For that purpose may the garden of marriage help you!
You shall create a higher body, a first movement, a spontaneously rolling wheel—you shall create a creating one.
Marriage: so I call the will of the two to create the one that is more than those who created it. The reverence for one another, as those exercising such a will, I call marriage.
Let this be the significance and the truth of your marriage. But that which the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones—ah, what shall I call it?
Ah, the poverty of soul in the two! Ah, the filth of soul in the two! Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the two!
They call it all marriage; and they say their marriages are made in heaven.
Well, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly net!
And let the God who limps near to bless what he has not joined stay far from me!
Do not laugh at such marriages! What child has not had reason to weep over its parents?
This man seemed to me worthy, and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for madcaps.
Yes, I wish that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with one another.
This one went forth as a hero in quest of truth, and at last got for himself a small dressed-up lie: he calls it his marriage.
That one was reserved in his dealings and chose choosily. But one time he spoilt his company for all time: he calls it his marriage.
Another sought a handmaid with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the handmaid of a woman, and now he needs also to become an angel.
I have found all buyers careful, and all of them have cunning eyes. But even the most cunning of them buys his wife in a sack. 
Many brief follies—that is called love with you. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, with one long stupidity.
Your love to woman, and woman’s love to man—ah, if only it were sympathy for suffering and veiled gods! But generally two animals find one another.
But even your best love is only an ecstatic simile and a painful burning. It is a torch to light you to higher paths.
One day you shall love beyond yourselves! So first LEARN to love. And for that you have had to drink the bitter cup of your love.
Bitterness is in the cup even of the best love: thus it causes longing for the Superman; thus it causes thirst in you, the creating one!
Thirst in the creating one, arrow and longing for the Superman: tell me, my brother, is this your will to marriage?
I call holy such a will and such a marriage.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXI. VOLUNTARY DEATH


Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange sounds the doctrine: “Die at the right time!”
Die at the right time: so teaches Zarathustra.
To be sure, he who never lives at the right time, how could he ever die at the right time? Would that he might never be born!—Thus I advise the superfluous ones.
But even the superfluous ones make much ado about their death, and even the most hollow nut wants to be cracked.
Every one regards dying as a great matter: but as yet death is not a festival. Not yet have people learned to inaugurate the finest festivals.
I show you the consummating death, which becomes a spur and promise to the living.
The consummating one dies his death triumphantly, surrounded by men filled with hope and making solemn vows.
Thus should one learn to die; and there should be no festival at which such a dying one does not consecrate the oaths of the living!
Thus to die is best; the next best, however, is to die in battle, and sacrifice a great soul.
But equally hateful to the fighter as to the victor, is your grinning death which creeps near like a thief,—and yet comes as master.
My death, I praise to you, the voluntary death, which comes to me because I want it.
And when shall I want it?—He that has a goal and an heir, wants death at the right time for the goal and the heir.
And out of reverence for the goal and the heir, he will hang up no more withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life.
Truly, I will not resemble the rope-makers: they lengthen out their cord, and by that go ever backward.
Many a one, also, waxes too old for his truths and triumphs; a toothless mouth has no longer the right to every truth.
And whoever wants to have fame, must take leave of honor early, and practise the difficult art of—going at the right time.
One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tastes best: that is known by those who want to be long loved.
There are sour apples, no doubt, whose lot is to wait until the last day of autumn: and at the same time they become ripe, yellow, and shrivelled.
In some the heart ages first, and in others the spirit. And some are old in youth, but the late young keep long young.
To many men life is a failure; a poison-worm gnaws at their heart. Then let them see to it that their dying is all the more a success.
Many never become sweet; they rot even in the summer. It is cowardice that holds them fast to their branches.
Far too many live, and they hang far too long on their branches. Would that a storm came and shook all this rottenness and worm-eatenness from the tree!
I wish that there came preachers of QUICK death! Those would be the appropriate storms and agitators of the trees of life! But I hear only slow death preached, and patience with all that is “earthly.”
Ah! you preach patience with what is earthly? It is this earthly that has too much patience with you, you blasphemers!
Truly, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honor: and it has proved a calamity to many that he died too early.
As yet he had known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just—the Hebrew Jesus: then he was seized with the longing for death.
Had he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the good and just! Then, perhaps, he would have learned to live, and love the earth—and laughter also!
Believe it, my brothers! He died too early; he himself would have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! He was noble enough to disavow!
But he was still immature. The youth loves immaturely, and immaturely also he hates man and earth. Still confined and awkward are his soul and the wings of his spirit.
But in man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less of melancholy: he understands better about life and death.
Free for death, and free in death; saying a holy No, when there is no longer time for Yes: thus he understands about death and life.
That your dying may not be a reproach to man and the earth, my friends: that I solicit from the honey of your soul.
In your dying your spirit and your virtue shall still shine like an evening after-glow around the earth: otherwise your dying has been unsatisfactory.
Thus I will die myself, that you friends may love the earth more for my sake; and earth I will again become, to have rest in her that bore me.
Truly, Zarathustra had a goal; he threw his ball. Now you friends be the heirs of my goal; to you I throw the golden ball.
Best of all, I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball! And so I still tarry a little while on the earth—pardon me for it!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXII. THE BESTOWING VIRTUE
  

1.
When Zarathustra had taken leave of the town to which his heart was attached, the name of which is “The Colorful Cow,” there followed him many people who called themselves his disciples, and kept him company. Thus they came to a crossroad. Then Zarathustra told them that he now wanted to go alone; for he was fond of going alone. His disciples, however, presented him at his departure with a staff, on the golden handle of which a serpent twined round the sun. Zarathustra rejoiced on account of the staff, and supported himself on it; then he spoke thus to his disciples:
Tell me, pray: how did gold come to the highest value? Because it is uncommon, and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in lustre; it always bestows itself.
Only as an image of the highest virtue did gold come to the highest value. Gold-like, beams the glance of the bestower. Gold-lustre makes peace between moon and sun.
The highest virtue is uncommon, and unprofiting, it is beaming, and soft of lustre: the highest virtue is a bestowing virtue.
Truly, I know you well, my disciples: you strive like me for the bestowing virtue. What should you have in common with cats and wolves?
It is your thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves: and therefore you have the thirst to accumulate all riches in your soul.
Your soul strives insatiably for treasures and jewels, because your virtue is insatiable in desiring to bestow.
You constrain all things to flow toward you and into you, so that they shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of your love.
Truly, such bestowing love must become an appropriator of all values; but I call this selfishness healthy and holy.—
There is another selfishness, an all-too-poor and hungry kind, which would always steal—the selfishness of the sick, the sickly selfishness.
With the eye of the thief it looks on all that is lustrous; with the craving of hunger it measures him who has abundance; and it always prowls around the tables of bestowers.
Sickness speaks in such craving, and invisible degeneration; the larcenous craving of this selfishness speaks of a sickly body.
Tell me, my brother, what do we think bad, and worst of all? Is it not DEGENERATION?—And we always suspect degeneration when the bestowing soul is lacking.
Our course goes upward from genera on to super-genera. But a horror to us is the degenerating sense, which says: “All for myself.”
Our sense soars upward: thus it is a simile of our body, a simile of an elevation. The names of the virtues are such similes of elevations.
Thus the body goes through history, a becomer and fighter. And the spirit—what is it to the body? The herald of its fights and victories, its companion and echo.
All names of good and evil are similes; they do not speak out, they only hint. He is a fool who seeks knowledge from them!
Give heed, my brothers, to every hour when your spirit would speak in similes: there is the origin of your virtue.
Then your body is elevated, and raised up; with its delight, it enraptures the spirit; so that it becomes creator, and valuer, and lover, and everything’s benefactor.
When your heart overflows broad and full like the river, a blessing and a danger to the lowlanders: there is the origin of your virtue.
When you are exalted above praise and blame, and your will would command all things, as a loving one’s will: there is the origin of your virtue.
When you despise pleasant things, and the effeminate couch, and cannot couch far enough from the effeminate: there is the origin of your virtue.
When you are willers of one will, and when that change of every need is needful to you: there is the origin of your virtue.
Truly, it is a new good and evil! Truly, a new deep murmuring, and the voice of a new fountain!
It is power, this new virtue; it is a ruling thought, and a subtle soul around it: a golden sun, with the serpent of knowledge around it.


2.
Here Zarathustra paused awhile, and looked lovingly on his disciples. Then he continued to speak thus—and his voice had changed:
Remain true to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue! Let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to the meaning of the earth! Thus I pray and implore you.
Let it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal walls with its wings! Ah, there has always been so much flown-away virtue!
Lead, as I do, the flown-away virtue back to the earth—yes, back to body and life: that it may give the earth its meaning, a human meaning!
A hundred times thus far, has spirit as well as virtue flown away and blundered. Alas! all this delusion and blundering still dwells in our body: there it has become body and will.
A hundred times thus far, has spirit as well as virtue attempted and erred. Yes, man has been an attempt. Alas, much ignorance and error has become embodied in us!
Not only the reason of millennia—but also their madness, breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir.
Still we fight step by step with the giant Chance, and until now nonsense, the lack-of-sense has ruled over all mankind.
Let your spirit and your virtue be devoted to the sense of the earth, my brothers: let the value of everything be newly determined by you! For that you shall be fighters! For that you shall be creators!
Intelligently the body purifies itself; attempting with intelligence it exalts itself; to the discerners all impulses sanctify themselves; to the exalted the soul becomes joyful.
Physician, heal yourself: then you will also heal your patient. Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes him who makes himself whole.
There are a thousand paths which have never yet been trodden; a thousand healths and hidden islands of life. Man and man’s earth are still unexhausted and undiscovered.
Awake and listen, you lonesome ones! From the future come winds with stealthy wings, and to fine ears good tidings are proclaimed.
You lonesome ones of today, you seceding ones, you shall one day be a people: out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall a chosen people arise:—and out of it the Superman.
Truly, the earth shall yet become a place of healing! And already a new odor is diffused around it, a salvation-bringing odor—and a new hope!


3.
When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he paused, like one who had not said his last word; and for a long time he balanced the staff doubtfully in his hand. At last he spoke thus—and his voice had changed:
Now I go alone, my disciples! You also now go away, and alone! So I will have it.
Truly, I advise you: depart from me, and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.
One repays a teacher badly if one remains merely a scholar. And why will you not pluck at my wreath?
You revere me; but what if your reverence should some day collapse? Beware lest a falling statue kill you!
You say, you believe in Zarathustra? But of what value is Zarathustra! You are my believers: but of what value are all believers!
You had not yet sought yourselves: then you found me. So all believers do; therefore all belief is of so little account.
Now I tell you to lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me, will I return to you.
Truly, with other eyes, my brothers, I shall then seek my lost ones; with another love I shall then love you.
And once again you shall have become friends to me, and children of one hope: then I will be with you for the third time, to celebrate the great noontide with you.
And it is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of his course between animal and Superman, and celebrates his advance to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the advance to a new morning.
At such time the down-goer will bless himself, that he should be an over-goer; and the sun of his knowledge will be at noontide.
“ALL THE GODS ARE DEAD: NOW WE DESIRE THE SUPERMAN TO LIVE.”—Let this be our final will at the great noontide!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.










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THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA
 SECOND PART
“—and only when you have all denied me, will I return to you.
Truly, with other eyes, my brothers, I shall then seek my lost ones; with another love I shall then love you.”—ZARATHUSTRA, I., “The Bestowing Virtue.”








XXIII. THE CHILD WITH THE MIRROR




After this Zarathustra returned again into the mountains to the solitude of his cave, and withdrew himself from men, waiting like a sower who has scattered his seed. His soul, however, became impatient and full of longing for those whom he loved: because he still had much to give them. For this is hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.
Thus months and years passed with the lonesome one; his wisdom meanwhile increased, and caused him pain by its abundance.
One morning, however, he awoke before the rosy dawn, and having meditated long on his couch, at last spoke thus to his heart:
Why did I startle in my dream, so that I awoke? Did a child not come to me, carrying a mirror?
“O Zarathustra”—the child said to me—“look at yourself in the mirror!”
But when I looked into the mirror, I cried out, and my heart shook: for it was not myself that I saw in it, but the sneer and grimace of a devil.
Truly, I understand all too well the dream’s omen and warning: my DOCTRINE is in danger; tares want to be called wheat!
My enemies have grown powerful and have disfigured the likeness of my doctrine, so that my dearest ones have to blush for the gifts that I gave them.
My friends are lost; the hour has come for me to seek my lost ones!—
With these words Zarathustra leaped up, not however like a frightened man seeking air, but rather like a seer and a singer whom the spirit inspires. His eagle and serpent gazed on him with amazement: for a coming bliss spread over his face like the rosy dawn.
What has happened to me, my animals?—said Zarathustra. Am I not transformed? Has bliss not come to me like a whirlwind?
My happiness is foolish, and it will speak foolish things: it is still too young—so have patience with it!
I am wounded by my happiness: all sufferers shall be physicians to me!
I can again go down to my friends, and also to my enemies! Zarathustra can again speak and bestow, and show his best love to his loved ones!
My impatient love overflows in streams,—down toward sunrise and sunset. Out of silent mountains and storms of affliction, my soul rushes into the valleys.
Too long have I longed and looked into the distance. Too long has solitude possessed me: thus I have unlearned to keep silence.
I have become mouth entirely, and the roaring of a brook from high rocks: downward into the valleys I will hurl my speech.
And let the stream of my love sweep into impassable channels! How should a stream not finally find its way to the sea!
Truly, there is a lake in me, sequestered and self-sufficing; but the stream of my love bears this along with it, down—to the sea!
I tread new paths, a new speech comes to me; Like all creators, I have become tired of the old tongues. My spirit will no longer walk on worn-out soles.
All speaking runs too slowly for me:—O storm, I leap into your chariot! And even you I will whip with my spite!
Like a cry and a huzza I will traverse wide seas, til I find the Happy Isles where my friends sojourn;—
And my enemies among them! How I now love everyone to whom I may but speak! Even my enemies pertain to my bliss.
And when I want to mount my wildest horse, then my spear always helps me up best: it is my foot’s ever ready servant:—
The spear which I hurl at my enemies! How grateful I am to my enemies that I may at last hurl it!
The tension of my cloud has been too great: between lightning-bolts of laughter I will cast hail-showers into the depths.
Violently my breast will then heave; violently it will blow its storm over the mountains: and thus it will win relief.
Truly, my happiness comes like a storm, and my freedom! But my enemies shall think that THE EVIL ONE roars over their heads.
Yes, you also, my friends, will be alarmed by my wild wisdom; and perhaps you will flee from it, along with my enemies.
Ah, that I knew how to lure you back with shepherds’ flutes! Ah, that my lioness wisdom would learn to roar softly! And we have already learned much with one another!
My wild wisdom became pregnant on the lonesome mountains; on the rough stones she bore the youngest of her young.
Now she runs foolishly in the arid wilderness, and seeks and seeks the soft grassland—my old, wild wisdom!
On the soft grassland of your hearts, my friends!—on your love, she would gladly bed her dearest one!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXIV. IN THE HAPPY ISLES




The figs fall from the trees, they are good and sweet; and in falling the red skins of them break. I am a north wind to ripe figs.
Thus, like figs, these doctrines fall for you, my friends: now drink their juice and eat their sweet flesh! It is autumn all around, and clear sky, and afternoon.
Behold, what fullness is around us! And out of the midst of superabundance, it is delightful to look out on distant seas.
Once people said God, when they looked out on distant seas; now, however, I have taught you to say, Superman.
God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond your creating will.
Could you CREATE a God?—Then, I pray you, be silent about all Gods! But you could well create the Superman.
Perhaps not you yourselves, my brothers! But you could transform yourselves into fathers and forefathers of the Superman: and let that be your best creating!—
God is a conjecture: but I would like your conjecturing restricted to the conceivable.
Could you CONCEIVE a God?—But let Will to Truth mean this to you: that everything be transformed into the humanly conceivable, the humanly visible, the humanly sensible! You shall follow your own discernment out to the end!
And what you have called the world shall only be created by you: your reason, your likeness, your will, your love, it shall itself become! And truly, for your own bliss, you discerning ones!
And how would you endure life without that hope, you discerning ones? Neither in the inconceivable could you have been born, nor in the irrational.
But that I may reveal my heart entirely to you, my friends: IF there were gods, how could I endure it not to be a God! THEREFORE there are no Gods.
Yes, I have drawn the conclusion; now, however, it draws me.—
God is a conjecture: but who could drink all the bitterness of this conjecture without dying? Shall the creating one be robbed of his faith, and the eagle of his flights into eagle-heights?
God is a thought—it makes all the straight crooked, and all that stands turn. What? Time would be gone, and all the perishable would be but a lie?
To think this is giddiness and vertigo to human limbs, and even vomiting to the stomach: truly, the reeling sickness, I call it, to conjecture such a thing.
I call it evil and misanthropic: all that teaching about the one, and the perfect, and the unmoved, and the sufficient, and the imperishable!
All the imperishable—that’s but a simile, and the poets lie too much.—
But the best similes shall speak of time and of becoming: they shall be a praise, and a justification of all perishableness!
Creating—that is the great salvation from suffering, and life’s alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.
Yes, there must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators! Thus you are advocates and justifiers of all perishableness.
For the creator himself to be the new-born child, he must also be willing to be the child-bearer, and endure the pangs of the child-bearer.
Truly, I went my way through a hundred souls, and through a hundred cradles and birth-throes. I have taken many a farewell; I know the heart-breaking last hours.
But so wills it my creating Will, my fate. Or, to tell you it more candidly: just such a fate—wills my Will.
All FEELING suffers in me, and is in prison: but my WILLING ever comes to me as my emancipator and comforter.
Willing emancipates: that is the true doctrine of will and emancipation—so Zarathustra teaches you.
No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer creating! Ah, that that great debility may ever be far from me!
And also in discerning do I feel only my will’s procreating and evolving delight; and if there be innocence in my knowledge, it is because there is will to procreation in it.
Away from God and Gods did this will allure me; what would there be to create if there were—Gods!
But to man does it ever impel me anew, my fervent creative will; thus impells it the hammer to the stone.
Ah, you men, within the stone slumbers an image for me, the image of my visions! Ah, that it should slumber in the hardest, ugliest stone!
Now my hammer rages ruthlessly against its prison. The fragments fly from the stone: what’s that to me?
I will complete it: for a shadow came to me—the stillest and lightest of all things once came to me!
The beauty of the Superman came to me as a shadow. Ah, my brothers! Of what account now are—the Gods to me!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXV. THE PITYING


My friends, there has arisen a satire on your friend: “Behold Zarathustra! Does he not walk among us as if among animals?”
But it is better said in this way: “The discerning one walks among men AS among animals.”
Man himself is to the discerning one: the animal with red cheeks.
How has that happened to him? Is it not because he has had to be ashamed too often?
O my friends! Thus speaks the discerning one: shame, shame, shame—that is the history of man!
And on that account does the noble one call upon himself not to abash: bashfulness does he impose on himself in presence of all sufferers.
Truly, I do not like them, the merciful ones, whose bliss is in their pity: too destitute are they of bashfulness.
If I must pity, I dislike it to be known; and if I do so, it is preferably at a distance.
Preferably also do I shroud my head, and flee, before being recognized: and thus do I bid you do, my friends!
May my destiny ever lead unafflicted ones like you across my path, and those with whom I MAY have hope and repast and honey in common!
Truly, I have done this and that for the afflicted: but I always seemed to do something better when I had learned to enjoy myself better.
Since humanity came into being, man has enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin!
And when we learn better to enjoy ourselves, then we unlearn best to give pain to others, and to contrive pain.
Therefore do I wash the hand that has helped the sufferer; therefore do I wipe also my soul.
For in seeing the sufferer suffering—I was ashamed of that on account of his shame; and in helping him, I sorely wounded his pride.
Great obligations do not make one grateful, but revengeful; and when a small kindness is not forgotten, it becomes a gnawing worm.
“Be shy in accepting! Distinguish by accepting!”—thus do I advise those who have nothing to bestow.
I, however, am a bestower: I bestow willingly as friend to friends. Strangers, however, and the poor, may pluck the fruit from my tree for themselves: thus does it cause less shame.
Beggars, however, one should entirely do away with! Truly, it annoys one to give to them, and it annoys one not to give to them.
And likewise sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: the sting of conscience teaches one to sting.
The worst things, however, are the petty thoughts. Truly, better to have done evilly than to have thought pettily!
To be sure, you say: “The delight in petty evils spares one many a great evil deed.” But here one should not wish to be sparing.
Like a boil is the evil deed: it itches and irritates and breaks forth—it speaks honorably.
“Behold, I am disease,” says the evil deed: that is its honorableness.
But like infection is the petty thought: it creeps and hides, and wants to be nowhere—until the whole body is decayed and withered by the petty infection.
To him however, who is possessed of a devil, I would whisper this word in the ear: “Better for you to rear up your devil! Even for you there is still a path to greatness!”—
Ah, my brothers! One knows a little too much about every one! And many a one becomes transparent to us, but still we can by no means penetrate him.
It is difficult to live among men because silence is so difficult.
And we are most unfair, not to him who is offensive to us, but to him who does not concern us at all.
If, however, you have a suffering friend, then be a resting-place for his suffering; like a hard bed, however, a camp-bed: thus will you serve him best.
And if a friend does you wrong, then say: “I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to YOURSELF, however—how could I forgive that!”
Thus speaks all great love: it surpasses even forgiveness and pity.
One should hold fast one’s heart; for when one lets it go, how quickly does one’s head run away!
Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the pitying? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the pitying?
Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity!
Thus spoke the devil to me, once on a time: “Even God has his hell: it is his love for man.”
And lately, I heard him say these words: “God is dead: of his pity for man has God died.”—
So you be warned against pity: FROM THERE there yet comes to men a heavy cloud! Truly, I understand weather-signs!
But attend also to this word: All great love is above all its pity: for it seeks—to create what is loved!
“I offer myself to my love, AND MY NEIGHBOR AS MYSELF”—such is the language of all creators.
All creators, however, are hard.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXVI. THE PRIESTS
  



And one day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples, and spoke these words unto them:
“Here are priests: but although they are my enemies, pass them quietly and with sleeping swords!
Even among them there are heroes; many of them have suffered too much—: so they want to make others suffer.
Bad enemies are they: nothing is more vengeful than their meekness. And readily does he soil himself who touches them.
But my blood is related to theirs; and I want also to see my blood honored in theirs.”—
And when they had passed, a pain attacked Zarathustra; but not long had he struggled with the pain, when he began to speak thus:
It moves my heart for those priests. They also go against my taste; but that is the smallest matter to me, since I am among men.
But I suffer and have suffered with them: to me they are prisoners, and stigmatized ones. He whom they call Savior put them in fetters:—
In fetters of false values and fatuous words! Oh, that someone would save them from their Savior!
They once thought they had landed on an isle, when the sea tossed them about; but behold, it was a slumbering monster!
False values and fatuous words: these are the worst monsters for mortals—long slumbers and waits the fate that is in them.
But at last it comes and awakes and devours and engulfs whatever has built tabernacles upon it.
Oh, just look at those tabernacles which those priests have built themselves! Churches, they call their sweet-smelling caves!
Oh, that falsified light, that mustified air! Where the soul—may not fly aloft to its height!
But so commands their belief: “On your knees, up the stair, you sinners!”
Truly, rather would I see a shameless one than the distorted eyes of their shame and devotion!
Who created for themselves such caves and penitence-stairs? Was it not those who sought to conceal themselves, and were ashamed under the clear sky?
And only when the clear sky looks again through ruined roofs, and down upon grass and red poppies on ruined walls—will I again turn my heart to the seats of this God.
They called God that which opposed and afflicted them: and truly, there was much hero-spirit in their worship!
And they knew not how to love their God otherwise than by nailing men to the cross!
As corpses they thought to live; in black draped they their corpses; even in their talk do I still feel the evil flavor of charnel-houses.
And he who lives near to them lives near to black pools, wherein the toad sings his song with sweet gravity.
Better songs would they have to sing, for me to believe in their Savior: more like saved ones would his disciples have to appear to me!
Naked, would I like to see them: for beauty alone should preach penitence. But whom would that disguised affliction convince!
Truly, their Saviors themselves came not from freedom and freedom’s seventh heaven! Truly, they themselves never trod the carpets of knowledge!
Of defects did the spirit of those Saviors consist; but into every defect had they put their illusion, their stop-gap, which they called God.
Their spirit was drowned in their pity; and when they swelled and overswelled with pity, there always floated to the surface a great folly.
Eagerly and with shouts they drove their flock over their foot-bridge; as if there were but one foot-bridge to the future! Truly, those shepherds also were still of the flock!
Small spirits and spacious souls had those shepherds: but, my brothers, what small domains have even the most spacious souls thus far been!
Characters of blood did they write on the way they went, and their folly taught that truth is proved by blood.
But blood is the very worst witness to truth; blood taints the purest teaching, and turns it into delusion and hatred of heart.
And when a person goes through fire for his teaching—what does that prove! It is more, truly, when one’s teaching comes out of one’s own burning!
Sultry heart and cold head; where these meet, there arises the blusterer, the “Savior.”
Greater ones, truly, have there been, and higher-born ones, than those whom the people call Saviors, those rapturous blusterers!
And by still greater ones than any of the Saviors must you be saved, my brothers, if you would find the way to freedom!
Never yet has there been a Superman. Naked have I seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest man:—
All-too-similar are they still to each other. Truly, even the greatest found I—all-too-human!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXVII. THE VIRTUOUS


With thunder and heavenly fireworks must one speak to indolent and somnolent senses.
But beauty’s voice speaks gently: it appeals only to the most awakened souls.
Gently my shield vibrated and laughed to me today; it was beauty’s holy laughing and thrilling.
At you, you virtuous ones, laughed my beauty today. And thus came its voice to me: “They want—to be paid besides!”
You want to be paid besides, you virtuous ones! you want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your today?
And now you reproach me for teaching that there is no reward-giver, nor paymaster? And truly, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward.
Ah! this is my sorrow: into the basis of things have reward and punishment been insinuated—and now even into the basis of your souls, you virtuous ones!
But like the snout of the boar shall my word grub up the basis of your souls; a ploughshare will I be called by you.
All the secrets of your heart shall be brought to light; and when you lie in the sun, grubbed up and broken, then will also your falsehood be separated from your truth.
For this is your truth: you are TOO PURE for the filth of the words: vengeance, punishment, recompense, retribution.
You love your virtue as a mother loves her child; but when did one hear of a mother wanting to be paid for her love?
It is your dearest Self, your virtue. The ring’s thirst is in you: every ring struggles to reach itself again, and turns itself.
And like the star that goes out, so is every work of your virtue: ever is its light on its way and travelling—and when will it cease to be on its way?
Thus the light of your virtue is still on its way, even when its work is done. Be it forgotten and dead, still its ray of light lives and travels.
That your virtue is your Self, and not an outward thing, a skin, or a cloak: that is the truth from the basis of your souls, you virtuous ones!—
But sure enough there are those to whom virtue means writhing under the lash: and you have listened too much to their crying!
And there are others who call virtue the slothfulness of their vices; and when once their hatred and jealousy relax the limbs, their “justice” becomes lively and rubs its sleepy eyes.
And there are others who are drawn downwards: their devils draw them. But the more they sink, the more ardently glow their eyes, and the longing for their God.
Ah! their crying also has reached your ears, you virtuous ones: “What I am NOT, that, that is God to me, and virtue!”
And there are others who go along heavily and creakingly, like carts taking stones downhill: they talk much of dignity and virtue—their drag they call virtue!
And there are others who are like eight-day clocks when wound up; they tick, and want people to call ticking—virtue.
Truly, in those I have my amusement: wherever I find such clocks I shall wind them up with my mockery, and they shall even whirr thereby!
And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned in their unrighteousness.
Ah! how ineptly comes the word “virtue” out of their mouth! And when they say: “I am just,” it always sounds like: “I am just—revenged!”
With their virtues they want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies; and they elevate themselves only that they may lower others.
And again there are those who sit in their swamp, and speak thus from among the bulrushes: “Virtue—that is to sit quietly in the swamp.
We bite no one, and go out of the way of him who would bite; and in all matters we have the opinion that is given us.”
And again there are those who love attitudes, and think that virtue is a sort of attitude.
Their knees continually adore, and their hands are eulogies of virtue, but their heart knows nothing of it.
And again there are those who regard it as virtue to say: “Virtue is necessary”; but after all they believe only that policemen are necessary.
And many a one who cannot see men’s loftiness, calls it virtue to see their baseness far too well: thus he calls his evil eye virtue.—
And some want to be edified and raised up, and call it virtue: and others want to be cast down,—and likewise call it virtue.
And thus do almost all think that they participate in virtue; and at least everyone claims to be an authority on “good” and “evil.”
But Zarathustra came not to say to all those liars and fools: “What do YOU know of virtue! What COULD you know of virtue!”—
But that you, my friends, might become weary of the old words which you have learned from the fools and liars:
That you might become weary of the words “reward,” “retribution,” “punishment,” “righteous vengeance.”—
That you might become weary of saying: “That an action is good is because it is unselfish.”
Ah! my friends! That YOUR very Self be in your action, as the mother is in the child: let that be YOUR formula of virtue!
Truly, I have taken from you a hundred formulae and your virtue’s favourite playthings; and now you scold me, as children scold.
They played by the sea—then there came a wave and swept their playthings into the deep: and now they cry.
But the same wave shall bring them new playthings, and spread before them new speckled shells!
Thus they will be comforted; and like them you shall also, my friends, have your comforting—and new speckled shells!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXVIII. THE RABBLE
Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all fountains are poisoned.
To everything cleanly am I well disposed; but I hate to see the grinning mouths and the thirst of the unclean.
They cast their eye down into the fountain: and now their odious smile glances up to me out of the fountain.
The holy water have they poisoned with their lustfulness; and when they called their filthy dreams delight, then poisoned they also the words.
The flame becomes indignant when they put their damp hearts to the fire; the spirit itself bubbles and smokes when the rabble approach the fire.
 In their hands the fruit becomes mawkish and over-mellow: their look makes the fruit tree unsteady, and withered at the top.
And many a one who has turned away from life, has only turned away from the rabble: he hated to share with them fountain, flame, and fruit.
And many a one who has gone into the wilderness and suffered thirst with beasts of prey, disliked only to sit at the cistern with filthy camel-drivers.
And many a one who has come along as a destroyer, and as a hailstorm to all cornfields, wanted merely to put his foot into the jaws of the rabble, and thus stop their throat.
And it is not the mouthful which has most choked me, to know that life itself requires enmity and death and torture-crosses:—
But I asked once, and suffocated almost with my question: What? is the rabble also NECESSARY for life?
Are poisoned fountains necessary, and stinking fires, and filthy dreams, and maggots in the bread of life?
Not my hatred, but my loathing, gnawed hungrily at my life! Ah, often I became weary of spirit, when I found even the rabble spiritual!
And I turned my back on the rulers, when I saw what they now call ruling: to traffic and bargain for power—with the rabble!
I dwelled among peoples of a strange language, with stopped ears: so that the language of their trafficking might remain strange to me, and their bargaining for power.
And holding my nose, I went morosely through all yesterdays and todays: truly, all yesterdays and todays smell badly of the scribbling rabble!
Like a cripple become deaf, and blind, and dumb—thus I have lived long; that I might not live with the power-rabble, the scribe-rabble, and the pleasure-rabble.
Toilsomely my spirit mounted stairs, and cautiously; alms of delight were its refreshment; on the staff did life creep along with the blind one.
What has happened to me? How have I freed myself from loathing? Who has rejuvenated my eyes? How have I flown to the height where no rabble any longer sit at the wells?
Did my loathing itself create for me wings and fountain-divining powers? Truly, to the loftiest height had I to fly, to find again the well of delight!
Oh, I have found it, my brothers! Here on the loftiest height bubbles up for me the well of delight! And there is a life at whose waters none of the rabble drink with me!
Almost too violently do you flow for me, you fountain of delight! And often you empty the goblet again, in wanting to fill it!
And yet I must learn to approach you more modestly: far too violently does my heart still flow towards you:—
My heart on which my summer burns, my short, hot, melancholy, over-happy summer: how my summer heart longs for your coolness!
Past, the lingering distress of my spring! Past, the wickedness of my snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely, and summer-noontide!
A summer on the loftiest height, with cold fountains and blissful stillness: oh, come, my friends, that the stillness may become more blissful!
For this is OUR height and our home: too high and steep do we here dwell for all uncleanly ones and their thirst.
Cast but your pure eyes into the well of my delight, my friends! How could it become turbid thereby! It shall laugh back to you with ITS purity.
On the tree of the future we build our nest; eagles shall bring us lone ones food in their beaks!
Truly, no food of which the impure could be fellow-partakers! Fire, would they think they devoured, and burn their mouths!
Truly, no abodes do we here keep ready for the impure! An ice-cave to their bodies would our happiness be, and to their spirits!
And as strong winds will we live above them, neighbours to the eagles, neighbours to the snow, neighbours to the sun: thus live the strong winds.
And like a wind I will one day blow among them, and with my spirit, take the breath from their spirit: thus wills my future.
Truly, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low places; and this counsel counsels he to his enemies, and to whatever spits and spews: “Take care not to spit AGAINST the wind!”—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXIX. THE TARANTULAS
  



Behold, this is the tarantula’s den! Would you see the tarantula itself? Here its web hangs: touch this, so that it may tremble.
There comes the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on your back is your triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in your soul.
Revenge is in your soul: wherever you bite, there arises a black scab; with revenge, your poison makes the soul giddy!
Thus do I speak to you in parable, you who make the soul giddy, you preachers of EQUALITY! Tarantulas are you to me, and secretly revengeful ones!
But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I laugh in your face my laughter of the height.
Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word “justice.”
Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. “Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance”—thus do they talk to one another.
“Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us”—thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.
“And ‘Will to Equality’—that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that has power we will raise an outcry!”
You preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence cries thus in you for “equality”: your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words!
Fretted conceit and suppressed envy—perhaps your fathers’ conceit and envy: in you they break forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance.
What the father has hid comes out in the son; and often I have found in the son the father’s revealed secret.
Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspires them—but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that makes them so.
Their jealousy leads them also into thinkers’ paths; and this is the sign of their jealousy—they always go too far: so that their fatigue has at last to go to sleep on the snow.
In all their lamentations sounds vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seems to them bliss.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound.
Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Truly, in their souls not only honey is lacking.
And when they call themselves “the good and just,” forget not, that for them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but—power!
My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others.
There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas.
That they speak in favor of life, though they sit in their den, these poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life—is because they would thereby do injury.
To those who have power at present would they thereby do injury: for with those the preaching of death is still most at home.
Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise: and they themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners.
With these preachers of equality, I will not be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaks justice TO ME: “Men are not equal.”
And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Superman, if I spoke otherwise?
On a thousand bridges and piers they shall throng to the future, and there shall always be more war and inequality among them: thus my great love makes me speak!
Inventors of figures and phantoms they shall be in their hostilities; and with those figures and phantoms they shall yet fight with each other the supreme fight!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: they shall be weapons, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself!
Aloft, it will build itself with columns and stairs—life itself: into remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties— THEREFORE does it require elevation!
And because it requires elevation, therefore does it require steps, and variance of steps and climbers! Life strives to rise, and in rising to surpass itself.
And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula’s den is, rises aloft an ancient temple’s ruins—just behold it with enlightened eyes!
Truly, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as the wisest ones about the secret of life!
That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and supremacy: that does he here teach us in the plainest parable.
How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving ones.—
Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely will we strive AGAINST one another!—
Alas! There has the tarantula bit me myself, my old enemy! Divinely steadfast and beautiful, it has bit me on the finger!
“Punishment must there be, and justice”—so thinks it: “not gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honor of enmity!”
Yes, it has revenged itself! And alas! now will it make my soul also dizzy with revenge!
That I may NOT turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my friends, to this pillar! Rather will I be a pillar-saint than a whirl of vengeance!
Truly, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXX. THE FAMOUS WISE ONES


You have served the people and the people’s superstition—NOT the truth!—all you famous wise ones! And just on that account did they pay you reverence.
And on that account also did they tolerate your unbelief, because it was a pleasantry and a by-path for the people. Thus does the master give free scope to his slaves, and even enjoys their presumptuousness.
But he who is hated by the people, as the wolf by the dogs—is the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-adorer, the dweller in the woods.
To hunt him out of his lair—that was always called “sense of right” by the people: on him do they still hound their sharpest-toothed dogs.
“For there is the truth, where the people are! Woe, woe to the seeking ones!”—thus has it echoed through all time.
You would justify your people in their reverence: you called that “Will to Truth,” you famous wise ones!
And your heart has always said to itself: “I have come from the people: from there came to me also the voice of God.”
Stiff-necked and artful, like the ass, you have always been, as the advocates of the people.
And many a powerful one who wanted to run well with the people, has harnessed in front of his horses—a donkey, a famous wise man.
And now, you famous wise ones, I would have you finally throw off entirely the skin of the lion!
The skin of the beast of prey, the speckled skin, and the dishevelled locks of the investigator, the searcher, and the conqueror!
Ah! for me to learn to believe in your “conscientiousness,” you would first have to break your venerating will.
Conscientious—so I call him who goes into God-forsaken wildernesses, and has broken his venerating heart.
In the yellow sands and burnt by the sun, he doubtless peers thirstily at the isles rich in fountains, where life reposes under shady trees.
But his thirst does not persuade him to become like those comfortable ones: for where there are oases, there are also idols.
Hungry, fierce, lonesome, God-forsaken: so does the lion-will wish itself.
Free from the happiness of slaves, redeemed from Deities and adorations, fearless and fear-inspiring, grand and lonesome: so is the will of the conscientious.
In the wilderness have ever dwelt the conscientious, the free spirits, as lords of the wilderness; but in the cities dwell the well-foddered, famous wise ones—the draught-beasts.
For, always, do they draw, as asses—the PEOPLE’S carts!
Not that I scold them on that account: but serving ones do they remain, and harnessed ones, even though they glitter in golden harness.
And often they have been good servants and worthy of their hire. For thus says virtue: “If you must be a servant, seek him to whom your service is most useful!
The spirit and virtue of your master shall advance by you being his servant: thus will you yourself advance with his spirit and virtue!”
And truly, you famous wise ones, you servants of the people! You yourselves have advanced with the people’s spirit and virtue—and the people by you! To your honor do I say it!
But the people you remain for me, even with your virtues, the people with purblind eyes—the people who know not what SPIRIT is!
Spirit is life which itself cuts into life: by its own torture does it increase its own knowledge,—did you know that before?
And the spirit’s happiness is this: to be anointed and consecrated with tears as a sacrificial victim,—did you know that before?
And the blindness of the blind one, and his seeking and groping, shall yet testify to the power of the sun into which he has gazed,—did you know that before?
And with mountains shall the discerning one learn to BUILD! It is a small thing for the spirit to remove mountains,—did you know that before?
You know only the sparks of the spirit: but you do not see the anvil which it is, and the cruelty of its hammer!
Truly, you know not the spirit’s pride! But still less could you endure the spirit’s humility, should it ever want to speak!
And never yet could you cast your spirit into a pit of snow: you are not hot enough for that! Thus are you unaware, also, of the delight of its coldness.
In all respects, however, you make too familiar with the spirit; and out of wisdom have you often made an almshouse and a hospital for bad poets.
You are not eagles: thus you have never experienced the happiness of the alarm of the spirit. And he who is not a bird should not camp above abysses.
You seem to me lukewarm ones: but coldly flows all deep knowledge. Ice-cold are the innermost wells of the spirit: a refreshment to hot hands and handlers.
Respectable do you there stand, and stiff, and with straight backs, you famous wise ones!—no strong wind or will impel you.
Have you never seen a sail crossing the sea, rounded and inflated, and trembling with the violence of the wind?
Like the sail trembling with the violence of the spirit, does my wisdom cross the sea—my wild wisdom!
But you servants of the people, you famous wise ones—how COULD you go with me!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXXI. THE NIGHT-SONG


‘Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a gushing fountain.
‘Tis night: now only do all songs of the loving ones awake. And my soul also is the song of a loving one.
Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me; it longs to find expression. A craving for love is within me, which speaks itself the language of love.
Light am I: ah, that I were night! But it is my lonesomeness to be girded with light!
Ah, that I were dark and nightly! How would I suck at the breasts of light!
And you yourselves would I bless, you twinkling starlets and glow-worms aloft!—and would rejoice in the gifts of your light.
But I live in my own light, I drink again into myself the flames that break forth from me.
I know not the happiness of the receiver; and often I have dreamt that stealing must be more blessed than receiving.
It is my poverty that my hand never ceases bestowing; it is my envy that I see waiting eyes and the brightened nights of longing.
Oh, the misery of all bestowers! Oh, the darkening of my sun! Oh, the craving to crave! Oh, the violent hunger in satiety!
They take from me: but do I yet touch their soul? There is a gap ‘twixt giving and receiving; and the smallest gap has finally to be bridged over.
A hunger arises out of my beauty: I should like to injure those I illumine; I should like to rob those I have gifted:—thus do I hunger for wickedness.
Withdrawing my hand when another hand already stretches out to it; hesitating like the cascade, which hesitates even in its leap:—thus do I hunger for wickedness!
Such revenge does my abundance think of: such mischief wells out of my lonesomeness.
My happiness in bestowing died in bestowing; my virtue became weary of itself by its abundance!
He who ever bestows is in danger of losing his shame; to him who ever dispenses, the hand and heart become callous by very dispensing.
My eye no longer overflows for the shame of suppliants; my hand has become too hard for the trembling of filled hands.
Where have gone the tears of my eye, and the down of my heart? Oh, the lonesomeness of all bestowers! Oh, the silence of all shining ones!
Many suns circle in desert space: they speak with their light to all that is dark —but to me they are silent.
Oh, this is the hostility of light to the shining one: unpityingly it pursues its course.
Unfair to the shining one in its innermost heart, cold to the suns:—thus travels every sun.
Like a storm do the suns pursue their courses: that is their travelling. Their inexorable will do they follow: that is their coldness.
Oh, you only is it, you dark, nightly ones, that extract warmth from the shining ones! Oh, you only drink milk and refreshment from the light’s udders!
Ah, there is ice around me; my hand burneth with the iciness! Ah, there is thirst in me; it pants after your thirst!
‘Tis night: alas, that I have to be light! And thirst for the nightly! And lonesomeness!
‘Tis night: now my longing breaks forth in me as a fountain,—I long for speech.
‘Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also is a gushing fountain.
‘Tis night: now do all songs of loving ones awake. And my soul also is the song of a loving one.—
Thus sang Zarathustra.










XXXII. THE DANCE-SONG
  



One evening Zarathustra and his disciples went through the forest; and when he sought for a well, behold, he lighted upon a green meadow peacefully surrounded with trees and bushes, where maidens were dancing together. As soon as the maidens recognized Zarathustra, they ceased dancing; Zarathustra, however, approached them with friendly gesture and spoke these words:
Cease not your dancing, you lovely maidens! No game-spoiler has come to you with evil eye, no enemy of maidens.
God’s advocate am I with the devil: he, however, is the spirit of gravity. How could I, you light-footed ones, be hostile to divine dances? Or to maidens’ feet with fine ankles?
To be sure, I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.
And he may even find the little God, who is dearest to maidens: he lies quietly beside the well, with closed eyes.
Truly, in broad daylight did he fall asleep, the sluggard! Had he perhaps chased butterflies too much?
Do not scold me, you beautiful dancers, when I chasten the little God somewhat! He will cry, certainly, and weep—but he is laughable even when weeping!
And with tears in his eyes shall he ask you for a dance; and I myself will sing a song to his dance:
A dance-song and satire on the spirit of gravity my supremest, powerfulest devil, who is said to be “lord of the world.”—
And this is the song that Zarathustra sang when Cupid and the maidens danced together:
Of late I gazed into your eyes, O Life! And there I seemed to sink into the unfathomable.
But you pulled me out with a golden angle-rod; derisively you laughed when I called you unfathomable.
“Such is the language of all fish,” you said; “what THEY do not fathom is unfathomable.
But I am merely changeable, and wild, and altogether a woman, and no virtuous one:
Though you men call me the ‘profound one,’ or the ‘faithful one,’ ‘the eternal one,’ ‘the mysterious one.’
But you men always endow us with your own virtues—alas, you virtuous ones!”
Thus she laughed, the unbelievable one; but I never believe her and her laughter, when she speaks evil of herself.
And when I talked face to face with my wild Wisdom, she said to me angrily: “You will, you crave, you love; for that reason alone you PRAISE Life!”
Then I had almost answered indignantly and told the truth to the angry one; and one cannot answer more indignantly than when one “tells the truth” to one’s Wisdom.
For thus do things stand with us three. In my heart I love only Life—and truly, most when I hate her!
But that I am fond of Wisdom, and often too fond, is because she reminds me very strongly of Life!
She has her eyes, her laugh, and even her golden angle-rod: am I responsible for it that both are so alike?
And when once Life asked me: “Who is she then, this Wisdom?”—then I said eagerly: “Ah, yes! Wisdom!
One thirsts for her and is not satisfied, one looks through veils, one grasps through nets.
Is she beautiful? What do I know! But the oldest carps are still lured by her.
She is changeable, and wayward; often I have seen her bite her lip, and pass the comb against the grain of her hair.
Perhaps she is wicked and false, and altogether a woman; but when she speaks ill of herself, just then she seduces most.”
When I had said this to Life, then she laughed maliciously, and shut her eyes. “Of whom do you speak?” said she. “Perhaps of me?
And if you were right—is it proper to say THAT in such a way to my face! But now, pray, speak also of your Wisdom!”
Ah, and now you have again opened your eyes, O beloved Life! And into the unfathomable have I again seemed to sink.—
Thus sang Zarathustra. But when the dance was over and the maidens had departed, he became sad.
“The sun has been long set,” he said at last, “the meadow is damp, and from the forest comes coolness.
An unknown presence is around me, and gazes thoughtfully. What! You still live, Zarathustra?
Why? Wherefore? Whereby? Whither? Where? How? Is it not folly still to live?—
Ah, my friends; it is the evening which thus interrogates in me. Forgive me my sadness!
Evening has come on: forgive me that evening has come on!”
Thus sang Zarathustra.










XXXIII. THE GRAVE-SONG


“Yonder is the grave-island, the silent isle; yonder also are the graves of my youth. There I will carry an evergreen wreath of life.”
Resolving thus in my heart, I sailed over the sea.—
Oh, you sights and scenes of my youth! Oh, all you gleams of love, you divine fleeting gleams! How could you perish so soon for me! I think of you today as my dead ones.
From you, my dearest dead ones, comes to me a sweet savour, heart-opening and melting. Truly, it convulses and opens the heart of the lone seafarer.
Still I am the richest and most to be envied—I, the lonesomest one! For I HAVE POSSESSED you, and you possess me still. Tell me: to whom has there ever fallen such rosy apples from the tree as have fallen to me?
Still am I your love’s heir and heritage, blooming to your memory with many-hued, wild-growing virtues, O you dearest ones!
Ah, we were made to remain near to each other, you kindly strange marvels; and not like timid birds did you come to me and my longing—no, but as trusting ones to a trusting one!
Yes, made for faithfulness, like me, and for fond eternities, must I now name you by your faithlessness, you divine glances and fleeting gleams: no other name have I yet learned.
Truly, too early did you die for me, you fugitives. Yet you did not flee from me, nor did I flee from you: innocent are we to each other in our faithlessness.
To kill ME, did they strangle you, you singing birds of my hopes! Yes, at you, you dearest ones, did malice ever shoot its arrows—to hit my heart!
And they hit it! Because you were always my dearest, my possession and my possessedness: ON THAT ACCOUNT had you to die young, and far too early!
At my most vulnerable point did they shoot the arrow—namely, at you, whose skin is like down—or more like the smile that dies at a glance!
But this word I will say to my enemies: What is all manslaughter in comparison with what you have done to me!
Worse evil did you do to me than all manslaughter; the irretrievable did you take from me:—thus do I speak to you, my enemies!
Slew you not my youth’s visions and dearest marvels! My playmates you took from me, the blessed spirits! To their memory do I deposit this wreath and this curse.
This curse upon you, my enemies! Have you not made my eternal short, as a tone dies away in a cold night! Scarcely, as the twinkle of divine eyes, did it come to me—as a fleeting gleam!
Thus spoke once in a happy hour my purity: “Divine shall everything be to me.”
Then did you haunt me with foul phantoms; ah, where has that happy hour now fled!
“All days shall be holy unto me”—so spoke once the wisdom of my youth: truly, the language of a joyous wisdom!
But then did you enemies steal my nights, and sold them to sleepless torture: ah, where has that joyous wisdom now fled?
Once I longed for happy auspices: then did you lead an owl-monster across my path, an adverse sign. Ah, where did my tender longing then flee?
I once vowed to renounce all loathing: then you changed my near ones and nearest ones into ulcerations. Ah, where did my noblest vow then flee?
I once walked as a blind one in blessed ways: then you cast filth on the blind one’s course: and now he is disgusted with the old footpath.
And when I performed my hardest task, and celebrated the triumph of my victories, then you made those who loved me call out that I then grieved them most.
Truly, it was always your doing: you embittered my best honey to me, and the diligence of my best bees.
To my charity you have ever sent the most impudent beggars; around my sympathy have you ever crowded the incurably shameless. Thus have you wounded the faith of my virtue.
And when I offered my holiest as a sacrifice, immediately did your “piety” put its fatter gifts beside it: so that my holiest suffocated in the fumes of your fat.
And once I wanted to dance as I had never yet danced: beyond all heavens I wanted to dance. Then you seduced my favorite minstrel.
And now he has struck up an awful, melancholy air; alas, he tooted as a mournful horn to my ear!
Murderous minstrel, instrument of evil, most innocent instrument! Already I stood prepared for the best dance: then you slayed my rapture with your tones!
Only in the dance do I know how to speak the parable of the highest things:—and now my grandest parable has remained unspoken in my limbs!
Unspoken and unrealised has my highest hope remained! And there have perished for me all the visions and consolations of my youth!
How did I ever bear it? How did I survive and surmount such wounds? How did my soul rise again out of those sepulchres?
Yes, something invulnerable, unburiable is with me, something that would rend rocks asunder: it is called MY WILL. Silently it proceeds, and unchanged throughout the years.
It will go its course on my feet, my old Will; hard of heart is its nature and invulnerable.
I am invulnerable only in my heel. Ever you live there, and are like yourself, you most patient one! Ever have you burst all shackles of the tomb!
In you still lives also the unrealizedness of my youth; and as life and youth you sit here hopeful on the yellow ruins of graves.
Yes, you are still for me the demolisher of all graves: Hail to you, my Will! And only where there are graves are there resurrections.—
Thus sang Zarathustra.








XXXIV. SELF-SURPASSING


“Will to Truth” do you call it, you wisest ones, that which impels you and makes you ardent?
Will for the thinkableness of all being: thus do I call your will!
All being would you MAKE thinkable: for you doubt with good reason whether it be already thinkable.
But it shall accommodate and bend itself to you! So wills your will. Smooth shall it become and subject to the spirit, as its mirror and reflection.
That is your entire will, you wisest ones, as a Will to Power; and even when you speak of good and evil, and of estimates of value.
You would still create a world before which you can bow the knee: such is your ultimate hope and ecstasy.
The ignorant, to be sure, the people—they are like a river on which a boat floats along: and in the boat sit the estimates of value, solemn and disguised.
Your will and your valuations have you put on the river of becoming; it betrays to me an old Will to Power, what is believed by the people as good and evil.
It was you, you wisest ones, who put such guests in this boat, and gave them pomp and proud names—you and your ruling Will!
Onward the river now carries your boat: it MUST carry it. A small matter if the rough wave foams and angrily resists its keel!
It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and evil, you wisest ones: but that Will itself, the Will to Power—the unexhausted, procreating life-will.
But that you may understand my gospel of good and evil, for that purpose will I tell you my gospel of life, and of the nature of all living things.
I followed the living thing; I walked in the broadest and narrowest paths to learn its nature.
With a hundred-faced mirror I caught its glance when its mouth was shut, so that its eyes might speak to me. And its eyes spoke to me.
But wherever I found living things, there I also heard the language of obedience. All living things are obeying things.
And this I heard secondly: Whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded. Such is the nature of living things.
This, however, is the third thing which I heard—namely, that commanding is more difficult than obeying. And not only because the commander bears the burden of all obeyers, and because this burden readily crushes him:—
To me all commanding seemed an attempt and a risk; and whenever it commands, the living thing risks itself thereby.
Yes, even when it commands itself, then also must it atone for its commanding. Of its own law it must become the judge and avenger and victim.
How does this happen! so I asked myself. What persuades the living thing to obey, and command, and even be obedient in commanding?
Listen now to my word, you wisest ones! Test it seriously, whether I have crept into the heart of life itself, and into the roots of its heart!
Wherever I found a living thing, there I found Will to Power; and even in the will of the servant I found the will to be master.
That the weaker shall serve the stronger—to that he persuades his will who would be master over a still weaker one. That delight alone he is unwilling to forego.
And as the lesser surrenders himself to the greater that he may have delight and power over the least of all, so does even the greatest surrender himself, and stakes—life, for the sake of power.
It is the surrender of the greatest to run risk and danger, and play dice for death.
And where there is sacrifice and service and love-glances, there also is the will to be master. By by-ways does the weaker then slink into the fortress, and into the heart of the mightier one—and there steals power.
And Life herself spoke this secret to me. “Behold,” she said, “I am that WHICH MUST EVER SURPASS ITSELF.
To be sure, you call it will to procreation, or impulse towards a goal, towards the higher, remoter, more manifold: but all that is one and the same secret.
I would rather succumb than disown this one thing; and truly, where there is succumbing and leaf-falling, behold, there does Life sacrifice itself—for power!
That I have to be struggle, and becoming, and purpose, and cross-purpose—ah, he who divines my will, also divines well on what CROOKED paths it has to tread!
Whatever I create, and however much I love it,—soon I must be adverse to it, and to my love: so wills my will.
And even you, discerning one, are only a path and footstep of my will: truly, my Will to Power walks even on the feet of your Will to Truth!
He certainly did not hit the truth who shot at it the formula: ‘Will to existence’: that will—does not exist!
For what is not, cannot will; that, however, which is in existence—how could it still strive for existence!
Only where there is life, is there also will: not, however, Will to Life, but—so I teach you—Will to Power!
Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the living one; but out of the very reckoning speaks—the Will to Power!”—
Thus did Life once teach me: and thereby, you wisest ones, do I solve you the riddle of your hearts.
Truly, I say to you: good and evil which would be everlasting—it does not exist! Of its own accord must it ever surpass itself anew.
With your values and formulae of good and evil, you exercise power, you valuing ones: and that is your secret love, and the sparkling, trembling, and overflowing of your souls.
But a stronger power grows out of your values, and a new surpassing: by it breaks egg and egg-shell.
And he who has to be a creator in good and evil—truly, he first has to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces.
Thus the greatest evil pertains to the greatest good: that, however, is the creating good.—
Let us SPEAK of that, you wisest ones, even though it be bad. To be silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous.
And let everything break up which—can break up by our truths! Many a house is still to be built!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXXV. THE SUBLIME ONES


Calm is the bottom of my sea: who would guess that it hides droll monsters!
Unmoved is my depth: but it sparkles with swimming enigmas and laughters.
I saw a sublime one today, a solemn one, a penitent of the spirit: Oh, how my soul laughed at his ugliness!
With upraised breast, and like those who draw in their breath: thus did he stand, the sublime one, and in silence:
Overhung with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting, and rich in torn raiment; many thorns also hung on him—but I saw no rose.
Not yet had he learned laughing and beauty. Gloomy did this hunter return from the forest of knowledge.
From the fight with wild beasts returned he home: but even yet a wild beast gazes out of his seriousness—an unconquered wild beast!
As a tiger does he ever stand, on the point of springing; but I do not like those strained souls; ungracious is my taste towards all those self-engrossed ones.
And you tell me, friends, that there is to be no dispute about taste and tasting? But all life is a dispute about taste and tasting!
Taste: that is weight at the same time, and scales and weigher; and alas for every living thing that would live without dispute about weight and scales and weigher!
Should he become weary of his sublimeness, this sublime one, only then will his beauty begin—and only then will I taste him and find him savoury.
And only when he turns away from himself will he overleap his own shadow—and truly! into HIS sun.
Far too long did he sit in the shade; the cheeks of the penitent of the spirit became pale; he almost starved on his expectations.
Contempt is still in his eyes, and loathing hides in his mouth. To be sure, he now rests, but he has not yet taken rest in the sunshine.
As the ox ought he to do; and his happiness should smell of the earth, and not of contempt for the earth.
As a white ox would I like to see him, which, snorting and lowing, walks before the plough-share: and his lowing should also laud all that is earthly!
Dark is still his countenance; the shadow of his hand dances upon it. Overshadowed is still the sense of his eyes.
His deed itself is still the shadow upon him: his doing obscures the doer. He has not yet overcome his deed.
To be sure, I love in him the shoulders of the ox: but now do I want to see also the eyes of the angel.
Also his hero-will has he still to unlearn: an exalted one shall he be, and not only a sublime one:—the ether itself should raise him, the will-less one!
He has subdued monsters, he has solved enigmas. But he should also redeem his monsters and enigmas; into heavenly children should he transform them.
His knowledge has not yet learned to smile, and to be without jealousy; as his gushing passion has not yet become calm in beauty.
Truly, not in satiety shall his longing cease and disappear, but in beauty! Gracefulness belongs to the munificence of the magnanimous.
His arm across his head: thus should the hero repose; thus should he also surmount his repose.
But precisely to the hero is BEAUTY the hardest thing of all. Unattainable is beauty by all ardent wills.
A little more, a little less: precisely this is much here, it is the most here.
To stand with relaxed muscles and with unharnessed will: that is the hardest for all of you, you sublime ones!
When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible—I call such condescension, beauty.
And from no one do I want beauty so much as from you, you powerful one: let your goodness be your last self-conquest.
All evil do I accredit to you: therefore do I desire of you the good.
Truly, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good because they have crippled paws!
The virtue of the pillar shall you strive after: more beautiful does it ever become, and more graceful—but internally harder and more sustaining—the higher it rises.
Yes, you sublime one, one day you shall also be beautiful, and hold up the mirror to your own beauty.
Then your soul will thrill with divine desires; and there will be adoration even in your vanity!
For this is the secret of the soul: when the hero has abandoned it, only then approaches it in dreams—the superhero.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXXVI. THE LAND OF CULTURE
  



I flew too far into the future: a horror seized upon me.
And when I looked around me, behold! there time was my sole contemporary.
Then I flew backwards, homewards—and always faster. Thus I came to you, you present-day men, and into the land of culture.
For the first time I brought an eye to see you, and good desire: truly, with longing in my heart did I come.
But how did it turn out with me? Although so alarmed—I had yet to laugh! Never had my eyes seen anything so motley-colored!
I laughed and laughed, while my foot still trembled, and my heart as well. “Here truly, is the home of all the paint-pots,”—said I.
With fifty patches painted on faces and limbs—so you sat there to my astonishment, you present-day men!
And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colors, and repeated it!
Truly, you could wear no better masks, you present-day men, than your own faces! Who could—RECOGNIZE you!
Written all over with the characters of the past, and these characters also pencilled over with new characters—thus you have concealed yourselves well from all decipherers!
And though one be a trier of the reins, who still believes that you have reins! You seem to be baked out of colors, and out of glued scraps.
All times and peoples gaze many-colored out of your veils; all customs and beliefs speak many-colored out of your gestures.
He who would strip you of veils and wrappers, and paints and gestures, would have just enough left to scare the crows.
Truly, I myself am the scared crow that once saw you naked, and without paint; and I flew away when the skeleton ogled at me.
I would rather be a day-laborer in the underworld, and among the shades of the departed!—Truly the underworlders are fatter and fuller than you!
This, yes this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure you naked nor clothed, you present-day men!
All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever makes strayed birds shiver, is truly more homelike and familiar than your “reality.”
For thus you speak: “We are wholly real, and without faith and superstition”: thus do you plume yourselves—alas! even without plumes!
Indeed, how would you be ABLE to believe, you many-colored ones!—you who are pictures of all that has ever been believed!
You are perambulating refutations of belief itself, and a dislocation of all thought. UNTRUSTWORTHY ONES: thus do I call you, you real ones!
All periods prate against one another in your spirits; and the dreams and pratings of all periods were even realer than your awakeness!
You are unfruitful: THEREFORE do you lack belief. But he who had to create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions—and believed in believing!—
You are half-open doors, at which grave-diggers wait. And this is YOUR reality: “Everything deserves to perish.”
Alas, how you stand there before me, you unfruitful ones; how lean your ribs! And many of you surely have had knowledge of it.
Many a one has said: “Surely a God has filched something from me there secretly while I slept? Truly, enough to make from it a girl for himself!
“Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!” thus has spoken many a present-day man.
Yes, you are laughable to me, you present-day men! And especially when you marvel at yourselves!
And woe to me if I could not laugh at your marvelling, and had to swallow all that is repugnant in your platters!
As it is, however, I will make lighter of you, since I have to carry what is heavy; and what does it matter if beetles and May-bugs also alight on my load!
Truly, it shall not on that account become heavier to me! And not from you, you present-day men, shall my great weariness arise.—
Ah, where shall I now ascend with my longing! From all mountains do I look out for fatherlands and motherlands.
But nowhere have I found a home: I am unsettled in all cities, and decamping at all gates.
Alien to me, and a mockery, are the present-day men, to whom of late my heart impelled me; and I am exiled from fatherlands and motherlands.
Thus do I love only my CHILDREN’S LAND, the undiscovered in the remotest sea: for it do I bid my sails search and search.
To my children will I make amends for being the child of my fathers: and to all the future—for THIS present-day!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXXVII. IMMACULATE PERCEPTION
  



When last evening the moon arose, then I imagined it was about to bear a sun: so broad and full it lied on the horizon.
But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and I will sooner believe in the man in the moon than in the woman.
To be sure, little of a man is he also, that timid night-reveller. Truly, with a bad conscience he stalks over the roofs.
For he is covetous and jealous, the monk in the moon; covetous of the earth, and all the joys of lovers.
No, I do not like him, that tom-cat on the roofs! Hateful to me are all that slink around half-closed windows!
Piously and silently he stalks along on the star-carpets:—but I like no light-treading human feet, on which not even a spur jingles.
Every honest one’s step speakes; the cat however, steals along over the ground. Behold! cat-like the moon comes along, and dishonestly.—
This parable I speak to you sentimental hypocrites, to you, the “pure discerners!” I call you—lechers!
You also love the earth, and the earthly: I have divined you well!—but shame is in your love, and a bad conscience—you are like the moon!
Your spirit has been persuaded to despise the earthly, but your bowels have not: these, however, are the strongest in you!
And now your spirit is ashamed to be at the service of your bowels, and goes back-ways and lying ways to escape its own shame.
“That would be the highest thing for me”—so says your lying spirit to itself—“to gaze upon life without desire, and not like the dog, with hanging-out tongue:
To be happy in gazing: with dead will, free from the grip and greed of selfishness—cold and ashy-grey all over, but with intoxicated moon-eyes!
That would be the dearest thing to me”—thus does the seduced one seduce himself,—“to love the earth as the moon loves it, and with the eye only to feel its beauty.
And this do I call IMMACULATE perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred facets.”—
Oh, you sentimental hypocrites, you covetous ones! You lack innocence in your desire: and now you defame desiring on that account!
Truly, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do you love the earth!
Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation. And he who seeks to create beyond himself, has for me the purest will.
Where is beauty? Where I MUST WILL with my whole Will; where I will love and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image.
Loving and perishing: these have rhymed from eternity. Will to love: that is to be ready also for death. Thus do I speak to you cowards!
But now does your emasculated ogling profess to be “contemplation!” And that which can be examined with cowardly eyes is to be christened “beautiful!” Oh, you violators of noble names!
But it shall be your curse, you immaculate ones, you pure discerners, that you shall never bring forth, even though you lie broad and full on the horizon!
Truly, you fill your mouth with noble words: and we are to believe that your heart overflows, you cozeners?
But MY words are poor, contemptible, stammering words: gladly do I pick up what falls from the table at your feasts.
Yet still I can say with them the truth—to hypocrites! Yes, my fish-bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall—tickle the noses of hypocrites!
Bad air is always about you and your feasts: your lascivious thoughts, your lies, and secrets are indeed in the air!
Only dare to believe in yourselves—in yourselves and in your inward parts! He who does not believe in himself always lies.
A God’s mask have you hung in front of you, you “pure ones”: into a God’s mask has your vile coiling snake crawled.
Truly you deceive, you “contemplative ones!” Even Zarathustra was once the dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not identify the serpent’s coil with which it was stuffed.
I once thought I saw a God’s soul, playing in your games, you pure discerners! I once dreamed of no better arts than your arts!
Serpents’ filth and evil odour, the distance concealed from me: and that a lizard’s craft prowled around there lasciviously.
But I came NEAR to you: then the day came to me,—and now it comes to you,—the moon’s love affair is at an end!
See there! Surprised and pale does it stand—before the rosy dawn!
For already she comes, the glowing one,—HER love to the earth comes! Innocence and creative desire, is all solar love!
See there, how she comes impatiently over the sea! Do you not feel the thirst and the hot breath of her love?
At the sea would she suck, and drink its depths to her height: now the desire of the sea rises with its thousand breasts.
Kissed and sucked WOULD it be by the thirst of the sun; vapour WOULD it become, and height, and path of light, and light itself!
Truly, like the sun do I love life, and all deep seas.
And this means TO ME knowledge: all that is deep shall ascend—to my height!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXXVIII. SCHOLARS


When I lay asleep, then did a sheep eat at the ivy-wreath on my head,—it ate, and said by that: “Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.”
It said this, and went away clumsily and proudly. A child told it to me.
I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined wall, among thistles and red poppies.
A scholar am I still to the children, and also to the thistles and red poppies. Innocent are they, even in their wickedness.
But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar: so wills my lot—blessings upon it!
For this is the truth: I have departed from the house of the scholars, and I have slammed the door behind me.
Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table: not like them have I got the knack of investigating, as the knack of nut-cracking.
Freedom do I love, and the air over fresh soil; rather would I sleep on ox-skins than on their honors and dignities.
I am too hot and scorched with my own thought: often is it ready to take away my breath. Then have I to go into the open air, and away from all dusty rooms.
But they sit cool in the cool shade: in everything they want to be merely spectators, and they avoid sitting where the sun burns on the steps.
Like those who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do they also wait, and gape at the thoughts which others have thought.
Should one lay hold of them, then do they raise a dust like flour-sacks, and involuntarily: but who would determine that their dust came from corn, and from the yellow delight of the summer fields?
When they give themselves out as wise, then do their petty sayings and truths chill me: in their wisdom there is often an odor as if it came from the swamp; and truly, I have even heard the frog croak in it!
Clever are they—they have dexterous fingers: what does MY simplicity pretend to beside their multiplicity! All threading and knitting and weaving do their fingers understand: thus do they make the hose of the spirit!
Good clockworks are they: only be careful to wind them up properly! Then do they indicate the hour without mistake, and make a modest noise thereby.
Like millstones do they work, and like pestles: throw only seed-corn to them!—they know well how to grind corn small, and make white dust out of it.
They keep a sharp eye on one another, and do not trust each other the best. Ingenious in little artifices, they wait for those whose knowledge walks on lame feet,—like spiders do they wait.
I saw them always prepare their poison with precaution; and always did they put glass gloves on their fingers in doing so.
They also know how to play with false dice; and so eagerly did I find them playing, that they perspired thereby.
We are alien to each other, and their virtues are even more repugnant to my taste than their falsehoods and false dice.
And when I lived with them, then did I live above them. Therefore did they take a dislike to me.
They want to hear nothing of any one walking above their heads; and so they put wood and earth and rubbish between me and their heads.
Thus did they deafen the sound of my tread: and least have I since been heard by the most learned.
All mankind’s faults and weaknesses did they put between themselves and me:—they call it “false ceiling” in their houses.
But nevertheless I walk with my thoughts ABOVE their heads; and even should I walk on mine own errors, still would I be above them and their heads.
For men are NOT equal: so speaks justice. And what I will, THEY may not will!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XXXIX. POETS


“Since I have known the body better”—said Zarathustra to one of his disciples—“the spirit has only been to me symbolically spirit; and all the ‘imperishable’—that is also but a simile.”
“So I have heard you say once before,” answered the disciple, “and then you added: ‘But the poets lie too much.’ Why did you say that the poets lie too much?”
“Why?” said Zarathustra. “You ask why? I do not belong to those who may be asked after their Why.
Is my experience but of yesterday? It is long ago that I experienced the reasons for my opinions.
Should I not have to be a cask of memory, if I also wanted to have my reasons with me?
It is already too much for me even to retain my opinions; and many a bird flies away.
And sometimes, also, I find a fugitive creature in my dovecote, which is alien to me, and trembles when I lay my hand on it.
But what did Zarathustra once say to you? That the poets lie too much?—But Zarathustra is also a poet.
You believe that he there spoke the truth? Why do you believe it?”
The disciple answered: “I believe in Zarathustra.” But Zarathustra shook his head and smiled.—
Belief does not sanctify me, he said, least of all the belief in myself.
But granting that someone did say in all seriousness that the poets lie too much: he was right—WE do lie too much.
We also know too little, and are bad learners: so we are obliged to lie.
And which of us poets has not adulterated his wine? Many a poisonous hotchpotch has evolved in our cellars: many an indescribable thing has been done there.
And because we know little, therefore we are pleased from the heart with the poor in spirit, especially when they are young women!
And even of those things are we desirous, which old women tell one another in the evening. This we call the eternally feminine in us.
And as if there were a special secret access to knowledge, which CHOKES UP for those who learn anything, so do we believe in the people and in their “wisdom.”
This, however, do all poets believe: that whoever pricks up his ears when lying in the grass or on lonely slopes, learns something of the things that are between heaven and earth.
And if there come to them tender emotions, then do the poets always think that nature herself is in love with them:
And that she steals to their ear to whisper secrets into it, and amorous flatteries: of this do they plume and pride themselves, before all mortals!
Ah, there are so many things between heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!
And especially ABOVE the heavens: for all Gods are poet-symbolisations, poet-sophistications!
Truly, ever are we drawn aloft—that is, to the realm of the clouds: on these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then call them Gods and Supermen:—
Are they not light enough for those chairs!—all these Gods and Supermen?—
Ah, how I am weary of all the inadequate that is insisted on as actual! Ah, how I am weary of the poets!
When Zarathustra so spoke, his disciple resented it, but was silent. And Zarathustra also was silent; and his eye directed itself inwardly, as if it gazed into the far distance. At last he sighed and drew breath.—
I am of today and heretofore, he said then; but something is in me that is of tomorrow, and the day following, and the hereafter.
I became weary of the poets, of the old and of the new: superficial are they all to me, and shallow seas.
They did not think sufficiently into the depth; therefore their feeling did not reach to the bottom.
Some sensation of voluptuousness and some sensation of tedium: these have as yet been their best contemplation.
Ghost-breathing and ghost-whisking, seems to me all the jingle-jangling of their harps; what have they known hitherto of the fervour of tones!—
They are also not pure enough for me: they all muddle their water that it may seem deep.
And gladly would they by that prove themselves reconcilers: but mediaries and mixers are they to me, and half-and-half, and impure!—
Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish; but I always drew up the head of some ancient God.
Thus the sea gave a stone to the hungry one. And they themselves may well originate from the sea.
Certainly, one finds pearls in them: for that they are more like hard molluscs. And instead of a soul, I have often found in them salt slime.
They have learned from the sea also its vanity: is not the sea the peacock of peacocks?
Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes does it spread out its tail; never does it tire of its lace-fan of silver and silk.
Disdainfully does the buffalo glance at it, near to the sand with its soul, nearer still to the thicket, nearest, however, to the swamp.
What is beauty and sea and peacock-splendour to it! This parable I speak to the poets.
Truly, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks, and a sea of vanity!
Spectators, seeks the spirit of the poet—should they even be buffaloes!—
But of this spirit became I weary; and I see the time coming when it will become weary of itself.
Yes, changed have I seen the poets, and their glance turned towards themselves.
Penitents of the spirit have I seen appearing; they grew out of the poets.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XL. GREAT EVENTS
  



There is an isle in the sea—not far from the Happy Isles of Zarathustra—on which a volcano ever smokes; of which isle the people, and especially the old women among them, say that it is placed as a rock before the gate of the underworld; but that through the volcano itself the narrow way leads downward which conducts to this gate.
Now about the time that Zarathustra sojourned on the Happy Isles, it happened that a ship anchored at the isle on which stands the smoking mountain, and the crew went ashore to shoot rabbits. About the noontide hour, however, when the captain and his men were together again, they suddenly saw a man coming towards them through the air, and a voice said distinctly: “It is time! It is the highest time!” But when the figure was nearest to them (it flew past quickly, however, like a shadow, in the direction of the volcano), then did they recognize with the greatest surprise that it was Zarathustra; for they had all seen him before except the captain himself, and they loved him as the people love: in such wise that love and awe were combined in equal degree.
“Behold!” said the old helmsman, “there goes Zarathustra to hell!”
About the same time that these sailors landed on the fire-isle, there was a rumor that Zarathustra had disappeared; and when his friends were asked about it, they said that he had gone on board a ship by night, without saying where he was going.
Thus there arose some uneasiness. After three days, however, there came the story of the ship’s crew in addition to this uneasiness—and then did all the people say that the devil had taken Zarathustra. His disciples laughed, sure enough, at this talk; and one of them said even: “Sooner would I believe that Zarathustra has taken the devil.” But at the bottom of their hearts they were all full of anxiety and longing: so their joy was great when on the fifth day Zarathustra appeared among them.
And this is the account of Zarathustra’s interview with the fire-dog:
The earth, said he, has a skin; and this skin has diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called “man.”
And another of these diseases is called “the fire-dog”: concerning HIM men have greatly deceived themselves, and let themselves be deceived.
To fathom this mystery I went over the sea; and I have seen the truth naked, truly! barefooted up to the neck.
Now I know how it is concerning the fire-dog; and likewise concerning all the spouting and subversive devils, of which not only old women are afraid.
“Up with you, fire-dog, out of your depth!” cried I, “and confess how deep that depth is! From where comes that which you snort up?
You drink copiously at the sea: your embittered eloquence betrays that! In truth, for a dog of the depth, you take your nourishment too much from the surface!
At the most, I regard you as the ventriloquist of the earth: and ever, when I have heard subversive and spouting devils speak, I have found them like you: embittered, mendacious, and shallow.
You understand how to roar and obscure with ashes! You are the best braggarts, and have sufficiently learned the art of making dregs boil.
Where you are, there must always be dregs at hand, and much that is spongy, hollow, and compressed: it wants to have freedom.
‘Freedom’ you all roar most eagerly: but I have unlearned the belief in ‘great events,’ when there is much roaring and smoke about them.
And believe me, friend Hullabaloo! The greatest events—are not our noisiest, but our stillest hours.
Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values, does the world revolve; INAUDIBLY it revolves.
And just own to it! Little had ever taken place when your noise and smoke passed away. What, if a city did become a mummy, and a statue lay in the mud!
And this I say also to the overthrowers of statues: It is certainly the greatest folly to throw salt into the sea, and statues into the mud.
In the mud of your contempt lay the statue: but it is just its law, that out of contempt, its life and living beauty grow again!
With diviner features does it now arise, seducing by its suffering; and truly! it will yet thank you for overthrowing it, you subverters!
This counsel, however, do I counsel to kings and churches, and to all that is weak with age or virtue—let yourselves be overthrown! That you may again come to life, and that virtue—may come to you!—”
Thus I spoke before the fire-dog: then did he interrupt me sullenly, and asked: “Church? What is that?”
“Church?” I answered, “that is a kind of state, and indeed the most mendacious. But remain quiet, you dissembling dog! You surely know your own species best!
Like yourself the state is a dissembling dog; like you it likes to speak with smoke and roaring—to make believe, like you, that it speaks out of the heart of things.
For it seeks by all means to be the most important creature on earth, the state; and people think it so.”
When I had said this, the fire-dog acted as if mad with envy. “What!” cried he, “the most important creature on earth? And people think it so?” And so much vapour and terrible voices came out of his throat, that I thought he would choke with vexation and envy.
At last he became calmer and his panting subsided; as soon, however, as he was quiet, I said laughingly:
“You are angry, fire-dog: so I am in the right about you!
And that I may also maintain the right, hear the story of another fire-dog; he speaks actually out of the heart of the earth.
Gold does his breath exhale, and golden rain: so does his heart desire. What are ashes and smoke and hot dregs to him!
Laughter flits from him like a variegated cloud; adverse is he to your gargling and spewing and grips in the bowels!
The gold, however, and the laughter—these he takes out of the heart of the earth: for, that you may know it,—THE HEART OF THE EARTH IS OF GOLD.”
When the fire-dog heard this, he could no longer endure to listen to me. Abashed did he draw in his tail, said “bow-wow!” in a cowed voice, and crept down into his cave.—
Thus told Zarathustra. His disciples, however, hardly listened to him: so great was their eagerness to tell him about the sailors, the rabbits, and the flying man.
“What am I to think of it!” said Zarathustra. “Am I indeed a ghost?
But it may have been my shadow. You have surely heard something of the Wanderer and his Shadow?
One thing, however, is certain: I must keep a tighter hold of it; otherwise it will spoil my reputation.”
And once more Zarathustra shook his head and wondered. “What am I to think of it!” he said once more.
“Why did the ghost cry: ‘It is time! It is the highest time!’
For WHAT is it then—the highest time?”—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XLI. THE SOOTHSAYER


“-And I saw a great sadness come over mankind. The best turned weary of their works.
A doctrine appeared, a faith ran beside it: ‘All is empty, all is alike, all has been!’
And from all hills there re-echoed: ‘All is empty, all is alike, all has been!’
To be sure we have harvested: but why have all our fruits become rotten and brown? What was it that fell last night from the evil moon?
All our labor was in vain, our wine has become poison, the evil eye has singed yellow our fields and hearts.
We all have become arid; and if fire falls on us, then we turn to dust like ashes:—yes, we have made the fire itself weary.
All our fountains have dried up, even the sea has receded. All the ground tries to gape, but the depth will not swallow!
‘Alas! where is there still a sea in which one could be drowned?’ so sounds our lament—across shallow swamps.
Truly, we have become too weary even for dying; now we keep awake and live on—in sepulchres.”
Thus did Zarathustra hear a soothsayer speak; and the foreboding touched his heart and transformed him. Sorrowfully did he go about and wearily; and he became like those of whom the soothsayer had spoken.—
Truly, he said to his disciples, a little while, and there comes the long twilight. Alas, how shall I preserve my light through it!
That it may not smother in this sorrowfulness! To remoter worlds shall it be a light, and also to remotest nights!
Thus did Zarathustra go about grieved in his heart, and for three days he did not take any meat or drink: he had no rest, and lost his speech. At last it came to pass that he fell into a deep sleep. His disciples, however, sat around him in long night-watches, and waited anxiously to see if he would awake, and speak again, and recover from his affliction.
And this is the discourse that Zarathustra spoke when he awoke; his voice, however, came to his disciples as from far away:
Hear, I pray you, the dream that I dreamed, my friends, and help me to determine its meaning!
It is still a riddle to me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it and caged, and does not yet fly above it on free wings.
All life had I renounced, so I dreamed. Night-watchman and grave-guardian had I become, aloft, in the lone mountain-fortress of Death.
There I guarded his coffins: the musty vaults of those trophies of victory stood full. Out of glass coffins did vanquished life gaze upon me.
I breathed the odor of dust-covered eternities: sultry and dust-covered lay my soul. And who could have aired his soul there!
Brightness of midnight was ever around me; lonesomeness cowered beside her; and as a third, death-rattle stillness, the worst of my female friends.
I carried keys, the rustiest of all keys; and I knew how to open with them the most creaking of all gates.
Like a bitterly angry croaking ran the sound through the long corridors when the leaves of the gate opened: ungraciously did this bird cry, unwillingly was it awakened.
But more frightful even, and more heart-strangling was it, when it again became silent and still all around, and I alone sat in that malignant silence.
Thus did time pass with me, and slip by, if time there still was: what do I know thereof! But at last there happened that which awoke me.
Thrice did there peal peals at the gate like thunders, thrice did the vaults resound and howl again: then I went to the gate.
Alpa! I cried, who carries his ashes to the mountain? Alpa! Alpa! who carries his ashes to the mountain?
And I pressed the key, and pulled at the gate, and exerted myself. But not a finger’s-breadth was it yet open:
Then did a roaring wind tear the folds apart: whistling, whizzing, and piercing, it threw to me a black coffin.
And in the roaring, and whistling, and whizzing the coffin burst up, and spouted out a thousand peals of laughter.
And a thousand caricatures of children, angels, owls, fools, and child-sized butterflies laughed and mocked, and roared at me.
I was fearfully terrified by that: it prostrated me. And I cried with horror as I never cried before.
But my own crying awoke me:—and I came to myself.—
Thus did Zarathustra relate his dream, and then was silent: for as yet he knew not its interpretation. But the disciple whom he loved most arose quickly, seized Zarathustra’s hand, and said:
“Your life itself interprets to us this dream, O Zarathustra!
Are you not yourself the wind with shrill whistling, which bursts open the gates of the fortress of Death?
Are you not yourself the coffin full of many-hued malices and angel-caricatures of life?
Truly, like a thousand peals of children’s laughter comes Zarathustra into all sepulchres, laughing at those night-watchmen and grave-guardians, and whoever else rattles with sinister keys.
With your laughter you will frighten and prostrate them: fainting and recovering will demonstrate your power over them.
And when the long twilight comes and the mortal weariness, even then you will not disappear from our firmament, you advocate of life!
You have made us see new stars, and new nocturnal glories: truly, laughter itself have you spread out over us like a many-hued canopy.
Now children’s laughter will ever flow from coffins; now a strong wind will ever come victoriously to all mortal weariness: of this you are yourself the pledge and the prophet!
Truly, THEY THEMSELVES DID YOU DREAM, your enemies: that was your sorest dream.
But as you woke from them and came to yourself, so shall they awaken from themselves—and come to you!”
Thus spoke the disciple; and all the others then thronged around Zarathustra, grasped him by the hands, and tried to persuade him to leave his bed and his sadness, and return to them. Zarathustra, however, sat upright on his couch, with an absent look. Like one returning from long foreign sojourn he looked on his disciples, and examined their features; but still he knew them not. When, however, they raised him, and set him on his feet, behold, all on a sudden his eye changed; he understood everything that had happened, stroked his beard, and said with a strong voice:
“Well! this has just its time; but see to it, my disciples, that we have a good repast; and without delay! Thus do I mean to make amends for bad dreams!
The soothsayer, however, shall eat and drink at my side: and truly, I will yet show him a sea in which he can drown himself!”—
Thus spoke Zarathustra. Then he gazed long into the face of the disciple who had been the dream-interpreter, and shook his head.—








XLII. REDEMPTION


When Zarathustra went one day over the great bridge, then did the cripples and beggars surround him, and a hunchback spoke thus to him:
“Behold, Zarathustra! Even the people learn from you, and acquire faith in your teaching: but for them to believe fully in you, one thing is still needful—you must first of all convince us cripples! Here now you have a fine selection, and truly, an opportunity with more than one forelock! The blind you can heal, and make the lame run; and from him who has too much behind, could you well, also, take away a little;—that, I think, would be the right method to make the cripples believe in Zarathustra!”
Zarathustra, however, answered thus to him who so spoke: When one takes his hump from the hunchback, then does one take from him his spirit—so do the people teach. And when one gives the blind man eyes, then does he see too many bad things on the earth: so that he curses him who healed him. He, however, who makes the lame man run, inflicts on him the greatest injury; for hardly can he run, when his vices run away with him—so do the people teach concerning cripples. And why should not Zarathustra also learn from the people, when the people learn from Zarathustra?
It is, however, the smallest thing to me since I have been among men, to see one person lacking an eye, another an ear, and a third a leg, and that others have lost the tongue, or the nose, or the head.
I see and have seen worse things, and many things so hideous, that I should neither like to speak of all matters, nor even keep silent about some of them: namely, men who lack everything, except that they have too much of one thing—men who are nothing more than a big eye, or a big mouth, or a big belly, or something else big,—reversed cripples, I call such men.
And when I came out of my solitude, and for the first time passed over this bridge, then I could not trust my eyes, but looked again and again, and said at last: “That is an ear! An ear as big as a man!” I looked still more attentively—and actually there did move under the ear something that was pitiably small and poor and slim. And in truth this immense ear was perched on a small thin stalk—the stalk, however, was a man! A person putting a glass to his eyes, could even recognize further a small envious face, and also that a bloated soullet dangled at the stalk. The people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a man, but a great man, a genius. But I never believed in the people when they spoke of great men—and I hold to my belief that it was a reversed cripple, who had too little of everything, and too much of one thing.
When Zarathustra had spoken thus to the hunchback, and to those of whom the hunchback was the mouthpiece and advocate, then he turned to his disciples in profound dejection, and said:
Truly, my friends, I walk among men as among the fragments and limbs of human beings!
This is the terrible thing to my eye, that I find man broken up, and scattered about, as on a battle- and butcher-ground.
And when my eye flees from the present to the past, it finds ever the same: fragments and limbs and fearful chances—but no men!
The present and the past on earth—ah! my friends—that is MY most unbearable trouble; and I would not know how to live, if I were not a seer of what is to come.
A seer, a purposer, a creator, a future itself, and a bridge to the future—and alas! also as it were a cripple on this bridge: all that is Zarathustra.
And you also asked yourselves often: “Who is Zarathustra to us? What shall he be called by us?” And like me, did you give yourselves questions for answers.
Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? A harvest? Or a ploughshare? A physician? Or a healed one?
Is he a poet? Or a genuine one? An emancipator? Or a subjugator? A good one? Or an evil one?
I walk among men as the fragments of the future: that future which I contemplate.
And it is all my poetization and aspiration to compose and collect into unity what is fragment and riddle and fearful chance.
And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the composer, and riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance!
To redeem what is past, and to transform every “It was” into “Thus would I have it!”—that only do I call redemption!
Will—so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a prisoner.
Willing emancipates: but what is that called which still puts the emancipator in chains?
“It was”: thus is the Will’s teeth-gnashing and lonesomest tribulation called. Impotent towards what has been done—it is a malicious spectator of all that is past.
Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time’s desire—that is the Will’s lonesomest tribulation.
Willing emancipates: what does Willing itself devise in order to get free from its tribulation and mock at its prison?
Ah, every prisoner becomes a fool! The imprisoned Will also delivers itself foolishly.
That time does not run backward—that is its animosity: “That which was”: so is the stone which it cannot roll called.
And thus it rolls stones out of animosity and ill-humour, and takes revenge on whatever does not, like it, feel rage and ill-humour.
Thus did the Will, the emancipator, become a torturer; and it takes revenge on all that is capable of suffering, because it cannot go backward.
This, yes, this alone is REVENGE itself: the Will’s antipathy to time, and its “It was.”
Truly, a great folly dwells in our Will; and it became a curse to all humanity, that this folly acquired spirit!
THE SPIRIT OF REVENGE: my friends, that has so far been man’s best contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was always penalty.
“Penalty,” so revenge calls itself. With a lying word it feigns a good conscience.
And because in the willer himself there is suffering, because he cannot will backwards—thus was Willing itself, and all life, claimed—to be penalty!
And then did cloud after cloud roll over the spirit, until at last madness preached: “Everything perishes, therefore everything deserves to perish!”
“And this itself is justice, the law of time—that he must devour his children:” thus did madness preach.
“Morally are things ordered according to justice and penalty. Oh, where is there deliverance from the flux of things and from the ‘existence’ of penalty?” Thus did madness preach.
“Can there be deliverance when there is eternal justice? Alas, unrollable is the stone, ‘It was’: eternal must also be all penalties!” Thus did madness preach.
“No deed can be annihilated: how could it be undone by the penalty! This, this is what is eternal in the ‘existence’ of penalty, that existence also must be eternally recurring deed and guilt!
Unless the Will should at last deliver itself, and Willing become non-Willing—:” but you know, my brothers, this fabulous song of madness!
I lead you away from those fabulous songs when I taught you: “The Will is a creator.”
All “It was” is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance—until the creating Will says to it: “But thus would I have it.”—
Until the creating Will says to it: “But thus do I will it! Thus shall I will it!”
But did it ever speak thus? And when does this take place? Has the Will been unharnessed from its own folly?
Has the Will become its own deliverer and joy-bringer? Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing?
And who has taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than all reconciliation?
Something higher than all reconciliation must the Will will which is the Will to Power—: but how does that take place? Who has taught it also to will backwards?
—But at this point in his discourse it chanced that Zarathustra suddenly paused, and looked like a person in the greatest alarm. With terror in his eyes did he gaze on his disciples; his glances pierced as with arrows their thoughts and arrear-thoughts. But after a brief space he again laughed, and said soothedly:
“It is difficult to live among men, because silence is so difficult— especially for a babbler.”—
Thus spoke Zarathustra. The hunchback, however, had listened to the conversation and had covered his face during the time; but when he heard Zarathustra laugh, he looked up with curiosity, and said slowly:
“But why does Zarathustra speak otherwise to us than to his disciples?”
Zarathustra answered: “What is there to be wondered at! With hunchbacks one may well speak in a hunchbacked way!”
“Very good,” said the hunchback; “and with pupils one may well tell tales out of school.
But why does Zarathustra speak otherwise to his pupils—than to himself?”—








XLIII. MANLY PRUDENCE
It is not the height, but the slope that is terrible!
The slope, where the gaze shoots DOWNWARDS, and the hand grasps UPWARDS. There does the heart become giddy through its double will.
Ah, friends, do you divine also my heart’s double will?
This, this is MY slope and my danger, that my gaze shoots towards the summit, and my hand would gladly clutch and lean—on the depth!
My will clings to man; with chains I bind myself to man, because I am pulled upwards to the Superman: for there does my other will tend.
And THEREFORE do I live blindly among men, as if I knew them not: that my hand may not entirely lose belief in firmness.
I do not know you men: this gloom and consolation is often spread around me.
I sit at the gateway for every rogue, and ask: Who wishes to deceive me?
This is my first manly prudence, that I allow myself to be deceived, so as not to be on my guard against deceivers.
Ah, if I were on my guard against man, how could man be an anchor to my ball! I would too easily be pulled upwards and away!
This providence is over my fate, that I have to be without foresight.
And he who would not languish among men, must learn to drink out of all glasses; and he who would keep clean among men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water.
And thus I spoke often to myself for consolation: “Courage! Cheer up! old heart! An unhappiness has failed to befall you: enjoy that as your—happiness!”
This, however, is my other manly prudence: I am more forbearing to the VAIN than to the proud.
Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies? Where, however, pride is wounded, there there grows up something better than pride.
That life may be fair to behold, its game must be well played; for that purpose, however, it needs good actors.
Good actors have I found all the vain ones: they play, and wish people to be fond of beholding them—all their spirit is in this wish.
They represent themselves, they invent themselves; in their neighborhood I like to look upon life—it cures of melancholy.
Therefore am I forbearing to the vain, because they are the physicians of my melancholy, and keep me attached to man as to a drama.
And further, who conceives the full depth of the modesty of the vain man! I am favorable to him, and sympathetic on account of his modesty.
From you he would learn his belief in himself; he feeds on your glances, he eats praise out of your hands.
He even believes your lies when you lie favorably about him: for in its depths his heart sighs: “What am I?”
And if that be the true virtue which is unconscious of itself—well, the vain man is unconscious of his modesty!—
This is, however, my third manly prudence: I am not put out of conceit with the WICKED by your timidness.
I am happy to see the marvels the warm sun hatches: tigers and palms and rattle-snakes.
Also among men there is a beautiful brood of the warm sun, and much that is marvellous in the wicked.
In truth, as your wisest did not seem to me so very wise, so I found also human wickedness below the fame of it.
And often I asked with a shake of the head: Why still rattle, you rattle-snakes?
Truly, there is still a future even for evil! And the warmest south is still undiscovered by man.
How many things are now called the worst wickedness, which are only twelve feet broad and three months long! Some day, however, will greater dragons come into the world.
For that the Superman may not lack his dragon, the superdragon that is worthy of him, there must still much warm sun glow on moist virgin forests!
Out of your wild cats must tigers have evolved, and out of your poison-toads, crocodiles: for the good hunter shall have a good hunt!
And truly, you good and just! In you there is much to be laughed at, and especially your fear of what has always been called “the devil!”
So alien are you in your souls to what is great, that to you the Superman would be FRIGHTFUL in his goodness!
And you wise and knowing ones, you would flee from the solar-glow of the wisdom in which the Superman joyfully bathes his nakedness!
You highest men who have come within my ken! this is my doubt of you, and my secret laughter: I suspect you would call my Superman—a devil!
Ah, I became tired of those highest and best ones: from their “height” I longed to be up, out, and away to the Superman!
A horror came over me when I saw those best ones naked: then there grew for me the wings to soar away into distant futures.
Into more distant futures, into more southern souths than ever artist dreamed of: there, where Gods are ashamed of all clothes!
But disguised do I want to see YOU, you neighbors and fellowmen, and well-attired and vain and estimable, as “the good and just;”—
And disguised will I myself sit among you—that I may MISTAKE you and myself: for that is my last manly prudence.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XLIV. THE STILLEST HOUR


What has happened to me, my friends? You see me troubled, driven forth, unwillingly obedient, ready to go—alas, to go away from YOU!
Yes, once more must Zarathustra retire to his solitude: but unjoyously this time does the bear go back to his cave!
What has happened to me? Who ordered this?—Ah, my angry mistress wishes it so; she spoke to me. Have I ever named her name to you?
Yesterday towards evening there spoke to me MY STILLEST HOUR: that is the name of my terrible mistress.
And thus it happened—for I must tell you everything, that your heart may not harden against the suddenly departing one!
Do you know the terror of him who falls asleep?—
To the very toes he is terrified, because the ground gives way under him, and the dream begins.
This do I speak to you in parable. Yesterday at the stillest hour did the ground give way under me: the dream began.
The hour-hand moved on, the timepiece of my life drew breath—never did I hear such stillness around me, so that my heart was terrified.
Then was there spoken to me without voice: “YOU KNOW IT, ZARATHUSTRA?”—
And I cried in terror at this whispering, and the blood left my face: but I was silent.
Then there was once more spoken to me without voice: “You know it, Zarathustra, but you do not speak it!”—
And at last I answered, like one defiant: “Yes, I know it, but I will not speak it!”
Then was there again spoken to me without voice: “You WILL not, Zarathustra? Is this true? Do not conceal yourself behind your defiance!”—
And I wept and trembled like a child, and said: “Ah, I would indeed, but how can I do it! Exempt me only from this! It is beyond my power!”
Then was there again spoken to me without voice: “What matter about yourself, Zarathustra! Speak your word, and succumb!”
And I answered: “Ah, is it MY word? Who am I? I await the worthier one; I am not worthy even to succumb by it.”
Then was there again spoken to me without voice: “What matter about yourself? You are not yet humble enough for me. Humility has the hardest skin.”—
And I answered: “What has the skin of my humility not endured! At the foot of my height do I dwell: how high are my summits, no one has yet told me. But well do I know my valleys.”
Then was there again spoken to me without voice: “O Zarathustra, he who has to remove mountains removes also valleys and plains.”—
And I answered: “As yet has my word not removed mountains, and what I have spoken has not reached man. I went, indeed, to men, but not yet have I attained to them.”
Then was there again spoken to me without voice: “What do you know of THAT! The dew falls on the grass when the night is most silent.”—
And I answered: “They mocked me when I found and walked in my own path; and certainly did my feet then tremble.
And thus did they speak to me: You forgot the path before, now do you also forget how to walk!”
Then was there again spoken to me without voice: “What matter about their mockery! You are one who have unlearned to obey: now shall you command!
Do you not know who is most needed by all? He who commands great things.
To execute great things is difficult: but the more difficult task is to command great things.
This is your most unpardonable obstinacy: you have the power, and you will not rule.”—
And I answered: “I lack the lion’s voice for all commanding.”
Then was there again spoken to me as a whispering: “It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves’ footsteps guide the world.
O Zarathustra, you shall go as a shadow of that which is to come: thus will you command, and in commanding go foremost.”—
And I answered: “I am ashamed.”
Then was there again spoken to me without voice: “You must yet become a child, and be without shame.
The pride of youth is still upon you; late have you become young: but he who would become a child must surmount even his youth.”—
And I considered a long while, and trembled. At last, however, did I say what I had said at first. “I will not.”
Then did a laughing take place all around me. Alas, how that laughing lacerated my bowels and cut into my heart!
And there was spoken to me for the last time: “O Zarathustra, your fruits are ripe, but you are not ripe for your fruits!
So you must go again into solitude: for you shall yet become mellow.”—
And again there was a laughing, and it fled: then did it become still around me, as with a double stillness. I lay, however, on the ground, and the sweat flowed from my limbs.
—Now you have heard all, and why I have to return into my solitude. I have kept nothing hidden from you, my friends.
But even this you have heard from me, WHO is still the most reserved of men—and will be so!
Ah, my friends! I should have something more to say to you! I should have something more to give to you! Why do I not give it? Am I then a niggard?—
When, however, Zarathustra had spoken these words, the violence of his pain, and a sense of the nearness of his departure from his friends came over him, so that he wept aloud; and no one knew how to console him. In the night, however, he went away alone and left his friends.










–––––––––––––––––––[End of Second Part]–––––––––––––––––––––––––










THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA
THIRD PART


“You look aloft when you long for exaltation, and I look downward because I am exalted.
“Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted?
“He who climbs on the highest mountains, laughs at all tragic plays and tragic realities.”—ZARATHUSTRA, I., “Reading and Writing.”








XLV. THE WANDERER


Then, when it was about midnight, Zarathustra went his way over the ridge of the isle, that he might arrive early in the morning at the other coast; because there he meant to embark. For there was a good roadstead there, in which foreign ships also liked to anchor: those ships took many people with them, who wished to cross over from the Happy Isles. So when Zarathustra thus ascended the mountain, he thought on the way of his many solitary wanderings from youth onwards, and how many mountains and ridges and summits he had already climbed.
I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seems I cannot long sit still.
And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience—a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experiences only oneself.
The time is now past when accidents could befall me; and what COULD now fall to my lot which would not already be my own!
It returns only, it comes home to me at last—my own Self, and such of it as has been long abroad, and scattered among things and accidents.
And one thing more do I know: I stand now before my last summit, and before that which has been longest reserved for me. Ah, my hardest path must I ascend! Ah, I have begun my lonesomest wandering!
He, however, who is of my nature does not avoid such an hour: the hour that says to him: Now only do you go the way to your greatness! Summit and abyss—these are now comprised together!
You go the way to your greatness: now it has become your last refuge, what was until now your last danger!
You go the way to your greatness: it must now be your best courage that there is no longer any path behind you!
You go the way to your greatness: here shall no one steal after you! Your foot itself has effaced the path behind you, and over it stands written: Impossibility.
And if from now on all ladders fail you, then you must learn to mount on your own head: how could you mount upward otherwise?
On your own head, and beyond your own heart! Now must the gentlest in you become the hardest.
He who has always much-indulged himself, sickens at last by his much-indulgence. Praises on what makes hardy! I do not praise the land where butter and honey—flow!
To learn TO LOOK AWAY FROM oneself, is necessary in order to see MANY THINGS:—this hardiness is needed by every mountain-climber.
He, however, who is obtrusive with his eyes as a discerner, how can he ever see more of anything than its foreground!
But you, O Zarathustra, would view the ground of everything, and its background: thus must you mount even above yourself—up, upwards, until you have even your stars UNDER you!
Yes! To look down upon myself, and even upon my stars: that only would I call my SUMMIT, that has remained for me as my LAST summit!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra to himself while ascending, comforting his heart with harsh maxims: for he was sore at heart as he had never been before. And when he had reached the top of the mountain-ridge, behold, there lay the other sea spread out before him: and he stood still and was long silent. The night, however, was cold at this height, and clear and starry.
I recognize my destiny, he said at last, sadly. Well! I am ready. Now has my last lonesomeness begun.
Ah, this sombre, sad sea, below me! Ah, this sombre nocturnal vexation! Ah, fate and sea! To you must I now GO DOWN!
Before my highest mountain do I stand, and before my longest wandering: therefore I must first go deeper down than I ever ascended:
—Deeper down into pain than I ever ascended, even into its darkest flood! So wills my fate. Well! I am ready.
From where come the highest mountains? so I once asked. Then I learned that they come out of the sea.
That testimony is inscribed on their stones, and on the walls of their summits. Out of the deepest must the highest come to its height.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra on the ridge of the mountain where it was cold: when, however, he came into the vicinity of the sea, and at last stood alone among the cliffs, then had he become weary on his way, and eagerer than ever before.
Everything as yet sleeps, he said; even the sea sleeps. Drowsily and strangely its eye gazes upon me.
But it breathes warmly—I feel it. And I feel also that it dreams. It tosses about dreamily on hard pillows.
Hark! Hark! How it groans with evil recollections! Or evil expectations?
Ah, I am sad along with you, you dusky monster, and angry with myself even for your sake.
Ah, that my hand has not strength enough! Gladly, indeed, would I free you from evil dreams!—
And while Zarathustra thus spoke, he laughed at himself with melancholy and bitterness. What! Zarathustra, said he, will you even sing consolation to the sea?
Ah, you amiable fool, Zarathustra, you too-blindly confiding one! But thus have you ever been: ever hast you approached confidently all that is terrible.
You would caress every monster. A whiff of warm breath, a little soft tuft on its paw—: and immediately were you ready to love and lure it.
LOVE is the danger of the lonesomest one, love to anything, IF IT ONLY LIVE! Laughable, truly, is my folly and my modesty in love!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and laughed thereby a second time. Then, however, he thought of his abandoned friends—and as if he had done them a wrong with his thoughts, he scolded himself because of his thoughts. And immediately it came to pass that the laugher wept—with anger and longing Zarathustra wept bitterly.








XLVI. THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA


1.
When it got around among the sailors that Zarathustra was on board the ship—for a man who came from the Happy Isles had gone on board along with him,—there was great curiosity and expectation. But Zarathustra kept silent for two days, and was cold and deaf with sadness; so that he neither answered looks nor questions. On the evening of the second day, however, he again opened his ears, though he still kept silent: for there were many curious and dangerous things to be heard on board the ship, which came from afar, and was to go still further. Zarathustra, however, was fond of all those who make distant voyages, and dislike to live without danger. And behold! when listening, his own tongue was at last loosened, and the ice of his heart broke. Then did he begin to speak thus:
To you, the daring venturers and adventurers, and whoever has embarked with cunning sails upon frightful seas,—
To you the enigma-intoxicated, the twilight-enjoyers, whose souls are allured by flutes to every treacherous gulf:
—For you dislike to grope at a thread with cowardly hand; and where you can DIVINE, there do you hate to CALCULATE—
To you only do I tell the enigma that I SAW—the vision of the lonesomest one.—
Gloomily I walked lately in corpse-colored twilight—gloomily and sternly, with compressed lips. Not only one sun had set for me.
A path which ascended daringly among boulders, an evil, lonesome path, which neither herb nor shrub any longer cheered, a mountain-path, crunched under the daring of my foot.
Mutely marching over the scornful clinking of pebbles, trampling the stone that let it slip: thus did my foot force its way upwards.
Upwards:—in spite of the spirit that drew it downwards, towards the abyss, the spirit of gravity, my devil and arch-enemy.
Upwards:—although it sat on me, half-dwarf, half-mole; paralysed, paralysing; dripping lead in my ear, and thoughts like drops of lead into my brain.
“O Zarathustra,” it whispered scornfully, syllable by syllable, “you stone of wisdom! You threw yourself high, but every thrown stone must—fall!
O Zarathustra, you stone of wisdom, you sling-stone, you star-destroyer! Yourself threw you so high,—but every thrown stone—must fall!
Condemned of yourself, and to your own stoning: O Zarathustra, you threw your stone far indeed—but upon YOURSELF will it recoil!”
Then was the dwarf silent; and it lasted long. The silence, however, oppressed me; and to be thus in pairs, one is truly lonesomer than when alone!
I ascended, I ascended, I dreamt, I thought,—but everything oppressed me. I resembled a sick one, whom bad torture wearies, and a worse dream reawakens out of his first sleep.—
But there is something in me which I call courage: it has always slain for me every dejection. This courage at last bade me stand still and say: “Dwarf! You! Or I!”—
For courage is the best slayer,—courage which ATTACKS: for in every attack there is sound of triumph.
Man, however, is the most courageous animal: by that he has overcome every animal. With sound of triumph has he overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain.
Courage slays also giddiness at abysses: and where does man not stand at abysses! Is not seeing itself—seeing abysses?
Courage is the best slayer: courage slays also fellow-suffering. Fellow-suffering, however, is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man looks into life, so deeply also does he look into suffering.
Courage, however, is the best slayer, courage which attacks: it slays even death itself; for it says: “WAS THAT life? Well! Once more!”
In such speech, however, there is much sound of triumph. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.—
2.
“Halt, dwarf!” said I. “Either I—or you! I, however, am the stronger of the two:—you know not my abysmal thought! IT—you could not endure!”
Then happened that which made me lighter: for the dwarf sprang from my shoulder, the prying sprite! And it squatted on a stone in front of me. There was however a gateway just where we halted.
“Look at this gateway! Dwarf!” I continued, “it has two faces. Two roads come together here: these has no one yet gone to the end of.
This long lane backwards: it continues for an eternity. And that long lane forward—that is another eternity.
They are antithetical to one another, these roads; they directly abut on one another:—and it is here, at this gateway, that they come together. The name of the gateway is inscribed above: ‘This Moment.’
But should one follow them further—and ever further and further on, you think, dwarf, that these roads would be eternally antithetical?”—
“Everything straight lies,” murmured the dwarf, contemptuously. “All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle.”
“You spirit of gravity!” I said wrathfully, “do not take it too lightly! Or I shall let you squat where you squatted, Haltfoot,—and I carried you HIGH!”
“Observe,” I continued, “This Moment! From the gateway, This Moment, there runs a long eternal lane BACKWARDS: behind us lies an eternity.
Must not whatever CAN run its course of all things, have already run along that lane? Must not whatever CAN happen of all things have already happened, resulted, and gone by?
And if everything has already existed, what do you think, dwarf, of This Moment? Must not this gateway also—have already existed?
And are not all things closely bound together in such wise that This Moment draws all coming things after it? CONSEQUENTLY—itself also?
For whatever CAN run its course of all things, also in this long lane OUTWARD—MUST it once more run!—
And this slow spider which creeps in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and you and I in this gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things—must we not all have already existed?
—And must we not return and run in that other lane out before us, that long weird lane—must we not eternally return?”—
Thus did I speak, and always more softly: for I was afraid of my own thoughts, and arrear-thoughts. Then, suddenly did I hear a dog HOWL near me.
Had I ever heard a dog howl thus? My thoughts ran back. Yes! When I was a child, in my most distant childhood:
—Then I heard a dog howl thus. And saw it also, with hair bristling, its head upwards, trembling in the stillest midnight, when even dogs believe in ghosts:
—So that it excited my commiseration. For just then went the full moon, silent as death, over the house; just then did it stand still, a glowing globe—at rest on the flat roof, as if on someone’s property:—
The dog had been terrified by that: for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And when I again heard such howling, then it excited my commiseration once more.
Where was the dwarf now? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Had I dreamt? Had I awakened? Between rugged rocks I suddenly stood alone, dreary in the dreariest moonlight.
BUT THERE LAID A MAN! And there! The dog leaping, bristling, whining—now it saw me coming—then it howled again, then it CRIED:—had I ever heard a dog cry so for help?
And truly, what I saw, I had never seen the like. I saw a young shepherd, writhing, choking, quivering, with a distorted face, and with a heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth.
Had I ever seen so much loathing and pale horror on one face? Had he perhaps gone to sleep? Then the serpent had crawled into his throat—it had bitten itself there firmly.
My hand pulled at the serpent, and pulled:—in vain! I failed to pull the serpent out of his throat. Then there cried out of me: “Bite! Bite!
Its head off! Bite!”—so it cried out of me; my horror, my hatred, my loathing, my pity, all my good and my bad cried with one voice out of me.—
You daring ones around me! You venturers and adventurers, and whoever of you have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas! You enigma-enjoyers!
Solve to me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret to me the vision of the lonesomest one!
For it was a vision and a foresight:—WHAT did I then behold in parable? And WHO is it that must come some day?
WHO is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus crawled? WHO is the man into whose throat all the heaviest and blackest will thus crawl?
—The shepherd however bit as my cry had admonished him; he bit with a strong bite! Far away did he spit the head of the serpent—: and sprang up.—
No longer shepherd, no longer man—a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as HE laughed!
O my brothers, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,—and now a thirst gnaws at me, a longing that is never allayed.
My longing for that laughter gnaws at me: oh, how can I still endure to live! And how could I endure to die at present!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XLVII. INVOLUNTARY BLISS


With such enigmas and bitterness in his heart did Zarathustra sail over the sea. When, however, he was four day-journeys from the Happy Isles and from his friends, then he had surmounted all his pain—: triumphantly and with firm foot he again accepted his fate. And then Zarathustra talked in this wise to his exulting conscience:
I am alone again, and like to be so, alone with the pure heaven, and the open sea; and again is the afternoon around me.
On an afternoon I found my friends for the first time; on an afternoon, also, I found them a second time:—at the hour when all light becomes stiller.
For whatever happiness is still on its way between heaven and earth, now seeks a luminous soul for lodging: WITH HAPPINESS all light has now become stiller.
O afternoon of my life! Once my happiness also descended to the valley that it might seek a lodging: then it found those open hospitable souls.
O afternoon of my life! What did I not surrender that I might have one thing: this living plantation of my thoughts, and this dawn of my highest hope!
The creating one once sought companions, and children of HIS hope: and behold, it turned out that he could not find them, except he himself should first create them.
Thus I am in the midst of my work, going to my children, and returning from them: for the sake of his children Zarathustra must perfect himself.
For in one’s heart one loves only one’s child and one’s work; and where there is great love to oneself, then it is the sign of pregnancy: so I have found it.
My children are still verdant in their first spring, standing near one another, and shaken in common by the winds, the trees of my garden and of my best soil.
And truly, where such trees stand beside one another, there ARE Happy Isles!
But one day I will take them up, and put each by itself alone: that it may learn lonesomeness and defiance and prudence.
Gnarled and crooked and with flexible hardness it shall then stand by the sea, a living lighthouse of unconquerable life.
Yonder where the storms rush down into the sea, and the snout of the mountain drinks water, each on a time shall have his day and night watches, for HIS testing and recognition.
Each shall be recognized and tested, to see if he is of my type and lineage:—if he is master of a long will, silent even when he speaks, and giving in such wise that he TAKES in giving:—
—So that he may one day become my companion, a fellow-creator and fellow-enjoyer with Zarathustra:—such a one as writes my will on my tables, for the fuller perfection of all things.
And for his sake and for those like him, I must perfect MYSELF: therefore I now avoid my happiness, and present myself to every misfortune—for MY final testing and recognition.
And truly, it were time that I went away; and the wanderer’s shadow and the longest tedium and the stillest hour—have all said to me: “It is the highest time!”
The word blew to me through the keyhole and said “Come!” The door sprang subtly open to me, and said “Go!”
But I lay chained to my love for my children: desire spread this snare for me—the desire for love—that I should become the prey of my children, and lose myself in them.
Desiring—that is now for me to have lost myself. I POSSESS YOU, MY CHILDREN! In this possessing shall everything be assurance and nothing desire.
But the sun of my love lay brooding upon me, Zarathustra stewed in his own juice,—then shadows and doubts flew past me.
I now longed for frost and winter: “Oh, that frost and winter would again make me crack and crunch!” I sighed:—then icy mist arose out of me.
My past burst its tomb, many pains buried alive woke up—: they had fully slept merely, concealed in corpse-clothes.
So everything called to me in signs: “It is time!” But I—heard not, until at last my abyss moved, and my thought bit me.
Ah, abysmal thought, which is MY thought! When shall I find strength to hear you burrowing, and no longer tremble?
My heart throbs to my very throat when I hear you burrowing! Even your muteness is like to strangle me, you abysmal mute one!
As yet I have never ventured to call you UP; it has been enough that I—have carried you about with me! As yet I have not been strong enough for my final lion-wantonness and playfulness.
Your weight has ever been sufficiently formidable to me: but one day I shall yet find the strength and the lion’s voice which will call you up!
When I shall have surmounted myself in that, then I will surmount myself also in that which is greater; and a VICTORY shall be the seal of my perfection!—
Meanwhile I sail along on uncertain seas; chance flatters me, smooth-tongued chance; forward and backward I gaze—, still I see no end.
As yet the hour of my final struggle has not come to me—or does it come to me perhaps just now? Truly, with insidious beauty do sea and life gaze upon me round about:
O afternoon of my life! O happiness before eventide! O haven upon high seas! O peace in uncertainty! How I distrust all of you!
Truly, I am distrustful of your insidious beauty! I am like the lover, who distrusts too sleek smiling.
As he pushes the best-beloved before him—tender even in severity, the jealous one—, so do I push this blissful hour before me.
Away with you, you blissful hour! With you there has come to me an involuntary bliss! I stand here ready for my severest pain:—you have come at the wrong time!
Away with you, you blissful hour! Rather harbour there—with my children! Hasten! and bless them before eventide with MY happiness!
There, eventide already approaches: the sun sinks. Away—my happiness!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra. And he waited for his misfortune the whole night; but he waited in vain. The night remained clear and calm, and happiness itself came nearer and nearer to him. Towards morning, however, Zarathustra laughed to his heart, and said mockingly: “Happiness runs after me. That is because I do not run after women. Happiness, however, is a woman.”








XLVIII. BEFORE SUNRISE
  



O heaven above me, you pure, you deep heaven! You abyss of light! Gazing on you, I tremble with divine desires.
To toss myself up to your height—that is MY depth! To hide myself in your purity—that is MY innocence!
The God veils his beauty: thus you hide your stars. You do not speak: THUS you proclaim your wisdom to me.
Mute over the raging sea you have risen for me today; your love and your modesty make a revelation to my raging soul.
In that you came to me beautiful, veiled in your beauty, in that you spoke to me mutely, obvious in your wisdom:
Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of your soul! BEFORE the sun you came to me—the lonesomest one.
We have been friends from the beginning: to us grief, gruesomeness, and ground are common; even the sun is common to us.
We do not speak to each other, because we know too much—: we keep silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other.
Are you not the light of my fire? Have you not the sister-soul of my insight?
Together we learned everything; together we learned to ascend beyond ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloudedly:—
—Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out of miles of distance, when under us constraint and purpose and guilt steam like rain.
And I wandered alone, for WHAT did my soul hunger by night and in labyrinthine paths? And I climbed mountains, WHOM did I ever seek, if not you, upon mountains?
And all my wandering and mountain-climbing: it was merely a necessity, and a makeshift of the unhandy one:—only to FLY, wants my entire will, to fly into YOU!
And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever taints you? And I have even hated my own hatred, because it tainted you!
I detest the passing clouds—those stealthy cats of prey: they take from you and me what is common to us—the vast unbounded Yes- and Amen-saying.
We detest these mediators and mixers—the passing clouds: those half-and-half ones, that have neither learned to bless nor to curse from the heart.
I will rather sit in a tub under a closed heaven, I will rather sit in the abyss without heaven, than see you, you luminous heaven, tainted with passing clouds!
And I have often longed to pin them firm with the jagged gold-wires of lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum on their kettle-bellies:—
—An angry drummer, because they rob me of your Yes and Amen!—you heaven above me, you pure, you luminous heaven! You abyss of light!—because they rob you of MY Yes and Amen.
For I will rather have noise and thunders and tempest-blasts, than this discreet, doubting cat-repose; and also among men do I hate most of all the soft-treaders, and half-and-half ones, and the doubting, hesitating, passing clouds.
And “he who cannot bless shall LEARN to curse!”—this clear teaching dropped to me from the clear heaven; this star stands in my heaven even in dark nights.
I, however, am a blesser and a Yes-sayer, if you be but around me, you pure, you luminous heaven! You abyss of light!—into all abysses do I then carry my beneficent Yes-saying.
I have become a blesser and a Yes-sayer: and for that I strove long and was a striver, that I might one day get my hands free for blessing.
This, however, is my blessing: to stand above everything as its heaven, its round roof, its blue bell and eternal security: and blessed is he who thus blesses!
For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds.
Truly, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that “above all things there stands the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of hazard, the heaven of wantonness.”
“Of Hazard”—that is the oldest nobility in the world; I gave that back to all things; I emancipated them from bondage under purpose.
This freedom and celestial serenity did I put like a blue bell above all things, when I taught that over them and through them, no “eternal Will”—wills.
This wantonness and folly did I put in place of that Will, when I taught that “In everything there is one thing impossible—rationality!”
A LITTLE reason, to be sure, a germ of wisdom scattered from star to star—this leaven is mixed in all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed in all things!
A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security have I found in all things, that they prefer—to DANCE on the feet of chance.
O heaven above me! you pure, you lofty heaven! This is now your purity to me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and reason-cobweb:—
—That to me you are a dancing-floor for divine chances, that to me you are a table of the Gods, for divine dice and dice-players!—
But you blush? Have I spoken unspeakable things? Have I abused, when I meant to bless you?
Or is it the shame of being two of us that makes you blush!—Do you bid me go and be silent, because now—DAY comes?
The world is deep:—and deeper than the day could ever read. Not everything may be uttered in presence of day. But day comes: so let us part!
O heaven above me, you modest one! you glowing one! O you, my happiness before sunrise! The day comes: so let us part!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








XLIX. THE BEDWARFING VIRTUE
1.
When Zarathustra was again on the continent, he did not go straight to his mountains and his cave, but made many wanderings and questionings, and ascertained this and that; so that he said of himself jestingly: “Behold, a river that flows back to its source in many windings!” For he wanted to learn what had taken place AMONG MEN during the interval: whether they had become greater or smaller. And once, when he saw a row of new houses, he marvelled, and said:
“What do these houses mean? Truly, no great soul put them up as its simile!
Did perhaps a silly child take them out of its toy-box? Would that another child put them again into the box!
And these rooms and chambers—can MEN go out and in there? They seem to be made for silk dolls; or for dainty-eaters, who perhaps let others eat with them.”
And Zarathustra stood still and meditated. At last he said sorrowfully: “There EVERYTHING has become smaller!
Everywhere I see lower doorways: he who is of MY type can still go through them, but—he must stoop!
Oh, when shall I arrive again at my home, where I shall no longer have to stoop—shall no longer have to stoop BEFORE THE SMALL ONES!”—And Zarathustra sighed, and gazed into the distance.—
The same day, however, he gave his discourse on the bedwarfing virtue.


2.
I pass through this people and keep my eyes open: they do not forgive me for not envying their virtues.
They bite at me, because I say to them that for small people, small virtues are necessary—and because it is hard for me to understand that small people are NECESSARY!
Here I am still like a cock in a strange farm-yard, at which even the hens peck: but on that account I am not unfriendly to the hens.
I am courteous toward them, as toward all small annoyances; to be prickly toward what is small, seems to me wisdom for hedgehogs.
They all speak of me when they sit around their fire in the evening—they speak of me, but no one thinks—of me!
This is the new stillness which I have experienced: their noise around me spreads a mantle over my thoughts.
They shout to one another: “What is this gloomy cloud about to do to us? Let us see that it does not bring a plague on us!”
And recently a woman seized on her child that was coming to me: “Take the children away,” she cried, “such eyes scorch children’s souls.”
They cough when I speak: they think coughing is an objection to strong winds—they know nothing of the boisterousness of my happiness!
“We have not yet time for Zarathustra”—so they object; but what matter about a time that “has no time” for Zarathustra?
And if they should altogether praise me, how could I go to sleep on THEIR praise? To me their praise is a girdle of spines: it scratches me even when I take it off.
And I also learned this among them: the praiser does as if he gave back; in truth, however, he wants more to be given to him!
Ask my foot if their lauding and luring strains please it! Truly, to such measure and ticktack, it likes neither to dance nor to stand still.
They would gladly lure and laud me to small virtues; they would gladly persuade my foot to the ticktack of small happiness.
I pass through this people and keep my eyes open; they have become SMALLER, and ever become smaller:—THE REASON FOR IT IS THEIR DOCTRINE OF HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE.
For they are moderate also in virtue,—because they want comfort. With comfort, however, only moderate virtue is compatible.
To be sure, they also learn in their way to stride on and stride forward: that, I call their HOBBLING.—By that they become an obstacle to all who are in haste.
And many of them go forward, and look backward by that, with stiffened necks: those I like to run up against.
Foot and eye shall not lie, nor give the lie to each other. But there is much lying among small people.
Some of them WILL, but most of them are WILLED. Some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors.
There are actors without knowing it among them, and actors without intending it—, the genuine ones are always rare, especially the genuine actors.
There is little here of man: therefore do their women masculinize themselves. For only he who is man enough, will—SAVE THE WOMAN in woman.
And I found this hypocrisy worst among them, that even those who command feign the virtues of those who serve.
“I serve, you serve, we serve”—so chants here even the hypocrisy of the rulers—and alas! if the first lord be ONLY the first servant!
Ah, even on their hypocrisy did my eyes’ curiosity alight; and I divined well all their fly-happiness, and their buzzing around sunny window-panes.
So much kindness, so much weakness do I see. So much justice and pity, so much weakness.
They are round, fair, and considerate to one another, as grains of sand are round, fair, and considerate to grains of sand.
To modestly embrace a small happiness—they call that “submission”! and at the same time they peer modestly after a new small happiness.
In their hearts they want simply one thing most of all: that no one hurt them. Thus they anticipate everyone’s wishes and do well to everyone.
That, however, is COWARDICE, though it be called “virtue.”—
And when they chance to speak harshly, those small people, then do I hear in it only their hoarseness—every draught of air makes them hoarse.
They are indeed shrewd, their virtues have shrewd fingers. But they lack fists: their fingers do not know how to creep behind fists.
Virtue for them is what makes modest and tame: with it they have made the wolf a dog, and man himself man’s best domestic animal.
“We set our chair in the MIDST”—so their smirking says to me—“and as far from dying gladiators as from satisfied swine.”
That, however, is—MEDIOCRITY, though it be called moderation.—


3.
I pass through this people and let many words fall: but they know neither how to take nor how to retain them.
They wonder why I came not to revile venery and vice; and truly, I came not to warn against pickpockets either!
They wonder why I am not ready to abet and whet their wisdom: as if they had not yet enough of wise-asses, whose voices grate on my ear like slate-pencils!
And when I call out: “Curse all the cowardly devils in you, that would gladly whimper and fold the hands and adore”—then they shout: “Zarathustra is godless.”
And especially their teachers of submission shout this;—but precisely in their ears do I love to cry: “Yes! I AM Zarathustra, the godless!”
Those teachers of submission! Wherever there is anything puny, or sickly, or scabby, there they creep like lice; and only my disgust prevents me from cracking them.
Well! This is my sermon for THEIR ears: I am Zarathustra the godless, who says: “Who is more godless than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?”
I am Zarathustra the godless: where do I find my equal? And all those are my equals who give to themselves their Will, and divest themselves of all submission.
I am Zarathustra the godless! I cook every chance in MY pot. And only when it has been quite cooked do I welcome it as MY food.
And truly, many a chance came imperiously to me: but still more imperiously did my WILL speak to it,—then it lied imploringly on its knees—
—Imploring that it might find home and heart with me, and saying flatteringly: “See, O Zarathustra, how only friend comes to friend!”—
But why do I talk, when no one has MY ears! And so I will shout it out to all the winds:
You become ever smaller, you small people! You crumble away, you comfortable ones! You will yet perish—
—By your many small virtues, by your many small omissions, and by your many small submissions!
Too tender, too yielding: so is your soil! But for a tree to become GREAT, it seeks to twine hard roots around hard rocks!
Also what you omit weaves at the web of all the human future; even your naught is a cobweb, and a spider that lives on the blood of the future.
And when you take, then it is like stealing, you small virtuous ones; but even among knaves HONOR says that “one shall only steal when one cannot rob.”
“It gives itself”—that is also a doctrine of submission. But I say to you, you comfortable ones, that IT TAKES TO ITSELF, and will ever take more and more from you!
Ah, that you would renounce all HALF-willing, and would decide for idleness as you decide for action!
Ah, that you understood my word: “Do ever what you will—but first be such as CAN WILL.
Love ever your neighbor as yourselves—but first be such as LOVE THEMSELVES—
—Such as love with great love, such as love with great contempt!” Thus speaks Zarathustra the godless.—
But why do I talk, when no one has MY ears! It is still an hour too early for me here.
I am my own forerunner among this people, my own cockcrow in dark lanes.
But THEIR hour comes! And there comes also mine! Hourly do they become smaller, poorer, unfruitfuller,—poor herbs! poor earth!
And SOON shall they stand before me like dry grass and prairie, and verily, weary of themselves—and panting for FIRE, more than for water!
O blessed hour of the lightning! O mystery before noontide!—I will one day make running fires of them, and heralds with flaming tongues:—
—They shall one day herald with flaming tongues: It comes, it is nigh, THE GREAT NOONTIDE!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








L. ON THE OLIVE-MOUNT
  



Winter, a bad guest, sits with me at home; my hands are blue with his friendly hand-shaking.
I honor him, that bad guest, but gladly leave him alone. I gladly run away from him; and when one runs WELL, then one escapes him!
With warm feet and warm thoughts I run where the wind is calm—to the sunny corner of my olive-mount.
There do I laugh at my stern guest, and am still fond of him; because he clears my house of flies, and quiets many little noises.
For he does not suffer it if a gnat wants to buzz, or even two of them; he also makes the lanes lonesome, so that the moonlight is afraid there at night.
He is a hard guest,—but I honor him, and do not worship, like the tenderlings, the pot-bellied fire-idol.
Better even a little teeth-chattering than idol-adoration!—so wills my nature. And I especially have a grudge against all ardent, steaming, steamy fire-idols.
Him whom I love, I love better in winter than in summer; I now mock better at my enemies, and more heartily, when winter sits in my house.
Heartily, truly, even when I CREEP into bed—: there, still laughs and wantons my hidden happiness; even my deceptive dream laughs.
I, a—creeper? Never in my life did I creep before the powerful; and if I ever lied, then I lied out of love. Therefore I am glad even in my winter-bed.
A poor bed warms me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my poverty. And in winter she is most faithful to me.
With a wickedness do I begin every day: I mock at the winter with a cold bath: on that account my stern house-mate grumbles.
I also like to tickle him with a wax-taper, that he may finally let the heavens emerge from ashy-grey twilight.
For I am especially wicked in the morning: at the early hour when the pail rattles at the well, and horses neigh warmly in grey lanes:—
I then wait impatiently, that the clear sky may finally dawn for me, the snow-bearded winter-sky, the hoary one, the white-head,—
—The winter-sky, the silent winter-sky, which often stifles even its sun!
Did I perhaps learn from it the long clear silence? Or did it learn it from me? Or has each of us devised it himself?
Of all good things the origin is a thousandfold,—all good roguish things spring into existence for joy: how could they always do so—for once only!
What is also a good roguish thing is the long silence, and to look, like the winter-sky, out of a clear, round-eyed face:—
—Like it to stifle one’s sun, and one’s inflexible solar will: verily, this art and this winter-roguishness I have learned WELL!
It is my best-loved wickedness and art, that my silence has learned not to betray itself by silence.
Clattering with diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assistants: all those stern watchers, shall my will and purpose elude.
That no one might see down into my depth and into my ultimate will—for that purpose I devised the long clear silence.
I found many a shrewd one: he veiled his face and made his water muddy, that no one might see through it and under it.
But precisely to him came the shrewder distrusters and nut-crackers: precisely from him did they fish his best-concealed fish!
But the clear, the honest, the transparent—these are for me the wisest silent ones: in them, so PROFOUND is the depth that even the clearest water does not—betray it.—
You snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, you round-eyed whitehead above me! Oh, you heavenly simile of my soul and its wantonness!
And MUST I not conceal myself like one who has swallowed gold—lest my soul should be ripped up?
MUST I not wear stilts, that they may OVERLOOK my long legs—all those enviers and injurers around me?
Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-natured souls—how COULD their envy endure my happiness!
Thus I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks—and NOT that my mountain winds all the solar girdles around it!
They hear only the whistling of my winter-storms: and do NOT know that I also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south-winds.
They commiserate also my accidents and chances:—but MY word says: “Suffer the chance to come to me: it is innocent as a little child!”
How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and cloaking snowflakes!
—If I did not myself commiserate their PITY, the pity of those enviers and injurers!
—If I did not myself sigh before them, and chatter with cold, and patiently LET myself be swathed in their pity!
This is the wise impish-will and good-will of my soul, that it does NOT CONCEAL its winters and glacial storms; it does not conceal its chillburns either.
To one man, lonesomeness is the flight of the sick one; to another, it is the flight FROM the sick ones.
Let them HEAR me chattering and sighing with winter-cold, all those poor squinting knaves around me! With such sighing and chattering I flee from their heated rooms.
Let them sympathize with me and sigh with me on account of my chillburns: “At the ice of knowledge he will yet FREEZE TO DEATH!”—so they mourn.
Meanwhile I run with warm feet here and there on my olive-mount: in the sunny corner of my olive-mount I sing, and mock at all pity.—
Thus sang Zarathustra.








LI. ON PASSING-BY


Thus slowly wandering through many peoples and varied cities, Zarathustra returned by round-about roads to his mountains and his cave. And behold, that way he came unawares also to the gate of the GREAT CITY. Here, however, a foaming fool, with extended hands, sprang forward to him and stood in his way. It was the same fool whom the people called “the ape of Zarathustra:” for he had learned from him something of the expression and modulation of language, and perhaps liked also to borrow from the store of his wisdom. And the fool talked thus to Zarathustra:
O Zarathustra, here is the great city: here you have nothing to seek and everything to lose.
Why would you wade through this mire? Have pity on your feet! Rather spit on the gate of the city, and—turn back!
Here is the hell for anchorites’ thoughts: here are great thoughts seethed alive and boiled small.
Here do all great sentiments decay: here only rattle-boned sensations may rattle!
Do you not already smell the shambles and cookshops of the spirit? Does this city not steam with the fumes of slaughtered spirit?
Do you not see the souls hanging like limp dirty rags?—And they make newspapers also out of these rags!
Do you not hear how spirit has here become a verbal game? It vomits forth loathsome verbal swill!—And they make newspapers also out of this verbal swill.
They hound one another, and know not where! They inflame one another, and know not why! They tinkle with their pinchbeck, they jingle with their gold.
They are cold, and seek warmth from distilled waters: they are inflamed, and seek coolness from frozen spirits; they are all sick and sore through public opinion.
All lusts and vices are at home here; but there are also the virtuous here; there is much appointable appointed virtue:—
Much appointable virtue with scribe-fingers, and hardy sitting-flesh and waiting-flesh, blessed with small breast-stars, and padded, haunchless daughters.
There is here also much piety, and much faithful spittle-licking and spittle-backing, before the God of Hosts.
“From on high,” drips the star, and the gracious spittle; for the high, longs every starless bosom.
The moon has its court, and the court has its moon-calves: to all, however, that comes from the court do the mendicant people pray, and all appointable mendicant virtues.
“I serve, you serve, we serve”—so prays all appointable virtue to the prince: that the merited star may at last stick on the slender breast!
But the moon still revolves around all that is earthly: so revolves also the prince around what is earthliest of all—that, however, is the gold of the shopman.
The God of the Hosts of war is not the God of the golden bar; the prince proposes, but the shopman—disposes!
By all that is luminous and strong and good in you, O Zarathustra! Spit on this city of shopmen and return back!
Here all blood flows putridly and tepidly and frothily through all veins: spit on the great city, which is the great slum where all the scum froths together!
Spit on the city of compressed souls and slender breasts, of pointed eyes and sticky fingers—
—On the city of the obtrusive, the brazen-faced, the pen-demagogues and tongue-demagogues, the overheated ambitious:—
Where everything maimed, ill-famed, lustful, untrustful, over-mellow, sickly-yellow and seditious, festers pernicious:—
—Spit on the great city and turn back!—
Here, however, did Zarathustra interrupt the foaming fool, and shut his mouth.—
Stop this at once! called out Zarathustra, long have your speech and your species disgusted me!
Why did you live by the swamp so long, that you yourself had to become a frog and a toad?
Does there not flow a tainted, frothy, swamp-blood in your own veins, when you have thus learned to croak and revile?
Why did you not go into the forest? Or why did you not till the ground? Is the sea not full of green islands?
I despise your contempt; and when you warned me—why did you not warn yourself?
Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; but not out of the swamp!—
They call you my ape, you foaming fool: but I call you my grunting-pig,—by your grunting, you spoil even my praise of folly.
What was it that first made you grunt? Because no one sufficiently FLATTERED you:—therefore you sat yourself beside this filth, that you might have cause for much grunting,—
—That you might have cause for much VENGEANCE! For vengeance, you vain fool, is all your foaming; I have divined you well!
But your fools’-word injures ME, even when you are right! And even if Zarathustra’s word WERE a hundred times justified, you would ever—DO wrong with my word!
Thus spoke Zarathustra. Then he looked on the great city and sighed, and was long silent. At last he spoke thus:
I also loathe this great city, and not only this fool. Here and there— there is nothing to better, nothing to worsen.
Woe to this great city!—And I would that I already saw the pillar of fire in which it will be consumed!
For such pillars of fire must precede the great noontide. But this has its time and its own fate.—
This precept, however, I give to you, in parting, you fool: Where one can no longer love, there one should—PASS BY!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and passed by the fool and the great city.








LII. THE APOSTATES


1.
Ah, everything lies already withered and grey which just lately stood green and colorful on this meadow! And how much honey of hope did I carry away into my beehives!
Those young hearts have already all become old—and not even old! only weary, ordinary, comfortable:—they declare it: “We have again become pious.”
Lately I saw them run forth at early morning with valorous steps: but the feet of their knowledge became weary, and now they malign even their morning valour!
Truly, many of them once lifted their legs like the dancer; the laughter of my wisdom winked to them:—then they thought of themselves. Just now I have seen them bent down—to creep to the cross.
Around light and liberty did they once flutter like gnats and young poets. A little older, a little colder: and already are they mystifiers, and mumblers and mollycoddles.
Did perhaps their hearts despond, because lonesomeness had swallowed me like a whale? Did their ear perhaps listen yearningly-long for me IN VAIN, and for my trumpet-notes and herald-calls?
—Ah! Ever there are but few of those whose hearts have persistent courage and exuberance; and in such the spirit also remains patient. The rest, however, are COWARDLY.
The rest: these are always the great majority, the common-place, the superfluous, the far-too many—all those are cowardly!—
He who is of my type, will also meet the experiences of my type on the way: so that his first companions must be corpses and buffoons.
His second companions, however—they will call themselves his BELIEVERS,—will be a living host, with much love, much folly, much unbearded veneration.
He who is of my type among men shall not bind his heart to those believers; he shall not believe in those spring-times and colorful meadows, who knows the fickly faint-hearted human species!
If they COULD do otherwise, then they would also WILL otherwise. The half-and-half spoil every whole. That leaves become withered,—what is there to lament about that!
Let them go and fall away, O Zarathustra, and do not lament! Better even to blow among them with rustling winds,—
—Blow among those leaves, O Zarathustra, that everything WITHERED may run away from you the faster!—


2.
“We have again become pious”—so do those apostates confess; and some of them are still too pusillanimous thus to confess.
To them I look into the eye,—before them I say it to their face and to the blush on their cheeks: You are those who again PRAY!
It is however a shame to pray! Not for all, but for you, and me, and whoever has his conscience in his head. For YOU it is a shame to pray!
You know it well: the faint-hearted devil in you, which would gladly fold its arms, and place its hands in its bosom, and take it easier:—this faint-hearted devil persuades you that “there IS a God!”
IN THAT, however, you belong to the light-dreading type, to whom light never permits repose: now you must daily thrust your head deeper into obscurity and vapor!
And truly, you choose the hour well: for just now the nocturnal birds again fly abroad. The hour has come for all light-dreading people, the vesper hour and leisure hour, when they do not—“take leisure.”
I hear it and smell it: it has come—their hour for hunt and procession, not indeed for a wild hunt, but for a tame, lame, snuffling, soft-treaders’, soft-prayers’ hunt,—
—For a hunt after susceptible simpletons: all mouse-traps for the heart have again been set! And whenever I lift a curtain, a night-moth rushes out of it.
Did it perhaps squat there along with another night-moth? For everywhere do I smell small concealed communities; and wherever there are closets there are new devotees in them, and the atmosphere of devotees.
They sit for long evenings beside one another, and say: “Let us again become like little children and say, ‘good God!’”—ruined in mouths and stomachs by the pious confectioners.
Or they look for long evenings at a crafty, lurking cross-spider, that preaches prudence to the spiders themselves, and teaches that “under crosses it is good for cobweb-spinning!”
Or they sit all day at swamps with angle-rods, and on that account think themselves PROFOUND; but whoever fishes where there are no fish, I do not even call him superficial!
Or they learn in godly-gay style to play the harp with a hymn-poet, who would gladly harp himself into the heart of young girls:—for he has tired of old girls and their praises.
Or they learn to shudder with a learned semi-madcap, who waits in darkened rooms for spirits to come to him—and the spirit runs away entirely!
Or they listen to an old roving howl-and growl-piper, who has learned from the sad winds the sadness of sounds; now he pipes as the wind, and preaches sadness in sad strains.
And some of them have even become night-watchmen: they know now how to blow horns, and go about at night and awaken old things which have long fallen asleep.
I heard five words about old things last night at the garden-wall: they came from such old, sorrowful, arid night-watchmen.
“For a father he cares not sufficiently for his children: human fathers do this better!”—
“He is too old! He now cares no more for his children,”—answered the other night-watchman.
“Then HAS he children? No one can prove it unless he himself proves it! I have long wished that he would for once prove it thoroughly.”
“Prove? As if HE had ever proved anything! Proving is difficult to him; he lays great stress on one’s BELIEVING him.”
“Ay! Ay! Belief saves him; belief in him. That is the way with old people! So it is with us also!”—
—Thus the two old night-watchmen and light-scarers spoke to each other, and then tooted sorrowfully on their horns: so it happened last night at the garden-wall.
To me, however, the heart writhed with laughter, and was like to break; it knew not where to go, and sunk into the midriff.
Truly, it will be my death yet—to choke with laughter when I see asses drunken, and hear night-watchmen thus doubt about God.
Has the time not LONG since passed for all such doubts? Who may nowadays awaken such old slumbering, light-shunning things!
With the old Deities it has long since come to an end:—and truly, a good joyful Deity-end they had!
They did not “begloom” themselves to death—people fabricate that! On the contrary, they—LAUGHED themselves to death once on a time!
That took place when the unGodliest utterance came from a God himself—the utterance: “There is but one God! You shall have no other Gods before me!”—
—An old grim-beard of a God, a jealous one, forgot himself in that way:—
And all the Gods then laughed, and shook on their thrones, and exclaimed: “Is it not just divinity that there are Gods, but no God?”
He that has an ear let him hear.—
Thus talked Zarathustra in the city he loved, which is surnamed “The Colorful Cow.” For from here he had but two days to travel to reach once more his cave and his animals; his soul, however, rejoiced unceasingly on account of the nearness of his return home.








LIII. THE RETURN HOME


O lonesomeness! My HOME, lonesomeness! Too long have I lived wildly in wild remoteness, to return to you without tears!
Now threaten me with the finger as mothers threaten; now smile on me as mothers smile; now say just: “Who was it that like a whirlwind once rushed away from me?—
—Who when departing called out: ‘I have sat too long with lonesomeness; there I have unlearned silence!’ You have learned THAT now—surely?
O Zarathustra, I know everything; and that you were MORE FORSAKEN among the many, you unique one, than you ever were with me!
One thing is forsakenness, another matter is lonesomeness: THAT you have now learned! And that among men you will ever be wild and strange:
—Wild and strange even when they love you: for above all they want to be TREATED INDULGENTLY!
Here, however, are you at home and house with yourself; here you can utter everything, and unbosom all motives; here nothing is ashamed of concealed, congealed feelings.
Here all things come caressingly to your talk and flatter you: for they want to ride on your back. On every simile you here ride to every truth.
Here you may talk to all things uprightly and openly: and truly, it sounds as praise in their ears, for one to talk to all things—directly!
Another matter, however, is forsakenness. For, do you remember, O Zarathustra? When your bird screamed overhead, when you stood in the forest, irresolute, ignorant where to go, beside a corpse:—
—When you spoke: ‘Let my animals lead me! I have found it more dangerous among men than among animals:’—THAT was forsakenness!
And do you remember, O Zarathustra? When you sat in your isle, a well of wine giving and granting among empty buckets, bestowing and distributing among the thirsty:
—Until at last you alone sat thirsty among the drunken ones, and wailed nightly: ‘Is taking not more blessed than giving? And stealing yet more blessed than taking?’—THAT was forsakenness!
And do you remember, O Zarathustra? When your stillest hour came and drove you forth from yourself, when with wicked whispering it said: ‘Speak and succumb!’—
—When it disgusted you with all your waiting and silence, and discouraged your humble courage: THAT was forsakenness!”—
O lonesomeness! My home, lonesomeness! How blessedly and tenderly your voice speaks to me!
We do not question each other, we do not complain to each other; we go together openly through open doors.
For all is open with you and clear; and even the hours run here on lighter feet. For in the dark, time weighs heavier on one than in the light.
Here all being’s words and word-cabinets fly open to me: here all being wants to become words, here all becoming wants to learn from me how to talk.
Down there, however—all talking is in vain! There, forgetting and passing-by are the best wisdom: THAT I have learned now!
He who would understand everything in man must handle everything. But for that I have too clean hands.
I do not like even to inhale their breath; alas! that I have lived so long among their noise and bad breaths!
O blessed stillness around me! O pure odors around me! How from a deep breast this stillness fetches pure breath! How it listens, this blessed stillness!
But down there—there everything speaks, there everything is misheard. If one announces one’s wisdom with bells, the shopmen in the market-place will out-jingle it with pennies!
Everything among them talks; no one knows any longer how to understand. Everything falls into the water; nothing falls any longer into deep wells.
Everything among them talks, nothing succeeds any longer and accomplishes itself. Everything cackles, but who will still sit quietly on the nest and hatch eggs?
Everything among them talks, everything is out-talked. And that which yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its tooth, hangs today, outchamped and outchewed, from the mouths of the men of today.
Everything among them talks, everything is betrayed. And what was once called the secret and secrecy of profound souls, today belongs to the street-trumpeters and other butterflies.
O human hubbub, you wonderful thing! You noise in dark streets! Now you are again behind me:—my greatest danger lies behind me!
My greatest danger lay ever in indulging and pitying; and all human hubbub wishes to be indulged and tolerated.
With suppressed truths, with fool’s hand and befooled heart, and rich in petty lies of pity:—thus I have ever lived among men.
I sat disguised among them, ready to misjudge MYSELF that I might endure THEM, and willingly saying to myself: “You fool, you do not know men!”
One unlearns men when one lives among them: there is too much foreground in all men—what can far-seeing, far-longing eyes do THERE!
And, fool that I was, when they misjudged me, I indulged them on that account more than myself, being habitually hard on myself, and often even taking revenge on myself for the indulgence.
Stung all over by poisonous flies, and hollowed like the stone by many drops of wickedness: thus did I sit among them, and still said to myself: “Everything petty is innocent of its pettiness!”
Especially did I find those who call themselves “the good,” the most poisonous flies; they sting in all innocence, they lie in all innocence; how COULD they—be just towards me!
He who lives among the good—pity teaches him to lie. Pity makes stifling air for all free souls. For the stupidity of the good is unfathomable.
To conceal myself and my riches—THAT I learned down there: for I still found every one poor in spirit. It was the lie of my pity, that I knew in every one,
—That I saw and scented in every one, what was ENOUGH of spirit for him, and what was TOO MUCH!
Their stiff wise men: I call them wise, not stiff—thus I learned to slur over words.
The grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases. Under old rubbish rest bad vapors. One should not stir up the marsh. One should live on mountains.
With blessed nostrils I again breathe mountain-freedom. Freed at last is my nose from the smell of all human hubbub!
Tickled with sharp breezes, as with sparkling wine, my soul SNEEZES— sneezes, and shouts self-congratulatingly: “Health to you!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








LIV. THE THREE EVIL THINGS


1.
In my dream, in my last morning-dream, I stood today on a cliff— beyond the world; I held a pair of scales, and WEIGHED the world.
Alas, that the rosy dawn came too early to me: she glowed me awake, the jealous one! She is always jealous of the glows of my morning-dream.
Measurable by him who has time, weighable by a good weigher, attainable by strong wings, divinable by divine nut-crackers: thus did my dream find the world:—
My dream, a bold sailor, half-ship, half-hurricane, silent as the butterfly, impatient as the falcon: how had it the patience and leisure today for world-weighing!
Did my wisdom perhaps speak secretly to it, my laughing, wide-awake day-wisdom, which mocks at all “infinite worlds”? For it says: “Where force is, there NUMBER becomes the master: it has more force.”
How confidently my dream contemplated this finite world, not new-fangledly, not old-fangledly, not timidly, not entreatingly:—
—As if a big round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe golden apple, with a coolly-soft, velvety skin:—thus did the world present itself to me:—
—As if a tree nodded to me, a broad-branched, strong-willed tree, curved as a recline and a foot-stool for weary travellers: thus did the world stand on my cliff:—
—As if delicate hands carried a casket towards me—a casket open for the delectation of modest adoring eyes: thus did the world present itself before me today:—
—Not riddle enough to scare human love from it, not solution enough to put human wisdom to sleep:—to me today the world was a humanly good thing, of which such bad things are said!
How I thank my morning-dream that at today’s dawn, I thus weighed the world! It came to me as a humanly good thing, this dream and heart-comforter!
And that I may do the same by day, and imitate and copy its best, now I will put the three worst things on the scales, and weigh them humanly well.—
He who taught to bless taught also to curse: what are the three best cursed things in the world? These I will put on the scales.
VOLUPTUOUSNESS, PASSION FOR POWER, and SELFISHNESS: these three things have until now always been best cursed, and have been in worst and falsest repute—these three things I will weigh humanly well.
Well! Here is my cliff, and there is the sea—IT rolls here to me, shaggily and fawningly, the old, faithful, hundred-headed dog-monster that I love!—
Well! Here I will hold the scales over the turbulent sea: and I also choose a witness to look on—you, the anchorite-tree, you, the strong-odored, broad-arched tree that I love!—
On what bridge goes the now to the hereafter? By what constraint does the high stoop to the low? And what compels even the highest still—to grow upwards?—
Now the scales stand poised and at rest: I have thrown in three heavy questions; the other scale carries three heavy answers.


2.
Voluptuousness: to all hair-shirted despisers of the body, a sting and stake; and, cursed as “the world,” by all backworldsmen: for it mocks and makes fools of all erring, misinferring teachers.
Voluptuousness: to the rabble, the slow fire at which it is burned; to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the prepared heat and stew furnace.
Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the garden-happiness of the earth, all the future’s thanks-overflow to the present.
Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion-willed, however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines.
Voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope. For to many is marriage promised, and more than marriage,—
—To many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman:—and who has fully understood HOW UNKNOWN to each other are man and woman!
Voluptuousness:—but I will have hedges around my thoughts, and even around my words, lest swine and libertine should break into my gardens!—
Passion for power: the glowing scourge of the hardest of the hard-hearted; the cruel torture reserved for the cruellest themselves; the gloomy flame of living pyres.
Passion for power: the wicked gadfly which is mounted on the vainest peoples; the scorner of all uncertain virtue; which rides on every horse and on every pride.
Passion for power: the earthquake which breaks and upbreaks all that is rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punitive demolisher of whitened sepulchres; the flashing question-mark beside premature answers.
Passion for power: before whose glance man creeps and crouches and drudges, and becomes lower than the serpent and the swine:—until at last great contempt cries out of him—,
Passion for power: the terrible teacher of great contempt, which preaches to their face to cities and empires: “Away with you!”—until a voice cries out of themselves: “Away with ME!”
Passion for power: which, however, mounts alluringly even to the pure and lonesome, and up to self-satisfied elevations, glowing like a love that paints purple felicities alluringly on earthly heavens.
Passion for power: but who would call it PASSION, when the height longs to stoop for power! Truly, nothing sick or diseased is there in such longing and descending!
That the lonesome height may not forever remain lonesome and self-sufficing; that the mountains may come to the valleys and the winds of the heights to the plains:—
Oh, who could find the right prenomen and honoring name for such longing! “Bestowing virtue”—thus Zarathustra once named the unnamable.
And then it happened also,—and truly, it happened for the first time!—that his word blessed SELFISHNESS, the wholesome, healthy selfishness, that springs from the powerful soul:—
—From the powerful soul, to which the high body pertains, the handsome, triumphing, refreshing body, around which everything becomes a mirror:
—The pliant, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and epitome is the self-enjoying soul. Of such bodies and souls the self-enjoyment calls itself “virtue.”
With its words of good and bad such self-enjoyment shelters itself as with sacred groves; with the names of its happiness it banishes from itself everything contemptible.
Away from itself it banishes everything cowardly; it says: “Bad—THAT IS cowardly!” To it seem contemptible the ever-solicitous, the sighing, the complaining, and whoever pick up the most trifling advantage.
It despises also all bittersweet wisdom: for truly, there is also wisdom that blooms in the dark, a night-shade wisdom, which ever sighs: “All is vain!”
Shy distrust is regarded by it as base, and every one who wants oaths instead of looks and hands: also all over-distrustful wisdom,—for such is the mode of cowardly souls.
Baser still it regards the obsequious, doggish one, who immediately lies on his back, the submissive one; and there is also wisdom that is submissive, and doggish, and pious, and obsequious.
Hateful to it altogether, and a loathing, is he who will never defend himself, he who swallows down poisonous spittle and bad looks, the all-too-patient one, the all-endurer, the all-satisfied one: for that is the mode of slaves.
Whether they be servile before Gods and divine spurnings, or before men and stupid human opinions: it spits at ALL kinds of slaves, this blessed selfishness!
Bad: thus it calls all that is spirit-broken, and sordidly-servile—constrained, blinking eyes, depressed hearts, and the false submissive style, which kisses with broad cowardly lips.
And spurious wisdom: so it calls all the wit that slaves, and hoary-headed and weary ones affect; and especially all the cunning, spurious-witted, curious-witted foolishness of priests!
The spurious wise, however, all the priests, the world-weary, and those whose souls are of feminine and servile nature—oh, how has their game all along abused selfishness!
And precisely THAT was to be virtue and was to be called virtue—to abuse selfishness! And “selfless”—so did they wish themselves with good reason, all those world-weary cowards and cross-spiders!
But to all those now comes the day, the change, the sword of judgment, THE GREAT NOONTIDE: then shall many things be revealed!
And he who proclaims the EGO wholesome and holy, and selfishness blessed, truly, he, the prognosticator, speaks also what he knows: “BEHOLD, IT COMES, IT IS NIGH, THE GREAT NOONTIDE!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








LV. THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY
  



My mouth—is of the people: I talk too coarsely and cordially for silk rabbits. And my word sounds still stranger to all ink-fish and pen-foxes.
My hand—is a fool’s hand: woe to all tables and walls, and whatever has room for fool’s sketching, fool’s scrawling!
My foot—is a horse-foot; with it I trample and trot over stick and stone, in the fields up and down, and am bedevilled with delight in all fast racing.
My stomach—is surely an eagle’s stomach? For it prefers lamb’s flesh. Certainly it is a bird’s stomach.
Nourished with innocent things, and with few, ready and impatient to fly, to fly away—that is now my nature: why should there not be something of bird-nature in it!
And especially that I am hostile to the spirit of gravity, that is bird-nature:—truly, deadly hostile, supremely hostile, originally hostile! Oh, where has my hostility not flown and misflown!
Of that I could sing a song—and WILL sing it: though I be alone in an empty house, and must sing it to my own ears.
There are other singers, to be sure, to whom only the full house makes the voice soft, the hand eloquent, the eye expressive, the heart wakeful:—I am not like them.—


2.
He who one day teaches men to fly will have shifted all landmarks; to him all landmarks will themselves fly into the air; he will christen the earth anew—as “the light body.”
The ostrich runs faster than the fastest horse, but it also thrusts its head heavily into the heavy earth: thus it is with the man who cannot yet fly.
Earth and life are heavy to him, and so WILLS the spirit of gravity! But he who would become light, and be a bird, must love himself:—thus I teach.
Not, to be sure, with the love of the sick and infected, for with them even self-love stinks!
One must learn to love oneself—thus I teach—with a wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go wandering around.
Such wandering around christens itself “love of one’s neighbor”; with these words there has always been the best lying and hypocrisy, and especially by those who have been burdensome to everyone.
And truly, it is no commandment for today and tomorrow to LEARN to love oneself. It is rather of all arts the finest, subtlest, last, and most patient.
For all possession is well concealed from its possessor, and of all treasure-pits one’s own is last excavated—the spirit of gravity causes this.
Almost in the cradle we are given heavy words and values: “good” and “evil”—so this dowry calls itself. For the sake of it, we are forgiven for living.
And therefore one suffers little children to come to one, to forbid them early to love themselves—the spirit of gravity causes this.
And we—we bear loyally what is given to us, on hard shoulders, over rugged mountains! And when we sweat, then people say to us: “Yes, life is hard to bear!”
But only man himself is hard to bear! The reason for it is that he carries too many alien things on his shoulders. Like the camel he kneels down, and lets himself be well laden.
Especially the strong load-bearing man in whom reverence resides. He loads on himself too many ALIEN heavy words and values—then to him life seems a desert!
And truly! Also many things that are ONE’S OWN are hard to bear! And many internal things in man are like the oyster—repulsive and slippery and hard to grasp;—
So that an elegant shell, with elegant adornment, must plead for them. But one must also learn this art: to HAVE a shell, and a fine appearance, and prudent blindness!
Again, it deceives about many things in man, that many a shell is poor and pitiable, and too much of a shell. Much concealed goodness and power is never dreamed of; the choicest dainties find no tasters!
Women know that, the choicest of them: a little fatter a little leaner— oh, how much fate is in so little!
Man is difficult to discover, and to himself most difficult of all; often the spirit lies concerning the soul. The spirit of gravity causes this.
He, however, has discovered himself who says: This is MY good and evil: with that he has silenced the mole and the dwarf, who say: “Good for all, evil for all.”
Truly, I also dislike those who call everything good, and this world the best of all. I call those the all-satisfied.
All-satisfiedness, which knows how to taste everything,—that is not the best taste! I honor the refractory, fastidious tongues and stomachs, which have learned to say “I” and “Yes” and “No.”
To chew and digest everything, however—that is the genuine swine-nature! Ever to say YE-AH—only the ass has learned that, and those like it!—
Deep yellow and hot red—so MY taste wants—it mixes blood with all colors. He, however, who whitewashes his house, betrays to me a whitewashed soul.
Some fall in love with mummies; others with phantoms: both alike hostile to all flesh and blood—oh, how repugnant are both to my taste! For I love blood.
And I will not stay and dwell where everyone spits and spews: that is now MY taste,—I would rather live among thieves and perjurers. No one carries gold in his mouth.
Still more repugnant to me, however, are all lickspittles; and the most repugnant animal of man that I found, I named “parasite”: it would not love, and would yet live by love.
I call wretched all those who have only one choice: either to become evil beasts, or evil beast-tamers. Among such I would not build my tabernacle.
I also call wretched all those who have ever to WAIT,—they are repugnant to my taste—all the tax-collectors and traders, and kings, and other landkeepers and shopkeepers.
Truly, I also learned waiting, and thoroughly so,—but only waiting for MYSELF. And above all, I learned standing and walking and running and leaping and climbing and dancing.
This however is my teaching: he who wishes to one day fly, must first learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing:—one does not fly into flying!
With rope-ladders I learned to reach many a window, with nimble legs I climbed high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss;—
—To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and ship-wrecked ones!
By varied ways and paths I arrived at my truth; I did not by one ladder mount to the height where my eye roams into my remoteness.
And I asked my way only unwillingly—that was always counter to my taste! Rather I questioned and tested the ways themselves.
All my travelling has been a testing and a questioning:—and truly, one must also LEARN to answer such questioning! That, however,—is my taste:
—Neither a good nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy.
“This—is now MY way,—where is yours?” Thus I answered those who asked me “the way.” For THE way—it does not exist!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








LVI. OLD AND NEW TABLES


1.
Here I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new half-written tables. When does my hour come?
—The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once more I will go to men.
For that hour I now wait: for first the signs must come to me that it is MY hour—namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves.
Meanwhile I talk to myself as one who has time. No one tells me anything new, so I tell myself my own story.


2.
When I came to men, I found them resting on an old infatuation: all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men.
To them all discourse about virtue seemed an old wearisome business; and he who wished to sleep well spoke of “good” and “bad” before retiring to rest.
I disturbed this somnolence when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWS what is good and bad:—unless it be the creating one!
—It is he, however, who creates man’s goal, and gives to the earth its meaning and its future: only he EFFECTS it THAT anything is good or bad.
And I told them to upset their old academic chairs, and wherever that old infatuation had sat; I told them to laugh at their great moralists, their saints, their poets, and their Saviors.
I told them to laugh at their gloomy sages, and whoever had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life.
I sat myself on their great grave-highway, and even beside the carrion and vultures—and I laughed at all their past and its mellow decaying glory.
Truly, like penitential preachers and fools I cried wrath and shame on all their greatness and smallness. Oh, that their best is so very small! Oh, that their worst is so very small! Thus I laughed.
Thus my wise longing, born in the mountains, cried and laughed in me; a wild wisdom, truly!—my great wing-rustling longing.
And often it carried me off and up and away and in the midst of laughter; then I flew quivering like an arrow with sun-intoxicated rapture:
—Out into distant futures, which no dream has yet seen, into warmer souths than ever sculptor conceived,—where gods in their dancing are ashamed of all clothes:
(That I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the poets: and truly I am ashamed that I still have to be a poet!)
Where all becoming seemed to me dancing of Gods, and wantoning of Gods, and the world unloosed and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:—
—As an eternal self-fleeing and re-seeking of one another of many Gods, as the blessed self-contradicting, recommuning, and refraternizing with one another of many Gods:—
Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of freedom:—
Where I also found again my old devil and arch-enemy, the spirit of gravity, and all that it created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil:—
For must there not be that which is danced OVER, danced beyond? Must there not, for the sake of the nimble, the nimblest,—be moles and clumsy dwarfs?—


3.
It was also there where I picked up from the path the word “Superman,” and that man is something that must be surpassed.
—That man is a bridge and not a goal—rejoicing over his noontides and evenings, as advances to new rosy dawns:
—The Zarathustra word of the great noontide, and whatever else I have hung up over men like purple evening-afterglows.
Truly, I also made them see new stars, along with new nights; and over cloud and day and night, I spread out laughter like a joyfully colored canopy.
I taught them all MY poetization and aspiration: to compose and collect into unity what is fragment in man, and riddle and fearful chance;—
—As composer, riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance, I taught them to create the future, and all that HAS BEEN—to redeem by creating.
To redeem the past of man, and to transform every “It was,” until the Will says: “But so I willed it! So shall I will it—”
—This I called redemption; I taught them to call this alone redemption.—
Now I await MY redemption—that I may go to them for the last time.
For once more I will go to men: AMONG them my sun will set; in dying will I give them my choicest gift!
I learned this from the sun, when it goes down, the exuberant one: it then pours gold into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches,—
—So that even the poorest fisherman rows with GOLDEN oars! For I once saw this, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it.—
Like the sun Zarathustra will also go down: now he sits here and waits, old broken tables around him, and also new tables—half-written.


4.
Behold, here is a new table; but where are my brothers who will carry it with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?—
Thus my great love demands to the remotest ones: DO NOT BE CONSIDERATE OF YOUR NEIGHBOR! Man is something that must be surpassed.
There are many varied ways and modes of surpassing: YOU see to that! But only a buffoon thinks: “man can also be OVERLEAPT.”
Surpass yourself even in your neighbor: and a right which you can seize upon, you shall not allow to be given to you!
What you do no one can do to you again. Behold, there is no requital.
He who cannot command himself shall obey. And many a one CAN command himself, but still sorely lacks self-obedience!


5.
Thus the type of noble souls wishes: they desire to have nothing GRATUITOUSLY, least of all, life.
He who is of the populace wishes to live gratuitously; we others, however, to whom life has given itself—we are ever considering WHAT we can best give IN RETURN!
And truly, it is a noble dictum which says: “What life promises US, that promise WE will keep—to life!”
One should not wish to enjoy where one does not contribute to the enjoyment. And one should not WISH to enjoy!
For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things. Neither like to be sought for. One should HAVE them,—but one should rather SEEK for guilt and pain!—


6.
O my brothers, he who is a firstling is ever sacrificed. Now, however, we are firstlings!
We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars, we all burn and broil in honor of ancient idols.
Our best is still young: this excites old palates. Our flesh is tender, our skin is only lambs’ skin:—how could we not excite old idol-priests!
IN OURSELVES he dwells still, the old idol-priest, who broils our best for his banquet. Ah, my brothers, how could firstlings fail to be sacrifices!
But so wishes our type; and I love those who do not wish to preserve themselves, I love the down-going ones with my entire love: for they go beyond.—


7.
To be true—few CAN be that! And he who can, will not! Least of all, however, can the good be true.
Oh, those good ones! GOOD MEN NEVER SPEAK THE TRUTH. For the spirit, thus to be good, is a malady.
They yield, those good ones, they submit themselves; their heart repeats, their soul obeys: HE, however, who obeys, DOES NOT LISTEN TO HIMSELF!
All that is called evil by the good, must come together in order that one truth may be born. O my brothers, are you also evil enough for THIS truth?
The daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel No, the tedium, the cutting-into-the-quick—how seldom do THESE come together! Out of such seed, however—is truth produced!
Thus far all KNOWLEDGE has grown BESIDE the bad conscience! Break up, break up, you discerning ones, the old tables!


8.
When the water has planks, when gangways and railings overspan the stream, truly, he is not believed who then says: “All is in flux.”
But even the simpletons contradict him. “What?” say the simpletons, “all in flux? Planks and railings are still OVER the stream!
“OVER the stream all is stable, all the values of things, the bridges and bearings, all ‘good’ and ‘evil’: these are all STABLE!”—
The hard winter comes, however, the stream-tamer, then even the wittiest learn distrust, and truly, not only the simpletons then say: “Should not everything—STAND STILL?”
“Fundamentally everything stands still”—that is an appropriate winter doctrine, good cheer for an unproductive period, a great comfort for winter-sleepers and fireside-loungers.
“Fundamentally everything stands still”—: but CONTRARY to that, preaches the thawing wind!
The thawing wind, a bullock, which is no ploughing bullock—a furious bullock, a destroyer, which with angry horns breaks the ice! The ice however—BREAKS GANGWAYS!
O my brothers, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX? Have not all railings and gangways fallen into the water? Who would still HOLD ON to “good” and “evil”?
“Woe to us! Hail to us! The thawing wind blows!”—Thus preach, my brothers, through all the streets!


9.
There is an old illusion—it is called good and evil. The orbit of this illusion has always revolved around soothsayers and astrologers.
Once one BELIEVED in soothsayers and astrologers; and THEREFORE one believed, “Everything is fate: you shall, for you must!”
Then again one distrusted all soothsayers and astrologers; and THEREFORE did one believe, “Everything is freedom: you can, for you will it!”
O my brothers, concerning the stars and the future there has thus far been only illusion, and not knowledge; and THEREFORE concerning good and evil there has thus far been only illusion and not knowledge!


10.
“You shall not rob! You shall not slay!”—such precepts were once called holy; one bowed the knee and the head before them, and took off one’s shoes.
But I ask you: Where have there ever been better robbers and slayers in the world than such holy precepts?
Is there not even in all life—robbing and slaying? And for such precepts to be called holy, was not TRUTH itself by that—slain?
—Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contradicted and dissuaded from life?—O my brothers, break up, break up for me the old tables!


11.
It is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is abandoned,—
—Abandoned to the favor, the spirit and the madness of every generation that comes, and reinterprets all that has been as its bridge!
A great potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald, and a cock-crowing.
This however is the other danger, and my other sympathy:—he who is of the populace, his thoughts go back to his grandfather,—with his grandfather, however, time ceases.
Thus all the past is abandoned: for it might some day happen for the populace to become master, and drown all time in shallow waters.
Therefore, O my brothers, a NEW NOBILITY is needed, which shall be the adversary of all populace and potentate rule, and shall inscribe anew the word “noble” on new tables.
For many noble ones are needed, and many kinds of noble ones, FOR A NEW NOBILITY! Or, as I once said in parable: “That is just divinity, that there are Gods, but no God!”


12.
O my brothers, I consecrate you and point you to a new nobility: you shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future;—
—Truly, not to a nobility which you could purchase like traders with traders’ gold; for little worth is all that has its price.
Henceforth let it not be your honor from where you come, but where you go! Your Will and your feet which seek to surpass you—let these be your new honor!
Truly, not that you have served a prince—of what account are princes now!—nor that you have become a bulwark to that which stands, that it may stand more firmly.
Not that your family have become courtly at courts, and that you have learned—gay-coloured, like the flamingo—to stand long hours in shallow pools:
(For ABILITY-to-stand is a merit in courtiers; and all courtiers believe that to blessedness after death pertains—PERMISSION-to-sit!)
Nor even that a Spirit called Holy, led your forefathers into promised lands, which I do not praise: for where the worst of all trees grew—the cross,—in that land there is nothing to praise!—
—And truly, wherever this “Holy Spirit” led its knights, always in such campaigns—goats and geese, and cross ones and cross-eyed ones ran FOREMOST!—
O my brothers, not backward shall your nobility gaze, but OUTWARD! Exiles shall you be from all fatherlands and forefather-lands!
Your CHILDREN’S LAND shall you love: let this love be your new nobility,—the undiscovered in the remotest seas! For it do I tell your sails to search and search!
To your children shall you MAKE AMENDS for being the children of your fathers: all the past shall you THUS redeem! This new table I place over you!


13.
“Why should one live? All is vain! To live—that is to thrash straw; to live—that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm.”—
Such ancient babbling still passes for “wisdom”; because it is old, however, and smells mustily, THEREFORE is it the more honored. Even mold ennobles.—
Children might thus speak: they SHUN the fire because it has burned them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.
And he who ever “thrashes straw,” why should he be allowed to rail at thrashing! Such a fool one would have to muzzle!
Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing with them, not even good hunger:—and then they rail: “All is vain!”
But to eat and drink well, my brothers, is truly no vain art! Break up, break up for me the tables of the never-joyous ones!


14.
“To the clean all things are clean”—thus say the people. I, however, say to you: To the swine all things become swinish!
Therefore preach the visionaries and bowed-heads (whose hearts are also bowed down): “The world itself is a filthy monster.”
For these are all unclean spirits; especially those, however, who have no peace or rest, unless they see the world FROM THE BACKSIDE—the backworldsmen!
TO THOSE I say it to the face, although it sound unpleasantly: the world resembles man, in that it has a backside,—SO MUCH is true!
There is in the world much filth: SO MUCH is true! But the world itself is not therefore a filthy monster!
There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smells badly: loathing itself creates wings, and fountain-divining powers!
In the best there is still something to loathe; and the best is still something that must be surpassed!—
O my brothers, there is much wisdom in the fact that much filth is in the world!—


15.
Such sayings did I hear pious backworldsmen speak to their consciences, and truly without wickedness or guile,—although there is nothing more guileful in the world, or more wicked.
“Let the world be as it is! Raise not a finger against it!”
“Let whoever will choke and stab and skin and scrape the people: raise not a finger against it! By that they will learn to renounce the world.”
“And your own reason—this you yourself shall stifle and choke; for it is a reason of this world,—by that you will learn yourself to renounce the world.”—
—Shatter, shatter, O my brothers, those old tables of the pious! Tatter the maxims of the world-maligners!—


16.
“He who learns much unlearns all violent cravings”—people now whisper that to one another in all the dark lanes.
“Wisdom wearies, nothing is worthwhile; you shall not crave!”—this new table I found hanging even in the public markets.
Break up for me, O my brothers, break up also that NEW table! The weary-of-the-world put it up, and the preachers of death and the jailer: for behold, it is also a sermon for slavery:—
Because they learned badly and not the best, and everything too early and everything too fast; because they ATE badly: from that has resulted their ruined stomach;—
—For a ruined stomach, is their spirit: IT persuades to death! For truly, my brothers, the spirit IS a stomach!
Life is a well of delight, but to him in whom the ruined stomach speaks, the father of affliction, all fountains are poisoned.
To discern: that is DELIGHT to the lion-willed! But he who has become weary, is himself merely “willed”; all the waves play with him.
And such is always the nature of weak men: they lose themselves on their way. And at last their weariness asks: “Why did we ever go on the way? All is indifferent!”
TO THEM it sounds pleasant to have preached in their ears: “Nothing is worthwhile! You shall not will!” That, however, is a sermon for slavery.
O my brothers, a fresh blustering wind comes Zarathustra to all way-weary ones; many noses will he yet make sneeze!
My free breath blows even through walls, and into prisons and imprisoned spirits!
Willing emancipates: for willing is creating: so do I teach. And ONLY for creating shall you learn!
And also the learning shall you LEARN only from me, the learning well!—He who has ears let him hear!


17.
There stands the boat—there it goes over, perhaps into vast nothingness—but who wills to enter into this “Perhaps”?
None of you want to enter into the death-boat! How should you then be WORLD-WEARY ones!
World-weary ones! And have not even withdrawn from the earth! I always found you eager for the earth, still amorous of your own earth-weariness!
It is not in vain that your lip hangs down:—a small worldly wish still sits on it! And in your eyes—do there not float cloudlets of unforgotten earthly bliss?
On the earth there are many good inventions, some useful, some pleasant: for their sake the earth is to be loved.
And there are many such good inventions, that are like woman’s breasts: useful, and at the same time pleasant.
You world-weary ones, however! You earth-idlers! You, shall one beat with stripes! With stripes shall one again make you sprightly limbs.
For if you be not invalids, or decrepit creatures, of whom the earth is weary, then you are sly sloths, or dainty, sneaking pleasure-cats. And if you will not again RUN gaily, then shall you—pass away!
To the incurable shall one not seek to be a physician: thus teaches Zarathustra:—so shall you pass away!
But more COURAGE is needed to make an end than to make a new verse: that do all physicians and poets know well.—


18.
O my brothers, there are tables which weariness framed, and tables which slothfulness framed, corrupt slothfulness: although they speak similarly, they want to be heard differently.—
See this languishing one! Only a span-breadth is he from his goal; but from weariness has he lain down obstinately in the dust, this brave one!
From weariness he yawns at the path, at the earth, at the goal, and at himself: not a step further will he go,—this brave one!
Now the sun glows on him, and the dogs lick at his sweat: but he lies there in his obstinacy and prefers to languish:—
—A span-breadth from his goal, to languish! Truly, you will have to drag him into his heaven by the hair of his head—this hero!
Better still that you let him lie where he has lain down, that sleep may come to him, the comforter, with cooling patter-rain.
Let him lie, until of his own accord he awakens,—until of his own accord he repudiates all weariness, and what weariness has taught through him!
Only, my brothers, see that you scare the dogs away from him, the idle skulkers, and all the swarming vermin:—
—All the swarming vermin of the “cultured,” that—feast on the sweat of every hero!—


19.
I form circles around me and holy boundaries; ever fewer ascend with me ever higher mountains: I build a mountain-range out of ever holier mountains.—
But wherever you would ascend with me, O my brothers, take care lest a PARASITE ascend with you!
A parasite: that is a reptile, a creeping, cringing reptile, that tries to fatten on your infirm and sore places.
And THIS is its art: it divines where ascending souls are weary, in your trouble and dejection, in your sensitive modesty, does it build its loathsome nest.
Where the strong are weak, where the noble are all-too-gentle—there it builds its loathsome nest; the parasite lives where the great have small sore-places.
What is the highest of all species of being, and what is the lowest? The parasite is the lowest species; he, however, who is of the highest species feeds the most parasites.
For the soul which has the longest ladder, and can go deepest down: how could there fail to be most parasites on it?—
—The most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and rove furthest in itself; the most necessary soul, which out of joy flings itself into chance:—
—The soul in Being, which plunges into Becoming; the possessing soul, which SEEKS to attain desire and longing:—
—The soul fleeing from itself, which overtakes itself in the widest circuit; the wisest soul, to which folly speaks most sweetly:—
—The soul most self-loving, in which all things have their current and counter-current, their ebb and their flow:—oh, how could THE LOFTIEST SOUL fail to have the worst parasites?


20.
O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: What falls, that shall one also push!
Everything of today—it falls, it decays; who would preserve it! But I—I wish also to push it!
Do you know the delight which rolls stones into precipitous depths?—Those men of today, see just how they roll into my depths!
I am a prelude to better players, O my brothers! An example! DO according to my example!
And him whom you do not teach to fly, I pray you teach—TO FALL FASTER!—


21.
I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swordsman,—one must also know ON WHAT to use the sword!
And often it is greater bravery to keep quiet and pass by, that THEREBY one may reserve oneself for a worthier enemy!
You shall only have enemies to be hated; but not enemies to be despised: you must be proud of your enemies. Thus I have already taught.
For the worthier enemy, O my brothers, shall you reserve yourselves: therefore you must pass by many,—
—Especially many of the rabble, who din your ears with noise about people and peoples.
Keep your eyes clear of their For and Against! There is there much just, much unjust: he who looks on becomes angry.
There sighting and smiting—are the same thing: therefore depart into the forests and lay your sword to sleep!
Go YOUR ways! and let the people and peoples go theirs!—gloomy ways, truly, on which not a single hope glints any more!
Let there the trader rule, where all that still glitters is—traders’ gold. It is the time of kings no longer: that which now calls itself the people is unworthy of kings.
See how these peoples themselves now do just like the traders: they pick up the smallest advantage out of all kinds of rubbish!
They lay lures for one another, they lure things out of one another,—they call that “good neighborliness.” O blessed remote period when a people said to itself: “I will be—MASTER over peoples!”
For, my brothers, the best shall rule, the best also WILL to rule! And where the teaching is different, there—the best is LACKING.


22.
If THEY had—bread for nothing, alas! for what would THEY cry! Their maintainment—that is their true entertainment; and they shall have it hard!
They are beasts of prey: in their “working”—there is even plundering, in their “earning”—there is even overreaching! Therefore they shall have it hard!
Thus they shall become better beasts of prey, subtler, cleverer, MORE MAN-LIKE: for man is the best beast of prey.
Man has already robbed all the animals of their virtues: that is why of all animals it has been hardest for man.
Only the birds are still beyond him. And if man should yet learn to fly, alas! TO WHAT HEIGHT—would his rapacity fly!


23.
Thus I would have man and woman: fit for war, the one; fit for maternity, the other; both, however, fit for dancing with head and legs.
And lost be the day to us in which a measure has not been danced. And false be every truth which has not had laughter along with it!


24.
Your marriage-bond: see that it not be a bad BINDING! You have bound too hastily: so there FOLLOWS from that—marriage-breaking!
And better marriage-breaking than marriage-bending, marriage-lying!—Thus spoke a woman to me: “Indeed, I broke the marriage, but first the marriage broke—me!
The badly paired I found ever the most revengeful: they make everyone suffer for it that they no longer run as one.
On that account I want the honest ones to say to one another: “We love each other: let us SEE TO IT that we maintain our love! Or shall our pledging be blundering?”
—“Give us a set term and a small marriage, that we may see if we are fit for the great marriage! It is a great matter always to be twain.”
Thus do I counsel all honest ones; and what would be my love to the Superman, and to all that is to come, if I should counsel and speak otherwise!
Not only to propagate yourselves onward but UPWARD—to that, O my brothers, may the garden of marriage help you!


25.
He who has grown wise concerning old origins, behold, he will at last seek after the fountains of the future and new origins.—
O my brothers, it will not be long until NEW PEOPLES shall arise and new fountains shall rush down into new depths.
For the earthquake—it chokes up many wells, it causes much languishing: but it brings also to light inner powers and secrets.
The earthquake discloses new fountains. In the earthquake of old peoples new fountains burst forth.
And whoever calls out: “Behold, here is a well for many thirsty ones, one heart for many longing ones, one will for many instruments”:—around him collects a PEOPLE, that is to say, many attempting ones.
Who can command, who must obey—THAT IS THERE ATTEMPTED! Ah, with what long seeking and solving and failing and learning and re-attempting!
Human society: it is an attempt—so I teach—a long seeking: it seeks however the ruler!—
—An attempt, my brothers! And NO “contract”! Destroy, I pray you, destroy that word of the soft-hearted and half-and-half!


26.
O my brothers! With whom lies the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just?—
—As those who say and feel in their hearts: “We already know what is good and just, we possess it also; woe to those who still seek after it!
And whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm of the good is the harmfulest harm!
And whatever harm the world-maligners may do, the harm of the good is the harmfulest harm!
O my brothers, into the hearts of the good and just someone looked once on a time, who said: “They are the Pharisees.” But people did not understand him.
The good and just themselves were not free to understand him; their spirit was imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably wise.
It is the truth, however, that the good MUST be Pharisees—they have no choice!
The good MUST crucify him who devises his own virtue! That IS the truth!
The second one, however, who discovered their country—the country, heart and soil of the good and just,—it was he who asked: “Whom do they hate most?”
The CREATOR, they hate most, him who breaks the tables and old values, the breaker,—him they call the law-breaker.
For the good—they CANNOT create; they are always the beginning of the end:—
—They crucify him who writes new values on new tables, they sacrifice TO THEMSELVES the future—they crucify the whole human future!
The good—they have always been the beginning of the end.—


27.
O my brothers, have you also understood this word? And what I once said of the “last man”?—
With whom lies the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just?
BREAK UP, BREAK UP, I PRAY YOU, THE GOOD AND JUST!—O my brothers, have you understood also this word?


28.
You flee from me? You are frightened? You tremble at this word?
O my brothers, when I told you to break up the good, and the tables of the good, only then did I embark man on his high seas.
And only now the great terror comes to him, the great outlook, the great sickness, the great nausea, the great sea-sickness.
False shores and false securities did the good teach you; in the lies of the good you were born and bred. Everything has been radically contorted and distorted by the good.
But he who discovered the country of “man,” discovered also the country of “man’s future.” Now you shall be sailors for me, brave, patient!
Keep yourselves up early, my brothers, learn to keep yourselves up! The sea storms: many seek to raise themselves again by you.
The sea storms: all is in the sea. Well! Cheer up! You old sailor-hearts!
What of fatherland! Our helm strives to where our CHILDREN’S LAND is! Toward there, stormier than the sea, storms our great longing!—


29.
“Why so hard!”—said the charcoal one day to the diamond; “are we then not near relatives?”—
Why so soft? O my brothers; thus do I ask you: are you then not—my brothers?
Why so soft, so submissive and yielding? Why is there so much negation and abnegation in your hearts? Why is there so little fate in your looks?
And if you will not be fates and inexorable ones, how can you one day— conquer with me?
And if your hardness will not glance and cut and chip to pieces, how can you one day—create with me?
For the creators are hard. And it must seem to you blessedness to press your hand on millennia as upon wax,—
—Blessedness to write on the will of millennia as upon brass,—harder than brass, nobler than brass. Only the noblest is entirely hard.
This new table, O my brothers, I put up over you: BECOME HARD!—


30.
O you, my Will! You change of every need, MY needfulness! Preserve me from all small victories!
You fatedness of my soul, which I call fate! You In-me! Over-me! Preserve and spare me for one great fate!
And your last greatness, my Will, spare it for your last—that you may be inexorable IN your victory! Ah, who has not succumbed to his victory!
Ah, whose eye has not dimmed in this intoxicated twilight! Ah, whose foot has not faltered and forgotten in victory—how to stand!—
—That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noontide: ready and ripe like the glowing ore, the lightning-bearing cloud, and the swelling milk-udder:—
—Ready for myself and for my most hidden Will: a bow eager for its arrow, an arrow eager for its star:—
—A star, ready and ripe in its noontide, glowing, pierced, blessed, by annihilating sun-arrows:—
—A sun itself, and an inexorable sun-will, ready for annihilation in victory!
O Will, you change of every need, MY needfulness! Spare me for one great victory!—-
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








LVII. THE CONVALESCENT




1.
One morning, not long after his return to his cave, Zarathustra sprang up from his couch like a madman, crying with a frightful voice, and acting as if someone still lay on the couch who did not wish to rise. Zarathustra’s voice also resounded in such a way that his animals came to him frightened, and out of all the neighbouring caves and lurking-places all the creatures slipped away—flying, fluttering, creeping or leaping, according to their variety of foot or wing. Zarathustra, however, spoke these words:
Up, abysmal thought out of my depth! I am your cock and morning dawn, you overslept reptile: Up! Up! My voice shall soon crow you awake!
Unbind the fetters of your ears: listen! For I wish to hear you! Up! Up! There is thunder enough to make the very graves listen!
And rub the sleep and all the dimness and blindness out of your eyes! Hear me also with your eyes: my voice is a medicine even for those born blind.
And once you are awake, then you shall ever remain awake. It is not MY custom to awake great-grandmothers out of their sleep that I may bid them—sleep on!
You stir, stretch yourself, wheeze? Up! Up! Not wheeze, shall you,—but speak to me! Zarathustra calls you, Zarathustra the godless!
I, Zarathustra, the advocate of living, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circuit—I call you, my most abysmal thought!
Joy to me! You come,—I hear you! My abyss SPEAKS, my lowest depth I have turned over into the light!
Joy to me! Come here! Give me your hand—ha! let be! aha!—Disgust, disgust, disgust—alas to me!
2.
Hardly, however, had Zarathustra spoken these words, when he fell down as one dead, and remained long as one dead. When however he again came to himself, he was pale and trembling, and remained lying; and for long he would neither eat nor drink. This condition continued for seven days; his animals, however, did not leave him day nor night, except that the eagle flew forth to fetch food. And what it fetched and foraged, it laid on Zarathustra’s couch: so that Zarathustra at last lay among yellow and red berries, grapes, rosy apples, sweet-smelling herbage, and pine-cones. At his feet, however, two lambs were stretched, which the eagle had with difficulty carried off from their shepherds.
At last, after seven days, Zarathustra raised himself on his couch, took a rosy apple in his hand, smelt it and found its smell pleasant. Then did his animals think the time had come to speak to him.
“O Zarathustra,” they said, “now you have lain thus for seven days with heavy eyes: will you not set yourself again on your feet?
Step out of your cave: the world waits for you as a garden. The wind plays with heavy fragrance which seeks for you; and all brooks would like to run after you.
All things long for you, since you have remained alone for seven days—step forth out of your cave! All things want to be your physicians!
Did perhaps a new knowledge come to you, a bitter, grievous knowledge? Like leavened dough you lay, your soul arose and swelled beyond all its bounds.—”
—O my animals, answered Zarathustra, talk on thus and let me listen! It refreshes me so to hear your talk: where there is talk, there the world is as a garden to me.
How charming it is that there are words and tones; are not words and tones rainbows and seeming bridges between the eternally separated?
To each soul belongs another world; to each soul is every other soul a back-world.
Among the most alike, resemblance deceives most delightfully: for the smallest gap is most difficult to bridge over.
For me—how could there be an outside-of-me? There is no outside! But we forget this when hearing tones; how delightful it is that we forget!
Have not names and tones been given to things that man may refresh himself with them? It is a beautiful folly, speaking; with it man dances over everything.
How lovely is all speech and all falsehoods of tones! With tones our love dances on many-colored rainbows.—
—“O Zarathustra,” then said his animals, “to those who think like us, things all dance themselves: they come and hold out the hand and laugh and flee—and return.
Everything goes, everything returns; eternally rolls the wheel of existence. Everything dies, everything blossoms forth again; the year of existence eternally runs on.
Everything breaks, everything is integrated anew; the same house of existence eternally builds itself. All things separate, all things again greet each other; the ring of existence remains eternally true to itself.
Every moment begins existence, around every ‘Here’ rolls the ball ‘There.’ The middle is everywhere. Crooked is the path of eternity.”—
—O you wags and barrel-organs! answered Zarathustra, and smiled once more, how well you know what had to be fulfilled in seven days:—
—And how that monster crept into my throat and choked me! But I bit off its head and spat it away from me.
And you—you have made a lyre-lay out of it? Now, however, do I lie here, still exhausted with that biting and spitting-away, still sick with my own salvation.
AND YOU LOOKED ON AT IT ALL? O my animals, are you also cruel? Did you like to look at my great pain as men do? For man is the cruellest animal.
At tragedies, bull-fights, and crucifixions has he thus far been happiest on earth; and when he invented his hell, behold, that was his heaven on earth.
When the great man cries—: immediately the little man runs there, and his tongue hangs out of his mouth for very lusting. He, however, calls it his “pity.”
The little man, especially the poet—how passionately he accuses life in words! Listen to him, but do not fail to hear the delight which is in all accusation!
Such accusers of life—life overcomes them with a glance of the eye. “You love me?” says the insolent one; “wait a little, as yet have I no time for you.”
Toward himself man is the cruellest animal; and in all who call themselves “sinners” and “bearers of the cross” and “penitents,” do not overlook the voluptuousness in their complaints and accusations!
And I myself—do I then want to be man’s accuser? Ah, my animals, only this have I learned thus far, that for man his baddest is necessary for his best,—
—That all that is baddest is the best POWER, and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must become better AND badder:—
Not to THIS torture-stake was I tied, that I know man is bad,—but I cried, as no one has yet cried:
“Ah, that his baddest is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very small!”
The great disgust at man—IT strangled me and had crept into my throat: and what the soothsayer had predicted: “All is alike, nothing is worthwhile, knowledge strangles.”
A long twilight limped on before me, a fatally weary, fatally intoxicated sadness, which spoke with yawning mouth.
“Eternally he returns, the man of whom you are weary, the small man”—so yawned my sadness, and dragged its foot and could not go to sleep.
The human earth became a cavern to me; its breast caved in; everything living became to me human dust and bones and moldering past.
My sighing sat on all human graves, and could no longer arise: my sighing and questioning croaked and choked, and gnawed and nagged day and night:
—“Ah, man returns eternally! The small man returns eternally!”
Naked had I once seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest man: all too like one another—all too human, even the greatest man!
All too small, even the greatest man!—that was my disgust at man! And the eternal return also of the smallest man!—that was my disgust at all existence!
Ah, Disgust! Disgust! Disgust!—Thus spoke Zarathustra, and sighed and shuddered; for he remembered his sickness. Then his animals prevented him from speaking further.
“Do not speak further, you convalescent!”—so answered his animals, “but go out where the world waits for you like a garden.
Go out to the roses, the bees, and the flocks of doves! Especially, however, to the singing-birds, to learn SINGING from them!
For singing is for the convalescent; the healthy ones may talk. And when the healthy also want songs, then they want other songs than the convalescent.”
—“O you wags and barrel-organs, be silent!” answered Zarathustra, and smiled at his animals. “How well you know what consolation I devised for myself in seven days!
That I have to sing once more—THAT consolation I devised for myself, and THIS convalescence: would you also make another lyre-lay of it?”
—“Do not talk further,” answered his animals once more; “rather, you convalescent, prepare for yourself first a lyre, a new lyre!
For behold, O Zarathustra! For your new songs there are needed new lyres.
Sing and bubble over, O Zarathustra, heal your soul with new songs: that you may bear your great fate, which has not yet been anyone’s fate!
For your animals know it well, O Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, YOU ARE THE TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RETURN,—that is now YOUR fate!
That you must be the first to teach this teaching—how could this great fate not be your greatest danger and infirmity!
Behold, we know what you teach: that all things eternally return, and ourselves with them, and that we have already existed times without number, and all things with us.
You teach that there is a great year of Becoming, a prodigy of a great year; it must, like a sandglass, ever turn over anew, that it may anew run down and run out:—
—So that all those years are like one another in the greatest and also in the smallest, so that we ourselves, in every great year, are like ourselves in the greatest and also in the smallest.
And if you would now die, O Zarathustra, behold, we know also how you would then speak to yourself:—but your animals beseech you not to die yet!
You would speak, and without trembling, buoyant rather with bliss, for a great weight and worry would be taken from you, you most patient one!—
‘Now I die and disappear,’ you would say, ‘and in a moment I am nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies.
But the plexus of causes returns in which I am intertwined,—it will again create me! I myself pertain to the causes of the eternal return.
I come again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent—NOT to a new life, or a better life, or a similar life:
—I come again eternally to this identical and selfsame life, in its greatest and its smallest, to teach again the eternal return of all things,—
—To speak again the word of the great noontide of earth and man, to announce again to man the Superman.
I have spoken my word. I break down by my word: so wills my eternal fate—as announcer I succumb!
The hour has now come for the down-goer to bless himself. Thus—ENDS Zarathustra’s down-going.’”—
When the animals had spoken these words they were silent and waited, so that Zarathustra might say something to them: but Zarathustra did not hear that they were silent. On the contrary, he lay quietly with closed eyes like a person sleeping, although he did not sleep; for he communed just then with his soul. The serpent, however, and the eagle, when they found him silent in this way, respected the great stillness around him, and prudently retired.








LVIII. THE GREAT LONGING


O my soul, I have taught you to say “today” as “once” and “formerly,” and to dance your measure over every Here and There and Yonder.
O my soul, I delivered you from all crevices, I brushed down from you dust and spiders and twilight.
O my soul, I washed the petty shame and the crevice virtue from you, and persuaded you to stand naked before the eyes of the sun.
With the storm that is called “spirit” did I blow over your surging sea; all clouds did I blow away from it; I strangled even the strangler called “sin.”
O my soul, I gave you the right to say No like the storm, and to say Yes as the open heaven says Yes: calm as the light you remain, and now walk through denying storms.
O my soul, I restored to you liberty over the created and the uncreated; and who knows, as you know, the voluptuousness of the future?
O my soul, I taught you the contempt which does not come like worm-eating, the great, the loving contempt, which loves most where it contempts most.
O my soul, I taught you so to persuade that you persuade even the grounds themselves to you: like the sun, which persuades even the sea to its height.
O my soul, I have taken from you all obeying and knee-bending and homage-paying; I have myself given you the names, “Change of need” and “Fate.”
O my soul, I have given you new names and joyfully-colored playthings, I have called you “Fate” and “the Circuit of circuits” and “the Navel-string of time” and “the Blue bell.”
O my soul, to your domain I gave all wisdom to drink, all new wines, and also all immemorially old strong wines of wisdom.
O my soul, I shed on you every sun, and every night and every silence and every longing:—then you grew up for me as a vine.
O my soul, exuberant and heavy you now stand forth, a vine with swelling udders and full clusters of brown golden grapes:—
—Filled and weighted by your happiness, waiting from superabundance, and yet ashamed of your waiting.
O my soul, there is nowhere a soul which could be more loving and more comprehensive and more extensive! Where could future and past be closer together than with you?
O my soul, I have given you everything, and all my hands have become empty by you:—and now! Now you say to me, smiling and full of melancholy: “Which of us owes thanks?—
—Does the giver not owe thanks because the receiver received? Is bestowing not a necessity? Is receiving not—pitying?”—
O my soul, I understand the smiling of your melancholy: your over-abundance itself now stretches out longing hands!
Your fulness looks forth over raging seas, and seeks and waits: the longing of over-fullness looks forth from the smiling heaven of your eyes!
And truly, O my soul! Who could see your smiling and not melt into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears through the over-graciousness of your smiling.
Your graciousness and over-graciousness, is it which will not complain and weep: and yet, O my soul, longs your smiling for tears, and your trembling mouth for sobs.
“Is not all weeping complaining? And all complaining, accusing?” Thus you speak to yourself; and therefore, O my soul, you will rather smile than pour forth your grief—
—Than in gushing tears pour forth all your grief concerning your fullness, and concerning the craving of the vine for the vintager and vintage-knife!
But will you not weep, will you not weep forth your purple melancholy, then will you have to SING, O my soul!—Behold, I smile myself, who foretell you this:
—You will have to sing with passionate song, until all seas turn calm to listen to your longing,—
—Until over calm longing seas the bark glides, the golden marvel, around the gold of which all good, bad, and marvellous things frisk:—
—Also many large and small animals, and everything that has light marvellous feet, so that it can run on violet-blue paths,—
—Toward the golden marvel, the spontaneous bark, and its master: he, however, is the vintager who waits with the diamond vintage-knife,—
—Your great deliverer, O my soul, the nameless one—for whom only future songs will find names! And truly, your breath already has the fragrance of future songs,—
—Already you glow and dream, already you drink thirstily at all deep echoing wells of consolation, already your melancholy reposes in the bliss of future songs!—
O my soul, now I have given you all, and even my last possession, and all my hands have become empty by you:—THAT I TOLD YOU TO SING, behold, that was my last thing to give!
That I told you to sing,—say now, say: WHICH of us now—owes thanks?— Better still, however: sing to me, sing, O my soul! And let me thank you!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








LIX. THE SECOND DANCE-SONG


1.
“Into your eyes I gazed lately, O Life: I saw gold gleam in your night-eyes,—my heart stood still with delight:
—A golden bark I saw gleam on darkened waters, a sinking, drinking, reblinking, golden swing-bark!
At my dance-frantic foot, do you cast a glance, a laughing, questioning, melting, thrown glance:
Only twice you moved your rattle with your little hands—then did my feet swing with dance-fury.—
My heels reared aloft, my toes they listened,—you they would know: has not the dancer his ear—in his toe!
To you did I spring: then you fled back from my bound; and toward me waved your fleeing, flying tresses round!
Away from you did I spring, and from your snaky tresses: then you stood there half-turned, and in your eye caresses.
With crooked glances—you teach me crooked courses; on crooked courses my feet learn—crafty fancies!
I fear you near, I love you far; your flight allures me, your seeking secures me:—I suffer, but for you, what would I not gladly bear!
For you, whose coldness inflames, whose hatred misleads, whose flight enchains, whose mockery—pleads:
—Who would not hate you, you great bindress, inwindress, temptress, seekress, findress! Who would not love you, you innocent, impatient, wind-swift, child-eyed sinner!
Where do you pull me now, you paragon and tomboy? And now you fool me fleeing; you sweet romp do annoy!
I dance after you, I follow even faint traces lonely. Where are you? Give me your hand! Or your finger only!
Here are caves and thickets: we shall go astray!—Halt! Stand still! Do you not see owls and bats in fluttering fray?
You bat! You owl! You would play me foul? Where are we? From the dogs have you learned thus to bark and howl.
You gnash on me sweetly with little white teeth; your evil eyes shoot out on me, your curly little mane from underneath!
This is a dance over stock and stone: I am the hunter,—will you be my hound, or soon my chamois?
Now beside me! And quickly, wickedly springing! Now up! And over!—Alas! I have fallen myself overswinging!
Oh, see me lying, you arrogant one, and imploring grace! Gladly would I walk with you—in some lovelier place!
—In the paths of love, through bushes many-colored, quiet, trim! Or there along the lake, where gold-fishes dance and swim!
You are now weary? There above are sheep and sun-set stripes: is it not sweet to sleep—the shepherd pipes?
You are so very weary? I carry you there; let just your arm sink! And are you thirsty—I should have something; but your mouth would not like it to drink!—
—Oh, that cursed, nimble, supple serpent and lurking-witch! Where are you gone? But in my face do I feel through your hand, two spots and red blotches itch!
I am truly weary of it, ever your sheepish shepherd to be. You witch, if so far I have sung to you, now YOU shall—cry to me!
To the rhythm of my whip you shall dance and cry! I forget not my whip?—Not I!”—
2.
Then Life answered me thus, and by it kept her fine ears closed:
“O Zarathustra! Crack not so terribly with your whip! You know surely that noise kills thought,—and just now there came to me such delicate thoughts.
We are both of us genuine ne’er-do-wells and ne’er-do-ills. Beyond good and evil we found our island and our green meadow—we two alone! Therefore we must be friendly to each other!
And even should we not love each other from the bottom of our hearts,—must we then have a grudge against each other if we do not love each other perfectly?
And that I am friendly to you, and often too friendly, that you know: and the reason is that I am envious of your Wisdom. Ah, this mad old fool, Wisdom!
If your Wisdom should one day run away from you, ah! then also my love would run away from you quickly.”—
Then Life looked thoughtfully behind and around, and said softly: “O Zarathustra, you are not faithful enough to me!
You love me not nearly so much as you say; I know you think of soon leaving me.
There is an old heavy, heavy, booming-clock: it booms by night up to your cave:—
—When you hear this clock strike the hours at midnight, then you think between one and twelve on it—
—You think on it, O Zarathustra, I know it—of soon leaving me!”—
“Yes,” I answered, hesitatingly, “but you know it also”—And I said something into her ear, in among her confused, yellow, foolish tresses.
“You KNOW that, O Zarathustra? That no one knows—”
And we gazed at each other, and looked at the green meadow over which the cool evening was just passing, and we wept together.—Then, however, Life was dearer to me than all my Wisdom had ever been.—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
3.
One!
O man! Take heed!
Two!
What says deep midnight’s voice indeed?
Three!
“I slept my sleep—
Four!
“From deepest dream I’ve woke and plead:—
Five!
“The world is deep,
Six!
“And deeper than the day could read.
Seven!
“Deep is its woe—
Eight!
“Joy—deeper still than grief can be:
Nine!
“Woe says: Away! Go!
Ten!
“But joys all want eternity—
Eleven!
“Want deep profound eternity!”
Twelve!








LX. THE SEVEN SEALS
(OR THE YES AND AMEN SONG)


1.
If I be a diviner and full of the divining spirit which wanders on high mountain-ridges, between two seas,—
Wanders between the past and the future as a heavy cloud—hostile to sultry plains, and to all that is weary and can neither die nor live:
Ready for lightning in its dark bosom, and for the redeeming flash of light, charged with lightnings which say Yes! which laugh Yes! ready for divining flashes of lightning:—
—Blessed, however, is he who is thus charged! And truly, he must long hang like a heavy tempest on the mountain, who shall one day kindle the light of the future!—
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY! 


2.
If ever my wrath has burst graves, shifted landmarks, or rolled old shattered tables into precipitous depths:
If ever my scorn has scattered moldered words to the winds, and if I have come like a broom to cross-spiders, and as a cleansing wind to old charnel-houses:
If ever I have sat rejoicing where old Gods lie buried, world-blessing, world-loving, beside the monuments of old world-maligners:—
—For even churches and Gods’-graves do I love, if only heaven looks through their ruined roofs with pure eyes; gladly I sit like grass and red poppies on ruined churches—
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY! 


3.
If ever a breath has come to me of the creative breath, and of the heavenly necessity which compels even chances to dance star-dances:
If ever I have laughed with the laughter of the creative lightning, to which the long thunder of the deed follows, grumblingly, but obediently:
If ever I have played dice with the Gods at the divine table of the earth, so that the earth quaked and ruptured, and snorted forth fire-streams:—
—For the earth is a divine table, and trembling with new creative dictums and dice-casts of the Gods:
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY! 


4.
If ever I have drunk a full draught of the foaming spice- and confection-bowl in which all things are well mixed:
If ever my hand has mingled the furthest with the nearest, fire with spirit, joy with sorrow, and the harshest with the kindest:
If I myself am a grain of the saving salt which makes everything in the confection-bowl mix well:—
—For there is a salt which unites good with evil; and even the evilest is worthy, as spicing and as final over-foaming:—
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY! 


5.
If I be fond of the sea, and all that is sealike, and fondest of it when it angrily contradicts me:
If the exploring delight is in me, which impels sails to the undiscovered, if the seafarer’s delight be in my delight:
If ever my rejoicing has called out: “The shore has vanished,—now the last chain has fallen from me—
The boundless roars around me, space and time sparkle for me far away,—well! cheer up! old heart!”—
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY! 


6.
If my virtue be a dancer’s virtue, and if I have often sprung with both feet into golden-emerald rapture:
If my wickedness is a laughing wickedness, at home among rose-banks and hedges of lilies:
—For in laughter is all evil present, but it is sanctified and absolved by its own bliss:—
And if it be my Alpha and Omega that everything heavy shall become light, every body a dancer, and every spirit a bird: and verily, that is my Alpha and Omega!—
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY! 


7.
If ever I have spread out a tranquil heaven above me, and have flown into my own heaven with my own wings:
If I have swum playfully in profound luminous distances, and if my freedom’s avian wisdom has come to me:—
—Thus however speaks avian wisdom:—“Behold, there is no above and no below! Throw yourself about,—outward, backward, you light one! Sing! speak no more!
—Are not all words made for the heavy? Do not all words lie to the light ones? Sing! speak no more!”—
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings—the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY!








––––––––––––End of Third Part––––––––––––––








THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA
FOURTH AND LAST PART


Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the pitiful? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the pitiful?
Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity!
Thus spoke the devil to me, once on a time: “Even God has his hell: it is his love for man.”
And lately I heard him say these words: “God is dead: of his pity for man has God died.” —ZARATHUSTRA, II, “The Pitiful”












LXI. THE HONEY SACRIFICE


—And again moons and years passed over Zarathustra’s soul, and he did not heed it; his hair, however, became white. One day when he sat on a stone in front of his cave, and gazed calmly into the distance—one there gazes out on the sea, and away beyond sinuous abysses,—then his animals went thoughtfully round about him, and at last set themselves in front of him.
“O Zarathustra,” they said, “you gaze out perhaps for your happiness?”—“Of what account is my happiness!” he answered, “I have long ceased to strive any more for happiness, I strive for my work.”—“O Zarathustra,” said the animals once more, “you say that as one who has overmuch of good things. Do you not lie in a sky-blue lake of happiness?”—“You wags,” answered Zarathustra, and smiled, “how well you chose the simile! But you know also that my happiness is heavy, and not like a fluid wave of water: it presses me and will not leave me, and is like molten pitch.”—
Then his animals again went thoughtfully around him, and placed themselves once more in front of him. “O Zarathustra,” they said, “is it consequently FOR THAT REASON that you yourself always become yellower and darker, although your hair looks white and flaxen? Behold, you sit in your pitch!”—“What do you say, my animals?” said Zarathustra, laughing; “truly I reviled when I spoke of pitch. As it happened with me, so it is with all fruits that turn ripe. It is the HONEY in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and also my soul stiller.”—“So it will be, O Zarathustra,” answered his animals, and pressed up to him; “but will you not today ascend a high mountain? The air is pure, and today one sees more of the world than ever.”—“Yes, my animals,” he answered, “you counsel admirably and according to my heart: I will today ascend a high mountain! But see that honey is there ready at hand, yellow, white, good, ice-cool, golden-comb-honey. For know that when aloft I will make the honey-sacrifice.”—
When Zarathustra, however, was aloft on the summit, he sent his animals home that had accompanied him, and found that he was now alone:—then he laughed from the bottom of his heart, looked around him, and spoke thus:
That I spoke of sacrifices and honey-sacrifices, it was merely a ruse in talking and truly, a useful folly! Here aloft I can now speak freer than in front of mountain-caves and anchorites’ domestic animals.
What to sacrifice! I squander what is given to me, a squanderer with a thousand hands: how could I call that—sacrificing?
And when I desired honey I only desired bait, and sweet mucus and mucilage, for which even the mouths of growling bears, and strange, sulky, evil birds, water:
—The best bait, as huntsmen and fishermen require it. For if the world be as a gloomy forest of animals, and a pleasure-ground for all wild huntsmen, it seems to me rather—and preferably—a fathomless, rich sea;
—A sea full of many-hued fishes and crabs, for which even the Gods might long, and might be tempted to become fishers in it, and casters of nets,—so rich is the world in wonderful things, great and small!
Especially the human world, the human sea:—toward IT do I now throw out my golden angle-rod and say: Open up, you human abyss!
Open up, and throw to me your fish and shining crabs! With my best bait I shall allure to myself today the strangest human fish!
—My happiness itself do I throw out into all places far and wide between orient, noontide, and occident, to see if many human fish will not learn to hug and tug at my happiness;—
Until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they have to come up to MY height, the motleyest abyss-groundlings, to the wickedest of all fishers of men.
For THIS I am from the heart and from the beginning—drawing, hither-drawing, upward-drawing, upbringing; a drawer, a trainer, a training-master, who not in vain counselled himself once on a time: “Become what you are!”
Thus men may now come UP to me; for as yet I await the signs that it is time for my down-going; as yet I do not myself go down, as I must, among men.
Therefore I wait here, crafty and scornful upon high mountains, no impatient one, no patient one; rather one who has even unlearned patience,—because he no longer “suffers.”
For my fate gives me time: it has forgotten me perhaps? Or does it sit behind a big stone and catch flies?
And truly, I am well-disposed to my eternal fate, because it does not hound and hurry me, but leaves me time for merriment and mischief; so that I have today ascended this high mountain to catch fish.
Did anyone ever catch fish on high mountains? And though it be a folly what I here seek and do, it is better this, than that down below I should become solemn with waiting, and green and yellow—
—A posturing wrath-snorter with waiting, a holy howl-storm from the mountains, an impatient one that shouts down into the valleys: “Listen, or I will scourge you with the scourge of God!”
Not that I would have a grudge against such wrathful ones on that account: they are good enough for laughter to me! They must now be impatient, those big alarm-drums, which find a voice now or never!
Myself, however, and my fate—we do not talk to the Present, neither do we talk to the Never: for talking we have patience and time and more than time. For one day it must yet come, and may not pass by.
What must one day come and may not pass by? Our great Hazar, that is to say, our great, remote human-kingdom, the Zarathustra-kingdom of a thousand years—
How remote may such “remoteness” be? What does it concern me? But on that account it is none the less sure to me—, with both feet I stand secure on this ground;
—On an eternal ground, on hard primary rock, on this highest, hardest, primary mountain-ridge, to which all winds come, as to the storm-parting, asking Where? and When? and To Where?
Here laugh, laugh, my hearty, healthy wickedness! From high mountains cast down your glittering scorn-laughter! Allure for me with your glittering the finest human fish!
And whatever belongs to ME in all seas, my in-and-for-me in all things—fish THAT out for me, bring THAT up to me: for that I wait, the wickedest of all fish-catchers.
Out! out! my fishing-hook! In and down, you bait of my happiness! Drip your sweetest dew, you honey of my heart! Bite, my fishing-hook, into the belly of all black affliction!
Look out, look out, my eyes! Oh, how many seas round about me, what dawning human futures! And above me—what rosy red stillness! What unclouded silence!








LXII. THE CRY OF DISTRESS


The next day Zarathustra again sat on the stone in front of his cave, while his animals roamed about in the world outside to bring home new food,—also new honey: for Zarathustra had spent and wasted the old honey to the very last particle. When he thus sat, however, with a stick in his hand, tracing the shadow of his figure on the earth, and reflecting—truly! not on himself and his shadow,—all at once he startled and shrank back: for he saw another shadow beside his own. And when he hastily looked around and stood up, behold, there stood the soothsayer beside him, the same whom he had once given to eat and drink at his table, the proclaimer of the great weariness, who taught: “All is alike, nothing is worthwhile, the world is without meaning, knowledge strangles.” But his face had changed since then; and when Zarathustra looked into his eyes, his heart was startled once more: so much evil announcement and ashy-grey lightnings passed over that face.
The soothsayer, who had perceived what went on in Zarathustra’s soul, wiped his face with his hand, as if he would wipe out the impression; Zarathustra also did the same. And when both of them had thus silently composed and strengthened themselves, they gave each other the hand, as a token that they wanted once more to recognize each other.
“Welcome here,” said Zarathustra, “you soothsayer of the great weariness, not in vain shall you once have been my messmate and guest. Eat and drink also with me today, and forgive it that a cheerful old man sits with you at table!”—“A cheerful old man?” answered the soothsayer, shaking his head, “but whoever you are, or would be, O Zarathustra, you have been here aloft the longest time,—in a little while your bark shall no longer rest on dry land!”—“Do I then rest on dry land?”—asked Zarathustra, laughing.—“The waves around your mountain,” answered the soothsayer, “rise and rise, the waves of great distress and affliction: they will soon raise your bark also and carry you away.”—Then Zarathustra was silent and wondered.—“Do you still hear nothing?” continued the soothsayer: “does it not rush and roar out of the depth?”—Zarathustra was silent once more and listened: then he heard a long, long cry, which the abysses threw to one another and passed on; for none of them wished to retain it: so evil did it sound.
“You ill announcer,” said Zarathustra at last, “that is a cry of distress, and the cry of a man; it may come perhaps out of a black sea. But what does human distress matter to me! My last sin which has been reserved for me,—do you know what it is called?”
—“PITY!” answered the soothsayer from an overflowing heart, and raised both his hands aloft—“O Zarathustra, I have come that I may seduce you to your last sin!”—
And hardly had those words been uttered when there sounded the cry once more, and longer and more alarming than before—also much nearer. “Do you hear? Do you hear, O Zarathustra?” called out the soothsayer, “the cry concerns you, it calls you: Come, come, come; it is time, it is the highest time!”—
Zarathustra was silent then, confused and staggered; at last he asked, like one who hesitates in himself: “And who is it there that calls me?”
“But you know it, certainly,” answered the soothsayer warmly, “why do you conceal yourself? It is THE HIGHER MAN that cries for you!”
“The higher man?” cried Zarathustra, horror-stricken: “what does HE want? What does HE want? The higher man! What does he want here?”—and his skin covered with perspiration.
The soothsayer, however, did not heed Zarathustra’s alarm, but listened and listened in the downward direction. When, however, it had been still there for a long while, he looked behind, and saw Zarathustra standing trembling.
“O Zarathustra,” he began, with sorrowful voice, “you do not stand there like one whose happiness makes him giddy: you will have to dance lest you tumble down!
But although you should dance before me, and leap all your side-leaps, no one may say to me: ‘Behold, here dances the last joyous man!’
In vain would anyone come to this height who sought HIM here: he would find caves, indeed, and back-caves, hiding-places for hidden ones; but not lucky mines, nor treasure-chambers, nor new gold-veins of happiness.
Happiness—how indeed could one find happiness among such buried-alive and solitary ones! Must I yet seek the last happiness on the Happy Isles, and far away among forgotten seas?
But all is alike, nothing is worthwhile, no seeking is useful, there are no longer any Happy Isles!”—
Thus sighed the soothsayer; with his last sigh, however, Zarathustra again became serene and assured, like one who has come out of a deep chasm into the light. “No! No! Three times No!” he exclaimed with a strong voice, and stroked his beard—“THAT I know better! There are still Happy Isles! Silence on THAT, you sighing sorrow-sack!
Cease to splash on THAT, you rain-cloud of the forenoon! Do I not already stand here wet with your misery, and drenched like a dog?
Now I shake myself and run away from you, that I may again become dry: at that may you not wonder! Do I seem to you discourteous? Here however is MY court.
But as regards the higher man: well! I shall seek him at once in those forests: FROM THERE came his cry. Perhaps he is there hard beset by an evil beast.
He is in MY domain: in it he shall receive no injury! And truly, there are many evil beasts around me.”—
With those words Zarathustra turned around to depart. Then the soothsayer said: “O Zarathustra, you are a rogue!
I know it well: you would gladly be rid of me! You would rather run into the forest and lay snares for evil beasts!
But what good will it do you? In the evening you will have me again: in your own cave I will sit, patient and heavy like a block—and wait for you!”
“So be it!” shouted back Zarathustra, as he went away: “and what is mine in my cave belongs also to you, my guest!
Should you however find honey in there, well! just lick it up, you growling bear, and sweeten your soul! For in the evening we want to both be in good spirits;
—In good spirits and joyful, because this day has come to an end! And you yourself shall dance to my songs, as my dancing-bear.
You do not believe this? You shake your head? Well! Cheer up, old bear! But I also—am a soothsayer.”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








LXIII. TALK WITH THE KINGS


1.
Before Zarathustra had been an hour on his way in the mountains and forests, he saw all at once a strange procession. Right on the path which he was about to descend came two kings walking, bedecked with crowns and purple girdles, and colorful like flamingos: they drove before them a loaded ass. “What do these kings want in my domain?” said Zarathustra in astonishment to his heart, and hid himself hastily behind a thicket. When however the kings approached to him, he said half-aloud, like one speaking only to himself: “Strange! Strange! How does this harmonise? I see two kings—and only one ass!”
Then the two kings halted; they smiled and looked toward the spot from where the voice had come, and then looked into each other’s faces. “We also think such things among ourselves,” said the king on the right, “but we do not utter them.”
The king on the left, however, shrugged his shoulders and answered: “That may perhaps be a goat-herd. Or an anchorite who has lived too long among rocks and trees. For no society at all also spoils good manners.”
“Good manners?” the other king replied angrily and bitterly: “what then do we run away from? Is it not ‘good manners’? Our ‘good society’?
Better, truly, to live among anchorites and goat-herds, than with our gilded, false, over-rouged populace—though it calls itself ‘good society.’
—Though it calls itself ‘nobility.’ But there all is false and foul, above all the blood—thanks to old evil diseases and worse healers.
The best and dearest to me at present is still a sound peasant, coarse, artful, obstinate and enduring: that is at present the noblest type.
The peasant is at present the best; and the peasant type should be master! But it is the kingdom of the populace—I no longer allow anything to be imposed on me. The populace, however—that means, hodgepodge.
Populace-hodgepodge: in that everything is mixed with everything, saint and swindler, gentleman and Jew, and every beast out of Noah’s ark.
Good manners! Everything is false and foul with us. No one knows any longer how to reverence: it is THAT precisely that we run away from. They are fulsome obtrusive dogs; they gild palm-leaves.
This loathing chokes me, that we kings ourselves have become false, draped and disguised with the old faded pomp of our ancestors, show-pieces for the stupidest, the craftiest, and whoever at present trafficks for power.
We ARE NOT the first men—and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of this imposture we have at last become weary and disgusted.
From the rabble we have gone out of the way, from all those bawlers and scribe-blowflies, from the trader-stench, the ambition-fidgeting, the bad breath—: fie, to live among the rabble;
—Fie, to stand for the first men among the rabble! Ah, loathing! Loathing! Loathing! What does it now matter about us kings!”—
“Your old sickness seizes you,” said here the king on the left, “your loathing seizes you, my poor brother. You know, however, that some one hears us.”
Immediately then, Zarathustra, who had opened ears and eyes to this talk, rose from his hiding-place, advanced towards the kings, and thus began:
“He who listens to you, he who gladly listens to you, is called Zarathustra.
I am Zarathustra who once said: ‘What does it now matter about kings!’ Forgive me; I rejoiced when you said to each other: ‘What does it matter about us kings!’
Here, however, is MY domain and jurisdiction: what might you be seeking in my domain? Perhaps, however, you have FOUND on your way what I seek: namely, the higher man.”
When the kings heard this, they beat upon their breasts and said with one voice: “We are recognized!
With the sword of your utterance you severe the thickest darkness of our hearts. You have discovered our distress; for behold! we are on our way to find the higher man—
—The man that is higher than we, although we are kings. To him we convey this ass. For the highest man shall also be the highest lord on earth.
There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becomes false and distorted and monstrous.
And when they are even the last men, and more beast than man, then rises and rises the populace in honor, and at last says even the populace-virtue: ‘Behold, I alone am virtue!’”—
What have I just heard? answered Zarathustra. What wisdom in kings! I am enchanted, and verily, I have already promptings to make a rhyme on it:—
—Even if it should happen to be a rhyme not suited for everyone’s ears. I unlearned long ago to have consideration for long ears. Well then! Well now!
(Here, however, it happened that the ass also found utterance: it said distinctly and with malevolence, Y-E-A-H.)


‘Once—I think year one of our blessed Lord,
Drunk without wine, the Sybil thus deplored:
“How foul things go!
Decay! 
Decay! 
Never sank the world so low!
Rome is now a whore and a whorehouse too,
Rome’s Caesar a beast, and God—has turned Jew!


2.
With those rhymes of Zarathustra the kings were delighted; the king on the right, however, said: “O Zarathustra, how well it was that we set out to see you!
For your enemies showed us your likeness in their mirror: there you looked with the grimace of a devil, and sneeringly: so that we were afraid of you.
But what good did it do! You always pricked us anew in heart and ear with your sayings. Then we said at last: What does it matter how he looks!
We must HEAR him; him who teaches: ‘You shall love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the long!’
No one ever spoke such warlike words: ‘What is good? To be brave is good. It is the good war that hallows every cause.’
O Zarathustra, our fathers’ blood stirred in our veins at such words: it was like the voice of spring to old wine-casks.
When the swords ran among one another like red-spotted serpents, then our fathers became fond of life; the sun of every peace seemed to them languid and lukewarm, the long peace, however, made them ashamed.
How they sighed, our fathers, when they saw on the wall brightly furbished, dried-up swords! Like those they thirsted for war. For a sword thirsts to drink blood, and sparkles with desire.”—
—When the kings thus discoursed and talked eagerly of the happiness of their fathers, there came upon Zarathustra more than a small desire to mock at their eagerness: for evidently they were very peaceable kings whom he saw before him, kings with old and refined features. But he restrained himself. “Well!” he said, “there leads the way, there lies the cave of Zarathustra; and this day is to have a long evening! At present, however, a cry of distress calls me hastily away from you.
It will honor my cave if kings want to sit and wait in it: but, to be sure, you will have to wait long!
Well! What of that! Where does one at present learn better to wait than at courts? And the whole virtue of kings that has remained to them—is it not today called: ABILITY to wait?”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.








LXIV. THE LEECH


And Zarathustra went on thoughtfully, farther and lower down, through forests and past dark swamps; as it happens, however, to everyone who meditates on hard matters, he then unintentionally trod on a man. And behold, there spurted into his face all at once a cry of pain, and two curses and twenty bad invectives, so that in his fright he raised his stick and also struck the trodden one. Immediately afterward, however, he regained his composure, and his heart laughed at the folly he had just committed.
“Pardon me,” he said to the trodden one, who had got up enraged, and had seated himself, “pardon me, and hear first of all a parable.
As a wanderer who dreams of remote things on a lonesome highway, runs unaware against a sleeping dog, a dog which lies in the sun:
—As both of them then start up and snap at each other, like deadly enemies, those two beings mortally frightened—so it happened to us.
And yet! And yet—how little was lacking for them to caress each other, that dog and that lonesome one! Are they not both—lonesome ones!”
—“Whoever you are,” said the trodden one, still enraged, “you tread too near me also with your parable, and not only with your foot!
Behold! am I then a dog?”—And then the sitting one got up, and pulled his naked arm out of the swamp. For at first he had lain outstretched on the ground, hidden and indiscernible, like those who lie in wait for swamp-game.
“But whatever are you doing!” called out Zarathustra in alarm, for he saw a great deal of blood streaming over the naked arm,—“what has hurt you? Has an evil beast bit you, you unfortunate one?”
The bleeding one laughed, still angry, “What matter is it to you!” he said, and was about to go on. “Here I am at home and in my province. Let him question me whoever will: to a dolt, however, I shall hardly answer.”
“You are mistaken,” said Zarathustra sympathetically, and held him tight; “you are mistaken. Here you are not at home, but in my domain, and here I will have no one come to harm.
However call me what you will—I am who I must be. I call myself Zarathustra.
Well! Up there is the way to Zarathustra’s cave: it is not far,—will you not tend to your wounds at my home?
It has gone badly with you in this life, you unfortunate one: first a beast bit you, and then—a man trod on you!”—
When however the trodden one had heard the name of Zarathustra he was transformed. “What happens to me!” he exclaimed, “WHO preoccupies me so much in this life as this one man, namely Zarathustra, and that one animal that lives on blood, the leech?
For the sake of the leech I lied here by this swamp, like a fisher, and already my outstretched arm had been bitten ten times, when there bites a still finer leech at my blood, Zarathustra himself!
O happiness! O miracle! Praised be this day which enticed me into the swamp! Praised be the best, the livest cupping-glass, that at present lives; praised be the great conscience-leech Zarathustra!”—
Thus spoke the trodden one, and Zarathustra rejoiced at his words and their refined reverential style. “Who are you?” he asked, and gave him his hand, “there is much to clear up and elucidate between us, but already I think pure clear day is dawning.”
“I am THE SPIRITUALLY CONSCIENTIOUS ONE,” answered he who was asked, “and in matters of the spirit it is difficult for any one to take it more rigorously, more restrictedly, and more severely than I, except him from whom I learned it, Zarathustra himself.
Better know nothing than half-know many things! Better be a fool on one’s own account, than a sage on other people’s approbation! I—go to the basis:
—What matter if it be great or small? If it be called swamp or sky? A hand’s width of basis is enough for me, if it be actually basis and ground!
—A hand’s width of basis: one can stand on that. In the true knowing-knowledge there is nothing great and nothing small.”
“Then you are perhaps an expert on the leech?” asked Zarathustra; “and you investigate the leech to its ultimate basis, you conscientious one?”
“O Zarathustra,” answered the trodden one, “that would be something immense; how could I presume to do so!
That, however, of which I am master and knower, is the BRAIN of the leech:—that is MY world!
And it is also a world! Forgive, however, that my pride here finds expression, for here I have no equal. That is why I said: ‘here I am at home.’
How long I have investigated this one thing, the brain of the leech, so that here the slippery truth might no longer slip from me! Here is MY domain!
—For the sake of this did I cast everything else aside, for the sake of this everything else became indifferent to me; and close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.
My spiritual conscience requires from me that it should be so—that I should know one thing, and not know all else: they are a loathing to me, all the semi-spiritual, all the hazy, hovering, and visionary.
Where my honesty ceases, there I am blind, and also want to be blind. Where I want to know, however, there I want also to be honest—namely, severe, rigorous, restricted, cruel and inexorable.
Because YOU once said, O Zarathustra: ‘Spirit is life which itself cuts into life’;—that led and allured me to your doctrine. And truly, with my own blood I have increased my own knowledge!”
—“As the evidence indicates,” broke in Zarathustra; for still the blood was flowing down on the naked arm of the conscientious one. For there ten leeches had bitten into it.
“O you strange fellow, how much does this very evidence teach me—namely, you yourself! And not all, perhaps, might I pour into your rigorous ear!
Well then! We part here! But I would like to find you again. Up there is the way to my cave: tonight you shall there be my welcome guest!
I would gladly also make amends to your body for Zarathustra treading on you with his feet: I think about that. Just now, however, a cry of distress calls me hastily away from you.”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.