1883–1885 2026
This is an AI modernization of Thus Spoke Zarathustra into contemporary English. The original is available from Project Gutenberg. Also available as an epub.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) had been a professor of classical philology at Basel at twenty-four and had retired with bad health at thirty-four. By the early 1880s he was living on a small pension, moving between boarding houses in Switzerland and Italy, half-blind and often ill, and writing books that hardly sold. In August 1881, walking by a lake near Sils-Maria in the Swiss Alps, he had the idea he called the eternal recurrence: the thought that everything that happens will happen again, exactly the same, forever. Thus Spoke Zarathustra grew out of it. He wrote the first part in about ten days in early 1883 and published the book in four parts between 1883 and 1885. The fourth part was printed at his own expense in a few dozen copies, most of which he kept.
Zarathustra is the Persian prophet the Greeks called Zoroaster. Nietzsche chose him because, as he later explained, Zarathustra was the first to make the struggle between good and evil the engine of the world, and so he should be the first to see past it. The book is not an argument laid out in steps. It is a story told in short speeches, songs and parables: a prophet comes down from his mountain after ten years alone, tells a crowd that God is dead and that man is something that must be overcome, is laughed at, gathers a few disciples, sends them away, and climbs back up, several times, as he works toward the hardest of his ideas.
The style imitates Luther's German Bible on purpose: "Thus spoke Zarathustra" closes most of the speeches the way a refrain closes a psalm, and there are parables, beatitudes, a last supper and a donkey. The parody is the point, and much of the book is funny. Some of its terms need a word. The overman is Nietzsche's Übermensch, the higher type he says humanity should be a bridge toward; the word is kept as "overman" because the book plays it against "going under" from its first page. The will to power, the last man and the eternal recurrence are his own phrases, and each is explained by the book itself.
Nietzsche collapsed in Turin in January 1889 and spent his last eleven years unable to work. His sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, controlled his papers and shaped his reputation, later presenting him as a prophet of German nationalism; he had broken with her husband over his antisemitism. This edition is translated from Nietzsche's German, with Thomas Common's 1909 English translation consulted for sense only. Common wrote in the language of the King James Bible; the German is plainer than that, and so is this.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home and went up into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years he did not grow tired of it. But at last his heart changed — and one morning he rose with the dawn, stepped out before the sun, and spoke to it like this:
“You great star! What would your happiness be, if you did not have those you shine for?
For ten years you have come up here to my cave: you would have grown sick of your light and of this road, if not for me, my eagle, and my serpent.
But every morning we waited for you, took your overflow from you, and blessed you for it.
Look! I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey. I need hands that reach out for it.
I want to give it away and hand it out, until the wise among men are glad once again of their folly, and the poor once again of their riches.
For that I must go down into the depths, as you do in the evening when you sink behind the sea and bring your light even to the underworld, you overrich star!
Like you, I must go under, as men call it, the men to whom I want to go down.
So bless me, then, you calm eye, which can look without envy even on a happiness that is all too great!
Bless the cup that wants to overflow, so that the water may flow from it golden and carry the reflection of your delight everywhere!
Look! This cup wants to be empty again, and Zarathustra wants to be a man again.”
— Thus began Zarathustra’s going under.
Zarathustra came down the mountain alone, and no one met him. But when he came into the forest, there suddenly stood before him an old man, who had left his holy hut to look for roots in the woods. And the old man spoke to Zarathustra like this:
This wanderer is no stranger to me: many years ago he passed by here. Zarathustra was his name; but he has changed. Back then you carried your ashes up the mountain: will you carry your fire down into the valleys today? Are you not afraid of the punishment for arsonists?
Yes, I recognize Zarathustra. His eye is clear, and no disgust lurks around his mouth. Does he not walk like a dancer?
Zarathustra has changed, Zarathustra has become a child, Zarathustra is awake: what do you want now among the sleepers?
You lived in your solitude as in the sea, and the sea carried you. Woe, do you want to climb out onto the land? Woe, do you want to drag your own body around again?
Zarathustra answered: “I love mankind.”
Why, said the saint, did I go into the forest and the wilderness at all? Was it not because I loved mankind all too much?
Now I love God: mankind I do not love. Man is too imperfect a thing for me. Love of man would kill me.
Zarathustra answered: “Who said anything about love! I am bringing mankind a gift.”
Give them nothing, said the saint. Better to take something off their shoulders and carry it with them — that will do them the most good, as long as it does you good!
And if you want to give to them, give them no more than alms, and make them beg for it, too!
“No,” answered Zarathustra, “I give no alms. I am not poor enough for that.”
The saint laughed at Zarathustra and said: Then see to it that they accept your treasures! They are suspicious of hermits and do not believe that we come to give gifts.
Our footsteps sound too lonely to them as they echo through the streets. And just as when they lie in bed at night and hear a man walking about, long before the sun is up, they probably ask themselves: where is that thief going?
Do not go to men, and stay in the forest! Go to the animals instead! Why will you not be as I am — a bear among bears, a bird among birds?
“And what does the saint do in the forest?” asked Zarathustra.
The saint answered: I make songs and sing them, and when I make songs, I laugh, I weep, and I growl: that is how I praise God.
With singing, weeping, laughing, and growling I praise the God who is my god. But what do you bring us as a gift?
When Zarathustra had heard these words, he saluted the saint and said: “What could I have to give you! But let me go quickly, before I take something from you!” — And so they parted from each other, the old man and the man, laughing, just as two boys laugh.
But when Zarathustra was alone, he spoke to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old saint in his forest has not yet heard that God is dead!” —
When Zarathustra came into the nearest town, which lies at the edge of the forest, he found a great crowd of people gathered in the marketplace: for it had been announced that there would be a tightrope walker to see. And Zarathustra spoke to the people like this:
I teach you the overman. Man is something that must be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
All beings so far have created something beyond themselves: and you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and would rather go back to the beasts than overcome man?
What is the ape to man? A laughingstock, or a painful shame. And that is exactly what man shall be to the overman: a laughingstock, or a painful shame.
You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now man is more of an ape than any ape.
But even the wisest among you is only a discord, a hybrid of plant and ghost. But do I tell you to become ghosts or plants?
Look, I teach you the overman!
The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth!
I implore you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of hopes beyond the earth! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.
They are despisers of life, dying off and poisoned themselves, and the earth is weary of them: so let them go!
Once, blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and these blasphemers died with him. To blaspheme against the earth is now the most terrible thing — and to honor the bowels of the unfathomable more highly than the meaning of the earth!
Once the soul looked on the body with contempt: and in those days that contempt was the highest thing — the soul wanted the body thin, hideous, starved. In that way it thought it could slip away from the body and from the earth.
Oh, that soul was itself still thin, hideous, and starved: and cruelty was that soul’s lust!
But you too, my brothers, tell me: what does your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and filth and a wretched contentment?
Truly, man is a polluted river. One must be a sea to take in a polluted river without becoming unclean.
Look, I teach you the overman: he is this sea; in him your great contempt can go under.
What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness turns to disgust for you, and your reason and your virtue as well.
The hour when you say: “What does my happiness matter! It is poverty and filth and a wretched contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself!”
The hour when you say: “What does my reason matter! Does it crave knowledge as the lion craves its food? It is poverty and filth and a wretched contentment!”
The hour when you say: “What does my virtue matter! It has never yet made me rage. How tired I am of my good and my evil! All of that is poverty and filth and a wretched contentment!”
The hour when you say: “What does my justice matter! I do not see that I am fire and fuel. But the just man is fire and fuel!”
The hour when you say: “What does my pity matter! Is pity not the cross to which he is nailed who loves mankind? But my pity is no crucifixion.”
Have you ever spoken like this? Have you ever cried out like this? Ah, if only I had heard you cry out like this!
Not your sin — your easy satisfaction cries out to heaven; your stinginess even in your sinning cries out to heaven!
Where, then, is the lightning that would lick you with its tongue? Where is the madness you ought to be inoculated with?
Look, I teach you the overman: he is this lightning, he is this madness! —
When Zarathustra had spoken like this, someone in the crowd shouted: “We’ve heard enough about the tightrope walker; now let’s see him too!” And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the tightrope walker, who thought the words were meant for him, set to work.
But Zarathustra looked at the people and wondered. Then he spoke like this:
Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss.
A dangerous going-over, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and standing-still.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in man is that he is a going over and a going under.
I love those who do not know how to live except by going under, for they are the ones who go over.
I love the great despisers, because they are the great reverers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.
I love those who do not first look behind the stars for a reason to go under and to be a sacrifice, but who sacrifice themselves to the earth, so that the earth may one day belong to the overmen.
I love the one who lives in order to know, and who wants to know so that one day the overman may live. And so he wants his going under.
I love the one who works and invents so that he may build a house for the overman and make ready earth, animal, and plant for him: for that is how he wants his going under.
I love the one who loves his virtue: for virtue is the will to go under, and an arrow of longing.
I love the one who does not hold back a single drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: so he strides over the bridge as spirit.
I love the one who makes his virtue his bent and his fate: so for the sake of his virtue he wants to live on, and to live no longer.
I love the one who does not want too many virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for fate to hang on.
I love the one whose soul squanders itself, who wants no thanks and gives nothing back: for he always gives and does not want to keep himself.
I love the one who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favor, and who then asks: am I a cheat, then? — for he wants to perish.
I love the one who throws golden words out ahead of his deeds and always does still more than he promises: for he wants his going under.
I love the one who justifies the people of the future and redeems the people of the past: for he wants to perish of the people of the present.
I love the one who chastises his god because he loves his god: for he must perish of his god’s wrath.
I love the one whose soul is deep even in its wounds, and who can perish of a small experience: so he gladly goes over the bridge.
I love the one whose soul is so overfull that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: so all things become his going under.
I love the one who is free in spirit and free in heart: so his head is only the bowels of his heart, but his heart drives him to his going under.
I love all those who are heavy drops, falling one by one from the dark cloud that hangs over mankind: they announce that the lightning is coming, and they perish as its heralds.
Look, I am a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called overman. —
When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he looked at the people again and fell 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 smash their ears, so that they learn to hear with their eyes? Must one rattle like kettledrums and preachers of repentance? Or do they believe only a man who stammers?
They have something they are proud of. What is it they call the thing that makes them proud? They call it culture; it sets them apart from the goatherds.
That is why they do not like to hear the word ‘contempt’ spoken of themselves. So I will speak to their pride.
So I will speak to them of the most contemptible thing of all: and that is the last man.”
And Zarathustra spoke to the people like this:
It is time for man to set himself his goal. It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope.
His soil is still rich enough for it. But one day this soil will be poor and tame, and no tall tree will be able to grow from it anymore.
Woe! The time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing out beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to whir!
I tell you: you must still have chaos in you to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you.
Woe! The time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars. Woe! The time of the most contemptible man is coming, the man who can no longer hold himself in contempt.
Look! I show you the last man.
“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?” asks the last man, and blinks.
The earth has grown small by then, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His kind is as impossible to wipe out as the earth flea; the last man lives longest.
“We have invented happiness,” say the last men, and they blink.
They have left the places where it was hard to live: for they need warmth. They still love their neighbor and rub up against him: for they need warmth.
Getting sick and being suspicious count as sins to them: they go about carefully. What a fool, whoever still stumbles over stones or people!
A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And a lot of poison at the end, for a pleasant death.
They still work, for work is entertainment. But they take care that the entertainment does not tire them out.
No one becomes poor or rich anymore: both are too much bother. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too much bother.
No shepherd and one herd! Everyone wants the same thing, everyone is the same: whoever feels differently goes into the madhouse of his own accord.
“In the old days the whole world was mad,” say the most refined of them, and they blink.
They are clever and know everything that has ever happened: so there is no end to their mockery. They still quarrel, but they soon make up — otherwise it upsets the stomach.
They have their little pleasure for the day and their little pleasure for the night: but they have great respect for health.
“We have invented happiness,” say the last men, and they blink —
And here ended the first speech of Zarathustra, which is also called “the Prologue”: for at this point the shouting and glee of the crowd interrupted him. “Give us this last man, oh Zarathustra,” they cried, “make us into these last men! Then we will make you a present of the overman!” And all the people cheered and smacked their lips. But Zarathustra grew sad and said to his heart:
They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for these ears.
I must have lived too long in the mountains; I listened too much to brooks and trees: now I talk to them as if they were goatherds.
My soul is unmoved and bright as the mountains in the morning. But they think I am cold, a mocker who makes terrible jokes.
And now they look at me and laugh: and as they laugh, they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter.
But then something happened that struck every mouth dumb and fixed every eye in a stare. For in the meantime the tightrope walker had begun his performance: he had stepped out of a little door and was walking along the rope, which was stretched between two towers so that it hung over the marketplace and the people. Just as he reached the middle of his way, the little door opened once more, and a fellow in motley, dressed like a jester, sprang out and went after the first man with quick steps. “Forward, lame-foot!” cried his terrible voice. “Forward, lazybones, sneak, pasty-face! Move, or I’ll tickle you with my heel! What are you doing here between towers? The tower is where you belong — they ought to lock you up in it! You’re blocking the open road for a better man than you!” — And with every word he came closer and closer to him: but when he was only a single step behind him, the terrible thing happened that struck every mouth dumb and fixed every eye in a stare: — he let out a shriek like a devil and leaped over the man who stood in his way. But the other, when he saw his rival win like this, lost his head and the rope; he threw away his pole and shot down into the depths faster than it, a whirlwind of arms and legs. The marketplace and the people were like the sea when a storm drives into it: everyone fled apart and over one another, and most of all where the body was bound to come crashing down.
But Zarathustra stood still, and the body fell right beside him, badly smashed and broken, 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 is dragging me off to hell: will you try to stop him?”
“On my honor, friend,” answered Zarathustra, “none of the things you speak of exist: there is no devil and no hell. Your soul will be dead even sooner than your body: so fear nothing anymore!”
The man looked up at him with distrust. “If you are telling the truth,” he said then, “then I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal that has been taught to dance with blows and scraps of food.”
“Not so,” said Zarathustra. “You made danger your calling, and there is nothing in that to despise. Now you perish by your calling: for that I will bury you with my own hands.”
When Zarathustra had said this, the dying man answered no more; but he moved his hand, as if he were reaching for Zarathustra’s hand to thank him. —
Meanwhile evening came, and the marketplace hid itself in darkness: then the people drifted away, for even curiosity and terror grow tired. But Zarathustra sat on the ground beside the dead man and was lost in thought: so he forgot the time. But at last night came, and a cold wind blew over the lonely man. Then Zarathustra rose and said to his heart:
Truly, a fine catch Zarathustra made today! He caught no man, but he did catch a corpse.
Human existence is uncanny, and still without meaning: a jester can become its fate.
I want to teach people the meaning of their being: which is the overman, the lightning out of the dark cloud that is man.
But I am still far from them, and my sense does not speak to their senses. To people I am still something halfway between a fool and a corpse.
Dark is the night, dark are the ways of Zarathustra. Come, you cold and stiff companion! I will carry you to where I will bury you with my own hands.
When Zarathustra had said this to his heart, he loaded the corpse onto his back and set off on his way. And he had not yet gone a hundred steps when a man crept up to him and whispered in his ear — and look! The one who spoke was the jester from the tower. “Get away from this town, oh Zarathustra,” he said; “too many people here hate you. The good and the just hate you, and they call you their enemy and despiser; the believers of the true faith hate you, and they call you a danger to the crowd. It was your good luck that they laughed at you: and truly, you talked like a jester. It was your good luck that you made friends with the dead dog; by lowering yourself like that you saved yourself, for today. But go away from this town — or tomorrow I will leap over you, a living man over a dead one.” And when he had said this, the man disappeared; but Zarathustra walked on through the dark streets.
At the town gate the gravediggers met him: they held their torch up to his face, recognized Zarathustra, and mocked him a great deal. “Zarathustra is carrying off the dead dog: good for Zarathustra, he’s turned gravedigger! For our hands are too clean for this roast. Does Zarathustra mean to steal the devil’s mouthful? Well, go ahead! And enjoy your meal! If only the devil isn’t a better thief than Zarathustra! — he’ll steal them both, he’ll gobble them both up!” And they laughed together and put their heads together.
Zarathustra said not a word to this and went on his way. When he had walked for two hours, past forests and swamps, he had heard too much of the hungry howling of the wolves, and he grew hungry himself. So he stopped at a lonely house in which a light was burning.
Hunger falls on me like a robber, said Zarathustra. In forests and swamps my hunger falls on me, and in the deep of the night.
My hunger has strange moods. Often it comes to me only after a meal, and today it did not come all day: where has it been?
And with that Zarathustra knocked at the door of the house. An old man appeared; he carried the light and asked: “Who comes to me and to my bad sleep?”
“A living man and a dead one,” said Zarathustra. “Give me something to eat and drink; I forgot to during the day. He who feeds the hungry refreshes his own soul: so says wisdom.”
The old man went away, but came back at once and offered Zarathustra bread and wine. “This is a bad place for the hungry,” he said; “that is why I live here. Animals and people come to me, the hermit. But tell your companion to eat and drink too; he is more tired than you are.” Zarathustra answered: “My companion is dead; I doubt I can talk him into it.” “That’s no concern of mine,” said the old man grumpily; “whoever knocks at my house must take what I offer him. Eat, and fare well!” —
Then Zarathustra walked for another two hours and trusted to the path and to the light of the stars: for he was used to walking at night and loved to look everything that sleeps in the face. But when the morning grayed, Zarathustra found himself in a deep forest, and no path showed itself to him anymore. Then he laid the dead man in a hollow tree above where his head would lie — for he wanted to protect him from the wolves — and laid himself down on the ground and the moss. And at once he fell asleep, tired in body but with an unmoved soul.
Zarathustra slept a long time, and not only the dawn passed over his face but the morning as well. But at last his eye opened: in wonder Zarathustra looked into the forest and the stillness, in wonder he looked into himself. Then he rose quickly, like a seafarer who all at once sees land, and shouted for joy: for he saw a new truth. And he spoke to his heart like this:
A light has dawned on me: I need companions, and living ones — not dead companions and corpses that I carry with me wherever I want.
Rather, I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves — and to go where I want.
A light has dawned on me: let Zarathustra speak not to the people, but to companions! Zarathustra shall not become the shepherd and the dog of a herd!
To lure many away from the herd — that is what I came for. The people and the herd shall be angry with me: Zarathustra wants the shepherds to call him a robber.
Shepherds, I say, but they call themselves the good and the just. Shepherds, I say: but they call themselves the believers of the true faith.
Look at the good and the just! Whom do they hate most? The one who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker: — but he is the creator.
Look at the believers of every faith! Whom do they hate most? The one who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker: — but he is the creator.
The creator seeks companions, not corpses, and not herds and believers either. The creator seeks fellow creators, those who write new values on new tablets.
The creator seeks companions, and fellow harvesters: for everything around him stands ripe for the harvest. But he lacks the hundred sickles: so he tears off the ears of grain by hand and is annoyed.
The creator seeks companions, and those who know how to whet their sickles. They will be called destroyers and despisers of good and evil. But they are the harvesters and the celebrators.
Zarathustra seeks fellow creators; Zarathustra seeks fellow harvesters and fellow celebrators: what has he to do with herds and shepherds and corpses!
And you, my first companion, farewell! I buried you well in your hollow tree; I hid you well from the wolves.
But I am leaving you; the time is up. Between dawn and dawn a new truth came to me.
I am not to be a shepherd, nor a gravedigger. I will not even speak with the people again; for the last time I have spoken to a dead man.
I will join the creators, the harvesters, the celebrators: I will show them the rainbow and all the stairways of the overman.
I will sing my song to those who live alone and to those who live alone together; and whoever still has ears for the unheard-of, I will make his heart heavy with my happiness.
I am bound for my goal, I go my own way; over the hesitant and the dawdlers I will leap. So let my going be their going under!
Zarathustra had said this to his heart when the sun stood at noon: then he looked up questioningly — for above him he heard the sharp cry of a bird. And look! An eagle was sweeping through the air in wide circles, and a serpent hung from it, not like prey but like a friend: for she kept herself coiled around his neck.
“They are my animals!” said Zarathustra, and his heart was glad.
“The proudest animal under the sun and the shrewdest animal under the sun — they have gone out scouting.
They want to find out whether Zarathustra is still alive. Truly, am I still alive?
I found it more dangerous among men than among animals; Zarathustra walks dangerous paths. May my animals lead me!”
When Zarathustra had said this, he remembered the words of the saint in the forest, sighed, and spoke to his heart like this:
If only I were shrewder! If only I were shrewd to the very core, like my serpent!
But I am asking for the impossible: so I ask my pride instead to go always with my shrewdness!
And if one day my shrewdness leaves me — ah, it loves to fly away! — then may my pride still fly with my folly!
— Thus began Zarathustra’s going under.
Three metamorphoses of the spirit I name for you: 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, for the strong, load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwells: its strength longs for the heavy and the heaviest.
What is heavy? asks the load-bearing spirit; and so it kneels down, like the camel, and wants to be well loaded.
What is the heaviest thing, you heroes? asks the load-bearing spirit, so that I may take it upon myself and rejoice in my strength.
Is it not this: to humble yourself, in order to wound your pride? To let your folly shine out, in order to mock your wisdom?
Or is it this: to part from our cause just when it celebrates its victory? To climb high mountains in order 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 in the soul?
Or is it this: to be sick, and send the comforters home, and make friends with the deaf, who never hear what you want?
Or is it this: to step into dirty water, if it is the water of truth, and not to push away cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: to love those who despise us, and to hold out a hand to the ghost when it wants to frighten us?
All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit takes upon itself: like the camel that hurries into the desert with its load, so it hurries into its desert.
But in the loneliest desert the second metamorphosis takes place: here the spirit becomes a lion; it wants to seize freedom as its prey and be master in its own desert.
Here it seeks out its last master: it wants to become his enemy and the enemy of its last god; it wants to wrestle for victory with the great dragon.
What is the great dragon that the spirit no longer wants to call master and god? “You-shall” is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says “I will.”
“You-shall” lies in its path, glittering with gold, a scaly beast, and on every scale “You-shall!” shines in gold.
Values a thousand years old shine on these scales, and so speaks the mightiest of all dragons: “All the value of things — it shines on me.”
“All value has already been created, and all created value — that is me. Truly, there shall be no more ‘I will’!” So speaks the dragon.
My brothers, why is the lion needed in the spirit? Why is the beast of burden not enough, the one that renounces and is reverent?
To create new values — even the lion cannot yet do that: but to create freedom for itself for new creating — that the lion’s might can do.
To create freedom for itself, and a holy No even to duty: for that, my brothers, the lion is needed.
To take for itself the right to new values — that is the most terrible taking for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Truly, to such a spirit it is robbery, and the business of a beast of prey.
Once it loved the “You-shall” as its holiest thing: now it must find delusion and caprice even in the holiest, so that it may steal its freedom away from its love: it takes a lion for this robbery.
But tell me, my brothers, what can the child still do that even the lion could not? Why must the preying lion still become a child?
The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling out of itself, a first movement, a holy Yes.
Yes, for the game of creating, my brothers, a holy Yes is needed: the spirit now wills its own will; the one who was lost to the world now wins his own world.
Three metamorphoses of the spirit I have named for you: 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 was staying in the town that is called: the Motley Cow.
Zarathustra heard people praise a wise man who was said to speak well about sleep and about virtue: he was greatly honored and rewarded for it, and all the young men sat before his professor’s chair. Zarathustra went to him, and he sat before his chair with all the young men. And the wise man spoke like this:
Honor sleep, and be bashful before it! That is the first thing! And stay out of the way of all who sleep badly and lie awake at night!
Even the thief is bashful before sleep: he always steals softly through the night. But the night watchman is shameless; shamelessly he carries his horn.
Sleeping is no small art: you have to stay awake all day for it.
Ten times a day you must overcome yourself: that makes for a good tiredness, and it is poppy for the soul.
Ten times you must reconcile yourself with yourself again; for overcoming is bitterness, and the unreconciled sleep badly.
Ten truths you must find in a day: otherwise you will still be searching for truth at night, and your soul will have stayed hungry.
Ten times a day you must laugh and be cheerful: otherwise your stomach, that father of gloom, will disturb you in the night.
Few people know it: but you 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? None of that would go well with good sleep.
And even when you have all the virtues, there is still one more thing you must know how to do: send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time.
So that they do not quarrel with one another, the nice little women! And over you, you unhappy wretch!
Peace with God and with your neighbor: that is what good sleep wants. And peace even with your neighbor’s devil! Otherwise he will haunt you at night.
Honor the authorities and obey them, even the crooked authorities! That is what good sleep wants. How can I help it if power likes to walk on crooked legs?
I will always call him the best shepherd who leads his sheep to the greenest pasture: that is what goes well with good sleep.
I do not want many honors, or great treasures: that inflames the spleen. But it is hard to sleep well without a good name and a little treasure.
A little company is more welcome to me than bad company: but it must come and go at the right time. That is what goes well with good sleep.
I am also very fond of the poor in spirit: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if you always tell them they are right.
That is how the day passes for the virtuous man. And when night comes, I take good care not to summon sleep! Sleep, who is the master of the virtues, does not want to be summoned!
Instead I think over what I did and thought during the day. Chewing it over, patient as a cow, I ask myself: what, then, were your ten overcomings?
And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughs with which my heart treated itself?
As I weigh such things, rocked by forty thoughts, sleep suddenly overtakes me, the unsummoned one, the master of the virtues.
Sleep taps on my eyes: and they grow heavy. Sleep touches my mouth: and it stays open.
Truly, on soft soles he comes to me, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts from me: I stand there as stupid as this chair.
But I do not stand there for long: I am already lying down. —
When Zarathustra heard the wise man speak like this, he laughed in his heart: for a light had dawned on him. And he spoke to his heart like this:
This wise man with his forty thoughts is a fool to me: but I do believe he knows all about sleeping.
Happy already is anyone who lives near this wise man! Sleep like that is catching; it is catching even through a thick wall.
There is a magic even in his professor’s chair. And it was not for nothing that the young men sat before this preacher of virtue.
His wisdom says: stay awake in order to sleep well. And truly, if life had no meaning and I had to choose nonsense, this would be the nonsense most worth choosing for me too.
Now I understand clearly what people once looked for above all when they looked for teachers of virtue. Good sleep is what they looked for, and poppy-flowered virtues to go with it!
To all these much-praised wise men of the lecture chairs, wisdom was sleep without dreams: they knew no better meaning of life.
Even today there may well be a few like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honest: but their time is up. And they will not stand for much longer: they are already lying down.
Blessed are the sleepy ones: for they shall soon nod off. —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Once Zarathustra too cast his delusion beyond man, like all the believers in worlds behind. Back then the world seemed to me the work of a suffering and tormented god.
Back then the world seemed to me a dream, and the poem of a god; colored smoke before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one.
Good and evil and pleasure and pain and I and you — colored smoke, it seemed to me, before creative eyes. The creator wanted to look away from himself — so he created the world.
It is a drunken pleasure for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to lose himself. Drunken pleasure and losing-oneself: that is what the world once seemed to me.
This world, the eternally imperfect one, the image of an eternal contradiction, and an imperfect image — a drunken pleasure for its imperfect creator: — that is what the world once seemed to me.
So I too once cast my delusion beyond man, like all the believers in worlds behind. Beyond man in truth?
Ah, brothers, this god whom I created was man’s work and man’s madness, like all gods!
He was man, and only a poor piece of man and of the “I”: out of my own ashes and embers this ghost came to me, and truly! It did not come to me from beyond!
What happened, my brothers? I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes up the mountain; I invented a brighter flame for myself. And look! Then the ghost fled from me!
It would be suffering for me now, and torment for the one who has recovered, to believe in such ghosts: it would be suffering for me now, and humiliation. This is how I speak to the believers in worlds behind.
It was suffering and incapacity — that is what created all worlds behind; and that brief madness of happiness that only the one who suffers most experiences.
Weariness, which wants to reach the ultimate in one leap, in one death-leap; a poor, ignorant weariness that no longer even wants to want: that is what created all gods and worlds behind.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the body — it groped at the ultimate walls with the fingers of a deluded spirit.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the earth — it heard the belly of being speaking to it.
And then it wanted to push its head through the ultimate walls, and not only its head — over into “that other world.”
But “that other world” is well hidden from man, that dehumanized, inhuman world which is a heavenly nothing; and the belly of being does not speak to man at all, except as man.
Truly, all being is hard to prove and hard to get to speak. Tell me, brothers, is not the strangest of all things still the best proved?
Yes, this “I,” and the contradiction and confusion of the “I,” still speak most honestly of its being — this creating, willing, valuing “I,” which is the measure and value of things.
And this most honest being, the “I” — it speaks of the body, and it still wants the body, even when it makes poems and raves and flutters about on broken wings.
It learns to speak more and more honestly, the “I”: and the more it learns, the more words and honors it finds for the body and the earth.
My “I” taught me a new pride, and I teach it to mankind: no longer to bury your head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head, which creates the meaning of the earth!
I teach mankind a new will: to want this way that man has walked blindly, and to call it good, and no longer to slink off to the side of it, like the sick and the dying!
It was the sick and the dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the heavenly realm and the redeeming drops of blood: but even these sweet and gloomy poisons they took from the body and the earth!
They wanted to escape their misery, and the stars were too far away for them. So they sighed: “Oh, if only there were heavenly paths by which to sneak into another being and another happiness!” — so they invented their sneaking ways for themselves, and their bloody little potions!
Now they imagined themselves carried away from their body and this earth, these ingrates. Yet to whom did they owe the spasm and the bliss of their rapture? To their body and this earth.
Zarathustra is gentle with the sick. Truly, he is not angry at their kinds of comfort and ingratitude. May they become convalescents and overcomers, and create a higher body for themselves!
Nor is Zarathustra angry with the convalescent when he looks tenderly back at his delusion and creeps around the grave of his god at midnight: but to me even his tears are still sickness and a sick body.
There have always been many sickly people among those who make poems and crave God; they furiously hate the seeker of knowledge and that youngest of the virtues, which is called: honesty.
They always look back toward dark ages: then, of course, delusion and faith were a different thing; the raving of reason was likeness to God, and doubt was sin.
I know these godlike ones all too well: they want people to believe in them, and doubt to be sin. All too well I also know what they themselves believe in most.
Truly not in worlds behind and redeeming drops of blood: rather, they too believe most in the body, and their own body is their thing in itself.
But to them it is a sickly thing: and they would gladly jump out of their skin. That is why they listen to the preachers of death, and themselves preach worlds behind.
Listen instead, my brothers, to the voice of the healthy body: it is a more honest and purer voice.
More honestly and more purely speaks the healthy body, the perfect body, built square and true: and it speaks of the meaning of the earth.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
I want to say my word to the despisers of the body. I do not want them to learn differently and teach differently, but only to say farewell to their own bodies — and so fall silent.
“I am body and soul” — so the child speaks. And why should one not speak like the children?
But the awakened one, the one who knows, says: I am body entirely, and nothing besides; and soul is only a word for something about the body.
The body is a great reason, a multitude with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd.
Your little reason too, my brother, which you call “spirit,” is a tool of your body, a little tool and toy of your great reason.
“I,” you say, and you are proud of this word. But the greater thing, which you do not want to believe in, is your body and its great reason: it does not say “I,” but does “I.”
What the sense feels, what the spirit knows, never has its end in itself. But sense and spirit would like to persuade you that they are the end of all things: that is how vain they are.
Sense and spirit are tools and toys: behind them still lies the Self. The Self seeks with the eyes of the senses too; it listens with the ears of the spirit too.
The Self is always listening and seeking: it compares, compels, conquers, destroys. It rules, and is the ruler of the “I” as well.
Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage — whose name is Self. He lives in your body; he is your body.
There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. And who knows, then, why your body needs precisely your best wisdom?
Your Self laughs at your “I” and its proud leaps. “What are these leaps and flights of thought to me?” it says to itself. “A detour to my purpose. I am the leading strings of the ‘I’ and the prompter of its ideas.”
The Self says to the “I”: “Feel pain here!” And then it suffers, and thinks about how it might suffer no more — and that is exactly why it is meant to think.
The Self says to the “I”: “Feel pleasure here!” Then it is glad, and thinks about how it might often be glad again — and that is exactly why it is meant to think.
I want to say a word to the despisers of the body. It is their esteeming that makes them despise. What is it that created esteeming and despising and value and will?
The creating Self created esteeming and despising for itself; it created pleasure and pain for itself. The creating body created the spirit for itself, as a hand of its will.
Even in your folly and contempt, you despisers of the body, you serve your Self. I tell you: your Self itself wants to die, and is turning away from life.
It can no longer do what it would most like to do: — to create beyond itself. That is what it would most like to do; that is its whole fervor.
But now it has grown too late for that: — so your Self wants to go under, you despisers of the body.
Your Self wants to go under, and that is why you became despisers of the body! For you can no longer create beyond yourselves.
And that is why you are now angry with life and the earth. An unconscious envy lies in the sidelong glance of your contempt.
I do not go your way, you despisers of the body! You are no bridges to the overman for me! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
My brother, if you have a virtue, and it is your own virtue, then you have it in common with no one.
Of course, you want to call it by name and caress it; you want to tug its ear and have some fun with it.
And look! Now you have its name in common with the people, and you have become people and herd with your virtue!
You would do better to say: “Unspeakable and nameless is what makes the torment and the sweetness of my soul, and is the hunger of my very bowels as well.”
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.
So speak and stammer: “This is my good, this I love, this pleases me wholly, this alone is how I want the good.
I do not want it as a god’s law; I do not want it as a human statute or a human necessity: let it be no signpost for me to over-earths and paradises.
It is an earthly virtue that I love: there is little prudence in it, and least of all the reason of everyone.
But this bird built its nest with me: that is why I love it and hold it to my heart — now let it sit with me on its golden eggs.”
That is how 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 laid your highest goal on the heart of these passions: then they became your virtues and your passions of joy.
And whether you came from the race of the hot-tempered, or of the lustful, or of the fanatics of faith, or of the vengeful:
in the end all your passions became virtues, and all your devils angels.
Once you had wild dogs in your cellar: but in the end they turned into birds and lovely singers.
Out of your poisons you brewed your balm; you milked your cow, Gloom — now you drink the sweet milk of her udder.
And from now on nothing evil grows out of you anymore, except the evil that grows out of the struggle among your virtues.
My brother, if you are lucky, you have one virtue and no more: then you go over the bridge more easily.
It is a distinction to have many virtues, but a hard lot; and many a man has gone into the desert and killed himself because he was tired of being the battle and the battlefield of virtues.
My brother, are war and battle evil? But this evil is necessary; necessary are the envy and the mistrust and the slander among your virtues.
Look how each of your virtues craves the highest: it wants your whole spirit, so that it may be its herald; it wants your whole strength in wrath, hatred, and love.
Each virtue is jealous of the others, and jealousy is a terrible thing. Even virtues can perish of jealousy.
Whoever is ringed by the flame of jealousy will at last, like the scorpion, turn the poisoned sting against himself.
Ah, my brother, have you never yet seen a virtue slander and stab itself?
Man is something that must be overcome: and that is why you should love your virtues — for you will perish of them. —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
You do not want to kill, you judges and sacrificers, until the animal has nodded? Look, the pale criminal has nodded: out of his eye speaks the great contempt.
“My ‘I’ is something that shall be overcome: my ‘I’ is to me the great contempt for man”: that is what speaks out of this eye.
That he judged himself was his highest moment: do not let the exalted one sink back into his lowliness!
There is no redemption for one who suffers so from himself, unless it is a quick death.
Your killing, you judges, should be an act of pity and not of revenge. And as you kill, see to it that you yourselves justify life!
It is not enough that you be reconciled with the one you kill. Let your sadness be love for the overman: that is how you justify your still-being-alive!
“Enemy” you shall say, but not “villain”; “sick man” you shall say, but not “scoundrel”; “fool” you shall say, but not “sinner.”
And you, red judge, if you were to say out loud everything you have already done in your thoughts, then everyone would cry: “Away with this filth and this poisonous worm!”
But the thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed another again. The wheel of cause does not roll between them.
An image made this pale man pale. He was equal to his deed when he did it: but he could not bear its image once it was done.
Now he always saw himself as the doer of one deed. Madness, I call this: the exception turned itself, for him, into the essence.
A stroke of chalk spellbinds a hen; the stroke he struck spellbound his poor reason — madness after the deed, I call this.
Listen, you judges! There is another madness besides: and it comes before the deed. Ah, you did not crawl deep enough into this soul for me!
So says the red judge: “Why did this criminal murder? He wanted to rob.” But I tell you: his soul wanted blood, not loot: he thirsted for the bliss of the knife!
But his poor reason did not understand this madness, and talked him round. “What does blood matter!” it said. “Do you not want at least to get some loot out of it? To take some revenge?”
And he listened to his poor reason: its words lay on him like lead — so he robbed when he murdered. He did not want to be ashamed of his madness.
And now the lead of his guilt lies on him again, and again his poor reason is so stiff, so paralyzed, so heavy.
If only he could shake his head, his burden would roll off: but who will shake this head?
What is this man? A heap of diseases that reach out into the world through the spirit: there they want to seize their prey.
What is this man? A tangle of wild serpents that seldom have peace with one another — so they go off on their own and seek prey in the world.
Look at this poor body! What it suffered and craved, this poor soul interpreted for itself — it interpreted it as murderous lust and greed for the bliss of the knife.
Whoever falls sick now is overcome by the evil that is evil now: he wants to cause pain with whatever causes him pain. But there were other times, and another evil and good.
Once, doubt was evil, and the will to a self. Back then the sick man became a heretic and a witch: as heretic and witch he suffered and wanted to cause suffering.
But this will not go into your ears: it harms your good people, you tell me. But what do I care about your good people!
Much about your good people disgusts me, and truly not their evil. How I wish they had a madness to perish of, like this pale criminal!
Truly, I wish their madness were called truth, or loyalty, or justice: but they have their virtue in order to live long, and in a wretched contentment.
I am a railing beside the torrent: let whoever can grasp me, grasp me! But I am not your crutch. —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Of all that is written, I love only what someone writes with his own blood. Write with blood, and you will discover that blood is spirit.
It is not easy to understand the blood of another: I hate the idlers who read.
Whoever knows the reader does nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers — and spirit itself will stink.
That everyone may learn to read ruins, in the long run, not only writing but thinking too.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
Whoever writes in blood and in proverbs does not want to be read, but to be learned by heart.
In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that you must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks: and those they are spoken to should be great and tall.
The air thin and pure, danger near, and the spirit full of a joyful malice: these things go well together.
I want goblins around me, for I am brave. Courage that scares away ghosts makes goblins for itself — courage wants to laugh.
I no longer feel what you feel: this cloud that I see beneath me, this blackness and heaviness that I laugh at — that is exactly your thundercloud.
You look upward when you long to be lifted up. And I look down, because I am lifted up.
Which of you can laugh and be lifted up at the same time?
Whoever climbs the highest mountains laughs at all tragic plays and all tragic solemnity.
Brave, carefree, mocking, violent — that is how wisdom wants us: she is a woman, and she only ever loves a warrior.
You tell me: “Life is hard to bear.” But then why do you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?
Life is hard to bear: but do not act so delicate with me! We are all of us fine, sturdy pack donkeys, he-donkeys and she-donkeys alike.
What do we have in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew lies on its body?
It is true: we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving.
There is always some madness in love. But there is always some reason in madness, too.
And to me as well, who am fond of life, it seems that butterflies and soap bubbles, and whatever is like them among human beings, know the most about happiness.
To see these light, foolish, dainty, nimble little souls flutter about — that moves Zarathustra to tears and to songs.
I would believe only in a god who could dance.
And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, deep, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity — through him all things fall.
One kills not with anger but with laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!
I have learned to walk: since then I let myself run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not need to be pushed before I can move from the spot.
Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself, now a god dances through me.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Zarathustra’s eye had seen that a certain young man was avoiding him. And as he walked alone one evening through the mountains that surround the town called “the Motley Cow”: look, as he walked he came upon this young man, sitting leaning against a tree and gazing with tired eyes into the valley. Zarathustra took hold of the tree the young man was sitting by, and spoke like this:
If I wanted to shake this tree here with my hands, I would not be able to.
But the wind, which we do not see, torments it and bends it wherever it likes. We are bent and tormented worst of all by invisible hands.
At that the young man stood up in dismay and said: “I hear Zarathustra, and I was just now thinking of him.” Zarathustra replied:
“Why does that frighten you? — But it is with man as it is with the tree.
The more he wants to rise up into the height and the light, the more strongly his roots strive earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep — into evil.”
“Yes, into evil!” cried the young man. “How is it possible that you have discovered my soul?”
Zarathustra smiled and said: “Many a soul will never be discovered, unless it is first invented.” “Yes, into evil!” cried the young man once more.
“You spoke the truth, Zarathustra. I no longer trust myself since I have wanted to rise into the heights, and no one trusts me anymore — how does that happen?
I change too fast: my today refutes my yesterday. When I climb, I often skip the steps — and no step forgives me for that.
When I am up there, I always find myself alone. No one speaks to me; the frost of solitude makes me shiver. What do I even want in the heights?
My contempt and my longing grow together; the higher I climb, the more I despise the one who climbs. What does he even want in the heights?
How ashamed I am of my climbing and stumbling! How I mock my own violent panting! How I hate the one who flies! How tired I am in the heights!”
Here the young man fell silent. And Zarathustra looked at the tree beside which they stood, and spoke like this:
This tree stands alone here on the mountainside; it has grown high up, far above man and beast.
And if it wanted to speak, it would have no one who could understand it: so high has it grown.
Now it waits and waits — what is it waiting for? It lives too close to the seat of the clouds: perhaps it is waiting for the first lightning?
When Zarathustra had said this, the young man cried out with violent gestures: “Yes, Zarathustra, you speak the truth. It was my going under I longed for when I wanted to rise into the heights, and you are the lightning I was waiting for! Look, what am I anymore, since you appeared among us? It is envy of you that has destroyed me!” — So spoke the young man, and wept bitterly. But Zarathustra put his arm around him and led him away with him.
And when they had walked together for a while, Zarathustra began to speak like this:
It tears my heart. Better than your words can say it, your eye tells me all your danger.
You are not free yet; you are still searching for freedom. Your searching has kept you up all night and made you too wakeful.
You want to go up into the free heights; your soul thirsts for the stars. But your wicked instincts thirst for freedom too.
Your wild dogs want to be free; they bark for joy in their cellar when your spirit sets out to unlock every prison.
To me you are still a prisoner who dreams up freedom for himself: ah, the soul of such prisoners grows shrewd, but also cunning and bad.
The one who has freed his spirit still has to purify himself. Much prison and mold is still left in him: his eye still has to become pure.
Yes, I know your danger. But by my love and my hope I implore you: do not throw away your love and your hope!
You still feel noble, and the others still feel that you are noble too, the ones who resent you and send you evil looks. Know that a noble man stands in everyone’s way.
A noble man stands in the way of the good as well: and even when they call him a good man, they mean by it to push him aside.
The noble man wants to create what is new, and a new virtue. The good man wants what is old, and wants the old to be preserved.
But the danger for the noble man is not that he will become a good man, but that he will become insolent, a scoffer, a destroyer.
Ah, I have known noble men who lost their highest hope. And then they slandered all high hopes.
Then they lived insolently in brief pleasures, and hardly cast a goal beyond the day.
“Spirit is also sensual pleasure” — that is what they said. Then the wings of their spirit broke: now it crawls about and dirties whatever it gnaws.
Once they thought of becoming heroes: pleasure-seekers is what they are now. To them the hero is a grief and a horror.
But by my love and my hope I implore you: do not throw away the hero in your soul! Hold your highest hope holy! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom turning away from life must be preached.
The earth is full of the superfluous; life is spoiled by the many-too-many. May they be lured out of this life with “eternal life”!
“The yellow ones”: that is what the preachers of death are called, or “the black ones.” But I want to show them to you in other colors too.
There are the terrible ones, who carry the beast of prey around inside themselves and have no choice but lusts or tearing their own flesh. And even their lusts are a tearing of their own flesh.
They have not even become human beings yet, these terrible ones: let them preach turning away from life, and depart this life themselves!
There are the consumptives of the soul: they are hardly born before they begin to die, and they long for doctrines of weariness and renunciation.
They would gladly be dead, and we ought to approve of their will! Let us beware of waking these dead and of damaging these living coffins!
They meet a sick man or an old man or a corpse; and at once they say: “Life is refuted!”
But only they are refuted, they and their eye, which sees only the one face of existence.
Wrapped in thick melancholy, and eager for the little accidents that bring death: that is how they wait, clenching their teeth.
Or else: they reach for candy and mock their own childishness as they do it: they cling to the straw of their life and mock themselves for still clinging to a straw.
Their wisdom goes: “A fool, whoever stays alive — but such fools are we! And that is exactly the most foolish thing about life!” —
“Life is only suffering” — so say others, and they do not lie: then see to it that you stop! Then see to it that the life that is only suffering stops!
And let the teaching of your virtue be this: “You shall kill yourself! You shall steal yourself away!” —
“Lust is sin” — so say some of those who preach death — “let us step aside and father no children!”
“Giving birth is hard” — say others — “why give birth anymore? One only gives birth to the unhappy!” And they too are preachers of death.
“Pity is needed” — so say the third kind. “Take what I have! Take what I am! The less life will bind me!”
If they were pitying to the core, they would spoil life for their neighbors. To be wicked — that would be their true goodness.
But they want to get free of life: what do they care that they bind others even tighter with their chains and their gifts! —
And you too, for whom life is frantic work and unrest: are you not very tired of life? Are you not very ripe for the sermon of death?
All of you who love frantic work and what is fast, new, and strange — you can hardly bear yourselves; your hard work is flight, and the will to forget yourselves.
If you believed more in life, you would throw yourselves away less on the moment. But you do not have enough in you for waiting — not even for laziness!
Everywhere the voice of those who preach death rings out: and the earth is full of those to whom death must be preached.
Or “eternal life”: it is all the same to me — as long as they depart quickly!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
We do not want to be spared by our best enemies, nor by those we love to the core. So let me tell you the truth!
My brothers in war! I love you to the core; I am and have always been one of your kind. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth!
I know about the hatred and envy in your hearts. You are not great enough not to know hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them!
And if you cannot be saints of knowledge, then at least be its warriors for me. They are the companions and forerunners of such holiness.
I see many soldiers: if only I saw many warriors! “Uni-form,” they call what they wear: may what they hide beneath it not be uni-form!
You should be the kind whose eye is always searching for an enemy — for your enemy. And with some of you there is hatred at first sight.
You should seek your enemy, you should wage your war, and wage it for your thoughts! And if your thought is defeated, your honesty should still cry out in triumph over that!
You should love peace as a means to new wars. And the short peace more than the long.
I do not counsel you to work, but to fight. I do not counsel you to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory!
One can be silent and sit still only when one has bow and arrow: otherwise one chatters and squabbles. Let your peace be a victory!
You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I tell you: it is the good war that hallows every cause.
War and courage have done more great things than love of the neighbor. Not your pity but your bravery has so far saved the unfortunate.
What is good? you ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: “Being good is whatever is pretty and touching at the same time.”
They call you heartless: but your heart is genuine, and I love the shyness of your warmth. You are ashamed of your flood tide, and others are ashamed of their ebb.
You are ugly? Well then, my brothers! Then wrap the sublime around you, the mantle of the ugly!
And when your soul grows great, it grows arrogant, and in your sublimity there is malice. I know you.
In malice the arrogant man meets the weakling. But they misunderstand each other. I know you.
You may have only enemies who are to be hated, not enemies to be despised. You must be proud of your enemy: then your enemy’s successes are your successes too.
Rebellion — that is the nobility of the slave. Let your nobility be obedience! Let your very commanding be an obeying!
To a good warrior “you shall” sounds more pleasant than “I will.” And everything you hold dear, you should first let yourselves be commanded to.
Let your love of life be love of your highest hope: and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life!
But your highest thought you should let me command you — and it goes: man is something that must be overcome.
So live your life of obedience and of war! What does long life matter! What warrior wants to be spared!
I do not spare you, I love you to the core, my brothers in war! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not where we are, my brothers: here there are states.
State? What is that? Well then! Now open your ears to me, for now I will tell you my word about the death of peoples.
State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie crawls out of its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.”
It is a lie! It was creators who created the peoples and hung a faith and a love over them: that is how they served life.
It is destroyers who set traps for the many and call them the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.
Where there is still a people, it does not understand the state, and hates it as the evil eye and as a sin against customs and laws.
This sign I give you: every people speaks its own tongue of good and evil, which its neighbor does not understand. It invented its own language for itself in its customs and laws.
But the state lies in every tongue of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies — and whatever it has, it has stolen.
Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth, this biter. Even its bowels are false.
A confusion of tongues of good and evil: this sign I give you as the sign of the state. Truly, this sign points to the will to death! Truly, it beckons to the preachers of death!
Far too many are born: the state was invented for the superfluous!
Just look how it lures them to itself, the many-too-many! How it gulps them down, and chews them, and chews them again like cud!
“On earth there is nothing greater than I: I am the ordering finger of God” — so roars the monster. And it is not only the long-eared and the short-sighted who sink to their knees!
Ah, even in you, you great souls, it whispers its gloomy lies! Ah, it finds out the rich hearts that like to squander themselves!
Yes, it finds you out too, you conquerors of the old God! You grew weary in the struggle, and now your weariness serves even the new idol!
Heroes and honorable men it would like to set up around itself, the new idol! It loves to bask in the sunshine of good consciences — the cold monster!
It will give you everything, if you worship it, the new idol: that is how it buys the luster of your virtue and the look in your proud eyes.
It wants to use you as bait for the many-too-many! Yes, a hellish trick has been invented here, a horse of death, jingling in the finery of divine honors!
Yes, a dying for the many has been invented here, which praises itself as life: truly, a service dear to the hearts of all preachers of death!
State I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: state, where the slow suicide of all — is called “life.”
Just look at these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise: culture is what they call their theft — and everything turns to sickness and misery for them!
Just look at 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 look at these superfluous ones! They acquire riches and become poorer by them. They want power, and first of all the crowbar of power, a lot of money — these men of no means!
Watch them climb, these nimble apes! They climb over one another and so drag each other down into the mud and the depths.
They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne! Often it is mud that sits on the throne — and often the throne sits on mud, too.
Madmen they all are to me, and climbing apes, and overheated. Their idol smells foul to me, the cold monster: they all smell foul to me together, these idol-worshipers.
My brothers, do you want to suffocate in the fumes of their mouths and their cravings? Better to smash the windows and leap out into the open air!
Get out of the way of the bad smell! Go away from the idol-worship of the superfluous!
Get out of the way of the bad smell! Go away from the smoke of these human sacrifices!
The earth still stands open to great souls, even now. Many places are still empty for those who live alone and those who live alone together, places where the scent of quiet seas drifts around.
A free life still stands open to great souls. Truly, whoever possesses little is all the less possessed: praised be a little poverty!
There, where the state ends, there the human being who is not superfluous first begins: there begins the song of the necessary, the one and only, irreplaceable tune.
There, where the state ends — look over there, my brothers! Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the overman? —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you deafened by the noise of the great men and stung all over by the stings of the little ones.
Forest and rock know how to keep a dignified silence with you. Be like the tree again that you love, the broad-branched one: silent and listening, it hangs over the sea.
Where solitude ends, the marketplace begins; and where the marketplace begins, there begins the noise of the great actors too, and the buzzing of the poisonous flies.
In the world even the best things are still worth nothing without someone to stage them first: the people call these stagers great men.
The people understand little of what is great, that is: what creates. But they have a nose for all the stagers and actors of great things.
Around the inventors of new values the world turns: — it turns invisibly. But around the actors turn the people and fame: that is the way of the world.
The actor has spirit, but little conscience of the spirit. He always believes in whatever makes others believe most strongly — makes them believe in him!
Tomorrow he has a new faith, and the day after tomorrow a newer one. He has quick senses, like the people, and a changeable nose for the weather.
To bowl people over — that, to him, means to prove. To drive them wild — that, to him, means to convince. And blood counts with him as the best of all reasons.
A truth that slips only into fine ears he calls a lie and a nothing. Truly, he believes only in gods who make a great noise in the world!
The marketplace is full of solemn jesters — and the people boast of their great men! To them these are the masters of the hour.
But the hour presses them: so they press you. And they want a Yes or a No from you too. Woe, would you set your chair between For and Against?
Do not be jealous of these absolute and pushy ones, you lover of truth! Truth has never yet hung on the arm of an absolute man.
Because of these sudden ones, go back into your safety: only in the marketplace is one ambushed with Yes? or No?
All deep wells experience slowly: they must wait a long time before they know what has fallen into their depths.
Everything great happens far from the marketplace and from fame: the inventors of new values have always lived far from the marketplace and from fame.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung all over by poisonous flies. Flee to where a rough, strong wind blows!
Flee into your solitude! You have lived too close to the small and the wretched. Flee from their invisible revenge! Toward you they are nothing but revenge.
Do not raise your arm against them anymore! They are countless, and it is not your lot to be a fly swatter.
Countless are these small and wretched ones; and raindrops and weeds have already been the downfall of many a proud building.
You are not a stone, but already you have been hollowed out by many drops. Many drops will yet make you crack and burst apart.
I see you worn out by poisonous flies, I see you scratched bloody in a hundred places; and your pride will not even get angry.
They want blood from you in all innocence; their bloodless souls crave blood — and so they sting, in all innocence.
But you deep one, you suffer too deeply even from small wounds; and before you have even healed, the same poisonous worm has crawled over your hand.
You are too proud, to my mind, to kill these sweet-toothed nibblers. But take care that it does not become your doom to bear all their poisonous injustice!
They buzz around you with their praise, too: their praise is pushiness. They want to be near your skin and your blood.
They flatter you as one flatters a god or a devil; they whimper before you as before a god or a devil. What does it matter! They are flatterers and whimperers, and nothing more.
Often, too, they show themselves to you as lovable. But that has always been the shrewdness of cowards. Yes, cowards are shrewd!
They think a great deal about you with their narrow souls — you are always questionable to them! Everything that is much questioned becomes questionable.
They punish you for all your virtues. From the bottom of their hearts they forgive you only — your mistakes.
Because you are gentle and just in mind, you say: “They are not to blame for their small existence.” But their narrow souls think: “All great existence is to blame.”
Even when you are gentle with them, they still feel despised by you; and they repay your good turns with hidden ill turns.
Your wordless pride always goes against their taste; they rejoice if for once you are modest enough to be vain.
Whatever we recognize in a person, we also set alight in him. So beware of the small ones!
Before you they feel small, and their lowness smolders and glows against you in invisible revenge.
Did you not notice how often they fell silent when you came up to them, and how their strength went out of them like smoke from a dying fire?
Yes, my friend, you are the bad conscience of your neighbors: for they are unworthy of you. So they hate you and would like to suck your blood.
Your neighbors will always be poisonous flies; what is great in you — that itself must make them more poisonous and ever more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude, and to where a rough, strong wind blows. It is not your lot to be a fly swatter. —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
I love the forest. It is bad to live in the cities: there are too many people there who are in heat.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a woman in heat?
And just look at these men: their eye says it — they know nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman.
There is mud at the bottom of their souls; and woe, if their mud has spirit in it as well!
If only you were at least perfect as animals! But innocence belongs to the animal.
Do I advise you to kill your senses? I advise the innocence of the senses.
Do I advise chastity? With some, chastity is a virtue, but with many it is almost a vice.
These people abstain, no doubt: but the bitch Sensuality looks out with envy from everything they do.
Even up into the heights of their virtue and right into the cold spirit, this beast follows them, and its discontent with it.
And how nicely the bitch Sensuality knows how to beg for a piece of spirit when she is refused a piece of meat!
You love tragedies and everything that breaks the heart? But I am suspicious of your bitch.
Your eyes are too cruel for my liking, and you look lustfully at those who suffer. Has your lust not merely put on a disguise and called itself pity?
And I give you this parable too: not a few who wanted to drive out their devil went into the swine themselves.
Whoever finds chastity hard should be advised against it, so that it does not become the road to hell — that is, to the mud and heat of the soul.
Do I speak of dirty things? To me that is not the worst.
It is not when the truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the seeker of knowledge is reluctant to step into its water.
Truly, there are people who are chaste to the core: they are gentler of heart, they laugh more gladly and more richly than you.
They laugh at chastity too, and ask: “What is chastity!
Is chastity not folly? But this folly came to us, and not we to it.
We offered this guest a roof and a heart: now he lives with us — let him stay as long as he likes!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
“There is always one too many around me” — so thinks the hermit. “Always one times one — in the long run that makes two!”
I and Me are always too deep in conversation: how could it be endured if there were no friend?
For the hermit the friend is always the third: the third is the cork that keeps the conversation of the two from sinking into the depths.
Ah, there are too many depths for all hermits. That is why they long so for a friend and for his height.
Our faith in others betrays what we would like to have faith in, in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
And often with love one only wants to leap over envy. And often one attacks and makes oneself an enemy, to hide that one can be attacked.
“At least be my enemy!” — so speaks true reverence, which does not dare to ask for friendship.
If you want to have a friend, you must also be willing to wage war for him: and to wage war, you must be able to be an enemy.
You should honor even the enemy in your friend. Can you step right up close to your friend without stepping over to his side?
In your friend you should have your best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.
You want to wear no clothes in front of your friend? It is supposed to honor your friend that you give yourself to him just as you are? But he wishes you to the devil for it!
Whoever hides nothing of himself gives offense: that is how much reason you have to fear nakedness! Yes, if you were gods, then you might be ashamed of your clothes!
You cannot dress yourself up beautifully enough for your friend: for you are to be an arrow for him, and a longing for the overman.
Have you ever watched your friend asleep — to find out what he looks like? What else is the face of your friend? It is your own face, in a rough and imperfect mirror.
Have you ever watched your friend asleep? Were you not frightened that your friend looks like that? Oh, my friend, man is something that must be overcome.
In guessing and in keeping silent the friend should be a master: you must not want to see everything. Your dream should tell you what your friend does when he is awake.
Let your pity be a guessing: so that you first know whether your friend wants pity. Perhaps what he loves in you is the unbroken eye and the gaze of eternity.
Let your pity for your friend hide under a hard shell; you should break a tooth on it. That way it will have its delicacy and its sweetness.
Are you pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to your friend? Many a man cannot loosen his own chains, and yet he is his friend’s redeemer.
Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.
For all too long a slave and a tyrant were hidden in woman. That is why woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.
In woman’s love there is injustice and blindness toward everything she does not love. And even in woman’s knowing love there is still always ambush and lightning and night beside the light.
Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats, and birds. Or, at best, cows.
Woman is not yet capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, which of you is capable of friendship?
Oh, your poverty, you men, and the stinginess of your souls! As much as you give your friend, I will give even to my enemy, and will not have grown any poorer by it.
There is comradeship: may there be friendship!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Zarathustra saw many lands and many peoples: and so he discovered the good and evil of many peoples. Zarathustra found no greater power on earth than good and evil.
No people could live without first esteeming; but if it wants to preserve itself, it must not esteem as its neighbor esteems.
Much that one people called good, another called scorn and disgrace: so I found it. Much I found called evil here, and there decked out in purple honors.
Never did one neighbor understand another: his soul always marveled at his neighbor’s madness and wickedness.
A tablet of goods hangs over every people. Look, it is the tablet of its overcomings; look, it is the voice of its will to power.
Whatever it finds hard, it counts as praiseworthy; whatever is indispensable and hard is called good; and whatever frees it even from the direst need, the rare thing, the hardest of all — that it praises as holy.
Whatever makes it rule and conquer and shine, to the horror and envy of its neighbor: that it counts as the high, the first, the measure, the meaning of all things.
Truly, my brother, once you have recognized a people’s need and land and sky and neighbor, you can surely guess the law of its overcomings, and why it climbs this ladder toward its hope.
“You shall always be the first and stand out above the others: your jealous soul shall love no one, except the friend” — this made the soul of a Greek tremble: and so he walked his path of greatness.
“To speak the truth and to be good with bow and arrow” — this seemed at once dear and hard to that people from whom my name comes — the name that is at once dear and hard to me.
“To honor father and mother and to do their will down to the root of the soul”: this tablet of overcoming another people hung up over itself, and became mighty and eternal by it.
“To practice loyalty, and for loyalty’s sake to stake honor and blood even on wicked and dangerous causes”: by teaching itself this, another people mastered itself, and by mastering itself this way it became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.
Truly, human beings gave themselves all their good and evil. Truly, they did not take it, they did not find it, it did not fall to them as a voice from heaven.
It was man who first put values into things, to preserve himself — he was the first to create a meaning for things, a human meaning! That is why he calls himself “man”, which means: the esteemer.
Esteeming is creating: hear it, you creators! Esteeming itself is the treasure and the jewel of all esteemed things.
Only through esteeming is there value: and without esteeming, the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, you creators!
A change of values — that is a change of the creators. Whoever must be a creator always destroys.
At first the creators were peoples, and only later individuals; truly, the individual himself is still the youngest creation.
Peoples once hung a tablet of the good over themselves. Love that wants to rule and love that wants to obey created such tablets together.
The pleasure in the herd is older than the pleasure in the “I”: and as long as the good conscience is called herd, only the bad conscience says: I.
Truly, the cunning “I”, the loveless one, that wants its own advantage in the advantage of the many: that is not the origin of the herd, but its going under.
It was always lovers and creators who created good and evil. The fire of love glows in the names of all the virtues, and the fire of wrath.
Zarathustra saw many lands and many peoples: Zarathustra found no greater power on earth than the works of the lovers: “good” and “evil” is their name.
Truly, the power of this praising and blaming is a monster. Tell me, brothers, who will subdue it for me? Tell me, who will throw the fetter over the thousand necks of this beast?
There have been a thousand goals so far, for there have been a thousand peoples. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still missing, the one goal is missing. Humanity still has no goal.
But tell me, my brothers: if humanity still lacks a goal, is it not also still lacking — humanity itself? —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
You crowd around your neighbor and have fine words for it. But I tell you: your love of the neighbor is your bad love of yourselves.
You flee to your neighbor to get away from yourselves, and you would like to make a virtue of it: but I see through your “selflessness”.
The “you” is older than the “I”; the “you” has been declared holy, but not yet the “I”: so man crowds toward his neighbor.
Do I advise love of the neighbor? I would sooner advise flight from the neighbor and love of the farthest!
Higher than love of the neighbor is love of the farthest and of the future; higher still than love of human beings is love of things and of ghosts.
This ghost that runs on ahead of you, my brother, is more beautiful than you; why do you not give it your flesh and your bones? But you are afraid, and you run to your neighbor.
You cannot stand yourselves, and you do not love yourselves enough: so now you want to seduce your neighbor into loving you, and gild yourselves with his mistake.
I wish you could not stand all sorts of neighbors and the people next door to them; then you would have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves.
You invite a witness when you want to speak well of yourselves; and when you have seduced him into thinking well of you, you think well of yourselves.
It is not only the one who speaks against what he knows who lies, but even more the one who speaks against what he does not know. And that is how you speak of yourselves when you go into company, and you deceive your neighbor with yourselves.
This is what the fool says: “Mixing with people ruins the character, especially if you have none.”
The one goes to his neighbor because he is looking for himself, and the other because he would like to lose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes your solitude a prison.
It is the more distant ones who pay for your love of the neighbor; and as soon as there are five of you together, a sixth must always die.
I do not love your festivals either: I found too many actors there, and even the spectators often behaved like actors.
I do not teach you the neighbor, but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the overman.
I teach you the friend and his overfull heart. But you must know how to be a sponge, if you want to be loved by overfull hearts.
I teach you the friend in whom the world stands complete, a bowl of the good — the creating friend, who always has a complete world to give away.
And as the world rolled apart for him, so it rolls together again for him in rings, as the becoming of good through evil, as the becoming of purposes out of chance.
Let the future and the farthest be the cause of your today: in your friend you shall love the overman as your cause.
My brothers, I do not advise love of the neighbor: I advise love of the farthest.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Do you want to go into isolation, my brother? Do you want to seek the way to yourself? Wait a little longer, and listen to me.
“Whoever seeks easily gets lost himself. All isolation is guilt”: so says the herd. And you belonged to the herd for a long time.
The voice of the herd will still ring in you too. And when you say, “I no longer share one conscience with you,” it will be a lament and a pain.
Look, this pain itself was born of that one conscience: and the last glimmer of that conscience still glows on your gloom.
But you want to go the way of your gloom, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your right and your strength for it!
Are you a new strength and a new right? A first movement? A wheel rolling out of itself? Can you also compel stars to revolve around you?
Ah, there is so much lusting after the heights! There are so many convulsions of the ambitious! Show me that you are not one of the lustful and the ambitious!
Ah, there are so many great thoughts that do no more than a bellows: they puff things up and make them emptier.
You call yourself free? I want to hear your ruling thought, and not that you have escaped from a yoke.
Are you one who was allowed to escape a yoke? There is many a man who threw away his last value when he threw away his servitude.
Free from what? What does Zarathustra care about that! But your eye should tell me clearly: free for what?
Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good, and hang your will over yourself like a law? Can you be your own judge, and the avenger of your law?
It is a terrible thing to be alone with the judge and avenger of your own law. That is how a star is flung out into empty space and into the icy breath of being alone.
Today you still suffer from the many, you single one: today you still have all your courage, and your hopes.
But one day solitude will make you weary, one day your pride will bow and your courage gnash its teeth. One day you will cry out: “I am alone!”
One day you will no longer see your heights, and see your lowness all too near; your very sublimity will frighten you like a ghost. One day you will cry out: “Everything is false!”
There are feelings that want to kill the solitary one; if they do not succeed, well, then they themselves must die! But are you capable of that — of being a murderer?
Do you know yet, my brother, the word “contempt”? And the torment of your justice, to be just to those who despise you?
You force many to change their minds about you; they hold that hard against you. You came near them and yet went on past: that they will never forgive you.
You go up beyond them: but the higher you climb, the smaller you look to the eye of envy. But the one who flies is hated most of all.
“How could you be just to me!” — you must say — “I choose your injustice as the share allotted to me.”
They throw injustice and dirt at the solitary one: but, my brother, if you want to be a star, you must shine on them no less for that!
And beware of the good and the just! They like to crucify those who invent their own virtue for themselves — they hate the solitary one.
Beware of holy simplicity too! Everything that is not simple is unholy to it; it also likes to play with fire — the fire of the stake.
And beware too of the fits of your love! The solitary one is too quick to hold out his hand to whoever he meets.
There are people to whom you must not give your hand, but only your paw: and I want your paw to have claws as well.
But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you yourself lie in wait for yourself in caves and forests.
Solitary one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way leads past yourself, and past your seven devils!
You will be a heretic to yourself, and a witch and a soothsayer and a fool and a doubter and an unholy one and a villain.
You must be willing to burn yourself up in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes!
Solitary one, you are going the way of the creator: you want to create a god for yourself out of your seven devils!
Solitary one, you are going the way of the lover: you love yourself, and that is why you despise yourself, as only lovers despise.
The lover wants to create, because he despises! What does he know of love who did not have to despise precisely what he loved!
Go into your isolation with your love and with your creating, my brother; and only late will justice come limping after you.
Go into your isolation with my tears, my brother. I love the one who wants to create beyond himself, and so perishes. —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
“Why do you creep so timidly through the twilight, Zarathustra? And what are you hiding so carefully under your cloak?
Is it a treasure someone gave you? Or a child that was born to you? Or are you now walking the ways of thieves yourself, you friend of the wicked?” —
Truly, my brother! said Zarathustra, it is a treasure that was given to me: it is a little truth that I am carrying.
But it is as unruly as a young child; and if I do not hold its mouth shut, it screams far too loudly.
As I was going my way alone today, at the hour when the sun sinks, a little old woman met me and spoke like this to my soul:
“Zarathustra has said many things to us women too, but he has never spoken to us about woman.”
And I answered her: “About woman, one should speak only to men.”
“Speak to me too about woman,” she said; “I am old enough to forget it again at once.”
And I obliged the little old woman and spoke to her like this:
Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: it is called pregnancy.
For woman, man is a means: the end is always the child. But what is woman for man?
The real man wants two things: danger and play. That is why he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.
Man should be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: everything else is folly.
Fruits that are all too sweet — the warrior does not like them. That is why 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 real man a child is hidden: it wants to play. Come, you women, discover the child in man for me!
Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine, like a precious stone, lit by the virtues of a world that does not yet exist.
Let the ray of a star shine in your love! Let your hope be called: “May I give birth to the overman!”
Let there be courage in your love! With your love you shall go after the one who makes you afraid!
Let your honor be in your love! Otherwise woman understands little about honor. But let this be your honor: always to love more than you are loved, and never to be second.
Let man fear woman when she loves: then she makes every sacrifice, and every other thing counts as worthless to her.
Let man fear woman when she hates: for at the bottom of his soul man is only evil, but woman there is bad.
Whom does woman hate most? — Thus spoke the iron to the magnet: “I hate you most, because you attract me, but are not strong enough to pull me to you.”
Man’s happiness is called: I will. Woman’s happiness is called: he will.
“Look, just now the world has become perfect!” — so thinks every woman when she obeys out of whole love.
And woman must obey, and find a depth for her surface. Woman’s nature is surface, a restless, stormy skin over shallow water.
But man’s nature is deep; his current roars in underground caves: woman senses his power, but does not grasp it. —
Then the little old woman answered me: “Zarathustra has said many nice things, especially for those who are young enough for them.
It is strange: Zarathustra knows little about women, and yet he is right about them! Does this happen because with woman nothing is impossible?
And now take a little truth by way of thanks! After all, I am old enough for it!
Wrap it up and hold its mouth shut: otherwise it will scream far too loudly, this little truth.”
“Woman, give me your little truth!” I said. And the little old woman spoke like this:
“You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
One day Zarathustra had fallen asleep under a fig tree, because it was hot, and he had laid his arms over his face. Then an adder came and bit him in the neck, so that Zarathustra cried out in pain. When he had taken his arm from his face, he looked at the serpent: and it recognized the eyes of Zarathustra, writhed awkwardly, and tried to get away. “Not so,” said Zarathustra; “you have not yet accepted my thanks! You woke me in time; my way is still long.” “Your way is short now,” said the adder sadly; “my poison kills.” 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 give it to me as a gift.” Then the adder fell on his neck once more and licked his wound.
When Zarathustra told this story to his disciples one day, they asked: “And what, oh Zarathustra, is the moral of your story?” Zarathustra answered them like this:
The good and the just call me the destroyer of morals: my story is immoral. —
But if you have an enemy, do not repay him evil with good: for that would put him to shame. Instead, prove that he has done you some good.
And rather be angry than put anyone to shame! And when you are cursed, I do not like it when you want to bless in return. Better to join in the cursing a little!
And if a great wrong has been done to you, then quickly do five little wrongs on top of it! It is a horrible sight, the one who is weighed down by the wrong alone.
Did you know this already? A wrong shared is half a right. And the one who can bear the wrong should take it on himself!
A little revenge is more human than no revenge at all. And if the punishment is not also a right and an honor for the one who transgresses, then I do not like your punishing either.
It is nobler to put yourself in the wrong than to insist on being right, especially when you are right. Only, you must be rich enough for it.
I do not like your cold justice; and out of the eye of your judges there always looks at me the executioner and his cold steel.
Tell me, where is the justice to be found that is love with seeing eyes?
Then invent for me the love that bears not only all punishment but also all guilt!
Then invent for me the justice that acquits everyone, except the one who judges!
Do you want to hear this too? In the one who wants to be just down to the ground, even the lie becomes a kindness to mankind.
But how could I want to be just down to the ground! How can I give each his own! Let this be enough for me: I give each my own.
Finally, my brothers, beware of doing wrong to any hermit! How could a hermit forget! How could he repay!
A hermit is like a deep well. It is easy to throw a stone into it; but once it has sunk to the bottom, tell me, who will bring it out again?
Beware of insulting the hermit! But if you have done it, well then, kill him too!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
I have a question for you alone, my brother: like a sounding lead I cast this question into your soul, so that I may know how deep it is.
You are young and you wish for a child and marriage. But I ask you: are you a man who is allowed to wish for a child?
Are you the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the commander of your senses, the master of your virtues? That is what I ask you.
Or is it the animal and need that speak out of your wish? Or loneliness? Or discord with yourself?
I want your victory and your freedom to long for a child. You shall build living monuments to your victory and your liberation.
You shall build beyond yourself. But first you must be built yourself, square and true in body and soul.
You shall not only plant yourself onward, but upward! May the garden of marriage help you to do it!
You shall create a higher body, a first motion, a wheel rolling out of itself — you shall create a creator.
Marriage: that is what I call the will of two to create the one that is more than those who created it. Reverence for each other, as for those who will such a will — that is what I call marriage.
Let this be the meaning and the truth of your marriage. But what the many-too-many call marriage, these superfluous ones — ah, what shall I call that?
Ah, this poverty of the soul for two! Ah, this filth of the soul for two! Ah, this wretched contentment for two!
Marriage, they call all this; and they say their marriages are made in heaven.
Well, I do not like it, this heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, these animals tangled together in heaven’s net!
And let the god keep far from me, too, who comes limping up to bless what he did not join together!
Do not laugh at such marriages! What child would not have reason to weep over its parents?
This man seemed worthy to me, and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a madhouse, a home for the senseless.
Yes, I wish the earth would shake in convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with each other.
This one set out like a hero in search of truths, and in the end he carried off as his prize a little dressed-up lie. His marriage, he calls it.
That one was standoffish with people and choosy in his choosing. But all at once he spoiled his company once and for all: his marriage, he calls it.
That one looked for a maid with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the maid of a woman, and now he would need to become an angel on top of it.
I have found all buyers careful, and all of them have cunning eyes. But even the most cunning of them still buys his wife in a sack, sight unseen.
Many short follies — that is what you call love. And your marriage puts an end to many short follies, as one long stupidity.
Your love for woman, and woman’s love for man: ah, if only it were pity for suffering and veiled gods! But mostly two animals sniff each other out.
But even your best love is only an ecstatic parable and a painful fire. It is a torch that should light your way to higher paths.
One day you shall love beyond yourselves! So first learn to love! And that is why you had to drink the bitter cup of your love.
There is bitterness in the cup of even the best love: that is how it stirs longing for the overman, that is how it stirs thirst in you, the creator!
Thirst in the creator, arrow and longing for the overman: tell me, my brother, is this your will to marriage?
Holy, I call such a will and such a marriage. —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Many die too late, and some die too early. The teaching still sounds strange: “Die at the right time!”
Die at the right time: that is what Zarathustra teaches.
Of course, if someone never lives at the right time, how could he ever die at the right time? If only he had never been born! — That is my advice to the superfluous.
But even the superfluous still make a great show of their dying, and even the hollowest nut still wants to be cracked.
Everyone takes dying seriously: but death is not yet a festival. People have not yet learned how to consecrate the most beautiful festivals.
I show you the death that fulfills, which becomes a spur and a pledge to the living.
The one who fulfills his life dies his death victorious, surrounded by people who hope and people who pledge.
That is how one should learn to die; and there should be no festival at which such a dying man does not consecrate the oaths of the living!
To die like that is best; but the second best is to die in battle and squander a great soul.
But hateful alike to the fighter and to the victor is your grinning death, which creeps up like a thief — and yet comes as master.
I praise to you my death, the free death, which comes to me because I will it.
And when will I will it? — Whoever 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 no more withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life.
Truly, I do not want to be like the rope-makers: they draw out their thread longer and longer, and all the while they themselves keep walking backward.
Many a man also grows too old for his truths and his victories; a toothless mouth no longer has the right to every truth.
And everyone who wants fame must take leave of honor in good time, and practice the difficult art of knowing, at the right time, how to — go.
You must stop letting yourself be eaten when you taste best: that is something known by those who want to be loved for a long time.
There are sour apples, of course, whose lot is to wait until the last day of autumn: and they become ripe, yellow, and wrinkled all at once.
In some the heart grows old first, and in others the spirit. And some are gray-haired in their youth: but young late stays young long.
For many a man, life turns out badly: a poison worm eats its way into his heart. Then let him see to it that his dying turns out all the better.
Many a man never grows sweet; he is already rotting in summer. It is cowardice that holds him fast to his branch.
Far too many live, and far too long they hang on their branches. If only a storm would come and shake all this rotten and worm-eaten stuff from the tree!
If only preachers of quick death would come! Those would be the right storms for me, the right shakers of the trees of life! But I hear only slow death preached, and patience with everything “earthly”.
Ah, you preach patience with the earthly? It is this earthly that has too much patience with you, you blasphemers!
Truly, that Hebrew died too early whom the preachers of slow death honor: and it has been the doom of many since then that he died too early.
He knew only tears as yet, and the melancholy of the Hebrew, together with the hatred of the good and the just — the Hebrew Jesus: and then the longing for death came over him.
If only he had stayed in the wilderness, far from the good and the just! Perhaps he would have learned to live and learned to love the earth — and to laugh as well!
Believe me, my brothers! He died too early; he himself would have taken back his teaching if he had lived to my age! He was noble enough to take it back!
But he was still unripe. Unripe is the young man’s love, and unripe, too, is his hatred of man and earth. His heart and the wings of his spirit are still tethered and heavy.
But in the grown man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less melancholy: he understands death and life better.
Free for death and free in death, a holy No-sayer when it is no longer time for Yes: that is how he understands death and life.
That your dying may be no blasphemy against man and earth, my friends: that is what I ask of the honey of your soul.
In your dying your spirit and your virtue should still glow, like a sunset glow around the earth: or else your dying has turned out badly.
That is how I want to die myself, so that you, my friends, will love the earth more for my sake; and I want to become earth again, so that I may have rest in her who bore me.
Truly, Zarathustra had a goal, he threw his ball: now you, my friends, are the heirs of my goal, to you I throw the golden ball.
More than anything I love to see you, my friends, throwing the golden ball! And so I linger a little while longer on the earth: forgive me the lingering!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
When Zarathustra had taken leave of the town his heart had grown fond of, whose name is “the Motley Cow” — many who called themselves his disciples followed him and kept him company on his way. So they came to a crossroads: there Zarathustra told them that from now on he wanted to go alone; for he was a friend of going alone. But at parting his disciples handed him a staff, on whose golden handle a serpent coiled around the sun. Zarathustra was glad of the staff and leaned on it; then he spoke to his disciples like this:
Tell me, then: how did gold come to have the highest value? Because it is uncommon and useless and gleaming and gentle in its luster; it always gives itself away.
Only as an image of the highest virtue did gold come to have the highest value. The glance of the giver gleams like gold. The gleam of gold makes peace between moon and sun.
The highest virtue is uncommon and useless, it is gleaming and gentle in its luster: a gift-giving virtue is the highest virtue.
Truly, I can guess what you are, my disciples: like me, you strive for the gift-giving virtue. What would you have in common with cats and wolves?
This is your thirst, to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves: and that is why you have the thirst to heap up all riches in your soul.
Your soul strives insatiably for treasures and jewels, because your virtue is insatiable in its wanting to give away.
You force all things to come to you and into you, so that they may flow back out of your well as the gifts of your love.
Truly, such gift-giving love must become a robber of all values; but whole and holy, I call this selfishness.
There is another selfishness, an all-too-poor one, a hungry one, which always wants to steal: that selfishness of the sick, the sick selfishness.
With the eye of a thief it looks at everything that gleams; with the greed of hunger it sizes up the one who has plenty to eat; and it is always creeping around the table of the givers.
Sickness speaks out of such craving, and an invisible degeneration; the thieving greed of this selfishness speaks of an ailing body.
Tell me, my brothers: what do we count as bad, and the worst of all? Is it not degeneration? — And we always suspect degeneration where the gift-giving soul is missing.
Our way goes upward, from our kind over to an overkind. But a horror to us is the degenerate mind that says: “Everything for me.”
Our mind flies upward: so it is a parable of our body, a parable of an elevation. The names of the virtues are parables of such elevations.
So the body goes through history, a becoming and a fighting thing. And the spirit — what is it to the body? The herald of its fights and victories, their companion and their echo.
All the names of good and evil are parables: they do not speak out, they only hint. He is a fool who wants knowledge from them!
Pay attention, my brothers, to every hour when your spirit wants to speak in parables: that is where your virtue has its origin.
Then your body is exalted and risen; with its delight it enraptures the spirit, so that the spirit becomes a creator and a valuer and a lover and a benefactor of all things.
When your heart surges broad and full like the river, a blessing and a danger to those who live along its banks: that is where your virtue has its origin.
When you are lifted above praise and blame, and your will wants to command all things, as the will of one who loves: that is where your virtue has its origin.
When you despise what is comfortable and the soft bed, and cannot make your bed far enough away from the soft: that is where your virtue has its origin.
When you are the willers of a single will, and this turning point of all need is what you call your necessity: that is where your virtue has its origin.
Truly, it is a new good and evil! Truly, a new deep rushing, and the voice of a new spring!
It is power, this new virtue; it is a ruling thought, and around it a shrewd soul: a golden sun, and around it the serpent of knowledge.
Here Zarathustra fell silent for a while and looked lovingly at his disciples. Then he went on speaking like this: — and his voice had changed.
Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue! Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth! So I beg and implore you.
Do not let it fly away from the earthly and beat its wings against eternal walls! Ah, there has always been so much virtue that flew away!
Lead the virtue that flew away back to the earth, as I do — yes, back to body and life: so that it may give the earth its meaning, a human meaning!
A hundred times so far both spirit and virtue have flown astray and grasped wrong. Ah, all this delusion and blundering still lives in our body now: there it has become body and will.
A hundred times so far both spirit and virtue have tried and strayed. Yes, man was an experiment. Ah, much ignorance and error has become body in us!
Not only the reason of millennia — their madness, too, breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir.
We are still fighting step by step with the giant Chance, and over all of humanity until now nonsense has ruled — the meaningless.
Let your spirit and your virtue serve the meaning of the earth, my brothers: and let the value of all things be set anew by you! That is why you shall be fighters! That is why you shall be creators!
Through knowing, the body purifies itself; experimenting with knowledge, it elevates itself; to the seeker of knowledge all drives become holy; to the one who is elevated the soul becomes joyful.
Physician, heal yourself: in that way you will heal your patient too. Let this be his best help, that he sees with his own eyes the one who makes himself whole.
There are a thousand paths that have never yet been walked; a thousand healths and hidden islands of life. Man and man’s earth are still unexhausted and undiscovered.
Keep watch and listen, you solitary ones! From the future come winds with secret beating of wings; and good news goes out to fine ears.
You solitary ones of today, you who withdraw, you shall one day be a people: from you who have chosen yourselves a chosen people shall grow: — and from it the overman.
Truly, the earth shall yet become a place of healing! And already a new scent lies around it, a scent that brings salvation — and a new hope!
When Zarathustra had said these words, he fell silent, like one who has not said his last word; for a long time he weighed the staff doubtfully in his hand. At last he spoke like this: — and his voice had changed.
I go alone now, my disciples! You too go away now, and alone! This is how I want it.
Truly, I advise you: go away from me and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he 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 always remains only a pupil. And why will you not pluck at my wreath?
You revere me; but what if one day your reverence topples over? Take care that a statue does not strike you dead!
You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what does Zarathustra matter! You are my believers: but what do any believers matter!
You had not yet sought yourselves: then you found me. That is what all believers do; that is why all faith amounts to so little.
Now I bid you 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 will then seek my lost ones; with another love I will then love you.
And one day you shall have become my friends, and children of one hope: then I will be with you for the third time, to celebrate the great noon with you.
And this is the great noon: when man stands at the middle of his course between beast and overman, and celebrates his way to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the way to a new morning.
Then the one who goes under will bless himself for being one who goes over; and the sun of his knowledge will stand at noon for him.
“Dead are all gods: now we want the overman to live.” — let this one day, at the great noon, be our last will! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
“— and only when you have all denied me will I return to you. Truly, with other eyes, my brothers, I will then seek my lost ones; with another love I will then love you.”
Zarathustra, “On the Gift-Giving Virtue”
After this Zarathustra went back into the mountains and into the solitude of his cave, and withdrew from people, waiting like a sower who has scattered his seed. But his soul grew full of impatience and of longing for those he loved: for he still had much to give them. For this is the hardest thing of all: to close the open hand out of love, and to keep a sense of shame as a giver.
So months and years passed for the solitary one; but his wisdom grew, and it caused him pain with its fullness.
But one morning he woke even before the dawn, lay thinking for a long time on his bed, and at last spoke to his heart:
Why was I so frightened in my dream that I woke up? Did not a child come to me, carrying a mirror?
“Oh 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 was shaken: for it was not myself I saw there, but a devil’s grimace and sneering laughter.
Truly, I understand the dream’s sign and warning all too well: my teaching is in danger; weeds want to be called wheat!
My enemies have grown powerful and have distorted the image of my teaching, so that those dearest to me must be ashamed of the gifts I gave them.
I have lost my friends; the hour has come for me to seek my lost ones! —
With these words Zarathustra sprang up, but not like a frightened man gasping for air — rather like a seer and a singer whom the spirit seizes. His eagle and his serpent looked at him in wonder: for a coming happiness lay on his face like the dawn.
What has happened to me, my animals? — said Zarathustra. Am I not transformed? Did bliss not come to me like a whirlwind?
My happiness is foolish, and it will say foolish things: it is still too young — so be patient with it!
I am wounded by my happiness: let all who suffer be my physicians!
I may go down to my friends again, and to my enemies too! Zarathustra may speak and give again, and do the dearest thing for those he loves!
My impatient love overflows in torrents, downward, toward the sunrise and the sunset. Out of silent mountains and thunderstorms of pain my soul rushes roaring into the valleys.
Too long I longed and gazed into the distance. Too long I belonged to solitude: so I have forgotten how to be silent.
I have become mouth through and through, and the roar of a brook from high cliffs: I want to hurl my speech down into the valleys.
And let my torrent of love plunge where there is no path! How could a torrent not find its way to the sea at last!
There is a lake in me, it is true, a hermit lake, sufficient to itself; but my torrent of love sweeps it along with it, down — to the sea!
I walk new ways, a new speech comes to me; like all creators, I have grown tired of the old tongues. My spirit no longer wants to walk on worn-out soles.
All speaking runs too slowly for me: — into your chariot I leap, storm! And even you I will whip with my malice!
Like a cry and a shout of joy I will sail over wide seas, until I find the Blessed Isles where my friends dwell: —
And my enemies among them! How I love everyone now to whom I may simply speak! My enemies too belong to my bliss.
And when I want to mount my wildest horse, it is always my spear that helps me up best: it is my foot’s ever-ready servant: —
The spear that I hurl at my enemies! How grateful I am to my enemies that at last I may hurl it!
The tension in my cloud was too great: between the laughter of the lightning I will throw showers of hail into the depths.
Mightily my chest will heave then, mightily it will blow its storm over the mountains: so it will find relief.
Truly, my happiness and my freedom come like a storm! But my enemies shall believe that the evil one is raging over their heads.
Yes, you too, my friends, will be frightened by my wild wisdom; and perhaps you will run away from it, along with my enemies.
Ah, if only I knew how to lure you back with shepherds’ flutes! Ah, if only my lioness Wisdom would learn to roar tenderly! And we have already learned much together!
My wild wisdom grew pregnant on lonely mountains; on rough stones she gave birth to her young, her youngest.
Now she runs foolishly through the hard desert, and seeks and seeks for soft grass — my old wild wisdom!
On the soft grass of your hearts, my friends! — on your love she would like to bed her dearest one!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
The figs are falling from the trees, they are good and sweet; and as they fall, their red skins split. I am a north wind to ripe figs.
So, like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends: now drink their juice and their sweet flesh! It is autumn all around, and clear sky, and afternoon.
Look, what fullness there is around us! And out of this overflow it is beautiful to gaze out at distant seas.
Once people said God when they gazed out at distant seas; but now I have taught you to say: overman.
God is a conjecture; but I want your conjecturing to reach no further than your creating will.
Could you create a god? — Then do not speak to me of any gods! But you could well create the overman.
Not you yourselves, perhaps, my brothers! But you could re-create yourselves into fathers and forefathers of the overman: and let this be your best creating! —
God is a conjecture: but I want your conjecturing to be bounded by what can be thought.
Could you think a god? — But let this be what the will to truth means to you: that everything be transformed into what is humanly thinkable, humanly visible, humanly feelable! You shall think your own senses through to the end!
And what you have called the world, that must first be created by you: your reason, your image, your will, your love shall itself become it! And truly, for your bliss, you seekers of knowledge!
And how would you bear life without this hope, you seekers of knowledge? You could not have been born into the incomprehensible, nor into the irrational.
But to open my heart to you completely, my friends: if there were gods, how could I bear not to be a god! Therefore there are no gods.
I drew the conclusion, it is true; but now it draws me. —
God is a conjecture: but who could drink all the torment of this conjecture without dying? Shall the creator be robbed of his faith, and the eagle of his soaring in eagle-distances?
God is a thought that makes everything straight crooked, and everything that stands spin. What? Time would be gone, and everything that passes away only a lie?
To think this is a whirling and a dizziness to human bones, and a vomiting to the stomach besides: truly, I call it the spinning sickness, to conjecture such a thing.
I call it evil and hostile to man: all this teaching of the One and the Full and the Unmoved and the Sated and the Imperishable!
Everything imperishable — that is only a parable! And the poets lie too much. —
But the best parables should speak of time and becoming: they should be a praise and a justification of everything that passes away!
Creating — that is the great redemption from suffering, and what makes life light. But for the creator to come to be, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.
Yes, there must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators! So you are advocates and justifiers of everything that passes away.
For the creator to be himself the child that is newly born, he must also want to be the one who gives birth, and the pain of the one who gives birth.
Truly, I have gone my way through a hundred souls, and through a hundred cradles and birth pangs. I have taken many a farewell already; I know the heartbreaking last hours.
But so my creating will wills it, my fate. Or, to tell you more honestly: it is just such a fate that — my will wills.
Everything in me that feels suffers and is in prisons: but my willing always comes to me as my liberator and bringer of joy.
Willing liberates: that is the true teaching about will and freedom — so Zarathustra teaches it to you.
No-longer-willing and no-longer-esteeming and no-longer-creating! ah, may this great weariness always stay far from me!
In knowing, too, I feel only my will’s joy in begetting and becoming; and if there is innocence in my knowledge, this happens because the will to beget is in it.
This will lured me away from God and gods; what would there be to create, after all, if there were — gods!
But to man it drives me again and again, my ardent will to create; so it drives the hammer to the stone.
Ah, you human beings, an image sleeps for me in the stone, the image of my images! Ah, that it has to sleep in the hardest, ugliest stone!
Now my hammer rages cruelly against its prison. Pieces fly from the stone like dust: what do I care?
I want to finish it: for a shadow came to me — the stillest and lightest of all things once came to me!
The beauty of the overman came to me as a shadow. Ah, my brothers! What do they still matter to me — the gods! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
My friends, a mocking word has reached your friend: “Just look at Zarathustra! Does he not walk among us as if among animals?”
But it is better said like this: “The seeker of knowledge walks among human beings as among animals.”
To the seeker of knowledge, however, man himself is called: the animal with red cheeks.
How did that happen to him? Is it not because he has had to be ashamed too often?
Oh my friends! So speaks the seeker of knowledge: shame, shame, shame — that is the history of man!
And that is why the noble man commands himself not to put others to shame: he commands himself to feel shame before everyone who suffers.
Truly, I do not like them, the merciful, who are blessed in their pity: they are too lacking in shame.
If I must be pitying, I still do not want to be called so; and if I am, then preferably from a distance.
I also like to cover my head and run away before I am recognized: and I bid you do the same, my friends!
May my fate always lead those who do not suffer across my path, like you, and those with whom I may share hope and meal and honey!
Truly, I have done this and that for those who suffer: but I always seemed to myself to be doing something better when I learned to enjoy myself better.
For as long as there have been human beings, man has enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin!
And if we learn to enjoy ourselves better, that is the best way to unlearn hurting others and thinking up hurts.
That is why I wash the hand that helped the sufferer; that is why I wipe off my soul as well.
For I was ashamed to have seen the sufferer suffering, ashamed for the sake of his shame; and when I helped him, I trespassed harshly on his pride.
Great obligations do not make people grateful, but vengeful; and if the small kindness is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.
“Be reluctant to accept! Honor someone by accepting!” — that is my advice to those who have nothing to give away.
But I am a giver: I give gladly, as a friend to friends. But strangers and the poor may pick the fruit from my tree themselves: that puts them less to shame.
But beggars ought to be done away with altogether! Truly, it is annoying to give to them, and annoying not to give to them.
And the same goes for sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: the bites of conscience teach people to bite.
But the worst thing of all is small thoughts. Truly, better to have done evil than to have thought small!
Of course you say: “Our pleasure in small acts of malice spares us many a great evil deed.” But here one should not want to be sparing.
The evil deed is like a boil: it itches and scratches and breaks out — it speaks honestly.
“Look, I am sickness” — so speaks the evil deed; that is its honesty.
But the small thought is like a fungus: it creeps and crouches and wants to be nowhere — until the whole body is rotten and withered with little fungi.
But to the one who is possessed by a devil I whisper this word into his ear: “Better still, raise your devil up big! For you too there is still a way to greatness!” —
Ah, my brothers! We know a little too much about everyone! And many a person becomes transparent to us, but that is still far from meaning we can pass through him.
It is hard to live with human beings, because keeping silent is so hard.
And it is not to the one who repels us that we are most unjust, but to the one who does not concern us at all.
But if you have a friend who suffers, be a resting place for his suffering, but a hard bed, as it were, a camp bed: that is how you will serve him best.
And if a friend does you wrong, say: “I forgive you what you did to me; but that you did it to yourself — how could I forgive that!”
So speaks all great love: it overcomes even forgiveness and pity.
One should keep a firm hold on one’s heart; for if one lets it go, how soon the head goes running off too!
Ah, where in the world have greater follies happened than among the pitying? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the pitying?
Woe to all lovers who do not yet have a height that is above their pity!
Thus spoke the devil to me once: “Even God has his hell: it is his love of man.”
And recently I heard him say this word: “God is dead; God died of his pity for man.” —
So be warned against pity: from there a heavy cloud is still coming to mankind! Truly, I know how to read the signs of the weather!
But mark this word too: all great love is above all its pity: for it wants — to create what it loves!
“I offer myself to my love, and my neighbor as myself” — that is how all creators speak.
But all creators are hard. —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
And once Zarathustra gave his disciples a sign and spoke these words to them:
“Here are priests: and even though they are my enemies, pass by them quietly, with your swords asleep!
Among them too there are heroes; many of them have suffered too much —: so they want to make others suffer.
They are bad enemies: nothing is more vengeful than their humility. And whoever attacks them easily soils himself.
But my blood is related to theirs; and I want my blood honored even in theirs.” —
And when they had passed by, pain seized Zarathustra; and he had not wrestled long with his pain when he began to speak like this:
These priests grieve me. They also go against my taste; but that matters least to me, since I have been among human beings.
But I suffer and have suffered with them: to me they are prisoners and marked men. The one they call Redeemer has put them in chains: —
In chains of false values and delusion-words! Ah, if only someone would redeem them from their Redeemer!
They once thought they had landed on an island when the sea was tossing them about; but look, it was a sleeping monster!
False values and delusion-words: these are the worst monsters for mortals — long does doom sleep and wait in them.
But at last it comes and wakes and eats and swallows whatever built itself huts on it.
Oh, just look at these huts that these priests have built themselves! Churches, they call their sweet-smelling caves.
Oh, this falsified light, this swampy air! Here, where the soul, up toward its height — may not fly!
Instead, their faith commands: “Up the stairs on your knees, you sinners!”
Truly, I would rather see even the shameless than the twisted eyes of their shame and devotion!
Who created such caves and stairs of penance for themselves? Was it not those who wanted to hide and were ashamed before the clear sky?
And only when the clear sky looks in again through broken roofs, and down on grass and red poppies by broken walls — will I turn my heart again to the places of this god.
They called God whatever opposed them and hurt them: and truly, there was much of the hero in their worship!
And they knew no other way to love their god than by nailing man to the cross!
They meant to live as corpses, they dressed their corpses in black; even from their speeches I still smell the foul spice of burial vaults.
And whoever lives near them lives near black ponds, out of which the toad sings its song with sweet profundity.
They would have to sing me better songs for me to learn to believe in their Redeemer: his disciples would have to look more redeemed to me!
I would like to see them naked: for beauty alone should preach penance. But whom will this muffled-up gloom ever persuade!
Truly, their redeemers themselves did not come from freedom and freedom’s seventh heaven! Truly, they themselves never walked on the carpets of knowledge!
The spirit of these redeemers was made of gaps; but into every gap they had put their delusion, their gap-filler, which they called God.
Their spirit had drowned in their pity, and when they swelled and overswelled with pity, a great folly always floated to the top.
Eagerly and with shouting they drove their herd over their footbridge: as if there were only one footbridge to the future! Truly, these shepherds too still belonged among the sheep!
These shepherds had small spirits and roomy souls: but, my brothers, what small countries even the roomiest souls have been until now!
They wrote signs of blood on the way they walked, and their folly taught that truth is proved with blood.
But blood is the worst witness to truth; blood poisons even the purest teaching into delusion and hatred of the heart.
And if someone walks through fire for his teaching — what does that prove! It is more, truly, when one’s own teaching comes out of one’s own burning!
A sultry heart and a cold head: where these meet, the roaring wind arises, the “Redeemer.”
Truly, there have been greater ones and higher-born ones than those the people call redeemers, these sweeping, roaring winds!
And you must be redeemed, my brothers, by still greater ones than all the redeemers were, if you want to find the way to freedom!
There has never yet been an overman. I have seen both of them naked, the greatest man and the smallest man: —
They are still all too similar to each other. Truly, even the greatest I found — all too human!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
One must speak with thunder and heavenly fireworks to slack and sleeping senses.
But the voice of beauty speaks softly: it steals only into the most awakened souls.
Softly my shield trembled and laughed for me today; that is the holy laughing and trembling of beauty.
It was at you, you virtuous ones, that my beauty laughed today. And its voice came to me like this: “They still want — to be paid!”
You still want to be paid, you virtuous ones! You want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and the eternal for your today?
And now you are angry with me because I teach that there is no rewarder and no paymaster? And truly, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward.
Ah, this is my sorrow: reward and punishment have been lied into the ground of things — and now into the ground of your souls as well, you virtuous ones!
But like the snout of the boar my word shall tear open the ground of your souls; I want to be a plowshare to you.
All the secrets of your ground shall come to light; and when you lie rooted up and broken in the sun, your lie too will have been sorted out from your truth.
For this is your truth: you are too clean for the filth of the words: revenge, punishment, reward, retribution.
You love your virtue as a mother loves her child; but when did anyone hear of a mother who wanted to be paid for her love?
Your virtue is your dearest Self. The ring’s thirst is in you: every ring struggles and turns to reach itself again.
And every work of your virtue is like a star that dies out: its light is always still on its way and wandering — and when will it no longer be on its way?
So the light of your virtue is still on its way, even when the work is done. Let the work be forgotten and dead: its ray of light still lives and wanders.
That your virtue should be your Self and not something foreign, a skin, a cloak: that is the truth from the ground of your soul, you virtuous ones! —
But there are, to be sure, those for whom virtue means the cramp under a whip: and you have listened too much to their crying!
And there are others who call it virtue when their vices grow lazy; and when their hatred and their jealousy stretch their limbs for once, their “justice” wakes up and rubs its sleepy eyes.
And there are others who are dragged downward: their devils drag them. But the deeper they sink, the more fiercely their eye glows, and their craving for their god.
Ah, their crying too has reached your ears, you virtuous ones: “What I am not, that, that is God and virtue to me!”
And there are others who come along heavy and creaking, like wagons carrying stones downhill: they talk a great deal of dignity and virtue — they call their brake virtue!
And there are others who are like everyday clocks that have been wound up; they go tick-tock and want tick-tock to be called — virtue.
Truly, these give me my delight: wherever I find such clocks, I will wind them up with my mockery; and they shall purr for me while I do it!
And others are proud of their handful of justice, and for its sake commit outrages against all things: so that the world is drowned in their injustice.
Ah, how badly the word “virtue” dribbles out of their mouths! And when they say, “I am just,” it always sounds like, “I am just getting even!”
With their virtue they want to scratch out their enemies’ eyes; and they lift themselves up only to bring others down.
And then again there are those who sit in their swamp and speak out of the reeds like this: “Virtue — that means sitting still in the swamp.
We bite no one, and we get out of the way of anyone who wants to bite; and in all things we hold the opinion that is given to us.”
And then again there are those who love gestures and think: virtue is a kind of gesture.
Their knees are always worshiping, and their hands are hymns of praise to virtue, but their heart knows nothing of it.
And then again there are those who think it is virtue to say: “Virtue is necessary”; but at bottom they believe only that the police are necessary.
And many a man who cannot see what is high in people calls it virtue that he sees what is low in them all too closely: so he calls his evil eye virtue.
And some want to be edified and set upright, and call it virtue; and others want to be knocked over — and call that virtue too.
And in this way almost everyone believes he has a share in virtue; and at the very least, each one wants to be an expert on “good” and “evil.”
But Zarathustra did not come to say to all these liars and fools: “What do you know of virtue! What could you know of virtue!” —
But rather so that you, my friends, might grow weary of the old words you have learned from the fools and liars:
Grow weary of the words “reward,” “retribution,” “punishment,” “revenge in justice” —
Grow weary of saying: “What makes an action good is that it is selfless.”
Ah, my friends! That your Self be in the action as the mother is in the child: let that be your word for virtue!
Truly, I have taken from you a hundred words or so, and your virtue’s dearest toys; and now you are angry with me, the way children are angry.
They were playing by the sea — then the wave came and swept their toys away into the deep: now they cry.
But the same wave shall bring them new toys and pour out new colorful shells before them!
So they will be comforted; and like them, you too, my friends, shall have your comforts — and new colorful shells! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Life is a fountain of joy; but where the rabble drinks too, all wells are poisoned.
I am fond of everything clean; but I do not like to see the grinning mouths and the thirst of the unclean.
They cast their eye down into the well: now their repulsive smile gleams up at me out of the well.
They have poisoned the holy water with their lechery; and when they called their dirty dreams joy, they poisoned even the words.
The flame turns sullen when they lay their damp hearts on the fire; the spirit itself bubbles and smokes wherever the rabble steps up to the fire.
In their hands the fruit turns sickly sweet and overripe: their gaze makes the fruit tree windfallen and withered at the crown.
And many a man who turned away from life turned away only from the rabble: he did not want to share well and flame and fruit with the rabble.
And many a man who went into the desert and suffered thirst among beasts of prey only did not want to sit around the cistern with filthy camel drivers.
And many a man who came along like a destroyer, and like a hailstorm to every field of grain, only wanted to set his foot in the rabble’s jaws and so stop up its throat.
And the mouthful that choked me most was not knowing that life itself needs enmity and dying and crosses of torture: —
But rather, I once asked, and almost suffocated on my question: what? Does life need the rabble too?
Are poisoned wells needed, and stinking fires, and soiled dreams, and maggots in the bread of life?
Not my hatred but my disgust gnawed hungrily at my life! Ah, I often grew weary of the spirit when I found even the rabble rich in spirit!
And I turned my back on the rulers when I saw what they now call ruling: haggling and bargaining for power — with the rabble!
I lived among peoples with a foreign tongue, with my ears shut: so that the tongue of their haggling and their bargaining for power would stay foreign to me.
And holding my nose, I walked in ill humor through all of yesterday and today: truly, all of yesterday and today stinks of the scribbling rabble!
Like a cripple who has gone deaf and blind and dumb: that is how I lived for a long time, so as not to live with the power-rabble and the scribble-rabble and the pleasure-rabble.
My spirit climbed stairs with effort, and with caution; alms of joy were its refreshment; life crept along on a stick for the blind man.
What was it, then, that happened to me? How did I redeem myself from disgust? Who made my eye young again? How did I fly up to the height where no rabble sits at the well anymore?
Did my disgust itself create wings for me, and powers that can divine where springs are hidden? Truly, I had to fly to the very highest to find the fountain of joy again!
Oh, I have found it, my brothers! Here in the highest the fountain of joy wells up for me! And there is a life the rabble does not drink from too!
You flow almost too violently for me, spring of joy! And often you empty the cup again by wanting to fill it!
And I must still learn to approach you more modestly: my heart still flows toward you all too violently: —
My heart, on which my summer burns, my short, hot, melancholy, overblissful summer: how my summer heart longs for your coolness!
Gone, the lingering gloom of my spring! Over, the malice of my snowflakes in June! I have become summer entirely, and summer noon!
A summer in the highest, with cold springs and blissful stillness: oh come, my friends, so that the stillness may become more blissful still! For this is our height and our home: we live here too high and too steep for all the unclean and their thirst. Just cast your pure eyes into the fountain of my joy, you friends! How could that make it cloudy? It shall laugh back at you with its purity.
On the tree called Future we build our nest; eagles shall bring food in their beaks to us solitary ones!
Truly, no food that the unclean would be allowed to share! They would think they were eating fire, and burn their mouths!
Truly, we keep no homes ready here for the unclean! Our happiness would be an ice cave to their bodies and to their spirits!
And like strong winds we want to live above them, neighbors to the eagles, neighbors to the snow, neighbors to the sun: that is how strong winds live.
And like a wind I will one day blow among them, and with my spirit take the breath from their spirit: that is what my future wills.
Truly, Zarathustra is a strong wind to all lowlands; and this advice he advises to his enemies and to everything that spits and spews: beware of spitting against the wind!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Look, this is the tarantula’s den! Do you want to see her yourself? Here hangs her web: touch it, so that it trembles.
Here she comes, willingly: welcome, tarantula! Black on your back sits your triangle, your emblem; and I know too what sits in your soul.
Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite, black scabs grow; with revenge your poison makes the soul whirl!
So I speak to you in a parable, you who make souls whirl, you preachers of equality! To me you are tarantulas, secretly vengeful ones!
But I will drag your hiding places into the light soon enough: that is why I laugh my laughter of the heights in your faces.
That is why I tear at your web, so that your rage may lure you out of your den of lies, and your revenge may leap out from behind your word “justice.”
For that man may be redeemed from revenge: that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
But the tarantulas, of course, want it otherwise. “What we call justice is precisely this: that the world be filled with the storms of our revenge” — so they talk with one another.
“We will take revenge on all who are not equal to us, and heap abuse on them” — so the tarantula hearts vow to one another.
“And ‘will to equality’ — that itself shall from now on be the name for virtue; and against everything that has power we will raise our outcry!”
You preachers of equality, it is the tyrant-madness of impotence that cries out of you like this for “equality”: your most secret tyrant-lusts disguise themselves like this in virtue-words!
Embittered conceit, pent-up envy, perhaps your fathers’ conceit and envy: it bursts out of you as a flame and a madness of revenge.
What the father kept silent about comes out speaking in the son; and I have often found the son to be the father’s secret laid bare.
They look like the inspired: but it is not the heart that inspires them — it is revenge. And when they grow refined and cold, it is not the spirit but envy that makes them refined and cold.
Their jealousy leads them onto the paths of thinkers too; and this is the mark of their jealousy — they always go too far: so that in the end their weariness has to lie down and sleep on the snow.
Revenge rings out of every one of their complaints, there is a wish to hurt in every one of their praises; and being judges seems like bliss to them.
But this is my advice to you, my friends: mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is powerful!
They are people of a bad kind and a bad descent; the hangman and the bloodhound look out of their faces.
Mistrust all those who talk a great deal about their justice! Truly, it is not only honey that their souls lack.
And when they call themselves “the good and the just,” do not forget that nothing stands between them and the Pharisee except — power!
My friends, I do not want to be mixed up with others or mistaken for them.
There are those who preach my teaching about life: and at the same time they are preachers of equality, and tarantulas.
That they speak up for life, even though they sit in their den, these poison spiders, turned away from life: the reason is that they want to hurt with it.
They want to hurt those who have power now: for among them the preaching of death is still most at home.
If it were otherwise, the tarantulas would teach otherwise: and it was precisely they who were once the best slanderers of the world and burners of heretics.
I do not want to be mixed up with these preachers of equality or mistaken for them. For this is how justice speaks to me: “People are not equal.”
Nor shall they become so! What would my love of the overman be, if I spoke otherwise?
On a thousand bridges and footpaths they shall throng toward the future, and ever more war and inequality shall be set between them: that is how my great love makes me speak!
They shall become inventors of images and ghosts in their hostilities, and with their images and ghosts they shall yet fight the highest fight against one another!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all the names of values: they shall be weapons, and clanging marks of this, that life must overcome itself again and again!
Life itself wants to build itself up into the heights with pillars and steps: it wants to gaze into far distances and out toward blissful beauties — that is why it needs height!
And because it needs height, it needs steps, and the contradiction between the steps and those who climb them! Life wants to climb, and in climbing to overcome itself.
And just look at this, my friends! Here, where the tarantula’s den is, the ruins of an old temple rise up — just look at them with enlightened eyes!
Truly, whoever once piled his thoughts up toward the sky in stone here knew the secret of all life as well as the wisest!
That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and more-than-power: he teaches us that here in the plainest parable.
How divinely vault and arch break against each other here, in a wrestling match: how they strive against each other with light and shadow, these divine strivers —
Let us be enemies like this too, my friends, sure and beautiful! Let us strive divinely against one another! —
Woe! Now the tarantula has bitten me myself, my old enemy! Divinely sure and beautiful, she bit me on the finger!
“There must be punishment and justice” — so she thinks: “he shall not sing songs here in honor of enmity for nothing!”
Yes, she has taken her revenge! And woe! now with revenge she will make my soul whirl too!
But so that I do not whirl, my friends, tie me fast here to this pillar! I would rather be a pillar saint than a whirlwind of vengefulness!
Truly, Zarathustra is no twister and no whirlwind; and if he is a dancer, he is never a tarantula dancer! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
You have served the people and the people’s superstition, all you famous wise men! — and not the truth! And that is exactly why they paid you reverence.
And that is also why they put up with your unbelief: because it was a joke and a detour on the way to the people. That is how the master lets his slaves have their way, and even enjoys their high spirits.
But the one the people hate as the dogs hate a wolf: that is the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-worshiper, the one who makes his home in the forests.
To hunt him out of his hiding place — the people have always called that a “sense of what is right”: against him they still set their sharpest-toothed dogs.
“For the truth is there: after all, the people are there! Woe, woe to those who seek!” — so it has rung out from the beginning.
You wanted to justify your people in their reverence: that you called the “will to truth,” you famous wise men!
And your heart always said to itself: “I came from the people: from there the voice of God came to me as well.”
Stiff-necked and shrewd, like the donkey, you have always been the people’s advocates.
And many a powerful man who wanted to fare well with the people harnessed in front of his horses — a little donkey, a famous wise man.
And now, you famous wise men, I wish you would at last throw off the lion’s skin entirely!
The skin of the beast of prey, the spotted, motley one, and the shaggy mane of the researcher, the seeker, the conqueror!
Ah, for me to learn to believe in your “truthfulness,” you would first have to break your reverent will.
Truthful — that is what I call the one who goes into godless deserts and has broken his reverent heart.
In the yellow sand, burned by the sun, he may well squint thirstily over at the islands rich in springs, where living things rest under dark trees.
But his thirst does not persuade him to become like these comfortable ones: for where there are oases, there are idols too.
Hungry, violent, solitary, godless: that is how the lion-will wants itself to be.
Free from the happiness of serfs, redeemed from gods and worship, fearless and fearsome, great and solitary: that is the will of the truthful.
The truthful, the free spirits, have always lived in the desert, as the desert’s masters; but in the cities live the well-fed, famous wise men — the draft animals.
For they always pull, as donkeys pull — the people’s cart!
Not that I am angry with them for that: but to me they remain servants and creatures in harness, even when their harness gleams with gold.
And often they were good servants, worthy of praise. For this is how virtue speaks: if you must be a servant, look for the one whom your service profits most!
“Your master’s spirit and virtue shall grow because you are his servant: so you yourself will grow along with his spirit and his virtue!”
And truly, you famous wise men, you servants of the people! You yourselves have grown along with the people’s spirit and virtue — and the people through you! I say this to your credit!
But to me you remain the people even in your virtues, the people with dull eyes — the people who do not know what spirit is!
Spirit is the life that itself cuts into life: by its own torment it increases its own knowledge — did you know that already?
And the spirit’s happiness is this: to be anointed and consecrated with tears as the sacrificial animal — did you know that already?
And the blindness of the blind man, and his seeking and groping, shall yet bear witness to the power of the sun he looked into — did you know that already?
And the seeker of knowledge shall learn to build with mountains! It is a small thing for the spirit to move mountains — did you know that already?
You know only the sparks of the spirit: but you do not see the anvil that it is, nor the cruelty of its hammer!
Truly, you do not know the spirit’s pride! But still less could you bear the spirit’s modesty, if it ever wanted to speak!
And never yet have you been allowed to throw your spirit into a pit of snow: you are not hot enough for that! And so you do not know the raptures of its coldness either.
But in everything you are too familiar with the spirit; and you have often turned wisdom into a poorhouse and a hospital for bad poets.
You are no eagles: so you have never experienced the happiness in the terror of the spirit either. And whoever is not a bird should not make his camp above abysses.
To me you are lukewarm: but all deep knowledge flows cold. Ice-cold are the innermost wells of the spirit: a refreshment to hot hands and to those who take things in hand.
There you stand, respectable and stiff and with straight backs, you famous wise men! — no strong wind and no strong will drives you.
Have you never seen a sail go over the sea, rounded and swelling and trembling before the fury of the wind?
Like the sail, trembling before the fury of the spirit, my wisdom goes over the sea — my wild wisdom!
But you servants of the people, you famous wise men — how could you go with me! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
It is night: now all the leaping fountains speak more loudly. And my soul too is a leaping fountain.
It is night: only now do all the songs of lovers awake. And my soul too is the song of a lover.
Something unstilled, unstillable is in me; it wants to be heard. A craving for love is in me, and it speaks the very language of love.
I am light: ah, that I were night! But this is my solitude, that I am girded round with light.
Ah, that I were dark and of the night! How I would suck at the breasts of light!
And I would bless even you, you little twinkling stars and glowworms up there! — and be blessed in your gifts of light.
But I live in my own light; I drink back into myself the flames that break out of me.
I do not know the happiness of those who take; and I have often dreamed that stealing must be more blessed still than taking.
This is my poverty, that my hand never rests from giving; this is my envy, that I see waiting eyes and the lit-up nights of longing.
Oh, the misery of all who give! Oh, the eclipse of my sun! Oh, the craving to crave! Oh, the ravenous hunger in fullness!
They take from me: but do I still touch their soul? There is a gulf between giving and taking; and the smallest gulf is the last to be bridged.
A hunger grows out of my beauty: I would like to hurt those I shine for, I would like to rob those I have given gifts to: — that is how I hunger for malice.
Pulling back my hand when another hand already reaches out to it; hesitating like the waterfall that hesitates even as it plunges: — that is how I hunger for malice.
Such revenge my fullness devises; such spite wells up out of my solitude.
My happiness in giving died in giving; my virtue grew weary of itself in its overflow!
Whoever always gives is in danger of losing his shame; whoever always hands out has calluses on hand and heart from sheer handing out.
My eye no longer overflows at the shame of those who beg; my hand has grown too hard to feel the trembling of hands that have been filled.
Where have the tears of my eye gone, and the down of my heart? Oh, the solitude of all who give! Oh, the silence of all who shine!
Many suns circle in empty space: to everything that is dark they speak with their light — to me they are silent.
Oh, this is the hostility of light toward what shines: without mercy it travels its paths.
Unjust in its deepest heart toward what shines, cold toward suns — so travels every sun.
Like a storm the suns fly along their paths: that is their traveling. They follow their own relentless will: that is their coldness.
Oh, it is only you, you dark ones, you creatures of the night, who make warmth out of what shines! Oh, only you drink milk and comfort from the udders of light!
Ah, there is ice around me, my hand is burned by what is icy! Ah, there is thirst in me that pines for your thirst!
It is night: ah, that I must be light! And thirst for what belongs to the night! And solitude!
It is night: now my longing breaks out of me like a spring — I long to speak.
It is night: now all the leaping fountains speak more loudly. And my soul too is a leaping fountain.
It is night: only now do all the songs of lovers awake. And my soul too is the song of a lover. —
Thus sang Zarathustra.
One evening Zarathustra was walking through the forest with his disciples; and as he was looking for a well, look, he came upon a green meadow quietly ringed by trees and bushes, and on it girls were dancing together. As soon as the girls recognized Zarathustra, they stopped dancing; but Zarathustra stepped up to them with a friendly gesture and spoke these words:
“Do not stop dancing, you lovely girls! No spoilsport has come to you with an evil eye, no enemy of girls.
I am God’s advocate before the devil: and the devil is the spirit of gravity. How could I, you light ones, be an enemy of divine dances? Or of girls’ feet with pretty ankles?
It is true that I am a forest and a night of dark trees: but whoever is not afraid of my darkness will also find slopes of roses under my cypresses.
And he will probably find the little god too, the one girls love best: he lies beside the well, quiet, with his eyes closed.
Truly, he fell asleep on me in broad daylight, that waster of days! Did he chase too many butterflies, perhaps?
Do not be angry with me, you beautiful dancers, if I punish the little god a little! He will probably cry and weep — but he is laughable even when he weeps!
And with tears in his eyes he shall ask you for a dance; and I myself will sing a song to his dance:
A dancing song and a mocking song on the spirit of gravity, my supreme, almighty devil, of whom they say that he is ‘the lord of the world’.” —
And this is the song that Zarathustra sang while Cupid and the girls danced together.
Into your eye I looked not long ago, oh life! And I seemed to myself to be sinking into the unfathomable.
But you pulled me out with a golden fishing rod; you laughed mockingly when I called you unfathomable.
“That is how all fish talk,” you said; “what they cannot fathom is unfathomable.
But I am only changeable and wild, and in everything a woman, and not a virtuous one:
Even if to you men I am called ‘the deep one’, or ‘the faithful one’, ‘the eternal one’, ‘the mysterious one’. —
But you men always present us with your own virtues — ah, you virtuous ones!”
Thus she laughed, the unbelievable one; but I never believe her or her laughter when she speaks evil of herself.
And when I talked alone with my wild wisdom, she said to me angrily: “You will, you crave, you love: that is the only reason you praise life!”
I almost gave her an evil answer then and told the angry one the truth; and there is no more evil answer than to “tell the truth” to one’s wisdom.
For this is how things stand among the three of us. From the bottom of my heart I love only life — and truly, most of all when I hate her!
But that I am fond of wisdom, and often too fond: that is because she reminds me so very much of life!
She has life’s eye, life’s laugh, and even life’s little golden fishing rod: how can I help it that the two look so alike?
And once, when life asked me: Who is she, then, this wisdom? — I said eagerly: “Ah, yes! Wisdom!
One thirsts for her and is never satisfied, one looks through veils, one snatches through nets.
Is she beautiful? What do I know! But even the oldest carp are still caught with her as bait.
She is changeable and stubborn; I have often seen her bite her lip and comb her hair against the grain.
Perhaps she is evil and false, and in everything a female; but just when she speaks badly of herself, that is when she seduces most.”
When I said this to life, she laughed maliciously and closed her eyes. “Whom are you talking about?” she said. “About me, perhaps?
And even if you were right — is that something to say to my face like this! But now go on and speak of your wisdom too!”
Ah, and now you opened your eye again, oh beloved life! And again I seemed to myself to be sinking into the unfathomable. —
Thus sang Zarathustra. But when the dance was over and the girls had gone away, he grew sad.
“The sun has long since gone down,” he said at last; “the meadow is damp, a coolness is coming from the forests.
Something unknown is around me and looks on thoughtfully. What! You are still alive, Zarathustra?
Why? What for? By what? Where to? Where? How? Is it not folly to go on living? —
Ah, my friends, it is the evening that asks such things from within me. Forgive me my sadness!
Evening has come: forgive me that evening has come!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
“There is the island of graves, the silent one; there too are the graves of my youth. There I will carry an evergreen wreath of life.”
Resolving this in my heart, I sailed over the sea. —
Oh you visions and apparitions of my youth! Oh, all you glances of love, you divine twinklings of an eye! How quickly you died on me! I remember you today as I remember my dead.
From you, my dearest dead, a sweet scent comes to me, a scent that loosens the heart and the tears. Truly, it shakes and loosens the heart of the one who sails alone.
I am still the richest and the most to be envied — I, the most solitary! For I had you after all, and you have me still: tell me, to whom did such rosy apples fall from the tree as fell to me?
I am still the heir of your love and the earth it was left to, blooming in your memory with motley, wild-growing virtues, oh you most beloved!
Ah, we were made to stay close to each other, you sweet strange wonders; and you did not come to me and my desire like timid birds — no, but as the trusting to the one who trusts!
Yes, made for faithfulness, like me, and for tender eternities: must I now name you after your faithlessness, you divine glances and twinklings: I have not yet learned any other name.
Truly, you died on me too quickly, you fugitives. Yet you did not flee from me, nor did I flee from you: we are innocent toward each other in our faithlessness.
To kill me, they strangled you, you songbirds of my hopes! Yes, at you, my dearest ones, malice always shot its arrows — to hit my heart!
And it hit! For you were always what was dearest to my heart, my possession and what possessed me: that is why you had to die young, and far too early!
At the most vulnerable thing I had they shot the arrow: that was you, whose skin is like down, and still more like the smile that dies at a glance!
But this word I will speak to my enemies: what is all the murder of men compared with what you did to me!
You did me a greater evil than any murder of men; you took from me what can never be brought back: — this is how I speak to you, my enemies!
For you murdered the visions of my youth and my dearest wonders! You took my playmates from me, the blessed spirits! To their memory I lay down this wreath and this curse.
This curse on you, my enemies! For you made what was eternal in me short, as a tone breaks off in a cold night! It came to me only as a gleam of divine eyes — as a twinkling of an eye!
Thus spoke my purity once, in a good hour: “All beings shall be divine to me.”
Then you fell upon me with filthy ghosts; ah, where has that good hour fled now!
“All days shall be holy to me” — so the wisdom of my youth once spoke: truly, the words of a joyful wisdom!
But then you enemies stole my nights from me and sold them to sleepless torment: ah, where has that joyful wisdom fled now?
Once I longed for lucky omens from the birds: then you led an owl-monster across my path, a repulsive one. Ah, where did my tender longing flee then?
Once I vowed to renounce all disgust: then you turned my near ones and my neighbors into boils. Ah, where did my noblest vow flee then?
Once I walked blessed paths like a blind man: then you threw filth on the blind man’s path: and now the old footpath of the blind disgusts him.
And when I did my hardest thing and celebrated the victory of my overcomings: then you made those who loved me cry out that I was hurting them most of all.
Truly, that was always your doing: you made my best honey bitter for me, and the labor of my best bees.
To my charity you always sent the most insolent beggars; around my pity you always crowded the incurably shameless. In this way you wounded my virtue in its faith.
And if I laid down my holiest thing as an offering, at once your “piety” set its fatter gifts beside it: so that my holiest thing was smothered in the smoke of your fat.
And once I wanted to dance as I had never danced before: I wanted to dance away over all the heavens. Then you talked my dearest singer over to your side.
And now he struck up a dreadful, muffled tune; ah, he droned it into my ears like a gloomy horn!
Murderous singer, tool of malice, most innocent one! I was already standing ready for the best dance: then with your tones you murdered my rapture!
Only in the dance do I know how to speak the parable of the highest things: — and now my highest parable remained unspoken in my limbs!
Unspoken and unredeemed my highest hope remained! And all the visions and consolations of my youth died on me!
How did I ever bear it? How did I get over and overcome such wounds? How did my soul rise again from these graves?
Yes, there is something in me that cannot be wounded, cannot be buried, something that bursts rocks apart: it is called my will. It strides silent and unchanged through the years.
It wants to walk its own way on my feet, my old will; hard-hearted is its temper, and it cannot be wounded.
I cannot be wounded except in my heel. You live there still and are the same as ever, most patient one! Still you broke out through every grave!
In you lives still what was unredeemed in my youth; and as life and youth you sit here, hoping, on yellow ruins of graves.
Yes, you are still the shatterer of all graves for me: Hail to you, my will! And only where there are graves are there resurrections. —
Thus sang Zarathustra. —
“Will to truth” — is that what you call it, you wisest ones, the thing that drives you and sets you burning?
A will to the thinkability of all that is: that is what I call your will!
You want first to make all that is thinkable: for you doubt, with a healthy mistrust, whether it is thinkable already.
But it shall bend and yield to you! So your will wants it. It shall become smooth and subject to the spirit, as the spirit’s mirror and reflection.
That is your whole will, you wisest ones, a will to power; and that holds even when you talk of good and evil and of valuations. You want to create the world before which you can kneel: that is your last hope and your intoxication.
The unwise, of course, the people — they are like the river on which a boat floats along: and in the boat sit the valuations, solemn and cloaked.
You set your will and your values on the river of becoming; what the people believe to be good and evil betrays to me an old will to power.
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!
Now the river carries your boat along: it must carry it. It matters little if the broken wave foams and angrily contradicts the keel!
It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and evil, you wisest ones: it is that will itself, the will to power — the unexhausted, begetting will of life.
But so that you may understand my word about good and evil, I will also tell you my word about life, and about the nature of all that lives.
I followed what lives; I walked the greatest and the smallest paths, so as to know its nature.
With a hundredfold mirror I caught its glance even when its mouth was shut, so that its eye might speak to me. And its eye spoke to me.
But wherever I found something living, there I also heard the talk of obedience. Everything living is something that obeys.
And this is the second thing: whoever cannot obey himself is commanded. That is the nature of what lives.
But this is the third thing I heard: that commanding is harder than obeying. And not only because the one who commands bears the burden of all who obey, and because this burden easily crushes him: —
An experiment and a risk appeared to me in all commanding; and whenever it commands, the living thing risks itself in doing so.
Yes, even when it commands itself: even then it must pay for its commanding. It must become judge and avenger and victim of its own law.
How does this happen! I asked myself. What persuades the living thing to obey and to command, and in commanding still to practice obedience?
Hear my word now, you wisest ones! Test it in earnest, whether I have crept into the very heart of life, and down to the roots of its heart!
Wherever I found something living, I found will to power; and even in the will of the one who serves I found the will to be master.
That the weaker should serve the stronger: to this its will persuades it, the will that wants to be master over what is weaker still. This one pleasure it will not do without.
And as the smaller gives itself up to the greater, so that it may have pleasure and power over the smallest: so even the greatest gives itself up, and for the sake of power stakes — its life.
That is the self-surrender of the greatest: that it is risk and danger, and a game of dice with death.
And where there are sacrifice and services and loving glances: there too is the will to be master. By secret paths the weaker steals into the castle, and right into the heart of the mightier — and there steals power.
And life itself told me this secret. Look, it said, I am that which must always overcome itself.
“Of course, you call it a will to procreation, or a drive toward a goal, toward the higher, the farther, the more manifold: but all of this is one thing and one secret.
I would rather go under than renounce this one thing; and truly, wherever there is going under and the falling of leaves, look, there life sacrifices itself — for power!
That I must be struggle and becoming and goal and the contradiction of goals: ah, whoever guesses my will surely guesses too on what crooked paths it must walk!
Whatever I create and however much I love it — soon I must be its opponent, and the opponent of my love: so my will wants it.
And you too, seeker of knowledge, are only a path and a footprint 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 with the phrase ‘will to existence’: that will — does not exist!
For what does not exist cannot will; but what already exists, how could it still want to exist!
Only where there is life is there also will: not will to life, but — so I teach you — will to power!
The living esteem many things more highly than life itself; but out of the esteeming itself speaks — the will to power!” —
Thus life once taught me: and with this, you wisest ones, I will yet solve the riddle of your hearts.
Truly I tell you: good and evil that would last forever — there is no such thing! Out of itself it must overcome itself again and again.
With your values and your words of good and evil you exercise force, you esteemers of value: and this is your hidden love and the shining, trembling and overflowing of your soul.
But a stronger force grows out of your values, and a new overcoming: on it egg and eggshell break.
And whoever must be a creator in good and evil: truly, he must first be a destroyer and break values.
So the highest evil belongs to the highest goodness: but that is the creative goodness. —
Let us speak of it, you wisest ones, even if it is bad. To be silent is worse; all truths kept silent become poisonous.
And let everything that can break on our truths — break! There are many houses still to build!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Still is the floor of my sea: who would guess that it hides playful monsters!
Unshakable is my depth: but it glitters with swimming riddles and laughter.
I saw a sublime one today, a solemn one, a penitent of the spirit: oh, how my soul laughed at his ugliness!
His chest lifted up, and like those who are drawing in their breath: that is how he stood there, the sublime one, and silent:
Hung all over with ugly truths, the spoils of his hunt, and rich in torn clothes; many thorns hung on him too — but I saw no rose yet.
He had not yet learned laughter and beauty. Gloomy, this hunter came back from the forest of knowledge.
He came home from the fight with wild beasts: but out of his seriousness a wild beast still looks too — one not yet overcome!
He still stands there like a tiger about to spring; but I do not like these tensed souls, and my taste is unkind to all these withdrawn ones.
And you tell me, friends, that there is no arguing about taste and tasting? But all of life is an argument about taste and tasting!
Taste: that is the weight and the scales and the weigher, all at once; and woe to every living thing that wanted to live without arguing over weight and scales and weigher!
If he grew tired of his sublimity, this sublime one: only then would his beauty begin — and only then do I want to taste him and find him to my taste.
And only when he turns away from himself will he leap over his own shadow — and, truly! into his sun.
Far too long he sat in the shade, and the cheeks of the penitent of the spirit grew pale; he nearly starved on his expectations.
There is contempt in his eye still, and disgust hides around his mouth. He is resting now, it is true, but his rest has not yet lain down in the sun.
He should do as the bull does; and his happiness should smell of the earth, and not of contempt for the earth.
I would like to see him as a white bull, snorting and bellowing as he goes ahead of the plowshare: and his bellowing should still praise everything earthly!
His face is still dark; the shadow of the hand plays over it. The sense of his eye is still in shadow.
His deed itself is still the shadow over him: the hand darkens the one whose hand it is. He has not yet overcome his deed.
I do love the bull’s neck on him: but now I want to see the eye of the angel as well.
He must still unlearn his hero’s will, too: I want him to be one who is lifted, and not only one who is sublime: — the ether itself should lift him, the will-less one!
He conquered monsters, he solved riddles: but he should also absolve his monsters and riddles; he should still transform them into heavenly children.
His knowledge has not yet learned to smile and to be without jealousy; his flooding passion has not yet grown still in beauty.
Truly, his longing should fall silent and sink down not in satiety, but in beauty! Grace belongs to the generosity of the great-hearted.
His arm laid over his head: that is how the hero should rest, and that is how he should overcome even his resting.
But to the hero above all, the beautiful is the hardest thing of all. Beauty cannot be won by any violent will.
A little more, a little less: just this counts for much here, it counts for the most.
To stand with muscles slack and with the will unharnessed: that is the hardest thing for all of you, you sublime ones!
When power becomes gracious and comes down into the visible: beauty is what I call such a coming down.
And from no one do I want beauty as much as from you, you mighty one: let your goodness be your last overpowering of yourself.
I believe you capable of every evil: that is why I want the good from you.
Truly, I have often laughed at the weaklings who think themselves good because their paws are lame!
You shall strive after the virtue of the pillar: it grows ever more beautiful and more delicate, but inwardly harder and more load-bearing, the higher it rises.
Yes, you sublime one, one day you shall be beautiful too, and hold up the mirror to your own beauty.
Then your soul will shudder with divine desires; and there will be worship even in your vanity!
For this is the secret of the soul: only when the hero has abandoned it does there approach it, in a dream — the over-hero.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
I flew too far into the future: a horror came over me.
And when I looked around me, look! time was my only contemporary.
Then I fled backward, homeward — and faster and faster: and so I came to you, you people of the present, and into the land of culture.
For the first time I brought an eye for you along, and good desire: truly, I came with longing in my heart.
But what happened to me? Frightened as I was — I had to laugh! Never had my eye seen anything so speckled with color!
I laughed and laughed, while my foot was still trembling, and my heart too: “Why, this is the home of all the paint pots!” — I said.
Painted with fifty splotches on your faces and limbs: that is how you sat there, to my amazement, you people of the present!
And with fifty mirrors around you, flattering your play of colors and repeating it after you!
Truly, you could wear no better mask, you people of the present, than your own face! Who could ever — recognize you!
Written all over with the signs of the past, and those signs painted over with new signs: that is how well you have hidden yourselves from all interpreters of signs!
And even if one is a searcher of the innermost parts: who still believes that you have any innermost parts! You seem to be baked out of paint and scraps of glued paper.
All ages and peoples look out motley from your veils; all customs and faiths speak motley from your gestures.
Whoever took away your veils and wraps and colors and gestures would have just enough left over to scare the birds.
Truly, I myself am the scared bird that once saw you naked and without color; and I flew away when the skeleton beckoned to me with love.
I would rather be a day laborer in the underworld, among the shades of what once was! — why, even the dwellers of the underworld are plumper and fuller than you!
This, yes, this is bitterness to my bowels: that I can stand you neither naked nor clothed, you people of the present!
Everything unhomely in the future, and whatever ever made strayed birds shudder, is truly homelier and cozier than your “reality.”
For this is how you talk: “We are wholly real, and without faith or superstition”: that is how you puff out your chests — ah, and without even having chests!
Yes, how could you be able to believe, you speckled ones! — you who are paintings of everything that was ever believed!
You are walking refutations of faith itself, and the breaking of every thought’s limbs. Unbelievable: that is what I call you, you real ones!
All the ages chatter against one another in your spirits; and the dreams and chatter of all the ages were more real still than your waking is!
You are barren: that is why you lack faith. But whoever had to create always had his truth-dreams and star-signs too — and believed in believing! —
You are half-open gates at which gravediggers wait. And this is your reality: “Everything deserves to perish.”
Ah, how you stand there before me, you barren ones, how lean in the ribs! And many of you have surely noticed it yourselves.
And he said: “Did some god perhaps steal something from me secretly while I slept? Truly, enough to form himself a little woman from it!
Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!” So many a person of the present has already spoken.
Yes, you make me laugh, you people of the present! And especially when you marvel at yourselves!
And woe to me if I could not laugh at your marveling, and had to drink down everything repulsive in your bowls!
But as it is, I will take you more lightly, since I have something heavy to carry; and what does it matter to me if beetles and winged worms settle on my bundle as well!
Truly, it shall not grow any heavier for me on that account! And it is not from you, you people of the present, that my great weariness shall come. — Ah, where shall I climb now with my longing! From every mountain I look out for fatherlands and motherlands.
But I have found a home nowhere: I am unsettled in every settlement and a departure at every gate.
Strangers to me, and a mockery, are the people of the present, to whom my heart drove me not long ago; and I am driven out of fatherlands and motherlands.
So now I love only my children’s land, the undiscovered one, in the farthest sea: I bid my sails search and search for it.
To my children I will make up for being the child of my fathers: and to all the future — for this present!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
When the moon rose yesterday, I imagined it wanted to give birth to a sun: so broad and pregnant did it lie on the horizon.
But it lied to me with its pregnancy; and I would sooner believe in the man in the moon than in the woman.
Of course, there is not much of a man in him either, this shy night-prowler. Truly, he wanders over the rooftops with a bad conscience.
For he is lustful and jealous, the monk in the moon, lustful for the earth and for all the joys of lovers.
No, I do not like him, this tomcat on the rooftops! Repulsive to me are all who creep around half-closed windows!
Pious and silent he wanders along on carpets of stars: — but I do not like any soft-treading feet of men on which not even a spur jingles.
Every honest man’s step speaks up; but the cat steals away over the floor. Look, catlike and dishonest the moon comes along. —
This parable I give to you, you sentimental hypocrites, to you, the “pure perceivers”! I call you — the lustful!
You too love the earth and what is earthly: I have guessed you well! — but there is shame in your love, and a bad conscience — you are like the moon!
Your spirit has been talked into despising what is earthly, but your bowels have not: and they are the strongest thing in you!
And now your spirit is ashamed of doing what your bowels want, and to escape its own shame it goes by sneaking paths and lying paths.
“That would be the highest thing for me” — so your lying spirit talks to itself — “to look at life without desire, and not like a dog with its tongue hanging out:
To be happy in looking, with a will that has died, without the grip and greed of selfishness — cold and ash-gray all over the body, but with drunken moon-eyes!”
“That would be the dearest thing to me” — so the seduced one seduces himself — “to love the earth the way the moon loves it, and to touch its beauty with the eye alone.
And this I would call the immaculate perception of all things: that I want nothing from things, except to be allowed to lie before them like a mirror with a hundred eyes.” —
Oh, you sentimental hypocrites, you lustful ones! You lack innocence in your desire: and so now you slander desiring!
Truly, you do not love the earth as creators, as begetters, as those who delight in becoming!
Where is innocence? Where there is the will to beget. And whoever wants to create beyond himself has, for me, the purest will.
Where is beauty? Where I must will with all my will; where I want to love and go under, so that an image does not remain only an image.
Loving and going under: these have rhymed for eternities. The will to love: that means being willing to die as well. That is how I speak to you cowards!
But now your unmanned leering wants to be called “contemplation”! And whatever lets itself be fingered by cowardly eyes is to be christened “beautiful”! Oh, you contaminators of noble names!
But this shall be your curse, you immaculate ones, you pure perceivers, that you will never give birth: even though you lie broad and pregnant on the horizon!
Truly, you fill your mouths with noble words: and we are supposed to believe that your hearts are overflowing, you liars?
But my words are humble, despised, crooked words: I gladly pick up what falls under the table at your meals.
With them I can still — tell hypocrites the truth! Yes, my fish bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall — tickle the noses of hypocrites!
There is always bad air around you and your meals: for your lustful thoughts, your lies and secrets, are in the air!
Just dare first to believe yourselves — yourselves and your bowels! Whoever does not believe himself always lies.
You have hung a god’s mask in front of yourselves, you “pure ones”: into a god’s mask your loathsome ringed worm has crawled.
Truly, you deceive, you “contemplative ones”! Zarathustra too was once the fool of your godlike skins; he did not guess the serpent coils they were stuffed with.
Once I imagined I saw a god’s soul playing in your games, you pure perceivers! Once I imagined there was no better art than your arts!
The distance hid from me the serpent filth and the foul smell: and that a lizard’s cunning was creeping around here, lustfully.
But I came near you: then the day came to me — and now it is coming to you — the moon’s love affair has come to an end!
Just look! There he stands, caught out and pale — before the dawn!
For already she is coming, the glowing one — her love for the earth is coming! Innocence and the creator’s desire are all the love of the sun!
Just look how impatiently she comes over the sea! Do you not feel the thirst and the hot breath of her love?
She wants to suck at the sea and drink its depth up to her height: and the desire of the sea rises with a thousand breasts.
It wants to be kissed and sucked by the thirst of the sun; it wants to become air and height and a footpath of light, and light itself!
Truly, like the sun I love life and all deep seas.
And this is what knowledge means to me: everything deep shall rise — up to my height!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
As I lay asleep, a sheep ate at the ivy wreath on my head — ate, and said as it ate: “Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.”
It said this and went off, stiff-legged and proud. A child told me about it.
I like to lie here, where the children play, by the broken wall, among thistles and red poppies.
To the children I am still a scholar, and to the thistles and red poppies too. They are innocent, even in their mischief.
But to the sheep I am one no longer: so my lot wills it — blessed be it!
For this is the truth: I have moved out of the house of the scholars, and slammed the door behind me as well.
Too long my soul sat hungry at their table; I am not trained, as they are, to knowing as if to nutcracking.
I love freedom and the air over fresh earth; I would rather sleep on ox hides than on their honors and respectabilities.
I am too hot and scorched by my own thoughts: often they nearly take my breath away. Then I have to go out into the open, away from all dusty rooms.
But they sit cool in the cool shade: in everything they want only to be spectators, and they take care not to sit where the sun burns on the steps.
Like those who stand in the street and gape at the people going by: so they too wait, and gape at thoughts that others have thought.
If you take hold of them with your hands, they send up dust all around like flour sacks, and without meaning to; but who would guess that their dust comes from grain, and from the yellow delight of the summer fields?
When they act wise, their little sayings and truths make me shiver: there is often a smell about their wisdom, as if it came from the swamp: and truly, I have even heard the frog croaking out of it!
They are skillful, they have clever fingers: what is my simplicity next to their multiplicity! Their fingers understand all threading and knotting and weaving: so they knit the stockings of the spirit!
They are good clockworks: only take care to wind them up correctly! Then they tell the hour without fail and make a modest noise about it.
They work like mills and stamping machines: just throw them your seed grain! — they know well how to grind grain small and make white dust out of it.
They keep a close eye on one another’s fingers and do not trust each other the best. Inventive in little cunnings, they wait for those whose knowledge walks on lame feet — like spiders they wait.
I always saw them prepare poison with care; and every time they put glass gloves on their fingers to do it.
They know how to play with loaded dice too; and I found them playing so eagerly that they sweated over it.
We are strangers to one another, and their virtues go against my taste even more than their falsehoods and their loaded dice.
And when I lived among them, I lived above them. They held that against me.
They want to hear nothing of anyone walking over their heads; and so they put wood and earth and filth between me and their heads.
So they muffled the sound of my steps: and until now I have been heard worst of all by the most learned.
All of mankind’s faults and weakness they laid between themselves and me: — a “false floor” is what they call that in their houses.
But in spite of it I walk with my thoughts over their heads; and even if I wanted to walk on my own faults, I would still 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.
“Since I have come to know the body better,” Zarathustra said to one of his disciples, “spirit has been spirit to me only in a manner of speaking; and all that is ‘imperishable’ — that too is only a parable.”
“I heard you say that once before,” answered the disciple, “and that time 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 am not one of those who may be asked for their why.
Is my experience from yesterday, then? It is a long time since I experienced the reasons for my opinions.
Would I not have to be a barrel of memory if I wanted to keep my reasons with me as well?
It is already too much for me to keep my opinions themselves; and many a bird flies away.
And now and then I also find a creature that has strayed into my dovecote, one that is strange to me and trembles when I lay my hand on it.
But what was it Zarathustra once said to you? That the poets lie too much? — But Zarathustra too is a poet.
Do you believe, then, that he spoke the truth there? Why do you believe it?”
The disciple answered: “I believe in Zarathustra.” But Zarathustra shook his head and smiled.
Faith does not make me blessed, he said, least of all faith in me.
But suppose that someone said in all seriousness that the poets lie too much: he is right — we lie too much.
We also know too little and are bad learners: so we simply have to lie.
And which of us poets has not doctored his wine? Many a poisonous hodgepodge has been brewed in our cellars, many an indescribable thing has been done there.
And because we know little, we take a heartfelt liking to the poor in spirit, especially when they are young women!
And we are even greedy for the things that little old women tell each other in the evenings. That is what we ourselves call the Eternal-Feminine in us.
And as if there were a special secret way into knowledge that is blocked up for those who learn something: so we believe in the people and their “wisdom.”
But this is what all poets believe: that whoever lies in the grass or on lonely slopes and pricks up his ears learns something of the things that are between heaven and earth.
And when tender stirrings come over them, the poets always think that nature herself is in love with them:
And that she creeps up to their ear to whisper secrets into it, and loving flatteries: and they puff themselves up and boast of it before all mortals!
Ah, there are so many things between heaven and earth that only the poets have let themselves dream of!
And especially above heaven: for all gods are poets’ parables, poets’ pilferings!
Truly, we are always drawn upward — that is, to the realm of the clouds: on these we set our motley stuffed dolls and then call them gods and overmen: —
For they are just light enough for those chairs! — all these gods and overmen.
Ah, how tired I am of all the inadequate that insists on being an event! Ah, how tired I am of the poets!
When Zarathustra spoke like this, his disciple was angry with him, but kept silent. And Zarathustra kept silent too; and his eye had turned inward, as if it were gazing into far distances. At last he sighed and drew a breath.
I am of today and of the past, he said then; but there is something in me that is of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and of someday.
I grew tired of the poets, the old and the new: to me they are all surface, and shallow seas.
They did not think far enough into the depth: that is why their feeling did not sink to the bottom.
A little lust and a little boredom: that has been the best of their thinking so far.
All their harp-jingle-jangle is to me the breath and flitting of ghosts; what have they ever known of the fervor of tones! —
Nor are they clean enough for me: they all muddy their waters so that they may seem deep.
And they like to present themselves as reconcilers by it: but to me they remain go-betweens and mixers, and half-and-halfs, and unclean! —
Ah, I did cast my net into their seas and wanted to catch good fish; but every time I pulled up the head of some old god.
So the sea gave the hungry man a stone. And they themselves may well come from the sea.
Certainly, one finds pearls in them: all the more do they themselves resemble hard shellfish. And instead of a soul I have often found salted slime in them.
They have learned from the sea its vanity as well: is the sea not the peacock of peacocks?
Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes it spreads out its tail, and it never tires of its lace fan of silver and silk.
The buffalo looks on defiantly, near to the sand in his soul, nearer still to the thicket, but nearest of all to the swamp.
What does he care for beauty and sea and the finery of peacocks! This parable I speak to the poets.
Truly, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks and a sea of vanity!
The poet’s spirit wants spectators: even if they should be buffaloes! —
But I grew tired of this spirit: and I see the time coming when it will grow tired of itself.
I have already seen the poets transformed, and their gaze turned against themselves.
I saw penitents of the spirit coming: they grew out of the poets.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
There is an island in the sea — not far from Zarathustra’s Blessed Isles — on which a fire-mountain is always smoking. The people say of it, and the little old women among the people say it most of all, that it has been set like a boulder before the gate of the underworld: but that through the fire-mountain itself runs the narrow path leading down to this gate of the underworld.
Now at the time when Zarathustra was staying on the Blessed Isles, it happened that a ship dropped anchor at the island where the smoking mountain stands; and its crew went ashore to shoot rabbits. Toward the hour of noon, however, when the captain and his men were together again, they suddenly saw a man coming toward them through the air, and a voice said clearly: “It is time! It is high time!” But when the figure was nearest to them — it flew past quickly, like a shadow, in the direction where the fire-mountain lay — they recognized, to their utter dismay, that it was Zarathustra; for all of them had seen him before, except the captain himself, and they loved him as the people love: with love and awe together in equal parts.
“Look at that!” said the old helmsman. “There goes Zarathustra to hell!” —
At about the same time as these sailors landed on the fire island, a rumor went around that Zarathustra had disappeared; and when his friends were asked, they told how he had gone aboard a ship by night, without saying where he meant to travel.
So there was unrest; but after three days the sailors’ story was added to this unrest — and now all the people said that the devil had taken Zarathustra. His disciples laughed at this talk, it is true; and one of them even said: “I would sooner believe that Zarathustra has taken the devil.” But at the bottom of their souls they were all full of worry and longing: so their joy was great when, on the fifth day, Zarathustra appeared among them.
And this is the story of Zarathustra’s conversation with the fire-dog.
The earth, he said, has a skin; and this skin has diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called: “man.”
And another of these diseases is called “fire-dog”: about him people have told each other many lies, and let themselves be told many lies.
To get to the bottom of this secret I went over the sea: and I have seen the truth naked — truly! barefoot up to the neck.
Now I know what the fire-dog is all about; and likewise all the devils of eruption and overthrow, which not only little old women are afraid of.
Come out, fire-dog, out of your depths! I cried. And confess how deep those depths are! Where does it come from, this stuff you snort up?
You drink plentifully at the sea: your oversalted eloquence gives that away! In truth, for a dog of the depths, you take your nourishment too much from the surface!
At most I take you for the ventriloquist of the earth: and whenever I heard the devils of overthrow and eruption speak, I found them just like you: salty, lying, and shallow.
You know how to roar and how to darken things with ash! You are the best of bigmouths, and you have learned more than enough of the art of bringing mud to the boil.
Wherever you are, there must always be mud close by, and much that is spongy, cavernous, squeezed in: it wants to get out into freedom.
“Freedom” is what you all like best to roar: but I have unlearned my belief in “great events” as soon as there is much roaring and smoke around them.
And just believe me, friend Hell-Racket! The greatest events — they are not our loudest hours, but our stillest.
The world revolves not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values; it revolves inaudibly.
And just admit it! Very little had ever happened when your noise and smoke cleared away. What does it matter that a city became a mummy, and a statue lies in the mud!
And I say this word as well to the overthrowers of statues. It is surely the greatest folly to throw salt into the sea and statues into the mud.
The statue lay in the mud of your contempt: but that is just its law, that out of contempt life and living beauty grow back in it!
Now it rises again with more godlike features, seductive in its suffering; and truly! it will yet thank you for overthrowing it, you overthrowers!
But this advice I give to kings and churches and to everything that is weak with age and weak in virtue — just let yourselves be overthrown! So that you may come back to life, and so that virtue may come back to you! —
So I spoke before the fire-dog: then he interrupted me sullenly and asked: “Church? What is that, then?”
Church? I answered. That is a kind of state, and the most deceitful kind. But be quiet, you hypocrite dog! You surely know your own kind best already!
Like you yourself, the state is a hypocrite dog; like you, it likes to speak with smoke and roaring — to make people believe, like you, that it speaks from the belly of things.
For the state wants, at all costs, to be the most important animal on earth; and people believe it, too. —
When I had said this, the fire-dog behaved as if out of his mind with envy. “What?” he screamed. “The most important animal on earth? And people believe it, too?” And so much steam and such horrible voices came out of his throat that I thought he would choke with rage and envy.
At last he grew quieter, and his panting eased off; but as soon as he was quiet, I said, laughing:
“You are angry, fire-dog: so I am right about you!
And so that I may stay right, hear now about another fire-dog: he really does speak from the heart of the earth.
His breath breathes gold and golden rain: that is what his heart wants. What are ash and smoke and hot slime to him any more!
Laughter flutters out of him like a many-colored cloud; he has no liking for your gurgling and spitting and the gripes of your bowels!
But the gold and the laughter — those he takes from the heart of the earth: for, just so you know, — the heart of the earth is made of gold.”
When the fire-dog heard this, he could no longer stand to listen to me. Ashamed, he drew in his tail, said “Woof! Woof!” in a small, meek voice, and crawled down into his cave. —
So Zarathustra told it. But his disciples 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 make of this!” said Zarathustra. “Am I a ghost, then?
But it must have been my shadow. You have probably heard something already about the wanderer and his shadow?
But this much is certain: I must keep it on a shorter leash — or else it will ruin my reputation yet.”
And once again Zarathustra shook his head and wondered. “What am I to make of this!” he said once more.
“Why, then, did the ghost cry: ‘It is time! It is high time!’
High time — for what?” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
“— and I saw a great sadness come over mankind. The best of them grew weary of their works.
A doctrine went out, and a faith ran alongside it: ‘All is empty, all is the same, all has been!’
And from every hill it echoed back: ‘All is empty, all is the same, all has been!’
We have harvested, it is true: but why did all our fruits turn rotten and brown on us? What fell down from the evil moon last night?
All our work was in vain, our wine has turned to poison, the evil eye has scorched our fields and our hearts yellow.
We have all become dry; and if fire falls on us, we scatter like ash: — yes, we have made fire itself weary.
All our wells have dried up, even the sea has drawn back. All the ground wants to split open, but the depths will not swallow!
‘Ah, where is there still a sea one could drown in’: so goes our lament — out across the shallow swamps.
Truly, we have grown too weary even to die; now we stay awake and live on — in burial vaults!” —
So Zarathustra heard a soothsayer speak; and his prophecy went to Zarathustra’s heart and changed him. He went about sad and weary; and he became like those of whom the soothsayer had spoken.
Truly, he said to his disciples, it will not be long before this long twilight comes. Ah, how am I to save my light and carry it across!
If only it does not suffocate in this sadness! It is meant to be a light to farther worlds, and to the farthest nights!
Troubled like this in his heart, Zarathustra went about; and for three days he took neither food nor drink, had no rest, and lost his speech. At last it happened that he fell into a deep sleep. But his disciples sat around him through long night watches, waiting anxiously to see whether he would wake and speak again and be cured of his gloom.
And this is the discourse that Zarathustra gave when he woke; but his voice came to his disciples as if from far away.
Listen to the dream I dreamed, my friends, and help me guess its meaning!
It is still a riddle to me, this dream; its meaning is hidden inside it and trapped there, and does not yet fly out over it on free wings.
I had renounced all life, so I dreamed. I had become a night watchman and a guardian of graves, up there in the lonely mountain castle of death.
Up there I guarded his coffins: the musty vaults stood full of these trophies of victory. Overcome life gazed at me out of glass coffins.
I breathed the smell of dusty eternities: my soul lay sultry and dusty. And who could have aired out his soul in such a place!
The brightness of midnight was always around me, solitude crouched beside it; and, making three, a death-rattle silence, the worst of my companions.
I carried keys, the rustiest of all keys; and I knew how to open the creakiest of all gates with them.
Like a bitter, evil croaking the sound ran through the long corridors whenever the wings of the gate swung up: this bird screeched spitefully, it did not like being woken.
But more frightening still, and more heart-wringing, was when it fell silent again and all around grew still, and I sat alone in that treacherous silence.
So time passed for me and crept along, if there was still such a thing as time: what do I know of it! But at last the thing happened that woke me.
Three times blows struck the gate, like thunder, and three times the vaults echoed and howled back: then I went to the gate.
Alpa! I cried, who is carrying his ashes up the mountain? Alpa! Alpa! Who is carrying his ashes up the mountain?
And I pressed the key and heaved at the gate and strained. But it was still not open a finger’s breadth:
Then a roaring wind tore its wings apart: whistling, shrilling, and cutting, it hurled a black coffin toward me:
And amid the roaring and whistling and shrilling the coffin burst open and spewed out a thousandfold laughter.
And out of a thousand grimacing faces of children, angels, owls, fools, and butterflies as big as children, something laughed and jeered and roared at me.
I was horribly frightened by it: it threw me to the ground. And I screamed in horror, as I had never screamed before.
But my own scream woke me up: — and I came to myself. —
So Zarathustra told his dream, and then fell silent: for he did not yet know the interpretation of his dream. But the disciple he loved most rose quickly, took Zarathustra’s hand, and said:
“Your life itself interprets this dream for us, oh Zarathustra!
Are you not yourself the wind with its shrill whistling, which tears open the gates of the castles of death?
Are you not yourself the coffin full of life’s many-colored mischief and angel-grimaces?
Truly, like a thousandfold children’s laughter Zarathustra comes into every death chamber, laughing at those night watchmen and guardians of graves, and at whoever else goes rattling gloomy keys.
You will frighten them and knock them over with your laughter; fainting and waking will prove your power over them.
And even when the long twilight comes, and the weariness of death, you will not go under in our sky, you advocate of life!
You have let us see new stars and new splendors of the night; truly, you have spread laughter itself over us like a many-colored tent.
Now children’s laughter will always well up out of coffins; now a strong wind will always come, victorious over all weariness of death: of that you yourself are our guarantee and our soothsayer!
Truly, you dreamed them themselves, your enemies: that was your hardest dream!
But just as you woke from them and came to yourself, so they shall wake from themselves — and come to you!” —
So spoke the disciple; and all the others now crowded around Zarathustra and took him by the hands and tried to persuade him to leave his bed and his sadness and come back to them. But Zarathustra sat upright on his bed, with a strange look in his eyes. Like someone coming home from a long time in foreign lands, he looked at his disciples and searched their faces; and still he did not recognize them. But when they lifted him and set him on his feet, look, all at once his eye changed; he understood everything that had happened, stroked his beard, and said in a strong voice:
“Well then! All this has its time; but see to it, my disciples, that we have a good meal, and soon! That is how I mean to do penance for bad dreams!
But the soothsayer shall eat and drink at my side: and truly, I will yet show him a sea he can drown in!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra. But then he looked for a long time into the face of the disciple who had played the interpreter of dreams, and shook his head as he did so. —
When Zarathustra was crossing the great bridge one day, the cripples and beggars surrounded him, and a hunchback spoke to him like this:
“Look, Zarathustra! The people too are learning from you and coming to believe in your teaching: but for them to believe you completely, one more thing is needed — first you still have to convince us cripples! Here you have a fine selection, and truly, an opportunity with more than one handle to grab it by! You can heal the blind and make the lame walk; and from the one who has too much behind him you could surely take a little off as well: — that, I think, would be the right way to make the cripples believe in Zarathustra!”
But Zarathustra answered the one who had spoken like this: “If you take away the hunchback’s hump, you take away his spirit — so the people teach. And if you give the blind man his eyes, he sees too many bad things on earth: so that he curses the one who healed him. But whoever makes the lame man walk does him the greatest harm: for no sooner can he walk than his vices run away with him — so the people teach about cripples. And why should Zarathustra not learn from the people too, when the people learn from Zarathustra?
But it is the least thing to me, since I have been among people, to see: ‘This one is missing an eye, and that one an ear, and a third one his leg, and there are others who have lost their tongue or their nose or their head.’
I see, and have seen, worse things, and many things so hideous that I would not want to speak of every one of them, and of some I would not even want to keep silent: I mean people who lack everything, except that they have too much of one thing — people who are nothing more than a big eye, or a big mouth, or a big belly, or something else big, — inverse cripples is what I call such people.
And when I came out of my solitude and crossed this bridge for the first time, I did not trust my eyes, and looked, and looked again, and said at last: ‘That is an ear! An ear as big as a man!’ I looked more closely still: and in fact, under the ear something else was moving, something wretchedly small and poor and puny. And truly, the enormous ear sat on a thin little stalk, — but the stalk was a human being! Anyone who held a glass to his eye could even make out a little envious face; and also a bloated little soul dangling from the stalk. But the people told me that the big ear was not only a human being, but a great human being, a genius. But I have never believed the people when they talked about great human beings — and I kept my belief that it was an inverse cripple, who had too little of everything and too much of one thing.”
When Zarathustra had spoken like this to the hunchback, and to those whose mouthpiece and advocate he was, he turned to his disciples in deep displeasure and said:
“Truly, my friends, I walk among people as among the fragments and limbs of human beings!
This is what is terrible to my eye, that I find man shattered and scattered as if over a field of battle and of butchery.
And if my eye flees from the now to the past: it always finds the same thing: fragments and limbs and dreadful accidents — but no human beings!
The now and the past on earth — ah! my friends — that is what I find most unbearable; and I would not know how to live, if I were not also a seer of what must come.
A seer, one who wills, a creator, a future itself and a bridge to the future — and ah, also, as it were, a cripple at this bridge: all of that is Zarathustra.
And you too have often asked yourselves: ‘Who is Zarathustra to us? What shall we call him?’ And like me, you gave yourselves questions for answers.
Is he one who promises? Or one who fulfills? A conqueror? Or an heir? An autumn? Or a plowshare? A doctor? Or one who has recovered?
Is he a poet? Or a truthful man? A liberator? Or a tamer? A good man? Or an evil one?
I walk among people as among the fragments of the future: that future which I see.
And this is all my composing and striving: that I compose into one and gather together what is fragment and riddle and dreadful accident.
And how could I bear to be a man, if man were not also a poet and a guesser of riddles and the redeemer of accident!
To redeem those who are past, and to recreate every ‘It was’ into a ‘So I willed it!’ — that alone would I call redemption!
Will — that is the name of the liberator and bringer of joy: so I taught you, my friends! But now learn this as well: the will itself is still a prisoner.
Willing liberates: but what is the name of the thing that still puts even the liberator in chains?
‘It was’: that is the name of the will’s gnashing of teeth and loneliest gloom. Powerless against what has been done — it is an evil spectator of everything past.
The will cannot will backward; that it cannot break time and time’s greed, — that is the will’s loneliest gloom.
Willing liberates: what does willing itself devise, to get free of its gloom and to mock its prison?
Ah, every prisoner becomes a fool! And the imprisoned will, too, redeems itself foolishly.
That time does not run backward, that is its fury; ‘That which was’ — that is the name of the stone it cannot roll.
And so it rolls stones out of fury and displeasure, and takes revenge on whatever does not feel fury and displeasure as it does.
So the will, the liberator, became a doer of harm: and on everything that can suffer it takes revenge for the fact that it cannot go back.
This, yes, this alone is revenge itself: the will’s ill will against time and its ‘It was.’
Truly, a great folly lives in our will; and it became a curse to everything human that this folly learned to be spirit!
The spirit of revenge: my friends, that has so far been mankind’s best reflection; and wherever there was suffering, there always had to be punishment.
‘Punishment,’ you see, is what revenge calls itself: with a lying word it fakes itself a good conscience.
And because there is suffering in the one who wills, since he cannot will backward, — therefore willing itself and all life were supposed to be — punishment!
And now cloud upon cloud rolled over the spirit: until at last madness preached: ‘Everything passes away, therefore everything deserves to pass away!’
‘And this is justice itself, that law of time, that it must devour its children’: so madness preached.
‘Things are ordered morally, according to justice and punishment. Oh, where is redemption from the flux of things and from the punishment called existence?’ So madness preached.
‘Can there be redemption, if there is an eternal justice? Ah, the stone “It was” cannot be rolled away: all punishments, too, must be eternal!’ So madness preached.
‘No deed can be annihilated: how could it be undone by punishment! This, this is what is eternal in the punishment called “existence,” that existence must also be, eternally, deed and guilt again and again!
Unless the will should at last redeem itself, and willing become not-willing — ’: but you know, my brothers, this fable-song of madness!
I led you away from these fable-songs when I taught you: ‘The will is a creator.’
Every ‘It was’ is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful accident — until the creating will says to it: ‘But so I willed it!’
Until the creating will says to it: ‘But so I will it! So shall I will it!’
But has it ever spoken like this yet? And when will this happen? Has the will been unharnessed yet from its own folly?
Has the will become its own redeemer and bringer of joy yet? Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all gnashing of teeth?
And who has taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than any reconciliation?
Something higher than any reconciliation the will must will, the will that is will to power —: but how does that happen to it? Who has taught it to will backward, too?”
— But at this point in his discourse it happened that Zarathustra suddenly stopped, looking exactly like someone who has been frightened to the utmost. With frightened eyes he looked at his disciples; his eye pierced their thoughts, and the thoughts behind their thoughts, as if with arrows. But after a little while he was laughing again, and said, soothed:
“It is hard to live with people, because keeping silent is so hard. Especially for a chatterbox.” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra. But the hunchback had listened to the conversation, covering his face as he did; but when he heard Zarathustra laugh, he looked up curiously and said slowly:
“But why does Zarathustra speak differently to us than to his disciples?”
Zarathustra answered: “What is so surprising about that! With hunchbacks one may well speak crookedly!”
“Good,” said the hunchback. “And with pupils one may well tell tales out of school.
But why does Zarathustra speak differently to his pupils — than to himself?” —
Not the height: the slope is what is terrible!
The slope, where the gaze plunges down and the hand reaches up. There the heart grows dizzy before its double will.
Ah, friends, can you guess my heart’s double will as well?
This, this is my slope and my danger, that my gaze plunges toward the heights, and that my hand would like to hold on and brace itself — against the depths!
My will clings to man, with chains I bind myself to man, because I am being torn upward toward the overman: for that is where my other will wants to go.
And for this I live blind among people, as though I did not know them: so that my hand may not wholly lose its faith in something solid.
I do not know you people: this darkness and comfort is often spread around me.
I sit at the gateway for every rogue and ask: who wants to deceive me?
This is my first human prudence, that I let myself 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 for my ball! Too easily I would be torn up and away!
This providence stands over my fate: that I must have no foresight.
And whoever does not want to die of thirst among people must learn to drink from every glass; and whoever wants to stay clean among people must know how to wash even with dirty water.
And so I often spoke to myself for comfort: “Well then! Up, then! Old heart! A misfortune has miscarried for you: enjoy this as your — good fortune!”
But this is my other human prudence: I spare the vain more than the proud.
Is wounded vanity not the mother of all tragedies? But where pride is wounded, something better than pride may well grow.
For life to be good to watch, its play must be played well: but for that it needs good actors.
I have found all the vain to be good actors: they act, and they want people to enjoy watching them, — all their spirit is in this will.
They put on a show, they invent themselves; near them I love to watch life, — it cures me of melancholy.
That is why I spare the vain, because they are the doctors of my melancholy, and keep me attached to man as to a play.
And then: who can measure in the vain man the whole depth of his modesty! I am fond of him, and pity him for his modesty.
He wants to learn his faith in himself from you; he feeds on your glances, he eats praise out of your hands.
He believes even your lies, if you lie well about him: for in its depths his heart sighs: “What am I!”
And if the true virtue is the one that does not know about itself: well, the vain man does not know about his modesty! —
But this is my third human prudence, that I do not let your fearfulness spoil for me the sight of the evil.
I am blissful to see the wonders that the hot sun hatches: tigers and palm trees and rattlesnakes.
Among people, too, there is a fine brood of the hot sun, and much that is wonderful in the evil.
It is true that, just as your wisest did not seem so very wise to me: so too I found people’s wickedness falling short of its reputation.
And often I asked, shaking my head: Why go on rattling, you rattlesnakes?
Truly, there is a future even for evil! And the hottest south has not yet been discovered for man.
How many things are already called the worst wickedness that are only twelve feet wide and three months long! But someday greater dragons will come into the world.
For if the overman is not to lack his dragon, the over-dragon that is worthy of him: much hot sun must still blaze down on damp jungle!
Your wildcats must first have become tigers, and your poisonous toads crocodiles: for the good hunter shall have a good hunt!
And truly, you good and just! There is much in you to laugh at, and above all your fear of what has so far been called “devil”!
You are so foreign in your souls to what is great that the overman would be frightening to you in his goodness!
And you wise men and knowers, you would run from the sunburn of wisdom in which the overman joyfully bathes his nakedness!
You highest people my eye has met! This is my doubt about you and my secret laughter: I guess that you would call my overman — devil!
Ah, I grew tired of these highest and best: out of their “height” I longed to go up, out, away to the overman!
A horror came over me when I saw these best ones naked: then wings grew on me to float away into distant futures.
Into more distant futures, into more southern souths than any artist ever dreamed: there, where gods are ashamed of all clothes!
But I want to see you disguised, you neighbors and fellow men, and well dressed up, and vain, and dignified, as “the good and the just,” —
And I myself want to sit among you disguised, — so that I may mistake you and myself: for that is my last human prudence.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
“What has happened to me, my friends? You see me distraught, driven away, unwillingly obedient, ready to go — ah, to go away from you!
Yes, Zarathustra must go back into his solitude once more: but this time the bear goes back into his cave without any joy!
What has happened to me? Who commands this? — Ah, my angry mistress wills it so; she spoke to me: have I ever yet told you her name?
Yesterday, toward evening, my stillest hour spoke to me: that is the name of my terrible mistress.
And this is how it happened, — for I must tell you everything, so that your hearts do not harden against the one who is suddenly leaving!
Do you know the terror of someone falling asleep? —
He is terrified down to his toes, because the ground gives way under him and the dream begins.
I tell you this as a parable. Yesterday, at the stillest hour, the ground gave way under me: the dream began.
The hand moved on, the clock of my life drew breath — never had I heard such stillness around me: so that my heart was terrified.
Then it spoke to me without a voice: ‘You know it, Zarathustra?’ —
And I cried out in terror at this whisper, and the blood drained from my face: but I kept silent.
Then it spoke to me again without a voice: ‘You know it, Zarathustra, but you do not speak it!’ —
And at last I answered, like someone defiant: ‘Yes, I know it, but I will not speak it!’
Then it spoke to me again without a voice: ‘You will not, Zarathustra? Is that really true? Do not hide yourself in your defiance!’ —
And I wept and trembled like a child and said: ‘Ah, I would like to, but how can I! Spare me this, at least! It is beyond my strength!’
Then it spoke to me again without a voice: ‘What do you matter, Zarathustra! Speak your word and break!’ —
And I answered: ‘Ah, is it my word? Who am I? I am waiting for someone worthier; I am not worthy even to break on it.’
Then it spoke to me again without a voice: ‘What do you matter? You are not yet humble enough for me. Humility has the toughest hide.’ —
And I answered: ‘What has the hide of my humility not borne already! I live at the foot of my own height: how high are my peaks? No one has told me yet. But I know my valleys well.’
Then it spoke to me again without a voice: ‘Oh Zarathustra, whoever has mountains to move moves valleys and lowlands too.’ —
And I answered: ‘My word has not yet moved any mountains, and what I said did not reach people. I did go to people, but I have not yet arrived among them.’
Then it spoke to me again without a voice: ‘What do you know about that! The dew falls on the grass when the night is at its most silent.’ —
And I answered: ‘They mocked me when I found my own way and walked it; and in truth my feet trembled then.’
And so they said to me: ‘You have unlearned the way, now you are unlearning how to walk as well!’
Then it spoke to me again without a voice: ‘What does their mockery matter! You are someone who has unlearned how to obey: now you shall command!
Do you not know who is most needed by all? The one who commands great things.
To do great things is hard: but the harder thing is to command great things.
This is what is most unforgivable in you: you have the power, and you will not rule.’ —
And I answered: ‘I lack the lion’s voice for any commanding.’
Then it spoke to me again, like a whisper: ‘It is the stillest words that bring the storm. Thoughts that come on doves’ feet guide the world.
Oh Zarathustra, you shall go as a shadow of what must come: in that way you will command, and lead the way by commanding.’ —
And I answered: ‘I am ashamed.’
Then it spoke to me again without a voice: ‘You must still become a child, and without shame.
The pride of youth is still on you, you became young late: but whoever wants to become a child must overcome even his youth.’ —
And I thought it over for a long time, and trembled. But at last I said what I had said at first: ‘I will not.’
Then there was laughter all around me. Woe, how that laughter tore my insides and slit my heart open!
And it spoke to me for the last time: ‘Oh Zarathustra, your fruits are ripe, but you are not ripe for your fruits!
So you must go back into solitude: for you must still grow mellow.’ —
And again it laughed, and fled: then it grew still around me, as if with a twofold stillness. But I lay on the ground, and the sweat poured from my limbs.
— Now you have heard everything, and why I must go back into my solitude. I have kept nothing silent from you, my friends.
But you have heard this from me as well: who is still the most silent of all men — and wants to be!
Ah, my friends! I would still have something to say to you, I would still have something to give you! Why do I not give it? Am I stingy, then?” —
But when Zarathustra had spoken these words, the force of his pain and the nearness of parting from his friends overwhelmed him, so that he wept aloud; and no one knew how to comfort him. But in the night he went away alone and left his friends.
“You look upward when you long to be lifted up. And I look down, because I am lifted up. Which of you can laugh and be lifted up at the same time? Whoever climbs the highest mountains laughs at all tragic plays and all tragic solemnity.”
Zarathustra, “On Reading and Writing”
It was midnight when Zarathustra set out over the ridge of the island, so that he would reach the other shore by early morning: for there he meant to board a ship. There was a good harbor there, where foreign ships too liked to drop anchor; and they took along many who wanted to cross the sea from the Blessed Isles. Now as Zarathustra climbed the mountain like this, he thought along the way of all his solitary wandering since his youth, and of how many mountains and ridges and summits he had already climbed.
I am a wanderer and a mountain climber, he said to his heart; I do not love the plains, and it seems I cannot sit still for long.
And whatever may still come to me as fate and experience — there will be wandering in it, and mountain climbing: in the end one experiences only oneself.
The time has run out when accidents were still allowed to befall me; and what could still fall to me now that was not already my own!
It only returns, it finally comes home to me — my own Self, and whatever of it has long been abroad and scattered among all things and accidents.
And I know one thing more: I am standing now before my last summit, and before what has been saved up for me the longest. Ah, I must climb my hardest path! Ah, I have begun my most solitary wandering!
But whoever is of my kind does not escape such an hour: the hour that says to him: “Only now are you going your way of greatness! Summit and abyss — they are now joined into one!
You are going your way of greatness: what until now was called your last danger has now become your last refuge!
You are going your way of greatness: now this must be your best courage, that there is no longer any path behind you!
You are going your way of greatness; here no one shall sneak after you! Your own foot has wiped out the path behind you, and above it is written: Impossibility.
And if from now on you have no ladders left, then you must know how to climb up on your own head: how else would you climb upward?
Up on your own head and away over your own heart! Now the gentlest thing in you must become the hardest.
Whoever has always spared himself much grows sick at last from all his sparing. Praised be what makes hard! I do not praise the land where butter and honey — flow!
Learning to look away from oneself is necessary in order to see much: — every mountain climber needs this hardness.
But whoever, as a seeker of knowledge, is pushy with his eyes — how could he see more of any thing than its foreground!
But you, oh Zarathustra, wanted to see the ground of all things, and their background: so you must climb up over yourself — upward, higher, until even your stars are under you!
Yes! To look down on myself and even on my stars: that alone would I call my summit, that has remained for me as my last summit! —”
Thus spoke Zarathustra to himself as he climbed, comforting his heart with hard little sayings: for he was sore at heart as never before. And when he reached the top of the ridge, look, there the other sea lay spread out before him: and he stood still and was silent for a long time. But the night was cold at this height, and clear, and bright with stars.
I recognize my lot, he said at last, with sadness. Well then! I am ready. Now my last solitude has begun.
Ah, this black, sad sea beneath me! Ah, this pregnant, nighttime sullenness! Ah, fate and sea! To you I must now climb down!
I stand before my highest mountain and before my longest wandering: that is why I must first go down deeper than I ever climbed:
— deeper down into pain than I ever climbed, right into its blackest flood! So my fate wills it: Well then! I am ready.
Where do the highest mountains come from? I once asked. Then I learned that they come out of the sea.
This testimony is written in their rock and in the walls of their summits. It is out of the deepest that the highest must come to its height. —
Thus spoke Zarathustra on the peak of the mountain, where it was cold; but when he came near the sea and at last stood alone among the cliffs, he had grown weary on the way, and more full of longing than ever before.
Everything is still asleep now, he said; even the sea is asleep. Drunk with sleep and strange, its eye gazes at me.
But its breath is warm, I can feel that. And I feel too that it is dreaming. It writhes, dreaming, on hard pillows.
Listen! Listen! How it groans with evil memories! Or with evil expectations?
Ah, I am sad along with you, you dark monster, and angry with myself on your account.
Ah, that my hand does not have strength enough! Gladly, truly, would I redeem you from evil dreams! —
And as Zarathustra spoke like this, he laughed at himself with melancholy and bitterness. “What! Zarathustra!” he said, “do you even want to sing comfort to the sea?
Ah, you loving fool Zarathustra, you who are overblissful with trust! But you were always like this: you always came trustingly up to everything terrible.
Every monster you still wanted to stroke. A breath of warm air, a little soft shagginess on the paw —: and at once you were ready to love it and to coax it.
Love is the danger of the most solitary one, love for everything, if only it is alive! Truly, my folly and my modesty in love are laughable!” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and laughed a second time as he did; but then he thought of the friends he had left behind —, and as if he had wronged them with his thoughts, he was angry with himself for his thoughts. And soon it happened that the one who laughed was weeping: — with anger and longing Zarathustra wept bitterly.
When word spread among the sailors that Zarathustra was on the ship — for a man who came from the Blessed Isles had come on board with him — there arose a great curiosity and expectation. But Zarathustra kept silent for two days and was cold and deaf with sadness, so that he answered neither looks nor questions. On the evening of the second day, however, he opened his ears again, though he still kept silent: for there was much that was strange and dangerous to listen to on this ship, which came from far away and wanted to go farther still. And Zarathustra was a friend of all those who make long voyages and do not like to live without danger. And look! at last, as he listened, his own tongue was loosened, and the ice of his heart broke: — then he began to speak like this:
To you, the bold seekers and tempters, and whoever has ever set out with cunning sails on terrible seas, —
to you who are drunk on riddles, who delight in twilight, whose souls are lured by flutes into every maze and gulf:
— for you do not want to grope along a thread with a cowardly hand; and where you can guess, you hate to deduce —
to you alone I tell the riddle that I saw, — the vision of the most solitary one. —
Gloomily I walked not long ago through the corpse-colored twilight, — gloomily and hard, with pressed lips. Not only one sun had gone under for me.
A path that climbed defiantly through the scree, a spiteful, solitary path, cheered on by neither herb nor bush any longer: a mountain path crunched under the defiance of my foot.
Striding silently over the mocking clatter of pebbles, crushing the stone that made it slip: so my foot forced its way upward.
Upward: — in spite of the spirit that pulled it downward, pulled it toward the abyss, the spirit of gravity, my devil and archenemy.
Upward: — although he sat on me, half dwarf, half mole; lame; laming; dripping lead into my ear, leaden-drop thoughts into my brain.
“Oh Zarathustra,” he whispered mockingly, syllable by syllable, “you stone of wisdom! You threw yourself high, but every stone that is thrown must — fall!
Oh Zarathustra, you stone of wisdom, you sling-stone, you star-smasher! You threw yourself so high, — but every stone that is thrown — must fall!
Condemned to yourself and to your own stoning: oh Zarathustra, far indeed you threw the stone, — but it will fall back on you!”
Then the dwarf fell silent; and it lasted a long time. But his silence weighed on me; and to be two in this way is, truly, lonelier than to be one!
I climbed, I climbed, I dreamed, I thought, — but everything weighed on me. I was like a sick man worn out by his cruel torment, who is woken again from his falling asleep by a still crueler dream. —
But there is something in me that I call courage: so far it has struck dead every discouragement in me. This courage at last bade me stand still and say: “Dwarf! You! Or I!” —
For courage is the best killer, — courage that attacks: for in every attack there is the sound of drums and trumpets.
But man is the most courageous animal: with that he has overcome every animal. With the sound of drums and trumpets he has overcome every pain as well; but human pain is the deepest pain.
Courage strikes dead even dizziness at the edge of abysses: and where does man not stand at the edge of abysses! Is seeing itself not — seeing abysses?
Courage is the best killer: courage strikes dead even pity. But pity is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man sees into life, so deeply does he see into suffering.
But courage is the best killer, courage that attacks: it strikes dead even death, for it says: “Was that life? Well then! Once more!”
In such a saying, though, there is much sound of drums and trumpets. Whoever has ears, let him hear. —
“Stop! Dwarf!” I said. “I! Or you! But I am the stronger of us two —: you do not know my abysmal thought! That — you could not bear!” —
Then something happened that made me lighter: for the dwarf jumped down from my shoulder, the curious creature! And he squatted on a stone in front of me. But just there, where we had stopped, stood a gateway.
“Look at this gateway, dwarf!” I went on. “It has two faces. Two paths come together here: no one has ever yet walked either of them to its end.
This long lane back here: it lasts an eternity. And that long lane out there — that is another eternity.
They contradict each other, these paths; they run head-on into each other: — and it is here, at this gateway, that they come together. The gateway’s name is written above it: ‘Moment.’
But if someone were to walk on along one of them — and on and on, ever farther: do you believe, dwarf, that these paths contradict each other eternally?” —
“Everything straight lies,” the dwarf muttered contemptuously. “All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle.”
“You spirit of gravity!” I said angrily, “do not take this too lightly! Or I will leave you squatting where you squat, lamefoot, — and I carried you high!
Look,” I went on, “at this moment! From this gateway, Moment, a long eternal lane runs backward: behind us lies an eternity.
Must not whatever of all things can run have already run along this lane once before? Must not whatever of all things can happen have already happened once before, been done, run past?
And if everything has already been here before: what do you think, dwarf, of this moment? Must not this gateway too have — been here before?
And are not all things knotted together so tightly that this moment draws all coming things after it? And so — itself as well?
For whatever of all things can run: in this long lane out there too — it must run once more! —
And this slow spider that creeps in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway, whispering together, whispering of eternal things — must we not all have been here before?
— and come again and run in that other lane, out there, before us, in this long, eerie lane — must we not come again eternally?” —
So I spoke, more and more softly: for I was afraid of my own thoughts, and of the thoughts behind my thoughts. Then, suddenly, I heard a dog howl nearby.
Had I ever heard a dog howl like that? My thoughts ran back. Yes! When I was a child, in my most distant childhood:
— then I heard a dog howl like that. And I saw it too, its hair bristling, its head raised, trembling, in the stillest midnight, when even dogs believe in ghosts:
— so that I felt sorry for it. For just then the full moon, silent as death, was passing over the house; just then it stood still, a round glow, — still on the flat roof, as if on someone else’s property: —
that was what had terrified the dog then: for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And when I heard such howling again, I felt sorry for it once more.
Where now was the dwarf? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Was I dreaming, then? Was I waking up? All at once I stood among wild cliffs, alone, desolate, in the most desolate moonlight.
But there lay a man! And there! The dog, leaping, bristling, whining, — now it saw me coming — then it howled again, then it screamed: — had I ever heard a dog scream for help like that?
And truly, what I saw, I had never seen the like of. I saw a young shepherd, writhing, choking, twitching, his face distorted, and a heavy black serpent was hanging out of his mouth.
Had I ever seen so much disgust and pale horror on one face? He must have been asleep? Then the serpent crawled into his throat — and there it bit fast.
My hand pulled at the serpent and pulled: — in vain! it could not pull the serpent out of his throat. Then it cried out of me: “Bite! Bite down!
Its head off! Bite!” — so it cried out of me, my horror, my hatred, my disgust, my mercy, all my good and my bad cried out of me in a single cry. —
You bold ones around me! You seekers and tempters, and whoever of you has set out with cunning sails on unexplored seas! You who delight in riddles!
Then guess me the riddle that I saw back then, interpret for me the vision of the most solitary one!
For it was a vision and a foreseeing: — what did I see back then in a parable? And who is it that must one day still come?
Who is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent crawled like this? Who is the man into whose throat everything heaviest, blackest will crawl like this?
— But the shepherd bit, as my cry had advised him; he bit with a good bite! Far away he spat the serpent’s head —: and sprang up. —
No longer shepherd, no longer man, — one transformed, surrounded with light, who laughed! Never yet on earth has a man laughed as he laughed!
Oh my brothers, I heard a laughter that was no human laughter, — and now a thirst gnaws at me, a longing that is never stilled.
My longing for this laughter gnaws at me: oh, how can I bear to go on living! And how could I bear to die now! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
With such riddles and bitternesses in his heart Zarathustra crossed the sea. But when he was four days’ journey from the Blessed Isles and from his friends, he had overcome all his pain —: victorious and with firm feet he stood once more upon his fate. And then Zarathustra spoke like this to his exultant conscience:
“Alone I am again, and I want to be, alone with the pure sky and the open sea; and again it is afternoon around me.
It was in the afternoon that I once found my friends for the first time, and in the afternoon the second time as well: — at the hour when all light grows stiller.
For whatever happiness is still on its way between heaven and earth now seeks a bright soul to lodge in: for happiness all light has now grown stiller.
Oh afternoon of my life! Once my happiness too came down to the valley to seek a lodging for itself: and there it found these open, hospitable souls.
Oh afternoon of my life! What did I not give up to have one thing: this living plantation of my thoughts, and this morning light of my highest hope!
The creator once sought companions, and children of his hope: and look, it turned out that he could not find them, unless he first created them himself.
So I am in the midst of my work, going to my children and coming back from them: for the sake of his children Zarathustra must complete himself.
For at bottom one loves only one’s child and one’s work; and where there is great love of oneself, it is the sign of pregnancy: so I have found it.
My children are still green in their first spring, standing close together and shaken together by the winds, the trees of my garden and of my best soil.
And truly! Where such trees stand together, there are Blessed Isles!
But one day I want to dig them up and set each one apart by himself: so that he may learn solitude and defiance and caution.
Gnarled and bent and with a supple hardness, he shall then stand for me by the sea, a living lighthouse of unconquerable life.
There, where the storms plunge down into the sea, and the mountain’s trunk drinks water, each one shall one day keep his watches by day and by night, for his testing and knowing.
He shall be known and tested, to see whether he is of my kind and descent, — whether he is master of a long will, silent even when he speaks, and yielding in such a way that in giving he takes: —
— so that one day he may become my companion, a fellow creator and fellow celebrator of Zarathustra’s —: one who writes my will on my tablets, for the fuller completion of all things.
And for his sake and for the sake of those like him, I must complete myself: that is why I now turn aside from my happiness and offer myself to every misfortune — for my last testing and knowing.
And truly, it was time for me to go; and the wanderer’s shadow and the longest while and the stillest hour — they all urged me: ‘It is high time!’
The wind blew through my keyhole and said ‘Come!’ The door sprang slyly open for me and said ‘Go!’
But I lay chained to the love of my children: desire laid this snare for me, the desire for love, that I should become my children’s prey and lose myself to them.
Desiring — to me that already means: to have lost myself. I have you, my children! In this having, everything shall be certainty and nothing desire.
But the sun of my love lay brooding on me, Zarathustra was stewing in his own juice, — then shadows and doubts flew over me.
I was already longing for frost and winter: ‘oh, if only frost and winter would make me crack and crunch again!’ I sighed: — then icy mists rose out of me.
My past burst its graves, many a pain that had been buried alive woke up —: it had only been sleeping its fill, hidden in shrouds.
So everything called to me in signs: ‘It is time!’ — But I — did not hear: until at last my abyss stirred and my thought bit me.
Ah, abysmal thought, you who are my thought! When will I find the strength to hear you digging and no longer tremble?
My heart pounds right up into my throat when I hear you digging! Even your silence wants to strangle me, you abysmally silent one!
As yet I have never dared to call you up: it was enough that I — carried you with me! As yet I was not strong enough for the lion’s last exuberance and mischief.
Your heaviness was always terrible enough for me: but one day I shall yet find the strength and the lion’s voice that calls you up!
Once I have overcome myself in that, then I will overcome myself in what is greater still; and a victory shall be the seal of my completion! —
Meanwhile I still drift on uncertain seas; accident flatters me, smooth-tongued accident; I look forward and backward —, and still I see no end.
The hour of my last struggle has not yet come to me, — or is it coming to me just now? Truly, sea and life gaze at me all around with treacherous beauty!
Oh afternoon of my life! Oh happiness before evening! Oh harbor on the high seas! Oh peace in uncertainty! How I distrust you all!
Truly, I am distrustful of your treacherous beauty! I am like the lover who distrusts all-too-velvety smiles.
As he pushes his most beloved away ahead of him, tender even in his hardness, the jealous one —, so I push this blissful hour away ahead of me.
Away with you, you blissful hour! With you there came to me a bliss against my will! Willing, I stand here for my deepest pain: — you came at the wrong time!
Away with you, you blissful hour! Better to take lodging over there — with my children! Hurry! and bless them before evening with my happiness!
There, evening is already drawing near: the sun is sinking. Gone — my happiness! —”
Thus spoke Zarathustra. And he waited for his misfortune all night long: but he waited in vain. The night stayed bright and still, and happiness itself came nearer and nearer to him. But toward morning Zarathustra laughed to his heart and said mockingly: “Happiness runs after me. That comes from my not running after women. But happiness is a woman.”
Oh heaven above me, you pure one! You deep one! You abyss of light! Gazing at you, I shudder with godlike desires.
To throw myself up into your height — that is my depth! To shelter myself in your purity — that is my innocence!
The god is veiled by his beauty: so you hide your stars. You do not speak: so you proclaim your wisdom to me.
Mute over the roaring sea you have risen for me today; your love and your shame speak revelation to my roaring soul.
That you came to me beautiful, veiled in your beauty, that you speak to me mutely, revealed in your wisdom:
Oh, how could I not guess all that is bashful in your soul! Before the sun you came to me, the loneliest of all.
We have been friends from the beginning: grief and grimness and ground we have in common; even the sun we have in common.
We do not speak to each other, because we know too much —: we are silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other.
Are you not the light to my fire? Do you not have the sister soul to my insight?
Together we learned everything; together we learned to climb above ourselves to ourselves, and to smile without a cloud: —
— to smile down without a cloud, out of bright eyes and from miles away, when under us compulsion and purpose and guilt steam like rain.
And when I wandered alone: for what did my soul hunger in the nights and on wrong paths? And when I climbed mountains, whom did I ever seek on the mountains, if not you?
And all my wandering and mountain climbing: it was only a necessity, and a help for the helpless: — my whole will wants only to fly, to fly up into you!
And whom did I hate more than drifting clouds, and everything that stains you? And I hated even my own hatred, because it stained you!
I bear a grudge against the drifting clouds, those creeping cats of prey: they take from you and me what we have in common — the vast, unbounded Yes-and-Amen-saying.
We bear a grudge against these go-betweens and mixers, the drifting clouds: these half-and-halfers, who have learned neither to bless nor to curse from the ground up.
I would rather sit in a tub under a closed heaven, rather sit in the abyss with no heaven at all, than see you, heaven of light, stained with drifting clouds!
And often I have longed to pin them down with jagged gold wires of lightning, so that, like the thunder, I could beat the kettledrum on their kettle-bellies: —
— an angry kettledrummer, because they rob me of your Yes! and Amen!, you heaven above me, you pure one! You bright one! You abyss of light! — because they rob you of my Yes! and Amen!
For I would rather have noise and thunder and the curses of storms than this cautious, doubting cat-calm; and among men too, what I hate most are all the pussyfooters and half-and-halfers and doubting, hesitating, drifting clouds.
And “whoever cannot bless shall learn to curse!” — this clear teaching fell to me out of a clear sky; this star still stands in my heaven even on black nights.
But I am one who blesses and a Yes-sayer, if only you are around me, you pure one! You bright one! You abyss of light! — then I carry my blessing Yes-saying even into every abyss.
I have become one who blesses and one who says Yes: and for that I wrestled long and was a wrestler, so that one day I might get my hands free for blessing.
But this is my blessing: to stand over each and every thing as its own heaven, as its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security: and blessed is the one who blesses like this!
For all things are baptized at the fountain of eternity and beyond good and evil; but good and evil themselves are only shadows in between, and damp glooms, and drifting clouds.
Truly, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach: “Over all things stands the heaven Accident, the heaven Innocence, the heaven Chance, the heaven Exuberance.”
“Of Chance” — that is the oldest title of nobility in the world; I gave it back to all things, I redeemed them from their serfdom under purpose.
This freedom and heavenly cheerfulness I set like an azure bell over all things, when I taught that over them and through them no “eternal will” — wills.
This exuberance and this folly I set in the place of that will, when I taught: “In everything one thing is impossible — rationality!”
A little reason, to be sure, a seed of wisdom scattered from star to star — this leaven is mixed into all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed into all things!
A little wisdom is possible, certainly; but this blessed security I found in all things: that they would rather — dance on the feet of accident.
Oh heaven above me, you pure one! You lofty one! This is what your purity now is to me: that there is no eternal reason-spider and no reason-spiderweb: —
— that you are a dance floor for me for divine accidents, that you are a table of the gods for me, for divine dice and dice players! —
But you are blushing? Did I say something unsayable? Did I blaspheme when I wanted to bless you?
Or is it the shame of being two together that made you blush? — Are you telling me to go and be silent, because now — the day is coming?
The world is deep —: and deeper than the day could ever comprehend. Not everything may have words in front of the day. But the day is coming: so let us part now!
Oh heaven above me, you bashful one! You glowing one! Oh you, my happiness before sunrise! The day is coming: so let us part now! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
When Zarathustra was back on solid land, he did not go straight to his mountains and his cave, but took many roads and asked many questions and found out this and that, so that he said of himself in jest: “Look, a river that flows back to its source in many windings!” For he wanted to learn what had happened to man in the meantime: whether he had become bigger or smaller. And once he saw a row of new houses; he was astonished and said:
“What do these houses mean? Truly, no great soul set them up as a parable of itself!
Did some silly child take them out of its toy box? If only another child would put them back in its box!
And these rooms and chambers: can men go in and out of them? They seem to me made for silk dolls; or for nibblers, who perhaps also let themselves be nibbled.”
And Zarathustra stood still and thought. At last he said sadly: “Everything has become smaller!
Everywhere I see lower gates: one of my kind can still get through them, but — he has to stoop!
Oh, when will I come home again to where I no longer have to stoop — no longer have to stoop before the small!” — And Zarathustra sighed and gazed into the distance. —
But that same day he gave his discourse on the virtue that makes small.
I walk among this people and keep my eyes open: they do not forgive me for not envying their virtues.
They snap at me because I tell them: small people need small virtues — and because I find it hard to swallow that small people are needed!
I am still like the rooster here in a strange farmyard, whom even the hens peck at; but I hold no grudge against these hens for it.
I am polite to them, as to every small annoyance; to be prickly toward small things seems to me a wisdom for hedgehogs.
They all talk about me when they sit around the fire in the evening — they talk about me, but nobody thinks — of me!
This is the new stillness I have learned: their noise around me spreads a cloak over my thoughts.
They make noise among themselves: “What does this dark cloud want with us? Let us make sure it does not bring us a plague!”
And recently a woman snatched back her child, who wanted to come to me: “Take the children away!” she screamed; “eyes like that scorch children’s souls.”
They cough when I speak: they think coughing is an objection to strong winds — they guess nothing of the roaring of my happiness!
“We have no time for Zarathustra yet” — so they object; but what does a time matter that “has no time” for Zarathustra?
And even when they praise me: how could I fall asleep on their glory? Their praise is a belt of thorns to me: it still scratches me when I take it off.
And this too I learned among them: the one who praises acts as though he were giving something back, but in truth he wants to be given more!
Ask my foot whether it likes their lauding and luring tune! Truly, to such a beat and tick-tock it wants neither to dance nor to stand still.
They would like to lure and laud me into small virtue; they would like to coax my foot into the tick-tock of small happiness.
I walk among this people and keep my eyes open: they have become smaller, and are getting smaller and smaller: — and it is their teaching about happiness and virtue that does it.
For they are modest even in virtue — because they want comfort. And only modest virtue gets along with comfort.
They too learn, in their way, to stride and to stride forward: that is what I call their hobbling —. With it they become a stumbling block to anyone in a hurry.
And many of them walk forward and look back while they do it, with a stiffened neck: I like to run into those.
Foot and eye should not lie, nor give each other the lie. But there is much lying among the small people.
Some of them will, but most of them are only willed. Some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors.
There are actors among them without knowing it, and actors without wanting it —, the genuine ones are always rare, especially the genuine actors.
There is little of the man here: that is why their women make themselves manly. For only one who is man enough will — redeem the woman in woman.
And this hypocrisy I found the worst among them: that even those who command feign the virtues of those who serve.
“I serve, you serve, we serve” — so prays even the hypocrisy of the rulers here — and woe if the first lord is only the first servant!
Ah, my eye’s curiosity strayed even into their hypocrisies; and I guessed well all their fly-happiness and their buzzing around sunlit windowpanes.
So much kindness, so much weakness I see. So much justice and pity, so much weakness.
Round, fair, and kind they are with one another, as grains of sand are round, fair, and kind with grains of sand.
To embrace a small happiness modestly — that they call “submission”! and meanwhile they are already squinting modestly after a new small happiness.
At bottom, in their simplicity, they want one thing most of all: that nobody hurt them. So they get in first with everyone and do them good.
But this is cowardice: even if it is called “virtue.” —
And when for once they speak roughly, these small people: I hear in it only their hoarseness — for every draft makes them hoarse.
Shrewd they are; 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 into a dog, and man himself into man’s best domestic animal.
“We have set our chair in the middle” — so their smirk tells me — “just as far from dying gladiators as from contented sows.”
But this is — mediocrity: even if it is called moderation. —
I walk among this people and let many a word fall: but they know neither how to take nor how to keep.
They are surprised that I did not come to rail against lusts and vices; and truly, I did not come to warn against pickpockets either!
They are surprised that I am not ready to smarten and sharpen their cleverness still more: as if they did not already have enough know-it-alls, whose voices squeak at me like slate pencils!
And when I cry: “Curse all the cowardly devils in you that like to whimper and fold their hands and worship”: then they cry: “Zarathustra is godless.”
And their teachers of submission cry it most of all —; but it is precisely into their ears that I love to shout: Yes! I am Zarathustra, the godless!
These teachers of submission! Wherever things are small and sick and scabby, they crawl, like lice; and only my disgust keeps me from cracking them.
Well then! This is my sermon for their ears: I am Zarathustra the godless, who says: “Who is more godless than I, that I may delight in his instruction?”
I am Zarathustra the godless: where do I find my equals? And all those are my equals who give themselves their own will and throw off all submission.
I am Zarathustra the godless: I cook every accident in my own pot. And only when it is cooked through there do I welcome it, as my food.
And truly, many an accident came to me like a master: but my will spoke to it more masterfully still — and at once it lay on its knees, begging —
— begging that it might find shelter and a heart with me, and coaxing me with flattery: “Just look, oh Zarathustra, how only a friend comes to a friend!” —
But why do I speak, where no one has my ears! And so I will shout it out into all the winds:
You are getting smaller and smaller, you small people! You are crumbling away, you comfortable ones! You will perish yet —
— of your many small virtues, of your many small omissions, of your many small submissions!
Too sparing, too yielding: that is your soil! But for a tree to become great, it wants to strike hard roots around hard rocks!
What you leave undone, too, weaves at the web of all mankind’s future; even your nothing is a spiderweb, and a spider that lives on the blood of the future.
And when you take, it is like stealing, you small virtuous ones; but even among rogues honor says: “One should steal only where one cannot rob.”
“It will all work itself out” — that too is a teaching of submission. But I tell you, you comfortable ones: it helps itself, and will help itself to more and more of you!
Ah, if only you would throw off all half willing, and become resolute in sloth as in action!
Ah, if only you understood my word: “Go ahead and do whatever you will — but first be such as are able to will!”
“Go ahead and love your neighbor as yourselves — but first, I tell you, be such as love themselves —
— who love with the great love, who love with the great contempt!” Thus speaks Zarathustra the godless. —
But why do I speak, where 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 through dark alleys.
But their hour is coming! And mine is coming too! Hour by hour they become smaller, poorer, more barren — poor weeds! poor soil!
And soon they shall stand before me like dry grass and steppe, and truly! weary of themselves — and thirsting more for fire than for water!
Oh blessed hour of the lightning! Oh mystery before noon! — One day I will yet make running fires of them, and heralds with tongues of flame: —
— one day they shall yet proclaim with tongues of flame: It is coming, it is near, the great noon!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Winter, a bad guest, is sitting at home with me; my hands are blue from the handshake of his friendship.
I honor him, this bad guest, but I like to leave him sitting alone. I like to run away from him; and if one runs well, one gets away from him!
With warm feet and warm thoughts I run to where the wind stands still — to the sunny corner of my Mount of Olives.
There I laugh at my stern guest and am still fond of him, because at home he catches the flies for me and silences much small noise.
For he will not put up with a mosquito wanting to sing, let alone two; he makes even the street so lonely that the moonlight is afraid in it at night.
He is a hard guest — but I honor him, and I do not pray, like the pampered ones, to the potbellied fire-idol.
Better to chatter one’s teeth a little than to worship idols! — that is how my nature wants it. And I bear a special grudge against all fire-idols, the ardent, the steaming, the stuffy.
Whom I love, I love better in winter than in summer; I mock my enemies better and more heartily now that winter sits in my house.
Heartily, truly, even when I crawl into bed —: even then my huddled happiness laughs and makes mischief; even my lying dream laughs.
I — a crawler? Never in my life have I crawled before the mighty; and if I ever lied, I lied out of love. That is why I am glad even in my winter bed.
A humble bed warms me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my poverty. And in winter it is most faithful to me.
I begin each day with a piece of malice: I mock the winter with a cold bath: and at that my stern housemate grumbles.
I also like to tickle him with a little wax candle: so that at last he lets the sky out of the ash-gray dusk for me.
For I am especially malicious in the morning: at the early hour, when the bucket rattles at the well and the horses whinny warmly through gray streets: —
Impatiently I wait then for the bright sky to rise for me at last, the snow-bearded winter sky, the old man and white-head, —
— the winter sky, the silent one, which often keeps silent even about its sun!
Did I learn the long bright silence from him? Or did he learn it from me? Or did each of us invent it himself?
The origin of all good things is thousandfold — all good, mischievous things leap into existence for joy: how could they ever do that only — once!
A good, mischievous thing is the long silence too, and to look out, like the winter sky, from a bright, round-eyed face: —
— like it, to keep silent about one’s sun and one’s unbending sun-will: truly, this art and this winter mischief I learned well!
It is my favorite malice and art that my silence has learned not to betray itself by being silent.
Rattling words and dice, I outwit the solemn watchers: my will and purpose shall slip away from all these stern spies.
So that no one may see down into my ground and my last will — for that I invented the long bright silence.
Many a clever one I found who veiled his face and muddied his water, so that no one might see through him and down into him.
But it was to him of all people that the cleverer distrusters and nutcrackers came: it was from him of all people that they fished out his most hidden fish!
No, the clear, the brave, the transparent ones — those are to me the cleverest of the silent: their ground is so deep that even the clearest water does not — betray it. —
You snow-bearded, silent winter sky, you round-eyed white-head above me! Oh you heavenly parable of my soul and its mischief!
And must I not hide, like one who has swallowed gold — so that they do not slit my soul open?
Must I not wear stilts, so that they overlook my long legs — all these envy-mongers and misery-mongers around me?
These smoky, stove-warmed, worn-out, mildewed, moping souls — how could their envy bear my happiness!
So I show them only the ice and the winter on my peaks — and not that my mountain still winds all the belts of the sun around itself!
They hear only my winter storms whistling: and not that I also sail over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south winds.
They even take mercy on my mishaps and accidents: — but my word is: “Let accident come to me: it is innocent, like a little child!”
How could they bear my happiness, if I did not wrap mishaps and winter hardships and polar-bear caps and cloaks of snowy sky around my happiness!
— if I did not myself take mercy on their pity — the pity of these envy-mongers and misery-mongers!
— if I did not myself sigh and shiver with frost in front of them and patiently let myself be wrapped in their pity!
This is the wise mischief and goodwill of my soul, that it does not hide its winter and its frost storms; nor does it hide its chilblains.
One man’s solitude is the flight of the sick; another’s solitude is the flight from the sick.
Let them hear me chattering and sighing from the winter cold, all these poor squint-eyed scoundrels around me! With such sighing and chattering I still flee from their heated rooms.
Let them pity me and sigh their pity over my chilblains: “He will freeze to death on us yet, on the ice of knowledge!” — so they lament.
Meanwhile I run with warm feet this way and that on my Mount of Olives: in the sunny corner of my Mount of Olives I sing and mock at all pity. —
Thus sang Zarathustra.
So, walking slowly through many peoples and many kinds of cities, Zarathustra went back by roundabout ways to his mountains and his cave. And look, on the way he came unexpectedly to the city gate of the great city: but here a foaming fool sprang at him with outspread hands and blocked his way. This was the same fool whom the people called “Zarathustra’s ape”: for he had picked up from him something of the phrasing and cadence of his speech, and liked, too, to borrow from the treasure of his wisdom. And the fool spoke to Zarathustra like this:
“Oh Zarathustra, here is the great city: here you have nothing to look for and everything to lose.
Why would you wade through this mud? Have pity on your foot! Spit on the city gate instead and — turn back!
Here is hell for hermits’ thoughts: here great thoughts are boiled alive and cooked small.
Here all great feelings rot: here only rattle-thin little feelings may rattle!
Do you not already smell the slaughterhouses and cookshops of the spirit? Is this city not steaming with the fumes of slaughtered spirit?
Do you not see the souls hanging like limp, dirty rags? — And they even make newspapers out of these rags!
Do you not hear how the spirit has turned into wordplay here? It vomits up a disgusting word-swill! — And they even make newspapers out of this word-swill.
They harry one another and do not know where to? They heat one another up and do not know why? They jingle their tin, they clink their gold.
They are cold and seek warmth from burnt spirits; they are overheated and seek coolness from frozen spirits; they are all sick and addicted to public opinions.
All lusts and vices are at home here; but there are virtuous people here too, there is much employable, employed virtue: —
Much employable virtue with writing fingers and hard sitting-and-waiting flesh, blessed with little stars on the breast and padded, rumpless daughters.
There is also much piety here, and much devout spittle-licking and flattery-baking before the God of Hosts.
For “from on high” drips the star and the gracious spittle; toward on high yearns every starless bosom.
The moon has its court, and the court has its mooncalves: but to everything that comes from the court the beggar-people pray, and all employable beggar-virtue.
“I serve, you serve, we serve” — so all employable virtue prays up to the prince: so that the deserved star may at last be pinned on the narrow bosom!
But the moon still revolves around everything earthly: so the prince too still revolves around the most earthly thing of all —: and that is the shopkeepers’ gold.
The God of Hosts is no god of gold bars; the prince proposes, but the shopkeeper — disposes!
By all that is bright and strong and good in you, oh Zarathustra! Spit on this city of shopkeepers and turn back!
Here all blood flows rotten and lukewarm and frothy through all the veins: spit on the great city, which is the great rubbish heap where all the scum comes foaming together!
Spit on the city of dented souls and narrow chests, of sharp eyes, of sticky fingers —
— on the city of the pushy, the shameless, the scribblers and screamers, the overheated overambitious: —
— where everything rotten and rank, leering and lowering, overripe, ulcerous, and plotting festers together: —
— spit on the great city and turn back!” —
But here Zarathustra interrupted the foaming fool and put his hand over his mouth.
“Stop it at last!” cried Zarathustra. “Your speech and your manner have disgusted me for a long time!
Why did you live so long by the swamp that you had to become a frog and a toad yourself?
Does a rotten, frothy swamp-blood not flow now through your own veins, that you have learned to croak and blaspheme like this?
Why did you not go into the forest? Or plow the earth? Is the sea not full of green islands?
I despise your despising; and if you warned me — why did you not warn yourself?
Out of love alone shall my despising and my warning bird fly up for me: but not out of the swamp! —
They call you my ape, you foaming fool: but I call you my grunting pig — with your grunting you are spoiling even my praise of folly.
What was it, then, that first made you grunt? That no one had flattered you enough: — so you sat yourself down beside this filth, so that you would have grounds to grunt a great deal, —
— so that you would have grounds for a great deal of revenge! For revenge, you vain fool, is all your foaming; I have guessed you well!
But your fool’s word does me harm, even where you are right! And even if Zarathustra’s word were right a hundred times over: with my word you would always — do wrong!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra; and he looked at the great city, sighed, and was silent for a long time. At last he spoke like this:
I am disgusted by this great city too, and not only by this fool. Here and there, there is nothing to better, nothing to worsen.
Woe to this great city! — And I wish I could already see the pillar of fire in which it is burned!
For such pillars of fire must go before the great noon. But this has its time and its own fate. —
But this teaching I give you, you fool, in parting: where one can no longer love, there one should — pass by! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he passed by the fool and the great city.
Ah, does everything already lie withered and gray that only lately stood green and bright on this meadow? And how much honey of hope I carried from here into my beehives!
These young hearts have all grown old already — and not even old! only tired, common, comfortable: — they call it “We have become pious again.”
Only lately I saw them running out in the early morning on brave feet: but their feet of knowledge grew tired, and now they even slander their morning bravery!
Truly, many of them once lifted their legs like a dancer; the laughter in my wisdom beckoned to them: — then they thought better of it. Just now I saw one of them bent over — crawling to the cross.
Once they fluttered around light and freedom like gnats and young poets. A little older, a little colder: and already they are dark-mongers and whisper-mongers and stove-squatters.
Did their hearts lose courage, perhaps, because solitude swallowed me like a whale? Did their ears listen for me long and longingly, in vain, for my trumpet calls and herald calls?
— Ah! There are always only a few whose hearts have a long courage and high spirits; and in such as these the spirit, too, stays patient. But the rest are cowardly.
The rest: that is always by far the most of them, the everyday, the superfluous, the many-too-many — all of these are cowardly! —
Whoever is of my kind will also meet the experiences of my kind along the way: so that his first companions must be corpses and jesters.
But his second companions — they will call themselves his believers: a living swarm, much love, much folly, much beardless veneration.
Whoever is of my kind among men should not bind his heart to these believers; whoever knows the fleeting, cowardly human kind should not believe in these springtimes and bright meadows!
If they could be otherwise, they would also will otherwise. Half-and-halfers spoil every whole. That leaves wither — what is there to lament in that!
Let them go and fall, oh Zarathustra, and do not lament! Better still, blow among them with rustling winds, —
— blow among these leaves, oh Zarathustra: so that everything withered runs away from you all the faster! —
“We have become pious again” — so these apostates confess; and some of them are still too cowardly to confess even that.
I look them in the eye — I say it to their faces and to the red in their cheeks: you are the kind who pray again!
But it is a disgrace to pray! Not for everyone, but for you and me and whoever has his conscience in his head as well. For you it is a disgrace to pray!
You know it well: the cowardly devil in you, who would like to fold his hands and lay his hands in his lap and have an easier time of it: — this cowardly devil talks you into it: “There is a God!”
With that, though, you belong to the light-shy kind, whom light never leaves in peace; now you must stick your head deeper into night and fog every day!
And truly, you chose your hour well: for the night birds are flying out again just now. The hour has come for all the light-shy people, the hour of evening and of rest, when they do not — “rest.”
I hear it and smell it: their hour has come for the hunt and the procession — not a wild hunt, to be sure, but a tame, lame, sniffing hunt of soft-treaders and soft-prayers, —
— a hunt for soulful, mousy cowerers: all the mousetraps of the heart are set up again! And wherever I lift a curtain, a little night moth comes tumbling out.
Was it perhaps crouching there together with another little night moth? For everywhere I smell small, tucked-away congregations; and wherever there are little prayer closets, there are new prayer-brothers inside them, and the stale air of prayer-brothers.
They sit together for long evenings and say: let us become like little children again and say “dear God”! — their mouths and stomachs ruined by the pious confectioners.
Or they spend long evenings watching a cunning, lurking cross-spider, which preaches shrewdness to the spiders themselves and teaches like this: “Under crosses, the spinning is good!”
Or they sit all day with fishing rods beside swamps and think that makes them deep; but whoever fishes where there are no fish, I would not even call shallow!
Or, pious and pleased, they learn to strum the harp from a songwriter who would like to harp his way into the hearts of young ladies: — for he has grown tired of the old ladies and their praises.
Or they learn to shudder from a learned half-madman who waits in darkened rooms for the spirits to come to him — and the spirit runs off altogether!
Or they listen to an old, restless purr-and-growl piper, who learned the gloom of sounds from gloomy winds; now he pipes as the wind blows and preaches gloom in gloomy tones.
And some of them have even become night watchmen: they now know how to blow horns and go around at night and wake up old things that fell asleep long ago.
Five words about old things I heard last night at the garden wall: they came from such old, gloomy, dried-up night watchmen.
“For a father, he doesn’t care enough about his children: human fathers do it better!” —
“He’s too old! He doesn’t care about his children at all anymore” — so the other night watchman answered.
“Has he got any children? Nobody can prove it, if he doesn’t prove it himself! I’ve wanted him to prove it properly for ages.”
“Prove it? As if he had ever proved anything! Proving comes hard to him; he sets great store by people believing him.”
“Yes! Yes! Faith saves him, faith in him. That’s the way of old people! It’s the same with us!” —
— Thus spoke the two old night watchmen and light-scarecrows to each other, and then tooted mournfully on their horns: so it happened last night at the garden wall.
But my heart writhed with laughter and wanted to break and did not know where to go? and sank into my diaphragm.
Truly, this will yet be my death, that I choke with laughter when I see donkeys drunk and hear night watchmen doubting God like this.
Is the time for all such doubts not long past? Who may still wake up such old, sleepy, light-shy things!
The old gods came to their end long ago, after all: — and truly, they had a good, merry end for gods!
They did not “twilight” themselves to death — that is a lie people tell! On the contrary: they once — laughed themselves to death!
That happened when the most godless word came from a god himself — the word: “There is One God! You shall have no other god besides me!” —
— an old grim-beard of a god, a jealous one, forgot himself like that: —
And all the gods laughed then, and rocked on their chairs, and cried: “Is this not precisely godliness, that there are gods, but no God?”
Whoever has ears, let him hear. —
Zarathustra spoke like this in the town he loved, which is called: the Motley Cow. For from here he had only two more days to go before he would be back in his cave and with his animals; and his soul rejoiced all the while at the nearness of his homecoming. —
Oh solitude! You, my home, solitude! Too long have I lived wild in wild foreign lands to come home to you without tears!
Now just wag your finger at me, as mothers do; no, smile at me, as mothers smile; now just say: “And who was it that once stormed away from me like a storm wind? —
— who cried as he left: too long have I sat with solitude, and there I unlearned silence! That — I suppose you have learned it now?
Oh Zarathustra, I know everything: and that among the many you were more forsaken, you single one, than you ever were with me!
Forsakenness is one thing, solitude another: that — you have learned now! And that among men you will always be wild and strange:
— wild and strange even when they love you: for above all else they want to be spared!
But here you are at home in your own house; here you can speak everything out and pour out all your reasons; nothing here is ashamed of hidden, hardened feelings.
Here all things come caressing to your speech and flatter you: for they want to ride on your back. On every parable you ride here to every truth.
Upright and forthright you may speak here to all things: and truly, it sounds like praise in their ears, that someone speaks to all things — straight!
But being forsaken is another thing. For do you still remember, oh Zarathustra? That time your bird screamed above you, when you stood in the forest, undecided, where to go? not knowing, near a corpse: —
— when you said: May my animals lead me! I found it more dangerous among men than among animals: — That was forsakenness!
And do you still remember, oh Zarathustra? When you sat on your island, a well of wine among empty buckets, giving and giving away, bestowing and pouring out among the thirsty:
— until at last you sat alone and thirsty among the drunk and lamented at night: ‘Is taking not more blessed than giving? And stealing more blessed still than taking?’ — That was forsakenness!
And do you still remember, oh Zarathustra? When your stillest hour came and drove you away from yourself, when it said with an evil whisper: ‘Speak and break!’ —
— when it made you sick of all your waiting and silence and discouraged your humble courage: That was forsakenness!” —
Oh solitude! You, my home, solitude! How blissfully and tenderly your voice speaks to me!
We do not question each other, we do not complain to each other, we walk openly together through open doors.
For with you everything is open and bright; and even the hours run here on lighter feet. For in the dark, time weighs more heavily on us than in the light.
Here the words and word-shrines of all being spring open for me: here all being wants to become word, here all becoming wants to learn from me how to speak.
But down there — down there all speech is in vain! There, forgetting and passing by are the best wisdom: that — I have learned now!
Whoever wanted to grasp everything about people would have to handle everything. But my hands are too clean for that.
I do not even like to breathe in their breath; ah, that I lived so long among their noise and bad breath!
Oh blissful stillness around me! Oh pure scents around me! Oh, how this stillness draws pure breath from a deep chest! Oh, how it listens, this blissful stillness!
But down there — there everything talks, there everything goes unheard. You may ring in your wisdom with bells: the shopkeepers in the marketplace will out-jingle it with pennies!
Everything among them talks; no one knows how to understand anymore. Everything falls into the water; nothing falls into deep wells anymore.
Everything among them talks; nothing turns out well and comes to an end anymore. Everything cackles, but who still wants to sit quietly on the nest and hatch eggs?
Everything among them talks; everything is talked to pieces. And what yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its tooth: today it hangs, scraped and gnawed, out of the mouths of the people of today.
Everything among them talks; everything is betrayed. And what was once called the secret and the secrecy of deep souls belongs today to the street trumpeters and other butterflies.
Oh humankind, you strange thing! You noise in dark alleys! Now you lie behind me again: — my greatest danger lies behind me!
My greatest danger always lay in sparing and pitying; and all humankind wants to be spared and suffered.
With truths held back, with a fool’s hand and a fool-fond heart, and rich in the little lies of pity: — that is how I always lived among men.
I sat among them in disguise, ready to mistake myself so that I could bear them, and gladly talking myself into it: “You fool, you do not know people!”
One unlearns people when one lives among people: there is too much foreground in all people — what use are far-seeing, far-craving eyes there!
And when they mistook me: I, the fool, spared them for it more than myself: used to being hard on myself, and often even taking revenge on myself for this sparing.
Stung all over by poisonous flies and hollowed out, like a stone, by many drops of malice: that is how I sat among them, and still talked myself into it: “Everything small is innocent of its smallness!”
Especially those who call themselves “the good” I found to be the most poisonous flies: they sting in all innocence, they lie in all innocence; how could they manage — to be just to me!
Whoever lives among the good is taught by pity to lie. Pity makes the air stuffy for all free souls. For the stupidity of the good is unfathomable.
To hide myself and my riches — that is what I learned down there: for I found everyone still poor in spirit. That was the lie of my pity, that with everyone I knew,
— that with everyone I saw and smelled what was enough spirit for him and what was already too much spirit for him!
Their stiff wise men: I called them wise, not stiff — so I learned to swallow words. Their gravediggers: I called them researchers and examiners — so I learned to swap words.
The gravediggers dig themselves into diseases. Foul vapors rest under old rubble. One should not stir up the swamp. One should live on mountains.
With blissful nostrils I breathe mountain freedom again! Redeemed at last is my nose from the smell of all humankind!
Tickled by sharp breezes, as if by sparkling wines, my soul sneezes — sneezes and cheers itself: Gesundheit!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
In a dream, in my last morning dream, I stood today on a headland — beyond the world; I held a pair of scales and weighed the world.
Oh, that the dawn came to me too early: she glowed me awake, the jealous one! She is always jealous of the glowing of my morning dreams.
Measurable for one who has time, weighable for a good weigher, reachable in flight for strong wings, guessable for divine nutcrackers: that is how my dream found the world: —
My dream, a bold sailor, half ship, half squall, silent as butterflies, impatient as falcons: how did it have the patience and the leisure today for weighing the world!
Did my wisdom perhaps speak to it in secret, my laughing, wide-awake daytime wisdom, which mocks all “infinite worlds”? For it says: “Where there is force, number becomes the mistress too: she has more force.”
How surely my dream looked upon this finite world, not greedy for the new, not greedy for the old, not fearing, not pleading: —
— as if a full apple offered itself to my hand, a ripe golden apple with cool, soft, velvety skin: — that is how the world offered itself to me: —
— as if a tree beckoned to me, a broad-branched, strong-willed tree, bent into a backrest and a footrest for the one weary of the road: that is how the world stood on my headland: —
— as if delicate hands carried a shrine toward me — a shrine open for the delight of bashful, reverent eyes: that is how the world offered itself to me today: —
— not riddle enough to scare human love away, not solution enough to put human wisdom to sleep: — a humanly good thing the world was to me today, the world of which so much evil is said!
How I thank my morning dream that I weighed the world like this, early today! As a humanly good thing it came to me, this dream and comforter of the heart!
And so that I may do as it did by day, and copy and learn its best from it: I will now put the three most evil things on the scales and weigh them well, humanly. —
Whoever taught blessing also taught cursing: which are the three best-cursed things in the world? These I will put on the scales.
Sensual pleasure, lust for power, selfishness: these three have so far been cursed the best and bad-mouthed and lie-mouthed the worst — these three I will weigh well, humanly.
Come on, then! Here is my headland, and there is the sea: it rolls toward me, shaggy, fawning, the faithful old hundred-headed dog-monster that I love.
Come on, then! Here I will hold the scales over the rolling sea: and I choose a witness too, to watch — you, you hermit tree, you strong-scented, broad-vaulted tree that I love! —
On what bridge does the Now cross over to the Someday? By what compulsion does the high compel itself down to the low? And what bids even the highest still — to grow upward? —
Now the scales stand level and still: three heavy questions I threw in, three heavy answers the other pan carries.
Sensual pleasure: to all hair-shirted despisers of the body, their thorn and stake, and cursed as “the world” by all believers in worlds behind: for it mocks and fools all muddlers and misleaders.
Sensual pleasure: to the rabble, the slow fire on which it is burned; to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the furnace ready to rut and reek.
Sensual pleasure: to free hearts, innocent and free, the garden happiness of the earth, the overflowing thanks of all the future to the Now.
Sensual pleasure: only to the withered a sweetish poison, but to the lion-willed the great cordial for the heart, and the wine of wines, reverently saved.
Sensual pleasure: the great parable-happiness for a higher happiness and the highest hope. For to much is marriage promised, and more than marriage, —
— to much that is more foreign to itself than man and woman: — and who has fully grasped how foreign man and woman are to each other!
Sensual pleasure: — but I want fences around my thoughts and around my words as well: so that the swine and the swooners do not break into my gardens! —
Lust for power: the red-hot scourge of the hardest of the hard-hearted; the gruesome torture that saves itself up for the cruelest himself; the somber flame of living pyres.
Lust for power: the spiteful gadfly set upon the vainest peoples; the mocker of all uncertain virtue; the rider on every horse and every pride.
Lust for power: the earthquake that breaks and breaks open everything rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punishing breaker of whitewashed tombs; the flashing question mark beside premature answers.
Lust for power: before whose gaze man crawls and cringes and slaves and becomes lower than serpent and swine: — until at last the great contempt cries out of him —,
Lust for power: the terrible teacher of the great contempt, who preaches “away with you!” to the very faces of cities and empires — until it cries out of them themselves, “away with me!”
Lust for power: which climbs alluringly, though, even to the pure and the solitary, and up to self-sufficient heights, glowing like a love that paints purple blisses alluringly on earthly skies.
Lust for power: but who would call it a lust, when what is high longs downward for power! Truly, there is nothing sick and nothing craving in such longing and descending!
That the solitary height may not isolate itself forever and be content with itself; that the mountain may come to the valley and the winds of the heights to the lowlands: —
Oh, who could find the right christening name and virtue name for such a longing! “Gift-giving virtue” — that is what Zarathustra once named the unnameable.
And it was then too that it happened — and truly, it happened for the first time! — that his word called selfishness blessed, the whole, healthy selfishness that wells up from a mighty soul: —
— from a mighty soul, to which belongs the high body, the beautiful, victorious, refreshing body, around which every single thing becomes a mirror:
— the supple, persuasive body, the dancer, whose parable and essence is the soul that delights in itself. The self-delight of such bodies and souls calls itself: “virtue.”
With its words of good and bad, such self-delight shields itself as if with sacred groves; with the names of its happiness it banishes from itself everything contemptible.
It banishes from itself everything cowardly; it says: Bad — that is cowardly! Contemptible in its eyes is the one who always worries, sighs, whimpers, and whoever picks up even the smallest advantages.
It also despises all woe-wallowing wisdom: for truly, there is also wisdom that blooms in the dark, a nightshade wisdom, which always sighs: “All is vanity!”
Shy mistrust counts for little with it, and so does everyone who wants oaths instead of looks and hands: and all all-too-mistrustful wisdom as well — for that is the way of cowardly souls.
Still less does it count the quick-to-please, the doglike one, who lies down on his back at once, the humble one; and there is wisdom too that is humble and doglike and pious and quick-to-please.
Hateful to it, even disgusting, is the one who never wants to defend himself, who swallows down poisonous spit and evil looks, the all-too-patient one, the all-enduring, the all-satisfied: for that is the serf’s kind.
Whether someone is servile before gods and divine kicks, or before men and stupid human opinions: it spits on every serf’s kind, this blessed selfishness!
Bad: that is what it calls everything that is bowed and stingily servile, unfree blinking eyes, pressed-down hearts, and that false, yielding kind that kisses with broad, cowardly lips.
And sham wisdom: that is what it calls everything that serfs and graybeards and the weary make jokes about; and especially all the wicked, witless, over-witty foolery of priests!
But the sham-wise, all the priests, the world-weary, and whoever has a soul of the woman’s and the serf’s kind — oh, what foul play their game has always made with selfishness!
And precisely this was supposed to be virtue and to be called virtue, that one made foul play with selfishness! And “selfless” — that is what all these world-weary cowards and cross-spiders wished to be, and with good reason!
But for all of them the day is coming now, the change, the sword of judgment, the great noon: then many things shall be revealed!
And whoever calls the “I” whole and holy and selfishness blessed, truly, he also speaks what he knows, as one who foreknows: “Look, it is coming, it is near, the great noon!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
My mouth — belongs to the people: I talk too coarsely and too heartily for the silky rabbits. And my word sounds stranger still to all ink-squids and pen-foxes.
My hand — is a fool’s hand: woe to all tables and walls, and whatever else still has room for fools’ doodles, fools’ daubs!
My foot — is a horse’s hoof; with it I trot and tramp over stick and stone, criss-cross across country, and I am devilish with delight at every fast run.
My stomach — is it an eagle’s stomach, perhaps? For it loves lamb best of all. But it is certainly a bird’s stomach.
Fed on innocent things, and on little, ready and impatient to fly, to fly away — that is my nature now: how could there not be something of the bird’s nature in it!
And above all, that I am the enemy of the spirit of gravity, that is the bird’s nature: and truly, deadly enemy, archenemy, primal enemy! Oh, where has my enmity not already flown and flown astray!
I could sing a song about that — and I will sing it: although I am alone in an empty house and must sing it to my own ears.
There are other singers, of course, whose throats are softened, whose hands grow eloquent, whose eyes grow expressive, whose hearts grow wakeful only in a full house: — those I do not resemble. —
Whoever one day teaches men to fly will have moved all the boundary stones; all the boundary stones themselves will fly into the air for him; he will baptize the earth anew — as “the Light One.”
The ostrich runs faster than the fastest horse, but even it still sticks its head heavily into the heavy earth: so it is with the man who cannot yet fly.
Earth and life are heavy to him; and that is how the spirit of gravity wants it! But whoever wants to become light, and a bird, must love himself: — that is what I teach.
Not, of course, with the love of the sick and the craving: for with them even self-love stinks!
One must learn to love oneself — that is what I teach — with a whole and healthy love: so that one can bear to be with oneself and does not go roaming about.
Such roaming about christens itself “love of the neighbor”: with this word the best lying and the best hypocrisy have been done so far, and especially by those who were heavy on everyone.
And truly, this is no commandment for today and tomorrow, to learn to love oneself. Rather, of all arts this is the finest, the most cunning, the last, and the most patient.
For to its owner, all that is his own is well hidden; and of all treasure pits, one’s own is dug up last — so the spirit of gravity arranges it.
Almost in the cradle we are handed heavy words and values: “good” and “evil” — that is what this dowry calls itself. For its sake we are forgiven for being alive.
And that is why the little children are allowed to come, so that they can be stopped in good time from loving themselves: so the spirit of gravity arranges it.
And we — we faithfully drag what we are handed, on hard shoulders and over rough mountains! And when we sweat, they tell us: “Yes, life is hard to bear!”
But only man is hard for himself to bear! The reason is that he drags too much that is foreign on his shoulders. Like the camel, he kneels down and lets himself be well loaded.
Especially the strong, load-bearing man in whom reverence dwells: he loads too many foreign heavy words and values onto himself — and now life seems to him a desert!
And truly! Much that is one’s own is hard to bear, too! And much that is inside man is like the oyster: that is, disgusting and slippery and hard to grasp —,
— so that a noble shell with noble ornament must plead for it. But this art too one must learn: to have a shell, and a fair appearance, and a prudent blindness!
Again, many things about man deceive us, because many a shell is poor and sad and too much a shell. Much hidden goodness and strength is never guessed; the most exquisite delicacies find no one to taste them!
Women know this, the most exquisite of them: a little fatter, a little thinner — oh, how much fate lies in so little!
Man is hard to discover, and hardest of all for himself; often the spirit lies about the soul. So the spirit of gravity arranges it.
But he has discovered himself who says: This is my good and evil: with that he has struck dumb the mole and dwarf who says, “Good for all, evil for all.”
Truly, I do not like those either for whom each and every thing is good and this world is even the best. Those I call the all-satisfied.
All-satisfaction, which knows how to taste everything: that is not the best taste! I honor the stubborn, choosy tongues and stomachs that have learned to say “I” and “Yes” and “No.”
But to chew and digest everything — that is the true swine’s way! Always to say Yeah-aw — only the donkey has learned that, and whoever is of his spirit! —
Deep yellow and hot red: that is what my taste wants — it mixes blood into all colors. But whoever whitewashes his house betrays to me a whitewashed soul.
Some are in love with mummies, the others with ghosts; and both alike are enemies of all flesh and blood — oh, how both go against my taste! For I love blood.
And I do not want to live and linger where everyone spits and spews: that is now my taste — I would sooner live among thieves and perjurers. No one carries gold in his mouth.
But still more repugnant to me are all lickspittles; and the most repugnant animal of a man that I found, I baptized parasite: it did not want to love, and yet wanted to live on love.
Wretched I call all those who have only one choice: to become evil beasts or evil beast-tamers: among such I would build myself no huts.
Wretched I call those too who must always wait — they go against my taste: all the tax collectors and shopkeepers and kings and other keepers of countries and counters.
Truly, I learned waiting too, and learned it thoroughly,
— but only waiting for myself. And above all I learned standing and walking and running and jumping and climbing and dancing.
But this is my teaching: whoever wants to learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance: — one does not fly one’s way into flying!
With rope ladders I learned to climb up to many a window, with nimble legs I clambered up high masts: to sit on high masts of knowledge seemed to me no small bliss, —
— to flicker like little flames on high masts: a small light, to be sure, but still a great comfort to storm-driven sailors and the shipwrecked! —
By many ways and in many manners I came to my truth; not by one ladder did I climb to the height where my eye roams into my distance.
And I only ever asked the way unwillingly — that always went against my taste! I would rather question and try out the ways themselves.
A trying and a questioning was all my going: — and truly, one must also learn to answer such questioning! But that — is my taste:
— not a good one, not a bad one, but my taste, which I no longer either hide or am ashamed of.
“This — is now my way — where is yours?” That is how I answered those who asked me “the way.” For the way — it does not exist!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Here I sit and wait, old broken tablets around me, and new tablets too, half written on. When will my hour come?
— the hour of my going down, my going under: for I want to go to mankind one more time.
That is what I am waiting for now: for first the signs must come to me that it is my hour, — namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves.
In the meantime I talk to myself, as one who has time. No one tells me anything new: so I tell myself about myself. —
When I came to mankind, I found them sitting on an old conceit: all of them had long fancied that they knew what was good and evil for man.
All talk of virtue seemed to them an old, tired business; and whoever wanted to sleep well still talked about “good” and “evil” before going to bed.
I disturbed this sleepiness when I taught: what is good and evil, no one knows yet: — unless it is the creator!
— But he is the one who creates man’s goal and gives the earth its meaning and its future: only he creates it, that something is good and evil.
And I told them to overturn their old professors’ chairs, and wherever that old conceit had sat; I told them to laugh at their great masters of virtue and their saints and poets and world-redeemers.
I told them to laugh at their gloomy sages, and at whoever had ever sat on the tree of life like a black scarecrow, giving warnings.
I sat down beside their great avenue of tombs, and even among the carrion and the vultures — and I laughed at all their once-upon-a-time and its crumbling, decaying glory.
Truly, like preachers of repentance and fools, I raised a cry of wrath and outrage over all their great and small, — that their best is so very small! That their most evil is so very small! — so I laughed.
So my wise longing cried and laughed out of me, my longing that was born on mountains, a wild wisdom, truly! — my great longing with its roaring wings.
And often it swept me away, up and off and away, in the middle of my laughter: then I flew, shuddering, an arrow, through sun-drunk rapture:
— out into distant futures that no dream has seen yet, into hotter souths than any sculptor ever dreamed of: where gods, dancing, are ashamed of all clothes: —
— that I speak in parables, that is, and limp and stammer like the poets: and truly, I am ashamed that I must still be a poet! —
Where all becoming seemed to me the dancing of gods and the high spirits of gods, and the world set free and running wild and fleeing back to itself: —
— as an eternal fleeing from each other and seeking each other again of many gods, as the blissful contradicting of each other, hearing each other again, belonging to each other again, of many gods: —
Where all time seemed to me a blissful mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, playing blissfully with the goad of freedom: —
Where I also found my old devil and archenemy again, the spirit of gravity, and everything he created: compulsion, statute, need and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil: —
For must there not be something that is danced over, danced away over? Must there not be — for the sake of the light ones, the lightest — moles and heavy dwarfs? —
It was there, too, that I picked up the word “overman” from the road, and that man is something that must be overcome,
— that man is a bridge and not a goal: counting himself blessed for his noon and his evening, as a way to new dawns:
— the Zarathustra-word of the great noon, and whatever else I hung up over man, like a purple second sunset.
Truly, I also let them see new stars, along with new nights; and over clouds and day and night I spread out laughter like a motley tent.
I taught them all my composing and striving: to compose into one and gather together what is fragment in man, and riddle and dreadful accident, —
— as a poet, a guesser of riddles, and the redeemer of accident, I taught them to work at creating the future, and to redeem, by creating, everything that was.
To redeem the past in man and to re-create every “It was,” until the will says: “But so I willed it! So shall I will it —”
— This I called redemption for them, this alone I taught them to call redemption. — —
Now I wait for my redemption, — to go to them for the last time.
For I want to go to mankind one more time: down among them I want to go under, and in dying I want to give them my richest gift!
I learned this from the sun when it goes down, the overrich one: then it pours gold into the sea out of its inexhaustible riches, —
— so that even the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars! For I saw this once, and as I watched I could not weep my fill of tears. —
Like the sun, Zarathustra too wants to go under: now he sits here and waits, old broken tablets around him, and new tablets too, — half written on.
Look, here is a new tablet: but where are my brothers to carry it with me down into the valley and into hearts of flesh? —
So my great love of the farthest demands it: do not spare your neighbor! Man is something that must be overcome.
There are many ways and means of overcoming: see to that yourself! But only a jester thinks: “Man can also be leaped over.”
Overcome yourself even in your neighbor: and a right that you can seize for yourself, you shall not let anyone give you!
What you do, no one can do back to you. Look, there is no retribution.
Whoever cannot command himself shall obey. And many a man can command himself, but there is still much lacking before he also obeys himself!
This is what the kind of noble souls wants: they want to have nothing for free, least of all life.
Whoever is of the mob wants to live for free; but we others, to whom life gave itself, — we are always thinking about what we can best give in return!
And truly, it is a noble saying that says: “What life promises us, we want to keep — for life!”
One should not want to enjoy where one gives nothing to enjoy. And — one should not want to enjoy!
For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things of all: neither wants to be sought out. One should have them —, but one should rather seek out guilt and pain! —
Oh my brothers, whoever is a firstborn is always sacrificed. And now we are firstborn.
We all bleed on secret altars of sacrifice, we all burn and roast in honor of old idols.
Our best is still young: that tempts old palates. Our flesh is tender, our hide is only a lambskin: — how could we not tempt old idol-priests!
In ourselves he still lives, the old idol-priest, who roasts our best for his feast. Ah, my brothers, how could the firstborn not be sacrifices!
But so our kind wills it; and I love those who do not want to preserve themselves. Those who go under I love with my whole love: for they go over. —
To be true — few can do it! And whoever can still does not want to! But the ones who can do it least of all are the good.
Oh, these good ones! — Good people never speak the truth; for the spirit, to be good in this way is a sickness.
They give in, these good ones, they give themselves up, their heart repeats what it is told, their depths obey: but whoever obeys does not listen to himself!
Everything that the good call evil must come together for one truth to be born: oh my brothers, are you evil enough for this truth too?
The daring venture, the long mistrust, the cruel No, the weariness of it all, the cutting into living flesh — how seldom does that come together! But from such seed truth is begotten!
Alongside the bad conscience all knowledge has grown, until now! Break, break the old tablets, you seekers of knowledge!
When the water has planks over it, when footbridges and railings leap across the river: truly, then no one is believed who says: “Everything flows.”
Even the blockheads contradict him. “What?” say the blockheads, “everything flows? But the planks and railings are over the flowing water!”
“Over the flow everything is firm, all the values of things, the bridges, the concepts, all ‘good’ and ‘evil’: all of it is firm!” —
But when the hard winter comes, the tamer of the river-beast: then even the wittiest learn mistrust; and truly, then it is not only the blockheads who say: “Should not everything — stand still?”
“At bottom everything stands still” —, that is a proper winter teaching, a good thing for a barren time, a good comfort for hibernators and stove-squatters.
“At bottom everything stands still” —: but the thaw wind preaches against it!
The thaw wind, a bull that is no plowing bull, — a raging bull, a destroyer, who breaks the ice with angry horns! But ice — breaks footbridges!
Oh my brothers, now — is not everything flowing? Have not all the railings and footbridges fallen into the water? Who would still hold on to “good” and “evil”?
“Woe to us! Hail to us! The thaw wind is blowing!” — Preach this for me, oh my brothers, through all the streets!
There is an old delusion, and it is called good and evil. Until now the wheel of this delusion has turned around soothsayers and astrologers.
Once, people believed in soothsayers and astrologers: and that is why they believed, “Everything is fate: you shall, because you must!”
Then again they distrusted all soothsayers and astrologers: and that is why they believed, “Everything is freedom: you can, because you will!”
Oh my brothers, about the stars and the future there has until now only been fancy, not knowledge: and that is why about good and evil there has until now only been fancy, not knowledge!
“You shall not rob! You shall not kill!” — such words were once called holy; before them people bowed their knees and their heads and took off their shoes.
But I ask you: where in the world have there ever been better robbers and killers than such holy words?
Is there not in all life itself — robbing and killing? And when such words were called holy, was not truth itself — killed by it?
Or was it a sermon of death, that called holy what contradicted all life and counseled against it? — Oh my brothers, break, break the old tablets!
This is my pity for all that is past: that I see it is abandoned, —
— abandoned to the mercy, the spirit, the madness of every generation that comes and reinterprets everything that was as a bridge to itself!
A great despot could come, a cunning monster, who with his favor and his disfavor would force and squeeze all that is past, until it became a bridge for him, and an omen and a herald and a cockcrow.
But this is the other danger, and my other pity: — whoever is of the mob, his memory goes back as far as his grandfather, — but with his grandfather, time stops.
So all that is past is abandoned: for it could one day happen that the mob became master and drowned all time in shallow waters.
That is why, oh my brothers, a new nobility is needed, which is the adversary of all mob and all despotism and writes the word “noble” anew on new tablets.
For many noble ones are needed, and many kinds of noble ones, for there to be a nobility! Or, as I once said in a parable: “Precisely this is godliness, that there are gods, but no God!”
Oh my brothers, I consecrate you and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become begetters and breeders and sowers of the future, —
— truly, not to a nobility that you could buy like shopkeepers, and with shopkeepers’ gold: for everything that has its price has little value.
From now on let your honor be not where you come from, but where you are going! Your will and your foot that wants to go out beyond yourselves, — let that be your new honor!
Truly, not that you have served a prince — what do princes matter anymore! — or became a bulwark for what stands, so that it would stand more firmly!
Not that your family became courtly at courts, and you learned to stand for long hours in shallow ponds, motley, like a flamingo.
— For being able to stand is a merit among courtiers; and all courtiers believe that the bliss after death includes — being allowed to sit! —
Nor that a spirit they call holy led your forefathers into promised lands, which I do not praise: for where the worst of all trees grew, the cross, — that land has nothing to praise! —
— and truly, wherever this “Holy Spirit” led its knights, on such crusades it was always goats and geese and cross-heads and cranks that ran ahead! —
Oh my brothers, your nobility shall not look backward, but outward! You shall be exiles from all fatherlands and forefatherlands!
You shall love your children’s land: let this love be your new nobility, — the undiscovered land, in the farthest sea! I tell your sails to search and search for it!
In your children you shall make up for being the children of your fathers: so you shall redeem all that is past! This new tablet I place over you!
“Why live? All is vanity! Living — that is threshing straw; living — that is burning oneself and still not getting warm.” —
Such antique chatter still counts as “wisdom”; but because it is old and smells musty, it is all the more honored. Even mold ennobles. —
Children may talk like that: they shy away from the fire because it burned them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.
And whoever is always “threshing straw,” how should he be allowed to blaspheme against threshing! Such a fool ought to be muzzled!
People like that sit down at the table and bring nothing with them, not even a good hunger: — and then they blaspheme: “All is vanity!”
But eating and drinking well, oh my brothers, is truly no vain art! Break, break the tablets of the never-glad!
“To the pure all things are pure” — so say the people. But I tell you: to swine all things turn swinish!
That is why the fanatics and the head-hangers, whose hearts hang down as well, preach: “The world itself is a filthy monster.”
For all of these have unclean spirits; but most of all those who have no rest and no peace unless they see the world from behind, — the believers in worlds behind!
To them I say it to their faces, even though it does not sound pretty: the world is like man in this, that it has a behind, — so much is true!
There is a lot of filth in the world: so much is true! But that does not make the world itself a filthy monster!
There is wisdom in this, that much in the world smells bad: disgust itself creates wings, and powers that can divine where springs are hidden!
Even in the best there is still something disgusting; and the best is still something that must be overcome! —
Oh my brothers, there is much wisdom in this, that there is much filth in the world! —
I heard pious believers in worlds behind say such sayings to their consciences; and truly, without malice or falseness, — although there is nothing in the world more false, nor more malicious.
“Just let the world be the world! Do not lift so much as one finger against it!”
“Let anyone who wants to choke and stab and cut and scrape the people: do not lift so much as one finger against it! That way they will learn to renounce the world.”
“And your own reason — you yourself shall throttle and choke it; for it is a reason of this world, — that way you yourself will learn to renounce the world.” —
— Break, break, oh my brothers, these old tablets of the pious! Unsay the sayings of the world-slanderers!
“Whoever learns much unlearns all violent desire” — that is what people whisper to each other today in all the dark alleys.
“Wisdom makes you tired, nothing is — worth it; you shall not covet!” — I found this new tablet hanging even in the open marketplaces.
Break, oh my brothers, break this new tablet too! The world-weary hung it up, and the preachers of death, and the jailers too: for look, it is also a sermon for serfdom! —
Because they learned badly, and not the best, and everything too early and everything too fast: because they ate badly, that is where that ruined stomach of theirs came from, —
— for their spirit is a ruined stomach: it advises death! For truly, my brothers, the spirit is a stomach!
Life is a fountain of joy: but for the one out of whom the ruined stomach speaks, the father of gloom, all springs are poisoned.
To know: that is joy for the lion-willed! But whoever has grown weary is himself only “willed,” and all the waves play with him.
And that is always the way of weak people: they lose themselves on their ways. And in the end their weariness even asks: “Why did we ever go on ways at all! All is the same!”
To them it sounds sweet in their ears when someone preaches: “Nothing is worth it! You shall not will!” But that is a sermon for serfdom.
Oh my brothers, Zarathustra comes as a fresh, blustering wind to all who are weary of the way; he will make many noses sneeze yet!
My free breath blows even through walls, and into prisons and imprisoned spirits!
Willing liberates: for willing is creating: so I teach. And you shall learn only in order to create!
And even learning you shall first learn from me, learning well! — Whoever has ears, let him hear!
There lies the boat, — over there, perhaps, the way leads into the great nothing. — But who wants to step into this “Perhaps”?
Not one of you wants to step into the boat of death! Then how can you claim to be weary of the world!
Weary of the world! And you have not even been lifted away from the earth! I always found you still lusting after the earth, still in love with your own weariness of the earth!
Not for nothing does your lip hang down: — a little earthly wish still sits on it! And in your eye — is there not a little cloud of unforgotten earthly pleasure floating there?
There are many good inventions on earth, some useful, others pleasant: for their sake the earth is to be loved.
And there are some things so well invented that they are like a woman’s breast: useful and pleasant at the same time.
But you who are weary of the world! You who are lazy about the earth! You should be beaten with rods! With strokes of the rod your legs should be made lively again.
For: if you are not sick people and worn-out wretches of whom the earth is weary, then you are sly sloths or sweet-toothed, skulking pleasure-cats. And if you do not want to run merrily again, then you shall — pass away!
One should not want to be a physician to the incurable: so Zarathustra teaches: — so you shall pass away!
But it takes more courage to make an end than to make a new verse: all physicians and poets know that. —
Oh my brothers, there are tablets that weariness created, and tablets that laziness created, the laziness that rots: though they speak alike, they want to be heard unalike. —
Look at this man here, wasting away! He is only a hand’s breadth from his goal, but out of weariness he has defiantly lain down here in the dust: this brave one!
Out of weariness he yawns at the way and the earth and the goal and himself: he will not take one step further, — this brave one!
Now the sun glares down on him, and the dogs lick at his sweat: but he lies there in his defiance and would rather waste away: —
— waste away a hand’s breadth from his goal! Truly, you will yet have to drag him by the hair into his heaven, — this hero!
Better still, leave him lying where he has lain down, so that sleep may come to him, the comforter, with cooling, rustling rain:
Let him lie until he wakes up of his own accord, — until of his own accord he takes back all his weariness and what weariness taught through him!
Only, my brothers, chase the dogs away from him, the lazy sneaks, and all that swarming vermin: —
— all that swarming vermin of the “cultured,” which — regales itself on the sweat of every hero! —
I draw circles around me and holy boundaries; fewer and fewer climb with me up higher and higher mountains, — I am building a mountain range out of holier and holier mountains. —
But wherever you may climb with me, oh my brothers: see to it that no parasite climbs with you!
A parasite: that is a crawling thing, a creeping, cringing thing, that wants to grow fat on your sick and sore corners.
And this is its art: it guesses where climbing souls are weary: in your grief and your gloom, in your tender shame, it builds its disgusting nest.
Where the strong are weak, where the noble are all too mild, — in there it builds its disgusting nest: the parasite lives where the great have small sore corners.
What is the highest kind of all that is, and what is the lowest? The parasite is the lowest kind; but whoever is of the highest kind feeds the most parasites.
For the soul that has the longest ladder and can go down the deepest: how could the most parasites not sit on that one? —
— the most comprehensive soul, which can run and wander and roam the farthest within itself; the most necessary soul, which out of joy flings itself into accident: —
— the soul that is, which dives into becoming; the soul that has, which wants to plunge into willing and desiring: —
— the soul that flees itself, which catches up with itself in the widest circle; the wisest soul, which folly talks to most sweetly: —
— the soul that loves itself most, in which all things have their streaming out and streaming back, their ebb and flood: — oh, how could the highest soul not have the worst parasites?
Oh my brothers, am I cruel, then? But I say: what is falling, one should also push!
Everything of today — it is falling, it is decaying: who would want to hold it up! But I — I want to push it as well!
Do you know the delight that rolls stones down into steep depths? — These people of today: just look at them, how they roll down into my depths!
I am a prelude to better players, oh my brothers! A precedent! Do as I have done before you!
And whoever you do not teach to fly, teach him — to fall faster! —
I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swashbuckler, — one must also know: look before you slash, and at whom!
And often there is more bravery in holding back and passing by: so that one saves oneself for a worthier enemy!
You shall have only enemies who are to be hated, but not enemies to be despised: you must be proud of your enemy: so I taught once before.
For the worthier enemy, oh my friends, you shall save yourselves: that is why you must pass many things by, —
— especially much of the rabble, which makes a din in your ears about the people and peoples.
Keep your eye clean of their for and against! There is much right there, and much wrong: whoever looks on grows angry.
To look in, to lash in — there it is all one: so go away into the forests and lay your sword to sleep!
Go your ways! And let the people and peoples go theirs! — dark ways, truly, on which not a single hope flickers anymore, not even like summer lightning!
Let the shopkeeper rule there, where everything that still glitters — is shopkeepers’ gold! It is no longer the time of kings: what calls itself a people today does not deserve kings.
Just look how these peoples themselves now act like shopkeepers: they pick even the smallest advantages out of every heap of rubbish!
They lie in wait for one another, they lie in wait to get something out of one another, — that is what they call “good neighborliness.” Oh, blessed, distant time, when a people said to itself: “I want to be — master over peoples!”
For, my brothers: the best shall rule, and the best also wants to rule! And where the teaching says otherwise, there — the best is lacking.
If they had — bread for free, woe! What would they cry out for! Their keep — that is what really keeps them busy; and they shall have it hard!
They are beasts of prey: in their “working” — there is still preying, in their “earning” — there is still outwitting! That is why they shall have it hard!
So they shall become better beasts of prey, finer, shrewder, more like man: for man is the best beast of prey.
Man has already robbed all the animals of their virtues: that is because, of all the animals, man has had it the hardest.
Only the birds are still above him. And if man were to learn to fly as well, woe! To what height — would his lust for prey fly!
This is how I want man and woman: the one fit for war, the other fit for bearing children, but both fit for dancing with head and legs.
And let every day be lost to us on which we did not dance even once! And let every truth be called false to us that did not bring even one laugh!
Your concluding of marriages: see to it that it is not a bad conclusion! You concluded too quickly: so there follows from it — the breaking of marriages!
And better the breaking of marriages than the bending of marriages, the lying of marriages! — A woman once said to me: “Yes, I broke my marriage, but first my marriage broke — me!”
I have always found the badly paired to be the worst of the vengeful ones: they make all the world pay for it that they can no longer run alone.
That is why I want honest people to say honestly to each other: “We love each other: let us see to it that we keep our love! Or shall our vow turn out to be an oversight?”
— “Give us a term and a little marriage, so that we may see whether we are fit for the great marriage! It is a great thing, always to be two!”
This is my advice to all honest people; and what would my love of the overman and of everything that is to come be worth, if I advised and spoke otherwise!
Not only to plant yourselves onward, but upward — for that, oh my brothers, may the garden of marriage help you!
Whoever has grown wise about old origins, look, he will in the end search for the springs of the future and for new origins. —
Oh my brothers, it will not be long before new peoples spring up and new springs rush down into new depths.
For the earthquake — it buries many wells, it makes many go thirsty: it also lifts inner powers and secret things into the light.
The earthquake reveals new springs. In the earthquake of old peoples, new springs break out.
And whoever calls out: “Look, here is a well for many who thirst, one heart for many who long, one will for many tools”: — around him a people gathers, that is: many who are trying.
Who can command, who must obey — that is what is tried there! Ah, with what long searching and guessing and missing and learning and trying again!
Human society: it is an experiment, so I teach, — a long search: but what it searches for is the one who commands! —
— an experiment, oh my brothers! And not a “contract”! Break, break this word of the soft-hearted and the half-and-halfs!
Oh my brothers! With whom does the greatest danger to all mankind’s future lie? Is it not with the good and the just? —
— as with those who say, and feel in their hearts: “We already know what is good and just, and we have it too; woe to those who are still searching here!” —
And whatever harm the evil may do: the harm the good do is the most harmful harm!
And whatever harm the world-slanderers may do: the harm the good do is the most harmful harm.
Oh my brothers, someone once looked into the hearts of the good and the just and said: “They are the Pharisees.” But no one understood him.
The good and the just themselves were not allowed to understand him: their spirit is imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably shrewd.
But this is the truth: the good must be Pharisees, — they have no choice!
The good must crucify the one who invents his own virtue! That is the truth!
But the second one to discover their country, the country, heart and soil of the good and the just: that was the one who asked: “Whom do they hate most?”
The creator is the one they hate most: the one who breaks tablets and old values, the breaker, — him they call the lawbreaker.
For the good — they cannot create: they are always the beginning of the end: —
— they crucify the one who writes new values on new tablets, they sacrifice the future to themselves, — they crucify all mankind’s future!
The good — they have always been the beginning of the end. —
Oh my brothers, did you understand this word as well? And what I once said about the “last man”? —
With whom does the greatest danger to all mankind’s future lie? Is it not with the good and the just?
Break, break the good and the just! — Oh my brothers, did you understand this word as well?
You are running from me? You are frightened? You tremble at this word?
Oh my brothers, when I told you to break the good and the tablets of the good: only then did I put man out to sea, onto his high sea.
And only now does the great terror come over him, the great looking-around, the great sickness, the great disgust, the great seasickness.
The good taught you false coasts and false securities; you were born in the lies of the good and harbored in them. Everything has been lied crooked and bent out of true, right down to the bottom, by the good.
But whoever discovered the land “man” also discovered the land “mankind’s future.” Now you shall be seafarers for me, brave and patient ones!
Walk upright in good time, oh my brothers, learn to walk upright! The sea is storming: many want to pull themselves upright again by you.
The sea is storming: everything is in the sea. Come on! Up and away! You old sailors’ hearts!
Fatherland, indeed! There our helm wants to go, where our children’s land is! Out there, stormier than the sea, our great longing storms! —
“Why so hard?” the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. “Are we not close relatives?” —
Why so soft? Oh my brothers, this is what I ask you: are you not — my brothers?
Why so soft, so yielding and giving way? Why is there so much denial and self-denial in your hearts? So little fate in your look?
And if you do not want to be fates and inexorable ones: how could you one day — conquer with me?
And if your hardness does not want to flash and cut and cut to pieces: how could you one day — create with me?
For the creators are hard. And it must seem bliss to you to press your hand on millennia as if on wax, —
— bliss to write on the will of millennia as if on bronze, — harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is entirely hard.
This new tablet, oh my brothers, I place over you: Become hard! —
Oh you my will! You turning of all need, you my necessity! Preserve me from all small victories!
You dispensation of my soul, which I call destiny! You-in-me! Over-me! Preserve me and save me for one great destiny!
And your last greatness, my will, save it for your last, — so that you are inexorable in your victory! Ah, who has not been defeated by his own victory!
Ah, whose eye has not grown dark in this drunken twilight! Ah, whose foot has not staggered and in victory forgotten how — to stand! —
— That I may one day be ready and ripe at the great noon: ready and ripe like glowing bronze, like a cloud pregnant with lightning, like a swelling udder of milk: —
— ready for myself and for my most hidden will: a bow burning for its arrow, an arrow burning for its star: —
— a star, ready and ripe in its noon, glowing, pierced through, blissful before annihilating arrows of the sun: —
— a sun itself, and an inexorable sun-will, ready to annihilate in victory!
Oh will, turning of all need, you my necessity! Save me for one great victory! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
One morning, not long after his return to the cave, Zarathustra sprang up from his bed like a madman, cried out in a terrible voice, and acted as if someone else were still lying on the bed who would not get up; and Zarathustra’s voice rang out so loudly that his animals came running to him in fright, and out of all the caves and hiding places that neighbored Zarathustra’s cave, every creature scurried away — flying, fluttering, crawling, leaping, each according to the kind of foot or wing it had been given. But Zarathustra spoke these words:
Up, abysmal thought, out of my depths! I am your rooster and your morning twilight, you sleepy worm: up! up! My voice shall crow you awake!
Untie the fetters from your ears: listen! For I want to hear you! Up! Up! There is thunder enough here to teach even graves to listen!
And wipe the sleep and all the dullness and blindness from your eyes! Hear me with your eyes as well: my voice is a medicine even for those born blind.
And once you are awake, you shall stay awake for me forever. It is not my way to wake great-grandmothers from their sleep only to tell them — go back to sleep!
You stir, you stretch, you rattle in your throat? Up! Up! Not rattle — you shall speak to me! Zarathustra calls you, Zarathustra the godless!
I, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle — I call you, my most abysmal thought!
Hail to me! You are coming — I hear you! My abyss speaks, I have turned my last depth inside out into the light!
Hail to me! Come here! Give me your hand — ha! let go! Haha! — disgust, disgust, disgust — woe is me!
But Zarathustra had hardly spoken these words when he fell down like a dead man and lay for a long time like a dead man. And when he came to himself again, he was pale and trembling, and he stayed lying down, and for a long time he would neither eat nor drink. This went on for seven days; but his animals did not leave him by day or by night, except that the eagle flew out to fetch food. And whatever it fetched and plundered, it laid on Zarathustra’s bed: so that at last Zarathustra lay among yellow and red berries, grapes, rose apples, sweet-smelling herbs, and pine cones. But at his feet lay two lambs, which the eagle had stolen with great effort from their shepherds.
At last, after seven days, Zarathustra sat up on his bed, took a rose apple in his hand, smelled it, and found its smell lovely. Then his animals believed that the time had come to speak with him.
“Oh Zarathustra,” they said, “you have been lying like this for seven days now, with heavy eyes: will you not stand on your feet again at last?
Step out of your cave: the world is waiting for you like a garden. The wind is playing with heavy fragrances that want to come to you; and all the brooks would like to run after you.
All things are longing for you, while you have stayed alone for seven days — step out of your cave! All things want to be your physicians!
Did some new knowledge come to you, perhaps, a sour and heavy one? You lay like leavened dough; your soul rose and swelled over all its rims. —”
— Oh my animals, answered Zarathustra, go on chattering like this and let me listen! It refreshes me so to hear you chatter: where there is chatter, the world already lies before me like a garden.
How lovely it is that there are words and sounds: are not words and sounds rainbows and illusory bridges between things eternally apart?
To every soul belongs another world; for every soul, every other soul is a world behind the world.
It is between the things most alike that illusion lies most beautifully; for the smallest gap is the hardest to bridge.
For me — how could there be anything outside me? There is no outside! But we forget that with every sound; how lovely it is that we forget!
Have not names and sounds been given to things so that man may refresh himself with things? Speaking is a beautiful folly: with it man dances over all things.
How lovely is all talking, and all the lying of sounds! With sounds our love dances on many-colored rainbows. —
— “Oh Zarathustra,” the animals said then, “to those who think as we do, all things dance by themselves: they come and offer each other their hands and laugh and run away — and come back.
Everything goes, everything comes back; the wheel of being rolls eternally. Everything dies, everything blossoms again; the year of being runs eternally.
Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; the same house of being builds itself eternally. Everything parts, everything greets itself again; the ring of being stays eternally true to itself.
In every instant being begins; around every Here rolls the sphere There. The center is everywhere. Crooked is the path of eternity.” —
— Oh you rascally fools and barrel organs! answered Zarathustra, and smiled again. How well you know what had to be fulfilled in seven days: —
— and how that monster crawled down my throat and choked me! But I bit its head off and spat it away from me.
And you — you have already made a barrel-organ song out of it? But now I lie here, still tired from that biting and spitting away, still sick from my own redemption.
And you watched all this? Oh my animals, are you cruel too? Did you want to watch my great pain, the way human beings do? For man is the cruelest animal.
At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt most at home on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, look, that was his heaven on earth.
When the great man cries out —: quick, the little man runs up; and his tongue hangs out of his mouth with lust. But he calls it his “pity.”
The little man, especially the poet — how eagerly he accuses life in words! Listen to him, but do not fail to hear the pleasure that is in all accusing!
Such accusers of life: life overcomes them with a blink of the eye. “You love me?” says the shameless one. “Wait a little longer, I have no time for you yet.”
Man is the cruelest animal toward himself; and in everyone who calls himself a “sinner” and a “cross-bearer” and a “penitent,” do not fail to hear the sensual pleasure in this complaining and accusing!
And I myself — do I want to be man’s accuser by saying this? Ah, my animals, this alone have I learned so far: that man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him —
— that everything most evil is his best power, and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must become better and more evil: —
It was not to this stake of torture that I was nailed — to knowing that man is evil — but I cried out as no one has yet cried out:
“Ah, that his most evil is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very small!”
The great weariness of man — that choked me and had crawled down my throat: and what the soothsayer foretold: “All is the same, nothing is worth it, knowledge chokes.”
A long twilight limped along in front of me, a sadness tired to death and drunk with death, which spoke with a yawning mouth.
“Eternally he comes back, the man you are tired of, the little man” — so yawned my sadness, and dragged its foot and could not fall asleep.
The human earth turned into a cave for me, its breast sank in, everything living became human rot and bones and crumbling past to me.
My sighing sat on all the graves of man and could no longer get up; my sighing and questioning croaked and choked and gnawed and wailed by day and by night:
— “Ah, man comes back eternally! The little man comes back eternally!” —
I had once seen them both naked, the greatest man and the smallest man: all too like each other — all too human, even the greatest!
All too small, the greatest! — that was my weariness of man! And eternal recurrence even of the smallest! — that was my weariness of all existence!
Ah, disgust! Disgust! Disgust! — — Thus spoke Zarathustra, and sighed and shuddered; for he remembered his sickness. But then his animals would not let him go on speaking.
“Speak no further, you convalescent!” — so his animals answered him — “but go out, where the world is waiting for you like a garden.
Go out to the roses and the bees and the flocks of doves! But above all to the songbirds: so that you may learn singing from them!
For singing is for the convalescent; the healthy may talk. And even when the healthy man wants songs, he wants other songs than the convalescent.”
— “Oh you rascally fools and barrel organs, do be quiet!” answered Zarathustra, and smiled at his animals. “How well you know what comfort I invented for myself in seven days!
That I would have to sing again — that comfort I invented for myself, and this convalescence: do you want to make a barrel-organ song out of that right away, too?”
— “Speak no further,” his animals answered him once more; “rather, you convalescent, first make yourself a lyre, a new lyre!
For look, oh Zarathustra! Your new songs need new lyres.
Sing and overflow, oh Zarathustra, heal your soul with new songs: so that you may bear your great destiny, which has never yet been any man’s destiny!
For your animals know well, oh Zarathustra, who you are and must become: look, you are the teacher of the eternal recurrence — that is now your destiny!
That you must be the first to teach this teaching — how could this great destiny not also be your greatest danger and sickness!
Look, we know what you teach: that all things recur eternally, and we ourselves with them, and that we have already been here an eternal number of times, and all things with us.
You teach that there is a great year of becoming, a monster of a great year: like an hourglass, it must turn itself over again and again, so that it may run down and run out anew: —
— so that all these years are the same as themselves, in the greatest and in the smallest as well — so that we ourselves are the same as ourselves in every great year, in the greatest and in the smallest as well.
And if you wanted to die now, oh Zarathustra: look, we know too how you would speak to yourself then: — but your animals beg you not to die yet!
You would speak, and without trembling, but rather breathing a sigh of bliss: for a great weight and a great sultriness would be lifted from you, you most patient one! —
‘Now I die and vanish,’ you would say, ‘and in an instant I am nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies.
But the knot of causes in which I am entangled comes back — it will create me again! I myself belong to the causes of the eternal recurrence.
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 same, selfsame life, in the greatest and in the smallest as well, to teach again the eternal recurrence of all things —
— to speak again the word of the great noon of earth and man, to proclaim the overman to mankind again.
I spoke my word, I break on my word: so my eternal lot wills it — as a proclaimer I perish!
The hour has now come for the one who goes under to bless himself. Thus ends Zarathustra’s going under.’” —
When the animals had spoken these words, they fell silent and waited for Zarathustra to say something to them: but Zarathustra did not hear that they were silent. Instead he lay still, with his eyes closed, like someone sleeping, although he was not asleep: for he was just then conversing with his soul. But the serpent and the eagle, when they found him so silent, honored the great stillness around him and carefully slipped away.
Oh my soul, I taught you to say “today” as you say “once” and “formerly,” and to dance your round dance over every Here and There and Yonder.
Oh my soul, I redeemed you from every corner; I swept the dust, the spiders, and the twilight off you.
Oh my soul, I washed the petty shame and the corner-virtue off you and persuaded you to stand naked before the eyes of the sun.
With the storm that is called “spirit” I blew across your heaving sea; I blew all the clouds away; I even strangled the strangler that is called “sin.”
Oh my soul, I gave you the right to say No like the storm, and to say Yes as the open sky says Yes: still as light you stand, and now you walk through denying storms.
Oh my soul, I gave you back your freedom over what is created and what is uncreated: and who knows, as you know it, the lust of what is to come?
Oh my soul, I taught you the contempt that does not come like a gnawing worm, the great, the loving contempt that loves most where it most despises.
Oh my soul, I taught you to persuade so well that you persuade the very grounds to come to you: like the sun, which persuades even the sea up to its own height.
Oh my soul, I took from you all obeying, all bending of the knee, and all saying “Lord”; I myself gave you the names “Turning of Need” and “Destiny.”
Oh my soul, I gave you new names and many-colored playthings; I called you “Destiny” and “Circle of Circles” and “Umbilical Cord of Time” and “Azure Bell.”
Oh my soul, I gave your soil all wisdom to drink, all the new wines, and also all the strong wines of wisdom, old beyond memory.
Oh my soul, I poured every sun on you, and every night and every silence and every longing: — and you grew up for me like a vine.
Oh my soul, overrich and heavy you stand there now, a vine with swelling udders and crowded clusters of brown golden grapes: —
— crowded and pressed by your happiness, waiting out of overabundance, and still bashful about your waiting.
Oh my soul, there is now no soul anywhere that is more loving and more embracing and more encompassing! Where would future and past be closer together than in you?
Oh my soul, I have given you everything, and all my hands have grown empty on you: — and now! Now you say to me, smiling and full of melancholy: “Which of us has to give thanks? —
— does the giver not have to give thanks that the receiver received? Is giving not a need? Is receiving not — mercy?” —
Oh my soul, I understand the smile of your melancholy: your overwealth itself is now stretching out longing hands!
Your fullness gazes out over roaring seas and seeks and waits; the longing of overfullness gazes out of the smiling sky of your eyes!
And truly, oh my soul! Who could see your smile and not melt into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears at the overgoodness of your smile.
It is your goodness and overgoodness that will not complain and weep: and yet, oh my soul, your smile longs for tears, and your trembling mouth for sobs.
“Is not all weeping a complaining? And all complaining an accusing?” So you speak to yourself, and that is why, oh my soul, you would rather smile than pour out your sorrow —
— pour out in rushing tears all your sorrow over your fullness, and over all the vine’s urgent craving for the vintner and the vintner’s knife!
But if you will not weep, will not weep out your purple melancholy, then you will have to sing, oh my soul! — Look, I myself am smiling as I foretell this to you:
— sing, with a roaring song, until all the seas grow still to listen to your longing —
— until over still, longing seas the boat floats, the golden wonder, around whose gold all good, bad, and wondrous things leap: —
— many animals too, great and small, and everything that has light, wondrous feet, so that it can run on violet-blue paths —
— toward the golden wonder, the boat that comes of its own will, and toward its master: but that is the vintner, who waits with his diamond knife —
— your great deliverer, oh my soul, the nameless one — — for whom only future songs will find names! And truly, your breath is already fragrant with future songs —
— already you glow and dream, already you drink thirstily at all the deep, ringing wells of comfort, already your melancholy rests in the bliss of future songs! —
Oh my soul, now I have given you everything, even my last, and all my hands have grown empty on you: — that I told you to sing, look, that was my last!
That I told you to sing — speak now, speak: which of us now has to — give thanks? — But better still: sing to me, sing, oh my soul! And let me give thanks! —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
“Into your eye I looked not long ago, oh life: I saw gold blinking in your night-eye — my heart stood still with this delight:
— I saw a golden boat blinking on mighty waters, a sinking, drinking, ever-again-winking golden rocking boat!
At my foot, my dance-mad foot, you cast a glance, a laughing, questioning, melting, rocking glance:
Only twice did you stir your rattle with your little hands — and already my foot was rocking in a frenzy to dance. —
My heels reared up, my toes listened to understand you: for the dancer carries his ear — in his toes!
I leaped toward you: you fled back from my leap; and the tongue of your fleeing, flying hair flicked out at me!
Away from you I leaped, and from your serpents: and there you stood already, half turned, your eye full of yearning.
With crooked glances — you teach me crooked ways; on crooked ways my foot learns — tricks!
I fear you near, I love you far; your flight lures me, your seeking stops me short: — I suffer, but what have I not gladly suffered for you!
You whose coldness kindles, whose hatred seduces, whose flight binds, whose mockery — moves:
— who would not hate you, you great binder, entwiner, temptress, seeker, finder! Who would not love you, you innocent, impatient, wind-swift, child-eyed sinner!
Where are you pulling me now, you paragon and runaway? And now you flee me again, you sweet wildcat and ingrate!
I dance after you, I follow you even on the faintest trace. Where are you? Give me your hand! Or just one finger!
Here are caves and thickets: we will go astray! — Stop! Stand still! Do you not see owls and bats whirring away?
You owl! You bat! Do you want to make a monkey of me? Where are we? It was from the dogs you learned this howling and yapping.
You bare your little white teeth at me so sweetly, your evil eyes leap out at me from your curly little mane!
This is a dance over stick and stone: I am the hunter — will you be my hound, or my chamois?
Now beside me! And quickly, you spiteful leaper! Now up! And over! — Woe! I myself have fallen in the leap!
Oh, see me lying here, you insolence, and begging for grace! Gladly would I walk with you — in some lovelier place!
— the paths of love through quiet, many-colored bushes! Or there along the lake: goldfish swim and dance there!
You are tired now? Over there are sheep and evening glows: is it not lovely to sleep while shepherds play their flutes?
You are so terribly tired? I will carry you there, just let your arms sink! And if you are thirsty — I might have something, but your mouth does not want to drink! —
— Oh, this cursed, nimble, supple serpent and slippery witch! Where have you gone? But on my face I feel two spots and red blotches from your hand!
Truly, I am tired of always being your sheepish shepherd! You witch, if till now I have sung to you, now you shall — scream for me!
To the beat of my whip you shall dance and scream for me! I did not forget the whip, did I? — No!” —
Then life answered me like this, and held her dainty ears shut as she did:
“Oh Zarathustra! Do not crack your whip so terribly! You know very well: noise murders thoughts — and just now such tender thoughts are coming to me.
We are both a real pair of good-for-nothings and evil-for-nothings. Beyond good and evil we found our island and our green meadow — we two alone! So we really must be good to each other!
And even if we do not love each other from the ground up — must people be cross with each other if they do not love each other from the ground up?
And that I am good to you, and often too good, you know that: and the ground for it is that I am jealous of your wisdom. Ah, that mad old fool of a wisdom!
If your wisdom ever ran away from you, ah! then my love would quickly run away from you too.” —
Then life looked thoughtfully behind her and around her and said softly: “Oh Zarathustra, you are not faithful enough to me!
You do not love me nearly as much as you say; I know you are thinking of leaving me soon.
There is an old, heavy, heavy booming bell: at night its booming carries all the way up to your cave: —
— when you hear this bell strike the hour at midnight, you think about it between one and twelve —
— you think about it, oh Zarathustra, I know it, that you want to leave me soon!” —
“Yes,” I answered, hesitating, “but you know this too —” And I said something into her ear, right in among her tangled, yellow, foolish shaggy locks.
You know that, oh Zarathustra? No one knows that. —
And we looked at each other and gazed at the green meadow, over which the cool evening was just then running, and we wept together. — But then life was dearer to me than all my wisdom had ever been. —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
One! Oh man, attend! Two! What does the deep midnight portend? Three! “I slept, I slept —,” Four! “From a deep dream I woke, at its end: —” Five! “The world is deep,” Six! “And deeper than the day could comprehend.” Seven! “Deep is its woe —,” Eight! “Joy — deeper still than misery:” Nine! “Woe says: Go!” Ten! “But all joy wants eternity —,” Eleven! “— wants deep, deep eternity!” Twelve!
If I am a soothsayer, and full of that soothsaying spirit that wanders on a high ridge between two seas —
wanders between the past and the future like a heavy cloud — enemy to sultry lowlands and to everything that is weary and can neither die nor live —
ready for lightning in its dark breast and for the redeeming beam of light, pregnant with lightning bolts that say Yes! and laugh Yes!, ready for soothsaying flashes of lightning: —
— but blessed is the one who is pregnant in this way! And truly, whoever is one day to kindle the light of the future must hang long on the mountain like a heavy storm! —
Oh how could I not burn for eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings — the ring of recurrence!
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I wanted children, except this woman, whom I love: for I love you, oh eternity!
For I love you, oh eternity!
If my anger ever burst open graves, moved boundary stones, and rolled old tablets, broken, into steep depths:
If my scorn ever blew moldering words away, and I came like a broom to the cross spiders, and like a sweeping wind to old, stale burial chambers:
If I ever sat rejoicing where old gods lie buried, blessing the world, loving the world, beside the monuments of the old slanderers of the world: —
— for I love even churches and the graves of God, once the sky looks with its pure eye through their broken roofs; I like to sit on broken churches, like grass and red poppies —
Oh how could I not burn for eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings — the ring of recurrence!
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I wanted children, except this woman, whom I love: for I love you, oh eternity!
For I love you, oh eternity!
If ever a breath came to me from the creative breath, and from that heavenly necessity which compels even accidents to dance the round dances of the stars:
If I ever laughed with the laughter of the creative lightning, which the long thunder of the deed follows, rumbling but obedient:
If I ever played dice with gods at the gods’ table of the earth, so that the earth quaked and broke open and snorted up rivers of fire: —
— for the earth is a table of the gods, and trembles with creative new words and the throws of gods’ dice: —
Oh how could I not burn for eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings — the ring of recurrence!
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I wanted children, except this woman, whom I love: for I love you, oh eternity!
For I love you, oh eternity!
If I ever drank in full draughts from that foaming bowl of spice and mixing, in which all things are well mixed:
If my hand ever poured the farthest into the nearest, and fire into spirit, and joy into sorrow, and the worst into the kindest:
If I myself am a grain of that redeeming salt which makes all things mix well in the mixing bowl: —
— for there is a salt that binds good to evil; and even the most evil is worthy to be a spice and to make the last foaming over: —
Oh how could I not burn for eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings — the ring of recurrence!
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I wanted children, except this woman, whom I love: for I love you, oh eternity!
For I love you, oh eternity!
If I am fond of the sea and of everything that is of the sea’s kind, and fondest of all when it angrily contradicts me:
If that seeking joy is in me which drives the sails toward what is undiscovered, if a seafarer’s joy is in my joy:
If my rejoicing ever cried: “The coast has vanished — now the last chain has fallen from me —
— the boundless roars around me, far out space and time shine for me, come on! up and away! old heart!” —
Oh how could I not burn for eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings — the ring of recurrence!
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I wanted children, except this woman, whom I love: for I love you, oh eternity!
For I love you, oh eternity!
If my virtue is a dancer’s virtue, and I have often leaped with both feet into a golden-emerald rapture:
If my malice is a laughing malice, at home among slopes of roses and hedges of lilies:
— for in laughter all that is evil is gathered together, but pronounced holy and absolved by its own bliss: —
And if this is my alpha and omega, that all that is heavy should become light, every body a dancer, every spirit a bird: and truly, that is my alpha and omega! —
Oh how could I not burn for eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings — the ring of recurrence!
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I wanted children, except this woman, whom I love: for I love you, oh eternity!
For I love you, oh eternity!
If I ever spread still skies above me and flew with my own wings into my own skies:
If I swam playfully in deep distances of light, and the bird-wisdom of my freedom came to me: —
— but this is how bird-wisdom speaks: “Look, there is no above, no below! Throw yourself around, out, back, you light one! Sing! Speak no more!
— are not all words made for the heavy? Do not all words lie to the light one! Sing! Speak no more!” —
Oh how could I not burn for eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings — the ring of recurrence!
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I wanted children, except this woman, whom I love: for I love you, oh eternity!
For I love you, oh eternity!
Ah, where in the world have greater follies happened than among the pitying? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the pitying? Woe to all lovers who do not yet have a height that is above their pity! Thus spoke the devil to me once: “Even God has his hell: it is his love of man.” And recently I heard him say this word: “God is dead; God died of his pity for man.”
Zarathustra, “On the Pitying”
— And again moons and years passed over Zarathustra’s soul, and he paid no heed to it; but his hair turned white. One day, as he sat on a stone in front of his cave and quietly gazed out — and from there one gazes out on the sea, and away over winding abysses — his animals walked thoughtfully around him and at last came and stood in front of him.
“Oh Zarathustra,” they said, “are you looking out for your happiness?” — “What does happiness matter!” he answered. “I have long since stopped striving for happiness; I strive for my work.” — “Oh Zarathustra,” the animals said again, “you say that as one who has more than enough of good things. Are you not lying in a sky-blue lake of happiness?” — “You jesting rascals,” answered Zarathustra, and smiled, “how well you chose your parable! But you also know that my happiness is heavy, and not like a flowing wave of water: it presses on me and will not leave me, and it behaves like molten pitch.” —
Then the animals walked thoughtfully around him again and then came and stood in front of him once more. “Oh Zarathustra,” they said, “so that is why you yourself keep getting yellower and darker, even though your hair wants to look white and flaxen? Just look, you are stuck sitting in your pitch!” — “What are you saying, my animals,” said Zarathustra, and laughed at it, “truly, I slandered it when I spoke of pitch. What is happening to me happens to all fruits that grow ripe. It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker and my soul quieter as well.” — “So it will be, oh Zarathustra,” answered the animals, and pressed close to him; “but will you not climb a high mountain today? The air is clear, and today one can see more of the world than ever.” — “Yes, my animals,” he answered, “your advice is excellent and after my own heart: today I will climb a high mountain! But see to it that there is honey ready to hand for me up there, yellow, white, good, ice-fresh golden honey in the comb. For know this: up there I want to make the honey sacrifice.” —
But when Zarathustra was up on the summit, he sent home the animals that had come with him, and found that he was now alone: — then he laughed with his whole heart, looked around, and spoke like this:
That I spoke of sacrifices and honey sacrifices was only a trick of speech and, truly, a useful folly! Up here I may speak more freely than in front of hermits’ caves and hermits’ pets.
Why sacrifice! I squander what is given to me, I, a squanderer with a thousand hands: how could I still call that — sacrificing!
And when I asked for honey, I was only asking for bait, and sweet syrup and slime, which even grumbling bears and strange, sullen, wicked birds lick their tongues for:
— for the best bait, such as hunters and fishermen need. For if the world is like a dark forest full of beasts and a pleasure garden for all wild hunters, it seems to me even more, and more to my liking, a rich sea, deep as an abyss,
— a sea full of bright-colored fish and crabs, which might make even gods lust to become fishermen on it, and casters of nets: so rich is the world in strange things, great and small!
Especially the human world, the human sea: — it is into that sea that I now cast my golden fishing rod and say: Open up, you human abyss!
Open up and throw me your fish and your glittering crabs! With my best bait I will bait for myself today the strangest human fish!
— my happiness itself I cast out into all the wide distances, between sunrise, noon, and sunset, to see whether many human fish will not learn to tug and wriggle at my happiness.
Until, biting on my sharp hidden hooks, they have to come up to my height, the most colorful gudgeons of the abyss, up to the most malicious of all fishers of men.
For that is what I am, from the ground up and from the beginning: pulling, pulling in, pulling up, bringing up, a puller, a breeder, and a master of breeding, who once said to himself, and not for nothing: “Become who you are!”
So let men now come up to me: for I am still waiting for the signs that it is time for my going down; I myself do not yet go under, as I must, among men.
That is why I wait here, cunning and mocking, on high mountains, not an impatient one, not a patient one, but rather one who has even unlearned patience, — because he is no longer anyone’s “patient.”
For my destiny gives me time: has it forgotten me, perhaps? Or is it sitting in the shade behind a big stone, catching flies?
And truly, I am fond of it for this, my eternal destiny, that it does not hound me and hurry me, and leaves me time for pranks and malice: so that today I climbed this high mountain to go fishing.
Has any man ever caught fish on high mountains? And even if what I want and do up here is a folly: it is still better than if I grew solemn down below from waiting, and green and yellow —
— a strutting snorter of wrath from waiting, a holy howling storm from the mountains, an impatient one who shouts down into the valleys: “Listen, or I will whip you with the scourge of God!”
Not that I would bear a grudge against such angry men for it: they are good enough for me to laugh at! They have to be impatient, these big noise-drums, who will get their word in today or never!
But I and my destiny — we do not speak to Today, nor do we speak to Never: for speaking we have patience and time and more than time. For one day it must come, and it may not pass by.
What must come one day and may not pass by? Our great Hazar, that is, our great, distant human kingdom, the Zarathustra-kingdom of a thousand years —
How far off may such a “far off” be? What is that to me! But it stands no less firm for me on that account —, with both feet I stand secure on this ground,
— on an eternal ground, on hard primeval rock, on this highest, hardest, primeval mountain range, to which all winds come as to the weather divide, asking Where? and Where from? and Where to?
Laugh here, laugh, my bright and wholesome malice! From high mountains throw down your glittering, mocking laughter! With your glitter, bait for me the most beautiful human fish!
And whatever in all seas belongs to me, my in-and-for-myself in all things — fish that out for me, bring that up to me: that is what I am waiting for, I, the most malicious of all fishermen.
Out, out, my hook! In and down, bait of my happiness! Drip your sweetest dew, honey of my heart! Bite, my hook, into the belly of all black gloom!
Out, out, my eye! Oh, how many seas all around me, what dawning human futures! And above me — what rose-red stillness! What cloudless silence!
The next day Zarathustra was again sitting on his stone in front of the cave, while the animals roamed about out in the world to bring home new food — and new honey too: for Zarathustra had used up and squandered the old honey down to the last grain. But as he sat there in this way, with a stick in his hand, tracing the shadow of his figure on the ground, deep in thought and, truly! not about himself and his shadow — all at once he took fright and started: for beside his shadow he saw another shadow. And as he quickly looked around and stood up, look, there stood the soothsayer beside him, the same one he had once fed and given drink at his table, the proclaimer of the great weariness, who taught: “All is the same, nothing is worth it, the world is without meaning, knowledge chokes.” But his face had changed in the meantime; and when Zarathustra looked into his eyes, his heart took fright once again: so many evil proclamations and ash-gray lightnings passed over that face.
The soothsayer, who had perceived what was going on in Zarathustra’s soul, wiped his hand across his face, as if he wanted to wipe it away; and Zarathustra did the same. And when both of them had silently composed and strengthened themselves in this way, they gave each other their hands, as a sign that they wanted to recognize each other again.
“Welcome,” said Zarathustra, “you soothsayer of the great weariness; it shall not be for nothing that you were once my table companion and my guest. Eat and drink with me today as well, and forgive it if a contented old man sits at the table with you!” — “A contented old man?” answered the soothsayer, shaking his head. “But whoever you are or want to be, oh Zarathustra, you have been up here long enough — before long your boat will no longer sit high and dry!” — “Am I sitting high and dry, then?” asked Zarathustra, laughing. — “The waves around your mountain,” answered the soothsayer, “are rising and rising, the waves of great distress and gloom: soon they will lift your boat too and carry you away.” — At this Zarathustra was silent and wondered. — “Do you still hear nothing?” the soothsayer went on. “Is there not a rushing and roaring coming up from the depths?” — Zarathustra was silent again and listened: then he heard a long, long cry, which the abysses threw to one another and passed on, for none of them wanted to keep it: so evil did it sound.
“You evil proclaimer,” Zarathustra said at last, “that is a cry of distress, and the cry of a man; it may well come out of a black sea. But what is human distress to me! My last sin, which has been saved up for me — do you know what it is called?”
— “Pity!” answered the soothsayer from an overflowing heart, and raised both hands high. “Oh Zarathustra, I have come to tempt you to your last sin!” —
And hardly had these words been spoken when the cry rang out again, longer and more anxious than before, and already much nearer. “Do you hear? Do you hear, oh Zarathustra?” cried the soothsayer. “The cry is meant for you, it is calling you: come, come, come, it is time, it is high time!” —
At this Zarathustra was silent, confused and shaken; at last he asked, like one who hesitates within himself: “And who is it that is calling me there?”
“But you know already,” answered the soothsayer vehemently. “Why do you hide yourself? It is the higher man who is crying out for you!”
“The higher man?” cried Zarathustra, seized with horror. “What does he want? What does he want? The higher man! What does he want here?” — and his skin was covered with sweat.
But the soothsayer did not answer Zarathustra’s fear; he listened and listened toward the depths. But when it stayed quiet down there for a long time, he turned his gaze back and saw Zarathustra standing there trembling.
“Oh Zarathustra,” he began in a sad voice, “you do not stand there like one whose happiness makes his head spin: you will have to dance so that you do not fall over!
But even if you wanted to dance in front of me and leap all your side-leaps: no one shall be allowed to say to me: ‘Look, here dances the last happy man!’
Anyone who came up to this height looking for him would come in vain: caves he would find, no doubt, and caves behind caves, hiding places for those who hide, but no mine shafts of happiness, no treasure chambers, and no new golden veins of happiness.
Happiness — how could anyone find happiness among such buried ones and hermits! Must I still go looking for the last happiness on the Blessed Isles, far away among forgotten seas?
But all is the same, nothing is worth it, no seeking helps, and there are no Blessed Isles anymore either!” —
Thus sighed the soothsayer; but at his last sigh Zarathustra grew bright and sure again, like one who comes out of a deep gorge into the light. “No! No! Three times no!” he cried in a strong voice, and stroked his beard. “That I know better! There are still Blessed Isles! Be quiet about that, you sighing sack of sorrow!
Stop splashing about that, you rain cloud in the morning! Am I not standing here already, wet with your gloom and drenched like a dog?
Now I shake myself and run away from you, to get dry again: you must not wonder at that! Do I seem discourteous to you? But this is my court.
But as for your higher man: very well! I will look for him at once in those forests: that is where his cry came from. Perhaps some evil beast is pressing him hard there.
He is in my domain: here he shall come to no harm! And truly, there are many evil beasts around me.” —
With these words Zarathustra turned to go. Then the soothsayer said: “Oh Zarathustra, you are a rogue!
I know it already: you want to be rid of me! You would rather run into the forests and hunt down evil beasts!
But what good will it do you? In the evening you will have me back anyway; I will sit in your own cave, patient and heavy as a block of wood — and wait for you!”
“So be it!” Zarathustra called back as he went. “And what is mine in my cave belongs to you as well, my guest!
But if you should find any honey still in there, very well! Just lick it up, you grumbling bear, and sweeten your soul! For in the evening we both want to be in good spirits,
— in good spirits and glad that this day has come to an end! And you yourself shall dance to my songs as my dancing bear.
You do not believe it? You shake your head? Well then! Come on! Old bear! But I too — am a soothsayer.”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Zarathustra had not yet been an hour on his way in his mountains and forests when all at once he saw a strange procession. Right on the path he meant to go down came two kings walking, adorned with crowns and purple sashes and as colorful as flamingos: they were driving a loaded donkey ahead of them. “What do these kings want in my kingdom?” Zarathustra said to his heart in astonishment, and quickly hid himself behind a bush. But when the kings came up close to him, he said, half aloud, like one who talks only to himself: “Strange! Strange! What rhyme or reason is there in that? Two kings I see — and only one donkey!”
Then the two kings stopped, smiled, looked toward the spot the voice had come from, and afterward looked each other in the face. “People like us think such things too, no doubt,” said the king on the right, “but we do not say them out loud.”
But the king on the left shrugged his shoulders and answered: “That may well be a goatherd. Or a hermit who has lived too long among rocks and trees. For no company at all also corrupts good manners.”
“Good manners?” the other king replied, sullen and bitter. “Then what is it we are running away from? Is it not ‘good manners’? Our ‘good society’?
Better, truly, to live among hermits and goatherds than with our gilded, false, overpainted mob, — even if it calls itself ‘good society,’
— even if it calls itself ‘nobility.’ But there everything is false and rotten, the blood first of all, thanks to old bad diseases and worse artists of healing.
The best and dearest to me today is still a healthy peasant, coarse, cunning, stubborn, enduring: that is the noblest kind today.
The peasant is the best today; and the peasant kind should be master! But it is the kingdom of the mob, — I will not be fooled anymore. And mob means: mishmash.
Mob-mishmash: in it everything is jumbled up with everything else, saint and scoundrel and squire and Jew and every beast out of Noah’s ark.
Good manners! Everything among us is false and rotten. No one knows how to revere anymore: it is precisely that we are running away from. They are sugary, pushy dogs; they gild palm leaves.
This disgust is choking me, that we kings ourselves have become false, draped and disguised in the old yellowed pomp of our grandfathers, show medals for the stupidest and the slyest and for anyone who haggles with power today!
We are not the first — and yet we have to stand for the first: we have finally grown sick and disgusted with this fraud.
We went out of the way of the rabble, of all these screamers and scribbling blowflies, the shopkeepers’ stench, the fidgeting of ambition, the foul breath —: ugh, to live among the rabble,
— ugh, to stand for the first among the rabble! Ah, disgust! Disgust! Disgust! What do we kings matter anymore!” —
“Your old sickness is attacking you,” said the king on the left at this, “disgust is attacking you, my poor brother. But you know that someone is listening to us.”
At once Zarathustra, who had opened his ears and eyes wide to this talk, rose from his hiding place, stepped up to the kings, and began:
“The one who is listening to you, who likes listening to you, you kings, is called Zarathustra.
I am Zarathustra, who once said: ‘What do kings matter anymore!’ Forgive me, I was glad when you said to each other: ‘What do we kings matter!’
But here is my kingdom and my dominion: what might you be looking for in my kingdom? But perhaps on your way you found what I am looking for: namely, the higher man.”
When the kings heard this, they beat their breasts and said with one voice: “We are found out!
With the sword of this word you cut through the thickest darkness of our hearts. You have uncovered our distress, for look! We are on our way to find the higher man —
— the man who is higher than we are, even though we are kings. To him we are bringing this donkey. For the highest man shall also be the highest lord on earth.
There is no harder misfortune in all human destiny than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becomes false and crooked and monstrous.
And when they are even the last, and more beast than man: then the mob rises and rises in price, and at last even the mob-virtue says: ‘Look, I alone am virtue!’” —
What did I just hear? answered Zarathustra; what wisdom in kings! I am delighted, and, truly, I already feel the urge to make a rhyme on it: —
— even if it turns out to be a rhyme not fit for everyone’s ears. I unlearned long ago any consideration for long ears. Well then! Come on!
(But here it happened that the donkey too got a word in: and what it said, clearly and with ill will, was Yeah-aw.)
Once — I think it was the Year of Grace One — The Sibyl spoke, quite drunk, though wine she had none: “Woe, now all goes wrong below! Decline! Decline! Never has the world sunk so low! Rome sank to whore and to a whorehouse too, Rome’s Caesar sank to beast, God himself — became a Jew!”
The kings feasted on these rhymes of Zarathustra’s; but the king on the right said: “Oh Zarathustra, how well we did to set out to see you!
For your enemies showed us your image in their mirror: there you looked out with the grimace of a devil, laughing scornfully, so that we were afraid of you.
But what good did it do! Again and again you stung us in ear and heart with your sayings. So at last we said: what does it matter what he looks like!
We must hear him, him who teaches: ‘You should 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.’
Oh Zarathustra, at such words the blood of our fathers stirred in our bodies: it was like spring speaking to old wine casks.
When the swords ran in and out among one another like red-spotted serpents, then our fathers grew fond of life; the sun of every peace seemed to them flat and lukewarm, and the long peace brought them shame.
How they sighed, our fathers, when they saw gleaming, dried-out swords hanging on the wall! Like those swords, they thirsted for war. For a sword wants to drink blood, and sparkles with desire.” —
— When the kings talked and chattered so eagerly about the happiness of their fathers, Zarathustra was overcome by no small desire to mock their eagerness: for plainly they were very peaceable kings that he saw before him, kings with old and refined faces. But he restrained himself. “Well then!” he said. “That way lies the road, there lies Zarathustra’s cave; and this day shall have a long evening! But now a cry of distress calls me hastily away from you.
It honors my cave if kings want to sit and wait in it: but, of course, you will have to wait a long time!
Well, well! What does it matter! Where does one learn to wait better today than at courts? And the whole virtue of kings that is left to them, — is it not called today: being able to wait?”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
And Zarathustra went on, thoughtful, farther and deeper, through forests and past marshy hollows; but as happens to anyone who thinks about heavy things, he stepped on a man without noticing. And look, all at once a cry of pain and two curses and twenty foul insults spattered into his face: so that in his fright he raised his stick and struck the man he had stepped on as well. But the next moment he came to his senses; and his heart laughed at the folly he had just committed.
“Forgive me,” he said to the man he had stepped on, who had got up in a fury and sat down again, “forgive me, and before anything else, hear a parable.
As a wanderer who dreams of faraway things bumps, without noticing, on a lonely road into a sleeping dog, a dog lying in the sun:
— as both of them start up and fly at each other like mortal enemies, these two who are frightened to death: that is how it went with us.
And yet! And yet — how little was missing for them to caress each other, this dog and this solitary one! For they are both — solitary ones!”
— “Whoever you may be,” said the man who had been stepped on, still in a fury, “you are treading on me with your parable too, and not only with your foot!
Look, am I a dog, then?” — and with that the sitting man stood up and pulled his naked arm out of the swamp. For at first he had been lying stretched out on the ground, hidden and unrecognizable, like those who lie in wait for swamp game.
“But what are you doing!” cried Zarathustra in alarm, for he saw that a great deal of blood was flowing down the naked arm, “what has happened to you? Did an evil animal bite you, you unhappy man?”
The bleeding man laughed, still angry. “What business is it of yours!” he said, and was about to walk on. “Here I am at home and in my own domain. Let whoever wants to ask me: but I will hardly answer a clod.”
“You are wrong,” said Zarathustra with pity, and held him fast, “you are wrong: here you are not at home, but in my kingdom, and in it no one shall come to harm.
But call me whatever you like — I am who I must be. I myself call myself Zarathustra.
Come! Up there is the way to Zarathustra’s cave: it is not far — will you not tend your wounds at my place?
Things have gone badly for you in this life, you unhappy man: first the animal bit you, and then — man stepped on you!” —
But when the man who had been stepped on heard Zarathustra’s name, he was transformed. “What is happening to me!” he cried out. “Who else do I care about in this life, except this one man, Zarathustra, and that one animal that lives on blood, the leech?
For the leech’s sake I lay here by this swamp like a fisherman, and my arm, hung out as bait, had already been bitten ten times, when a still finer leech bites after my blood: Zarathustra himself!
Oh happiness! Oh wonder! Praised be this day that lured me into this swamp! Praised be the best, the liveliest cupping glass alive today, praised be the great leech of conscience, Zarathustra!” —
Thus spoke the man who had been stepped on; and Zarathustra was glad of his words and their fine, reverent manner. “Who are you?” he asked, and gave him his hand. “Between us there is much to clear up and to cheer up: but already, it seems to me, a pure, bright day is dawning.”
“I am the conscientious one of the spirit,” answered the one who was asked, “and in matters of the spirit hardly anyone takes things more strictly, more narrowly, and more harshly than I do, except the one I learned it from, Zarathustra himself.
Better to know nothing than to half-know a great deal! Better to be a fool on one’s own account than a sage by other people’s lights! I — go to the ground of things:
— what does it matter whether it is great or small? Whether it is called swamp or sky? A hand’s breadth of ground is enough for me: so long as it is truly ground, solid ground to stand on!
— a hand’s breadth of ground: a man can stand on that. In a true conscience-science there is nothing great and nothing small.”
“Then perhaps you are the expert on the leech?” asked Zarathustra. “And you pursue the leech down to its ultimate grounds, you conscientious one?”
“Oh Zarathustra,” answered the man who had been stepped on, “that would be something enormous; how could I dare to take that on!
But what I am master and expert of is the leech’s brain: — that is my world!
And it is a world, too! But forgive me that my pride speaks up here, for here I have no equal. That is why I said, ‘Here I am at home.’
How long I have been pursuing this one thing, the brain of the leech, so that the slippery truth might no longer slip away from me here! Here is my kingdom!
— for its sake I threw everything else away, for its sake everything else became all the same to me; and right beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.
My conscience of the spirit wants it so from me: that I know one thing and know nothing of everything else. I am disgusted by all the half-spirited, all the hazy, the hovering, the rapturous.
Where my honesty stops, I am blind, and I want to be blind. But where I want to know, I want to be honest as well — that is, hard, strict, narrow, cruel, inexorable.
That you once said, oh Zarathustra, ‘Spirit is the life that itself cuts into life’ — that led me, and led me astray, to your teaching. And truly, with my own blood I have increased my own knowledge!”
— “As is plain to see,” Zarathustra broke in; for the blood was still flowing down the naked arm of the conscientious one. Ten leeches, you see, had bitten into it.
“Oh you strange fellow, how much this plain sight here teaches me — namely, you yourself! And perhaps I should not pour all of it into your strict ears!
Come, then! Here we part! But I would gladly find you again. Up there is the way to my cave: tonight you shall be my dear guest there!
I would also gladly make it up to your body that Zarathustra trod on you with his feet: I am thinking it over. But now a cry of distress calls me away from you in haste.”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
But when Zarathustra came around a rock, he saw, not far below him on the same path, a man who flung his limbs about like a raving madman and at last crashed face down to the ground. “Stop!” Zarathustra then said to his heart. “That one there must surely be the higher man; from him came that terrible cry of distress — I will see whether there is any help to give.” But when he ran up to the spot where the man lay on the ground, he found a trembling old man with staring eyes; and however hard Zarathustra tried to raise him up and set him back on his feet, it was no use. Nor did the unhappy man seem to notice that anyone was near him; rather, he kept looking around with heart-rending gestures, like someone forsaken and isolated by all the world. But at last, after much trembling, twitching, and curling-himself-up, he began to lament like this:
Who warms me, who loves me still? Give me hot hands! Give me braziers for the heart! Stretched out, shuddering, Like someone half dead whose feet are being warmed — Shaken, ah! by unknown fevers, Trembling before sharp, icy arrows of frost, Hunted by you, thought! Unnamable! Veiled one! Horrifying one! You hunter behind the clouds! Struck down by your lightning, You mocking eye that looks at me out of the dark: — so I lie, Bend myself, writhe, tormented By all the eternal tortures, Hit By you, cruelest hunter, You unknown — god!
Strike deeper, Strike once more! Stab and break this heart! Why this torturing With blunt-toothed arrows? Why do you look again, Not weary of human torment, With gloating eyes of godly lightning? You do not want to kill, Only torture, torture? Why — torture me, You gloating unknown god? —
Haha! You are creeping closer? At such a midnight What do you want? Speak! You crowd me, press me — Ha! already far too close! Away! Away! You hear me breathing, You eavesdrop on my heart, You jealous one — But jealous of what? Away! Away! Why the ladder? Do you want in, Into my heart, To climb in, to climb into my most secret Thoughts? Shameless one! Unknown — thief! What do you want to steal for yourself, What do you want to overhear for yourself, What do you want to torture out of me, You torturer! You — hangman-god! Or shall I, like a dog, Roll over before you? Surrendering, beside myself with rapture, Wag — my love at you?
In vain! Stab on, Cruelest goad! No, No dog — I am only your game, Cruelest hunter! Your proudest captive, You robber behind the clouds… Speak at last, What do you want, you highwayman, from me? You lightning-shrouded one! Unknown one! Speak, What do you want, unknown god? — —
What? Ransom? How much ransom do you want? Ask much — so my pride advises! And keep it short — so my other pride advises!
Haha! Me — you want? Me? Me — all of me?
Haha! And you torture me, fool that you are, Torture my pride to pieces? Give me love — who warms me still? Who loves me still? — give me hot hands, Give me braziers for the heart, Give me, the most solitary one, Whom ice, ah! sevenfold ice Teaches to pine for enemies, For enemies, even, Give, yes, give up, Cruelest enemy, To me — yourself!…
Gone! He has fled, himself, My last and only companion, My great enemy, My unknown one, My hangman-god!…
— No! Come back, With all your tortures! To the last of all solitary ones Oh come back! All my streams of tears run Their course to you!
And my heart’s last flame — For you it glows anew! Oh come back, My unknown god! My pain! My last happiness!
— But here Zarathustra could hold himself back no longer; he took his stick and struck at the lamenting man with all his strength. “Stop it!” he shouted at him, with furious laughter. “Stop it, you actor! You counterfeiter! You liar to the core! I know you well!
I will warm your legs for you, you wicked magician; I know very well how to make it hot — for the likes of you!”
— “Stop,” said the old man, and sprang up from the ground, “do not hit me anymore, oh Zarathustra! I only did it as a game!
Things like this are part of my art; I wanted to put you yourself to the test when I gave you this taste of it! And truly, you saw right through me!
But you too — gave me no small taste of yourself: you are hard, you wise Zarathustra! You strike hard with your ‘truths’; your cudgel forces out of me — this truth!”
— “Do not flatter,” answered Zarathustra, still worked up and scowling, “you actor to the core! You are false: what are you doing talking — about truth!
You peacock of peacocks, you sea of vanity, what were you playing before me, you wicked magician, in whom was I supposed to believe when you lamented like that?”
“The penitent of the spirit,” said the old man, “him — I was playing: you yourself once invented the phrase —
— the poet and magician who at last turns his spirit against himself, the transformed one who freezes to death on his own evil knowledge and conscience.
And just admit it: it took you a long time, oh Zarathustra, to see through my art and my lie! You believed in my distress when you held my head in both your hands —
— I heard you lament, ‘He was loved too little, loved too little!’ That I deceived you so far — my malice rejoiced at that inwardly.”
“You may have deceived subtler people than me,” said Zarathustra harshly. “I am not on guard against deceivers; I must be without caution: so my lot wills it.
But you — must deceive: that much I know of you! You must always mean two, three, four, and five things at once! Even what you confessed just now was not nearly true enough or false enough for me!
You wicked counterfeiter, how could you do anything else! You would put makeup even on your illness if you showed yourself naked to your doctor.
That is just how you made up your lie before me when you said, ‘I only did it as a game!’ There was seriousness in it too; you are something of a penitent of the spirit!
I can guess what you are: you became the enchanter of everyone, but against yourself you have no lie and no cunning left — you are disenchanted with yourself!
You have harvested disgust as your one truth. Not a word of yours is genuine anymore, except your mouth: that is, the disgust that sticks to your mouth.” —
— “Who are you, then!” the old magician cried at this, in a defiant voice. “Who dares speak like this to me, the greatest man alive today?” — and a green flash of lightning shot from his eye at Zarathustra. But the next moment he was transformed and said sadly:
“Oh Zarathustra, I am tired of it, my arts disgust me, I am not great, why do I pretend! But you know it well — I searched for greatness!
I wanted to play a great man, and I persuaded many: but this lie went beyond my strength. I am breaking on it.
Oh Zarathustra, everything about me is a lie; but that I am breaking — this breaking of mine is genuine!” —
“It honors you,” said Zarathustra darkly, looking down to one side, “it honors you that you searched for greatness, but it also gives you away. You are not great.
You wicked old magician, this is the best and most honest thing in you, the thing I honor in you: that you grew tired of yourself and said it out loud: ‘I am not great.’
In this I honor you as a penitent of the spirit: and even if only for a breath and a blink, for this one moment you were — genuine.
But tell me, what are you looking for here in my forests and rocks? And when you laid yourself across my path, what test did you want of me? —
— what were you tempting me with?” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and his eyes sparkled. The old magician was silent for a while; then he said: “Did I tempt you? I — am only seeking.
Oh Zarathustra, I am seeking someone genuine, upright, simple, of one meaning only, a man of all honesty, a vessel of wisdom, a saint of knowledge, a great man!
Do you not know it, then, oh Zarathustra? I am seeking Zarathustra.”
— And here a long silence arose between the two; but Zarathustra sank deep into himself, so that he closed his eyes. But then, coming back to the one he was talking with, he took the magician’s hand and spoke, full of courtesy and cunning:
“Well then! Up there the way leads on; there lies Zarathustra’s cave. In it you may seek whomever you would like to find.
And ask my animals for advice, my eagle and my serpent: they shall help you seek. But my cave is large.
I myself, of course — I have never yet seen a great man. For what is great, the eye of even the finest is coarse today. It is the kingdom of the mob.
Many a one have I already found who stretched and puffed himself up, and the people shouted: ‘Look there, a great man!’ But what good are all the bellows! In the end the wind comes out.
In the end a frog bursts that has puffed itself up too long: then the wind comes out. To stab a swollen man in the belly — that is what I call a fine pastime. Listen to that, you boys!
This today belongs to the mob: who still knows what is great and what is small! Who would have luck searching for greatness! Only a fool: fools have the luck.
You are searching for great men, you strange fool? Who taught you that? Is today the time for it? Oh you wicked seeker, why — are you tempting me?” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra, his heart comforted, and went on his way, laughing.
But not long after Zarathustra had freed himself from the magician, he again saw someone sitting by the path he was walking, namely a tall man in black with a gaunt, pasty face: he annoyed him enormously. “Woe,” he said to his heart, “there sits gloom in disguise; that looks to me like the priestly kind: what do they want in my kingdom?
What! I have hardly escaped that magician, and must another black artist run across my path again —
— some sorcerer with a laying-on of hands, a dark miracle-worker by the grace of God, an anointed world-slanderer, may the devil take him!
But the devil is never in his place when he would be in place: he always comes too late, this accursed dwarf and clubfoot!” —
Thus Zarathustra cursed impatiently in his heart, and thought how he might slip past the black man with his eyes turned away: but look, it turned out otherwise. For in the same moment the sitting man had already caught sight of him; and not unlike someone to whom an unexpected piece of luck has happened, he jumped up and went straight for Zarathustra.
“Whoever you are, you wanderer,” he said, “help a man who has lost his way, a seeker, an old man who could easily come to harm here!
This world here is strange and far from me, and I heard wild animals howling, too; and the one who could have offered me protection — he himself is no more.
I was looking for the last pious man, a saint and hermit, who alone in his forest had not yet heard anything of what all the world knows today.”
“What does all the world know today?” asked Zarathustra. “This, perhaps: that the old God no longer lives, the God all the world once believed in?”
“You have said it,” answered the old man sorrowfully. “And I served this old God until his last hour.
But now I am retired, without a master, and still not free, and never merry for a single hour anymore, except in memories.
That is why I climbed into these mountains: so that I might at last hold a festival again for myself, as befits an old pope and father of the church — for know this, I am the last pope! — a festival of pious memories and divine services.
But now he himself is dead, the most pious man, that saint in the forest who constantly praised his God with singing and growling.
Him I no longer found when I found his hut — but I did find two wolves in it, howling over his death — for all the animals loved him. Then I ran away.
Had I come into these forests and mountains for nothing, then? Then my heart resolved that I should seek another, the most pious of all those who do not believe in God — that I should seek Zarathustra!”
Thus spoke the old man, and looked with a sharp eye at the one who stood before him; but Zarathustra took the old pope’s hand and gazed at it a long time in admiration.
“Look at that, you venerable man,” he said then, “what a beautiful, long hand! It is the hand of one who has always handed out blessings. But now it holds fast the one you are looking for: me, Zarathustra.
It is I, Zarathustra the godless, who says: who is more godless than I, that I may delight in his instruction?” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and with his gaze he pierced the thoughts and the second thoughts of the old pope. At last the pope began:
“Whoever loved and possessed him most has now also lost him most —:
— look, of the two of us, am I not now probably the more godless one? But who could be glad of that!” —
“You served him to the end,” asked Zarathustra thoughtfully, after a deep silence, “do you know how he died? Is it true, what people say, that pity strangled him,
— that he saw how man hung on the cross, and could not bear it that his love of man became his hell and at last his death?” —
But the old pope did not answer; he looked shyly aside, with a pained and gloomy expression.
“Let him go,” said Zarathustra after long reflection, still looking the old man straight in the eye.
“Let him go, he is gone. And though it honors you that you speak only good of this dead one, you know as well as I do who he was; and that he went strange ways.”
“Speaking between the three of our eyes,” said the old pope, cheered (for he was blind in one eye), “in matters of God I am more enlightened than Zarathustra himself — and I may well be.
My love served him for long years, my will followed all his will. But a good servant knows everything, including many things his master hides from himself.
He was a hidden god, full of secrecy. Truly, even to a son he came no other way than by sneaking paths. At the door of his faith stands adultery.
Whoever praises him as a god of love does not think highly enough of love itself. Did this god not want to be judge as well? But the one who loves, loves beyond reward and retribution.
When he was young, this god from the East, he was hard and vengeful, and built himself a hell for the delight of his favorites.
But at last he grew old and soft and crumbly and pitying, more like a grandfather than a father, but most of all like a wobbly old grandmother.
There he sat, withered, in his corner by the stove, fretting over his weak legs, weary of the world, weary of willing, and one day he choked on his all-too-great pity.” —
“You old pope,” Zarathustra broke in here, “did you see that with your own eyes? It could well have happened that way: that way, and some other way too. When gods die, they always die many kinds of death.
But well then! This way or that, this way and that — he is gone! He went against the taste of my ears and eyes; I would not want to say anything worse of him than that.
I love everything that looks clearly and speaks honestly. But he — you know it, you old priest, there was something of your kind about him, of the priestly kind — he had many meanings.
He was unclear, too. How angry he got with us over it, this snorter of wrath, because we understood him badly! But why did he not speak more plainly?
And if it was the fault of our ears, why did he give us ears that heard him badly? If there was mud in our ears, well then! who put it there?
Too much went wrong for him, this potter who had never finished his apprenticeship! But that he took revenge on his pots and his creatures because they turned out badly for him — that was a sin against good taste.
There is good taste in piety too: and it said at last, ‘Away with such a god! Better no god at all, better to make one’s own destiny on one’s own account, better to be a fool, better to be a god oneself!’”
— “What do I hear!” said the old pope here, pricking up his ears. “Oh Zarathustra, you are more pious than you believe, with an unbelief like that! Some god in you converted you to your godlessness.
Is it not your piety itself that no longer lets you believe in a god? And your overgreat honesty will yet carry you off beyond good and evil as well!
Look, then, what has been kept in store for you? You have eyes and hand and mouth, and they have been destined for blessing from all eternity. One does not bless with the hand alone.
Near you, though you want to be the most godless of all, I scent a secret fragrance of incense and well-being from long blessings: it makes me feel both well and woeful.
Let me be your guest, oh Zarathustra, for a single night! Nowhere on earth do I feel better now than with you!” —
“Amen! So be it!” said Zarathustra in great astonishment. “Up there the way leads on; there lies Zarathustra’s cave.
Truly, I would gladly lead you there myself, you venerable man, for I love all pious people. But now a cry of distress calls me away from you in haste.
In my domain no one shall come to harm; my cave is a good harbor. And most of all I would like to set every sad person back on firm land and firm legs.
But who could take your melancholy off your shoulders? For that I am too weak. Truly, we might wait a long time before someone wakes your God again.
For this old God no longer lives: he is thoroughly dead.” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
— And again Zarathustra’s feet ran through mountains and forests, and his eyes searched and searched, but nowhere was the one to be seen whom they wanted to see, the one in great distress who had cried out in distress. But all along the way he rejoiced in his heart and was grateful. “What good things,” he said, “this day has given me, to make up for its bad beginning! What strange people I have found to talk with!
Now I will chew on their words for a long time, as on good grains; my teeth shall grind and crush them small, until they flow into my soul like milk!” —
But when the path bent around a rock again, all at once the landscape changed, and Zarathustra stepped into a realm of death. Here black and red cliffs jutted upward: no grass, no tree, no bird’s voice. For it was a valley that all animals avoided, even the beasts of prey; only a kind of ugly, thick, green serpent came here to die when they grew old. That is why the shepherds called this valley: Serpents’ Death.
But Zarathustra sank into a black memory, for it seemed to him that he had stood in this valley once before. And much that was heavy weighed on his mind: so that he walked slowly, and more and more slowly, and at last stood still. But then, when he opened his eyes, he saw something sitting by the wayside, shaped like a man and hardly like a man, something unspeakable. And all at once a great shame fell on Zarathustra, that he had looked at such a thing with his eyes: blushing up to the roots of his white hair, he turned his gaze away and lifted his foot to leave this bad place. But then the dead wasteland grew loud: for up from the ground there welled a gurgling and a rattling, the way water gurgles and rattles at night through clogged water pipes; and at last it turned into a human voice and human speech: — and it went like this.
“Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Guess my riddle! Speak, speak! What is revenge on the witness?
I am luring you back, here is slippery ice! Watch out, watch out that your pride does not break its legs here!
You think yourself wise, you proud Zarathustra! Then guess the riddle, you hard nutcracker — the riddle that I am! Then speak — who am I!”
— But when Zarathustra had heard these words — what do you suppose happened then in his soul? Pity fell upon him; and all at once he sank to the ground, like an oak that has long withstood many woodcutters — heavily, suddenly, to the terror even of those who wanted to fell it. But already he was rising from the ground again, and his face grew hard.
“I know you well,” he said, in a voice of bronze: “you are the murderer of God! Let me go.
You could not bear the one who saw you — who saw you always and through and through, you ugliest man! You took revenge on this witness!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he wanted to get away; but the unspeakable one grabbed at a corner of his robe and began again to gurgle and search for words. “Stay!” he said at last —
— “stay! Do not pass by! I guessed what axe struck you to the ground: hail to you, oh Zarathustra, that you are standing again!
You guessed, I know it well, how the one feels who killed him — the murderer of God. Stay! Sit down here beside me; it is not for nothing.
To whom would I go, if not to you? Stay, sit down! But do not look at me! Honor in this way — my ugliness!
They are persecuting me: now you are my last refuge. Not with their hatred, not with their bailiffs: — oh, I would mock such persecution, and be proud and glad!
Has not all success so far been with the well-persecuted? And whoever persecutes well easily learns to follow: — after all, he is already — behind! But it is their pity —
— it is their pity that I am fleeing, fleeing to you for refuge. Oh Zarathustra, protect me, you my last refuge, you the only one who guessed me:
— you guessed how the one feels who killed him. Stay! And if you want to go, you impatient one: do not go the way I came. That way is bad.
Are you angry with me that I have been talk-tangle-mangling too long already? That I am already giving you advice? But know that it is I, the ugliest man,
— who also has the biggest, heaviest feet. Where I have walked, the way is bad. I trample every way to death and to ruin.
But that you passed me by, in silence; that you blushed, I saw it well: by that I knew you for Zarathustra.
Anyone else would have tossed me his alms, his pity, with a glance and a word. But for that — I am not beggar enough, you guessed that —
— for that I am too rich, rich in what is great, in what is terrible, in what is ugliest, in what is most unspeakable! Your shame, oh Zarathustra, honored me!
With difficulty I got out of the crush of the pitying, — to find the only one who teaches today that “pity is pushy” — you, oh Zarathustra!
— whether it is a god’s pity or the pity of men: pity goes against shame. And not-wanting-to-help can be nobler than that virtue which leaps to help.
But that is what all the little people today call virtue itself, pity: — they have no reverence for great misfortune, for great ugliness, for great failure.
I look away over all of these, as a dog looks away over the backs of teeming flocks of sheep. They are little, well-meaning, well-willing gray people.
As a heron looks away in contempt over shallow ponds, with its head thrown back: so I look away over the swarm of gray little waves and wills and souls.
Too long they have been told they are right, these little people: so in the end they were given power too — now they teach: “good is only what little people call good.”
And “truth” today is what the preacher spoke who came from among them himself, that strange saint and advocate of the little people, who testified of himself, “I — am the truth.”
For a long time now this immodest man has been making the little people puff up their crests — he who taught no small error when he taught, “I — am the truth.”
Was an immodest man ever answered more politely? — But you, oh Zarathustra, passed him by and said: “No! No! Three times no!”
You warned against his error, you were the first to warn against pity — not all, not none, but yourself and your kind.
You are ashamed at the shame of the great sufferer; and truly, when you say, “from pity comes a great cloud, beware, you people!”
— when you teach, “all creators are hard, all great love is above its pity”: oh Zarathustra, how well schooled in the signs of the weather you seem to me!
But you yourself — warn yourself too against your pity! For many are on their way to you, many who are suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning, freezing —
I warn you against me too. You guessed my best, my worst riddle, myself and what I did. I know the axe that fells you.
But he — had to die: he saw with eyes that saw everything, — he saw man’s depths and grounds, all his hidden disgrace and ugliness.
His pity knew no shame: he crept into my filthiest corners. This most curious, over-pushy, over-pitying one had to die.
He always saw me: on such a witness I wanted to have revenge — or not live myself.
The God who saw everything, even man: this God had to die! Man cannot bear that such a witness should live.”
Thus spoke the ugliest man. But Zarathustra rose and made ready to go: for he was chilled to his very bowels.
“You unspeakable one,” he said, “you warned me against your way. In thanks for that, I commend my own to you. Look, up there lies Zarathustra’s cave.
My cave is large and deep and has many corners; there the most hidden one finds his hiding place. And close by it are a hundred holes and hideaways for creeping, fluttering, and hopping creatures.
You outcast, who cast yourself out, you do not want to live among men and the pity of men? Well then, do as I do! So you will learn from me too; only the doer learns.
And talk first and foremost with my animals! The proudest animal and the shrewdest animal — they may well be the right counselors for the two of us!” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and went his way, more thoughtful and slower even than before: for he asked himself many things and did not easily know the answer.
“How poor man is, after all!” he thought in his heart, “how ugly, how rattling, how full of hidden shame!
I am told that man loves himself: ah, how great this self-love must be! How much contempt it has against it!
This one too loved himself even as he despised himself, — a great lover he is to me, and a great despiser.
I have found no one yet who despised himself more deeply: even that is height. Woe, was he perhaps the higher man whose cry I heard?
I love the great despisers. But man is something that must be overcome.” —
When Zarathustra had left the ugliest man, he was cold, and he felt lonely: for much that was cold and lonely went through his senses, so that his limbs too grew colder. But as he climbed on and on, up, down, now past green pastures, but also over wild, stony beds where an impatient brook had probably once gone to bed: — then all at once he felt warmer and more cheerful at heart again.
“What has happened to me?” he asked himself. “Something warm and living refreshes me; it must be near me.
Already I am less alone; unwitting companions and brothers roam around me, their warm breath touches my soul.”
But when he peered about and searched for the comforters of his solitude: look, they were cows, standing together on a hilltop; their nearness and their smell had warmed his heart. These cows, though, seemed to be listening eagerly to someone speaking, and paid no attention to the one who was coming near. But when Zarathustra was quite close to them, he heard clearly that a human voice was speaking from the middle of the cows; and plainly they had all turned their heads toward the speaker.
Then Zarathustra sprang eagerly up the slope and pushed the animals apart, for he feared that some harm had come to someone here, which the pity of cows could hardly help. But in this he was mistaken; for look, there sat a man on the ground, who seemed to be urging the animals not to be afraid of him, a peaceable man and preacher on the mount, out of whose eyes goodness itself was preaching. “What are you looking for here?” cried Zarathustra in surprise.
“What am I looking for here?” he answered. “The same thing you are looking for, you troublemaker! Namely, happiness on earth.
But for that I want to learn from these cows. For, you know, I have been talking to them for half a morning already, and they were just about to give me their answer. Why do you have to disturb them?
Unless we turn and become like cows, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. For there is one thing we ought to learn from them: chewing the cud.
And truly, if a man gained the whole world and did not learn this one thing, chewing the cud: what good would it do him! He would not be rid of his gloom
— his great gloom: but today it is called disgust. Who today does not have his heart, mouth, and eyes full of disgust? You too! You too! But just look at these cows!” —
Thus spoke the preacher on the mount, and then turned his own gaze on Zarathustra — for until then it had clung lovingly to the cows —: but then he was transformed. “Who is this I am talking to?” he cried in alarm, and sprang up from the ground.
This is the man without disgust, this is Zarathustra himself, the overcomer of the great disgust, this is the eye, this is the mouth, this is the heart of Zarathustra himself.”
And as he spoke like this, he kissed the hands of the one he was speaking to, with overflowing eyes, and behaved exactly like someone on whom a precious gift and jewel has fallen unexpectedly from heaven. But the cows looked on at all of this and wondered.
“Do not speak of me, you strange one! you lovely one!” said Zarathustra, warding off his tenderness, “speak to me first of yourself! Are you not the voluntary beggar who once threw away great riches, —
— who was ashamed of his riches and of the rich, and fled to the poorest, to give them his abundance and his heart? But they did not accept him.”
“But they did not accept me,” said the voluntary beggar, “you know that already. So in the end I went to the animals and to these cows.”
“There you learned,” Zarathustra interrupted the speaker, “how it is harder to give rightly than to take rightly, and that giving well is an art, and the last and most cunning master-art of goodness.”
“Especially nowadays,” answered the voluntary beggar: “today, that is, when everything low has become rebellious and shy and haughty in its own way: in the way of the mob, that is.
For the hour has come, you know it already, for the great, grim, long, slow uprising of the mob and the slaves: it grows and grows!
Now all charity and petty giving-away outrages the lowly; and the overrich had better be on their guard!
Whoever today drips like a big-bellied bottle out of a far too narrow neck: — people today like nothing better than to break the necks of such bottles.
Lustful greed, bilious envy, sullen vengefulness, mob pride: all of it leaped into my face. It is no longer true that the poor are blessed. But the kingdom of heaven is among the cows.”
“And why is it not among the rich?” asked Zarathustra, to tempt him, while he warded off the cows, which were snuffling trustingly at the peaceable one.
“Why do you tempt me?” the other answered. “You know it yourself even better than I do. What drove me to the poorest, oh Zarathustra? Was it not disgust at our richest?
— at the convicts of riches, who pick their profit out of every rubbish heap, with cold eyes and lecherous thoughts, at this rabble that stinks to high heaven,
— at this gilded, falsified mob, whose fathers were pickpockets, or carrion birds, or ragpickers, with wives who were willing, lustful, forgetful: — for none of them has far to go to be a whore —
Mob above, mob below! What do “poor” and “rich” mean anymore today! I unlearned that difference, — and so I fled, farther, ever farther, until I came to these cows.”
Thus spoke the peaceable one, and he himself snorted and sweated as he spoke: so that the cows wondered all over again. But Zarathustra kept looking him in the face with a smile while he talked so harshly, and silently shook his head.
“You are doing yourself violence, you preacher on the mount, when you use such hard words. Your mouth did not grow for such hardness, nor your eye.
Nor, it seems to me, your stomach itself: it turns against all such raging and hating and frothing over. Your stomach wants gentler things: you are no butcher.
Rather, you seem to me a plant-eater and a root-man. Perhaps you grind grain. But surely you are averse to the pleasures of the flesh, and you love honey.”
“You have guessed me well,” answered the voluntary beggar, with a lighter heart. “I love honey, I grind grain too, for I sought what tastes sweet and makes the breath pure:
— and also what takes a long time, a day’s work and a jaw’s work for gentle idlers and day-wasters.
These cows, of course, have gone furthest of all: they invented chewing the cud and lying in the sun for themselves. And they abstain from all heavy thoughts, which bloat the heart.”
“— Well then!” said Zarathustra: “you ought to see my animals too, my eagle and my serpent, — there are none like them on earth today.
Look, that way leads the path to my cave: be its guest tonight. And talk with my animals about the happiness of animals, —
— until I come home myself. For now a cry of distress calls me away from you in haste. You will also find new honey at my place, ice-fresh golden honey in the comb: eat it!
But now take leave of your cows, quickly, you strange one! you lovely one! however hard it may be for you. For they are your warmest friends and teachers!” —
“— All but one, whom I love even more,” answered the voluntary beggar. “You yourself are good, and better even than a cow, oh Zarathustra!”
“Away, away with you! you wicked flatterer!” cried Zarathustra with malice, “why do you spoil me with such praise and flattery-honey?”
“Away, away from me!” he cried once more, and swung his stick at the tender beggar: but the beggar ran nimbly away.
But scarcely had the voluntary beggar run off and Zarathustra was alone with himself again, when he heard a new voice behind him, calling, “Stop! Zarathustra! Wait for me! It’s me, oh Zarathustra, me, your shadow!” But Zarathustra did not wait, for a sudden annoyance came over him at all the crowding and thronging in his mountains. “Where has my solitude gone?” he said.
Truly, it is getting to be too much for me; these mountains are swarming, my kingdom is no longer of this world, I need new mountains.
My shadow is calling me? What does my shadow matter! Let him run after me! I — will run away from him.” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra to his heart, and ran away. But the one who was behind him followed after him: so that soon there were three runners one behind the other, namely the voluntary beggar in front, then Zarathustra, and third and hindmost his shadow. They had not run like this for long before Zarathustra came to his senses about his folly and with one jerk shook off all his annoyance and weariness.
“What!” he said, “have not the most ridiculous things always happened to us old hermits and saints?
Truly, my folly has grown tall in the mountains! Now I hear six old fools’ legs clattering along one behind the other!
But may Zarathustra really be afraid of a shadow? Besides, it seems to me, when all is said and done, that he has longer legs than I do.”
Thus spoke Zarathustra, laughing with his eyes and his bowels; he stopped and turned around quickly — and look, in doing so he almost threw his follower and shadow to the ground: so closely was the shadow already following on his heels, and so weak was he, too. For when Zarathustra looked him over with his eyes, he was startled as if by a sudden ghost: so thin, swarthy, hollow, and worn-out did this follower look.
“Who are you?” asked Zarathustra fiercely. “What are you doing here? And why do you call yourself my shadow? I do not like you.”
“Forgive me,” answered the shadow, “that it is I; and if you do not like me, well then, oh Zarathustra! in that I praise you and your good taste.
A wanderer I am, who has already walked a great deal behind your heels: always on the way, but without a goal, without a home too: so that truly I lack little of being the eternal Wandering Jew, except that I am not eternal, and not a Jew either.
What? Must I always be on the way? Whirled about by every wind, restless, driven on? Oh earth, you have grown too round for me!
I have already sat on every surface; like tired dust I have fallen asleep on mirrors and windowpanes: everything takes from me, nothing gives, I am growing thin, — I almost resemble a shadow.
But it was you, oh Zarathustra, whom I flew and trailed after longest; and though I hid from you, still I was your best shadow: wherever you sat, I sat too.
With you I haunted the farthest, coldest worlds, like a ghost that runs of its own free will over winter roofs and snow.
With you I strove into everything forbidden, everything worst, everything farthest: and if anything in me is virtue, it is that I had no fear of any prohibition.
With you I broke whatever my heart ever revered, I overturned all boundary stones and images, I ran after the most dangerous wishes, — truly, I once ran right over every crime there is.
With you I unlearned my faith in words and values and great names. When the devil sheds his skin, does his name not fall off too? For that too is skin. The devil himself is perhaps — skin.
“Nothing is true, everything is permitted”: so I told myself. I plunged into the coldest waters, head and heart. Ah, how often did I stand there afterward naked, red as a lobster!
Ah, where did all goodness go, and all shame, and all faith in the good! Ah, where is that lying innocence I once had, the innocence of the good and of their noble lies!
Too often, truly, I followed close on the heels of truth: then it kicked me in the head. Sometimes I thought I was lying, and look! only then did I hit upon — the truth.
Too much has become clear to me: now none of it concerns me anymore. Nothing lives anymore that I love, — how should I still love myself?
“To live as I please, or not to live at all”: that is how I want it, that is how the holiest man wants it too. But woe! what is there that still — pleases me?
Do I — still have a goal? A harbor toward which my sail is running?
A good wind? Ah, only the one who knows where he is sailing also knows which wind is good and is his fair wind.
What is left to me now? A heart weary and insolent; a restless will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone.
This hunting for my home: oh Zarathustra, do you know, this home-hunting was my haunting, it is eating me up.
“Where is — my home?” I ask and search and have searched for it, and I have not found it. Oh eternal everywhere, oh eternal nowhere, oh eternal — in vain!”
Thus spoke the shadow, and Zarathustra’s face grew long at his words. “You are my shadow!” he said at last, with sadness.
Your danger is no small one, you free spirit and wanderer! You have had a bad day: see to it that an even worse evening does not come to you!
To restless ones like you, in the end even a prison seems blissful. Have you ever seen how captured criminals sleep? They sleep peacefully, they enjoy their new security.
Beware that in the end a narrow faith does not capture you, a hard, strict delusion! For from now on anything that is narrow and firm seduces and tempts you.
You have lost your goal: woe, how will you laugh off and live down this loss? With it — you have lost your way as well!
You poor roamer and rover, you tired butterfly! Do you want a rest and a home for this evening? Then go up to my cave!
That way leads the path to my cave. And now I want to run away from you again, quickly. Already something lies on me like a shadow.
I want to run alone, so that it grows bright around me again. For that I must stay merrily on my legs a long while yet. But this evening at my place there will be — dancing!” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
— And Zarathustra ran and ran and found no one anymore, and was alone and found himself again and again, and enjoyed and sipped his solitude and thought of good things, — for hours. But around the hour of noon, when the sun stood directly over Zarathustra’s head, he passed an old, crooked, gnarled tree, which was embraced all around by the rich love of a grapevine and hidden from itself: from it yellow grapes hung down in plenty toward the wanderer. Then he felt the urge to quench a little thirst and break off a bunch of grapes for himself; but when he was already stretching out his arm for it, he felt the urge for something else even more: namely, to lie down beside the tree, at the hour of perfect noon, and sleep.
This Zarathustra did; and as soon as he lay on the ground, in the stillness and secrecy of the many-colored grass, he had already forgotten his little thirst and fell asleep. For, as Zarathustra’s proverb says: One thing is more necessary than another. Only his eyes stayed open: — for they could not get enough of seeing and praising the tree and the love of the vine. But as he fell asleep, Zarathustra spoke to his heart like this:
Still! Still! Did the world not just now become perfect? What is happening to me?
As a delicate wind, unseen, dances on an inlaid sea, light, light as a feather: so — sleep dances on me.
It closes no eye of mine, it leaves my soul awake. It is light, truly! light as a feather.
It persuades me, I do not know how?, it dabs at me inside with a coaxing hand, it compels me. Yes, it compels me, so that my soul stretches out: —
— how long and tired it grows, my strange soul! Did a seventh day’s evening come to it right at noon? Has it wandered too long already, blissful, among good and ripe things?
It stretches out long, long, — longer! It lies still, my strange soul. Too many good things it has tasted already; a golden sadness weighs on it, it twists its mouth.
— Like a ship that has run into its stillest bay: — now it leans against the earth, tired of the long voyages and the uncertain seas. Is the earth not more faithful?
As such a ship lays itself alongside the land and nestles against it: — then it is enough for a spider to spin its thread to it from the land. No stronger ropes are needed there.
Like such a tired ship in the stillest bay: so I too rest now close to the earth, faithful, trusting, waiting, tied to it with the faintest threads.
Oh happiness! Oh happiness! Do you want to sing, oh my soul? You are lying in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour when no shepherd plays his flute.
Take care! Hot noon is sleeping on the meadows. Do not sing! Still! The world is perfect.
Do not sing, you songbird of the grass, oh my soul! Do not even whisper! Look — still! old noon is sleeping, it moves its mouth: is it not just now drinking a drop of happiness —
— an old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something flits across it, its happiness laughs. So — a god laughs. Still! —
— “For happiness, how little is enough for happiness!” So I spoke once, and thought myself clever. But it was a blasphemy: that I have learned now. Clever fools speak better.
Precisely the least, the softest, the lightest, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a flit, a twinkling of an eye — little makes up the best happiness. Still!
— What happened to me: Listen! Did time fly away? Am I not falling? Did I not fall — listen! into the well of eternity?
— What is happening to me? Still! It stings me — woe — in the heart? In the heart! Oh break, break, heart, after such happiness, after such a sting!
— What? Did the world not just now become perfect? Round and ripe? Oh, the golden round ring, the ripe ring — where is it flying off to? Let me run after it! Quick!
Still — — (and here Zarathustra stretched himself and felt that he was asleep.) —
Up! he said to himself, you sleeper! You noon-sleeper! Come on, get up, you old legs! It is time and overtime, many a good stretch of road is still left for you —
Now you have slept your fill, but for how long? Half an eternity! Come on, get up now, my old heart! How long will it be after such a sleep before you may — wake yourself up?
(But then he was already falling asleep again, and his soul spoke against him and resisted and lay down again) — “Leave me alone! Still! Did the world not just now become perfect? Oh, the golden round ball!” —
“Get up,” said Zarathustra, “you little thief, you stealer of days! What? Still stretching, yawning, sighing, falling down into deep wells?
Who are you, then! Oh my soul!” (and here he took fright, for a sunbeam fell down from the sky onto his face)
“Oh heaven above me,” he said with a sigh, and sat up straight, “are you watching me? Are you listening to my strange soul?
When will you drink this drop of dew that fell down on all earthly things, — when will you drink this strange soul —
— when, well of eternity! you bright, dreadful abyss of noon! when will you drink my soul back into yourself?”
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and rose from his resting place by the tree as if from a strange drunkenness: and look, there the sun still stood directly over his head. From this, though, one might rightly conclude that Zarathustra had not slept long that time.
It was not until late in the afternoon that Zarathustra, after long and useless searching and roaming about, came home to his cave again. But when he stood facing it, no more than twenty paces away, there happened what he now least expected: once again he heard the great cry of distress. And, astonishing! this time it came from his own cave. But it was a long, manifold, strange cry, and Zarathustra could clearly make out that it was made up of many voices: even though, heard from far away, it might sound like the cry from a single mouth.
Then Zarathustra sprang toward his cave, and look! what a sight for the eyes awaited him after that treat for the ears! For there they sat all together, the ones he had passed by during the day: the king on the right and the king on the left, the old magician, the pope, the voluntary beggar, the shadow, the conscientious one of the spirit, the sad soothsayer, and the donkey; but the ugliest man had put on a crown and wound two purple sashes around himself, — for, like all ugly people, he loved to dress up and play the beauty. But in the middle of this gloomy company stood Zarathustra’s eagle, ruffled and restless, for he was supposed to answer too many things for which his pride had no answer; and the shrewd serpent hung around his neck.
All this Zarathustra looked at in great amazement; then he examined each one of his guests with friendly curiosity, read their souls, and wondered again. Meanwhile the assembled company had risen from their seats and were waiting in reverence for Zarathustra to speak. But Zarathustra spoke like this:
“You despairing ones! You strange ones! So it was your cry of distress I heard? And now I also know where to look for the one I looked for in vain today: the higher man —:
— in my own cave he sits, the higher man! But why am I surprised! Did I not lure him to me myself, with honey sacrifices and the cunning calls of my happiness?
But it seems to me that you are poor company for one another, you make each other’s hearts sour, you who cry out in distress, when you sit here together? Someone has to come first,
— someone who will make you laugh again, a good merry clown, a dancer and a wind and a wild thing, some old fool: — what do you think?
But forgive me, you despairing ones, for talking to you in such small words, unworthy, truly!, of such guests! But you do not guess what makes my heart so mischievous: —
— you yourselves do it, and the sight of you, forgive me! For everyone grows brave who looks at a despairing man. To talk courage into a despairing man — everyone thinks himself strong enough for that.
You gave this strength to me myself, — a good gift, my high guests! A proper guest-gift! Well then, do not be angry now if I offer you something of mine too.
This here is my kingdom and my dominion: but what is mine shall be yours for this evening and this night. My animals shall serve you: let my cave be your resting place!
At home with me no one shall despair; in my territory I protect everyone from his wild beasts. And that is the first thing I offer you: safety!
But the second is: my little finger. And once you have that, go ahead and take the whole hand too! and the heart along with it! Welcome here, welcome, my guests and friends!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and laughed with love and malice. After this welcome his guests bowed once more and were silent in reverence; but the king on the right answered him in their name.
“By the way you offered us your hand and your greeting, oh Zarathustra, we recognize you as Zarathustra. You humbled yourself before us; you almost hurt our reverence —:
— but who could humble himself as you do, with such pride? That lifts us up ourselves; it is a refreshment to our eyes and hearts.
Just to see this, we would gladly climb higher mountains than this mountain. For we came as sightseers, we wanted to see what makes dim eyes bright.
And look, already all our cries of distress are over. Already our minds and hearts stand open and are enchanted. Little is missing: and our courage will turn to mischief.
Nothing more delightful grows on earth, oh Zarathustra, than a high, strong will: it is the earth’s most beautiful growth. A whole landscape is refreshed by one such tree.
I compare to the pine whoever grows up like you, oh Zarathustra: tall, silent, hard, alone, of the best and most supple wood, magnificent, —
— but in the end reaching out with strong green branches for its dominion, asking strong questions of the winds and the storms and whatever else is at home on the heights,
— answering more strongly, a commander, a victor: oh, who would not climb high mountains to see such growths?
By your tree here, oh Zarathustra, even the gloomy one, the failure, is refreshed; at the sight of you even the restless one grows steady and heals his heart.
And truly, many eyes today are turned toward your mountain and your tree; a great longing has set out, and some have learned to ask: who is Zarathustra?
And all into whose ears you ever dripped your song and your honey: all the hidden ones, those who live alone and those who live alone together, said all at once to their hearts:
‘Is Zarathustra still alive? It is no longer worth living, all is the same, all is in vain: or else — we must live with Zarathustra!’
‘Why does he not come, he who announced himself so long ago? so many ask; did solitude swallow him up? Or should we perhaps come to him?’
Now it is happening that solitude itself grows brittle and breaks open, like a grave that breaks open and can no longer hold its dead. Everywhere one sees the risen.
Now the waves are rising and rising around your mountain, oh Zarathustra. And however high your height may be, many must come up to you; your boat shall not sit on dry land much longer.
And that we despairing ones have now come into your cave and already despair no longer: it is only a token and an omen that better ones are on their way to you, —
— for he himself is on his way to you, the last remnant of God among men, that is: all the men of the great longing, of the great disgust, of the great weariness,
— all who do not want to live unless they learn to hope again — unless they learn from you, oh Zarathustra, the great hope!”
Thus spoke the king on the right, and took Zarathustra’s hand to kiss it; but Zarathustra fended off his veneration and stepped back in alarm, silent and sudden, as if fleeing into far distances. But after a little while he was back with his guests again, looked at them with clear, searching eyes, and said:
My guests, you higher men, I want to speak to you in plain German, and plainly. It was not for you that I was waiting here in these mountains.
(“Plain German, and plainly? God have mercy!” said the king on the left at this point, aside; “you can tell he does not know the dear Germans, this wise man from the East!
But he means ‘German, and gruffly’ — well then! These days that is not yet the worst taste!”)
“You may all be higher men, truly,” Zarathustra went on: “but for me — you are not high and strong enough.
For me, that means: for the inexorable thing in me that is silent, but will not always be silent. And if you do belong to me, it is still not as my right arm.
For whoever stands on sick and delicate legs himself, as you do, wants above all, whether he knows it or hides it from himself: to be spared.
But my arms and my legs I do not spare, I do not spare my warriors: how could you be any use in my war?
With you I would spoil every victory of mine. And some of you would fall over just from hearing the loud roll of my drums.
Nor are you beautiful enough for me, or well-born enough. I need pure, smooth mirrors for my teachings; on your surface even my own image is distorted.
Many a burden presses on your shoulders, many a memory; many a nasty dwarf crouches in your corners. There is a hidden mob in you too.
And even if you are high and of a higher kind: much in you is crooked and misshapen. There is no smith in the world who could hammer you right and straight for me.
You are only bridges: may higher ones stride across over you! You stand for steps: so do not be angry with the one who climbs over you into his height!
From your seed a true son and perfect heir may one day grow for me too: but that is far off. You yourselves are not the ones to whom my inheritance and name belong.
It is not for you that I am waiting here in these mountains, it is not with you that I may go down for the last time. You came to me only as an omen that higher ones are already on their way to me, —
— not the men of the great longing, of the great disgust, of the great weariness, and what you called the remains of God.
— No! No! Three times no! It is for others that I am waiting here in these mountains, and I will not lift my foot from here without them,
— for higher ones, stronger ones, more victorious ones, more cheerful ones, ones who are built square in body and soul: laughing lions must come!
Oh my guests and friends, you strange ones, — have you heard nothing yet of my children? And that they are on their way to me?
Do speak to me of my gardens, of my Blessed Isles, of my new, beautiful kind, — why do you not speak to me of them?
This guest-gift I ask of your love, that you speak to me of my children. For this I am rich, for this I became poor: what have I not given away,
— what would I not give away to have one thing: these children, this living plantation, these trees of life of my will and of my highest hope!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and suddenly broke off his speech: for his longing came over him, and he closed his eyes and his mouth against the turmoil of his heart. And all his guests too were silent and stood still and dismayed: except that the old soothsayer made signs with his hands and gestures.
For at this point the soothsayer interrupted the welcome between Zarathustra and his guests: he pushed his way forward like someone with no time to lose, seized Zarathustra’s hand, and cried: “But Zarathustra!
One thing is more necessary than another, you say so yourself: well then, one thing is more necessary to me now than everything else.
A word at the right time: did you not invite me to a meal? And here are many who have come a long way. Surely you do not mean to fob us off with speeches?
Besides, all of you have already given me too much thought of freezing, drowning, suffocating, and other bodily emergencies: but nobody has given a thought to my emergency, namely starving —”
(Thus spoke the soothsayer; but when Zarathustra’s animals heard these words, they ran away in terror. For they saw that whatever they had brought home during the day would not be enough to stuff this one soothsayer.)
“Not to mention dying of thirst,” the soothsayer went on. “And although I hear water splashing here, like the speeches of wisdom, that is, abundantly and tirelessly: I — want wine!
Not everyone is a born water-drinker like Zarathustra. Nor is water any good for the tired and the withered: we deserve wine, — that alone gives sudden recovery and health on the spot!”
On this occasion, when the soothsayer was demanding wine, it happened that the king on the left, the silent one, got a word in for once too. “As for wine,” he said, “we have taken care of that, I and my brother, the king on the right: we have wine enough, — a whole donkey-load. So nothing is missing but bread.”
“Bread?” Zarathustra replied, and laughed as he said it. “Bread is the one thing hermits do not have. But man does not live by bread alone, but also by the meat of good lambs, of which I have two:
— these we should slaughter quickly and prepare with spice, with sage: that is how I love it. And there is no lack of roots and fruits either, good enough even for gourmets and fussy tasters; nor of nuts and other riddles to crack.
So in a little while we will make a good meal. But whoever wants to eat with us must also lend a hand, kings too. For at Zarathustra’s, even a king may be a cook.”
This proposal was after everyone’s heart: except that the voluntary beggar balked at meat and wine and spices.
“Now just listen to this glutton Zarathustra!” he said jokingly: “is that what people go into caves and high mountains for, to make meals like these?
Now of course I understand what he once taught us: ‘Praised be a little poverty!’ And why he wants to do away with beggars.”
“Be of good cheer,” Zarathustra answered him, “as I am. Keep to your custom, you excellent man, grind your grain, drink your water, praise your cooking: as long as it makes you cheerful!
I am a law only for my own, I am not a law for all. But whoever belongs to me must be strong of bone, and light of foot too, —
— glad for wars and feasts, no gloom-monger, no dreamy dawdler, ready for the hardest thing as for his feast, healthy and whole.
The best belongs to my own and to me; and if we are not given it, we take it: — the best food, the purest sky, the strongest thoughts, the most beautiful women!” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra; but the king on the right replied: “Strange! Did anyone ever hear such clever things from the mouth of a wise man?
And truly, that is the strangest thing about a wise man, when on top of everything he is also clever and no donkey.”
Thus spoke the king on the right, and wondered; but the donkey said Yeah-aw to his speech, with ill will. This, though, was the beginning of that long meal which is called “the Last Supper” in the history books. And at it nothing else was talked about but the higher man.
When I came to people for the first time, I committed the hermit’s folly, the great folly: I set myself up in the marketplace.
And when I spoke to all, I spoke to none. But in the evening tightrope walkers were my companions, and corpses; and I myself was almost a corpse.
But with the new morning a new truth came to me: then I learned to say, “What do the marketplace and the mob and the mob’s noise and the mob’s long ears matter to me!”
You higher men, learn this from me: in the marketplace no one believes in higher men. And if you want to speak there, very well! But the mob blinks: “We are all equal.”
“You higher men” — so the mob blinks — “there are no higher men, we are all equal, man is man, before God — we are all equal!”
Before God! — But now this God has died. And before the mob we do not want to be equal. You higher men, go away from the marketplace!
Before God! — But now this God has died! You higher men, this God was your greatest danger.
Only since he has been lying in the grave have you risen again. Only now does the great noon come, only now does the higher man become — master!
Did you understand this word, oh my brothers? You are frightened: do your hearts grow dizzy? Does the abyss yawn for you here? Does the hellhound yelp at you here?
Well then! Up with you! You higher men! Only now is the mountain of man’s future in labor. God died: now we want — the overman to live.
The most careful ask today: “How is man to be preserved?” But Zarathustra asks, as the only one and the first: “How is man to be overcome?”
The overman lies close to my heart, he is my first and only one — and not man: not the neighbor, not the poorest, not the one who suffers most, not the best —
Oh my brothers, what I can love in man is that he is a going over and a going under. And in you too there is much that makes me love and hope.
That you despised, you higher men, that makes me hope. For the great despisers are the great reverers.
That you despaired, there is much to honor in that. For you did not learn how to submit, you did not learn the small prudences.
For today the small people have become master: they all preach submission and modesty and prudence and diligence and consideration and the long and-so-on of the small virtues.
Whatever is of woman’s kind, whatever comes from the serf’s kind, and especially the mob-hodgepodge: that now wants to become master of all human destiny — oh disgust! Disgust! Disgust!
That asks and asks and never grows tired: “How does man preserve himself, best, longest, most pleasantly?” With that — they are the masters of today.
Overcome these masters of today for me, oh my brothers — these small people: they are the overman’s greatest danger!
Overcome for me, you higher men, the small virtues, the small prudences, the grain-of-sand considerations, the anthill’s crawling clutter, the wretched contentment, the “happiness of the greatest number” —!
And despair rather than submit. And, truly, I love you for this, that you do not know how to live today, you higher men! For that is how you live — best!
Do you have courage, oh my brothers? Are you brave-hearted? Not courage before witnesses, but the courage of hermits and eagles, which not even a god watches anymore?
Cold souls, mules, the blind, the drunken I do not call brave-hearted. He has heart who knows fear but masters fear; who sees the abyss, but with pride.
Whoever sees the abyss, but with an eagle’s eyes; whoever grasps the abyss with an eagle’s talons: he has courage. —
“Man is evil” — so all the wisest told me, for my comfort. Ah, if only it is still true today! For evil is man’s best strength.
“Man must become better and more evil” — so I teach. The most evil is necessary for the overman’s best.
It may have been good for that preacher of the small people that he suffered and bore the sin of man. But I rejoice in great sin as my great comfort. —
But such things are not said for long ears. Not every word belongs in every snout, either. These are fine, faraway things: sheep’s hooves shall not grab at them!
You higher men, do you think I am here to make good what you made bad?
Or that from now on I wanted to make softer beds for you sufferers? Or to show you restless ones, you who have strayed, you who have climbed astray, new and easier footpaths?
No! No! Three times no! Ever more, ever better ones of your kind shall perish — for you shall have it ever worse and harder. Only so —
— only so does man grow up to that height where the lightning strikes him and breaks him: high enough for the lightning!
My mind and my longing go out toward the few, the long, the far: what would your small, many, short misery matter to me!
You do not yet suffer enough for me! For you suffer from yourselves; you have not yet suffered from man. You would be lying if you said otherwise! None of you suffers from what I suffered. —
It is not enough for me that the lightning no longer does harm. I do not want to conduct it away: it shall learn — to work for me. —
My wisdom has long been gathering like a cloud; it grows stiller and darker. So does every wisdom that is one day to give birth to lightning. —
To these people of today I do not want to be light, nor to be called light. Them — I want to blind: lightning of my wisdom! Put out their eyes!
Will nothing beyond your ability: there is a wicked falseness in those who will beyond their ability.
Especially when they will great things! For they awaken mistrust of great things, these subtle counterfeiters and actors: —
— until at last they are false even before themselves, squint-eyed, whitewashed worm-rot, cloaked in strong words, in shop-window virtues, in glittering false works.
Be well on your guard there, you higher men! For nothing today is more precious to me, and rarer, than honesty.
Does this today not belong to the mob? But the mob does not know what is great, what is small, what is straight and honest: it is innocently crooked, it always lies.
Have a good mistrust today, you higher men, you brave-hearted ones! You openhearted ones! And keep your reasons secret! For this today belongs to the mob.
What the mob once learned to believe without reasons, who could, with reasons — overturn that for it?
And in the marketplace one persuades with gestures. But reasons make the mob mistrustful.
And if truth ever did win a victory there, then ask yourselves with good mistrust: “What strong error fought for it?”
Beware of the scholars too! They hate you: for they are barren! They have cold, dried-up eyes; before them every bird lies plucked.
Such people boast that they do not lie: but being powerless to lie is still far from being love of truth. Beware!
Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge! I do not believe in spirits that have gone cold. Whoever cannot lie does not know what truth is.
If you want to rise high, use your own legs! Do not let yourselves be carried up; do not sit on other people’s backs and heads!
But you have mounted a horse? You are riding briskly up to your goal now? Well then, my friend! But your lame foot is riding on the horse too!
When you are at your goal, when you leap down from your horse: right on your height, you higher man — you will stumble!
You creators, you higher men! One is pregnant only with one’s own child.
Do not let anyone talk you into anything, or talk anything into you! Who, then, is your neighbor? And even if you act “for the neighbor” — you still do not create for him!
Unlearn this “for” for me, you creators: your very virtue wants you to do nothing with “for” and “in order to” and “because.” You shall seal your ears against these false little words.
“For the neighbor” is the virtue only of small people: there they say “like with like” and “one hand washes the other”: — they have neither the right nor the strength for your self-interest!
In your self-interest, you creators, is the caution and the foresight of the pregnant! What no one has yet seen with eyes, the fruit: that is what your whole love shelters and spares and feeds.
Where your whole love is, with your child, there is your whole virtue too! Your work, your will is your “neighbor”: do not let anyone talk you into false values!
You creators, you higher men! Whoever must give birth is sick; but whoever has given birth is unclean.
Ask the women: one does not give birth because it is a pleasure. Pain makes hens and poets cackle.
You creators, there is much that is unclean in you. That is because you had to be mothers.
A new child: oh, how much new filth came into the world too! Step aside! And whoever has given birth shall wash his soul clean!
Do not be virtuous beyond your strength! And want nothing of yourselves that goes against probability!
Walk in the footsteps where your fathers’ virtue already walked! How would you climb high if your fathers’ will did not climb with you?
But whoever wants to be a firstling, let him see to it that he does not also become a lastling! And where the vices of your fathers are, there you should not want to pass for saints!
Someone whose fathers kept company with women and strong wines and wild boars: what would it be if he wanted chastity of himself?
It would be a folly! Truly, it seems a great deal to me for such a man if he is the husband of one or two or three women.
And if he founded monasteries and wrote over the door, “The way to holiness,” — I would still say: what for! It is a new folly!
He has founded himself a house of correction and a house of flight: much good may it do him! But I do not believe in it.
In solitude whatever one brings into it grows, the inner brute too. For this reason solitude is inadvisable for many.
Has there been anything filthier on earth so far than the saints of the desert? Around them not only was the devil loose — but the swine too.
Shy, ashamed, clumsy, like a tiger whose leap has failed: that, you higher men, is how I have often seen you slink aside. A throw had failed you.
But, you dice-players, what does it matter! You did not learn to play and to mock as one must play and mock! Are we not always sitting at a great table of mocking and playing?
And if great things failed you, does that make you yourselves — failures? And if you yourselves are failures, does that make man — a failure? But if man is a failure: well then! Up with you!
The higher a thing’s kind, the more rarely it succeeds. You higher men here, have you not all — failed?
Take heart, what does it matter! How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as one must laugh!
And what wonder that you failed and half succeeded, you half-broken ones! Is it not — man’s future that presses and jostles in you?
Man’s farthest, deepest, star-highest, his tremendous strength: does not all of that foam against itself in your pot?
What wonder that many a pot breaks! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as one must laugh! You higher men, oh, how much is still possible!
And truly, how much has already succeeded! How rich this earth is in small, good, perfect things, in things that turned out well!
Set small, good, perfect things around you, you higher men! Their golden ripeness heals the heart. What is perfect teaches hope.
What has been the greatest sin here on earth so far? Was it not the word of the one who said, “Woe to those who laugh here!”
Did he find no reasons to laugh on the earth itself? Then he searched badly. Even a child finds reasons here.
He — did not love enough: otherwise he would have loved us too, the laughing ones! But he hated and jeered at us; he promised us weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Must one curse right away where one does not love? That — seems to me bad taste. But that is what he did, this unconditional one. He came from the mob.
And he himself simply did not love enough: otherwise he would have been less angry that people did not love him. All great love does not want love: — it wants more.
Get out of the way of all such unconditional ones! They are a poor, sick kind, a mob-kind: they look on this life with ill will, they have the evil eye for this earth.
Get out of the way of all such unconditional ones! They have heavy feet and sultry hearts: — they do not know how to dance. How could the earth be light to such as these!
All good things come near their goal crookedly. Like cats they arch their backs, they purr inwardly at their coming happiness — all good things laugh.
A person’s stride betrays whether he is already walking on his own path: so watch me walk! But whoever comes near his goal, dances.
And, truly, I have not become a statue, nor do I stand there yet, stiff, stolid, stony, a pillar; I love running fast.
And even if there are bogs and thick gloom on earth: whoever has light feet runs on over the mud and dances as on swept ice.
Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high! higher! And do not forget your legs either! Lift up your legs too, you good dancers, and better still: stand on your heads as well!
This crown of the laughing one, this rose-wreath crown: I myself set this crown on my head, I myself have canonized my laughter. I found no one else strong enough for it today.
Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one, who beckons with his wings, one ready for flight, beckoning to all birds, ready and set, a blissfully lighthearted one: —
Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, no impatient one, no unconditional one, one who loves leaps and side-leaps; I myself set this crown on my head!
Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high! higher! And do not forget your legs either! Lift up your legs too, you good dancers, and better still: stand on your heads as well!
There are heavy beasts in happiness too; there are clubfoots from the very beginning. Strangely they toil away, like an elephant toiling to stand on its head.
But better to be foolish with happiness than foolish with misfortune, better to dance clumsily than to walk lamely. So learn this wisdom of mine from me: even the worst thing has two good reverse sides, —
— even the worst thing has good legs for dancing: so learn from me, you higher men, how to stand yourselves on your proper legs!
So unlearn your moping and all mob-sadness! Oh, how sad even the mob’s clowns seem to me today! But this today belongs to the mob.
Do as the wind does when it rushes out of its mountain caves: it wants to dance to its own piping, and the seas tremble and leap under its footsteps.
The one who gives donkeys wings, who milks lionesses, praised be this good, unruly spirit, which comes like a storm wind to all of today and to all the mob, —
— which is the enemy of thistle-heads and fiddle-heads and of all withered leaves and weeds: praised be this wild, good, free storm-spirit, which dances on bogs and glooms as if on meadows!
Which hates the mob’s consumptive curs and all the botched and gloomy brood: praised be this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing storm, which blows dust into the eyes of all the black-sighted and the sore-blighted!
You higher men, the worst thing about you is this: none of you has learned to dance as one must dance — to dance beyond yourselves! What does it matter that you failed!
How much is still possible! So learn to laugh beyond yourselves! Lift up your hearts, you good dancers, high! higher! And do not forget good laughter either!
This crown of the laughing one, this rose-wreath crown: to you, my brothers, I throw this crown! I have canonized laughter; you higher men, learn — to laugh!
When Zarathustra was giving these discourses, he stood near the entrance of his cave; but with the last words he slipped away from his guests and fled for a little while into the open air.
“Oh pure smells around me,” he cried, “oh blissful stillness around me! But where are my animals? Come here, come here, my eagle and my serpent!
Tell me, my animals: these higher men, all of them together — do they perhaps not smell good? Oh pure smells around me! Only now do I know and feel how much I love you, my animals.”
— And Zarathustra said once more: “I love you, my animals!” But the eagle and the serpent pressed close to him as he spoke these words, and looked up at him. In this way the three of them were quietly together, and sniffed and sipped the good air with one another. For the air out here was better than among the higher men.
But hardly had Zarathustra left his cave when the old magician got up, looked around slyly, and said: “He is out!
And already, you higher men — let me tickle you with this name of praise and flattery, just as he does — already my wicked spirit of deceit and magic is coming over me, my melancholy devil,
— who is an adversary of this Zarathustra from the ground up: forgive him for it! Now he wants to work magic before you, it is just his hour; in vain do I wrestle with this evil spirit.
To all of you, whatever honors you may give yourselves with words, whether you call yourselves ‘the free spirits’ or ‘the truthful’ or ‘the penitents of the spirit’ or ‘the unchained’ or ‘the great longers’ —
— to all of you who suffer from the great disgust as I do, for whom the old God has died and no new god yet lies in cradles and swaddling clothes — to all of you my evil spirit and magic-devil is well disposed.
I know you, you higher men, I know him — I know this fiend too, whom I love against my will, this Zarathustra: he himself often seems to me like a beautiful saint’s mask,
— like a new and wondrous masquerade, in which my evil spirit, the melancholy devil, takes pleasure: — I love Zarathustra, so it often seems to me, for the sake of my evil spirit. —
But already he is coming over me and forcing me, this spirit of melancholy, this devil of the evening twilight: and, truly, you higher men, he has a craving —
— just open your eyes! — he has a craving to come naked, whether male or female I do not know yet: but he is coming, he is forcing me, woe! Open your senses!
The day is dying away, evening now comes to all things, even to the best things; hear now, and see, you higher men, what devil, whether man or woman, this spirit of evening melancholy is!”
Thus spoke the old magician, looked around slyly, and then reached for his harp.
When the air has cleared, When already the dew’s comfort Wells down onto the earth, Unseen, unheard as well: — For tender are the shoes The comforting dew wears, like all the gently comforting —: Do you remember then, do you remember, hot heart, How once you thirsted, For heavenly tears and the dripping of dew Thirsted, scorched and weary, While on yellow grassy paths Wicked evening glances of the sun Ran around you through black trees, Blinding, burning glances of the sun, gloating.
“The suitor of truth? You?” — so they jeered — “No! Only a poet! An animal, a cunning, preying, creeping one, That has to lie, That knowingly, willingly has to lie: Lusting for prey, Masked in motley, Its own mask, Its own prey — That — the suitor of truth? No! Only a fool! Only a poet! Only speaking motley, Shrieking motley out of fool’s masks, Clambering about on lying bridges of words, On motley rainbows, Between false heavens And false earths, Roaming about, hovering about, — Only a fool! Only a poet! ...
That — the suitor of truth? Not still, stiff, smooth, cold, Turned into an image, Into a pillar of God, Not set up before temples, A god’s doorkeeper: No! An enemy of such statues of truth, More at home in any wilderness than before temples, Full of a cat’s mischief, Leaping through every window, Whisk! into every accident, Sniffing toward every jungle, Sniffing with craving and longing, That you might run in jungles Among the motley-spotted beasts of prey, Sinfully healthy and motley and beautiful, With lusting lips, Blissfully mocking, blissfully hellish, blissfully bloodthirsty, Run preying, creeping, lying: ...
Or, like the eagle, which long, Long stares fixedly into abysses, Into its own abysses: ... — Oh, how they coil down here, Downward, inward, Into ever deeper depths! — Then, Suddenly, On a straight track, In a blade-drawn attack, Swoop down on lambs, Headlong down, ravenous, Lusting for lambs, Grudging all lamb-souls, Grimly grudging all that looks Sheepish, lamb-eyed, curly-wooled, Gray, with lamb-and-sheep goodwill!
So Eagle-like, panther-like Are the poet’s longings, Are your longings under a thousand masks, You fool! You poet!
You who saw man As god as much as sheep —: To tear apart the god in man As much as the sheep in man, And, tearing, to laugh —
That, that is your bliss! A panther’s and an eagle’s bliss! A poet’s and a fool’s bliss!” —
When the air has cleared, When already the moon’s sickle Creeps green between purple reds, And envious: — hostile to the day, With every step in secret Sickling at the hammocks of roses, Until they sink, Sink pale, down toward the night:
So I myself once sank Out of my truth-madness, Out of my day-longings, Weary of day, sick from light, — sank downward, evenward, shadowward: By one single truth Burned and thirsty: — do you still remember, do you remember, hot heart, How you thirsted then? — That I should be banished From all truth, Only a fool! Only a poet!
Thus sang the magician; and all who were gathered there went unawares, like birds, into the net of his cunning and melancholy lust. Only the conscientious one of the spirit had not been caught: he quickly snatched the harp away from the magician and cried: “Air! Let good air in! Let Zarathustra in! You are making this cave sultry and poisonous, you wicked old magician!
You seduce us, you false one, you subtle one, toward unknown desires and wildernesses. And woe when people like you start talking and making a fuss about truth!
Woe to all free spirits who are not on their guard against such magicians! Their freedom is finished: you teach and lure them back into prisons, —
— you old melancholy devil, out of your lament sounds a decoy whistle; you are like those who, by praising chastity, secretly invite us to lusts!”
Thus spoke the conscientious one; but the old magician looked around him, enjoyed his victory, and for its sake swallowed the annoyance the conscientious one had caused him. “Be quiet!” he said in a modest voice. “Good songs want to echo well; after good songs one should be silent for a long time.
That is what all these are doing, the higher men. But you have probably understood little of my song? There is little of a magic spirit in you.”
“You praise me,” replied the conscientious one, “by setting me apart from yourself; very well! But you others, what do I see? You are all still sitting there with lusting eyes —:
You free souls, where has your freedom gone! You almost seem to me like people who have long been watching wicked naked girls dancing: your souls are dancing themselves!
In you, you higher men, there must be more of what the magician calls his evil spirit of magic and deceit: — we must be different, I suppose.
And truly, we talked and thought together enough before Zarathustra came home to his cave for me to know: we are different.
We seek different things up here too, you and I. For I seek more security; that is why I came to Zarathustra. For he is still the firmest tower and will —
— today, when everything totters, when all the earth quakes. But you, when I see the eyes you make, it almost seems to me that you seek more insecurity,
— more shudders, more danger, more earthquake. You crave, it almost seems to me, forgive my presumption, you higher men —
— you crave the worst, most dangerous life, the one that frightens me most, the life of wild animals, forests, caves, steep mountains and gorges to lose your way in.
And it is not the ones who lead you out of danger that please you best, but the ones who lead you off all paths, the misleaders. But if such craving in you is real, it still seems to me impossible.
For fear — that is man’s original and fundamental feeling; from fear everything is explained, original sin and original virtue. Out of fear grew my virtue too, and it is called: science.
For the fear of wild animals — that was bred into man longest of all, including the animal he hides and fears inside himself: — Zarathustra calls it ‘the inner brute.’
Such long, old fear, refined at last, made spiritual, made intellectual — today, it seems to me, it is called: science.” —
Thus spoke the conscientious one; but Zarathustra, who was just then coming back into his cave and had heard and guessed the last speech, threw the conscientious one a handful of roses and laughed at his “truths.” “What!” he cried, “what did I just hear? Truly, it seems to me that you are a fool, or else I am one myself: and your ‘truth’ I will stand on its head in a flash.
For fear — is our exception. But courage and adventure and joy in the uncertain, in the unventured — courage seems to me man’s whole prehistory.
He envied the wildest, most courageous animals all their virtues and robbed them of them: only so did he become — man.
This courage, refined at last, made spiritual, made intellectual, this human courage with eagle’s wings and serpent’s shrewdness: that, it seems to me, is called today —”
“Zarathustra!” cried all who sat together there, as if from one mouth, and they broke into a great laughter; but it rose from them like a heavy cloud. The magician laughed too, and said shrewdly: “Well then! He is gone, my evil spirit!
And did I not warn you against him myself, when I said that he was a deceiver, a spirit of lies and deceit?
Especially when he shows himself naked. But what can I do about his tricks! Did I create him and the world?
Well then! Let us be good again, and in good spirits! And even though Zarathustra looks angry — just look at him! he is cross with me —:
— before night comes he will learn again to love me and praise me; he cannot live long without committing such follies.
He — loves his enemies: he understands this art best of anyone I have seen. But he takes revenge for it — on his friends!”
Thus spoke the old magician, and the higher men applauded him: so that Zarathustra went around and, with malice and love, shook hands with his friends — like someone who has something to make good and to apologize for to everyone. But when, as he did so, he came to the door of his cave, look, he was already craving the good air out there again, and his animals — and he wanted to slip outside.
“Do not go away!” said the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra’s shadow, “stay with us, or the old, heavy gloom may fall upon us again.
That old magician has already treated us to the worst he has, and look, the good pious pope there has tears in his eyes and has set sail once more on the sea of melancholy.
These kings may still put on a good face in front of us: for they have learned that best of all of us today! But if they had no witnesses, I bet the evil game would start again with them too —
— the evil game of drifting clouds, of damp melancholy, of veiled skies, of stolen suns, of howling autumn winds,
— the evil game of our howling and our cries of distress: stay with us, oh Zarathustra! Here is much hidden misery that wants to speak, much evening, much cloud, much heavy air!
You fed us on strong man’s food and powerful sayings: do not let the soft, womanish spirits fall upon us again for dessert!
You alone make the air around you strong and clear! Did I ever find such good air anywhere on earth as with you in your cave?
And I have seen many lands; my nose has learned to test and appraise many kinds of air: but with you my nostrils taste their greatest delight!
Unless it be — unless it be —, oh, forgive an old memory! Forgive me an old after-dinner song that I once composed among daughters of the desert: —
— for with them there was the same good, bright, Eastern air; there I was farthest from cloudy, damp, melancholy Old Europe!
Back then I loved such Eastern girls and other blue kingdoms of heaven, over which no clouds and no thoughts hang.
You would not believe how prettily they sat there when they were not dancing, deep, but without thoughts, like little secrets, like beribboned riddles, like dessert nuts —
colorful and strange, truly! but without clouds: riddles that let themselves be guessed: for the love of such girls I made up an after-dinner psalm back then.”
Thus spoke the wanderer and shadow; and before anyone could answer him, he had already seized the old magician’s harp, crossed his legs, and looked around him, calm and wise: — but with his nostrils he drew in the air slowly and questioningly, like someone tasting new, foreign air in new lands. Then he began to sing with a kind of roar.
The desert grows: woe to him who harbors deserts!
— Ha! Solemn! Solemn indeed! A worthy beginning! African-solemn! Worthy of a lion, Or of a moral howler monkey — — but nothing for you, You loveliest lady friends, At whose feet I, For the first time, A European, under palm trees, Am granted leave to sit. Selah.
Wonderful, truly! Here I sit now, Near the desert and already So far from the desert again, And in no way yet deserted: That is, swallowed down By this smallest of oases —: — she had just opened, yawning, Her lovely jaws wide, The sweetest-smelling of all little mouths: And in I fell, Down, right through — among you, You loveliest lady friends! Selah.
Hail, hail to that whale, If he made things so pleasant For his guest! — you understand My learned allusion? Hail to his belly, If it was So lovely an oasis-belly As this one: which, however, I call into doubt, — for I come, after all, from Europe, Which is more addicted to doubt than any Elderly little wife. May God make it better! Amen!
Here I sit now, In this smallest of oases, Like a date, Brown, sweet through and through, oozing gold, lusting For a round girl’s mouth, But even more for girlish, Ice-cold, snow-white, sharp-edged Biting teeth: for it is after these That the heart of every burning date pants. Selah.
Like the southern fruits just named, Like them, all too like them, I lie here, by little Winged beetles Danced around and played around, And likewise by still smaller, More foolish, more malicious Wishes and whims, Besieged by you, You mute, you foreboding Girl-cats, Dudu and Suleika, — ensphinxed, if I may cram into one word A great deal of feeling: (May God forgive me This sin against language!) — I sit here, sniffing the finest air, The air of paradise, truly, Bright, light air, striped with gold, As good an air as ever Fell down from the moon — Whether it was by accident, Or did it happen out of exuberance? As the old poets tell. But I, a doubter, call it Into doubt, for, after all, I come From Europe, Which is more addicted to doubt than any Elderly little wife. May God make it better! Amen!
Drinking this loveliest air, With nostrils swelled like goblets, Without future, without memories, So I sit here, you Loveliest lady friends, And watch the palm tree, How she, like a dancing girl, Bows and bends and sways her hips, — one does it too, if one watches long! Like a dancing girl who, as it seems to me, Too long already, dangerously long, Has always, always stood on just one leg? — so that she forgot, as it seems to me, Her other little leg? In vain, at least, I searched for the missing twin jewel — that is, the other leg — In the holy vicinity Of her loveliest, daintiest Fanning and fluttering and flittering little skirt. Yes, if you, you beautiful lady friends, Will believe me entirely: She has lost it! It is gone! Gone forever! The other leg! Oh, what a pity about that lovely other leg! Where — might it linger now, and grieve, forsaken? The lonely leg? In fear, perhaps, of a Fierce, yellow, blond-maned Lion-monster? Or even, already, Gnawed off, nibbled away — Wretched, woe! woe! nibbled away! Selah.
Oh, do not weep, Soft hearts! Do not weep, you Date-hearts! Milk-bosoms! You licorice-heart- Pouches! Weep no more, Pale Dudu! Be a man, Suleika! Courage! Courage! — Or should perhaps Something strengthening, heart-strengthening, Be in order here? An anointed saying? A solemn word of comfort? —
Ha! Rise up, dignity! Virtue’s dignity! European dignity! Blow, blow again, Bellows of virtue! Ha! Roar once more, Roar morally! As a moral lion, Roar before the daughters of the desert! — For virtue’s howling, You loveliest of girls, Is more than anything European fervor, European ravenous hunger! And here I stand already, As a European, I can do no other, God help me! Amen!
The desert grows: woe to him who harbors deserts!
After the song of the wanderer and shadow, the cave was all at once full of noise and laughter; and since the assembled guests were all talking at the same time, and even the donkey, with such encouragement, no longer kept quiet, a little aversion and mockery toward his visitors came over Zarathustra: even though he rejoiced at their gladness. For it seemed to him a sign of convalescence. So he slipped out into the open and spoke to his animals.
“Where has their distress gone now?” he said, and already he himself breathed more freely after his little weariness, — “with me, it seems to me, they have unlearned their cries of distress!
— though not yet, alas, their crying.” And Zarathustra held his ears shut, for just then the donkey’s Yeah-aw was mingling strangely with the jubilant noise of these higher men.
“They are merry,” he began again, “and who knows? perhaps at their host’s expense; and if they learned to laugh from me, still it is not my laughter that they learned.
But what does it matter! They are old people: they recover in their own way, they laugh in their own way; my ears have put up with worse already and did not grow sullen.
This day is a victory: he is already giving way, he is fleeing, the spirit of gravity, my old archenemy! How well this day will end, which began so badly and so heavily!
And end it will. Already the evening is coming: it rides here over the sea, the good rider! How it sways, the blessed one, the homecoming one, in its purple saddles!
The sky looks on with clear eyes, the world lies deep: oh all you strange ones who came to me, it is already worth it to live with me!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra. And again the shouting and laughter of the higher men came out of the cave: then he began anew.
“They are biting, my bait is working, their enemy is giving way for them too, the spirit of gravity. Already they are learning to laugh at themselves: do I hear right?
My man’s food is working, my sayings full of sap and strength: and truly, I did not feed them on vegetables that bloat! But on warrior’s food, on conqueror’s food: I awakened new desires.
New hopes are in their arms and legs, their hearts are stretching out. They are finding new words, soon their spirit will breathe mischief.
Such food may not be for children, of course, nor for longing little women, old and young. Their bowels are persuaded in other ways; I am not their doctor and teacher.
Disgust is leaving these higher men: well then! that is my victory. In my kingdom they become secure, all stupid shame runs away, they pour themselves out.
They pour out their hearts, good hours come back to them, they celebrate and chew the cud, — they become grateful.
That I take as the best sign: they become grateful. Before long they will be thinking up festivals and setting up memorials to their old joys.
They are convalescents!” Thus spoke Zarathustra joyfully to his heart and looked out; but his animals pressed close to him and honored his happiness and his silence.
But suddenly Zarathustra’s ear took fright: for the cave, which until then had been full of noise and laughter, all at once went deathly still; — but his nose smelled a sweet-smelling smoke and incense, as if from burning pine cones.
“What is happening? What are they doing?” he asked himself, and crept up to the entrance, so that he could watch his guests unnoticed. But wonder upon wonder! what did he have to see there with his own eyes!
“They have all become pious again, they are praying, they are mad!” — he said, and was astonished beyond measure. And truly! all these higher men, the two kings, the retired pope, the wicked magician, the voluntary beggar, the wanderer and shadow, the old soothsayer, the conscientious one of the spirit, and the ugliest man: they were all lying on their knees like children and credulous little old women, worshipping the donkey. And just then the ugliest man began to gurgle and snort, as if something unspeakable wanted to come out of him; but when he had really brought it as far as words, look, it was a pious, strange litany in praise of the donkey they worshipped and burned incense to. And this litany went like this:
Amen! And blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and might be to our God, forever and ever!
— But the donkey brayed in response: Yeah-aw.
He carries our burden, he took on the form of a servant, he is patient of heart and never says No; and whoever loves his God chastises him.
— But the donkey brayed in response: Yeah-aw.
He does not speak: except that he always says Yes to the world he created: so he praises his world. It is his cunning that does not speak: that way he is seldom in the wrong.
— But the donkey brayed in response: Yeah-aw.
Unnoticed he goes through the world. Gray is the coat in which he wraps his virtue. If he has spirit, he hides it; but everyone believes in his long ears.
— But the donkey brayed in response: Yeah-aw.
What hidden wisdom it is, that he wears long ears and says only Yes and never No! Did he not create the world in his own image, that is, as stupid as possible?
— But the donkey brayed in response: Yeah-aw.
You walk straight paths and crooked ones; it troubles you little what seems straight or crooked to us human beings. Beyond good and evil is your kingdom. It is your innocence not to know what innocence is.
— But the donkey brayed in response: Yeah-aw.
Look how you push no one away from you, not the beggars, nor the kings. You let the little children come to you, and when evil boys entice you, you say, in all simplicity, Yeah-aw.
— But the donkey brayed in response: Yeah-aw.
You love she-donkeys and fresh figs, you are no despiser of good food. A thistle tickles your heart when you happen to be hungry. In that lies the wisdom of a god.
— But the donkey brayed in response: Yeah-aw.
At this point in the litany, however, Zarathustra could no longer master himself; he himself cried Yeah-aw, louder even than the donkey, and leaped into the midst of his guests, who had gone mad.
“But what are you doing there, you children of men?” he cried, pulling the worshippers up from the ground. “Woe, if anyone but Zarathustra were watching you:
Everyone would judge that with your new faith you were the worst blasphemers or the most foolish of all little old women!
And you yourself, you old pope, how does it square with you yourself, that you worship a donkey here as God in this fashion?” —
“Oh Zarathustra,” answered the pope, “forgive me, but in the things of God I am even more enlightened than you. And that is only fair.
Better to worship God in this form than in no form at all! Think about this saying, my lofty friend: you will quickly guess that there is wisdom in such a saying.
He who said ‘God is a spirit’ — he took the greatest step and leap toward unbelief that has yet been taken on earth: such a word is not easily made good again on earth!
My old heart leaps and skips because there is still something on earth to worship. Forgive that, oh Zarathustra, to an old, pious pope’s heart! —”
— “And you,” said Zarathustra to the wanderer and shadow, “you call yourself a free spirit and fancy that you are one? And here you practice such idol-worship and priest-worship?
Truly, you practice something worse here than with your wicked brown girls, you wicked new believer!”
“Wicked enough,” answered the wanderer and shadow, “you are right: but what can I do about it! The old God lives again, oh Zarathustra, say what you like.
The ugliest man is to blame for everything: he has raised him up again. And if he says that he once killed him: death is always just a prejudice where gods are concerned.”
— “And you,” said Zarathustra, “you wicked old magician, what did you do! Who, in this free age, should believe in you from now on, if you believe in such donkey-god foolishness?
It was a stupidity, what you did; how could you, you shrewd one, do such a stupid thing!”
“Oh Zarathustra,” answered the shrewd magician, “you are right, it was a stupidity, — and it was hard enough for me, too.”
— “And you of all people,” said Zarathustra to the conscientious one of the spirit, “consider, and put your finger to your nose! Does nothing here go against your conscience? Is your spirit not too clean for this praying and the fumes of these praying brothers?”
“There is something to it,” answered the conscientious one, and put his finger to his nose, “there is something in this spectacle that even does my conscience good.
Perhaps I am not allowed to believe in God: but it is certain that God seems to me most believable in this form.
God is supposed to be eternal, according to the testimony of the most pious: whoever has so much time takes his time. As slowly and as stupidly as possible: with that someone of that kind can still go very far.
And whoever has too much spirit might well fall in love with stupidity and folly themselves. Think about yourself, oh Zarathustra!
You yourself — truly! even you might well become a donkey out of overflow and wisdom.
Does not a perfect sage like to walk the crookedest paths? Appearances teach it, oh Zarathustra, — your appearance!”
— “And you yourself, last of all,” said Zarathustra, and turned to the ugliest man, who was still lying on the ground, raising his arm up to the donkey (for he was giving it wine to drink). “Speak, you unspeakable one, what have you done there!
You seem to me transformed, your eye glows, the mantle of the sublime lies around your ugliness: what did you do?
Is it true, then, what those others say, that you raised him up again? And what for? Was he not killed off and done away with for good reason?
You yourself seem to me awakened: what did you do? what did you turn around? What made you turn and convert? Speak, you unspeakable one?”
“Oh Zarathustra,” answered the ugliest man, “you are a rogue!
Whether He is still alive, or alive again, or thoroughly dead, — which of us two knows that best? I am asking you.
But one thing I know, — I learned it from you yourself once, oh Zarathustra: whoever wants to kill most thoroughly laughs.
‘One kills not with anger but with laughter’ — so you once said. Oh Zarathustra, you hidden one, you destroyer without anger, you dangerous saint, — you are a rogue!”
Then it happened that Zarathustra, astonished at so many roguish answers, sprang back to the door of his cave and, turning to all his guests, cried out in a strong voice:
“Oh you rogues and fools, every one of you, you jesters! Why do you disguise and hide yourselves from me!
How each of your hearts was wriggling with delight and malice, because at last you had once again become like little children, that is, pious, —
— because at last you did again as children do, that is, prayed, folded your hands, and said ‘dear God’!
But now leave me this nursery, my own cave, where today all childishness is at home. Out here, cool off your hot childish exuberance and the noise of your hearts!
Of course: unless you become like little children, you will not enter that kingdom of heaven. (And Zarathustra pointed upward with his hands.)
But we do not want to enter the kingdom of heaven at all: we have become men, — so we want the kingdom of earth.”
And once more Zarathustra began to speak. “Oh my new friends,” he said, — “you strange ones, you higher men, how well I like you now, —
— since you became joyful again! Truly, you have all blossomed: it seems to me that such flowers as you need new festivals,
— a little brave nonsense, some divine service and donkey festival, some old joyful Zarathustra-fool, a rushing wind that blows your souls bright.
Do not forget this night and this donkey festival, you higher men! That you invented here with me, that I take as a good omen, — such things only convalescents invent!
And if you celebrate it again, this donkey festival, do it for love of yourselves, do it also for love of me! And in remembrance of me!”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Meanwhile, however, one after another had stepped outside, into the open air and the cool, thoughtful night; but Zarathustra himself led the ugliest man by the hand, to show him his night-world and the great round moon and the silver waterfalls near his cave. There at last they stood still beside one another, nothing but old people, but with comforted, brave hearts, and wondering to themselves that they felt so well on earth; and the secrecy of the night came closer and closer to their hearts. And once again Zarathustra thought to himself: “Oh, how well I like them now, these higher men!” — but he did not say it aloud, for he honored their happiness and their silence. —
But then there happened the thing that was the most astonishing of that long, astonishing day: the ugliest man began once more, and for the last time, to gurgle and to snort, and when he had brought it as far as words, look, a question sprang round and clean from his mouth, a good, deep, clear question, which stirred the heart in the body of everyone who heard him.
“My friends, all of you,” said the ugliest man, “what do you think? For the sake of this day — I am content for the first time to have lived my whole life.
And that I bear witness to this much is still not enough for me. It is worth it to live on the earth: one day, one festival with Zarathustra has taught me to love the earth.
‘Was that life?’ I will say to death. ‘Well then! Once more!’
My friends, what do you think? Will you not say to death, as I do: Was that life? For Zarathustra’s sake, well then! Once more!” —
Thus spoke the ugliest man; but it was not long before midnight. And what do you suppose happened then? As soon as the higher men heard his question, they became aware all at once of their transformation and their recovery, and of who had given it to them: then they sprang toward Zarathustra, thanking him, revering him, caressing him, kissing his hands, each in the way that was his own: so that some laughed and some wept. But the old soothsayer danced with pleasure; and even if, as some storytellers think, he was full of sweet wine at the time, he was certainly fuller still of sweet life, and had renounced all weariness. There are even some who tell that the donkey danced then: for it was not for nothing that the ugliest man had given it wine to drink beforehand. This may have been so, or it may have been otherwise; and if in truth the donkey did not dance that evening, still greater and stranger wonders happened then than the dancing of a donkey would be. In short, as Zarathustra’s saying goes: “What does it matter!”
But Zarathustra, while this was happening with the ugliest man, stood there like a drunken man: his gaze went dim, his tongue stammered, his feet swayed. And who could guess what thoughts were running over Zarathustra’s soul just then? But plainly his spirit drew back and fled ahead and was in far distances and, as it were, “on a high ridge, as it is written, between two seas,
— wandering between the past and the future like a heavy cloud.” Gradually, however, while the higher men held him in their arms, he came back to himself a little, and with his hands he fended off the throng of those who revered him and worried about him; but he did not speak. All at once, however, he turned his head quickly, for he seemed to hear something: then he laid his finger to his lips and said: “Come!”
And at once all around it became still and secret; but from the depths the sound of a bell came slowly up. Zarathustra listened for it, as did the higher men; but then he laid his finger to his lips a second time and said again: “Come! Come! It is getting close to midnight!” — and his voice had changed. But still he did not stir from the spot: then it became stiller and more secret still, and everything listened, even the donkey, and Zarathustra’s animals of honor, the eagle and the serpent, and likewise Zarathustra’s cave and the great cool moon and the night itself. But Zarathustra laid his hand to his lips a third time and said:
Come! Come! Come! Let us wander now! It is the hour: let us wander into the night!
You higher men, it is getting close to midnight: so I want to say something into your ears, as that old bell says it into my ear, —
— as secretly, as terribly, as heartily as that midnight bell speaks it to me, which has lived through more than any one man:
— which already counted out the heartache-heartbeats of your fathers — ah! ah! how she sighs! how she laughs in her dream! the old, deep, deep midnight!
Hush! Hush! Then many things are heard that may not grow loud by day; but now, in the cool air, when all the noise of your hearts has grown still as well, —
— now it speaks, now it is heard, now it creeps into nocturnal, overwakeful souls: ah! ah! how she sighs! how she laughs in her dream!
— do you not hear how she speaks secretly, terribly, heartily to you, the old, deep, deep midnight? Oh man, attend!
Woe is me! Where has the time gone? Did I not sink into deep wells? The world is asleep —
Ah! Ah! The dog howls, the moon shines. I would sooner die, die, than tell you what my midnight heart is thinking just now.
Now I have died already. It is over. Spider, what are you spinning around me? Do you want blood? Ah! Ah! The dew is falling, the hour is coming —
— the hour when I shiver and freeze, the hour that asks and asks and asks: “Who has heart enough for it?
— who shall be lord of the earth? Who will say: this is how you shall run, you great rivers and small!”
— the hour draws near: oh man, you higher man, attend! this speech is for fine ears, for your ears — what does the deep midnight portend?
It carries me away, my soul is dancing. Day’s work! Day’s work! Who shall be lord of the earth?
The moon is cool, the wind is silent. Ah! Ah! Have you flown high enough yet? You danced: but a leg is still no wing.
You good dancers, now all joy is over, wine has turned to dregs, every cup has grown brittle, the graves are stammering.
You did not fly high enough: now the graves stammer, “Redeem the dead, then! Why is the night so long? Does the moon not make us drunk?”
You higher men, redeem the graves, then, wake the corpses! Ah, what is the worm still digging for? It is near, the hour is drawing near, —
— the bell is booming, the heart is still rattling, the woodworm is still digging, the heart-worm. Ah! Ah! The world is deep!
Sweet lyre! Sweet lyre! I love your tone, your drunken toad-call tone! — from how long ago, from how far away your tone comes to me, from far away, from the ponds of love!
You old bell, you sweet lyre! Every pain has torn into your heart, father-pain, fathers’-pain, forefathers’-pain; your speech has grown ripe, —
— ripe like golden autumn and afternoon, like my hermit’s heart — now you speak: the world itself has grown ripe, the grape is turning brown,
— now it wants to die, to die of happiness. You higher men, do you not smell it? A scent is secretly welling up,
— a fragrance and scent of eternity, a rose-blissful, brown, gold-wine scent of old happiness,
of drunken midnight-dying-happiness, which sings: the world is deep, and deeper than the day could comprehend!
Leave me! Leave me! I am too pure for you. Do not touch me! Has my world not just now become perfect?
My skin is too pure for your hands. Leave me, you stupid, oafish, stuffy day! Is the midnight not brighter?
The purest shall be lords of the earth, the most unknown, the strongest, the midnight souls, who are brighter and deeper than any day.
Oh day, you grope for me? You fumble for my happiness? To you I am rich, solitary, a treasure pit, a chamber of gold?
Oh world, you want me? Am I worldly to you? Am I spiritual to you? Am I godlike to you? But day and world, you are too clumsy, —
— have shrewder hands, reach for deeper happiness, for deeper misfortune, reach for some god or other, do not reach for me:
— my misfortune, my happiness is deep, you strange day, but still I am no god, no god’s hell: deep is its woe.
God’s woe is deeper, you strange world! Reach for God’s woe, not for me! What am I! A drunken sweet lyre, —
a midnight lyre, a bell-toad that no one understands, but that must speak, before the deaf, you higher men! For you do not understand me!
Gone! Gone! Oh youth! Oh noon! Oh afternoon! Now evening has come, and night and midnight, — the dog howls, the wind:
— is the wind not a dog? It whimpers, it yaps, it howls. Ah! Ah! how she sighs! how she laughs, how she rattles and gasps, the midnight!
How soberly she speaks just now, this drunken poetess! has she drunk herself past her drunkenness? has she grown overwakeful? is she chewing the cud?
— her woe she chews over again, in her dream, the old, deep midnight, and her joy still more. For joy, even if woe is deep: joy is deeper still than misery.
You vine! Why do you praise me? Did I not cut you! I am cruel, you are bleeding —: what does your praise of my drunken cruelty want?
“What has become perfect, everything ripe — wants to die!” so you speak. Blessed, blessed be the vintner’s knife! But everything unripe wants to live: woe!
Woe says: “Go! Away with you, woe!” But everything that suffers wants to live, so that it may become ripe and joyful and full of longing,
— longing for what is farther, higher, brighter. “I want heirs,” so speaks everything that suffers, “I want children, I do not want myself,” —
But joy does not want heirs, nor children, — joy wants itself, wants eternity, wants recurrence, wants everything-eternally-the-same.
Woe says: “Break, bleed, heart! Walk, leg! Wing, fly! Onward! Upward! Pain!” Well then! Up, then! Oh my old heart: woe says: “Go!”
You higher men, what do you think? Am I a soothsayer? A dreamer? A drunkard? An interpreter of dreams? A midnight bell?
A drop of dew? A haze and fragrance of eternity? Do you not hear it? Do you not smell it? Just now my world became perfect, midnight is also noon, —
pain is also a joy, a curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun, — go away, or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool.
Did you ever say Yes to a single joy? Oh, my friends, then you said Yes to all woe as well. All things are linked, laced, in love, —
— if you ever wanted one time twice, if you ever said: “You please me, happiness! Quick! Moment, remain!” then you wanted everything back again!
— everything anew, everything eternally, everything linked, laced, in love, oh, that is how you loved the world, —
— you eternal ones, love it eternally and for all time: and to woe, too, you say: go, but come back! For all joy wants — eternity!
All joy wants the eternity of all things, wants honey, wants dregs, wants drunken midnight, wants graves, wants the comfort of tears at the grave, wants gilded sunset —
— what does joy not want! it is thirstier, heartier, hungrier, more terrible, more secret than all woe, it wants itself, it bites into itself, the ring’s will wrestles in it, —
— it wants love, it wants hatred, it is overrich, it gives, throws away, begs someone to take it, thanks the one who takes, it would gladly be hated, —
— so rich is joy that it thirsts for woe, for hell, for hatred, for disgrace, for the cripple, for world, — for this world, oh, you know it well enough!
You higher men, it is for you that it longs, joy, the unruly, the blissful, — for your woe, you who have turned out badly! All eternal joy longs for what has turned out badly.
For all joy wants itself, and so it wants misery too! Oh happiness, oh pain! Oh break, heart! You higher men, learn it, then: joy wants eternity,
— joy wants the eternity of all things, wants deep, deep eternity!
Have you learned my song now? Have you guessed what it wants? Well then! Up, then! You higher men, now sing me my round!
Sing me the song yourselves now, the song whose name is “Once More,” whose meaning is “to all eternity!” — sing, you higher men, Zarathustra’s round!
Oh man, attend! What does the deep midnight portend? “I slept, I slept —, From a deep dream I woke, at its end: — The world is deep, And deeper than the day could comprehend. Deep is its woe —, Joy — deeper still than misery: Woe says: Go! But all joy wants eternity wants deep, deep eternity!”
But on the morning after this night Zarathustra sprang up from his bed, girded his loins, and came out of his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun that comes out of dark mountains.
“You great star,” he said, as he had once spoken before, “you deep eye of happiness, what would all your happiness be, if you did not have those you shine for!
And if they stayed in their rooms while you are already awake and come and give and hand out: how your proud shame would be angered at that!
Well then! they are still asleep, these higher men, while I am awake: these are not my true companions! It is not for them that I am waiting here in my mountains.
I want to go to my work, to my day: but they do not understand what the signs of my morning are; my step — is no wake-up call for them.
They are still asleep in my cave, their dream is still chewing on my midnights. The ear that hears me, — the heeding ear is missing from their limbs.”
— Zarathustra had spoken this to his heart as the sun rose: then he looked up questioningly, for above him he heard the sharp cry of his eagle. “Well then!” he called up, “so it pleases me and so it befits me. My animals are awake, for I am awake.
My eagle is awake and, like me, honors the sun. With eagle’s talons he reaches for the new light. You are my true animals; I love you.
But I still lack my true men!” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra; but then it happened that he suddenly heard himself swarmed and fluttered around as if by countless birds, — but the whirring of so many wings and the crowding around his head was so great that he shut his eyes. And truly, it fell upon him like a cloud, like a cloud of arrows that pours itself out over a new enemy. But look, here it was a cloud of love, and over a new friend.
“What is happening to me?” thought Zarathustra in his astonished heart, and he slowly sat down on the great stone that lay beside the mouth of his cave. But as he reached with his hands around him and above him and below him, fending off the tender birds, look, something stranger still happened to him: for in doing so he reached, without noticing, into a thick, warm, shaggy mane; and at the same moment a roar rang out in front of him, — a soft, long lion’s roar.
“The sign is coming,” said Zarathustra, and his heart was transformed. And in truth, when it grew light before him, there lay at his feet a mighty yellow beast, and it pressed its head against his knees and would not leave him, out of love, and acted like a dog that finds its old master again. But the doves were no less eager with their love than the lion; and every time a dove flitted across the lion’s nose, the lion shook its head and wondered and laughed at it.
To all this Zarathustra said only one word: “My children are near, my children” —, then he fell completely silent. But his heart was loosened, and tears dropped from his eyes and fell on his hands. And he paid no more heed to anything, and sat there motionless, no longer fending off the animals. Then the doves flew to and fro and perched on his shoulder and caressed his white hair and did not tire of their tenderness and rejoicing. But the strong lion kept licking the tears that fell on Zarathustra’s hands, and roared and growled shyly as he did. That is how these animals carried on. —
All this lasted a long time, or a short time: for, properly speaking, there is no time on earth for such things —. Meanwhile, however, the higher men in Zarathustra’s cave had woken up and were forming themselves into a procession, to go out to meet Zarathustra and offer him their morning greeting: for when they woke they had found that he was no longer among them. But when they reached the door of the cave, and the sound of their steps ran ahead of them, the lion started violently, turned all at once away from Zarathustra, and leaped, roaring wildly, at the cave; and the higher men, when they heard it roar, all cried out as with one mouth, and fled back, and in an instant they were gone.
But Zarathustra himself, dazed and estranged, rose from his seat, looked around him, stood there in amazement, questioned his heart, came to himself, and was alone. “What was it I heard?” he said at last, slowly. “What just happened to me?”
And already the memory came back to him, and he grasped in a single glance everything that had taken place between yesterday and today. “Here is the stone,” he said, and stroked his beard, “on this one I sat yesterday morning; and here the soothsayer came up to me, and here I first heard the cry that I heard just now, the great cry of distress.
Oh you higher men, it was your distress that the old soothsayer foretold to me yesterday morning, —
— to your distress he wanted to seduce and tempt me: oh Zarathustra, he said to me, I come to seduce you to your last sin.
To my last sin? cried Zarathustra, and laughed angrily at his own word: what was it that was saved up for me as my last sin?”
— And once more Zarathustra sank into himself, and sat down again on the great stone, and pondered. Suddenly he sprang up, —
“Pity! Pity for the higher man!” he cried out, and his face turned to bronze. “Well then! That — has had its time!
My suffering and my pity — what does it matter! Am I striving for happiness? I am striving for my work!
Well then! The lion has come, my children are near, Zarathustra has grown ripe, my hour has come: —
This is my morning, my day is beginning: rise up now, rise up, you great noon!” —
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun that comes out of dark mountains.