Thus Spoke Zarathustra

THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

FIRST PART. ZARATHUSTRA’S DISCOURSES.

ZARATHUSTRA’S PROLOGUE.

When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his own spirit and his solitude, and for ten years he did not tire of them.

But at last his heart changed. One morning he rose with the rosy dawn, stepped out before the sun, and spoke to it:

You great star! What would your happiness be if you had no one to shine for?

For ten years you have climbed up here to my cave. You would have grown tired of your light and of the journey, if it had not been for me, my eagle, and my serpent.

But we waited for you every morning. We took your overflow from you, and we blessed you for it.

Look! I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey. I need hands reaching out to take it.

I want to give it away and share it out, until the wise have once again become joyful in their folly, and the poor have become happy in their riches.

For that, I must descend into the depths. I must do as you do in the evening, when you sink behind the sea and bring light even to the underworld, you overflowing star!

Like you, I must go down, as it is called by the people to whom I shall descend.

So bless me, you calm eye, which can look even on the greatest happiness without envy!

Bless the cup that is about to overflow, so that the water may flow golden out of it and carry the reflection of your bliss everywhere!

Look! This cup is about to empty itself again, and Zarathustra is about to become a man again.

So began Zarathustra’s going-down.

Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, and no one met him. But when he entered the forest, an old man suddenly stood before him. The old man had left his holy hut to look for roots. And the old man spoke to Zarathustra:

“This wanderer is no stranger to me. Many years ago he passed this way. He was called Zarathustra, but he has changed.

Back then you carried your ashes up into the mountains. Will you now carry your fire down into the valleys? Are you not afraid of the fate of those who set fires?

Yes, I recognize Zarathustra. His eye is clear, and no disgust lurks around his mouth. Doesn’t he walk like a dancer?

Zarathustra has changed. Zarathustra has become a child. Zarathustra is awake. What will you do in the land of the sleepers?

You lived in solitude as if in the sea, and the sea carried you. Alas, will you now go ashore? Alas, will you once again drag your own body along?”

Zarathustra answered: “I love mankind.”

“Why,” said the saint, “did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it not because I loved people far too much?

Now I love God. People I do not love. Man is too imperfect a thing for me. Love of man would destroy me.”

Zarathustra answered: “Who said anything about love? I am bringing people gifts.”

“Give them nothing,” said the saint. “Instead, take part of their load and carry it along with them. That will please them most, as long as it pleases you too!

But if you want to give them something, give them no more than charity, and make them beg for it as well!”

“No,” replied Zarathustra, “I give no charity. I am not poor enough for that.”

The saint laughed at Zarathustra and said: “Then make sure they accept your treasures! They distrust hermits, and they do not believe that we come bearing gifts.

Our footsteps ring too hollow through their streets. When they lie in bed at night and hear someone walking outside long before sunrise, they ask themselves: ‘Where is that thief going?’ They ask the same about us.

Do not go to people. Stay in the forest! Go to the animals instead! Why not be like me, a bear among bears, a bird among birds?”

“And what does the saint do in the forest?” asked Zarathustra.

The saint answered: “I make up hymns and sing them. And as I make them, I laugh and weep and hum. That is how I praise God.

With singing, weeping, laughing, and humming, I praise the God who is my God. But what do you bring us as a gift?”

When Zarathustra heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said: “What could I have to give you? Let me hurry away instead, before I take something from you!” And so they parted, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing like two schoolboys.

But when Zarathustra was alone, he said to his heart: “Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard that God is dead!”

When Zarathustra came to the nearest town, at the edge of the forest, he found many people gathered in the market square. It had been announced that a tightrope walker would give a performance. And Zarathustra spoke to the people:

I teach you the Superman. Man is something that must be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

Every kind of being so far has created something beyond itself. Do you want to be the ebb of that great tide? Would you rather go back to the beast than overcome man?

What is the ape to man? A joke, or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be exactly the same to the Superman: a joke, or a painful embarrassment.

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.

Even the wisest among you is only a discord, a cross between plant and ghost. But do I tell you to become ghosts or plants?

Look, I teach you the Superman!

The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!

I beg you, my brothers, remain true to the earth. Do not believe those who speak to you of hopes beyond the earth! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.

They despise life. They are dying and poisoned themselves, and the earth is tired of them. So let them go!

Once, blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy. But God died, and those blasphemers died with him. Now the most dreadful sin is to blaspheme the earth, and to value the innards of the unknowable more highly than the meaning of the earth!

Once, the soul looked down on the body with contempt, and that contempt was considered the highest thing. The soul wanted the body thin, ghastly, and starved. In that way it hoped to escape from the body and from the earth.

Oh, but that soul was itself thin, ghastly, and starved, and cruelty was its pleasure!

But you too, my brothers, tell me: what does your body say about your soul? Isn’t your soul poverty and filth and miserable self-satisfaction?

Truly, man is a polluted stream. One must be a sea to take in a polluted stream without becoming unclean.

Look, I teach you the Superman. He is that sea. In him your great contempt can sink and disappear.

What is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. It is the hour in which even your happiness disgusts you, and so do your reason and your virtue.

It is the hour when you say: “What good is my happiness? It is poverty and filth and miserable self-satisfaction. Yet my happiness ought to justify existence itself!”

It is the hour when you say: “What good is my reason? Does it hunger for knowledge the way a lion hungers for food? It is poverty and filth and miserable self-satisfaction!”

It is the hour when you say: “What good is my virtue? So far it has not made me passionate. How tired I am of my good and my evil! It is all poverty and filth and miserable self-satisfaction!”

It is the hour when you say: “What good is my justice? I do not see that I am fire and fuel. But the just are fire and fuel!”

It is the hour when you say: “What good is my pity? Isn’t pity the cross on which the one who loves mankind is nailed? 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!

It is not your sin that cries out to heaven. It is your self-satisfaction. Your very stinginess in sinning cries out to heaven!

Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy you ought to be inoculated with?

Look, I teach you the Superman. He is that lightning. He is that frenzy!

When Zarathustra had finished speaking, someone in the crowd called out: “We’ve heard enough about the tightrope walker. Now let’s see him!” And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the tightrope walker, who thought the words were meant for him, began his performance.

Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spoke:

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman, a rope over an abyss.

It is a dangerous crossing, a dangerous journey, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and stopping.

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-down.

I love those who do not know how to live except by going down, for they are the ones who go over.

I love the great despisers, because they are the great worshippers, arrows of longing for the far shore.

I love those who do not first look for a reason beyond the stars to go down and be sacrificed. Instead they sacrifice themselves to the earth, so that the earth may one day belong to the Superman.

I love the one who lives in order to know, and who seeks knowledge so that the Superman may one day live. In this way he seeks his own going-down.

I love the one who works and invents in order to build a house for the Superman, and to prepare earth, animal, and plant for him. In this way he seeks his own going-down.

I love the one who loves his virtue, for virtue is the will to go down, and an arrow of longing.

I love the one who keeps no drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be entirely the spirit of his virtue. In this way he walks as spirit over the bridge.

I love the one who makes his virtue his inclination and his destiny. For the sake of his virtue, he is willing either to live on or to live no longer.

I love the one who does not want too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is a stronger knot for one’s destiny to hang on.

I love the one whose soul spends itself freely, who wants no thanks and gives nothing back. He always gives, and does not want to keep anything for himself.

I love the one who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favor, and who then asks: “Am I a cheat?” For he is willing to perish.

I love the one who scatters golden words ahead of his deeds, and always does more than he promises. For he seeks his own going-down.

I love the one who justifies those who will come in the future and redeems those who lived in the past. For he is willing to perish through those of the present.

I love the one who punishes his God because he loves his God. For he must perish through the anger of his God.

I love the one whose soul is deep even when it is wounded, and who can perish over some small thing. In this way he goes gladly over the bridge.

I love the one whose soul is so overfull that he forgets himself, and all things are within him. In this way all things become his going-down.

I love the one who has a free spirit and a free heart. His head is then only the entrails of his heart, but his heart drives him to his going-down.

I love all those who are like 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, a heavy drop from the cloud. But the lightning is called Superman.

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 only believe someone who stammers?

They have something they are proud of. What do they call this thing that makes them proud? They call it culture. It sets them apart from the goatherds.

That is why they dislike hearing the word ‘contempt’ applied to themselves. So I will appeal to their pride instead.

I will speak to them of the most contemptible thing of all: and that is the last man!”

And so Zarathustra spoke to the people:

It is time for man to set 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 that soil will be poor and worn out, and no tall tree will be able to grow in it anymore.

Alas! The time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to hum!

I tell you: one must still have chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos within you.

Alas! The time is coming when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! The time is coming of the most contemptible man, who can no longer feel contempt for himself.

Look! I show you the last man.

“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?” So asks the last man, and blinks.

The earth has then become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His kind is as impossible to wipe out as the ground-flea. The last man lives longest.

“We have discovered happiness,” say the last men, and they blink.

They have left the regions where life is hard, because they need warmth. People still love their neighbor and rub up against him, because they need warmth.

They consider falling ill and being distrustful sinful, so they walk carefully. Only a fool still stumbles over stones or over people!

A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And a lot of poison at the end, for a pleasant death.

People still work, because work is a pastime. But they take care that the pastime never hurts them.

No one becomes poor or rich anymore; both are too much of a burden. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too much of a burden.

No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same thing; everyone is equal. Whoever feels differently goes into the madhouse of his own free will.

“In the old days, the whole world was mad,” say the most refined among them, and they blink.

They are clever and know everything that has ever happened, so there is no end to their mockery. People still quarrel, but they soon make up. Otherwise it upsets their stomachs.

They have their little pleasures for the day and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a high regard for health.

“We have discovered happiness,” say the last men, and they blink.—

Here ended Zarathustra’s first discourse, which is also called “The Prologue,” because at this point the shouting and merriment of the crowd interrupted him.

“Give us this last man, O Zarathustra,” they called out. “Make us into these last men! Then we will make you a present of the Superman!” And all the people cheered and smacked their lips. Zarathustra, however, grew sad, and said to his heart:

“They do not understand me. I am not the mouth for these ears.

“Perhaps I have lived in the mountains too long. I have listened too much to the brooks and the trees, and now I speak to these people as I would to goatherds.

“My soul is calm and clear, like the mountains in the morning. But they think I am cold, a mocker who tells terrible jokes.

“And now they look at me and laugh, and while they laugh, they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter.”

Then something happened that silenced every mouth and fixed every eye. In the meantime, the rope-dancer had begun his performance. He had come out through a little door and was walking along the rope, which was stretched between two towers so that it hung above the market-place and the people.

When he was exactly halfway across, the little door opened again. A gaudily dressed fellow, like a clown, sprang out and went quickly after the first one.

“Keep going, limp-foot!” cried his frightful voice. “Keep going, lazy-bones, intruder, pasty-face, or I’ll tickle you with my heel! What are you doing here between the towers? The tower is the place for you. You should be locked up. You are blocking the way for someone better than you!”

With every word he came closer and closer to the first one. When he was only a step behind, the frightful thing happened that silenced every mouth and fixed every eye. He let out a yell like a devil and jumped over the man who stood in his way.

When the rope-dancer saw his rival triumph like this, he lost both his head and his footing on the rope. He threw away his pole and plunged downward faster than it, a whirl of arms and legs, into the depth below.

The market-place and the people were like the sea when a storm comes on. They all scattered in disorder, especially where the body was about to fall.

Zarathustra, however, stood still, and the body fell right beside him, badly injured and broken, but not yet dead. After a while the shattered man came to, 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 to hell. Will you stop him?”

“On my honor, my friend,” answered Zarathustra, “none of what you speak of exists. 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 distrustfully. “If you are telling the truth,” he said, “then I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal that has been taught to dance by beatings and meager food.”

“Not at all,” said Zarathustra. “You made danger your calling, and there is nothing contemptible in that. Now you are dying by your calling. For that reason I will bury you with my own hands.”

When Zarathustra had said this, the dying man made no further reply. But he moved his hand as if he were reaching for Zarathustra’s hand to thank him.

Meanwhile evening came on, and the market-place was wrapped in gloom. Then the people went away, for even curiosity and terror grow tired. Zarathustra, however, still sat on the ground beside the dead man, lost in thought, and so he forgot the time.

At last night fell, and a cold wind blew on the lonely man. Then Zarathustra rose and said to his heart:

Truly, Zarathustra has made a fine catch of fish today! It is not a man he has caught, but a corpse.

Human life is somber, and still without meaning. A clown can decide its fate.

I want to teach people the meaning of their existence. That meaning is the Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud that is man.

But I am still far from them, and my meaning does not speak to their minds. To people I am still something between a fool and a corpse.

The night is dark, and dark are the ways of Zarathustra. Come, my cold and stiff companion! I will carry you to the place where I will bury you with my own hands.

When Zarathustra had said this to his heart, he lifted the corpse onto his shoulders and set out on his way. But before he had gone a hundred steps, a man crept up to him and whispered in his ear. And look! The one who spoke was the clown from the tower.

“Leave this town, O Zarathustra,” he said. “There are too many here who hate you. The good and just hate you, and call you their enemy and despiser. The believers in the true faith hate you, and call you a danger to the masses.

“It was your good luck that they laughed at you, and truly, you spoke like a clown. It was your good luck to take up with the dead dog. By humbling yourself like this, you saved your life today.

“But leave this town, or tomorrow I will jump over you, a living man over a dead one.” When he had said this, the clown vanished. Zarathustra, however, went on through the dark streets.

At the town gate the grave-diggers met him. They shone their torch in his face, recognized Zarathustra, and mocked him harshly.

“Zarathustra is carrying off the dead dog! How fine that Zarathustra has become a grave-digger! Our hands are too clean for that roast. Is Zarathustra going to steal the devil’s dinner? Well then, enjoy the meal! If only the devil isn’t a better thief than Zarathustra! He’ll steal them both, he’ll eat them both!” And they laughed among themselves and put their heads together.

Zarathustra made no answer, but 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 where a light was burning.

“Hunger attacks me like a robber,” said Zarathustra. “In the forests and swamps my hunger attacks me, and late at 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?”

With that, Zarathustra knocked at the door of the house. An old man appeared, carrying a light, and asked: “Who comes to me and my bad sleep?”

“A living man and a dead one,” said Zarathustra. “Give me something to eat and drink. I forgot to during the day. ‘Whoever feeds the hungry refreshes his own soul,’ says wisdom.”

The old man went away, but came back immediately and offered Zarathustra bread and wine. “This is a bad country 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.”

Zarathustra answered: “My companion is dead. I will hardly be able to persuade him to eat.”

“That is no concern of mine,” said the old man sullenly. “Whoever knocks at my door must take what I offer him. Eat, and farewell!”—

After that Zarathustra walked on for another two hours, trusting the path and the light of the stars. He was an experienced night-walker, and he liked to look into the face of everything that sleeps.

When morning dawned, however, Zarathustra found himself in a thick forest, and the path could no longer be seen. He then placed the dead man in a hollow tree above his head, because he wanted to protect him from the wolves. He lay down on the ground and the moss, and immediately fell asleep, tired in body but tranquil in soul.

Zarathustra slept a long time. Not only the rosy dawn passed over his head, but the whole morning as well. At last, however, his eyes opened. In amazement he gazed into the forest and the stillness; in amazement he gazed into himself.

Then he rose quickly, like a sailor who suddenly sees land, and he shouted for joy, because he saw a new truth. And he said to his heart:

A light has dawned on me. I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses that I carry with me wherever I go.

I need living companions, who will follow me because they want to follow themselves, and who will go where I want to go.

A light has dawned on me. Zarathustra is not to speak to the people, but to companions! Zarathustra must not be the herdsman and sheepdog of the herd!

I have come to lure many away from the herd. The people and the herd must be angry with me. The herdsmen will call Zarathustra a robber.

I say herdsmen, but they call themselves the good and just. I say herdsmen, but they call themselves the believers in the true faith.

Look at the good and just! Whom do they hate most? The one who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker. Yet 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. Yet he is the creator.

The creator seeks companions, not corpses, and not herds or believers either. The creator seeks fellow creators, those who carve new values on new tablets.

The creator seeks companions and fellow harvesters, for with him everything is ripe for the harvest. But he lacks the hundred sickles, so he plucks the ears of grain by hand and is frustrated.

The creator seeks companions who know how to sharpen their sickles. They will be called destroyers, and despisers of good and evil. But they are the harvesters and the rejoicers.

Zarathustra seeks fellow creators. Zarathustra seeks fellow harvesters and fellow rejoicers. What has he to do with herds and herdsmen and corpses!

And you, my first companion, rest in peace! I have buried you well in your hollow tree. I have hidden you well from the wolves.

But I am leaving you; the time has come. Between one rosy dawn and the next, a new truth came to me.

I am not to be a herdsman. I am not to be a grave-digger. I will no longer speak to the people. For the last time I have spoken to the dead.

I will keep company with the creators, the harvesters, and the rejoicers. I will show them the rainbow and all the steps up to the Superman.

I will sing my song to those who live alone and to those who live in pairs. And for anyone who still has ears for the unheard, I will make the heart heavy with my happiness.

I am heading for my goal; I follow my own course. I will leap over the lingering and the slow. So let my going forward be their down-going!

Zarathustra had said this to his heart when the sun stood at noon. Then he looked up questioningly, because he heard the sharp cry of a bird above him.

And look! An eagle swept through the air in wide circles, and a serpent hung from it, not like prey but like a friend, for it kept itself coiled around the eagle’s neck.

“They are my animals,” said Zarathustra, and his heart rejoiced.

“The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the sun: they have come out to scout.

“They want to know whether Zarathustra is still alive. Truly, am I still alive?

“I have found it more dangerous among people than among animals. Zarathustra walks dangerous paths. Let my animals lead me!”

When Zarathustra had said this, he remembered the words of the saint in the forest. Then he sighed and said to his heart:

“If only I were wiser! If only I were wise from the depths of my heart, like my serpent!

“But I am asking for the impossible. So I ask my pride always to go along with my wisdom!

“And if my wisdom should someday abandon me—alas, it loves to fly away!—then may my pride fly away with my folly!”

So began Zarathustra’s down-going.

ZARATHUSTRA’S DISCOURSES.

I. THE THREE METAMORPHOSES.

Three transformations of the spirit I name for you: how the spirit becomes a camel, the camel becomes a lion, and the lion at last becomes a child.

There are many heavy things for the spirit, for the strong, load-bearing spirit in which reverence lives. Its strength longs for what is heavy, and for what is heaviest of all.

What is heavy? So asks the load-bearing spirit. Then it kneels down like the camel and wants to be well loaded.

What is the heaviest thing, you heroes? asks the load-bearing spirit, so that I may take it upon myself and rejoice in my strength.

Is it this: to humble yourself in order to wound your pride? To put your foolishness on display in order to mock your own wisdom?

Or is it this: to abandon your cause at the very moment it celebrates its triumph? To climb high mountains in order to tempt the tempter?

Or is it this: to live on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the sake of truth to let your soul go hungry?

Or is it this: to be sick and send away those who come to comfort you, and to make friends of the deaf, who never hear what you ask?

Or is it this: to wade into foul water when it is the water of truth, and not to shrink from the cold frogs and hot toads in it?

Or is it this: to love those who despise us, and to offer your hand to the ghost when it comes to frighten us?

The load-bearing spirit takes all these heaviest things upon itself. And just as the camel, once loaded, hurries into the desert, so the spirit hurries into its own desert.

But in the loneliest desert the second transformation takes place. Here the spirit becomes a lion. It wants to seize freedom for itself and to be master in its own desert.

Here it seeks out its last master. It will become the enemy of that master and of its last God. It will fight the great dragon for victory.

What is the great dragon that the spirit no longer wishes to call master and God? The great dragon’s name is “Thou shalt.” But the spirit of the lion says, “I will.”

“Thou shalt” lies in its path, sparkling with gold, a beast covered in scales. And on every scale, in gold, glitters “Thou shalt!”

The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales. And so the mightiest of all dragons speaks: “All the values of things glitter on me.

“All values have already been created, and I stand for every value that has been created. Truly, there shall be no more ‘I will.’” So speaks the dragon.

My brothers, why does the spirit need the lion? Why is the beast of burden not enough, the one that renounces and reveres?

To create new values is something even the lion cannot yet do. But to win for itself the freedom for new creating is within the lion’s power.

To win freedom for itself, and to say a sacred No even to duty: for that, my brothers, the lion is needed.

To claim the right to new values is the most fearsome claim a load-bearing, reverent spirit can make. Truly, to such a spirit it feels like seizing prey, the work of a beast of prey.

Once it loved “Thou shalt” as its holiest thing. Now it is forced to find illusion and caprice even in the holiest things, so that it can tear its freedom away from what it loved. The lion is needed for this seizure.

But tell me, my brothers, what can the child 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 that rolls by itself, a first motion, a sacred Yes.

Yes, my brothers, the game of creating requires a sacred Yes to life. Now the spirit wills its own will. The one who was cast out of the world now wins his own world.

Three transformations 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 called The Pied Cow.

II. THE ACADEMIC CHAIRS OF VIRTUE.

People recommended to Zarathustra a wise man who was said to speak well about sleep and virtue. He was greatly honored and well paid for it, and all the young men sat before his lecturer’s chair.

Zarathustra went to him and sat among the young men before his chair. And this is what the wise man said:

Respect and modesty in the presence of sleep! That comes first! And keep away from everyone who sleeps badly and lies awake at night!

Even the thief is modest in the presence of sleep: he always creeps softly through the night. But the night watchman is immodest; he carries his horn without any shame.

Sleeping is no small art. To manage it, you must stay awake all day.

Ten times a day you must overcome yourself. That produces a healthy weariness and works on the soul like poppy, the old sleeping draught.

Ten times you must make peace with yourself again. Overcoming yourself leaves bitterness behind, and those who have not made peace sleep badly.

Ten truths you must find during the day. Otherwise you will go looking 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 misery, will disturb you in the night.

Few people know it, but you need 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 if you have all the virtues, one thing more is needed: you must send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time.

Otherwise they will quarrel with one another, those good little women! And they will quarrel over you, you unhappy one!

Peace with God and with your neighbor: that is what good sleep requires. And peace also with your neighbor’s devil! Otherwise it will haunt you in the night.

Honor and obedience to the government, even to a crooked government! That is what good sleep requires. Is it my fault if power likes to walk on crooked legs?

Whoever leads his sheep to the greenest pasture will always be the best shepherd for me. That is what agrees with good sleep.

I do not want many honors or great treasures; they only stir up bile. But it is hard to sleep well without a good name and a little treasure.

I would rather have a small company than a bad one. But they must come and go at the right time. That is what agrees with good sleep.

The poor in spirit please me too: they encourage sleep. Blessed are they, especially if you always give in to them.

So passes the day for the virtuous. When night comes, I take good care not to call for sleep. Sleep does not like to be called, sleep, the master of the virtues!

Instead I think over what I have done and thought during the day. Chewing it over, as patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were your ten overcomings?

And what were the ten reconciliations, the ten truths, and the ten laughs that my heart enjoyed?

As I ponder this, rocked by forty thoughts, it suddenly overtakes me: sleep, the uncalled, the master of the virtues.

Sleep taps on my eye, and my eye grows heavy. Sleep touches my mouth, and my mouth stays open.

Truly, it comes to me on soft soles, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts away. Then I stand there stupid, like this lecturer’s chair.

But I do not stand much longer. 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 said to his heart:

This wise man with his forty thoughts seems a fool to me. But I believe he knows very well how to sleep.

Lucky even is anyone who lives near this wise man! Sleep like his is contagious, contagious even through a thick wall.

There is a kind of magic even in his lecturer’s chair. And it was not for nothing that the young men sat before this preacher of virtue.

His wisdom is to stay awake in order to sleep well. And truly, if life had no meaning and I had to choose some nonsense, this would be the most desirable nonsense for me too.

Now I understand what people used to seek above all else when they went looking for teachers of virtue. They were looking for good sleep, and for virtues like poppy heads to bring it on!

For all those celebrated sages in their academic chairs, wisdom meant sleep without dreams. They knew of no higher meaning in life.

Even today, of course, there are still some like this preacher of virtue, and not always as honest as he is. But their time is over. They will not stand much longer. They are already lying down.

Blessed are those drowsy ones, for they shall soon nod off.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

III. BACKWORLDSMEN.

Once, I, Zarathustra, also cast my imagination beyond humanity, like all the backworldsmen, those who dream of a world behind this one. At that time the world seemed to me the work of a suffering and tormented God.

At that time the world seemed to me a God’s dream and a God’s poem. It seemed colored mist before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied being.

Good and evil, joy and sorrow, I and you: all these seemed to me colored mist before the eyes of a creator. The creator wanted to look away from himself, and so he created the world.

For the sufferer, it is an intoxicating joy to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting: that is what the world once seemed to me.

This world, eternally imperfect, the image of an eternal contradiction and an imperfect image at that, an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator: that is how the world once seemed to me.

So once I too cast my imagination beyond humanity, like all backworldsmen. Beyond humanity? Really?

Ah, my brothers, the God I created was human work and human madness, like all gods!

He was a man, and only a poor fragment of a man and of a self. That ghost came to me out of my own ashes and my own fire. And truly, it did not come to me from the beyond!

What happened, my brothers? I overcame myself, the sufferer. I carried my own ashes up the mountain and made a brighter flame for myself. And look! Then the ghost withdrew from me!

Now that I am recovering, it would be suffering and torment for me to believe in such ghosts. It would be suffering for me now, and humiliation. This is what I say to the backworldsmen.

It was suffering and helplessness that created all backworlds, together with that brief madness of happiness that only the greatest sufferer experiences.

Weariness created all gods and backworlds: a weariness that wants to reach the ultimate in a single leap, a fatal leap. It is a poor, ignorant weariness that no longer even wants to will.

Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the body. With the fingers of a deluded spirit, it groped at the final walls.

Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the earth. It heard the belly of existence speaking to it.

And then it tried to break through the final walls with its head, and not only with its head, into “the other world.”

But that “other world” is well hidden from human beings. It is a dehumanized, inhuman world, a heavenly nothing. And the belly of existence does not speak to human beings except as a human being.

Truly, it is difficult to prove any being and hard to make it speak. Tell me, brothers, is not the strangest of all things the best proven?

Yes, this self, with all its contradiction and confusion, speaks most honestly of its own being. This self creates, wills, and assigns value; it is the measure and value of things.

And this most honest form of existence, the self, speaks of the body. It still requires the body, even when it daydreams and raves and flutters about with broken wings.

The self keeps learning to speak more honestly. And the more it learns, the more titles and honors it finds for the body and the earth.

My self taught me a new pride, and I teach it to others: no longer to bury your head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head that gives meaning to the earth!

I teach people a new will: to choose the path that humanity has followed blindly, and to affirm it, and no longer to sneak off it like the sick and dying!

It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth. They invented the heavenly world and the redeeming drops of blood. But even those sweet, sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth!

They wanted to escape their misery, and the stars were too far away. So they sighed: “If only there were heavenly paths by which we could slip into another existence, and into happiness!” Then they invented their side paths and their drinks of blood!

These ungrateful ones imagined they had been carried away beyond the reach of their bodies and of this earth. But to what did they owe the convulsion and rapture of being carried away? To their bodies and to this earth.

Zarathustra is gentle with the sickly. Truly, he is not angered by their ways of consoling themselves or by their ingratitude. May they recover and overcome, and create higher bodies for themselves!

Nor is Zarathustra angry with someone recovering who looks tenderly on his old delusions, and at midnight creeps around the grave of his God. But sickness and a sick body remain even in his tears.

There have always been many sickly people among those who dream and pine for God. They fiercely hate those who see clearly, and they hate the newest of the virtues, which is honesty.

They always look back toward the dark ages. Then, of course, delusion and faith were something different. Then the raving of reason was considered likeness to God, and doubt was a sin.

I know those godlike people all too well. They insist on being believed, and on doubt being a sin. I also know all too well what they themselves believe in most.

Truly, it is not backworlds and redeeming drops of blood. They too believe most of all in the body, and for them their own body is the thing-in-itself.

But the body is a sickly thing to them, and they would gladly get out of their own skin. That is why they listen to the preachers of death, and why they themselves preach backworlds.

Listen instead, my brothers, to the voice of the healthy body. It is a more upright and purer voice.

The healthy body, perfect and squarely built, speaks more uprightly and more purely. And it speaks of the meaning of the earth.—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

IV. THE DESPISERS OF THE BODY.

I will speak my word to the despisers of the body. I do not want them to learn differently or to teach differently. I only want them to say farewell to their own bodies, and so fall silent.

“I am body and soul,” says the child. And why should one not speak like children?

But the one who has awakened, the one who knows, says: “I am body entirely, and nothing besides. Soul is only the name for something in the body.”

The body is a great intelligence, a multiplicity with a single sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd.

Your little intelligence, my brother, which you call “spirit,” is also an instrument of your body. It is a little instrument and plaything of your great intelligence.

“Ego,” you say, and you are proud of that word. But the greater thing, which you refuse to believe in, is your body with its great intelligence. It does not say “ego”; it acts as one.

What the senses feel and what the spirit perceives never has its end in itself. Yet 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 instruments and playthings. Behind them there is still the Self. The Self searches with the eyes of the senses, and it also listens with the ears of the spirit.

The Self is always listening and searching. It compares, masters, conquers, and destroys. It rules, and it is also the ruler of the ego.

Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage. It is called the Self. It lives in your body; it is your body.

There is more intelligence in your body than in your best wisdom. And who, then, knows why your body needs precisely your best wisdom?

Your Self laughs at your ego and its proud leaps. “What are these leaps and flights of thought to me?” it says to itself. “A detour toward my purpose. I am the string by which the ego is led, and the one who prompts its ideas.”

The Self says to the ego: “Feel pain!” Then the ego suffers, and thinks about how to put an end to its suffering. That is exactly the purpose it IS MEANT to think for.

The Self says to the ego: “Feel pleasure!” Then the ego rejoices, and thinks about how it might rejoice more often. That, too, is exactly the purpose it IS MEANT to think for.

I will speak a word to the despisers of the body. Their contempt comes from their esteem. What was it that created esteeming and despising, worth and will?

The creating Self created esteeming and despising for itself. It created joy and sorrow for itself. The creating body created spirit for itself, as a hand for its will.

Even in your folly and your contempt, each of you serves your Self, you despisers of the body. I tell you: your Self itself wants to die, and is turning away from life.

Your Self can no longer do what it wants most of all: to create beyond itself. That is what it wants most; that is its whole passion.

But now it is too late for that. And so your Self wants to perish, you despisers of the body.

Your Self wants to perish, and that is why you have become despisers of the body. For you can no longer create beyond yourselves.

And that is why you are now angry at life and at the earth. There is an unconscious envy in the sidelong glance of your contempt.

I do not go your way, you despisers of the body! You are no bridges for me to the Superman!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

V. JOYS AND PASSIONS.

My brother, when you have a virtue, and it is your own virtue, you share it with no one.

Of course, you would like to call it by name and pet it. You would like to tug its ears and play with it.

And look! Then you share its name with the people, and with your virtue you have become one of the people and the herd!

It would be better for you to say: “What torments and delights my soul, and is also the hunger in my belly, is unspeakable and nameless.”

Let your virtue be too lofty for the familiarity of names. And if you must speak of it, do not be ashamed to stammer about it.

So speak and stammer: “That is MY good. That is what I love. It pleases me entirely this way, and only in this way do I want the good.

“I do not want it as the law of a God. I do not want it as a human law or a human necessity. It is not meant to be a signpost for me toward worlds above the earth and toward paradises.

“It is an earthly virtue that I love. There is little prudence in it, and the least of everyday wisdom.

“But that bird built its nest beside me. That is why I love and cherish it. Now it sits beside me on its golden eggs.”

This is how you should stammer and praise your virtue.

Once you had passions and called them evil. But now you have only your virtues, and they grew out of your passions.

You planted your highest goal in the heart of those passions. Then they became your virtues and your joys.

And even if you came from the race of the hot-tempered, or of the lustful, or of the fanatical, or of the vengeful,

in the end all your passions became virtues, and all your devils became 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 a healing balm for yourself. You milked your cow, affliction, and now you drink the sweet milk of her udder.

And nothing evil grows in you any longer, unless it is the evil that grows out of the conflict among your virtues.

My brother, if you are fortunate, you will have one virtue and no more. Then you will cross the bridge more easily.

It is a distinction to have many virtues, but a hard fate. Many have gone into the wilderness and killed themselves, because they were weary of being the battle and the battlefield of virtues.

My brother, are war and battle evil? Yet this evil is necessary. The envy, the distrust, and the slander among the virtues are necessary.

Look how each of your virtues craves the highest place. Each wants your whole spirit to be ITS herald. Each wants your whole strength, in wrath, in hatred, and in love.

Every virtue is jealous of the others, and jealousy is a dreadful thing. Even virtues can perish through jealousy.

Whoever is surrounded by the flame of jealousy finally turns the poisoned sting against himself, like the scorpion.

Ah, my brother, have you never seen a virtue slander and stab itself?

Man is something that must be surpassed. And therefore you shall love your virtues, for you will perish by them.—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

VI. THE PALE CRIMINAL.

You judges and sacrificers, you do not mean to kill until the animal has bowed its head? Look! The pale criminal has bowed his head. Out of his eye speaks the great contempt.

“My ego is something to be surpassed. My ego is, to me, the great contempt for man.” This is what speaks out of that eye.

When he judged himself, that was his highest moment. Do not let the exalted one sink back into his lowly state!

For someone who suffers from himself in this way, there is no salvation except a quick death.

Your killing, you judges, should be pity and not revenge. And as you kill, see to it that you yourselves justify life!

It is not enough to be reconciled with the one you kill. Let your sorrow be love for the Superman. In that way you will justify your own continuing to live!

You should say “enemy,” but not “villain.” You should say “invalid,” but not “wretch.” You should say “fool,” but not “sinner.”

And you, red judge: if you said aloud everything you have already done in thought, everyone would cry out, “Away with this filth and this poisonous snake!”

But the thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed is another still. The wheel of cause and effect does not roll between them.

An image made this pale man pale. He was equal to his deed when he did it. But once it was done, he could not bear the image of it.

From then on he always saw himself as the doer of one deed. I call this madness: in him the exception turned itself into the rule.

A hen held with its beak to a chalk line will stare at it as if spellbound. In the same way, the blow he struck cast a spell on his weak reason. I call this madness AFTER the deed.

Listen, you judges! There is another madness as well, and it comes BEFORE the deed. Ah, you have not gone deep enough into this soul!

The red judge says: “Why did this criminal commit murder? He meant to rob.” But I tell you, his soul wanted blood, not loot. He thirsted for the happiness of the knife!

But his weak reason did not understand this madness, and it talked him round. “What does blood matter?” it said. “Don’t you at least want to take some loot while you are at it? Or take revenge?”

And he listened to his weak reason. Its words lay on him like lead, and 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 once again his weak reason is so numb, so paralyzed, and so dull.

If only he could shake his head, his burden would roll off. But who will shake that head?

What is this man? A heap of diseases that reach out into the world through the spirit, where they want to catch their prey.

What is this man? A tangle of wild snakes that are seldom at peace with one another. So they go out separately and look for prey in the world.

Look at that poor body! What it suffered and craved, the poor soul interpreted to itself. It took it to be a lust for murder and a greed for the happiness of the knife.

Whoever falls sick now is overtaken by the evil that counts as evil now: he seeks to cause pain with whatever causes him pain. But there have been other ages, and another evil and another good.

Once, doubt was evil, and so was the will to be a Self. Then the sick man became a heretic or a sorcerer. As heretic or sorcerer he suffered, and he sought to make others suffer.

But this will not enter your ears. It hurts your good people, you tell me. But what do your good people matter to me!

Much about your good people disgusts me, and truly, it is not their evil. I wish they had a madness through which they would perish, 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 miserable self-satisfaction.

I am a railing beside the torrent: whoever can grasp me, let him grasp me! But I am not your crutch.—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

VII. READING AND WRITING.

Of all that is written, I love only what someone has written with his own blood. Write with blood, and you will find that blood is spirit.

It is not easy to understand someone else’s blood. I hate those who read out of idleness.

Whoever knows the reader does nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers, and spirit itself will stink.

Allowing everyone to learn to read ruins, in the long run, not only writing but thinking as well.

Once spirit was God. Then it became man. And now it is even becoming the 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 route 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. The courage that scares away ghosts creates goblins for itself, because it wants to laugh.

I no longer feel as you do. This very cloud that I see beneath me, this blackness and heaviness that I laugh at, is your thundercloud.

You look up when you long to be lifted high. I look down, because I have been lifted high.

Which of you can laugh and be lifted high at the same time?

Whoever climbs the highest mountains laughs at all tragic plays and all tragic realities.

Brave, unconcerned, scornful, forceful: that is how wisdom wants us. She is a woman, and she always loves only a warrior.

You tell me, “Life is hard to bear.” But why else would you have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?

Life is hard to bear, but do not act so delicate! We are all fine, sturdy pack-asses, male and female alike.

What do we have in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew has settled on it?

It is true that we love life. But we love it not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

And to me as well, who love life, it seems that butterflies and soap bubbles, and whatever among us is like them, enjoy the most happiness.

To see these light, foolish, pretty, lively little spirits flutter about: that moves Zarathustra to tears and to songs.

I would believe only in a God who knew how to dance.

And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, deep, and solemn. He was the spirit of gravity, and through him all things fall.

Not with anger but with laughter do we kill. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity!

I learned to walk; since then I have let myself run. I learned to fly; since then I need no one to push me before I can move from where I stand.

Now I am light, now I fly; now I see myself beneath myself. Now a God dances within me.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

VIII. THE TREE ON THE HILL.

Zarathustra had noticed that a certain young man was avoiding him. One evening he was walking alone over the hills around the town called “The Pied Cow.” There he found the young man sitting against a tree, gazing wearily into the valley.

Zarathustra took hold of the tree beside which the young man sat, and spoke:

“If I wanted to shake this tree with my hands, I could not do it.

But the wind, which we cannot see, torments it and bends it wherever it pleases. We are bent and tormented most painfully by invisible hands.”

At this the young man stood up, disconcerted, and said: “I hear Zarathustra, and I was just thinking of him!” Zarathustra answered:

“Why does that frighten you? But it is the same with human beings as with this tree.

The more a person tries to rise toward the heights and the light, the more strongly his roots strive earthward, downward, into the dark and 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: “Some souls will never be discovered unless one first invents them.”

“Yes, into evil!” the young man cried again.

“You have spoken the truth, Zarathustra. Ever since I began trying to climb to the heights, I no longer trust myself, and no one trusts me anymore. How does that happen?

I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday. When I climb, I often skip steps, and none of the steps forgives me for it.

When I am up high, I always find myself alone. No one speaks to me; the frost of solitude makes me shiver. What am I looking for on the heights?

My contempt and my longing grow together. The higher I climb, the more I despise the one who climbs. What is he looking for on 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 on the heights!”

Here the young man fell silent. Zarathustra looked at the tree beside which they stood, and spoke:

“This tree stands alone here in the hills. It has grown up high above people and animals.

And if it wanted to speak, it would find 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. I longed for my own destruction when I wanted to be on the heights, and you are the lightning I was waiting for!

Look, what have I been since you appeared among us? It is my envy of you that has destroyed me!”

So spoke the young man, and he wept bitterly. But Zarathustra put his arm around him and led him away.

When they had walked together for a while, Zarathustra began to speak:

It tears at my heart. Your eyes tell me all your danger more clearly than your words can.

You are not yet free; you are still seeking freedom. Your seeking has made you sleepless and overly wakeful.

You want to be on the open heights; your soul thirsts for the stars. But your bad impulses thirst for freedom too.

Your wild dogs want to be let loose. They bark with joy in their cellar when your spirit tries to open every prison door.

To me you still seem a prisoner who is plotting his own freedom. Ah, the souls of such prisoners grow sharp, but also deceitful and wicked.

Even one whose spirit has been set free must still purify himself. Much of the prison and its mold still remains in him. His eye has yet to become pure.

Yes, I know your danger. But by my love and hope I implore you: do not throw away your love and hope!

You still feel yourself to be noble, and others still feel that you are noble, even though they resent you and cast evil looks at you. Know this: a noble person stands in everyone’s way.

A noble person stands in the way of the good as well. Even when they call him a good man, they mean to push him aside by it.

The noble man wants to create something new, and a new virtue. The good man wants the old, and wants the old preserved.

But the noble man’s danger is not that he will become a good man. His danger is that he will become a blusterer, a scoffer, or a destroyer.

Ah, I have known noble people who lost their highest hope. And then they belittled all high hopes.

Then they lived shamelessly for passing pleasures, and hardly had any aim beyond the day.

“Spirit is also sensual pleasure,” they said. Then the wings of their spirit broke. Now it crawls about and defiles whatever it gnaws.

Once they thought of becoming heroes; now they are pleasure-seekers. To them the hero is a trouble and a terror.

But by my love and hope I implore you: do not throw away the hero in your soul! Keep your highest hope holy!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

IX. THE PREACHERS OF DEATH.

There are preachers of death, and the earth is full of people 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 by “eternal life”!

The preachers of death are called “the yellow ones,” or “the black ones.” But I will show them to you in other colors as well.

There are the terrible ones, who carry a beast of prey within themselves and have no choice except lusts or tearing themselves apart. And even their lusts are a way of tearing themselves apart.

They have not yet become human, those terrible ones. Let them preach turning away from life, and pass away themselves!

There are those whose spirit is wasting with consumption. Hardly are they born before they begin to die, and they long for doctrines of weariness and renunciation.

They would gladly be dead, and we should approve of their wish! Let us take care not to wake these dead, and not to damage these living coffins!

They meet a sick person, 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 one side of existence.

Wrapped in thick melancholy, and eager for the small accidents that bring death: so they wait, and clench their teeth.

Or else they grab at sweets, and mock their own childishness while doing it. They cling to their straw of life, and mock themselves for still clinging to it.

Their wisdom says: “Whoever stays alive is a fool, and so far we are such fools! And that is the most foolish thing in life!”

“Life is only suffering,” say others, and they are not lying. Then see to it that you stop! See to it that the life which is only suffering comes to an end!

And let this be the teaching of your virtue: “You shall kill yourself! You shall steal away from yourself!”

“Lust is sin,” say some who preach death. “Let us go apart and have no children!”

“Giving birth is a burden,” say others. “Why keep giving birth? One bears only the unfortunate!” They too are preachers of death.

“Pity is necessary,” says a third group. “Take what I have! Take what I am! Then life will bind me all the less!”

If they were thoroughly pitying, they would make their neighbors sick of life. To be wicked: that would be their true goodness.

But they want to be rid of life. What do they care if they bind others still tighter with their chains and gifts!

And you too, for whom life is hard labor and restlessness: are you not very tired of life? Are you not very ripe for the sermon of death?

All of you who love hard labor and whatever is fast, new, and strange: you put up with yourselves badly. Your industriousness is flight, and a will to forget yourselves.

If you believed more in life, you would throw yourselves less into the passing moment. But you do not have enough in you for waiting, not even for idleness!

Everywhere the voices of those who preach death resound, 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 pass away quickly!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

X. WAR AND WARRIORS.

We do not want to be spared by our best enemies, nor by those we love from the bottom of our hearts. So let me tell you the truth!

My brothers in war! I love you from the bottom of my heart. I am, and always was, your equal. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth!

I know the hatred and envy in your hearts. You are not great enough to be unacquainted with hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them!

And if you cannot be saints of knowledge, then I beg you, at least be its warriors. Warriors are the companions and forerunners of such sainthood.

I see many soldiers; if only I could see many warriors! What they wear is called a “uniform.” May what they hide beneath it not be uniform too!

You shall be those whose eyes are always looking for an enemy, for your enemy. And in some of you there is hatred at first sight.

You shall seek your enemy and wage your war, and for the sake of your thoughts! And if your thoughts are defeated, your honesty shall still shout in triumph over it!

You shall love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the long.

I do not advise you to work, but to fight. I do not advise you to make peace, but to win. Let your work be a fight, and your peace a victory!

One can be silent and sit peacefully only when one has bow and arrow; otherwise one chatters and quarrels. Let your peace be a victory!

You say it is the good cause that makes even war holy? I tell you: it is the good war that makes every cause holy.

War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your sympathy but your bravery has so far saved the victims.

“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 true, and I love the bashfulness of your goodwill. You are ashamed of your flood tide, and others are ashamed of their ebb.

Are you ugly? Well then, my brothers, wrap the sublime around you, the cloak of the ugly!

And when your soul grows great, it grows arrogant, and in your loftiness there is wickedness. I know you.

In wickedness the arrogant person and the weakling meet. But they misunderstand each other. I know you.

You shall have only enemies to be hated, not enemies to be despised. You must be proud of your enemies; then your enemies’ successes are your successes too.

Resistance: that is the slave’s mark of distinction. Let your distinction be obedience! Let even your commanding be an obeying!

To the good warrior, “you shall” sounds more pleasant than “I will.” And everything you hold dear, you shall first have commanded to you.

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 shall have commanded to you by me, and it is this: man is something that is to be surpassed.

So live your life of obedience and war! What does long life matter? What warrior wants to be spared?

I do not spare you; I love you from the bottom of my heart, my brothers in war!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XI. THE NEW IDOL.

Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not among us, my brothers. Here there are states.

A state? What is that? Well, open your ears to me now, for now I will speak my word about the death of peoples.

The state is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. It lies coldly, too, and this lie crawls out of its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.”

That is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith and a love over them. In this way they served life.

It is destroyers who set traps for the many and call it the state. They hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.

Where there is still a people, the state is not understood. It is hated as the evil eye, and as a sin against laws and customs.

I give you this sign: every people speaks its own language of good and evil, which its neighbor does not understand. It has invented this language for itself in its laws and customs.

But the state lies in every language of good and evil. Whatever it says, it lies; and whatever it has, it has stolen.

Everything in it is false. It bites with stolen teeth, this biter. Even its bowels are false.

Confusion of the language of good and evil: I give you this 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 see how it lures them to itself, the many-too-many! How it swallows them, and chews them, and chews them again!

“On earth there is nothing greater than I: I am the ordering finger of God.” So the monster roars. And it is not only the long-eared and the short-sighted who fall to their knees!

Ah, even into your ears, you great souls, it whispers its gloomy lies! Ah, it seeks out the rich hearts that gladly spend themselves!

Yes, it seeks you out too, you conquerors of the old God! You grew weary of the struggle, and now your weariness serves the new idol!

The new idol would like to set up heroes and honorable people around itself! It gladly basks in the sunshine of good consciences, the cold monster!

It will give YOU everything, if YOU worship it, this new idol. In this way it buys the luster of your virtue and the glance of your proud eyes.

Through you it means to lure the many-too-many! Yes, a hellish trick has been devised here: a horse of death, jingling with the trappings of divine honors!

Yes, a dying for the many has been devised here, and it glorifies itself as life. Truly, it is a heartfelt service to all preachers of death!

I call it the state, where all drink poison, the good and the bad alike. It is the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad alike. It is the state, where the slow suicide of everyone is called “life.”

Just look at these superfluous people! They steal the works of inventors and the treasures of the wise. They call their theft “culture,” and everything turns into sickness and trouble for them!

Just look at these superfluous people! They are always sick. They vomit up their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another and cannot even digest themselves.

Just look at these superfluous people! They acquire wealth and become poorer by it. They seek power, and above all the lever of power, which is plenty of money. These powerless ones!

See them climb, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and so they scuffle their way down into the mud and the abyss.

They all strive toward the throne. That is their madness, as if happiness sat on the throne! Often filth sits on the throne, and often the throne sits on filth.

They all seem to me madmen, climbing apes, and far too eager. Their idol, the cold monster, smells foul to me. They all smell foul to me, these idol-worshippers.

My brothers, will you suffocate in the fumes of their mouths and appetites? Better to break the windows and leap out into the open air!

Get away from the foul smell! Withdraw from the idol-worship of the superfluous!

Get away from the foul smell! Withdraw from the steam of these human sacrifices!

The earth still stands open for great souls. Many places are still empty for those who live alone or in pairs. Around those places drifts the scent of quiet seas.

A free life still stands open for great souls. Truly, whoever possesses little is that much less possessed. Blessed be modest poverty!

Where the state ends, only there begins the human being who is not superfluous. There begins the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody.

Where the state ENDS, look there, my brothers! Do you not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman?

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XII. THE FLIES IN THE MARKET-PLACE.

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 very well how to be silent with you. Be once more like the tree you love, the broad-branched one. Silent and attentive, it leans out over the sea.

Where solitude ends, the market-place begins. And where the market-place begins, there also begins the noise of the great actors and the buzzing of the poisonous flies.

In the world, even the best things are worth nothing without someone to present them. The people call these presenters great men.

The people understand little of what is great, that is, of the creative force. But they have a taste for everyone who presents and acts out great things.

The world revolves around the inventors of new values. It revolves around them invisibly. But the people and the glory revolve around the actors. That is the way of things.

The actor has spirit, but little conscience of the spirit. He always believes in whatever lets him make others believe most strongly. He believes in HIMSELF!

Tomorrow he has a new belief, and the day after, a newer one still. Like the people, he has quick perceptions and changeable moods.

To him, overturning something means proving it. Driving people mad means convincing them. And he counts blood as the best of all arguments.

A truth that slips only into sensitive ears he calls a lie and a trifle. Truly, he believes only in gods that make a great noise in the world!

The market-place is full of clattering clowns, and the people boast of their great men! For them, these are the masters of the hour.

But the hour presses them, so they press you. They want a Yes or a No from you as well. Alas, would you set your chair between For and Against?

Do not envy those absolute, impatient ones, you lover of truth! Truth has never yet clung to the arm of someone who deals in absolutes.

Because of those abrupt people, go back to your place of safety. Only in the market-place is a person ambushed with “Yes?” or “No?”

All deep wells are slow in what they come to know. They must wait a long time before they learn WHAT has fallen into their depths.

Everything great happens away from the market-place and from fame. The inventors of new values have always lived away from the market-place and from fame.

Flee, my friend, into your solitude. I see you stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee to where a rough, strong wind blows!

Flee into your solitude! You have lived too close to the small and the pitiful. Flee from their invisible revenge! Toward you they feel nothing but revenge.

Raise your arm against them no longer! They are countless, and it is not your fate to be a flyswatter.

The small and pitiful are countless. Many a proud building has been ruined by raindrops and weeds.

You are not stone, but the many drops have already hollowed you out. You will yet crack and burst from the many drops.

I see you exhausted by poisonous flies. I see you bleeding and torn in a hundred places. And your pride will not even scold them.

They want your blood in all innocence. Their bloodless souls crave blood, and so they sting in all innocence.

But you, deep one, suffer too deeply even from small wounds. Before you had healed, the same poisonous worm was crawling over your hand.

You are too proud to kill these sweet-toothed creatures. But take care that it does not become your fate to bear all their poisonous injustice!

They also buzz around you with their praise. Their praise is pushiness. They want to be close to 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 amount to? They are flatterers and whimperers, and nothing more.

Often they also show themselves to you as charming. But that has always been the cleverness of cowards. Yes, cowards are clever!

With their narrow souls they think about you a great deal, and you are always under suspicion. Whatever is thought about a great deal eventually comes to be thought suspicious.

They punish you for all your virtues. In their hearts they forgive you only for your mistakes.

Because you are gentle and upright, 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. They repay your kindness with secret malice.

Your silent pride always goes against their taste. They are delighted if you are ever humble enough to be frivolous.

Whatever we recognize in a person, we also inflame in that person. So be on your guard against the small ones!

In your presence they feel small, and their baseness smolders and glows against you in invisible revenge.

Did you not see how often they fell silent when you approached them? Did you not see how their strength left them like the smoke of a dying fire?

Yes, my friend, you are the bad conscience of your neighbors, because they are unworthy of you. That is why they hate you and would like to suck your blood.

Your neighbors will always be poisonous flies. What is great in you must itself make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like.

Flee, my friend, into your solitude, to where a rough, strong wind blows. It is not your fate to be a flyswatter.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XIII. CHASTITY.

I love the forest. It is bad to live in cities, because too many there are full of lust.

Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?

And just look at these men. Their eyes say it: they know nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman.

There is filth at the bottom of their souls. And alas, it is worse if their filth still has spirit in it!

If only you were perfect, at least as animals! But innocence belongs to animals.

Do I advise you to kill your instincts? I advise you to be innocent in your instincts.

Do I advise you to be chaste? For some, chastity is a virtue, but for many it is almost a vice.

These people practice restraint, certainly. But a dog’s lust looks enviously out of everything they do.

This creature follows them, with all its discord, even into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit.

And how sweetly a dog’s lust can beg for a scrap of spirit when it is denied a scrap of flesh!

You love tragedies and everything that breaks the heart? But I do not trust your dog’s lust.

Your eyes are too cruel, and you look at sufferers with lust. Has your lust not simply disguised itself and taken the name of sympathy?

I also give you this parable. Not a few who meant to drive out their devil went into the swine themselves in the process.

Those who find chastity difficult should be advised against it. Otherwise it may become the road to hell, that is, to filth and lust of the soul.

Am I speaking of filthy things? That is not the worst thing I could do.

The person who seeks knowledge is reluctant to wade into a truth’s waters not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow.

Truly, there are people who are chaste by nature. They are gentler of heart, and they laugh better and more often than you.

They laugh at chastity too, and ask, “What is chastity?

Is chastity not foolishness? But this foolishness came to us; we did not go to it.

We offered that guest shelter and our hearts. Now it lives with us. Let it stay as long as it likes!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XIV. THE FRIEND.

“One is always one too many around me,” thinks the hermit. “Always one times one: in the long run, that makes two!”

I and me are always too deeply engaged in conversation. How could it be endured if there were no friend?

For the hermit, the friend is always the third person. The third person 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 much for a friend, and for a friend’s height.

Our faith in others reveals where we would like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend gives us away.

Often with our love we only want to leap over envy. And often we attack and make enemies in order to hide that we can be wounded.

“At least be my enemy!” So speaks true reverence, which does not dare to ask for friendship.

If you want a friend, you must also be willing to wage war for him. And to wage war, you must be CAPABLE of being an enemy.

You should still honor the enemy in your friend. Can you go close to your friend without going over to his side?

In your friend you should have your best enemy. Your heart should be closest to him when you resist him.

Would you wear no clothes in front of your friend? Is it in your friend’s honor that you show yourself to him exactly as you are? But for that he wishes you to the devil!

Whoever hides nothing of himself is shocking. That is how much reason you have to fear nakedness! Yes, if you were gods, then you could be ashamed of clothing!

You cannot dress yourself finely enough for your friend. For you should be to him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.

Have you ever seen your friend asleep, to learn what he looks like? What is your friend’s face, usually? It is your own face, in a rough and imperfect mirror.

Have you ever seen your friend asleep? Were you not dismayed to see your friend looking like that? O my friend, man is something that must be surpassed.

A friend should be a master of guessing and of keeping silent. You must not want to see everything. Your dream should reveal to you what your friend does while awake.

Let your pity be a guessing: first find out whether your friend wants pity. Perhaps what he loves in you is the unmoved eye and the look of eternity.

Let your pity for your friend be hidden under a hard shell, one you would break a tooth on. In that way it will have delicacy and sweetness.

Are you pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to your friend? Many cannot loosen their own chains and yet free their friends.

Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.

For far too long a slave and a tyrant have been hidden in woman. For that reason woman is not yet capable of friendship. She knows only love.

In a woman’s love there is injustice and blindness toward everything she does not love. Even in a woman’s conscious love there is always surprise, lightning, and night alongside 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 meanness of your souls! As much as you give to your friend, I will give even to my enemy, and I will not have become any poorer by it.

There is comradeship: let there be friendship!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XV. THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS.

Zarathustra saw many lands and many peoples, and so he discovered the good and bad of many peoples. Zarathustra found no greater power on earth than good and bad.

No people could live without first valuing. But if a people wants to preserve itself, it must not value things as its neighbor does.

Much that one people considered good, another regarded with scorn and contempt: this is what I found. Much that I found called bad in one place was adorned with purple honors in another.

One neighbor never understood the other. Each one’s soul always marveled at the neighbor’s delusion and wickedness.

A table of excellences hangs over every people. Look: it is the table of their triumphs. Look: it is the voice of their Will to Power.

Whatever they find hard, they consider praiseworthy. What is both indispensable and hard they call good. And what brings relief in the direst distress, the rarest and hardest thing of all, they exalt as holy.

Whatever makes them rule, conquer, and shine, to the dismay and envy of their neighbors, they regard as the highest and foremost thing. It becomes the test and the meaning of everything else.

Truly, my brother, if you only knew a people’s need, its land, its sky, and its neighbor, you could guess the law of its self-overcomings. You could guess why it climbs that particular ladder toward its hope.

“You shall always be first and stand out above others. Your jealous soul shall love no one except a friend.” That made the soul of a Greek thrill, and by following it he went his way to greatness.

“To speak the truth and to be skillful with bow and arrow.” This seemed both dear and hard to the people from whom my name comes, the name that is both dear and hard to me.

“To honor father and mother, and to do their will from the root of the soul.” Another people hung this table of overcoming over themselves, and through it they became powerful and lasting.

“To keep faith, and for the sake of faithfulness to risk honor and blood, even in evil and dangerous causes.” By teaching itself this, another people mastered itself. And by mastering itself, it became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.

Truly, human beings gave themselves all their good and bad. Truly, they did not take it, they did not find it, and it did not come to them as a voice from heaven.

Humans assigned values to things only in order to preserve themselves. They created only the meaning of things, a human meaning! That is why the human being calls himself “man,” that is, the one who values.

Valuing is creating: hear this, you creators! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of all valued things.

Only through valuation is there value. Without valuation, the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear this, you creators!

A change of values means a change in the creators. Whoever must be a creator always destroys.

The first creators were peoples, and only later individuals. Truly, the individual himself is still the most recent creation.

Peoples once hung tables of the good over themselves. Love that wanted to rule and love that wanted to obey created such tables for themselves.

Delight in the herd is older than delight in the ego. As long as the good conscience belongs to the herd, only the bad conscience says: ego.

Truly, the crafty ego, the loveless one that seeks its own advantage in the advantage of the many, is not the origin of the herd but its ruin.

It was always lovers and creators who created good and bad. The fire of love glows in the names of all the virtues, and the fire of anger as well.

Zarathustra saw many lands and many peoples. He found no greater power on earth than the creations of the lovers: “good” and “bad” they are called.

Truly, this power of praising and blaming is a monster. Tell me, my brothers, who will master it for me? Who will put a fetter on the thousand necks of this beast?

There have been a thousand goals so far, because there have been a thousand peoples. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still missing; the one goal is missing. Humanity does not yet have a goal.

But tell me, my brothers: if humanity still lacks a goal, is it not also still lacking humanity itself?

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XVI. NEIGHBOUR-LOVE.

You crowd around your neighbor, and you have fine words for doing so. But I tell you: your love of your neighbor is your bad love of yourselves.

You flee from yourselves to your neighbor, 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 the I has not yet been. So people press close to their neighbor.

Do I advise you to love your neighbor? I would rather advise you to flee your neighbor and to love the most distant!

Higher than love of your neighbor is love of the most distant and of those still to come. Higher still than love of human beings is love of things and of phantoms.

The phantom that runs ahead of you, my brother, is more beautiful than you. Why don’t you give it your flesh and your bones? But you are afraid, and you run to your neighbor.

You cannot bear your own company, and you do not love yourselves enough. So you try to seduce your neighbor into loving you, and you would like to gild yourselves with his mistake.

I wish you could not bear any of those near you, or their neighbors either. Then you would have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves.

You call in a witness when you want to speak well of yourselves. And once you have misled him into thinking well of you, you think well of yourselves too.

It is not only the person who speaks against what he knows who lies. The person who speaks against what he does not know lies even more. This is how you speak about yourselves in company, and you deceive your neighbor along with yourselves.

So says the fool: “Associating with people spoils one’s character, especially when one has none.”

One person goes to his neighbor because he is looking for himself, another because he wants to lose himself. Your bad love of yourselves turns solitude into a prison for you.

The most distant are the ones who pay for your love of those near you. And whenever even five of you are together, a sixth must always die.

Nor do I love your festivals. 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 for you, and a foretaste of the Superman.

I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But you must know how to be a sponge if you want to be loved by overflowing hearts.

I teach you the friend in whom the world stands complete, a capsule holding the good. I teach the creating friend, who always has a complete world to give.

And just as the world unrolled itself for him, it rolls itself up again for him in rings: as the growth of good through evil, as the growth of purpose out of chance.

Let the future and the most distant be the motive of your today. In your friend you shall love the Superman as your motive.

My brothers, I do not advise you to love your neighbor. I advise you to love the most distant!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XVII. THE WAY OF THE CREATING ONE.

Do you want to go into solitude, my brother? Do you want to seek the way to yourself? Wait a little longer and listen to me.

“Whoever seeks may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong”: so says the herd. And you belonged to the herd for a long time.

The voice of the herd will still echo in you. And when you say, “I no longer share a conscience with you,” it will be a lament and a pain.

Notice that this same conscience produced that very pain. The last glow of that conscience still shines on your distress.

But do you want to go the way of your distress, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your right and your strength to do so!

Are you a new strength and a new right? A first movement? A wheel that rolls by itself? Can you also force stars to revolve around you?

Alas, there is so much craving for the heights! There are so many convulsions of ambition! Show me that you are not one of the cravers and the ambitious!

Alas, there are so many great thoughts that do no more than a bellows does: they puff things up and leave them emptier than before.

You call yourself free? I want to hear your ruling thought, not that you have escaped from a yoke.

Are you someone who has the RIGHT to escape a yoke? Many people threw away their last worth when they threw away their servitude.

Free from what? What does that matter to Zarathustra! But your eye should show me clearly: free FOR WHAT?

Can you give yourself your own bad and your own good, and hang your will over yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge, and the avenger of your own law?

It is terrible to be alone with the judge and avenger of one’s own law. This is how a star is flung out into empty space and into the icy breath of solitude.

Today you still suffer from the many, you individual. Today you still have your courage undiminished, and your hopes.

But one day solitude will weary you. One day your pride will bend and your courage will falter. One day you will cry: “I am alone!”

One day you will no longer see your height, and you will see your lowliness all too closely. Your very sublimity will frighten you like a ghost. One day you will cry: “Everything is false!”

There are feelings that seek to kill the solitary one. If they do not succeed, then they themselves must die! But are you capable of that, of being a murderer?

Have you ever known, my brother, the word “disdain”? And the anguish of your justice in being just to those who disdain you?

You force many people to think differently about you, and they hold that heavily against you. You came close to them and yet walked past, and for that they will never forgive you.

You go beyond them. But the higher you climb, the smaller the eye of envy sees you. And 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 filth at the solitary one. But, my brother, if you want to be a star, you must shine for them no less because of it!

And beware of the good and the just! They would gladly crucify those who invent their own virtue. They hate the solitary.

Beware also of holy simplicity! Everything that is not simple seems unholy to it. It, too, would gladly play with fire: the fire of bundled firewood heaped around the stake where condemned people were burned alive.

And beware also of the attacks of your own love! The solitary person too readily reaches out his hand to anyone he meets.

To many people you should 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 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 your seven devils!

You will be a heretic to yourself, and a sorcerer, and a soothsayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain.

You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame. How could you become new if you have not first become ashes!

Solitary one, you are going the way of the creator: you will create a god for yourself out of your seven devils!

Solitary one, you are going the way of the lover: you love yourself, and for that reason you despise yourself, as only lovers despise.

The lover wants to create because he despises! What does anyone know of love who has not had to despise precisely what he loved!

Go into your solitude with your love and with your creating, my brother. Only later will justice come limping after you.

Go into your solitude with my tears, my brother. I love the one who wants to create beyond himself, and so perishes.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XVIII. OLD AND YOUNG WOMEN.

“Why do you creep along so furtively in the twilight, Zarathustra? And what are you hiding so carefully under your cloak?

Is it a treasure someone has given you? Or a child born to you? Or are you going on a thief’s errand yourself, you friend of the wicked?”

Truly, my brother, said Zarathustra, it is a treasure that has been given to me: it is a little truth that I am carrying.

But it is unruly, like a young child. If I do not hold its mouth shut, it screams too loudly.

As I went on my way alone today, at the hour when the sun goes down, an old woman met me, and she spoke to my soul like this:

“Zarathustra has spoken a great deal 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.”

“Talk to me about woman too,” she said. “I am old enough to forget it right away.”

So I obliged the 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 purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man?

The true man wants two different 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.

The warrior does not like fruit that is too sweet. That is why he likes woman: even the sweetest woman is bitter.

Woman understands children better than man does, but man is more childish than woman.

In the true man a child is hidden, and it wants to play. Come, then, you women, and discover the child in man!

Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine like a precious stone, lit by the virtues of a world that has not yet come.

Let the beam of a star shine in your love! Let your hope say: “May I give birth to the Superman!”

Let there be courage in your love! With your love you should go after the one who makes you afraid.

Let your honor lie in your love! Woman understands little about honor otherwise. But let this be your honor: always to love more than you are loved, and never to come second.

Let man fear woman when she loves. Then she makes every sacrifice, and counts everything else as worthless.

Let man fear woman when she hates. For in his innermost soul man is merely wicked, but woman is mean.

Whom does woman hate most? This is what the iron said to the magnet: “I hate you most, because you attract me but are too weak to pull me to you.”

The happiness of man is “I will.” The happiness of woman is “He will.”

“Look, now the world has become perfect!” So every woman thinks when she obeys with all her love.

Woman must obey, and find a depth for her surface. Woman’s soul is surface, a restless, stormy film on shallow water.

Man’s soul, however, is deep. Its current rushes through underground caverns. Woman senses its force but does not understand it.

Then the old woman answered me: “Zarathustra has said many fine 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 women nothing is impossible?

“And now, as thanks, accept a little truth! I am old enough for it!

“Wrap it up and hold its mouth shut, or it will scream too loudly, this little truth.”

“Give me your little truth, woman!” I said. And the old woman spoke thus:

“You are going to women? Do not forget your whip!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XIX. THE BITE OF THE ADDER.

One day, because of the heat, Zarathustra had fallen asleep under a fig tree with his arms over his face. 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 snake. The snake recognized Zarathustra’s eyes, writhed awkwardly, and tried to get away.

“Not at all,” said Zarathustra. “You have not yet received my thanks! You woke me in time, and my journey is still long.”

“Your journey is short,” said the adder sadly. “My poison is fatal.”

Zarathustra smiled. “When did a dragon ever die of a snake’s poison?” he said. “But take your poison back! You are not rich enough to give it to me.” Then the adder fell on his neck again and licked his wound.

When Zarathustra once told this story to his disciples, they asked him: “And what, O Zarathustra, is the moral of your story?” Zarathustra answered them thus:

The good and the just call me the destroyer of morality. My story is immoral.

When you have an enemy, do not repay him good for evil, for that would shame him. Instead, prove that he has done you some good.

It is better to be angry than to shame anyone! And when you are cursed, I do not like it when you want to bless in return. Rather, curse a little too!

If a great injustice befalls you, then quickly commit five small ones besides. It is hideous to see someone on whom injustice weighs alone.

Did you ever know this? Shared injustice is half justice. And whoever can bear it should take the injustice on himself!

A small revenge is more humane than no revenge at all. And unless the punishment is also a right and an honor for the wrongdoer, I do not like your punishing.

It is nobler to admit you are wrong than to insist on being right, especially when you are right. Only, one must be rich enough to do so.

I do not like your cold justice. From your judges’ eyes the executioner and his cold steel are always looking out.

Tell me: where do we find justice 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 judge!

Would you hear this as well? For someone who seeks to be just from the heart, even a lie becomes an act of love for humanity.

But how could I be just from the heart? How can I give everyone what is his own? Let this be enough for me: I give everyone what is mine.

Finally, my brothers, beware of wronging 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 in. But if it sinks to the bottom, tell me, who will bring it out again?

Beware of injuring the hermit! But if you have done so, well then, kill him too!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XX. CHILD AND MARRIAGE.

I have a question for you alone, my brother. I cast this question into your soul like a sounding lead, the weight dropped on a line to measure depth, so that I may know how deep your soul is.

You are young, and you want a child and marriage. But I ask you: are you a man who has the RIGHT to want a child?

Are you the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of your passions, the master of your virtues? This is what I ask you.

Or does the animal speak in your wish, and need? Or loneliness? Or discord within you?

I want your victory and your freedom to long for a child. You should build living monuments to your victory and your liberation.

You should build beyond yourself. But first you must be built yourself, square and true in body and soul.

You should propagate yourself not only forward but upward! May the garden of marriage help you toward that end!

You should create a higher body, a first movement, a self-propelled wheel. You should create a creator.

Marriage is what I call the will of two people to create the one who is more than those who created it. Marriage is what I call the reverence each holds for the other as people who share such a will.

Let this be the meaning and the truth of your marriage. But what the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones, ah, what shall I call that?

Ah, the poverty of soul in the pair! Ah, the filth of soul in the pair! Ah, the pitiful self-satisfaction in the pair!

They call all this marriage, and they say their marriages are made in heaven.

Well, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, those animals tangled in heavenly nets!

Keep far from me, too, the God who limps over to bless what he did not join together!

Do not laugh at such marriages! What child has not had reason to weep over its parents?

This man seemed worthy and ripe for the meaning of the earth. But when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for lunatics.

Yes, I wish the earth would shake with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with each other.

This one set out in search of truth like a hero, and in the end won himself a small, dressed-up lie. He calls it his marriage.

That one was reserved with people and chose his company carefully. But at one stroke he spoiled his company forever. He calls it his marriage.

Another looked for a maidservant with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became a woman’s maidservant, and now he would need to become an angel too.

I have found all buyers careful, and all of them have shrewd eyes. But even the shrewdest of them buys his wife sight unseen, like goods in a sack.

You call many brief follies love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies with one long stupidity.

Your love for woman, and woman’s love for man: ah, if only it were compassion for suffering and veiled gods! But usually two animals simply land on each other.

Yet even your best love is only a rapturous image and a painful burning. It is a torch meant to light your way to higher paths.

Someday you shall love beyond yourselves! So first LEARN to love. That is why you had to drink the bitter cup of your love.

There is bitterness in the cup of even the best love. In this way it makes you long for the Superman. In this way it makes you thirst, you creator!

Thirst in the creator, an arrow and a longing for the Superman: tell me, my brother, is this your will to marriage?

Such a will and such a marriage I call holy.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXI. VOLUNTARY DEATH.

Many die too late, and some die too early. Still, the teaching sounds strange: “Die at the right time!”

Die at the right time: this is what Zarathustra teaches.

Of course, if someone never lives at the right time, how could he ever die at the right time? Better that he were never born! That is my advice to the superfluous.

But even the superfluous make a great fuss about their deaths, and even the hollowest nut wants to be cracked.

Everyone treats dying as a great matter, but death is not yet a festival. People have not yet learned how to consecrate the finest festivals.

I show you the consummating death, the death that completes a life and becomes a spur and a promise to the living.

The one who completes his life dies his death victoriously, surrounded by people who hope and make promises.

This is how one should learn to die. And there should be no festival at which such a dying man does not consecrate the vows of the living!

To die like this is best. The next best is to die in battle and spend a great soul.

But your grinning death, which creeps up like a thief and yet arrives as master, is as hateful to the fighter as it is to the victor.

I praise to you my own death, the voluntary death, which comes to me because I want it.

And when will I want it? Whoever has a goal and an heir wants death at the right time for the sake of the goal and the heir.

Out of reverence for the goal and the heir, he will hang no more withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life.

Truly, I will not be like the rope-makers. They draw out their cord longer and longer, and in doing so they keep walking backward.

Many also grow too old for their truths and their triumphs. A toothless mouth no longer has the right to every truth.

Whoever wants fame must take leave of honor in good time, and practice the difficult art of leaving at the right time.

One must stop letting oneself be feasted on when one tastes best. Those who want to be loved for a long time know this.

There are sour apples, of course, whose fate is to wait until the last day of autumn. They become ripe, yellow, and shriveled all at once.

In some, the heart grows old first; in others, the spirit. Some are gray-haired in youth, but those who become young late stay young for a long time.

For many people life is a failure; a poisonous worm gnaws at their heart. Then let them see to it that their dying is all the more a success.

Many never become sweet; they rot while it is still summer. It is cowardice that keeps them clinging to their branches.

Far too many live, and they hang far too long on their branches. If only a storm would come and shake all this rot and worm-eaten fruit from the tree!

If only preachers of QUICK death would come! They would be the proper storms to shake the trees of life! But I hear only slow death preached, and patience with everything “earthly.”

Ah! You preach patience with what is earthly? It is the earthly that has too much patience with you, you blasphemers!

Truly, that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honor died too early. And for many it has been a disaster that he died too early.

He had known only tears and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just. Then the Hebrew Jesus was seized by the longing for death.

If only he had stayed in the wilderness, far from the good and just! Then perhaps he would have learned to live and to love the earth, and to laugh as well!

Believe it, my brothers! He died too early. He himself would have renounced his teaching had he lived to my age! He was noble enough to renounce it!

But he was still unripe. The young man loves unripely, and he also hates humanity and the earth unripely. His soul and the wings of his spirit are still cramped and clumsy.

But in the grown man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less melancholy. He understands life and death better.

Free for death and free in death, a holy no-sayer when the time for yes has passed: this is how he understands death and life.

That your dying may not be a reproach against humanity and the earth, my friends: this I ask of the honey of your souls.

In your dying, your spirit and your virtue should still glow around the earth like the afterglow of evening. Otherwise your dying has turned out badly.

This is how I myself want to die: so that you, my friends, may love the earth more for my sake. And I will become earth again, to find 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, my friends, I want to see you throw the golden ball! And so I linger a little longer on the earth. Forgive me for it!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXII. THE BESTOWING VIRTUE.

Zarathustra took leave of the town his heart was attached to, a town called “The Pied Cow.” Many people who called themselves his disciples followed him and kept him company. So they came to a crossroads. There Zarathustra told them that he now wanted to go on alone, for he liked walking alone.

As he was leaving, his disciples gave him a staff. On its golden handle, a serpent coiled around the sun. Zarathustra was delighted with the staff and leaned on it. Then he spoke to his disciples:

Tell me, how did gold come to have the highest value? Because it is rare and useless, gleaming and soft in its shine. It always gives itself away.

Gold came to have the highest value only as an image of the highest virtue. The glance of the giver gleams like gold. The shine of gold makes peace between moon and sun.

The highest virtue is rare and useless. It gleams, and its shine is soft. The highest virtue is a bestowing virtue, a virtue that gives.

Truly, I read you well, my disciples: like me, you strive for the bestowing virtue. What could you have in common with cats and wolves?

You thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves. That is why you thirst to gather every kind of wealth into your souls.

Your soul strives endlessly for treasures and jewels, because your virtue is endless in its desire to give.

You compel all things to flow toward you and into you, so that they will flow back out of your fountain as the gifts of your love.

Truly, such bestowing love must take possession of all values. But I call this selfishness healthy and holy.

There is another selfishness, a far too poor and hungry kind, which always wants to steal. It is the selfishness of the sick, a sickly selfishness.

It looks at everything that shines with a thief’s eye. It sizes up anyone who has abundance with the craving of hunger. And it always prowls around the tables of those who give.

Sickness speaks in such craving, and an invisible degeneration. The thieving craving of this selfishness speaks of a sick body.

Tell me, my brother: what do we consider bad, and worst of all? Is it not degeneration? And we always suspect degeneration wherever the giving soul is missing.

Our course leads upward, from one kind to a higher kind beyond it. But we are horrified by the degenerating attitude that says, “Everything for me.”

Our sense soars upward. In this it is an image of our body, an image of elevation. The names of the virtues are such images of elevation.

So the body moves through history, always becoming and fighting. And the spirit: what is it to the body? It is the herald of the body’s battles and victories, its companion and echo.

All the names of good and evil are images. They do not speak plainly; they only hint. Anyone who seeks knowledge from them is a fool!

Pay attention, my brothers, to every hour when your spirit wants to speak in images. That is where your virtue begins.

Then your body is elevated and lifted up. Its delight enraptures the spirit, so that the spirit becomes a creator, a valuer, a lover, and a benefactor of all things.

When your heart overflows, broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger to those who live in the lowlands: that is where your virtue begins.

When you are raised above praise and blame, and your will wants to command all things, as the will of one who loves: that is where your virtue begins.

When you despise comfortable things and the effeminate bed, and cannot lie down far enough from the effeminate: that is where your virtue begins.

When you will a single will, and when this turning of every need becomes your necessity: that is where your virtue begins.

Truly, it is a new good and evil! Truly, a new deep murmuring, and the voice of a new spring!

This new virtue is power. It is a ruling thought, and around it a subtle soul: a golden sun, with the serpent of knowledge coiled around it.

Here Zarathustra paused for a while and looked lovingly at his disciples. Then he went on speaking, and his voice had changed:

Stay true to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue! Let your giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. This I beg and urge you.

Do not let it fly away from earthly things and beat its wings against eternal walls! Ah, there has always been so much virtue that flew away!

Like me, lead the virtue that flew away back to the earth. Yes, lead it back to the body and to life, so that it may give the earth its meaning, a human meaning!

Until now, spirit and virtue have flown off and blundered a hundred times. Alas, all this delusion and blundering still lives in our bodies. There it has become body and will.

Until now, spirit and virtue have tried and failed a hundred times. Yes, man has been an experiment. Alas, much ignorance and error has become flesh in us!

Not only the reason of thousands of years breaks out in us, but also their madness. It is dangerous to be an heir.

We still fight step by step with the giant Chance. Until now, nonsense, the lack of sense, has ruled over all humankind.

Let your spirit and your virtue serve the sense of the earth, my brothers. Let the value of everything be set anew by you! That is why you must be fighters. That is why you must be creators!

The body purifies itself through knowing. By experimenting with knowledge, it raises itself up. For those who seek knowledge, all instincts become holy. For those who are elevated, the soul becomes joyful.

Physician, heal yourself: then you will heal your patient too. Let his best cure be to see with his own eyes someone who makes himself whole.

There are a thousand paths that no one has yet walked, a thousand kinds of health and hidden islands of life. Man and man’s world are still unexhausted and undiscovered.

Wake up and listen, you lonely ones! Winds blow from the future on secret wings, and good news is announced to sharp ears.

You lonely ones of today, you who have withdrawn: one day you will be a people. Out of you who have chosen yourselves, a chosen people will arise, and out of it, the Superman.

Truly, the earth will yet become a place of healing! Already a new scent surrounds it, a scent that brings salvation, and a new hope!

When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he paused like someone who has not yet said his last word. For a long time he weighed the staff doubtfully in his hand. At last he spoke, and his voice had changed:

Now I go alone, my disciples! You too go away now, and alone! This is what I want.

Truly, I advise you: leave me, and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! Better still, be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you.

The person who seeks knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

You repay a teacher poorly if you remain only a pupil. And why will you not pluck at my wreath?

You revere me. But what if your reverence collapses one day? Take care that a statue does not crush you!

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 looked for yourselves when you found me. All believers do this. That is why all belief counts for so little.

Now I tell you to lose me and find yourselves. Only when you have all denied me will I return to you.

Truly, my brothers, I will then look for my lost ones with different eyes. I will love you then with a different love.

And once again you will have become my friends, and children of a single hope. Then I will be with you for the third time, to celebrate the great noon with you.

The great noon is the moment when man stands in the middle of his path between animal and Superman. He celebrates his way toward evening as his highest hope, because 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.

“ALL GODS ARE DEAD: NOW WE WANT THE SUPERMAN TO LIVE.” Let this be our final will at the great noon!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. SECOND PART.

“—and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.

Truly, my brothers, I will then look for my lost ones with different eyes. I will love you then with a different love.” —ZARATHUSTRA, I., “The Bestowing Virtue.”

XXIII. THE CHILD WITH THE MIRROR.

After this, Zarathustra went back into the mountains, to the solitude of his cave, and withdrew from people. He waited like a sower who has scattered his seed.

But his soul grew impatient and filled with longing for those he loved, because 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 stay modest as a giver.

So months and years passed for the lonely one. Meanwhile his wisdom grew, and its very abundance caused him pain.

One morning, however, he woke before the rosy dawn. After lying on his bed thinking for a long time, he finally spoke to his heart:

Why was I so startled in my dream that I woke up? Did a child not come to me, carrying a mirror?

“O Zarathustra,” the child said to me, “look at yourself in the mirror!”

But when I looked into the mirror, I cried out, and my heart pounded. I did not see myself there, but a devil’s grimace and sneer.

Truly, I understand the dream’s meaning and warning all too well: my doctrine is in danger. Weeds want to be called wheat!

My enemies have grown powerful and have distorted the image of my teaching, so that my dearest ones must blush at the gifts I gave them.

My friends are lost. The hour has come for me to look for my lost ones!

With these words Zarathustra sprang up. He was not like someone in anguish seeking relief, but like a seer and a singer seized by the spirit. His eagle and serpent gazed at him in amazement, for a coming bliss spread across his face like the rosy dawn.

What has happened to me, my animals? said Zarathustra. Am I not transformed? Has bliss not come to me like a whirlwind?

My happiness is foolish, and it will 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 can go down to my friends again, and to my enemies too! Zarathustra can speak and give again, and show his best love to those he loves!

My impatient love overflows in streams, down toward sunrise and sunset. Out of silent mountains and storms of pain, my soul rushes into the valleys.

Too long have I longed and gazed into the distance. Too long has solitude owned me. So I have forgotten how to keep silent.

I have become pure speech, the roar of a brook falling from high rocks. I will hurl my speech down into the valleys.

And let the stream of my love rush into channels no one travels! How could a stream not find its way to the sea in the end?

It is true that there is a lake in me, secluded and sufficient to itself. But the stream of my love carries it along, down to the sea!

I walk new paths, and a new way of speaking comes to me. Like all creators, I have grown tired of the old tongues. My spirit will no longer walk on worn-out soles.

All speech runs too slowly for me. Into your chariot, storm, I leap! And I will whip even you with my spite!

Like a shout and a cheer, I will cross wide seas until I find the Happy Isles where my friends are staying,

and my enemies among them! How I love everyone now to whom I may simply speak! Even my enemies are part of my bliss.

And when I want to mount my wildest horse, my spear always helps me up best. It is my foot’s ever-ready servant:

the spear I hurl at my enemies! How grateful I am to my enemies that at last I may hurl it!

The tension in my cloud has been too great. Between the laughter of lightning bolts, I will throw showers of hail into the depths.

Then my chest will heave violently. Violently it will blow its storm over the mountains, and so it will find relief.

Truly, my happiness and my freedom come like a storm! But my enemies will think that the Evil One is raging over their heads.

Yes, you too, my friends, will be frightened by my wild wisdom. Perhaps you will run 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 gently! And we have already learned so much together!

My wild wisdom became pregnant on the lonely mountains. On the rough stones she gave birth to the youngest of her young.

Now she runs foolishly through the dry wilderness, searching and searching for soft grass—my old, wild wisdom!

On the soft grass of your hearts, my friends!—on your love, she would gladly lay down her dearest one!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXIV. IN THE HAPPY ISLES.

The figs are falling from the trees. They are good and sweet, and as they fall, their red skins split open. I am a north wind to ripe figs.

Like figs, these teachings fall to you, my friends. Now drink their juice and take in their sweet flesh! It is autumn all around, with a clear sky, and afternoon.

Look at the fullness all around us! And out of the midst of this overabundance, it is a delight to gaze out at distant seas.

Once, when people looked out at distant seas, they said “God.” But now I have taught you to say “Superman.”

God is a conjecture. But I do not want your conjecturing to reach any further than your creating will.

Could you create a god? Then, I beg you, be silent about all gods! But you could well create the Superman.

Perhaps not you yourselves, my brothers! But you could transform yourselves into fathers and ancestors of the Superman. Let that be your best creating!—

God is a conjecture. But I would like your conjecturing kept within the limits of what can be conceived.

Could you conceive a god? Then let the will to truth mean this to you: that everything be transformed into what humans can conceive, what humans can see, what humans can feel! You must follow your own perceptions all the way to the end!

And what you have called the world must first be created by you. It must itself become your reason, your image, your will, your love! And truly, this is for your happiness, you who seek knowledge!

And how would you endure life without that hope, you who seek knowledge? You could not have been born into the inconceivable, 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.

Yes, I drew that conclusion. But now it draws me.—

God is a conjecture. But who could drink all the bitterness of this conjecture without dying? Shall the creator be robbed of his faith, and the eagle of its flights into eagle heights?

God is a thought that makes everything straight crooked, and makes everything that stands reel. What? Would time be gone, and everything perishable be nothing but a lie?

To think this brings dizziness and vertigo to human limbs, and even nausea to the stomach. Truly, I call it the reeling sickness, to conjecture such a thing.

I call it evil and hostile to humanity: all this teaching about the One, the Full, the Unmoved, the Self-Sufficient, the Imperishable!

Everything imperishable—that is only a metaphor, and the poets lie too much.—

But the best metaphors should speak of time and becoming. They should be a praise and a justification of everything perishable!

Creating—that is the great redemption from suffering, and what makes life lighter. But for the creator to come into being, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.

Yes, there must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators! In this way you are the advocates and justifiers of everything perishable.

For the creator to be himself the newborn child, he must also be willing to be the one who gives birth, and to endure the pains of giving birth.

Truly, I have made my way through a hundred souls, through a hundred cradles and birth pangs. I have said many farewells. I know the heartbreaking final hours.

But my creating will, my fate, wills it so. Or, to tell you more honestly: precisely such a fate is what my will wills.

All feeling in me suffers and lies in prison. But my willing always comes to me as my liberator and comforter.

Willing liberates: that is the true teaching about will and freedom—so Zarathustra teaches you.

No longer willing, no longer valuing, no longer creating! Ah, may that great weakness always stay far from me!

Even in knowing, I feel only my will’s delight in begetting and becoming. And if there is innocence in my knowledge, it is because there is a will to beget in it.

This will lured me away from God and gods. What would there be to create if there were—gods!

But my ardent creative will drives me again and again toward human beings, the way the hammer is driven toward the stone.

Ah, you humans, an image sleeps for me in the stone, the image of my visions! Ah, that it must sleep in the hardest, ugliest stone!

Now my hammer rages mercilessly against its prison. Fragments fly from the stone: what is that to me?

I will finish it. For a shadow came to me—the stillest and lightest of all things once came to me!

The beauty of the Superman came to me as a shadow. Ah, my brothers! What do the gods matter to me now!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXV. THE PITIFUL.

My friends, a mocking remark has been made about your friend: “Look at Zarathustra! Doesn’t he walk among us as if among animals?”

But it is better put this way: “The one who knows walks among human beings as among animals.”

To the one who knows, man himself is the animal with red cheeks.

How did that happen to him? Isn’t it because he has had to feel ashamed too often?

O my friends! This is what the one who knows says: shame, shame, shame—that is the history of man!

And for that reason the noble person commands himself not to put others to shame. In the presence of all who suffer, he commands himself to be modest.

Truly, I do not like them, the merciful ones whose happiness lies in their pity. They are far too lacking in modesty.

If I must feel pity, I don’t like to be called pitying. And if I do feel it, I prefer to feel it from a distance.

I also prefer to cover my head and flee before I am recognized. And I tell you to do the same, my friends!

May my destiny always lead untroubled people like you across my path, people with whom I may share hope, a meal, and honey!

Truly, I have done this and that for the afflicted. But I always seemed to do something better when I had learned to enjoy myself better.

Since humanity came into being, man has enjoyed himself too little. That alone, my brothers, is our original sin!

And when we learn to enjoy ourselves better, we best unlearn how to hurt others and how to devise ways of hurting them.

That is why I wash the hand that has helped the sufferer. That is why I also wipe my soul clean.

For when I saw the sufferer suffering, I was ashamed on account of his shame. And when I helped him, I wounded his pride badly.

Great obligations do not make people grateful, but vengeful. And when a small kindness is not forgotten, it becomes a gnawing worm.

“Be reluctant to accept! Show distinction in how you accept!”—that is my advice to those who have nothing to give.

I, however, am a giver. I give gladly, as a friend to friends. But strangers and the poor may pick the fruit from my tree for themselves; that causes less shame.

Beggars, though, should be done away with entirely! Truly, it is annoying to give to them, and it is annoying not to give to them.

And the same goes for sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: the sting of conscience teaches one to sting.

The worst things, however, are petty thoughts. Truly, it is better to have done evil than to have thought pettily!

Of course, you say: “Taking pleasure in petty evils spares one many a great evil deed.” But here one should not want to be sparing.

The evil deed is like a boil. It itches, irritates, and breaks out—it speaks honestly.

“Look, I am disease,” says the evil deed: that is its honesty.

But the petty thought is like an infection. It creeps and hides and wants to be nowhere—until the whole body is rotten and withered by the petty infection.

But to the one who is possessed by a devil, I would whisper this word in his ear: “Better for you to raise your devil to its full size! Even for you there is still a path to greatness!”—

Ah, my brothers! We know a little too much about everyone! And many a person becomes transparent to us, yet we still cannot see through him at all.

It is hard to live among people, because keeping silent is so hard.

And it is not the person who offends us whom we treat most unfairly, but the person who does not concern us at all.

But if you have a suffering friend, be a resting place for his suffering—yet a hard bed, a camp bed. That is how you will serve him best.

And if a friend wrongs you, 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 rises above even forgiveness and pity.

One should keep a firm hold on one’s heart. For once one lets it go, how quickly one’s head runs off as well!

Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than among the pitying? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the pitying?

Woe to all who love without having a height that stands above their pity!

Thus the devil once spoke to me: “Even God has his hell: it is his love for man.”

And recently I heard him say these words: “God is dead. God died of his pity for man.”—

So be warned against pity: from there a heavy cloud is still coming over humanity! 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 seeks—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.

XXVI. THE PRIESTS.

One day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples and spoke these words to them:

“Here are priests. Although they are my enemies, pass them quietly and with sleeping swords!

Even among them there are heroes. Many of them have suffered too much—and so they want to make others suffer.

They are bad enemies: nothing is more vengeful than their meekness. And whoever touches them easily soils himself.

But my blood is related to theirs. And even so, I want to see my blood honored in theirs.”—

And when they had passed by, a pain came over Zarathustra. But he had not struggled with the pain for long before he began to speak this way:

My heart goes out to those priests. They also offend my taste; but that matters least of all to me, since I am among people.

But I suffer and have suffered with them. To me they are prisoners and branded men. The one they call Savior put them in chains—

In chains of false values and empty words! Oh, if only someone would save them from their Savior!

Once, when the sea was tossing them about, they thought they had landed on an island. But look, it was a sleeping monster!

False values and empty words: these are the worst monsters for mortals. The fate within them sleeps and waits a long time.

But at last it comes, wakes up, and devours and swallows whatever has built shelters upon it.

Oh, just look at the shelters these priests have built for themselves! They call their sweet-smelling caves churches!

Oh, that falsified light, that stale, musty air! Where the soul is not allowed to fly up to its height!

But their faith commands: “On your knees, up the stairs, you sinners!”

Truly, I would rather see someone shameless than the twisted eyes of their shame and devotion!

Who built themselves such caves and stairs of penance? Was it not those who wanted to hide, and who were ashamed under the clear sky?

And only when the clear sky looks in again through ruined roofs, and down onto grass and red poppies on ruined walls, will I turn my heart once more to the dwellings of this God.

They called God whatever opposed and tormented them. And truly, there was much heroic spirit in their worship!

And they knew no way to love their God except by nailing human beings to the cross!

They meant to live as corpses, and they dressed their corpses in black. Even in their speech I still taste the foul flavor of burial vaults.

And whoever lives near them lives near black ponds, where the toad sings its song with sweet solemnity.

They would have to sing better songs for me to believe in their Savior. His disciples would have to look more redeemed to me!

I would like to see them naked, for beauty alone should preach repentance. But whom would that disguised misery convince!

Truly, their saviors themselves did not come from freedom and from freedom’s seventh heaven! Truly, they themselves never walked on the carpets of knowledge!

The spirit of those saviors was made of gaps. But into every gap they had put their illusion, their stopgap, which they called God.

Their spirit drowned in their pity. And whenever they swelled and overflowed with pity, a great folly always floated to the surface.

Eagerly and with shouting, they drove their flock over their footbridge, as if there were only one footbridge to the future! Truly, those shepherds too still belonged to the flock!

Those shepherds had small spirits and roomy souls. But, my brothers, what small territories even the roomiest souls have been until now!

They wrote signs in blood along the way they went, and their folly taught that truth is proved by blood.

But blood is the very worst witness to truth. Blood poisons the purest teaching and turns it into delusion and hatred of the heart.

And when someone walks through fire for his teaching—what does that prove! Truly, it is more when one’s own teaching comes out of one’s own burning!

Sultry heart and cold head: where these two meet, the blusterer arises, the “Savior.”

Truly, there have been greater ones, and higher-born ones, than those the people call Saviors, those rapturous blusterers! And you must be saved by ones still greater than any of the Saviors, my brothers, if you want to find the way to freedom!

There has never yet been a Superman. I have seen both of them naked, the greatest human being and the smallest:—

They are still all too similar to each other. Truly, even the greatest I found—all too human!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXVII. THE VIRTUOUS.

To senses that are lazy and half-asleep, one must speak with thunder and heavenly fireworks.

But beauty’s voice speaks gently: it reaches only the most awakened souls.

Today my shield trembled gently and laughed at me; it was beauty’s holy laughter and thrill. At you, you virtuous ones, my beauty laughed today. And its voice came to me like this: “They want—to be paid on top of it!”

You want to be paid on top of it, you virtuous ones! You want a reward for virtue, heaven in exchange for earth, and eternity in exchange for your today?

And now you reproach me for teaching that there is no one who hands out rewards, 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 slipped into the very foundation of things. And now they have been slipped even into the foundation of your souls, you virtuous ones!

But like a boar’s snout, my word will root up the foundation of your souls; you will call me a plowshare.

All the secrets of your heart will be brought into the light. And when you lie in the sun, rooted up and broken, your falsehood will also be separated from your truth.

For this is your truth: you are TOO PURE for the filth of these words: vengeance, punishment, recompense, retribution.

You love your virtue as a mother loves her child; but who ever heard of a mother wanting to be paid for her love?

Your virtue is your dearest Self. The ring’s thirst is in you: every ring struggles and turns in order to reach itself again.

And every work of your virtue is like a star that goes out. Its light is always still on its way, still traveling—and when will it ever stop traveling?

So the light of your virtue is still on its way, even when its work is done. Even if the work is forgotten and dead, its ray of light still lives and travels.

That your virtue is your Self, and not something outward, a skin or a cloak: that is the truth from the foundation of your souls, you virtuous ones!—

But to be sure, there are those for whom virtue means writhing under the whip: and you have listened too much to their crying!

And there are others who call it virtue when their vices grow lazy. Once their hatred and jealousy let their limbs relax, their “justice” comes alive 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 eyes glow, and the more ardent their longing for their God.

Ah, their crying too has reached your ears, you virtuous ones: “What I am NOT—that, that is God to me, and virtue!”

And there are others who move along heavily and creakingly, like carts hauling stones downhill. They talk a great deal about dignity and virtue—the brake that holds them back, they call virtue!

And there are others who are like eight-day clocks once they are wound up: they tick, and they want people to call the ticking—virtue.

Truly, these amuse me. Wherever I find such clocks, I will wind them up with my mockery, and they will even whirr from it!

And others are proud of their scrap of righteousness, and for its sake they do violence to everything, so that the world is drowned in their unrighteousness.

Ah, how awkwardly the word “virtue” comes out of their mouths! And when they say, “I am just,” it always sounds like, “I am just—revenged!”

With their virtues they want to scratch out their enemies’ eyes; and they raise themselves up only in order to bring others down.

And again there are those who sit in their swamp and speak like this from among the bulrushes: “Virtue—that means sitting quietly in the swamp.

We bite no one, and we get out of the way of anyone who wants to bite; and on every matter we hold the opinion we are given.”

And again there are those who love poses, and think virtue is a kind of pose. Their knees are always worshiping, and their hands are hymns of praise to virtue, but their hearts know nothing of it.

And again there are those who think it virtuous to say, “Virtue is necessary”; but in the end all they believe is that policemen are necessary.

And many a person who cannot see the loftiness in people calls it virtue to see their baseness far too well. In this way he calls his evil eye virtue.—

And some want to be edified and lifted up, and call that virtue; and others want to be thrown down—and call that virtue too.

And so almost everyone thinks they have a share in virtue; at the very least, everyone claims to be an authority 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!”—

He came so that you, my friends, might grow weary of the old words you have learned from the fools and liars. He came so that you might grow weary of the words “reward,” “retribution,” “punishment,” “righteous vengeance.”—

He came so that you might grow weary of saying: “An action is good because it is unselfish.”

Ah, my friends! That YOUR very Self be in your action, as the mother is in the child: let that be YOUR formula of virtue!

Truly, I have taken from you a hundred formulas and your virtue’s favorite toys; and now you scold me, as children scold.

They were playing by the sea. Then a wave came and swept their toys into the deep: and now they cry.

But the same wave will bring them new toys, and spread new speckled shells before them!

So they will be comforted; and like them, my friends, you too shall have your comfort—and new speckled shells!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXVIII. THE RABBLE.

Life is a well of delight; but wherever the rabble drink too, all fountains are poisoned.

I am well disposed toward everything clean; but I hate to see the grinning mouths and the thirst of the unclean.

They cast their eyes down into the fountain: and now their hateful smile glances up at me out of the fountain.

They have poisoned the holy water with their lust. And when they called their filthy dreams delight, they poisoned the words too.

The flame grows indignant when they bring their damp hearts to the fire; the spirit itself bubbles and smokes when the rabble come near the fire.

In their hands the fruit turns sickly-sweet and overripe. Their gaze makes the fruit tree unsteady and withered at the top.

And many who have turned away from life have only turned away from the rabble: they hated sharing fountain, flame, and fruit with them.

And many who went into the wilderness and suffered thirst among beasts of prey simply did not want to sit at the cistern with filthy camel drivers.

And many who came as destroyers, like a hailstorm over all the grainfields, only wanted to plant a foot in the rabble’s jaws and so stop up their throat.

And the mouthful that has choked me most is not the knowledge that life itself requires enmity and death and crosses of torture:—

But I once asked a question, and almost suffocated on it: What? Is the rabble also NECESSARY for life?

Are poisoned fountains necessary, and stinking fires, and filthy dreams, and maggots in the bread of life?

Not my hatred but my loathing gnawed hungrily at my life! Ah, I often grew weary of the spirit when I found that even the rabble had 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 who spoke a foreign tongue, with my ears stopped, so that the language of their haggling and their bargaining for power might stay foreign to me.

And holding my nose, I walked gloomily through all yesterdays and todays. Truly, all yesterdays and todays smell bad of the scribbling rabble!

Like a cripple who has gone deaf, blind, and mute—so I lived for a long time, so as not to live with the power-rabble, the scribbler-rabble, and the pleasure-rabble.

My spirit climbed stairs with effort and caution; small handouts of delight were its refreshment; life crept along on a staff with the blind man.

What has happened to me? How did I free myself from loathing? Who made my eyes young again? How did I fly to the height where no rabble sit at the wells anymore?

Did my loathing itself give me wings and the power to divine hidden springs? Truly, I had to fly to the loftiest height to find the well of delight again!

Oh, I have found it, my brothers! Here on the loftiest height the well of delight bubbles up for me! And there is a life at whose waters none of the rabble drink with me!

You flow almost too violently for me, fountain of delight! And often you empty the cup again in your eagerness to fill it!

And yet I must learn to approach you more modestly: my heart still flows toward you far too violently:—

My heart, on which my summer burns, my short, hot, melancholy, overhappy summer: how my summer heart longs for your coolness!

Gone, the lingering distress of my spring! Gone, the spite of my snowflakes in June! I have become summer entirely, and summer noon!

A summer on the loftiest height, 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 too high and too steep here for all the unclean and their thirst.

Just cast your pure eyes into the well of my delight, my friends! How could that make it muddy? It will laugh back at you with ITS purity.

We build our nest in the tree of the future; eagles shall bring food in their beaks to us solitary ones!

Truly, it is no food that the impure could share! They would think they were devouring fire, and burn their mouths!

Truly, we keep no dwellings ready here for the impure! Our happiness would be an ice cave to their bodies, and to their spirits!

And like strong winds we will live above them, neighbors of the eagles, neighbors of the snow, neighbors of the sun: that is how strong winds live.

And like a wind I will one day blow among them, and with my spirit take away their spirit’s breath: so wills my future.

Truly, Zarathustra is a strong wind to all low places. And he gives this advice to his enemies, and to everything that spits and spews: “Take care not to spit AGAINST the wind!”—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXIX. THE TARANTULAS.

Look, this is the tarantula’s den! Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Here hangs its web: touch it, so that it trembles.

Here comes the tarantula, willingly enough: Welcome, tarantula! Black on your back is your triangle, your emblem; and I also know what is in your soul.

Revenge is in your soul: wherever you bite, a black scab grows. With revenge, your poison makes the soul dizzy!

So I speak to you in a parable, you who make the soul dizzy, you preachers of EQUALITY! To me you are tarantulas, secretly vengeful ones!

But I will soon drag your hiding places into the light: that is why I laugh in your face with my laughter of the heights.

That is why I tear at your web: so that your rage lures you out of your den of lies, and your revenge leaps out from behind your word “justice.”

For THAT HUMANITY BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE: that, for me, is the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.

But the tarantulas want it otherwise. “Let justice mean precisely this: that the world fills with the storms of our vengeance”—so they say to one another.

“We will take vengeance and heap insult on all who are not like us”—so the tarantula-hearts vow.

“And ‘Will to Equality’—that itself shall from now on be the name for virtue; and against everything that has power we will raise an outcry!”

You preachers of equality, it is the tyrant-madness of impotence that cries out in you for “equality.” This is how your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves in words of virtue!

Wounded conceit and suppressed envy, perhaps your fathers’ conceit and envy: in you they break out as the flame and frenzy of vengeance.

What the father hid comes out in the son; and I have often found the father’s secret revealed in the son.

They look like inspired people, but it is not the heart that inspires them—it is vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit but envy that makes them so.

Their jealousy leads them onto the paths of thinkers too. And this is the mark of their jealousy: they always go too far, until at last their exhaustion has to lie down and sleep on the snow.

Vengeance sounds in all their complaints, malice in all their praises; and being a judge seems to them bliss.

But this is my advice to you, my friends: mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is powerful!

They are people of bad breed and descent; the hangman and the bloodhound peer out of their faces.

Mistrust all 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 just,” do not forget that the only thing they lack to be Pharisees is—power!

My friends, I will not be mixed up and confused with others.

There are those who preach my teaching about life and are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas.

These poison-spiders speak in favor of life, even though they sit in their den, withdrawn from life. They do so because they want to cause injury by it.

They want to injure those who hold power now, for among those people the preaching of death is still most at home.

If things were otherwise, the tarantulas would teach otherwise. And they themselves were once the best slanderers of the world and burners of heretics.

I will not be mixed up and confused with these preachers of equality. For this is what justice says TO ME: “Men are not equal.”

Nor shall they become equal! What would my love of the Superman be, if I said otherwise?

On a thousand bridges and piers they shall crowd toward the future, and there shall always be more war and inequality among them. My great love makes me say this!

In their hostilities they shall invent images and phantoms. And with those images and phantoms they shall yet fight the supreme fight against one another!

Good and evil, rich and poor, high and low, and all the names of values: these shall be weapons, and ringing signs that life must surpass itself again and again!

Life itself wants to build itself upward with columns and stairs. 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 difference between steps and between climbers! Life strives to rise, and in rising to surpass itself.

Just look, my friends! Here, where the tarantula’s den is, the ruins of an ancient temple rise up. Look at it with enlightened eyes!

Truly, whoever once raised his thoughts aloft here in stone knew the secret of life as well as the wisest do!

He teaches us here, in the plainest parable, that there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and supremacy.

How divinely vault and arch contrast with each other here in their struggle! How they strive against each other with light and shadow, these divinely striving ones!

So let us also be enemies, steadfast and beautiful, my friends! Divinely we will strive AGAINST one another!

Alas! The tarantula, my old enemy, has bitten me too! Divinely steadfast and beautiful, it has bitten me on the finger!

“There must be punishment, and justice,” it thinks. “He shall not sing songs in honor of enmity here for nothing!”

Yes, it has taken its revenge! And alas, now it will make my soul dizzy with revenge too!

But so that I do NOT become dizzy, tie me fast to this pillar, my friends! I would rather be a pillar-saint, one of those hermits who lived atop a column, than a whirl of vengeance!

Truly, Zarathustra is no cyclone or whirlwind. And if he is a dancer, he is certainly not a tarantula-dancer!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXX. THE FAMOUS WISE ONES.

You have served the people and the people’s superstition, NOT the truth, all you famous wise ones! And that is exactly why the people revered you.

That is also why they tolerated your unbelief: to the people it was a joke and a harmless side path. In the same way a master gives his slaves free rein and even enjoys their insolence.

But the one the people hate, as dogs hate the wolf, is the free spirit. He is the enemy of chains, the one who does not worship, the dweller in the woods.

The people have always called it their “sense of right” to hunt him out of his lair. They still set their sharpest-toothed dogs on him.

“For the truth is there, where the people are! Woe, woe to those who seek!” This cry has echoed through all time.

You wanted to justify your people in their reverence, and you called that “Will to Truth,” you famous wise ones!

And your heart has always told itself: “I came from the people, and from them the voice of God also came to me.”

As advocates of the people, you have always been stubborn and cunning, like the donkey.

And many a powerful man who wanted to get along well with the people has harnessed a donkey in front of his horses: a famous wise man.

And now, you famous wise ones, I would have you finally throw off the lion’s skin entirely!

Throw off the skin of the beast of prey, the spotted skin, and the tangled mane of the investigator, the searcher, and the conqueror!

Ah! Before I could learn to believe in your “conscientiousness,” you would first have to break your will to revere.

I call conscientious the one who goes into God-forsaken wildernesses and has broken his reverent heart.

In the yellow sand, burned by the sun, he no doubt peers thirstily at the islands rich in springs, where life rests under shady trees.

But his thirst does not persuade him to become like those comfortable ones. For where there are oases, there are also idols.

Hungry, fierce, lonely, God-forsaken: that is how the lion-will wants itself to be.

Free from the happiness of slaves, released from gods and worship, fearless and fear-inspiring, great and lonely: such is the will of the conscientious.

The conscientious, the free spirits, have always lived in the wilderness as its lords. But in the cities live the well-fed, famous wise ones: the beasts of burden.

For they always pull, like donkeys, the PEOPLE’S carts!

Not that I reproach them for this. But they remain servants and harnessed animals, even when they glitter in golden harness.

And they have often been good servants, worth their wages. For virtue says: “If you must be a servant, find the one to whom your service is most useful!

Your master’s spirit and virtue shall grow because you are his servant. That way you yourself will grow along with his spirit and virtue!”

And truly, you famous wise ones, you servants of the people! You yourselves have grown with the people’s spirit and virtue, and the people have grown through you! I say this to your honor!

But even with your virtues you remain the people to me: the people with dim eyes, the people who do not know what SPIRIT is!

Spirit is life that cuts into life itself. Through its own torment it increases its own knowledge. Did you know that before?

And the spirit’s happiness is this: to be anointed and consecrated with tears as a sacrificial victim. Did you know that before?

And the blindness of the blind man, his seeking and groping, shall yet bear witness to the power of the sun he gazed into. Did you know that before?

And the one who understands shall learn to BUILD with mountains! It is a small thing for the spirit to move mountains. Did you know that before?

You know only the sparks of the spirit. But you do not see the anvil that it is, or the cruelty of its hammer!

Truly, you do not know the spirit’s pride! But you could endure the spirit’s humility even less, if it ever wanted to speak!

And you have never been able to throw your spirit into a pit of snow. You are not hot enough for that! So you also do not know the delight of its coldness.

In every way, though, you treat the spirit too familiarly. Out of wisdom you have often made a poorhouse and a hospital for bad poets.

You are not eagles, so you have never known the happiness of the spirit’s terror. And whoever is not a bird should not camp above abysses.

You seem lukewarm to me. But all deep knowledge flows coldly. The innermost springs of the spirit are ice-cold: a refreshment for hot hands and for those who act.

There you stand, respectable and stiff, with straight backs, you famous wise ones! No strong wind or will drives you.

Have you never seen a sail crossing the sea, rounded and swollen, trembling with the force of the wind?

Like that sail, trembling with the force of the spirit, my wisdom crosses the sea: my wild wisdom!

But you servants of the people, you famous wise ones: how COULD you go with me!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXXI. THE NIGHT-SONG.

It is night: now all leaping fountains speak more loudly. And my soul too is a leaping fountain.

It is night: only now do all the songs of lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover.

Something unsatisfied, unsatisfiable, is in me, and it longs to be voiced. A craving for love is in me, and it speaks the language of love itself.

I am light: ah, if only I were night! But this is my loneliness, that I am surrounded by light!

Ah, if only I were dark and of the night! How I would suck at the breasts of light!

And I would bless you yourselves, you twinkling little stars and glowworms up above! I would rejoice in the gifts of your 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 the one who receives. And I have often dreamed that stealing must be more blessed than receiving.

This is my poverty: that my hand never stops giving. This is my envy: that I see waiting eyes and the brightened 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 yet touch their soul? There is a gap between giving and receiving, and the smallest gap is the last to be bridged.

A hunger grows out of my beauty. I would like to hurt those I give light to; I would like to rob those I have given gifts to. That is how I hunger for wickedness.

I would withdraw my hand when another hand is already reaching for it. I would hesitate like the waterfall that hesitates even as it plunges. That is how I hunger for wickedness!

Such revenge my abundance dreams up. Such mischief wells up out of my loneliness.

My happiness in giving died in the giving. My virtue grew weary of itself through its own abundance!

Whoever always gives is in danger of losing his sense of shame. Whoever always hands things out finds that hand and heart grow callused from the very 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 I have filled.

Where have the tears of my eye gone, and the softness of my heart? Oh, the loneliness of all who give! Oh, the silence of all who shine!

Many suns circle in empty space. To everything dark they speak with their light, but to me they are silent.

Oh, this is the hostility of light toward whatever shines: pitilessly it goes its way.

Unfair in its innermost heart to whatever shines, cold toward other suns: that is how every sun travels.

Like a storm the suns fly along their courses: that is their traveling. They follow their relentless will: that is their coldness.

Oh, it is only you, you dark ones, you creatures of night, who draw warmth from the shining ones! Oh, only you drink milk and refreshment from the udders of light!

Ah, there is ice around me, and my hand burns from the iciness! Ah, there is thirst in me, and it pants for your thirst!

It is night: alas, that I must be light! And thirst for what belongs to night! And loneliness!

It is night: now my longing bursts out of me like a fountain. I long to speak.

It is night: now all leaping fountains speak more loudly. And my soul too is a leaping fountain.

It is night: now all the songs of lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover.

Thus sang Zarathustra.

XXXII. THE DANCE-SONG.

One evening Zarathustra and his disciples were walking through the forest. While looking for a spring, he came upon a green meadow, peacefully surrounded by trees and bushes, where girls were dancing together.

As soon as the girls recognized Zarathustra, they stopped dancing. But Zarathustra came up to them with a friendly expression and spoke these words:

Don’t stop dancing, you lovely girls! No spoilsport with an evil eye has come to you, 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-footed ones, be hostile to divine dances? Or to girls’ feet with fine ankles?

True, I am a forest and a night of dark trees. But whoever is not afraid of my darkness will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

And he may even find the little god whom girls love best. He lies quietly beside the spring, with his eyes closed.

Truly, he fell asleep in broad daylight, the lazybones! Did he perhaps chase butterflies too much?

Don’t scold me, you beautiful dancers, if I discipline the little god a bit! He will certainly 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 for his dance:

A dance-song and a satire on the spirit of gravity, my highest and most powerful devil, who is said to be “lord of the world.”

And this is the song that Zarathustra sang while Cupid and the girls danced together:

Not long ago I gazed into your eye, O Life! And there I seemed to sink into the unfathomable.

But you pulled me out with a golden fishing hook. You laughed mockingly when I called you unfathomable.

“That is how all fish talk,” you said. “Whatever THEY cannot fathom is unfathomable.

But I am only changeable, and wild, and in every way a woman, and not a virtuous one,

even though you men call me ‘the profound one,’ or ‘the faithful one,’ ‘the eternal one,’ ‘the mysterious one.’

But you men always give us your own virtues. Alas, you virtuous ones!”

So she laughed, the unbelievable one. But I never believe her or her laughter when she speaks ill of herself.

And when I spoke face to face with my wild Wisdom, she said to me angrily: “You will, you crave, you love: that is the only reason you PRAISE Life!”

Then I almost answered her angrily and told the angry one the truth. There is no angrier way to answer than to “tell the truth” to one’s own Wisdom.

For this is how things stand among the three of us. In my heart I love only Life, and truly, I love her most when I hate her!

But I am fond of Wisdom, often too fond, because she reminds me so strongly of Life!

She has Life’s eyes, her laugh, and even her little golden fishing rod. Is it my fault that the two are so alike?

And once, when Life asked me, “Who is she, then, this Wisdom?” I answered eagerly: “Ah, yes! Wisdom!

People thirst for her and are never satisfied. They look at her through veils; they grasp at her through nets.

Is she beautiful? How should I know! But even the oldest carp still take her bait.

She is changeable and willful. I have often seen her bite her lip and drag the comb against the grain of her hair.

Perhaps she is wicked and false, and a woman through and through. But it is exactly when she speaks ill of herself that she is most seductive.”

When I said this to Life, she laughed maliciously and closed her eyes. “Whom are you talking about?” she said. “Perhaps about me?

And even if you were right, is it proper to say that to my face, like this? But now, please, talk about your Wisdom too!”

Ah, and now you have opened your eyes again, O beloved Life! And once again I seemed to sink into the unfathomable.

Thus sang Zarathustra. But when the dance was over and the young women had gone, he grew sad.

“The sun set long ago,” he said at last. “The meadow is damp, and a coolness is coming from the forest.

Some unknown presence is around me, gazing thoughtfully. What! You are still alive, Zarathustra?

Why? For what? By what means? Where to? Where? How? Isn’t it foolish to go on living?

Ah, my friends, it is the evening that questions me like this. Forgive me my sadness!

Evening has come. Forgive me that evening has come!”

Thus sang Zarathustra.

XXXIII. THE GRAVE-SONG.

“There is the island of graves, the silent island. The graves of my youth are there too. I will carry an evergreen wreath of life there.”

With this resolve in my heart, I sailed across the sea.

Oh, you sights and scenes of my youth! Oh, all you glimpses of love, you divine, fleeting glimpses! How could you die so soon for me? Today I think of you as my dead.

From you, my dearest dead, a sweet fragrance comes to me, one that opens and melts the heart. Truly, it shakes and opens the heart of the lonely seafarer.

I am still the richest and most enviable of all, I, the loneliest one! For I have possessed you, and you possess me still. Tell me: who has ever had such rosy apples fall to him from the tree as I have?

I am still the heir of your love and its inheritance, blooming in your memory with many-colored, wild-growing virtues, O my dearest ones!

Ah, we were made to stay close to one another, you kind and strange marvels. You did not come to me and my longing like timid birds. No, you came as trusting ones to one who trusted!

Yes, you were made for faithfulness, as I am, and for tender eternities. Yet now I must name you by your faithlessness, you divine glances and fleeting glimpses. I have not yet learned any other name for you.

Truly, you died too early for me, 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 singing birds of my hopes! Yes, it was at you, my dearest ones, that malice always shot its arrows, in order to hit my heart!

And they hit it! Because you were always dearest to me, my possession and what possessed me, for that very reason you had to die young, and far too early!

They shot the arrow at my most vulnerable point: at you, whose skin is like down, or more like a smile that dies at a single glance!

But I will say this to my enemies: What is any murder compared with what you have done to me!

You did me a worse wrong than any murder. You took from me what can never be recovered. This is what I say to you, my enemies!

Did you not kill the visions and dearest marvels of my youth? You took my playmates from me, those blessed spirits! To their memory I lay down this wreath and this curse.

This curse upon you, my enemies! Did you not cut my eternity short, as a note dies away on a cold night? It came to me barely for the twinkle of divine eyes, a fleeting glimpse!

Once, in a happy hour, my purity said: “Everything shall be divine to me.”

Then you haunted me with foul phantoms. Ah, where has that happy hour fled now?

“All days shall be holy to me,” the wisdom of my youth once said. Truly, that was the language of a joyful wisdom!

But then you, my enemies, stole my nights and sold them to sleepless torment. Ah, where has that joyful wisdom fled now?

Once I longed for happy omens. Then you led a monstrous owl across my path, an evil sign. Ah, where did my tender longing flee then?

Once I vowed to renounce all disgust. Then you turned those nearest and dearest to me into festering sores. Ah, where did my noblest vow flee then?

Once I walked blessed paths like a blind man. Then you threw filth in the blind man’s way, and now he is disgusted by the old footpath.

And when I accomplished my hardest task and celebrated the triumph of my victories, you made those who loved me cry out that it was then that I hurt them most.

Truly, it was always your doing. You made my best honey bitter to me, and the labor of my best bees.

To my charity you always sent the most impudent beggars. Around my compassion you always crowded the incurably shameless. In this way you wounded the faith of my virtue.

And when I offered up what was holiest to me as a sacrifice, your “piety” immediately set its fatter offerings beside it, so that my holiest thing suffocated in the fumes of your fat.

And once I wanted to dance as I had never danced before. I wanted to dance beyond all the heavens. Then you seduced my favorite minstrel.

And he struck up a dreadful, gloomy tune. Alas, he blared in my ear like a mournful horn!

Murderous minstrel, instrument of evil, most innocent instrument! I was already standing ready for the best dance of all, and then you killed my rapture with your notes!

Only in dance do I know how to speak the parable of the highest things. And now my greatest parable has remained unspoken in my limbs!

My highest hope has remained unspoken and unfulfilled! And all the visions and consolations of my youth have died for me!

How did I ever bear it? How did I survive and overcome such wounds? How did my soul rise again out of those tombs?

Yes, there is something in me that cannot be wounded or buried, something that could split rocks apart. It is called my will. It goes its way silently, unchanged through the years.

It will walk its path on my feet, my old Will. Its nature is hard-hearted and invulnerable.

I am invulnerable only in my heel. You live there always, and you stay true to yourself, you most patient one! You have always burst every shackle of the tomb!

In you still lives everything in my youth that went unfulfilled. You sit here, as life and youth, full of hope on the yellow ruins of graves.

Yes, you are still the destroyer of all graves for me. Hail to you, my Will! And only where there are graves are there resurrections.

Thus sang Zarathustra.

XXXIV. SELF-SURPASSING.

“Will to Truth”: is that what you call the thing that drives you and sets you burning, you wisest ones?

I call your will a will to make all being thinkable!

You want to make all being thinkable, because you doubt, with good reason, whether it is already thinkable.

But it must adapt and bend itself to you! That is what your will wants. Being must become smooth and subject to the spirit, as its mirror and reflection.

That is your whole will, you wisest ones: a Will to Power. And it remains so even when you speak of good and evil, and of valuations.

You still want to create a world before which you can kneel. That is your ultimate hope and ecstasy.

The ignorant, of course, the people, are like a river on which a boat floats along. And in the boat sit the valuations, solemn and disguised.

You have set your will and your valuations on the river of becoming. What the people believe to be good and evil reveals to me an old Will to Power.

It was you, you wisest ones, who put such passengers in this boat and gave them pomp and proud names: you and your ruling Will!

Now the river carries your boat onward. It must carry it. It matters little if the rough wave foams and angrily resists its keel!

The river is not your danger, you wisest ones, nor the end of your good and evil. Your danger is that Will itself, the Will to Power: the inexhaustible, procreating will of life.

But so that you may understand my gospel of good and evil, I will tell you my gospel of life and of the nature of all living things.

I followed the living thing. I walked the broadest and the narrowest paths to learn its nature.

With a hundred-faced mirror I caught its glance when its mouth was closed, so that its eye might speak to me. And its eye spoke to me.

But wherever I found living things, I also heard the language of obedience. All living things are obeying things.

The second thing I heard was this: whatever cannot obey itself is commanded. That is the nature of living things.

The third thing I heard was this: commanding is harder than obeying. This is not only because the one who commands bears the burden of all who obey, and because this burden can easily crush him.

All commanding seemed to me an experiment and a risk. Whenever a living thing commands, it puts itself at risk.

Yes, even when it commands itself, it must pay for its commanding. It must become the judge, the avenger, and the victim of its own law.

How does this happen? I asked myself. What persuades the living thing to obey, and to command, and even to be obedient while commanding?

Listen now to my word, you wisest ones! Test it seriously, and see whether I have crept into the heart of life itself, and into the roots of its heart!

Wherever I found a living thing, I found Will to Power. Even in the will of the servant I found the will to be master.

That the weaker should serve the stronger: his own will persuades him of this, because he wants to be master over someone weaker still. That one delight he will not give up.

And just as the lesser surrenders to the greater so that he may have delight and power over the least of all, so even the greatest surrenders himself and stakes his life for the sake of power.

This is the surrender of the greatest: to run risk and danger, and to play dice with death.

And where there is sacrifice and service and loving glances, there too is the will to be master. The weaker then slips by hidden paths into the fortress, into the very heart of the mightier one, and there steals power.

And Life herself told me this secret. “Behold,” she said, “I am that which must always surpass itself.

Of course, you call it the will to procreate, or the drive toward a goal, toward what is higher, more distant, more manifold. But all of that is one and the same secret.

I would rather perish than renounce this one thing. And truly, wherever there is perishing and the falling of leaves, see, there Life sacrifices itself for power!

I must be struggle and becoming and purpose and conflicting purposes. Ah, whoever guesses my will also guesses on what crooked paths it must walk!

Whatever I create, and however much I love it, I must soon turn against it and against my love. That is what my will wills.

And even you, seeker of knowledge, are only a path and footstep of my will. Truly, my Will to Power walks even on the feet of your Will to Truth!

He certainly missed the truth who shot the formula ‘will to existence’ at it. That will does not exist!

For what does not exist cannot will. But what already exists, how could it still strive for existence?

Only where there is life is there also will. But it is not will to life. It is, so I teach you, Will to Power!

The living being values many things more highly than life itself. But out of that very valuing speaks the Will to Power!”

So Life once taught me. And with this, you wisest ones, I solve for you the riddle of your hearts.

Truly, I tell you: a good and evil that would last forever does not exist! Of its own accord it must surpass itself again and again.

With your values and formulas of good and evil you exercise power, you who assign values. That is your hidden love, and the sparkling, trembling, and overflowing of your souls.

But a stronger power grows out of your values, and a new self-surpassing. It breaks both egg and eggshell.

And whoever must be a creator in good and evil must first, truly, be a destroyer, and smash values to pieces.

Thus the greatest evil belongs to the greatest good. But that is the creative good.

Let us speak of this, you wisest ones, even if speaking is bad. Silence is worse. All suppressed truths become poisonous.

And let everything break apart that can be broken by our truths! Many a house is still to be built!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXXV. THE SUBLIME ONES.

Calm is the floor of my sea. Who would guess that it hides playful monsters?

My depths are unmoved, yet they sparkle with swimming riddles and laughter.

Today I saw a sublime one, a solemn one, a penitent of the spirit. Oh, how my soul laughed at his ugliness!

He stood with his chest thrust out, like someone holding in a breath. That is how he stood, the sublime one, and in silence.

He was hung all over with ugly truths, the spoils of his hunting, and rich in torn clothing. Many thorns hung on him too, but I saw no rose.

He had not yet learned laughter and beauty. This hunter came back gloomy from the forest of knowledge.

He came home from his fight with wild beasts. Yet a wild beast still gazes out of his seriousness, an unconquered wild beast!

He always stands like a tiger about to spring. But I do not like these tense souls. My taste is unkind toward all these self-absorbed ones.

And you tell me, friends, that there is no arguing about taste? But all of life is an argument about taste and tasting!

Taste is at once the weight, the scales, and the one who weighs. And pity any living thing that tries to live without arguing over weight, scales, and weigher!

If this sublime one should grow tired of his sublimity, only then will his beauty begin. Only then will I taste him and find him to my liking.

And only when he turns away from himself will he leap over his own shadow, and indeed, leap into his sun.

He sat far too long in the shade. The cheeks of this penitent of the spirit grew pale, and he nearly starved on his expectations.

Contempt is still in his eye, and disgust hides in his mouth. True, he is resting now, but he has not yet rested in the sunshine.

He should do as the ox does. His happiness should smell of the earth, and not of contempt for the earth.

I would like to see him as a white ox, snorting and lowing as he walks ahead of the plow. And his lowing should also praise everything earthly!

His face is still dark, and the shadow of his hand dances across it. The meaning in his eyes is still overshadowed.

His deed itself is still the shadow on him: his doing darkens the doer. He has not yet overcome his deed.

True, I love the ox’s shoulders on him. But now I also want to see the eye of the angel.

He must also unlearn his hero’s will. He should be lifted up, and not merely sublime. The very air of the heavens should raise him, the one without will!

He has tamed monsters and solved riddles. But he should also redeem his monsters and riddles, and transform them into heavenly children.

His knowledge has not yet learned to smile and to be free of jealousy. His rushing passion has not yet grown calm in beauty.

Indeed, his longing should not stop and vanish in being satisfied, but in beauty! Grace belongs to the generosity of the great-souled.

With his arm resting across his head: that is how the hero should rest. And that is how he should also overcome his rest.

But for the hero, of all people, beauty is the hardest thing. No passionate will can reach beauty.

A little more, a little less: here that is a great deal. Here it is the most of all.

To stand with relaxed muscles and with the will unharnessed: that is the hardest thing for all of you sublime ones!

When power becomes gracious and comes down into the visible world, I call that descent beauty.

And from no one do I want beauty as much as from you, you powerful one. Let your goodness be your final conquest of yourself.

I believe you capable of every evil. That is why I ask the good of you.

Truly, I have often laughed at the weaklings who think they are good because their paws are crippled!

You should strive for the virtue of the pillar. The higher it rises, the more beautiful and graceful it becomes, but inside it grows harder and better able to bear weight.

Yes, you sublime one, one day you too will be beautiful, and you will hold up the mirror to your own beauty.

Then your soul will shiver 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 the superhero approach it, in dreams.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXXVI. THE LAND OF CULTURE.

I flew too far into the future, and horror seized me.

And when I looked around, I saw that time was my only contemporary.

Then I flew back, homeward, and faster and faster. So I came to you, you people of today, and into the land of culture.

For the first time I brought an eye that could see you, and a good will toward you. Truly, I came with longing in my heart.

But how did it go for me? Frightened as I was, I still had to laugh! My eye had never seen anything so many-colored!

I laughed and laughed, while my foot was still trembling, and my heart too. “This must be the home of all the paint pots,” I said.

There you sat, to my astonishment, you people of today, with fifty patches of paint on your faces and limbs!

And with fifty mirrors around you, flattering your play of colors and repeating it back!

Truly, you could wear no better masks than your own faces, you people of today! Who could possibly recognize you?

You are written all over with the signs of the past, and those signs are themselves scribbled over with new signs. In this way you have hidden yourselves well from anyone trying to decipher you!

Even someone who can examine the inner organs would hardly believe you have any inside you! You seem to be baked out of paints and glued-together scraps.

All ages and peoples look out, many-colored, from behind your veils. All customs and beliefs speak, many-colored, through your gestures.

Anyone who stripped you of your veils and wrappings, your paints and gestures, would have just enough left over to scare the crows.

Truly, I myself am the frightened crow that once saw you naked and without paint. I flew away when the skeleton made eyes at me.

I would rather be a day laborer in the underworld among the shades of the dead! Even the dwellers of the underworld are fatter and fuller than you!

This, yes, this is bitterness to my gut: that I can bear you neither naked nor clothed, you people of today!

Everything strange in the future, everything that makes stray birds shiver, is truly more homelike and familiar than your “reality.”

For this is what you say: “We are completely real, without faith or superstition.” That is how you preen yourselves, alas, even without feathers!

And indeed, how could you believe, you many-colored ones? You are paintings of everything that has ever been believed!

You are walking refutations of belief itself, and a dislocation of all thought. Untrustworthy ones: that is what I call you, you real ones!

All the ages chatter against one another in your minds. And the dreams and chatter of all those ages were more real than your waking state!

You are barren, and that is why you lack belief. But whoever had to create always had prophetic dreams and signs in the stars, and believed in believing!

You are half-open doors where gravediggers wait. And this is your reality: “Everything deserves to perish.”

Oh, how you stand before me, you barren ones, and how thin your ribs are! Many of you have surely noticed it yourselves.

Many a one has said: “Surely some god secretly stole something from me while I slept? Truly, enough to make himself a girl out of it!

“Astonishing is the poverty of my ribs!” So many a person of today has spoken.

Yes, I find you laughable, you people of today! Especially when you marvel at yourselves!

And woe to me if I could not laugh at your marveling, and had to swallow everything repulsive on your plates!

As it is, I will take you lightly, since I have heavy things to carry. What does it matter if beetles and May bugs land on my load as well?

Truly, my load will not grow heavier because of it! And my great weariness will not come from you, you people of today.

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 restless in every city, and leaving at every gate.

The people of today, to whom my heart recently drove me, are strangers to me and a mockery. And I am exiled from fatherlands and motherlands.

So I love only my children’s land, the undiscovered land in the farthest sea. I tell my sails to search and search for it.

To my children I will make amends for being the child of my fathers, and to all the future for this present!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXXVII. IMMACULATE PERCEPTION.

When the moon rose yesterday evening, I imagined it was about to give birth to a sun, so broad and swollen did it lie on the horizon.

But its pregnancy was a lie. I would sooner believe in the man in the moon than in the woman.

Though there is little of a man in him either, that timid night-prowler. Truly, he creeps over the rooftops with a bad conscience.

For he is greedy and jealous, the monk in the moon. He covets the earth and all the joys of lovers.

No, I do not like him, that tomcat on the rooftops! I find hateful all those who slink around half-closed windows!

He creeps along piously and silently on carpets of stars. But I do not like light-stepping human feet on which not even a spur jingles.

Every honest person’s step speaks. But the cat steals along over the ground. See, the moon comes along like a cat, and dishonestly.

I tell this parable to you sentimental hypocrites, to you “pure knowers”! I call you the greedy ones!

You too love the earth and earthly things. I have seen through you! But there is shame in your love, and a bad conscience. You are like the moon!

Your mind has been persuaded to despise earthly things, but not your gut. And your gut is the strongest thing in you!

Now your mind is ashamed to serve your gut, and it takes side roads and lying roads to escape its own shame.

“For me the highest thing would be,” your lying mind says to itself, “to gaze at life without desire, and not like a dog with its tongue hanging out.

“To be happy in gazing, with a dead will, free of the grip and greed of selfishness, cold and ash-gray all over, but with drunken moon-eyes!

“That would be the dearest thing to me,” so the seduced one seduces himself, “to love the earth as the moon loves it, and to feel its beauty with the eye alone.

“And this I call immaculate perception of all things: to want nothing from them except to be allowed to lie before them like a mirror with a hundred facets.”

Oh, you sentimental hypocrites, you greedy ones! You lack innocence in your desire, and that is why you now slander desire itself!

Truly, you do not love the earth as creators, as begetters, or as those who rejoice!

Where is innocence? Where there is a will to beget. And whoever seeks to create beyond himself has, for me, the purest will.

Where is beauty? Where I must will with my whole will, where I will love and perish, so that an image does not remain merely an image.

Loving and perishing have rhymed since eternity. The will to love means being ready for death as well. So I speak to you cowards!

But now your unmanned ogling claims to be “contemplation”! And whatever can be examined with cowardly eyes is to be baptized “beautiful”! Oh, you defilers of noble names!

But this shall be your curse, you immaculate ones, you pure knowers: you shall never give birth, even though you lie broad and swollen on the horizon!

Truly, you fill your mouths with noble words. And we are supposed to believe that your hearts overflow, you swindlers?

But my words are poor, despised, stammering words. I gladly pick up what falls from the table at your feasts.

Yet with them I can still tell the truth to hypocrites! Yes, my fish bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall tickle the noses of hypocrites!

There is always bad air around you and your feasts. Your lustful thoughts, your lies, and your secrets hang right there in the air!

Only dare to believe in yourselves, in yourselves and in your inner parts! Whoever does not believe in himself always lies.

You “pure ones” have hung a god’s mask in front of you. And your loathsome coiling snake has crawled into that god’s mask.

Truly, you deceive, you “contemplative ones”! Even Zarathustra was once fooled by your godlike surface. He did not guess at the coiled serpent stuffed inside it.

I once thought I saw a god’s soul playing in your games, you pure knowers! Once I dreamed of no better arts than yours!

Distance hid from me the serpents’ filth and stench, and hid the lizard’s cunning prowling lustfully nearby.

But I came near to you, and then day came to me. And now it is coming to you. The moon’s love affair is over!

Look there! It stands caught and pale before the rosy dawn!

For she is already coming, the glowing one. Her love for the earth is coming! All the sun’s love is innocence and creative desire!

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 depths up to her height. Now the desire of the sea rises with its thousand breasts.

It wants to be kissed and drunk by the sun’s thirst. It wants to become vapor, and height, and a path of light, and light itself!

Truly, I love life as the sun does, and all deep seas.

And this is what knowledge means TO ME: everything that is deep shall rise up—to my height!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXXVIII. SCHOLARS.

While I lay asleep, a sheep ate at the ivy wreath on my head. As it ate, it said: “Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.”

It said this and walked away, clumsy and proud. A child told me about it.

I like to lie here where the children play, beside the crumbling 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 wickedness.

But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar. That is what my fate wills, and I bless it for that!

For this is the truth: I have left the house of the scholars, and I slammed the door behind me as well.

My soul sat hungry at their table for too long. I never picked up their knack for investigating, which they practice the way others have a knack for cracking nuts.

I love freedom, and the air over fresh soil. I would rather sleep on ox hides than on their honors and dignities.

I am too hot, too scorched by my own thought, and it often nearly takes my breath away. Then I have to go out into the open air, away from all dusty rooms.

But they sit cool in the cool shade. In everything they want to be mere spectators, and they avoid sitting where the sun burns on the steps.

They are like people who stand in the street and gape at passersby. In the same way, they wait and gape at thoughts that others have thought.

If you take hold of them, they give off dust like flour sacks, without meaning to. But who would guess that their dust came from grain, and from the yellow delight of the summer fields?

When they present themselves as wise, their petty sayings and truths chill me. Their wisdom often has a smell as if it came from a swamp. Truly, I have even heard the frog croak in it!

They are clever, and they have nimble fingers. What can MY simplicity claim beside their many skills? Their fingers understand all threading, knitting, and weaving. That is how they make the stockings of the spirit!

They are good clockworks. Just be careful to wind them up properly! Then they tell the time without error, and make a modest noise as they do it.

They work like millstones and like pestles. Just throw them seed grain! They know well how to grind grain fine and make white dust out of it.

They keep a sharp eye on one another and do not trust each other much. Inventive in small tricks, they lie in wait for anyone whose knowledge walks on lame feet. They wait like spiders.

I always saw them prepare their poison carefully, and they always wore glass gloves on their fingers while doing it.

They also know how to play with loaded dice. I found them playing so eagerly that they sweated over it.

We are strangers to each other, and their virtues are even more distasteful to me than their lies and their loaded dice.

When I lived with them, I lived above them. That is why they came to dislike me.

They want to hear nothing of anyone walking over their heads. So they put wood and earth and rubbish between me and their heads.

In this way they muffled the sound of my steps. So far, the most learned have heard me least of all.

They put all of mankind’s faults and weaknesses between themselves and me. In their houses they call this a “false ceiling.”

But I still walk with my thoughts ABOVE their heads. Even if I walked on my own mistakes, I would still be above them and their heads.

For human beings are NOT equal: so speaks justice. And what I will, THEY may not will!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XXXIX. POETS.

“Since I have come to know the body better,” Zarathustra said to one of his disciples, “the spirit has been spirit to me only in a symbolic sense. And everything ‘imperishable’ is also only a simile.”

“I have heard you say that once before,” the disciple answered, “and then you added: ‘But the poets lie too much.’ Why did you say that the poets lie too much?”

“Why?” said Zarathustra. “You ask why? I am not one of those who may be asked for their Why.

Is my experience only from yesterday? It was long ago that I experienced the reasons for my opinions.

Wouldn’t I have to be a barrel of memory if I wanted to carry my reasons around with me as well?

It is already too much for me just to keep hold of my opinions, and many a bird flies away.

And sometimes I also find a stray creature in my dovecote. It is foreign to me, and it trembles when I lay my hand on it.

But what did Zarathustra once say to you? That the poets lie too much? But Zarathustra is also a poet.

Do you believe 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.

Belief does not make me holy, he said, and least of all belief in myself.

But suppose someone did say, in all seriousness, that the poets lie too much. He was right: WE do lie too much.

We also know too little, and we are poor learners. So we are forced to lie.

And which of us poets has not doctored his wine? Many a poisonous concoction has been brewed in our cellars, and many an unspeakable thing has been done there.

And because we know little, we take heartfelt pleasure in the poor in spirit, especially when they are young women!

We even crave the things that old women tell one another in the evening. We call this the eternal feminine in us.

We act as if there were a special secret path to knowledge, one that GETS BLOCKED for anyone who actually learns something. That is why we believe in the common people and their “wisdom.”

All poets believe this: that anyone who pricks up his ears while lying in the grass or on lonely slopes learns something about the things between heaven and earth.

And when tender feelings 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 and loving flatteries into it. They preen and pride themselves on this before all mortals!

Ah, there are so many things between heaven and earth that only the poets have dreamed of!

And especially ABOVE the heavens: for all gods are poets’ symbols, poets’ sophistries!

Truly, we are always drawn upward, which means to the realm of the clouds. On the clouds we set our gaudy puppets, and then we call them gods and Supermen.

Aren’t they just light enough for those seats, all these gods and Supermen?

Ah, how weary I am of everything inadequate that is insisted upon as real! Ah, how weary I am of the poets!

When Zarathustra spoke this way, his disciple resented it but said nothing. Zarathustra was silent too. His gaze turned inward, as if it were looking into the far distance. At last he sighed and drew a breath.

I belong to today and to the past, he then said. But there is something in me that belongs to tomorrow, and the day after, and the time still to come.

I grew weary of the poets, the old ones and the new ones. They all seem superficial to me, shallow seas.

They did not think far enough into the depths. That is why their feeling did not reach the bottom.

A little sensual pleasure and a little boredom: so far, that has been the best of their reflection.

All the jingling and jangling of their harps seems to me like ghostly breathing and ghostly flitting. What have they ever known of the passion in musical tones?

They are also not pure enough for me. They all muddy their water so that it will seem deep.

They would like to prove themselves reconcilers this way. But to me they are go-betweens and mixers, half-and-half, and impure!

Ah, I did cast my net into their sea, hoping to catch good fish. But I always pulled up the head of some ancient god.

So the sea gave a stone to the hungry man. And the poets themselves may well have come from the sea.

Certainly, one finds pearls in them, and that makes them all the more like hard-shelled shellfish. And instead of a soul, I have often found salty slime in them.

They have also learned vanity from the sea. Is the sea not the peacock of peacocks?

It spreads out its tail even before the ugliest of all buffaloes. It never tires of its lace fan of silver and silk.

The buffalo glances at it with scorn. Its soul is close to the sand, closer still to the thicket, but closest of all to the swamp.

What do beauty and sea and peacock splendor mean to it! I speak this parable 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 are only buffaloes!

But I grew weary of this spirit, and I see the time coming when it will grow weary of itself.

Indeed, I have already seen the poets changed, with their gaze turned toward themselves.

I have seen penitents of the spirit appear. They grew out of the poets.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XL. GREAT EVENTS.

There is an island in the sea, not far from Zarathustra’s Happy Isles, where a volcano is always smoking. The people, and especially the old women among them, say that this island stands like a rock in front of the gate of the underworld. They also say that the narrow path leading down to this gate runs through the volcano itself.

Around the time Zarathustra was staying on the Happy Isles, a ship anchored at the island with the smoking mountain, and the crew went ashore to shoot rabbits. Around noon, when the captain and his men had gathered again, they suddenly saw a man coming toward them through the air. A voice said clearly: “It is time! It is the highest time!”

The figure flew past quickly, like a shadow, toward the volcano. But when it was closest to them, they recognized with the greatest astonishment that it was Zarathustra. All of them except the captain had seen him before, and they loved him the way the people love: with love and awe in equal measure.

“Look!” said the old helmsman. “There goes Zarathustra to hell!”

Around the same time these sailors landed on the fire island, a rumor spread that Zarathustra had disappeared. When his friends were asked about it, they said he had boarded a ship at night without saying where he was going.

This caused some uneasiness. After three days, the story of the ship’s crew was added to it, and then all the people said that the devil had taken Zarathustra.

His disciples laughed at this talk, of course. One of them even said: “I would sooner believe that Zarathustra has taken the devil.” But deep in their hearts they were all full of anxiety and longing. So their joy was great when Zarathustra appeared among them on the fifth day.

And this is Zarathustra’s account of his 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.”

Another of these diseases is called “the fire-dog.” People have greatly deceived themselves about HIM, and have let themselves be deceived.

I crossed the sea to get to the bottom of this mystery. And I have seen the truth naked, truly! Barefoot up to the neck.

Now I know the truth about the fire-dog. I also know the truth about all the eruptive, subversive devils that not only old women fear.

“Come up out of your depth, fire-dog!” I cried. “Confess how deep that depth really is! Where does the stuff you snort up come from?

You drink heavily from the sea: your bitter eloquence gives that away! For a dog of the depths, you really take too much of your nourishment from the surface!

At most, I take you for the earth’s ventriloquist. And whenever I have heard subversive, eruptive devils speak, I have found them just like you: bitter, lying, and shallow.

You all know how to roar and darken everything with ashes! You are the best of braggarts, and you have learned well enough the art of making dregs boil.

Wherever you are, there must always be dregs close at hand, and a great deal that is spongy, hollow, and compressed. All of it wants freedom.

You all roar ‘Freedom’ most eagerly. But I have unlearned my belief in ‘great events’ whenever there is a great deal of roaring and smoke around them.

And believe me, friend Hullabaloo! The greatest events are not our loudest hours, but our stillest ones.

The world does not revolve around the inventors of new noise. It revolves around the inventors of new values, and it revolves INAUDIBLY.

Just admit it! Little had ever happened once your noise and smoke had cleared. So what if a city turned into a mummy, and a statue lay in the mud!

And I also say this to those who topple 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 it is precisely its law that out of contempt, its life and living beauty grow back!

It now rises again with more godlike features, seductive in its suffering. And truly, it will yet thank you for overthrowing it, you subverters!

But this is my advice to kings and churches, and to everything that is weak with age or with virtue: let yourselves be overthrown! Then you may come to life again, and virtue may come to you!—”

So I spoke before the fire-dog. Then he sullenly interrupted me and asked: “Church? What is that?”

“Church?” I answered. “That is a kind of state, and in fact the most deceitful kind. But keep quiet, you hypocritical dog! Surely you know your own species best!

Like you, the state is a hypocritical dog. Like you, it likes to speak with smoke and roaring, to make people believe, just as you do, that it speaks from the heart of things.

For the state wants, by every possible means, to be the most important creature on earth. And people believe that it is.”

When I had said this, the fire-dog behaved as if he were mad with envy. “What!” he cried. “The most important creature on earth? And people believe it?”

So much steam and so many terrible voices came out of his throat that I thought he would choke with rage and envy.

At last he grew calmer, and his panting subsided. As soon as he was quiet, however, I said with a laugh:

“You are angry, fire-dog. So I am right about you!

And so that I may keep on being right, listen to the story of another fire-dog. This one really does speak out of the heart of the earth.

His breath gives off gold and golden rain, for that is what his heart desires. What are ashes and smoke and hot dregs to him!

Laughter drifts from him like a many-colored cloud. He has no taste for your gargling and spewing and the cramps in your bowels!

But the gold and the laughter he takes out of the heart of the earth. For, so that you may know it: THE HEART OF THE EARTH IS MADE OF GOLD.”

When the fire-dog heard this, he could no longer bear to listen to me. Ashamed, he drew in his tail, said “bow-wow!” in a cowed voice, and crept down into his cave.—

So Zarathustra told it. But his disciples hardly listened to him, so eager were they to tell him about the sailors, the rabbits, and the flying man.

“What am I to make of this?” said Zarathustra. “Am I really a ghost?

But perhaps it was my shadow. You have surely heard something about the Wanderer and his Shadow?

One thing is certain, however: I must keep a tighter hold on it. Otherwise it will ruin my reputation.”

And once more Zarathustra shook his head and wondered. “What am I to make of this?” he said again.

“Why did the ghost cry, ‘It is time! It is high time!’

High time for what?”—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XLI. THE SOOTHSAYER.

“—And I saw a great sadness come over mankind. The best grew weary of their works.

A doctrine appeared, and a faith ran alongside it: ‘All is empty, all is the same, all has been before!’

And from every hill came the echo: ‘All is empty, all is the same, all has been before!’

Yes, we have brought in our harvest. But why have all our fruits turned rotten and brown? What fell from the evil moon last night?

All our labor was in vain. Our wine has turned to poison. The evil eye has scorched our fields and our hearts yellow.

We have all grown dry. If fire falls on us, we crumble into dust like ashes. Yes, we have made even fire weary.

All our springs have dried up, and even the sea has pulled back. All the ground tries to open up, but the depths refuse to swallow us!

‘Alas! Where is there still a sea deep enough to drown in?’ So our complaint sounds, out across the shallow swamps.

Truly, we have grown too weary even to die. Now we stay awake and go on living—in tombs.”

Zarathustra heard a soothsayer speak in this way. The prophecy touched his heart and changed him. He went about sorrowful and weary, and he became like the people the soothsayer had described.—

Truly, he said to his disciples, a little while longer, and the long twilight will come. Alas, how shall I keep my light alive through it!

May it not be smothered in this sorrow! It is meant to be a light for more distant worlds, and for the most distant nights as well!

So Zarathustra went about with a grieving heart. For three days he took no food or drink. He found no rest, and he lost the power of speech. At last he fell into a deep sleep.

His disciples sat around him through long night-watches. They waited anxiously to see whether he would wake, speak again, and recover from his affliction.

And this is the speech Zarathustra gave when he awoke. His voice, however, reached his disciples as if from far away:

Listen, I beg you, to the dream I dreamed, my friends, and help me work out its meaning!

This dream is still a riddle to me. Its meaning is hidden inside it, caged, and does not yet fly above it on free wings.

I dreamed that I had renounced all life. I had become a night-watchman and a guardian of graves, high up in the lonely mountain fortress of Death.

There I guarded his coffins. The musty vaults stood full of these trophies of his victory. Out of glass coffins, conquered life gazed back at me.

I breathed the smell of dust-covered eternities. My soul lay sultry and dust-covered. And who could have aired out his soul in such a place!

The brightness of midnight was always around me. Loneliness crouched beside her. And the third was a death-rattle stillness, the worst of my female companions.

I carried keys, the rustiest of all keys, and I knew how to open the most creaking of all gates with them.

When the two halves of the gate swung open, the sound ran through the long corridors like a bitterly angry croaking. This bird cried out ungraciously; it did not want to be woken.

But it was even more frightening, and more suffocating to the heart, when everything fell silent and still again, and I sat alone in that malicious silence.

So time passed for me and slipped away, if there was still such a thing as time. What do I know about it! But at last something happened that woke me.

Three times blows struck the gate like thunder. 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?

I turned the key, pulled at the gate, and strained with all my strength. But it had not yet opened even a finger’s breadth.

Then a roaring wind tore its two halves apart. Whistling, whizzing, and piercing, it hurled a black coffin toward me.

And in the roaring and whistling and whizzing, the coffin burst open and spat out a thousand peals of laughter.

A thousand grotesque figures of children, angels, owls, fools, and butterflies as big as children laughed at me, mocked me, and roared at me.

I was horribly terrified. It knocked me to the ground. And I cried out in horror as I had never cried before.

But my own cry woke me, and I came to myself.—

So Zarathustra told his dream, and then he fell silent, for he did not yet know its interpretation. But the disciple whom he loved most rose quickly, took Zarathustra’s hand, and said:

“Your life itself interprets this dream for us, O Zarathustra!

Are you not yourself the shrill, whistling wind that bursts open the gates of the fortress of Death?

Are you not yourself the coffin full of many-colored mischief and angel-like caricatures of life?

Truly, Zarathustra comes into every tomb like a thousand peals of children’s laughter. He laughs at all those night-watchmen and grave-guardians, and at anyone else who rattles sinister keys.

You will frighten them with your laughter and knock them to the ground. Their fainting and recovering will prove your power over them.

And when the long twilight comes, and the deathly weariness, even then you will not vanish from our sky, you champion of life!

You have shown us new stars and new glories of the night. Truly, you have spread laughter itself over us like a many-colored canopy.

From now on, children’s laughter will always flow out of coffins. From now on, a strong wind will always come and triumph over all deathly weariness. You yourself are the pledge and the prophet of this!

Truly, it was THEM YOU DREAMED, your enemies. That was your most painful dream.

But just as you woke from them and came to yourself, so they will wake from themselves—and come to you!”

So the disciple spoke. Then all the others crowded around Zarathustra, took him by the hands, and tried to persuade him to leave his bed and his sadness and come back to them.

Zarathustra, however, sat upright on his couch with a distant look. He looked at his disciples like someone returning from a long stay abroad, and studied their faces. But he still did not recognize them.

When they lifted him and set him on his feet, however, his eyes suddenly changed. He understood everything that had happened. He stroked his beard and said in a strong voice:

“Well! There is a time for this. But see to it, my disciples, that we have a good meal, and without delay! That is how I mean to make up for bad dreams!

The soothsayer, however, shall eat and drink at my side. And truly, I will yet show him a sea in which he can drown himself!”—

Thus spoke Zarathustra. Then he gazed for a long time into the face of the disciple who had interpreted the dream, and shook his head.—

XLII. REDEMPTION.

One day, as Zarathustra was crossing the great bridge, the cripples and beggars surrounded him, and a hunchback spoke to him:

“Look, Zarathustra! Even the people learn from you and come to believe in your teaching. But for them to believe in you completely, one thing is still needed: first of all, you must convince us cripples!

Here you have a fine selection, and truly, an opportunity with more than one forelock to seize it by! You can heal the blind and make the lame run.

And from the man who carries too much behind him, you could surely take away a little 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: If you take the hump from the hunchback, you take away his spirit. So the people teach.

And if you give the blind man eyes, he sees too many bad things on earth, so that he curses whoever healed him.

But whoever makes the lame man run does him the greatest harm. For as soon as he can run, his vices run away with him. So the people teach about cripples.

And why should Zarathustra not also learn from the people, when the people learn from Zarathustra?

But since I have been among men, it seems the smallest thing to me that one person lacks an eye, another an ear, and a third a leg, and that others have lost their tongue, or their nose, or their head.

I see, and have seen, worse things. Some are so hideous that I would not want to speak of all of them, yet I cannot keep silent about some of them.

I mean men who lack everything, except that they have too much of one thing. They are nothing more than a big eye, or a big mouth, or a big belly, or something else that is big. I call such men reversed cripples.

When I came out of my solitude and crossed this bridge for the first time, I could not trust my eyes. I looked again and again, and at last I said: “That is an ear! An ear as big as a man!”

I looked still more closely. And something really did move beneath the ear, something pitifully small and poor and thin. In truth, this enormous ear sat on a small, thin stalk—and the stalk was a man!

Anyone who held a magnifying glass to his eyes could even make out a small, envious face, and a bloated little soul dangling from the stalk.

The people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a man, but a great man, a genius. But I never believed the people when they talked about great men. And I hold to my belief that it was a reversed cripple, who had too little of everything and too much of one thing.

When Zarathustra had spoken in this way to the hunchback, and to those whose mouthpiece and advocate the hunchback was, he turned to his disciples in deep dejection and said:

Truly, my friends, I walk among men as if among the fragments and limbs of human beings!

This is what is terrible to my eye: I find man broken into pieces and scattered about, as if on a battlefield or in a slaughterhouse.

And when my eye flees from the present to the past, it always finds the same thing: fragments and limbs and dreadful accidents—but no men!

The present and the past on earth—ah, my friends—that is MY most unbearable burden. And I would not know how to live if I were not also a seer of what is to come.

A seer, a man of purpose, a creator, a future in himself, and a bridge to the future—and alas, also something like a cripple standing on this bridge: all this is Zarathustra.

And you, too, have often asked yourselves: “Who is Zarathustra to us? What shall we call him?” And like me, you answered your questions with more questions.

Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an heir? A harvest? Or a plowshare? A physician? Or one who has been healed?

Is he a poet? Or a truthful man? A liberator? Or a subjugator? A good man? Or an evil one?

I walk among men as among the fragments of the future: that future which I envision.

And all my creating and striving is to compose and gather into one whole what is fragment, riddle, and dreadful accident.

And how could I bear to be a man, if man were not also the composer, the reader of riddles, and the redeemer of chance!

To redeem what is past, and to transform every “It was” into “That is how I wanted it!”: that alone is what I call redemption!

Will is the name of the liberator and bringer of joy. That is what I have taught you, my friends! But now learn this as well: the will itself is still a prisoner.

Willing liberates. But what do we call the thing that still keeps the liberator in chains?

“It was”: that is the name of the will’s teeth-gnashing and its loneliest affliction. Powerless against what has already been done, the will is an angry spectator of everything past.

The will cannot will backward. That it cannot break time and time’s desire is the will’s loneliest affliction.

Willing liberates. What, then, does willing itself devise to free itself from its affliction and to mock its prison?

Ah, every prisoner becomes a fool! And the imprisoned will also frees itself foolishly.

That time does not run backward is the will’s resentment. “That which was” is the name of the stone it cannot roll away.

And so, out of resentment and bad temper, it rolls stones about. It takes revenge on whatever does not feel rage and bad temper as it does.

So the will, the liberator, became a torturer. It takes revenge on everything capable of suffering, because it cannot go backward.

This, yes, this alone is revenge itself: the will’s aversion to time and its “It was.”

Truly, a great folly lives in our will. And it became a curse to all humanity that this folly acquired spirit!

The spirit of revenge: my friends, that has so far been humanity’s best reflection. And wherever there was suffering, people claimed there must also be punishment.

“Punishment” is what revenge calls itself. With a lying word it pretends to have a good conscience.

And the one who wills suffers too, because he cannot will backward. So willing itself, and all of life, was declared to be punishment!

Then cloud after cloud rolled over the spirit, until at last madness preached: “Everything passes away; therefore everything deserves to pass away!”

“And this itself is justice, the law of time: that time must devour its own children.” So madness preached.

“Things are ordered morally, according to justice and punishment. Oh, where is there deliverance from the flow of things and from the ‘existence’ of punishment?” So madness preached.

“Can there be deliverance when there is eternal justice? Alas, the stone ‘It was’ cannot be rolled away. So all punishments must be eternal too!” So madness preached.

“No deed can be annihilated. How could punishment undo it! This, this is what is eternal in the ‘existence’ of punishment: that existence itself must be deed and guilt, eternally repeated!

“Unless the will should at last redeem itself, and willing become not-willing—” But you know this fable-song of madness, my brothers!

I led you away from those 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 that is how I wanted it.”

Until the creating will says to it: “But that is how I will it! That is how I shall will it!”

But has it ever spoken this way? And when does this happen? Has the will been unharnessed from its own folly?

Has the will become its own redeemer and bringer of joy? Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all its teeth-gnashing?

And who has taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than any reconciliation?

The will that is the will to power must will something higher than any reconciliation. But how does that happen? Who has taught it to will backward as well?

But at this point in his speech, Zarathustra suddenly stopped, and he looked like someone in the greatest alarm. With terror in his eyes he gazed at his disciples. His glances pierced their thoughts, and the thoughts behind their thoughts, like arrows. But after a short while he laughed again and said, calmed:

“It is hard to live among people, because silence is so hard, especially for a chatterbox.”

So spoke Zarathustra. The hunchback, however, had been listening to the conversation, and he had covered his face the whole time. But when he heard Zarathustra laugh, he looked up with curiosity and said slowly:

“But why does Zarathustra speak differently to us than to his disciples?”

Zarathustra answered: “What is surprising about that! With hunchbacks one may well speak in a hunchbacked way!”

“Very well,” 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?”

XLIII. MANLY PRUDENCE.

It is not the height that is terrifying, but the slope!

On the slope the gaze plunges downward while the hand reaches upward. There the heart grows dizzy from its double will.

Ah, friends, can you also guess my heart’s double will?

This, this is my slope and my danger: my gaze plunges toward the summit, while my hand would gladly clutch at the depths and lean on them!

My will clings to man. I bind myself to man with chains, because I am pulled upward toward the Superman, and that is where my other will is drawn.

That is why I live blindly among people, as if I did not know them: so that my hand does not entirely lose its faith in something firm.

“I do not know you humans.” This darkness, and this consolation, often surround me.

I sit at the gateway where every rogue passes, and I ask: Who wants to deceive me?

This is my first manly prudence: I allow myself to be deceived, so that I need not be on guard against deceivers.

Ah, if I were on guard against people, how could man be an anchor for my ball! I would be pulled upward and away too easily!

This is the providence that rules my fate: that I must be without foresight.

Whoever does not want to waste away among people must learn to drink from every glass. Whoever wants to stay clean among people must know how to wash even with dirty water.

And so I often said to myself for comfort: “Courage! Cheer up, old heart! A misfortune has failed to strike you. Enjoy that as your good fortune!”

This, however, is my second manly prudence: I am more patient with the vain than with the proud.

Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies? But where pride is wounded, something better than pride grows.

For life to be good to watch, its game must be played well. And for that it needs good actors.

I have found all the vain to be good actors. They perform, and they want people to enjoy watching them. All their spirit lies in this wish.

They put themselves on stage; they invent themselves. Near them I like to watch life, for it cures my melancholy.

So I am patient with the vain, because they are the physicians of my melancholy, and they keep me attached to man as to a play.

And besides, who grasps the full depth of the vain man’s modesty! I am well disposed toward him, and I sympathize with him, because of his modesty.

He wants to learn his belief in himself from you. He feeds on your glances; he eats praise out of your hands.

He even believes your lies when you lie flatteringly about him, for deep down his heart sighs: “What am I?”

And if true virtue is the kind that is unaware of itself, well, the vain man is unaware of his modesty!

This, however, is my third manly prudence: your timidity does not spoil my taste for the wicked.

I am happy to see the marvels that the warm sun hatches: tigers and palms and rattlesnakes.

Among humans, too, there is a beautiful brood of the warm sun, and there is much that is marvelous in the wicked.

Indeed, just as your wisest did not seem so very wise to me, I also found that human wickedness falls short of its reputation.

And often I asked, shaking my head: Why do you still bother to rattle, you rattlesnakes?

Truly, there is still a future even for evil! And the hottest south is still undiscovered by man.

How many things are now called the worst wickedness that are only twelve feet wide and three months long! But some day greater dragons will come into the world.

For the Superman must not lack his dragon, the superdragon worthy of him. For that, much warm sun must still glow on damp virgin forests!

Your wildcats must first evolve into tigers, and your poison toads into 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 especially your fear of what has until now been called “the devil”!

Your souls are so foreign to what is great that the Superman would be frightful to you in his goodness!

And you wise and knowing ones, you would flee from the sun-glow of the wisdom in which the Superman joyfully bathes his nakedness!

You highest men I have come to know! This is my doubt about you, and my secret laughter: I suspect you would call my Superman a devil!

Ah, I grew tired of these highest and best ones. From their “height” I longed to go up, out, and away to the Superman!

A horror came over me when I saw these best ones naked. Then wings grew on me, to soar away into distant futures.

Into more distant futures, into hotter souths than any artist ever dreamed of: there, where gods are ashamed of all clothing!

But I want to see you disguised, you neighbors and fellow men, well dressed and vain and dignified, as “the good and just.”

And I myself will sit among you disguised, so that I may mistake both you and myself. For that is my last manly prudence.

So spoke Zarathustra.

XLIV. THE STILLEST HOUR.

What has happened to me, my friends? You see me troubled, driven out, obedient against my will, ready to go. Alas, ready to go away from you!

Yes, Zarathustra must once more return to his solitude. But this time the bear goes back to his cave without joy!

What has happened to me? Who orders this? Ah, my angry mistress wants it so; she spoke to me. Have I ever 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. 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 who is falling asleep?

He is terrified down to his toes, because the ground gives way beneath him and the dream begins.

I tell you this as a parable. Yesterday, at the stillest hour, the ground gave way beneath me: the dream began.

The hour hand moved on, and the clock of my life drew breath. Never had I heard such stillness around me, so that my heart was terrified.

Then something spoke to me without a voice: “You know it, Zarathustra?”

I cried out in terror at this whisper, and the blood drained from my face. But I said nothing.

Then once more something spoke to me without a voice: “You know it, Zarathustra, but you do not speak it!”

At last I answered, like someone defiant: “Yes, I know it, but I will not speak it!”

Then something spoke to me again without a voice: “You will not, Zarathustra? Is this true? Do not hide behind your defiance!”

And I wept and trembled like a child, and said: “Ah, I would like to, but how can I do it! Spare me only this! It is beyond my strength!”

Then something spoke to me again without a voice: “What does it matter about you, Zarathustra! Speak your word, and succumb!”

And I answered: “Ah, is it my word? Who am I? I am waiting for someone worthier. I am not worthy even to succumb to it.”

Then something spoke to me again without a voice: “What does it matter about you? You are not yet humble enough for me. Humility has the toughest skin.”

And I answered: “What has the skin of my humility not endured! I live at the foot of my height. How high my summits are, no one has yet told me. But I know my valleys well.”

Then something spoke to me again without a voice: “O Zarathustra, whoever has to move mountains also moves valleys and lowlands.”

And I answered: “So far my word has not moved mountains, and what I have spoken has not reached people. I did go to people, but I have not yet reached them.”

Then something spoke to me again without a voice: “What do you know about that! The dew falls on the grass when the night is most silent.”

And I answered: “They mocked me when I found my own path and walked it, and my feet certainly trembled then.

“And this is what they said to me: You lost the path before, and now you are forgetting how to walk as well!”

Then something spoke to me again without a voice: “What does their mockery matter! You are one who has unlearned how to obey. Now you shall command!

“Do you not know who is most needed by everyone? The one who commands great things.

“To carry out great things is hard. But the harder task is to command great things.

“This is your most unforgivable stubbornness: you have the power, and you will not rule.”

And I answered: “I lack the lion’s voice for all commanding.”

Then something spoke to me again, as a whisper: “It is the stillest words that bring the storm. Thoughts that come on doves’ feet guide the world.

“O Zarathustra, you shall go as a shadow of what is to come. That is how you will command, and in commanding you will lead the way.”

And I answered: “I am ashamed.”

Then once again something spoke to me without a voice: “You must still become a child, and be 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 about it for a long while, and trembled. But at last I said what I had said at first: “I will not.”

Then laughter broke out all around me. Ah, how that laughter tore at my insides and cut into my heart!

And for the last time it was said to me: “O 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 there was laughter, and then it fled. After that it grew still around me, as if with a double stillness. But I lay on the ground, and sweat poured from my limbs.

—Now you have heard everything, and why I must return to my solitude. I have kept nothing hidden from you, my friends.

But you have also heard this from me: WHO is still the most reserved of men—and means to remain so!

Ah, my friends! I would have something more to say to you! I would have something more to give you! Why do I not give it? Am I a miser, then?—

But when Zarathustra had spoken these words, the force of his pain and the sense that he would soon be parted from his friends overwhelmed him, so that he wept aloud. No one knew how to comfort him. In the night, however, he went away alone and left his friends.

THIRD PART.

“You look up when you long to be exalted, and I look down because I am exalted.

“Who among you can laugh and be exalted at the same time?

“Whoever climbs the highest mountains laughs at all tragic plays and tragic realities.”—ZARATHUSTRA, I., “Reading and Writing.”

XLV. THE WANDERER.

Then, around midnight, Zarathustra set off across the ridge of the island, so that he would reach the other coast early in the morning, because he meant to set sail from there. There was a good anchorage on that coast, where foreign ships also liked to anchor. These ships took on many people who wanted to cross over from the Happy Isles.

As Zarathustra climbed the mountain, he thought along the way about his many solitary wanderings since his youth, and about 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 is past when mere accidents could happen to me. What COULD still fall to my lot that is not already my own?

It only returns; it comes home to me at last—my own Self, and those parts of it that have long been abroad, scattered among things and accidents.

And I know one thing more: I now stand before my last summit, and before what has been saved for me the longest. Ah, I must climb my hardest path! Ah, I have begun my loneliest wandering!

But whoever is of my nature does not avoid such an hour: the hour that tells him, Only now are you going the way to your greatness! Summit and abyss—these are now joined together!

You are going the way to your greatness: what was until now your last danger has now become your last refuge!

You are going the way to your greatness: now your best courage must be that there is no longer any path behind you!

You are going the way to your greatness: here no one shall sneak after you! Your own foot has erased the path behind you, and above it is written: Impossibility.

And if from now on all ladders fail you, then you must learn to climb on your own head. How else could you climb upward?

On your own head, and beyond your own heart! Now what is gentlest in you must become the hardest.

Whoever has always indulged himself greatly grows sick at last from his own indulgence. Praise be to what makes us hardy! I do not praise the land where butter and honey—flow!

To learn TO LOOK AWAY FROM oneself is necessary in order to see MANY THINGS. Every mountain-climber needs this hardiness.

But whoever, in seeking knowledge, presses his eyes too close upon things—how can he ever see more of anything than its foreground!

But you, O Zarathustra, want to see the ground of everything, and its background. So you must climb even above yourself—up, upward, until even your stars lie BENEATH you!

Yes! To look down on myself, and even on my stars: only that would I call my SUMMIT. That is what has remained for me as my LAST summit!—

So Zarathustra spoke to himself as he climbed, comforting his heart with harsh maxims, for his heart was sore as never before. And when he reached the top of the ridge, there lay the other sea, spread out before him. He stood still and was silent for a long time. The night at this height was cold, and clear and starry.

I recognize my destiny, he said at last, sadly. Very well! I am ready. Now my last loneliness has begun.

Ah, this dark, sad sea below me! Ah, this dark, sullen night! Ah, fate and sea! To you I must now GO DOWN!

I stand before my highest mountain, and before my longest wandering. Therefore I must first go deeper down than I ever climbed:

—Deeper down into pain than I ever climbed, even into its darkest flood! So my fate wills it. Very well! I am ready.

Where do the highest mountains come from? I once asked. Then I learned that they come out of the sea.

That testimony is written in their stones, and on the walls of their summits. Out of the deepest the highest must rise to its height.—

So Zarathustra spoke on the cold mountain ridge. But when he came near the sea, and at last stood alone among the cliffs, he had grown weary from his journey, and more full of longing than ever before.

Everything is still asleep, he said; even the sea is asleep. Its eye gazes at me drowsily and strangely.

But it breathes warmly—I feel it. And I feel too that it is dreaming. It tosses dreamily 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 even for your sake.

Ah, that my hand is not strong enough! How gladly I would free you from evil dreams!—

And as Zarathustra spoke this way, he laughed at himself with melancholy and bitterness. What, Zarathustra! he said. Will you even sing comfort to the sea?

Ah, you lovable fool, Zarathustra, you too-trusting one! But you have always been this way: you have always approached everything terrible with confidence.

You would pet every monster. A whiff of warm breath, a little soft tuft of fur on its paw—and at once you were ready to love it and coax it near.

LOVE is the danger of the loneliest one: love for anything, IF ONLY IT IS ALIVE! Laughable, truly, are my folly and my modesty in love!—

So spoke Zarathustra, and laughed a second time. But then he thought of the friends he had left behind. As if he had wronged them with his thoughts, he reproached himself for those thoughts. And at once the one who had laughed began to weep: with anger and longing, Zarathustra wept bitterly.

XLVI. THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA.

When word spread among the sailors that Zarathustra was on board—for a man from the Happy Isles had come aboard with him—there was great curiosity and expectation. But Zarathustra kept silent for two days. Sadness made him cold and deaf, so that he answered neither glances nor questions.

On the evening of the second day, however, he opened his ears again, though he still kept silent. There were many strange and dangerous things to be heard on that ship, which came from far away and was going still farther. And Zarathustra was fond of all who make distant voyages and do not like to live without danger.

And look! As he listened, his own tongue was at last loosened, and the ice around his heart broke. Then he began to speak:

To you, the bold seekers and adventurers, and whoever has 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 treacherous abyss—

—For you do not like to grope along a thread with a cowardly hand; and where you can GUESS, you hate to CALCULATE—

To you alone I tell the riddle that I SAW—the vision of the loneliest one.—

Recently I walked gloomily through a corpse-colored twilight—gloomy and stern, with my lips pressed tight. More than one sun had set for me.

A path that climbed boldly among boulders, an evil, lonely path that no herb or shrub cheered any longer, a mountain path, crunched under the boldness of my foot.

Marching silently over the scornful clinking of pebbles, trampling the stone that made it slip: so my foot forced its way upward.

Upward—in spite of the spirit that pulled it downward, toward the abyss: the spirit of gravity, my devil and archenemy.

Upward—though it sat on me, half dwarf, half mole; paralyzed and paralyzing; dripping lead into my ear, and thoughts like drops of lead into my brain.

“O Zarathustra,” it whispered mockingly, syllable by syllable, “you stone of wisdom! You threw yourself high, but every stone that is thrown must—fall!

“O Zarathustra, you stone of wisdom, you sling-stone, you star-destroyer! You threw yourself so high—but every stone that is thrown—must fall!

“Condemned by yourself, and to your own stoning: O Zarathustra, far indeed you threw your stone—but it will fall back upon YOURSELF!”

Then the dwarf fell silent, and the silence lasted long. But the silence weighed on me; and to be two together like this is truly lonelier than being alone!

I climbed, I climbed, I dreamed, I thought—but everything weighed on me. I was like a sick man worn out by cruel torment, whom a worse dream wakes again out of his first sleep.—

But there is something in me that I call courage. Until now it has slain every despondency for me. This courage at last told me to stand still and say: “Dwarf! You! Or I!”—

For courage is the best slayer—courage that ATTACKS: for in every attack there is the sound of triumph.

Man, however, is the most courageous animal: by courage he has overcome every animal. With the sound of triumph he has overcome every pain; but human pain is the sorest pain.

Courage also slays dizziness at the edge of abysses: and where does man not stand at abysses! Is not seeing itself—seeing abysses?

Courage is the best slayer: courage also slays fellow-suffering, or pity. But fellow-suffering is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man looks into life, so deeply does he also look into suffering.

But courage is the best slayer, courage that attacks: it slays even death itself, for it says: “WAS THAT life? Very well! Once more!”

In such a saying there is much sound of triumph. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.—

“Stop, dwarf!” I said. “Either I—or you! But I am the stronger of the two: you do not know my abysmal thought! IT—you could not endure!”

Then something happened that made me lighter: the dwarf, that prying sprite, jumped down from my shoulder. It squatted on a stone in front of me. And just where we had stopped, there was a gateway.

“Look at this gateway, dwarf!” I went on. “It has two faces. Two roads meet here, and no one has yet followed either to its end.

“This long lane backward: it goes on for an eternity. And that long lane forward—that is another eternity.

“They contradict each other, these roads; they run head-on into each other—and it is here, at this gateway, that they come together. The name of the gateway is written above it: ‘This Moment.’

“But if someone were to follow them farther—and ever farther and farther on—do you think, dwarf, that these roads would contradict each other forever?”—

“Everything straight lies,” the dwarf murmured contemptuously. “All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle.”

“You spirit of gravity!” I said angrily. “Do not make it too easy for yourself! 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, This Moment, a long eternal lane runs BACKWARD: behind us lies an eternity.

“Must not whatever of all things CAN run its course have already run along that lane? Must not whatever of all things CAN happen have already happened, been done, and passed by?

“And if everything has already existed, what do you think, dwarf, of This Moment? Must not this gateway too—have already existed?

“And are not all things knotted together so tightly that This Moment draws all coming things after it? THEREFORE—itself as well?

“For whatever of all things can run its course must also run it once more, in this long lane OUTWARD!—

“And this slow spider creeping in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and you and I in this gateway, whispering together, whispering of eternal things—must we not all have existed before?

“—And must we not return and run in that other lane out ahead of us, that long, eerie lane—must we not eternally return?”—

So I spoke, more and more softly, for I was afraid of my own thoughts and of the thoughts behind them. Then suddenly I heard a dog HOWL nearby.

Had I ever heard a dog howl like this? My thoughts ran back. Yes! When I was a child, in my most distant childhood:

—Then I heard a dog howl like this. 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 pity for it. For just then the full moon, silent as death, was passing over the house. Just then it stood still, a glowing globe, resting on the flat roof as if it were trespassing on someone’s property.

That was what had terrified the dog, for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And when I heard such howling again, I felt pity for it once more.

Where was the dwarf now? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Had I been dreaming? Had I woken up? Suddenly I stood alone among rugged rocks, desolate in the most desolate moonlight.

But there lay a man! And there was the dog, leaping, bristling, whining. Now it saw me coming. Then it howled again, then it cried out. Had I ever heard a dog cry for help like that?

And truly, I had never seen anything like what I saw then. I saw a young shepherd writhing, choking, shuddering, his face contorted, with a heavy black snake hanging out of his mouth.

Had I ever seen so much disgust and pale horror on a single face? Perhaps he had fallen asleep? Then the snake had crawled into his throat, and there it had bitten down and held fast.

My hand pulled at the snake, and pulled, but in vain. I could not pull the snake out of his throat. Then something cried out of me: “Bite! Bite!

“Bite its head off! Bite!” So it cried out of me. My horror, my hatred, my disgust, my pity, everything good and bad in me cried out with a single voice.

You daring ones around me! You venturers and adventurers, and all of you who have set out with cunning sails on unexplored seas! You who delight in riddles!

Solve for me the riddle that I saw then. Interpret for me the vision of the loneliest one!

For it was a vision and a foreseeing. What did I see then, in the form of a parable? And who is it that must come someday?

Who is the shepherd into whose throat the snake crawled like this? Who is the man into whose throat everything heaviest and blackest will crawl like this?

But the shepherd bit, as my cry had urged him. He bit with a strong bite! He spat the snake’s head far away, and sprang to his feet.

No longer a shepherd, no longer a man, but a transformed being, surrounded by light, and laughing! Never on earth has a man laughed as he laughed!

O my brothers, I heard a laughter that was no human laughter. And now a thirst gnaws at me, a longing that is never quieted.

My longing for that laughter gnaws at me. Oh, how can I still bear to live! And how could I bear to die now!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XLVII. INVOLUNTARY BLISS.

With such riddles and bitterness in his heart, Zarathustra sailed across the sea. But when he was four days’ journey from the Happy Isles and from his friends, he had overcome all his pain. Triumphantly, and with a firm step, he accepted his fate once more. And then Zarathustra spoke like this to his rejoicing conscience:

I am alone again, and I want to be: alone with the pure sky and the open sea. And once again the afternoon surrounds me.

It was in an afternoon that I first found my friends. It was in an afternoon, too, that I found them a second time: at the hour when all light grows quieter.

For whatever happiness is still on its way between heaven and earth now seeks a radiant soul to lodge in. All light has now grown quieter with happiness.

O afternoon of my life! Once my happiness also came down into the valley to seek lodging, and there it found those open, hospitable souls.

O afternoon of my life! What did I not give up in order to have one thing: this living garden of my thoughts, and this dawn of my highest hope!

Once the creator went looking for companions, for children of his hope. And 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 returning from them. For the sake of his children, Zarathustra must perfect himself.

For in our hearts we love only our child and our work. And where there is great love of oneself, it is a sign of pregnancy. So I have found it.

My children are still green in their first spring. They stand close to one another and are shaken together by the winds. They are the trees of my garden and of my best soil.

And truly, wherever such trees stand side by side, there are Happy Isles!

But one day I will dig them up and plant each one by itself, alone, so that it may learn loneliness, defiance, and prudence.

Then it shall stand by the sea, gnarled and crooked and with a supple hardness, a living lighthouse of unconquerable life.

There, where the storms rush down into the sea and the mountain’s snout drinks the water, each shall one day keep his watches by day and by night, for his testing and recognition.

Each shall be recognized and tested, to see whether he is of my kind and lineage. Is he master of a long will? Is he silent even when he speaks? Does he give in such a way that he takes in giving?

Such a one may one day become my companion, a fellow creator and fellow celebrant with Zarathustra. He will be someone who writes my will on my tablets, for the fuller perfection of all things.

And for his sake, and for the sake of those like him, I must perfect myself. That is why I now avoid my happiness and offer myself to every misfortune, for my final testing and recognition.

And truly, it was time for me to leave. The wanderer’s shadow, the longest boredom, and the stillest hour have all said to me: “It is high time!”

The word blew in to me through the keyhole and said, “Come!” The door sprang quietly open for me and said, “Go!”

But I lay chained by my love for my children. Desire had set this trap for me, the desire for love, so that I would become my children’s prey and lose myself in them.

For me, to desire now means to have lost myself. I possess you, my children! In this possessing, everything shall be certainty and nothing shall be desire.

But the sun of my love lay brooding on me, and Zarathustra stewed in his own juice. Then shadows and doubts flew past me.

I longed for frost and winter. “Oh, if only frost and winter would make me crack and crunch again!” I sighed. Then an icy mist rose out of me.

My past burst open its tomb. Many pains that had been buried alive woke up. They had only been sleeping, hidden in burial 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 burrowing and no longer tremble?

My heart pounds up into my throat when I hear you burrowing! Even your silence nearly strangles me, you abysmal silent one!

I have never yet dared to call you up. It has been enough that I have carried you around with me! I have not yet been strong enough for my final lion’s recklessness and playfulness.

Your weight has always been formidable enough for me. But one day I will find the strength and the lion’s voice to call you up!

When I have overcome myself in that, I will overcome myself in what is greater still. And a victory shall be the seal of my perfection!

Meanwhile I sail on uncertain seas. Chance flatters me, smooth-tongued chance. I look forward and backward, and still I see no end.

The hour of my final struggle has not yet come to me. Or is it perhaps coming to me right now? Truly, sea and life gaze at me from all around with treacherous beauty.

O afternoon of my life! O happiness before evening! O harbor on the high seas! O peace in uncertainty! How I distrust you all!

Truly, I distrust your treacherous beauty! I am like the lover who distrusts smiles that are too smooth.

As the jealous lover pushes his dearest one away from him, tender even in his harshness, so I push this blissful hour away from me.

Away with you, blissful hour! With you an involuntary bliss has come to me! I stand here ready for my harshest pain. You have come at the wrong time!

Away with you, blissful hour! Go and find shelter over there, with my children! Hurry! Bless them with my happiness before evening falls!

Look, evening is already approaching. The sun is sinking. Away, my happiness!

Thus spoke Zarathustra. And he waited for his misfortune all night long, but he waited in vain. The night stayed clear and calm, and happiness itself came closer and closer to him.

Toward morning, however, Zarathustra laughed to his heart and said mockingly: “Happiness runs after me. That is because I do not run after women. And happiness is a woman.”

XLVIII. BEFORE SUNRISE.

O sky above me, you pure, you deep sky! You abyss of light! As I gaze at you, I tremble with divine longings.

To hurl myself up to your height: that is my depth! To hide myself in your purity: that is my innocence!

The god veils his beauty; in the same way you hide your stars. You do not speak; in this way you proclaim your wisdom to me.

Today you have risen silently for me over the raging sea. Your love and your modesty are a revelation to my raging soul.

You came to me beautiful, veiled in your beauty. You spoke to me without words, your wisdom plain to see.

Oh, how could I fail to sense all the modesty of your soul! You came to me before the sun, to me, the loneliest one.

We have been friends from the beginning. Grief, dread, and depth are ours in common. Even the sun is ours in common.

We do not speak to each other, because we know too much. We keep silent with each other, and smile our knowledge to each other.

Are you not the light of my fire? Do you not have the sister-soul of my insight?

Together we learned everything. Together we learned to climb beyond ourselves to ourselves, and to smile without a cloud.

We learned to smile down without a cloud, from bright eyes and from miles away, while below us compulsion and purpose and guilt steam like rain.

And when I wandered alone, what was my soul hungry for at night and on winding paths? And when I climbed mountains, whom did I ever seek there, if not you?

All my wandering and mountain-climbing was only a necessity, a makeshift for someone clumsy. My whole will wants only to fly, to fly into you!

And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and everything that stains you? I have even hated my own hatred, because it stained you!

I loathe the passing clouds, those stealthy cats of prey. They take from you and me what we share: the vast, unbounded Yes and Amen.

We loathe these go-betweens and mixers, the passing clouds. They are half-and-half creatures that have learned neither to bless nor to curse from the heart.

I would rather sit in a barrel under a closed-over sky. I would rather sit in the abyss with no sky at all, than see you, bright sky, stained with passing clouds!

And often I have longed to pin them down with the jagged golden wires of lightning, so that I could beat the drum on their kettle-bellies, like the thunder.

I would be an angry drummer, because they rob me of your Yes and Amen, you sky above me, you pure, bright sky, you abyss of light! And because they rob you of my Yes and Amen.

For I would rather have noise and thunder and blasts of storm than this discreet, doubting, catlike calm. And among people, too, I hate most of all the soft-footed ones, the half-and-half ones, the doubting, hesitating passing clouds.

“Whoever cannot bless shall learn to curse!” This clear teaching fell to me from the clear sky. This star stands in my sky even on dark nights.

But I am one who blesses and says Yes, as long as you are around me, you pure, bright sky, you abyss of light! Then I carry my blessing Yes into every abyss.

I have become one who blesses and says Yes. That is why I struggled for so long and was a fighter: so that one day I would have my hands free for blessing.

And this is my blessing: to stand over each thing as its own sky, its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security. And blessed is the one who blesses in this way!

For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, beyond good and evil. Good and evil themselves are only fleeting shadows, damp sorrows, and passing clouds.

Truly, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach: “Over all things stands the sky of chance, the sky of innocence, the sky of accident, the sky of exuberance.”

“By accident”: that is the oldest nobility in the world. I gave it back to all things. I set them free from their slavery under purpose.

I placed this freedom and heavenly serenity like an azure bell over all things when I taught that no “eternal Will” wills over them and through them.

In place of that Will I put this exuberance and this folly, 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 yeast is mixed into all things. For the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed into all things!

A little wisdom is indeed possible. But this blessed certainty I have found in all things: they prefer to dance on the feet of chance.

O sky above me, you pure, you lofty sky! This is what your purity now means to me: that there is no eternal reason-spider and no reason-cobweb.

It means that you are a dance floor for divine chances, that you are a table of the gods for divine dice and dice-players!

But you blush? Have I spoken things that cannot be spoken? Have I insulted you when I meant to bless you?

Or is it the shame of being two of us that makes you blush? Do you tell me to go and be silent because now day is coming?

The world is deep, deeper than the day has ever understood. Not everything may be said in the presence of day. But day is coming, so let us part!

O heaven above me, you modest one, you glowing one! O my happiness before sunrise! The day is coming, so let us part!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

XLIX. THE BEDWARFING VIRTUE.

When Zarathustra was back on the mainland, he did not go straight to his mountains and his cave. Instead he wandered a great deal, asked many questions, and found out this and that. He joked about himself: “Look, a river that flows back to its source in many windings!”

He wanted to learn what had happened among people while he was away: whether they had become greater or smaller. Once, when he saw a row of new houses, he marveled and said:

“What do these houses mean? Truly, no great soul put them up as an image of itself!

Did some silly child take them out of its toy box? If only another child would put them back in the box!

And these rooms and chambers: can people go in and out of them? They seem made for silk dolls, or for dainty eaters who perhaps let others eat with them.”

Zarathustra stood still and thought. At last he said sorrowfully: “Everything has become smaller here!

Everywhere I see lower doorways. Someone of my kind can still go through them, but he has to stoop!

Oh, when will I be home again, where I no longer have to stoop, no longer have to stoop before the small!” And Zarathustra sighed and gazed into the distance.

That same day, however, he gave his speech on the virtue that makes people 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 that small people need small virtues, and because I find it hard to accept that small people are necessary!

Here I am still like a rooster in a strange farmyard, where even the hens peck at me. But I am not unfriendly to the hens because of that.

I am polite to them, as I am to all small annoyances. Being prickly toward small things seems to me wisdom fit for hedgehogs.

They all talk about me when they sit around their fire in the evening. They talk about me, but no one thinks about me!

This is the new stillness I have experienced: their noise around me spreads a cloak over my thoughts.

They shout to one another: “What is this gloomy cloud going to do to us? Let us make sure it does not bring a plague on us!”

Recently a woman grabbed her child, who was coming toward me. “Take the children away!” she cried. “Eyes like those scorch children’s souls.”

They cough when I speak. They think coughing is an objection to strong winds. They have no idea how boisterous my happiness is!

“We don’t have time for Zarathustra yet,” they object. But what does a time matter that “has no time” for Zarathustra?

And even if they praised me completely, how could I go to sleep on their praise? Their praise is a belt of thorns to me: it scratches me even when I take it off.

I learned this among them too: the one who praises acts as if he were giving something back, but in truth he wants to be given more!

Ask my foot whether their tunes of praise and enticement please it! Truly, to such a beat and tick-tock it wants neither to dance nor to stand still.

They would like to lure and praise me into small virtues. They would like to talk my foot into the tick-tock of small happiness.

I walk among this people and keep my eyes open. They have become smaller, and they keep becoming smaller. The reason is their doctrine of happiness and virtue.

They are moderate even in virtue, because they want comfort. And only moderate virtue is compatible with comfort.

Of course, they too learn in their way to stride along and stride forward. I call that their hobbling. In doing it, they get in the way of everyone who is in a hurry.

Many of them move forward while looking backward with stiff necks. Those are the ones I like to run into.

Foot and eye should not lie, nor contradict each other. But there is a great deal of lying among small people.

Some of them will, but most of them are willed. Some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors.

Among them are actors who do not know it, and actors who do not intend it. The genuine ones are always rare, especially the genuine actors.

There is little of man here, and so their women make themselves mannish. For only someone who is man enough will save the woman in woman.

And the worst hypocrisy I found among them is this: even those who command pretend to have the virtues of those who serve.

“I serve, you serve, we serve”: so even the rulers’ hypocrisy chants here. And alas, if the first lord is only the first servant!

Even their hypocrisy caught my eyes’ curiosity. I understood well all their fly-happiness, their buzzing around sunny windowpanes.

So much kindness, so much weakness I see. So much justice and pity, so much weakness.

They are round, fair, and considerate toward one another, just as grains of sand are round, fair, and considerate toward grains of sand.

To embrace a small happiness modestly: that they call “submission”! And at the same time they are already glancing modestly toward a new small happiness.

Deep down they want one thing above all: that no one hurt them. So they anticipate everyone’s wishes and do good to everyone.

That, however, is cowardice, even if it is called “virtue.”

And when these small people happen to speak harshly, I hear only their hoarseness in it. Every draft of air makes them hoarse.

They are clever indeed; their virtues have clever fingers. But they lack fists. Their fingers do not know how to curl themselves into fists.

For them, virtue is whatever makes people modest and tame. With it they have turned the wolf into a dog, and turned man himself into man’s best domestic animal.

“We set our chair in the middle,” their smirk tells me, “as far from dying gladiators as from contented pigs.”

That, however, is mediocrity, even if it is called moderation.

I walk among this people and let fall many words. But they know neither how to take them nor how to keep them.

They wonder why I did not come to denounce lust and vice. But truly, I did not come to warn against pickpockets either!

They wonder why I am not ready to encourage and sharpen their cleverness. As if they did not already have enough know-it-alls, whose voices grate on my ear like slate pencils!

And when I call out, “Curse all the cowardly devils in you that want to whimper, fold their hands, and worship!” they shout, “Zarathustra is godless.”

Their teachers of submission shout this most of all. But it is precisely into their ears that I love to cry: “Yes! I am Zarathustra, the godless!”

Those teachers of submission! Wherever there is something puny, sickly, or scabby, they crawl like lice. 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, so that I may enjoy his teaching?”

I am Zarathustra the godless: where do I find my equal? All those are my equals who give themselves their own will and throw off all submission.

I am Zarathustra the godless! I cook every chance in my pot. Only when it is thoroughly cooked do I welcome it as my food.

And truly, many a chance came to me commandingly. But my will spoke to it even more commandingly, and then it lay begging on its knees,

begging to find a home and a heart with me, and saying flatteringly: “See, O Zarathustra, how only a friend comes to a friend!”

But why do I talk, when no one has my ears? So I will shout it out to all the winds:

You keep getting smaller, you small people! You are crumbling away, you comfortable ones! You will yet perish—

—from your many small virtues, your many small omissions, and your many small submissions!

Too soft, too yielding: that is your soil! But for a tree to become great, it seeks to wrap hard roots around hard rocks!

Even what you leave undone helps weave the web of the whole human future. Even your nothing is a cobweb, and a spider that lives on the blood of the future.

And when you take, you small virtuous ones, it is like stealing. But even among rogues, honor says: “One should steal only when one cannot rob.”

“It gives itself”: that is also a doctrine of submission. But I tell you, you comfortable ones: it takes for itself, and it will take more and more from you!

Ah, if only you would give up all half-willing, and choose idleness as decisively as you choose action!

Ah, if only you understood my word: “Always do what you will, but first be people who can will.

Always love your neighbor as yourselves, but first be people who love themselves—

—who love with great love, who love with great contempt!” So speaks Zarathustra the godless.

But why do I talk, when no one has my ears? It is still an hour too early for me here.

I am my own forerunner among this people, my own rooster crowing in dark lanes.

But their hour is coming! And mine is coming too! Hour by hour they become smaller, poorer, less fruitful. Poor herbs! Poor earth!

And soon they will stand before me like dry grass and prairie, truly tired of themselves, and thirsting for fire more than for water!

O blessed hour of the lightning! O mystery before noontide! Someday I will turn them into running fires, heralds with tongues of flame.

With tongues of flame they will one day proclaim: It is coming, it is near, the great noontide!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

L. ON THE OLIVE-MOUNT.

Winter, a bad guest, sits with me at home. My hands are blue from his friendly handshakes.

I honor him, that bad guest, but I am glad to leave him alone. I like to run away from him, and if you run well, you escape him!

With warm feet and warm thoughts I run to where the wind is still: to the sunny corner of my olive mountain.

There I laugh at my stern guest and am still fond of him, because he clears my house of flies and quiets many little noises.

He will not put up with even one gnat buzzing, let alone two. He also makes the lanes lonely, so that even the moonlight is afraid there at night.

He is a hard guest, but I honor him. I do not worship the pot-bellied fire-idol as the softlings do.

Better a little teeth-chattering than idol worship! That is what my nature wants. And I have a special grudge against all fervent, steaming, steamy fire-idols.

Whoever I love, I love better in winter than in summer. I mock my enemies better and more heartily now, when winter sits in my house.

Heartily, truly, even when I crawl into bed: there my hidden happiness still laughs and plays; even my deceptive dream laughs.

I, a crawler? Never in my life did I crawl before the powerful. And if I ever lied, I lied out of love. That is why I am glad even in my winter bed.

A poor bed warms me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my poverty. And in winter she is most faithful to me.

I begin every day with a piece of mischief: I mock the winter with a cold bath. My stern housemate grumbles at that.

I also like to tickle him with a wax candle, so that he will finally let the sky emerge from its ash-grey twilight.

For I am especially mischievous in the morning, at the early hour when the bucket rattles at the well and horses neigh warmly in grey lanes.

Then I wait impatiently for the clear sky finally to dawn for me: the snow-bearded winter sky, the hoary one, the white-haired one—

—the winter sky, the silent winter sky, which often stifles even its own sun!

Did I learn the long, clear silence from it? Or did it learn it from me? Or did each of us invent it alone?

All good things have a thousand origins. All good, roguish things leap into existence out of joy: how could they do that only once?

The long silence is also a good roguish thing, and so is looking out, like the winter sky, from a clear, round-eyed face—

—and, like it, stifling one’s own sun and one’s unbending solar will. Truly, I have learned this art and this winter-roguishness well!

My favorite mischief and art is this: my silence has learned not to give itself away by being silent.

Clattering with words and dice, I outwit the solemn attendants. All those stern watchers will fail to catch my will and purpose.

I devised the long, clear silence so that no one could see down into my depths and into my ultimate will.

I found many a clever man who veiled his face and made his water muddy, so that no one could see through it and beneath it.

But it was precisely to him that the cleverer distrusters and nutcrackers came. It was precisely from him that they fished out his best-hidden fish!

But the clear, the honest, the transparent: these are, for me, the wisest of the silent. In them the depth is so profound that even the clearest water does not give it away.

You snow-bearded, silent winter sky, you round-eyed white-head above me! Oh, you heavenly image of my soul and its playfulness!

And must I not hide myself like someone who has swallowed gold, so that no one rips my soul open?

Must I not walk on stilts, so that all those envious and hurtful people around me will overlook my long legs?

Those dingy, stove-warmed, worn-out, green-tinged, ill-natured souls: how could their envy bear my happiness!

So I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks. I do not show them that every warm belt of the sun wraps around my mountain!

They hear only the whistling of my winter storms. They do not know that I also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south winds.

They also pity me for my accidents and chances. But my word says: “Let chance come to me: it is as innocent as a little child!”

How could they bear my happiness, if I did not wrap it in accidents and winter hardships, in bearskin caps and cloaks of snowflakes?

If I did not myself take pity on their pity, the pity of those envious and hurtful people?

If I did not sigh in front of them, and let my teeth chatter with cold, and patiently let myself be bundled up in their pity?

This is the wise mischief and goodwill of my soul: it does not hide its winters and icy storms. Nor does it hide its chilblains.

For one person, solitude is the escape of the sick. For another, it is the escape from the sick.

Let them hear me shivering and sighing with winter cold, all those poor squint-eyed rascals around me! With this sighing and shivering, I escape from their overheated rooms.

Let them feel sorry for me and sigh with me over my chilblains. “He will freeze to death yet on the ice of knowledge!” they mourn.

Meanwhile I run here and there with warm feet on my olive mount. In the sunny corner of my olive mount I sing, and I mock all pity.

Thus sang Zarathustra.

LI. ON PASSING-BY.

So, wandering slowly through many peoples and many different cities, Zarathustra made his way back by roundabout roads toward his mountains and his cave. And along the way, without expecting it, he came to the gate of the great city.

There a foaming fool sprang toward him with outstretched hands and blocked his path. It was the same fool whom the people called “Zarathustra’s ape.” He had picked up something of Zarathustra’s phrasing and tone of speech, and perhaps he also liked to borrow from the store of his wisdom. And the fool spoke to Zarathustra like this:

O 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 feet! Spit on the city gate instead, and turn back!

This is hell for a hermit’s thoughts. Here great thoughts are boiled alive and boiled down small.

Here every great feeling decays. Here only bony, rattling little sensations are allowed to rattle!

Can you not already smell the slaughterhouses and cheap kitchens 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 make newspapers out of these rags too!

Do you not hear how the spirit has become a game of words here? It vomits up disgusting verbal swill! And they make newspapers out of this verbal swill too.

They hound one another, and do not know where they are going! They stir each other up, and do not know why! They clink their imitation gold, and they jingle their real gold.

They are cold, and look for warmth in distilled liquor. They are overheated, and look for coolness in frozen spirits. They are all sick and sore from public opinion.

Every lust and every vice is at home here. But there are also virtuous people here, and much virtue that is fit for official appointment, and much that has been appointed.

There is much office-seeking virtue with clerks’ fingers, and with tough backsides made for sitting and waiting. It is blessed with little stars of honor on its chest, and with padded daughters who have no hips.

There is also much piety here, and much faithful licking and smearing of spittle, before the God of Hosts.

The star of honor drips down “from on high,” and so does the gracious spittle. And every chest that has no star longs for what is on high.

The moon has its court, and the court has its mooncalves. But the begging people, and all the begging virtues that hope for appointment, pray to everything that comes from the court.

“I serve, you serve, we serve”: so all the office-seeking virtue prays to the prince, hoping that the star it has earned will finally be pinned to its narrow chest!

But the moon still circles around everything earthly. In the same way, the prince circles around what is most earthly of all: the shopkeeper’s gold.

The God of the armies of war is not the god of the gold bar. The prince proposes, but the shopkeeper disposes!

By everything bright and strong and good in you, O Zarathustra! Spit on this city of shopkeepers and turn back!

Here all blood flows rotten, lukewarm, and frothy through every vein. Spit on the great city, which is the great slum where all the scum froths together!

Spit on the city of cramped souls and narrow chests, of sharp eyes and sticky fingers,

on the city of the pushy, the shameless, the demagogues of the pen and the demagogues of the tongue, the overheated ambitious ones,

where everything crippled, ill-famed, lustful, distrustful, overripe, sickly-yellow, and seditious festers together, pernicious.

Spit on the great city and turn back!

At this point Zarathustra interrupted the foaming fool and shut his mouth.

“Stop this at once!” Zarathustra cried. “Your speech and your kind 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 not tainted, frothy swamp blood flow in your own veins, now that you have learned to croak and rail like this?

“Why did you not go into the forest? Or why did you not till the soil? Is the sea not full of green islands?

“I despise your contempt. And when you warned me, why did you not warn yourself?

“My contempt and my warning bird shall take flight out of love alone, 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 spoil even my praise of folly.

“What first made you grunt? Nobody flattered you enough. So you sat yourself down beside this filth, so that you would have reason to grunt a great deal,

“so that you would have reason for much revenge! For all your foaming is revenge, you vain fool. I have seen through you.

“But your fool’s word harms me, even when you are right! And even if Zarathustra’s word were a hundred times justified, you would always do wrong with my word!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra. Then he looked at the great city, sighed, and was silent for a long time. At last he spoke:

“I loathe this great city too, and not only this fool. In both, there is nothing to make better and nothing to make worse.

“Woe to this great city! I wish I could already see the pillar of fire in which it will be consumed!

“For such pillars of fire must come before the great noontide. But that has its own time and its own fate.

“But I give you this rule as I leave, you fool: Where one can no longer love, one should pass by!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he passed by the fool and the great city.

LII. THE APOSTATES.

Ah, is everything on this meadow already withered and gray that only lately stood green and many-colored? And how much honey of hope I once carried from here back to my beehives!

Those young hearts have all grown old already. No, not even old! Only tired, ordinary, comfortable. They say it openly: “We have become pious again.”

Not long ago I saw them run out in the early morning with brave steps. But the feet of their knowledge grew tired, and now they even slander their morning courage!

Many of them once lifted their legs like dancers, and the laughter of my wisdom winked at them. Then they had second thoughts. Just now I saw them bent over, crawling to the cross.

They used to flutter around light and freedom like gnats and young poets. A little older, a little colder, and already they are mystery-mongers, mumblers, and milksops.

Did their hearts perhaps lose courage because solitude had swallowed me like a whale? Did their ears perhaps listen, long and longingly, for me in vain, for my trumpet notes and my herald’s calls?

Ah! There are always only a few whose hearts have lasting courage and abundance, and in such people the spirit also stays patient. The rest, however, are cowardly.

The rest: these are always the great majority, the commonplace, the superfluous, the far too many. They are all cowardly!

Whoever is of my kind will meet the experiences of my kind along the way. His first companions must be corpses and jesters.

His second companions, however, will call themselves his believers. They will be a living crowd, with much love, much foolishness, and much beardless reverence.

Whoever among human beings is of my kind should not bind his heart to these believers. Whoever knows the fickle, faint-hearted human species should not trust in these springtimes and many-colored meadows!

If they could act otherwise, then they would also will otherwise. The half-and-half spoil every whole. Leaves wither: what is there to mourn about that?

Let them go and fall away, O Zarathustra, and do not mourn! Better still, blow among them with rustling winds.

Blow among those leaves, O Zarathustra, so that everything withered will run away from you all the faster!

“We have become pious again”: so these apostates confess. And some of them are still too timid even to confess it.

I look them in the eye. I say it to their faces and to the blush on their cheeks: You are the ones who pray again!

But it is a disgrace to pray! Not for everyone, but for you, and for me, and for anyone who keeps his conscience in his head. For you it is a disgrace to pray!

You know it well. The faint-hearted devil in you would like to fold its arms, put its hands in its lap, and take things easier. This faint-hearted devil persuades you that “there is a God!”

But by this you belong to the light-fearing kind, to those whom the light never lets rest. Now you must push your head deeper every day into darkness and fog!

And you have chosen your hour well, for right now the night birds are flying out again. The hour has come for all light-fearing people: the evening hour, the hour of rest, when they do not “rest.”

I hear it and I smell it: their hour for hunting and processions has come. Not a wild hunt, but a tame, lame, sniffling hunt of soft-steppers and soft-prayers,

a hunt for impressionable simpletons. All the mousetraps for the heart have been set again! And whenever I lift a curtain, a moth rushes out.

Was it perhaps crouching there with another moth? For everywhere I smell small hidden communities. Wherever there are little closets, there are new devotees inside, and the stale air of devotees.

They sit beside one another for long evenings and say: “Let us become like little children again and say ‘dear God!’” Their mouths and stomachs have been ruined by the pious confectioners.

Or they spend long evenings watching a crafty, lurking cross-spider, the kind marked with a cross. It preaches prudence to the spiders themselves and teaches that “under crosses, it is good to spin webs!”

Or they sit all day at swamps with fishing rods, and for that reason think themselves deep. But whoever fishes where there are no fish, I would not even call shallow!

Or they learn to play the harp in a godly, cheerful style with a hymn-writer, who would like to harp his way into the hearts of young girls, because he has grown tired of old girls and their praise.

Or they learn to shudder with a learned half-madman, who waits in darkened rooms for spirits to come to him. And then the spirit runs away entirely!

Or they listen to an old wandering piper of howls and growls, who has learned the sadness of sounds from the sad winds. Now he pipes like the wind, and preaches sadness in sad tunes.

And some of them have even become night watchmen. They now know how to blow horns, and they go around at night waking up old things that fell asleep long ago.

Last night by the garden wall I heard five sentences about old things. They came from just such old, sorrowful, dried-up night watchmen.

“For a father, he does not care enough for his children. Human fathers do it better!”

“He is too old! He no longer cares for his children at all,” answered the other night watchman.

“Does he even have children? No one can prove it unless he proves it himself! I have long wished that he would prove it thoroughly, just once.”

“Prove? As if he had ever proved anything! Proving is hard for him. He sets great store by people believing him.”

“Yes! Yes! Belief makes him blessed, belief in him. That is how old people are! It is the same with us!”

So the two old night watchmen and scarers of light spoke to each other, and then they tooted sorrowfully on their horns. That is what happened last night by the garden wall.

But my heart twisted with laughter and almost burst. It did not know where to go, and it sank down into my diaphragm.

It will be the death of me yet, choking with laughter when I see drunken asses and hear night watchmen doubting God like this.

Has the time for all such doubts not long since passed? Who can still wake up such old, sleeping, light-shunning things nowadays?

The old gods came to an end long ago. And truly, they had a good and joyful end!

They did not “gloom” themselves to death. People make that up! On the contrary, they once laughed themselves to death!

That happened when the most ungodly saying came from a god himself, the saying: “There is only one God! You shall have no other gods before me!”

An old grim-bearded god, a jealous one, forgot himself in this way.

And all the gods laughed then, and rocked on their thrones, and cried: “Is this not exactly what divinity is, that there are gods, but no God?”

Whoever has an ear, let him hear.

Thus Zarathustra spoke in the city he loved, which is called “The Pied Cow.” From there he had only two more days to travel before he would reach his cave and his animals again. His soul rejoiced without pause because his homecoming was so near.

LIII. THE RETURN HOME.

O solitude! My home, solitude! I have lived too long and too wildly in wild, distant places to come back to you without tears!

Now shake your finger at me as mothers do. Now smile at me as mothers smile. Now simply say: “Who was it that once rushed away from me like a whirlwind?

“Who was it that called out on leaving: ‘I have sat too long with solitude, and there I have forgotten how to be silent!’ That you have surely learned by now?

“O Zarathustra, I know everything. I know that among the many you were more abandoned, you unique one, than you ever were with me!

“Abandonment is one thing, and solitude is another. That you have now learned! You have also learned that among people you will always be wild and strange.

“You will be wild and strange even when they love you, because above all they want to be treated gently!

“Here, though, you are at home and at ease with yourself. Here you can say everything and pour out all your motives. Nothing here is ashamed of hidden, hardened feelings.

“Here all things come fondly to your words and flatter you, because they want to ride on your back. Here you ride on every image toward every truth.

“Here you may speak honestly and openly to all things. And in truth, it sounds like praise in their ears when someone speaks to all things directly!

“Abandonment is another matter. Do you remember, O Zarathustra? Your bird screamed overhead while you stood in the forest beside a corpse, undecided, not knowing where to go.

“Then you said: ‘Let my animals lead me! I have found it more dangerous among people than among animals.’ That was abandonment!

“And do you remember, O Zarathustra? You sat on your island like a well of wine among empty buckets, giving and granting, handing out and sharing among the thirsty.

“In the end you alone sat thirsty among the drunken, and cried out every night: ‘Is taking not more blessed than giving? And is stealing not more blessed still than taking?’ That was abandonment!

“And do you remember, O Zarathustra? Your stillest hour came and drove you out of yourself, whispering wickedly: ‘Speak and be broken!’

“It made you sick of all your waiting and silence, and it disheartened your humble courage. That was abandonment!”

O solitude! My home, solitude! How tenderly and blissfully your voice speaks to me!

We do not question each other, and we do not complain to each other. We walk together openly through open doors.

With you, everything is open and clear, and even the hours run here on lighter feet. In the dark, time weighs more heavily on a person than in the light.

Here all the words of being, and all the cabinets where words are kept, fly open to me. Here all being wants to become words, and all becoming wants to learn from me how to speak.

Down there, though, all talking is useless! There the best wisdom is to forget and pass by. That I have now learned!

Whoever wants to understand everything in people must handle everything. But my hands are too clean for that.

I do not even like breathing in their breath. Alas, that I lived so long among their noise and their bad breath!

O blessed stillness around me! O pure scents around me! How this stillness draws pure breath from a deep chest! How it listens, this blessed stillness!

But down there everything speaks, and everything is misheard. If you announce your wisdom with bells, the shopkeepers in the marketplace will drown it out by jingling their pennies!

Among them everything talks, and no one knows how to understand anymore. Everything falls into the water, and nothing falls into deep wells anymore.

Among them everything talks, and nothing succeeds or comes to completion anymore. Everything cackles, but who will still sit quietly on the nest and hatch the eggs?

Among them everything talks, and everything is talked to death. What yesterday was too hard even for time and its teeth hangs today, chewed and gnawed to pieces, from the mouths of the people of today.

Among them everything talks, and everything is betrayed. What was once called the secret and secrecy of deep souls now belongs to the street criers and other butterflies.

O human hubbub, you strange and wonderful thing! You noise in dark streets! Now you are behind me again. My greatest danger lies behind me!

My greatest danger always lay in sparing and pitying others, and all human hubbub wants to be spared and tolerated.

I always lived among people with truths held back, with a fool’s hand and a fooled heart, and rich in the small lies of pity.

I sat among them in disguise, ready to misjudge myself so that I could bear them. I gladly told myself: “You fool, you do not know people!”

You forget what people are when you live among them. There is too much foreground in everyone. What can eyes that see far and long for far things do there?

Fool that I was, when they misjudged me I spared them more than I spared myself. I was used to being hard on myself, and often I even took revenge on myself for being so lenient with them.

Stung all over by poisonous flies, and hollowed like a stone by many drops of malice, I sat among them. And still I told myself: “Everything petty is innocent of its pettiness!”

I found the most poisonous flies to be those who call themselves “the good.” They sting in all innocence, and they lie in all innocence. How could they be just toward me!

Whoever lives among the good is taught by pity to lie. Pity makes the air stifling for every free soul, for the stupidity of the good has no bottom.

Down there I learned to hide myself and my riches, because I found everyone poor in spirit. That was the lie of my pity: that I knew in everyone,

that I saw and smelled in everyone, how much spirit was enough for him and how much was too much!

Their stiff wise men I called wise, not stiff. That is how I learned to slur over words.

The gravediggers dig up diseases for themselves. Bad fumes rest under old rubbish. One should not stir up the swamp. One should live on mountains.

With blissful nostrils I breathe mountain freedom again. My nose is finally free of the smell of all human hubbub!

Tickled by sharp breezes as if by sparkling wine, my soul sneezes. It sneezes and cries out to itself in congratulation: “Health to you!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

LIV. THE THREE EVIL THINGS.

In my dream, my last morning dream, I stood today on a headland beyond the world. I held a pair of scales, and I weighed the world.

Alas, the rosy dawn came too early for me. She glowed me awake, the jealous one! She is always jealous of the glow of my morning dreams.

My dream found the world measurable by anyone who has time, weighable by a good weigher, reachable by strong wings, and guessable by divine nutcrackers.

My dream is a bold sailor, half ship and half hurricane, silent as a butterfly, impatient as a falcon. How did it have the patience and leisure today to weigh the world?

Perhaps my wisdom spoke to it in secret: my laughing, wide-awake daytime wisdom, which mocks all “infinite worlds.” For it says: “Where there is force, number becomes master, because number has more force.”

How confidently my dream looked upon this finite world! It looked neither with a taste for novelty nor with a taste for the old, neither timidly nor pleadingly.

The world offered itself to me as if a big round apple were placed in my hand, a ripe golden apple with cool, soft, velvety skin.

The world stood on my headland as if a tree were nodding to me: a broad-branched, strong-willed tree, bent to form a backrest and a footstool for weary travelers.

The world presented itself to me today as if delicate hands were carrying a casket toward me, a casket left open for the delight of modest, admiring eyes.

It was not enough of a riddle to frighten human love away, and not enough of a solution to put human wisdom to sleep. Today the world was a humanly good thing to me, though such bad things are said of it!

How I thank my morning dream for letting me weigh the world at today’s dawn! It came to me as a humanly good thing, this dream and comforter of the heart!

So that I may do the same by day, imitating and copying the best of it, I will now put the three worst things on the scales and weigh them well, in a human way.

Whoever taught people to bless also taught them to curse. What are the three most thoroughly cursed things in the world? These I will put on the scales.

Sensual pleasure, lust for power, and selfishness. Until now these three have been cursed most thoroughly and have had the worst and falsest reputation. These three I will weigh well, in a human way.

Well, then! Here is my headland, and there is the sea. It rolls toward me, shaggy and fawning, the old, faithful, hundred-headed dog-monster that I love!

Well, then! Here I will hold the scales over the surging sea. I also choose a witness to watch: you, the hermit tree, you strong-scented, broad-arched tree that I love!

By what bridge does the present cross to the hereafter? What compels the high to stoop down to the low? And what commands even the highest to keep growing upward?

Now the scales hang balanced and still. I have thrown three heavy questions into one pan, and the other pan carries three heavy answers.

Sensual pleasure: to all body-despisers in hair shirts, a thorn and a stake. All backworldsmen, the believers in a world behind this one, curse it as “the world,” because it mocks and fools all mistaken teachers who draw false conclusions.

Sensual pleasure: to the rabble, the slow fire on which it is burned. To all worm-eaten wood and all stinking rags, the furnace already heated and waiting.

Sensual pleasure: to free hearts, something innocent and free, the garden happiness of the earth, the overflowing thanks of the whole future to the present.

Sensual pleasure: a sweet poison only to the withered. To the lion-willed, however, it is the great restorative, the wine of wines, reverently saved.

Sensual pleasure: the great symbol of happiness, pointing to a higher happiness and the highest hope. For marriage is promised to many, and more than marriage,

promised to many who are stranger to each other than man and woman. And who has fully understood how strange man and woman are to each other!

Sensual pleasure: but I want hedges around my thoughts, and even around my words, so that swine and libertines do not break into my gardens!

Lust for power: the glowing whip of the hardest of the hard-hearted, the cruel torture saved for the cruelest themselves, the dark flame of living pyres.

Lust for power: the wicked gadfly set upon the vainest peoples, the scorner of all uncertain virtue, riding on every horse and every pride.

Lust for power: the earthquake that breaks and breaks open everything rotten and hollow. It is the rolling, rumbling, punishing destroyer of whitewashed tombs, the flashing question mark beside answers given too soon.

Lust for power: under its gaze people creep and crouch and toil, and sink lower than the snake and the swine, until at last a great contempt cries out of them.

Lust for power: the terrible teacher of great contempt, which tells cities and empires to their face: “Away with you!” It does so until a voice cries out of them: “Away with me!”

Lust for power: yet it also climbs enticingly up to the pure and the solitary, up to heights content with themselves. It glows there like a love that paints purple joys enticingly across earthly skies.

Lust for power: but who would call it a lust when the height longs to stoop down for power! Truly, there is nothing sick or diseased in such longing and descending!

It longs that the solitary height may not stay solitary and self-sufficient forever, that the mountains may come down to the valleys, and the winds of the heights to the plains.

Oh, who could find the right name, an honoring name, for such longing! “The bestowing virtue”: that is what Zarathustra once called the unnamable.

And then it also happened, and truly it happened for the first time, that his word blessed selfishness: the wholesome, healthy selfishness that springs from a powerful soul.

It springs from the powerful soul to which the lofty body belongs: the beautiful, triumphant, refreshing body around which everything becomes a mirror.

This is the supple, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and essence is the self-enjoying soul. The self-enjoyment of such bodies and souls calls itself “virtue.”

Such self-enjoyment shelters itself with its words of good and bad as if with sacred groves. With the names of its happiness it drives away everything contemptible.

It drives away everything cowardly. It says: “Bad: that is cowardly!” The ever-anxious, the sighing, the complaining, and those who snatch up the smallest advantage all seem contemptible to it.

It also despises all bittersweet wisdom. For there is indeed a wisdom that blooms in the dark, a nightshade wisdom, which always sighs: “All is vain!”

It regards timid distrust as base, and also everyone who wants oaths instead of looks and handshakes. It regards all overly distrustful wisdom the same way, because that is the manner of cowardly souls.

It regards as baser still the fawning, doglike one who rolls onto his back at once, the submissive one. There is also a wisdom that is submissive, doglike, pious, and fawning.

It finds hateful and loathsome the one who will never defend himself. This is the one who swallows poisonous spit and hostile looks: the all-too-patient one, the one who endures everything, the one satisfied with everything. For that is the manner of slaves.

Whether they grovel before gods and divine kicks, or before people and stupid human opinions, this blessed selfishness spits on all kinds of slaves!

It calls everything bad that is broken in spirit and meanly servile: forced, blinking eyes, crushed hearts, and the false, submissive manner that kisses with broad, cowardly lips.

And it calls false wisdom all the wit that slaves and the gray-haired and weary put on, and above all the cunning, falsely clever, curiously clever foolishness of priests!

But the falsely wise, all the priests, the world-weary, and those whose souls are of a womanish and servile nature: oh, how their game has always abused selfishness!

And precisely that was supposed to be virtue, and was to be called virtue: abusing selfishness! And “selfless” is what all those world-weary cowards and cross-spiders wished to be, and with good reason!

But now the day is coming for all of them: the change, the sword of judgment, the great noontide. Then many things will be revealed!

And whoever proclaims the ego wholesome and holy, and selfishness blessed, truly, he is a prophet who speaks what he knows: “Behold, it is coming, it is near, the great noontide!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

LV. THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY.

My mouth is of the people. I talk too coarsely and too heartily for Angora rabbits. And my words sound stranger still to all ink-fish and pen-foxes.

My hand is a fool’s hand. Woe to all tables and walls, and to anything else that has room for a fool’s sketches and a fool’s scrawls!

My foot is a horse’s hoof. With it I trample and trot over sticks and stones, up and down the fields, and I am bedevilled with delight in every fast race.

My stomach: surely it is an eagle’s stomach? For it prefers lamb’s flesh. Certainly it is a bird’s stomach.

I am nourished on innocent things, and on few of them, ready and impatient to fly, to fly away. That is my nature now. Why shouldn’t there be something of the bird’s nature in it!

Above all, my hostility to the spirit of gravity is the bird’s nature. Truly, I am deadly hostile to it, supremely hostile, hostile from the very beginning! Oh, where has my hostility not flown, and flown astray!

I could sing a song about it, and I will sing it, even if I am alone in an empty house and must sing it to my own ears.

There are other singers, of course. Only a full house makes their voices soft, their hands eloquent, their eyes expressive, and their hearts wakeful. I am not like them.

Whoever one day teaches people to fly will have moved all the boundary stones. The boundary stones themselves will fly into the air for him. He will christen the earth anew, as “the light one.”

The ostrich runs faster than the fastest horse, but it also thrusts its head heavily into the heavy earth. So it is with the man who cannot yet fly.

Earth and life seem heavy to him, and that is just what the spirit of gravity wants! But whoever would become light, and be a bird, must love himself. That is what I teach.

He must not, of course, love himself with the love of the sick and infected, for in them even self-love stinks!

One must learn to love oneself with a wholesome and healthy love. That is what I teach. Then one can bear to be with oneself and need not go wandering about.

Such wandering about calls itself “brotherly love.” With these words the best lying and pretending have been done until now, especially by those who have been a burden to everyone.

And truly, learning to love oneself is no commandment for today and tomorrow. Of all arts, it is the finest, the subtlest, the last, and the most patient.

For everything a person possesses is well hidden from him, and of all treasure pits, one’s own is the last to be dug up. That is how 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 people suffer the little children to come to them: to forbid them, early on, to love themselves. That is how the spirit of gravity arranges it.

And we loyally carry what we are given, on hard shoulders, over rugged mountains! And when we sweat, people tell us: “Yes, life is hard to bear!”

But only man himself is hard to bear! The reason is that he carries too many foreign things on his shoulders. Like the camel, he kneels down and lets himself be well loaded.

This is especially true of the strong, load-bearing man in whom reverence dwells. He loads too many foreign heavy words and values onto himself, and then life seems to him a desert!

And truly, many things that are our own are hard to bear too! Many inner things in a person are like the oyster: repulsive, slippery, and hard to grasp.

So an elegant shell, elegantly adorned, must plead on their behalf. But this art too must be learned: to have a shell, a fine appearance, and a wise blindness!

Then again, many things in a person mislead us, because many a shell is poor and pitiable, and too much shell. Much hidden goodness and power is never suspected. The choicest delicacies find no one to taste them!

Women know this, the choicest of them: a little fatter, a little leaner. Oh, how much fate lies in so little!

Man is hard to discover, and hardest of all for himself to discover. The spirit often lies about the soul. That is how the spirit of gravity arranges it.

But he has discovered himself who says: “This is my good and evil.” With that he has silenced the mole and the dwarf, who say: “Good for all, evil for all.”

Truly, I do not like those either who call everything good and call this world the best of all. Those I call the all-satisfied.

All-satisfiedness, which knows how to taste everything, 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 is the true nature of swine! Always to say Ye-a: only the ass has learned that, and those like it!

Deep yellow and hot red: that is what my taste wants. It mixes blood into every color. But whoever whitewashes his house reveals to me a whitewashed soul.

Some fall in love with mummies, others with phantoms. Both alike are hostile to all flesh and blood. Oh, how both offend my taste! For I love blood.

And I will not live and stay where everyone spits and spews. That is my taste now. I would rather live among thieves and perjurers. No one carries gold in his mouth.

Still more offensive to me are all lickspittles. The most offensive human animal I found, I christened “parasite”: it would not love, and yet it wanted to live off love.

I call unhappy all those who have only one choice: to become either evil beasts or evil beast-tamers. Among such people I would not set up my tabernacle.

I also call unhappy those who must always wait. They offend my taste: all the toll-collectors and traders, and kings, and the other keepers of lands and keepers of shops.

Truly, I learned waiting too, and thoroughly, but only waiting for myself. Above all, I learned standing and walking and running and leaping and climbing and dancing.

This is my teaching: whoever wants to fly one day must first learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing. One does not fly straight into flying!

With rope ladders I learned to reach many a window. With nimble legs I climbed high masts. To sit on the high masts of knowledge seemed to me no small bliss:

to flicker like small flames on high masts. It is a small light, certainly, but a great comfort to castaway sailors and the shipwrecked!

I arrived at my truth by many ways and windings. It was not by one ladder that I climbed to the height from which my eye roams into my distance.

And I asked the way only unwillingly. That always went against my taste! I preferred to question and test the ways themselves.

All my traveling has been a testing and a questioning. And truly, one must also learn to answer such questioning! That, however, is my taste:

neither a good taste nor a bad one, but my taste, which I no longer hide and of which I am no longer ashamed.

“This is now my way. Where is yours?” That is how I answered those who asked me for “the way.” For the way does not exist!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

LVI. OLD AND NEW TABLES.

Here I sit and wait, with old broken tables around me, and new half-written tables too. When will my hour come?

It is the hour of my descent, of my going down, for once more I will go to men.

I am waiting for that hour now. First the signs must come to me that it is my hour: the laughing lion with the flock of doves.

Meanwhile I talk to myself, as one who has time. No one tells me anything new, so I tell myself my own story.

When I came to men, I found them resting on an old conceit. All of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for man.

All talk about virtue seemed to them an old, tiresome business. Whoever wanted to sleep well spoke of “good” and “bad” before going to bed.

I disturbed this sleepiness when I taught that no one yet knows what is good and bad, unless it is the one who creates!

He is the one who creates man’s goal and gives the earth its meaning and its future. He alone makes it so that anything is good or bad.

I told them to overturn their old academic chairs, and wherever else that old conceit had sat. I told them to laugh at their great moralists, their saints, their poets, and their Saviors.

I told them to laugh at their gloomy sages, and at whoever had sat on the tree of life like a black scarecrow, giving warnings.

I sat down on their great highway of graves, even beside the carrion and the vultures. And I laughed at all their past and its mellow, decaying glory.

Truly, like preachers of repentance and like fools, I cried wrath and shame on all their greatness and their smallness. Oh, that their best is so very small! Oh, that their worst is so very small! So I laughed.

So my wise longing, born in the mountains, cried and laughed in me. It was a wild wisdom, truly: my great longing with rustling wings.

Often it carried me off and up and away, in the middle of my laughter. Then I flew, quivering like an arrow, in sun-drunk rapture:

out into distant futures that no dream has yet seen, into warmer souths than any sculptor ever imagined, where gods, dancing, are ashamed of all clothing.

(I speak in parables, and limp and stammer like the poets. And truly, I am ashamed that I still have to be a poet!)

There all becoming seemed to me the dancing of gods and the wanton play of gods, and the world seemed set loose and unbridled, fleeing back to itself:

as many gods eternally fleeing themselves and seeking one another again, as many gods blessedly contradicting themselves, communing again, and becoming brothers once more.

There all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments. There necessity was freedom itself, playing happily with the goad of freedom.

There I also found again my old devil and archenemy, the spirit of gravity, and everything it created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil.

For must there not be something that is danced over, danced beyond? For the sake of the nimble, the nimblest, must there not be moles and clumsy dwarfs?

It was there, too, that I picked up the word “Superman” from the path, along with the teaching that man is something that must be surpassed.

I learned that man is a bridge and not a goal. He rejoices in his noontides and evenings as paths toward new rosy dawns.

There too I found the Zarathustra-word of the great noontide, and whatever else I have hung up over men like purple evening afterglows.

Truly, I also made them see new stars, along with new nights. And over cloud and day and night I spread out laughter like a brightly colored canopy.

I taught them all my creating and striving: to compose into one and gather together what in man is fragment and riddle and dreadful chance.

As composer, as reader of riddles, and as redeemer of chance, I taught them to create the future, and to redeem by creating all that has been.

I taught them to redeem man’s past and to transform every “It was,” until the will says: “But I willed it so! So shall I will it!”

This I called redemption. This alone I taught them to call redemption.

Now I await my redemption, so that I may go to them for the last time.

For once more I will go to men. Among them my sun shall set. In dying I will give them my richest gift!

I learned this from the sun when it goes down, the overflowing one. Then it pours gold into the sea out of its inexhaustible riches,

so that even the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars! I once saw this, and I did not tire of weeping as I watched it.

Like the sun, Zarathustra too will go down. Now he sits here and waits, with old broken tables around him, and new tables too, half-written.

Behold, here is a new table. But where are my brothers who will carry it with me down to the valley and into hearts of flesh?

This is what my great love for the most distant ones demands: Do not be considerate of your neighbor! Man is something that must be surpassed.

There are many different ways and means of surpassing. See to it yourself! But only a buffoon thinks: “Man can also be leaped over.”

Surpass yourself even in your neighbor. And a right that you can seize, you should not allow to be given to you!

What you do, no one can do back to you. Behold, there is no repayment.

Whoever cannot command himself shall obey. And many can command themselves, but still badly lack obedience to themselves!

This is what the noble type of soul wants: to have nothing for free, least of all life.

Whoever belongs to the rabble wants to live for free. But we others, to whom life has given itself, are always considering what we can best give in return!

And truly, it is a noble saying: “What life promises us, that promise we will keep to life!”

One should not want to enjoy where one does not contribute to the enjoyment. And one should not want to enjoy at all!

For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things. Neither likes to be sought. One should have them, but one should rather seek guilt and pain!

O my brothers, whoever is a firstborn is always sacrificed. And now we are the firstborn!

We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars. We all burn and roast in honor of ancient idols.

Our best is still young, and that excites old palates. Our flesh is tender; our skin is only lambskin. How could we fail to tempt the old idol-priests!

The old idol-priest still lives within ourselves, and he roasts our best for his banquet. Ah, my brothers, how could the firstborn fail to be sacrifices!

But our kind wants it so. And I love those who do not wish to preserve themselves. Those who go under I love with my whole love, for they go beyond.

To be truthful: few can be! And whoever can, will not! But the good are the least able of all to be truthful.

Oh, those good people! Good people never speak the truth. For the spirit, being good in this way is a sickness.

They give way, these good people; they submit. Their heart repeats what it is told, and their soul obeys. But whoever obeys does not listen to himself!

Everything the good call evil must come together for a single truth to be born. O my brothers, are you evil enough for this truth?

The daring venture, the long distrust, the cruel No, the weariness, the cutting into living flesh: how seldom do these come together! Yet it is from such seed that truth is produced!

Until now, all knowledge has grown up alongside the bad conscience! Break, break the old tables, you who seek knowledge!

When the water has planks across it, when walkways and railings span the stream, no one believes the person who says, “Everything is in flux.”

Even the simpletons contradict him. “What?” say the simpletons. “Everything in flux? But the planks and railings are still above the stream!

“Above the stream everything is solid: all the values of things, the bridges and supports, all ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ These are all solid!”

But then comes the hard winter, the tamer of streams, and even the cleverest learn distrust. And truly, then it is not only the simpletons who say: “Shouldn’t everything stand still?”

“At bottom, everything stands still.” That is a fitting winter doctrine. It is good cheer for a barren season, a great comfort for those who sleep through the winter and those who lounge by the fire.

“At bottom, everything stands still.” But the thawing wind preaches the opposite!

The thawing wind is a bull, but not a plowing bull. It is a furious bull, a destroyer, that breaks the ice with angry horns! And the ice in turn breaks the walkways!

O my brothers, isn’t everything now in flux? Haven’t all the railings and walkways fallen into the water? Who would still cling to “good” and “evil”?

“Woe to us! Hail to us! The thawing wind is blowing!” Preach this, my brothers, through every street!

There is an old illusion, and it is called good and evil. Until now, this illusion has revolved around soothsayers and astrologers.

Once people believed in soothsayers and astrologers, and therefore they believed: “Everything is fate. You shall, because you must!”

Then people came to distrust all soothsayers and astrologers, and therefore they believed: “Everything is freedom. You can, because you will!”

O my brothers, about the stars and the future there has so far been only illusion, not knowledge. And therefore about good and evil there has so far been only illusion, not knowledge!

“You shall not rob! You shall not kill!” Such commandments were once called holy. Before them people bent the knee and bowed the head, and took off their shoes.

But I ask you: where in the world have there ever been better robbers and killers than such holy commandments?

Is there not robbing and killing in all life itself? And when such commandments were called holy, was not truth itself thereby killed?

Or was it a sermon of death that called holy whatever contradicted life and turned people away from it? O my brothers, break, break the old tables for me!

This is my pity for all the past: I see that it has been abandoned,

abandoned to the favor, the spirit, and the madness of every generation that comes along and reinterprets everything that has been as a bridge to itself!

A great despot might arise, a cunning prodigy, who through his approval and disapproval could force and bend the whole past until it became his bridge, his forerunner, his herald, and his cock’s crow.

But this is the other danger, and my other pity: the thoughts of a man of the mob reach back only to his grandfather. And with his grandfather, time comes to an end.

So all the past is abandoned. For it might one day happen that the mob became master and drowned all time in shallow waters.

Therefore, O my brothers, a new nobility is needed. It must oppose all rule by the mob and by despots alike, and write the word “noble” anew on new tables.

For many noble ones are needed, and many kinds of noble ones, to make a new nobility! Or, as I once said in a parable: “This is exactly what divinity is: that there are gods, but no God!”

O my brothers, I consecrate you and point you toward a new nobility. You shall become begetters and cultivators and sowers of the future,

and truly, not a nobility you could buy like traders with traders’ gold. Whatever has its price is worth little.

From now on, let your honor lie not in where you come from but in where you are going! Your will, and your feet that seek to go beyond you: let these be your new honor!

Truly, your honor is not that you have served a prince (what do princes count for now!), nor that you have become a bulwark for what already stands, so that it may stand more firmly.

Nor is it that your family has grown courtly at court, and that you have learned, brightly colored like the flamingo, to stand for long hours in shallow pools.

(For the ability to stand is a merit in courtiers, and all courtiers believe that the bliss after death includes permission to sit!)

Nor is it even that a spirit called Holy led your forefathers into promised lands, which I do not praise. For where the worst of all trees grew, the cross, in that land there is nothing to praise!

And truly, wherever this “Holy Spirit” led its knights on such campaigns, it was always goats and geese, cranks and muddleheads, who ran at the front!

O my brothers, your nobility shall not gaze backward but outward! You shall be exiles from all fatherlands and forefather-lands!

You shall love your children’s land. Let this love be your new nobility: the undiscovered land in the farthest seas! For that land I bid your sails search and search!

You shall make amends to your children for being the children of your fathers. That is how you shall redeem all the past! This new table I place over you!

“Why live? Everything is vain! To live is to thresh straw. To live is to burn oneself and still not get warm.”

Such ancient babble still passes for “wisdom.” And because it is old and smells musty, it is honored all the more. Even mold confers nobility.

Children might speak this way: they shun the fire because it has burned them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.

And if someone forever “threshes straw,” why should he be allowed to rail against threshing? Such a fool ought to be muzzled!

Such people sit down at the table and bring nothing with them, not even a good appetite. And then they complain: “Everything is vain!”

But to eat and drink well, my brothers, is truly no vain art! Break, break for me the tables of those who are never joyful!

“To the pure, all things are pure,” the people say. But I say to you: to swine, all things become swinish!

That is why the dreamers and the bowed-heads, whose hearts are bowed down too, preach: “The world itself is a filthy monster.”

For these are all unclean spirits, especially those who have no peace or rest unless they see the world from behind: the backworldsmen!

To them I say it to their faces, though it may sound unpleasant: the world is like a human being in that it has a backside. That much is true!

There is much filth in the world: that much is true! But that does not make the world itself a filthy monster!

There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smells bad. Disgust itself creates wings, and powers that can divine hidden springs!

Even in the best there is still something to loathe, and even the best is still something that must be surpassed!

O my brothers, there is much wisdom in the fact that there is much filth in the world!

I heard pious backworldsmen speak sayings like these to their consciences. And truly, they spoke without malice or deceit, although nothing in the world is more deceitful or more wicked.

“Let the world be as it is! Do not lift a finger against it!”

“Let anyone who wants to choke and stab and flay and fleece the people do so. Do not lift a finger against it! In that way they will learn to renounce the world.”

“And your own reason you shall stifle and choke yourself, for it is a reason of this world. In that way you yourself will learn to renounce the world.”

Shatter, shatter, O my brothers, those old tables of the pious! Tear to tatters the maxims of the slanderers of the world!

“Whoever learns much unlearns all violent desires.” That is what people now whisper to each other in every dark alley.

“Wisdom makes weary; nothing is worthwhile; you shall not desire!” I found this new table hanging even in the public marketplaces.

Break for me, O my brothers, break this new table too! The world-weary hung it up, along with the preachers of death and the jailer. For look: it is also a sermon for slavery.

They learned badly, and not the best things, and everything too early and too fast. They ate badly, and that is how they ruined their stomachs.

For their spirit is a ruined stomach, and it counsels death! For truly, my brothers, the spirit is a stomach!

Life is a well of delight. But for anyone through whom the ruined stomach speaks, that father of gloom, every fountain is poisoned.

To know: that is delight to the lion-willed! But whoever has grown weary is himself merely “willed”; all the waves play with him.

And this is always the way of weak people: they lose themselves along the way. And at last their weariness asks: “Why did we ever set out on the way? It is all the same!”

To them it sounds pleasant to hear preached: “Nothing is worthwhile! You shall not will!” But that is a sermon for slavery.

O my brothers, Zarathustra comes as a fresh, blustering wind to all who are weary of the way. He will yet make many noses sneeze!

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 you shall learn learning itself only from me, learning well! Whoever has ears, let him hear!

There stands the boat. Over there it goes, perhaps into vast nothingness. But who wants to step into this “Perhaps”?

None of you wants to step into the death-boat! How then can you be world-weary!

World-weary! And you have not even withdrawn from the earth! I have always found you eager for the earth, still in love with your own weariness of it!

Your lip does not droop for nothing: a small earthly wish still sits on it! And in your eye, doesn’t a little cloud of unforgotten earthly bliss still float?

There are many good inventions on earth, some useful, some pleasant. For their sake the earth is to be loved.

And some of these inventions are so good that they are like a woman’s breasts: useful and pleasant at the same time.

But you world-weary ones! You idlers of the earth! You should be beaten with the whip! With the whip you should be given lively limbs again.

For if you are not invalids, or worn-out creatures of whom the earth is weary, then you are sly sluggards, or dainty, sneaking, pleasure-loving cats. And if you will not run happily again, then you shall pass away!

One should not try to be a physician to the incurable: so Zarathustra teaches. So pass away!

But it takes more courage to make an end than to make a new verse. All physicians and poets know that well.

O my brothers, there are tables created by weariness, and tables created by laziness, rotten laziness. Although they speak alike, they want to be heard differently.

Look at this exhausted man! He is only a hand’s breadth from his goal, but out of weariness he has stubbornly lain down in the dust, this brave one!

Out of weariness he yawns at the path, at the earth, at the goal, and at himself. He will not take one more step, this brave one!

Now the sun burns down on him, and the dogs lick at his sweat. But he lies there in his stubbornness and prefers to waste away,

to waste away a hand’s breadth from his goal! Truly, you would have to drag him into his heaven by the hair of his head, this hero!

Better still to let him lie where he has lain down, so that sleep, the comforter, may come to him with cooling, pattering rain.

Let him lie until he wakes of his own accord, until of his own accord he rejects all weariness and everything weariness has taught through him!

Only, my brothers, be sure to chase the dogs away from him, the idle sneaks, and all the swarming vermin,

all the swarming vermin of the “cultured,” who feast 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 build a mountain range out of ever holier mountains.

But wherever you would climb with me, O my brothers, take care that no parasite climbs with you!

A parasite: that is a reptile, a creeping, cringing reptile that tries to fatten itself on your sick and sore places.

And this is its art: it senses where climbing souls are weary. In your trouble and dejection, in your sensitive modesty, it builds its loathsome nest.

Where the strong are weak, where the noble are all too gentle, there it builds its loathsome nest. The parasite lives where the great have small sore places.

What is the highest of all kinds of being, and what is the lowest? The parasite is the lowest kind. But whoever belongs to the highest kind feeds the most parasites.

For the soul that has the longest ladder, and can go deepest down: how could it fail to carry the most parasites?—

—The most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and roam farthest within itself; the most necessary soul, which out of sheer joy flings itself into chance:—

—The soul in Being, which plunges into Becoming; the soul that already possesses, yet still SEEKS to reach desire and longing:—

—The soul fleeing from itself, which catches up with itself in the widest circle; the wisest soul, to which folly speaks most sweetly:—

—The most self-loving soul, in which all things have their current and countercurrent, their ebb and their flow:—oh, how could THE LOFTIEST SOUL fail to have the worst parasites?

O my brothers, am I cruel, then? But I say: What is falling, one should also push!

Everything of today is falling and decaying. Who would want to preserve it? But I—I want to push it as well!

Do you know the delight of rolling stones down into steep depths?—Those people of today: just watch how they roll down into my depths!

I am a prelude to better players, my brothers! An example! ACT according to my example!

And anyone you do not teach to fly, teach him, I beg you—TO FALL FASTER!—

I love the brave. But it is not enough to be a swordsman. One must also know WHOM to use one’s swordsmanship against!

Often it is the greater bravery to hold back and pass by, so that one saves oneself for a worthier enemy!

You should have only enemies worth hating, never enemies worth despising. You must be proud of your enemies. I have taught this already.

Save yourselves, my brothers, for the worthier enemy. That is why you must pass many people by,—

—Especially many of the rabble, who fill your ears with noise about the people and about peoples.

Keep your eyes clear of their For and Against! There is much right there, and much wrong. Whoever looks on grows angry.

Looking in and lashing out are the same thing there. So go off into the forests and lay your sword to sleep!

Go YOUR ways! And let the people and the peoples go theirs. They are gloomy ways, truly, on which not a single glimmer of hope shines any longer!

Let the trader rule there, where all that still glitters is traders’ gold. The time of kings is over. What now calls itself “the people” is unworthy of kings.

See how these peoples now behave just like traders. They pick up the smallest advantage from every kind of rubbish!

They lay traps for one another and coax things out of one another, and they call that “good neighbourliness.” O blessed, distant age when a people said to itself: “I will be—MASTER over peoples!”

For, my brothers, the best shall rule, and the best also WANT to rule! And wherever the teaching says otherwise, there—the best is LACKING.

If THEY had bread for nothing—alas! What would THEY have left to clamour for? Earning their keep is what really keeps them occupied. And they shall have it hard!

They are beasts of prey. In their “working” there is still plundering, and in their “earning” there is still cheating! That is why they shall have it hard!

In this way they will become better beasts of prey: subtler, cleverer, MORE HUMAN. For man is the best beast of prey.

Man has already robbed all the animals of their virtues. That is why, of all animals, man has had the hardest time.

Only the birds are still beyond him. And if man should ever learn to fly, alas! TO WHAT HEIGHT would his greed fly!

This is how I would have man and woman: the one fit for war, the other fit for motherhood, but both fit for dancing, with head and legs alike.

And let the day be counted lost on which we have not danced at least once. And let every truth be counted false that did not bring at least one laugh with it!

Your arranging of marriages: see that it does not turn out to be a bad ARRANGEMENT! You have arranged too hastily, and so marriage-breaking FOLLOWS from it!

Yet marriage-breaking is better than marriage-bending and marriage-lying! A woman once said to me: “Yes, I broke the marriage. But first the marriage broke—me!”

I have always found the badly matched to be the most vengeful. They make everyone suffer for the fact that they no longer walk alone.

That is why I want honest people to say to each other: “We love each other. Let us SEE TO IT that we keep our love alive! Or will our promise turn out to be a blunder?”

—“Give us a fixed term and a small marriage, so that we can 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 for the Superman, and for all that is to come, be worth if I advised or spoke otherwise!

Not only to reproduce yourselves onward, but UPWARD—may the garden of marriage help you to that, my brothers!

Whoever has grown wise about the old origins will at last go looking for the springs of the future and for new origins.

My brothers, it will not be long before NEW PEOPLES arise and new springs rush down into new depths.

For the earthquake chokes many wells and causes much suffering from thirst. But it also brings hidden powers and secrets to light.

The earthquake uncovers new springs. When old peoples are shaken by earthquakes, new springs burst forth.

And whoever cries out, “Look, here is a well for many who are thirsty, one heart for many who long, one will for many instruments”—around him gathers a PEOPLE, that is, many who are attempting.

Who can command, and who must obey—THAT is what is being attempted there! Ah, with what long seeking, guessing, failing, learning, and trying again!

Human society is an attempt—so I teach—a long seeking. But what it seeks is the ruler!

—An attempt, my brothers! And NOT a “contract”! Destroy, I beg you, destroy that word of the soft-hearted and the half-and-half!

O my brothers! Where does the greatest danger to the whole human future lie? Does it not lie with the good and just?—

—With those who say and feel in their hearts: “We already know what is good and just, and we possess it too. Woe to those who are still searching for it!”

Whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm!

And whatever harm the slanderers of the world may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm!

O my brothers, someone once looked into the hearts of the good and just and said: “They are the Pharisees.” But people did not understand him.

The good and just themselves were not free to understand him. Their spirit was imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably clever.

But this is the truth: the good MUST be Pharisees. They have no choice!

The good MUST crucify anyone who devises his own virtue! That IS the truth!

But the second person who discovered their country—the country, heart, and soil of the good and just—was the one who asked: “Whom do they hate most?”

They hate the CREATOR most: the one who breaks the tables and the old values, the breaker. Him they call the lawbreaker.

For the good CANNOT create. They are always the beginning of the end:—

—They crucify whoever writes new values on new tables. They sacrifice the future TO THEMSELVES. They crucify the whole human future!

The good have always been the beginning of the end.—

O my brothers, have you understood this word too? And what I once said about the “last man”?—

Where does the greatest danger to the whole human future lie? Does it not lie with the good and just?

BREAK, BREAK, I BEG YOU, THE GOOD AND JUST!—O my brothers, have you understood this word too?

You run from me? You are frightened? You tremble at this word?

O my brothers, only when I told you to break the good, and the tables of the good, did I launch man onto his high seas.

Only now does the great terror come upon him: the great outlook, the great sickness, the great nausea, the great seasickness.

The good taught you false shores and false securities. You were born and raised in the lies of the good. The good have twisted and distorted everything down to the root.

But whoever discovered the country called “man” also discovered the country called “man’s future.” Now you shall be my sailors, brave and patient!

Stand upright in good time, my brothers. Learn to keep yourselves upright! The sea is storming, and many are trying to pull themselves up by holding on to you.

The sea is storming: everything is at sea. Well then! Take heart, you old sailor-hearts!

What is a fatherland to us? Our helm strives toward the place where our CHILDREN’S LAND lies! Our great longing storms in that direction, stormier than the sea!—

“Why so hard?” the charcoal once said to the diamond. “Aren’t we close relatives?”

Why so soft? O my brothers, that is what I ask you. Are you not—my brothers?

Why so soft, so submissive and yielding? Why is there so much denial and self-denial in your hearts? Why is there so little fate in your eyes?

And if you will not be fates, unyielding ones, how can you one day—conquer with me?

And if your hardness will not flash and cut and chop things to pieces, how can you one day—create with me?

For creators are hard. And it must seem bliss to you to press your hand upon millennia as if upon wax,—

—Bliss to write upon the will of millennia as if upon bronze: harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is completely hard.

This new table, O my brothers, I set up over you: BECOME HARD!—

O my Will! You turning-point of every need, MY necessity! Keep me from all small victories!

You destiny of my soul, which I call fate! You In-me! Over-me! Keep me and save me for one great fate!

And your last greatness, my Will, save it for your last task, so that you may be unyielding IN your victory! Ah, who has not been overcome by his own victory?

Ah, whose eye has not grown dim in that drunken twilight? Ah, whose foot has not stumbled in victory and forgotten how to stand?—

—So that one day I may be ready and ripe in the great noontide: ready and ripe like glowing ore, like a cloud heavy with lightning, like a swelling udder full of milk:—

—Ready for myself and for my most hidden Will: a bow eager for its arrow, an arrow eager for its star:—

—A star, ready and ripe in its noontide, glowing, pierced, blessed by annihilating sun-arrows:—

—A sun itself, and an unyielding sun-will, ready for annihilation in victory!

O Will, you turning-point of every need, MY necessity! Save me for one great victory!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

LVII. THE CONVALESCENT.

One morning, not long after his return to his cave, Zarathustra sprang up from his bed like a madman. He cried out in a terrible voice and acted as if someone else were still lying on the bed who refused to get up.

His voice rang out so loudly that his animals came to him in fright. From all the nearby caves and hiding places, every creature slipped away, flying, fluttering, crawling, or leaping, each according to its kind of foot or wing. But Zarathustra spoke these words:

Up, abysmal thought, out of my depths! I am your rooster and your dawn, you oversleeping reptile. Up! Up! My voice will soon crow you awake!

Loosen the chains on your ears and listen! For I want to hear you! Up! Up! Here is thunder enough to make even the graves listen!

And rub the sleep and all the dimness and blindness out of 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 forever. It is not MY custom to wake great-grandmothers from their sleep only to tell them—go back to sleep!

You stir, you stretch, you wheeze? Up! Up! You shall not wheeze, you shall speak to me! Zarathustra is calling 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!

Joy to me! You are coming. I hear you! My abyss SPEAKS. I have turned my lowest depth out into the light!

Joy to me! Come here! Give me your hand—ha! let go! aha!—Disgust, disgust, disgust—woe is me!

But hardly had Zarathustra spoken these words when he fell down as if dead, and he stayed that way for a long time. When he came to himself again, he was pale and trembling, and he stayed lying down. For a long time he would neither eat nor drink.

This condition lasted seven days. His animals did not leave him day or night, except that the eagle flew off to fetch food. Whatever it fetched and gathered, it laid on Zarathustra’s bed.

So at last Zarathustra lay among yellow and red berries, grapes, rosy apples, sweet-smelling herbs, and pine cones. And at his feet lay two lambs, which the eagle had carried off from their shepherds only with great difficulty.

At last, after seven days, Zarathustra sat up on his bed, took a rosy apple in his hand, smelled it, and found the smell pleasant. Then his animals thought the time had come to speak to him.

“O Zarathustra,” they said, “you have now lain like this for seven days with heavy eyes. Will you not get back on your feet?

Step out of your cave: the world is waiting for you like a garden. The wind is playing with heavy fragrances that are looking for you, and all the streams would like to run after you.

All things long for you, because 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 bitter and painful knowledge? You lay there like rising dough. Your soul rose and swelled beyond all its bounds.—”

—O my animals, answered Zarathustra, go on talking like this and let me listen! It refreshes me so much to hear you talk. Where there is talk, the world lies before me like a garden.

How lovely it is that there are words and sounds! Are not words and sounds rainbows, illusory bridges between things that are eternally separate?

Each soul has a world of its own. For each soul, every other soul is a back-world, a world hidden behind its own.

Appearance deceives most delightfully between things that are most alike. The smallest gap is the hardest to bridge.

For me, how could there be anything outside of me? There is no outside! But we forget this when we hear sounds. How delightful it is that we forget!

Were not names and sounds given to things so that human beings might refresh themselves with them? Speaking is a beautiful folly. With it, man dances over everything.

How lovely all speech is, and all the falsehoods of sound! With sounds our love dances on many-colored rainbows.—

—“O Zarathustra,” his animals then said, “to those who think as we do, all things dance by themselves. They come and offer their hand, and laugh, and run away—and come back.

“Everything goes, everything comes back; the wheel of existence rolls on eternally. Everything dies, everything blossoms again; the year of existence runs on eternally.

“Everything breaks, everything is joined together anew; the same house of existence builds itself eternally. All things part, all things greet one another again; the ring of existence remains eternally true to itself.

“Existence begins in every moment. Around every ‘Here’ rolls the sphere of ‘There.’ The center is everywhere. The path of eternity is crooked.”—

—You jokers, you barrel organs cranking out the same tune! answered Zarathustra, and smiled again. How well you know what had to be accomplished in those seven days:—

—And how that monster crept into my throat and choked me! But I bit off its head and spat it away from me.

And you—you have already made a song for the lyre out of it? Yet here I lie, still exhausted from that biting and spitting, still sick from my own deliverance.

And you watched all of it? O my animals, are you cruel too? Did you enjoy watching my great pain, the way people do? For man is the cruelest animal.

Until now, man has been happiest on earth at tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions. And when he invented his hell, that was his heaven on earth.

When the great man cries out, the little man immediately comes running, his tongue hanging out of his mouth with craving. He, however, calls it his “pity.”

The little man, especially the poet—how passionately he accuses life in words! Listen to him, but do not fail to hear the delight that lies in all accusation!

Life overcomes such accusers with a single glance. “You love me?” says the insolent one. “Wait a little. I have no time for you yet.”

Man is the cruelest animal toward himself. In all who call themselves “sinners,” “bearers of the cross,” and “penitents,” do not overlook the sensual pleasure in their laments and accusations!

And I myself—do I want to be man’s accuser in saying this? Ah, my animals, this is the only thing I have learned so far: the most evil in man is necessary for his best,—

—All that is most evil is his best power, and the hardest stone for the highest creator. Man must become better and more evil:—

I was not tied to this torture stake, the knowledge that man is evil. Instead, I cried out as no one has ever cried out:

“Ah, that his most evil is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very small!”

The great disgust at man—it choked me. It had crept into my throat. And so had what the soothsayer foretold: “All is the same, nothing is worthwhile, knowledge chokes.”

A long twilight limped along ahead of me, a sadness weary to death and drunk to death, which spoke with a yawning mouth.

“He returns eternally, the man you are weary of, the small man”—so my sadness yawned. It dragged its foot and could not fall asleep.

The human earth became a cavern to me. Its breast caved in. Everything living became human dust and bones and moldering past to me.

My sighing sat on all human graves and could no longer rise. My sighing and questioning croaked and choked, and gnawed and nagged, day and night:

—“Ah, man returns eternally! The small man returns eternally!”

I had once seen both of them naked, the greatest man and the smallest man. They were all too like one another—all too human, even the greatest man!

All too small, even the greatest man!—that was my disgust at man! And the eternal return of even the smallest man!—that was my disgust at all existence!

Ah, disgust! Disgust! Disgust!—Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he sighed and shuddered, for he remembered his sickness. Then his animals kept him from speaking further.

“Do not speak further, you convalescent!” his animals answered. “Instead, go out where the world waits for you like a garden.

“Go out to the roses, the bees, and the flocks of doves! Above all, go to the songbirds, so that you may learn singing from them!

“For singing is for the convalescent; the healthy may talk. And when the healthy also want songs, they want different songs from those of the convalescent.”

—“You jokers, you barrel organs, do be quiet!” answered Zarathustra, smiling at his animals. “How well you know what consolation I devised for myself in those seven days!

“That I must sing once more—that is the consolation I devised for myself, and this is my convalescence. Will you make another song for the lyre out of that too?”

—“Do not talk further,” his animals answered once more. “Rather, you convalescent, first make yourself a lyre, a new lyre!

“For look, O Zarathustra! Your new songs need new lyres.

“Sing and overflow, O Zarathustra. Heal your soul with new songs, so that you may bear your great fate, which has never yet been anyone’s fate!

“For your animals know well, O Zarathustra, who you are and must become. Behold, you are the teacher of the eternal return—that is now your fate!

“You must be the first to teach this teaching. How could this great fate not also be your greatest danger and sickness!

“Behold, we know what you teach: that all things return eternally, and we ourselves with them, and that we have already existed countless 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 always be turned over again, so that it may run down and run out again:—

“—So that all these years are like one another, in the greatest things and in the smallest. And so we ourselves, in every great year, are like ourselves, in the greatest things and in the smallest.

“And if you were to die now, O Zarathustra, behold, we also know how you would then speak to yourself. But your animals beg you not to die yet!

“You would speak without trembling, rather buoyant with bliss, for a great weight and burden would be lifted from you, you most patient one!—

“‘Now I die and disappear,’ you would say, ‘and in a moment I am nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies.

“‘But the knot of causes in which I am entangled returns—and it will create me again! I myself belong among the causes of the eternal return.

“‘I come again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent—not to a new life, or a better life, or a similar life:

”‘—I come again eternally to this identical, selfsame life, in its greatest things and its smallest, to teach once more the eternal return of all things,—

”‘—To speak once more the word of the great noontide of earth and man, to proclaim the Superman to man once more.

“‘I have spoken my word. I break apart on my word. So my eternal fate wills it—as the one who proclaims it, I perish!

“‘The hour has now come for the down-goer to bless himself. Thus ends Zarathustra’s down-going.’”—

When the animals had said these words, they fell silent and waited for Zarathustra to say something to them. But Zarathustra did not notice that they were silent.

Instead, he lay quietly with his eyes closed, like someone asleep, although he was not sleeping, for he was communing with his soul. When the serpent and the eagle found him silent in this way, they respected the great stillness around him and prudently withdrew.

LVIII. THE GREAT LONGING.

O my soul, I taught you to say “today” just as you say “once upon a time” and “formerly,” and to dance your round over every Here and There and Over-there.

O my soul, I freed you from every corner and nook. I brushed the dust and spiders and twilight off you.

O my soul, I washed the petty shame and the narrow, nook-dwelling virtue from you, and persuaded you to stand naked before the eyes of the sun.

With the storm called “spirit” I blew across your surging sea. I blew every cloud away from it. I even strangled the strangler called “sin.”

O my soul, I gave you the right to say No like the storm, and to say Yes as the open sky says Yes. You remain as calm as the light, and now you walk through storms that deny.

O my soul, I gave you back your freedom over what is created and what is uncreated. And who knows the sensual delight of the future as you know it?

O my soul, I taught you a contempt that does not come gnawing like a worm: the great, loving contempt, which loves most where it despises most.

O my soul, I taught you to persuade so well that you persuade even the very grounds to come to you, like the sun, which persuades even the sea to rise to its height.

O my soul, I took from you all obeying, all bending of the knee, all paying of homage. I myself gave you the names “Change of need” and “Fate.”

O my soul, I gave you new names and brightly colored playthings. I called you “Fate,” and “the Circuit of circuits,” and “the Umbilical cord of time,” and “the Azure bell.”

O my soul, I gave your soil all wisdom to drink: all new wines, and also all the immemorially old, strong wines of wisdom.

O my soul, I poured every sun upon you, and every night, every silence, and every longing. Then you grew up for me like a vine.

O my soul, now you stand there, exuberant and heavy, a vine with swelling udders and full clusters of brown-golden grapes:—

—Filled and weighed down by your happiness, waiting out of superabundance, and yet ashamed of your waiting.

O my soul, there is no soul anywhere that could be more loving, more embracing, or more wide-ranging! Where could future and past lie closer together than in you?

O my soul, I have given you everything, and all my hands have become empty because of you. And now! Now you say to me, smiling and full of melancholy: “Which of us owes thanks?—

“—Does the giver not owe thanks because the receiver received? Is giving not a need? Is receiving not—pity?”—

O my soul, I understand the smile of your melancholy. Your overabundance itself now stretches out longing hands!

Your fullness looks out over raging seas, and searches, and waits. The longing of overfullness looks out from the smiling sky of your eyes!

And truly, O my soul! Who could see your smile and not melt into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears at the overflowing kindness of your smile.

It is your kindness and overflowing kindness that will not complain and weep. And yet, O my soul, your smile longs for tears, and your trembling mouth longs for sobs.

“Is not all weeping complaining? And all complaining accusing?” So you say to yourself. And that is why, O my soul, you would rather smile than pour out your grief—

—Rather than pour out in gushing tears all your grief over your fullness, and over the vine’s craving for the grape-gatherer and the vintage knife!

But if you will not weep, if you will not weep out your purple melancholy, then you will have to sing, O my soul!—Look, I who foretell this to you am smiling myself:

—You will have to sing with a passionate song, until all the seas fall calm to listen to your longing,—

—Until over calm, longing seas the boat glides, the golden marvel, around whose gold all good, bad, and marvelous things leap and play:—

—Many large and small animals too, and everything that has light, marvelous feet, so that it can run on violet-blue paths,—

—Toward the golden marvel, the boat that comes of its own accord, and toward its master. He is the grape-gatherer who waits with the diamond vintage knife,—

—Your great deliverer, O my soul, the nameless one—for whom only future songs will find names! And truly, your breath already carries the fragrance of future songs,—

—Already you glow and dream, already you drink thirstily at all the deep, echoing wells of consolation, already your melancholy rests in the bliss of future songs!—

O my soul, now I have given you everything, even my last possession, and all my hands have become empty because of you. That I told you to sing—behold, that was the last thing I had to give!

That I told you to sing—say now, say: which of us now owes thanks?—But better still: sing to me, sing, O my soul! And let me thank you!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

LIX. THE SECOND DANCE-SONG.

“I looked into your eyes not long ago, O Life. I saw gold gleaming in your night-eyes—my heart stood still with delight:

—I saw a golden boat gleaming on darkened waters, a sinking, drinking, winking-again, golden rocking boat!

At my dance-mad foot you cast a glance, a laughing, questioning, melting, tossed glance:

Only twice did you shake your rattle with your little hands—and already my feet were swinging in a dancing frenzy.—

My heels reared up high, my toes listened—they wanted to know you. Does a dancer not have his ear—in his toes!

I sprang toward you: then you fled back from my bound, and your fleeing, flying hair swept toward me all around!

I sprang away from you and from your snaky tresses: then you stood there half-turned, your eyes full of caresses.

With sidelong glances you teach me crooked ways; on crooked ways my feet learn—cunning fancies!

I fear you near, I love you far; your flight lures me, your seeking holds me fast:—I suffer, but for you, what would I not gladly bear!

For you, whose coldness sets me on fire, whose hatred leads me astray, whose flight binds me in chains, whose mockery—pleads with me:

—Who would not hate you, you great binder, entangler, 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 tomboy? And now you flee and make a fool of me; you sweet romp, how you tease!

I dance after you, I follow even your faintest traces, alone. Where are you? Give me your hand! Or just one finger!

Here are caves and thickets: we will lose our way!—Stop! Stand still! Don’t you see the owls and bats fluttering in a swarm?

You bat! You owl! Would you play me false? Where are we? You learned this barking and howling from the dogs.

You snap at me sweetly with little white teeth; your wicked eyes dart out at me from under your curly little mane!

This is a dance over stick and stone: I am the hunter—will you be my hound, or the chamois I chase?

Now beside me! Quickly, wickedly leaping! Now up! And over!—Alas! I leapt too far and fell myself!

Oh, look at me lying here, you arrogant one, begging for mercy! I would gladly walk with you—in some lovelier place!

—On the paths of love, through quiet, trim, many-colored bushes! Or there along the lake, where goldfish dance and swim!

Are you tired now? Up there are sheep and streaks of sunset: isn’t it sweet to sleep while the shepherd plays his pipe?

Are you so very tired? I will carry you there; just let your arm drop! And if you are thirsty—I would have something, but your mouth would not care to drink it!—

—Oh, that cursed, nimble, supple snake, that lurking witch! Where have you gone? But on my face I feel two spots from your hand, red blotches that itch!

Truly, I am tired of always being your sheepish shepherd. You witch, if until now I have sung to you, now YOU shall—cry out to me!

To the rhythm of my whip you shall dance and cry out! Did I forget my whip?—Not I!”—

Then Life answered me, keeping her delicate ears covered as she spoke:

“O Zarathustra! Don’t crack your whip so terribly! Surely you know that noise kills thought—and just now such delicate thoughts were coming to me.

We are both genuine good-for-nothings and do-no-harms. Beyond good and evil we found our island and our green meadow—we two alone! So we must be friendly to each other!

And even if we do not love each other from the bottom of our hearts—must we bear a grudge against each other because our love is not perfect?

You know that I am friendly to you, and often too friendly. The reason is that I am jealous of your Wisdom. Ah, that mad old fool, 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: “O 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 clock: at night its booming carries up to your cave:—

—When you hear this clock strike the hours at midnight, then between one and twelve you think about it—

—You think, O Zarathustra, I know it—of leaving me soon!”—

“Yes,” I answered hesitantly, “but you know this too”—And I whispered something into her ear, in among her tangled, yellow, foolish locks.

“You KNOW that, O Zarathustra? No one knows that—”

And we gazed at each other, and looked at the green meadow over which the cool evening was just passing, and we wept together.—But at that moment Life was dearer to me than all my Wisdom had ever been.—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

One!

O man! Take heed!

Two!

What does deep midnight’s voice declare?

Three!

“I slept my sleep—

Four!

“From deepest dream I’ve woken, and I plead:—

Five!

“The world is deep,

Six!

“And deeper than the day could read.

Seven!

“Deep is its woe—

Eight!

“Joy—deeper still than grief can be:

Nine!

“Woe says: Pass away! Go!

Ten!

“But all joy wants eternity—

Eleven!

“Wants deep, profound eternity!”

Twelve!

LX. THE SEVEN SEALS.

(OR THE YES AND AMEN SONG.)

If I am a seer, full of that prophetic spirit which wanders along high mountain ridges between two seas,—

Which wanders between past and future like a heavy cloud—hostile 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 flash of light; charged with lightning bolts that say Yes! that laugh Yes! ready for prophetic flashes of lightning:—

—Blessed, however, is the one who is so charged! 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 with longing for Eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings—the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I would want to have children, unless it is this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY!

If ever my anger has burst open graves, moved boundary stones, or rolled old shattered tablets into steep depths:

If ever my scorn has scattered rotten words to the winds, and if I have come like a broom to the cross-spiders, and like a cleansing wind to old charnel houses:

If ever I have 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 gods, if only heaven looks with pure eyes through their broken roofs; I gladly sit like grass and red poppies on ruined churches—

Oh, how could I not burn with longing for Eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings—the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I would want to have children, unless it is this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY!

If ever a breath of the creative breath has come to me, a breath of that heavenly necessity which compels even chance to dance in star-dances:

If ever I have laughed with the laughter of the creative lightning, which the long thunder of the deed follows, grumbling but obedient:

If ever I have played dice with the gods at the divine table of the earth, so that the earth shook and split open and snorted out streams of fire:—

—For the earth is a divine table, trembling with new creative words and the dice-throws of the gods:

Oh, how could I not burn with longing for Eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings—the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I would want to have children, unless it is this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY!

If ever I have drunk a full draught from that foaming bowl of spices and blends in which all things are well mixed:

If ever my hand has mixed the farthest with the nearest, fire with spirit, joy with sorrow, and the harshest with the kindest:

If I myself am a grain of that redeeming salt which makes everything in the bowl mix well:—

—For there is a salt that unites good with evil; and even the most evil thing is worthy, as spice and as the final foaming over:—

Oh, how could I not burn with longing for Eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings—the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I would want to have children, unless it is this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY!

If I love the sea and everything sea-like, and love it most when it angrily contradicts me:

If that delight in exploring is in me which drives sails toward the undiscovered, if the seafarer’s delight is part of my delight:

If ever my rejoicing has cried out: “The shore has vanished—now the last chain has fallen from me—

The boundless roars around me, far away space and time glitter for me—well then! Take heart, old heart!”—

Oh, how could I not burn with longing for Eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings—the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I would want to have children, unless it is this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY!

If my virtue is a dancer’s virtue, and if I have often leapt with both feet into golden-emerald rapture:

If my wickedness is a laughing wickedness, at home among banks of roses and hedges of lilies:

—For in laughter all evil is present, but it is made holy and absolved by its own bliss:—

And if it is my Alpha and Omega that everything heavy shall become light, every body a dancer, and every spirit a bird: and truly, that is my Alpha and Omega!—

Oh, how could I not burn with longing for Eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings—the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I would want to have children, unless it is this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY!

If ever I have spread a calm sky above me and flown into my own sky on my own wings:

If I have swum playfully in deep, luminous distances, and if the bird-wisdom of my freedom has come to me:—

—And this is how bird-wisdom speaks:—“Look, there is no above and no below! Throw yourself about—outward, backward, you light one! Sing! Speak no more!

—Are not all words made for the heavy? Do not all words lie to those who are light? Sing! Speak no more!”—

Oh, how could I not burn with longing for Eternity, and for the wedding ring of rings—the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I would want to have children, unless it is this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE YOU, O ETERNITY!

FOURTH AND LAST PART.

Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than among the pitying? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the pitying?

Woe to all who love without having a height that rises above their pity!

Thus the devil once spoke to me: “Even God has his hell: it is his love for man.”

And recently I heard him say these words: “God is dead: God died of his pity for man.”—ZARATHUSTRA, II., “The Pitiful.”

LXI. THE HONEY SACRIFICE.

—And again moons and years passed over Zarathustra’s soul, and he paid no attention to them; but his hair turned white.

One day he sat on a stone in front of his cave and gazed calmly into the distance—from there one looks out over the sea and far beyond winding abysses. Then his animals walked thoughtfully around him, and at last they placed themselves in front of him.

“O Zarathustra,” they said, “are you perhaps looking out for your happiness?”—“What does my happiness matter!” he answered. “I stopped striving for happiness long ago. I strive for my work.”

—“O Zarathustra,” the animals said again, “you say that like someone who has more than enough good things. Aren’t you lying in a sky-blue lake of happiness?”

—“You jesters,” Zarathustra answered, and smiled, “how well you chose that comparison! But you also know that my happiness is heavy, not like a flowing wave of water. It presses on me and will not let me go. It is like molten pitch.”—

Then his animals again walked thoughtfully around him and placed themselves in front of him once more. “O Zarathustra,” they said, “is THAT the reason you yourself keep growing yellower and darker, even though your hair looks white and flaxen? Look, you are sitting in your pitch!”

—“What are you saying, my animals?” said Zarathustra, laughing. “Truly, I spoke slanderously when I spoke of pitch. What is happening to me happens to all fruits that ripen. It is the HONEY in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and my soul stiller too.”

—“So it will be, O Zarathustra,” answered his animals, pressing close to him. “But won’t you climb a high mountain today? The air is pure, and today one can see more of the world than ever.”

—“Yes, my animals,” he answered, “your advice is admirable and suits my heart: today I will climb a high mountain! But see that honey is ready at hand up there—yellow, white, good, ice-cool, golden honey in the comb. For know that up there I will make the honey sacrifice.”—

When Zarathustra reached the summit, however, he sent home the animals that had come with him, and found that he was now alone. Then he laughed from the bottom of his heart, looked around him, and spoke thus:

My talk of sacrifices and honey sacrifices was merely a trick of speech, and truly, a useful foolishness! Up here I can speak more freely than in front of mountain caves and the pets of hermits.

What is there to sacrifice! I squander what is given to me, a squanderer with a thousand hands: how could I call that—sacrificing?

And when I asked for honey, I was only asking for bait: for sweet slime and syrup, which make even the mouths of growling bears and of strange, sulky, evil birds water:

—The best bait, the kind hunters and fishermen need. For if the world is like a gloomy forest full of animals, a pleasure ground for all wild hunters, it seems to me rather—and I prefer it so—a bottomless, rich sea;

—a sea full of fish and crabs of every color, a sea that even the gods might long for. They might be tempted to become fishermen there and cast their nets, so rich is the world in wonderful things, great and small!

This is especially true of the human world, the human sea. Toward THAT sea I now cast my golden fishing rod, and I say: Open up, you human abyss!

Open up, and throw me your fish and your shining crabs! With my best bait I will lure the strangest human fish to myself today!

I throw my happiness itself out far and wide, everywhere between east, noon, and west, to see whether many human fish will learn to tug and pull at my happiness.

Then, biting on my sharp hidden hooks, they will have to come up to MY height: the most motley creatures from the bottom of the abyss, drawn up by the wickedest of all fishers of men.

For THIS is what I am, at heart and from the beginning: someone who draws, draws in, draws upward, and raises up. I am a drawer, a trainer, a disciplinarian, who once, and not in vain, advised himself: “Become what you are!”

So people may now come UP to me. I am still waiting for the signs that it is time for my descent. I do not yet go down among people myself, as I eventually must.

That is why I wait here on high mountains, sly and scornful. I am not impatient, and I am not patient either. Rather, I am someone who has even unlearned patience, because he no longer “suffers.”

My fate gives me time. Has it perhaps forgotten me? Or is it sitting behind a big stone, catching flies?

And truly, I feel kindly toward my eternal fate, because it does not hound and hurry me. It leaves me time for fun and mischief. That is why I have climbed this high mountain today to catch fish.

Has anyone ever caught fish on high mountains? Even if what I am seeking and doing up here is folly, it is better than going down below and growing solemn with waiting, turning green and yellow—

—becoming a posturing, snorting, angry man made sour by waiting, a holy storm howling down 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 hold a grudge against such angry people for that. They are good enough for a laugh. They must be impatient now, those big alarm drums, which will find a voice now or never!

But my fate and I do not speak to the Present, nor do we speak to the 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 one day come and may not pass by? Our great Hazar: our great, distant human kingdom, the Zarathustra-kingdom of a thousand years—

How distant may this “distance” be? What does that matter to me? It is no less certain to me for that. I stand securely with both feet on this ground—

—on eternal ground, on hard primeval rock, on this highest, hardest, primeval mountain ridge. All the winds come to it as to the place where storms divide, asking: Where? and From where? and To where?

Laugh here, laugh, my hearty, healthy wickedness! Cast down your glittering, scornful laughter from the high mountains! With your glitter, lure the finest human fish for me!

And whatever belongs to ME in all the seas, whatever is in-and-for-me in all things: fish THAT out for me, bring THAT up to me. That is what I wait for, the wickedest of all fishermen.

Out, out, my fishing hook! In and down, you bait of my happiness! Drip your sweetest dew, you honey of my heart! Bite, my fishing hook, into the belly of all black sorrow!

Look out, look out, my eye! Oh, how many seas surround me, what dawning human futures! And above me, what rosy-red stillness! What cloudless silence!

LXII. THE CRY OF DISTRESS.

The next day Zarathustra was sitting again on the stone in front of his cave. His animals were out roaming the world to bring home new food, and also new honey, for Zarathustra had spent and squandered the old honey down to the last drop.

As he sat there with a stick in his hand, tracing the shadow of his figure on the ground and reflecting (truly, not on himself and his shadow), he suddenly started and shrank back. He had seen another shadow beside his own.

He quickly looked around and stood up. There beside him stood the soothsayer, the same one he had once fed and given drink at his table. This was the prophet of the great weariness, who taught: “All is the same, nothing is worthwhile, the world is meaningless, knowledge strangles.”

But his face had changed since then. When Zarathustra looked into his eyes, his heart was startled once again, so many evil omens and ashen-grey flashes of lightning passed across that face.

The soothsayer, who had noticed what was going on in Zarathustra’s soul, wiped his face with his hand, as if to wipe away the impression. Zarathustra did the same. When both of them had silently collected and steadied themselves in this way, they shook hands as a sign that they wanted to recognize each other once more.

“Welcome,” said Zarathustra, “you soothsayer of the great weariness. It shall not have been for nothing that you were once my table companion and guest. Eat and drink with me again today, and forgive a cheerful old man for sitting at the table with you!”

“A cheerful old man?” answered the soothsayer, shaking his head. “But whoever you are, or want to be, Zarathustra, you have been up here the longest time. Before long your boat will no longer rest on dry land!”

“Do I rest on dry land, then?” asked Zarathustra, laughing.

“The waves around your mountain,” answered the soothsayer, “are rising and rising, the waves of great distress and misery. Soon they will lift your boat too and carry you away.”

At that Zarathustra fell silent and wondered.

“Do you still hear nothing?” the soothsayer went on. “Isn’t something rushing and roaring up out of the depths?”

Zarathustra fell silent again and listened. Then he heard a long, long cry, which the abysses tossed to one another and passed along. None of them wanted to keep it, so evil did it sound.

“You bearer of bad news,” said Zarathustra at last, “that is a cry of distress, and the cry of a human being. Perhaps it comes out of a black sea. But what does human distress matter to me! My last sin, the one saved up for me: do you know what it is called?”

“PITY!” answered the soothsayer from an overflowing heart, raising both hands high. “Zarathustra, I have come to seduce you into your last sin!”

Hardly had he spoken when the cry sounded again, longer and more alarming than before, and much nearer. “Do you hear it? Do you hear it, Zarathustra?” called the soothsayer. “The cry concerns you. It is calling you: Come, come, come. It is time, high time!”

At that Zarathustra was silent, confused and shaken. At last he asked, like someone hesitating within himself: “And who is it that calls me there?”

“But surely you know,” answered the soothsayer warmly. “Why are you hiding? It is THE HIGHER MAN who is crying out for you!”

“The higher man?” cried Zarathustra, horrified. “What does HE want? What does HE want? The higher man! What does he want here?” And his skin broke out in sweat.

The soothsayer paid no attention to Zarathustra’s alarm, but kept listening and listening toward the depths below. When it had been quiet there for a long while, he looked back and saw Zarathustra standing there trembling.

“Zarathustra,” he began in a sorrowful voice, “you are not standing there like someone whose happiness makes him dizzy. You will have to dance so that you don’t fall over!

But even if you danced before me and leapt all your sideways leaps, no one could say to me: ‘Look, here dances the last joyful man!’

Anyone who came up to this height looking for HIM would come in vain. He would find caves, certainly, and caves behind caves, hiding places for those who hide. But he would find no lucky mines, no treasure chambers, no new veins of the gold of happiness.

Happiness: how could anyone find happiness among such people, buried alive and solitary! Must I still go looking for the last happiness on the Happy Isles, far away among forgotten seas?

But all is the same, nothing is worthwhile, no searching helps, there are no Happy Isles anymore!”

So sighed the soothsayer. But at his last sigh Zarathustra became calm and confident again, like someone who has climbed out of a deep chasm into the light. “No! No! Three times no!” he exclaimed in a strong voice, stroking his beard. “THAT I know better! There are still Happy Isles! Keep quiet about THAT, you sighing sack of sorrow!

Stop splashing on THAT, you morning rain cloud! Am I not already standing here wet with your misery, drenched like a dog?

Now I’ll shake myself and run away from you, so that I can get dry again. Don’t be surprised at that! Do I seem rude to you? But here is MY court.

As for the higher man: very well! I will look for him at once in those forests. That is where his cry came FROM. Perhaps an evil beast has him hard pressed.

He is in MY domain, and here he shall come to no harm! And truly, there are many evil beasts around me.”

With those words Zarathustra turned to leave. Then the soothsayer said: “Zarathustra, you are a rogue!

I know it well: you want to be rid of me! You would rather run into the forest and set traps for evil beasts!

But what good will it do you? In the evening you will have me again. I will sit in your own cave, patient and heavy as a block of wood, and wait for you!”

“So be it!” Zarathustra shouted back as he went away. “And whatever is mine in my cave belongs to you too, my guest!

But if you find any honey in there, go ahead and lick it up, you growling bear, and sweeten your soul! For this 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 don’t believe it? You shake your head? Well then! Cheer up, old bear! But I too am a soothsayer.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

LXIII. TALK WITH THE KINGS.

Zarathustra had not been walking an hour in the mountains and forests when he suddenly saw a strange procession. Coming down the very path he was about to descend were two kings, decked out in crowns and purple sashes and as brightly colored as flamingos. They were driving a loaded donkey ahead of them.

“What do these kings want in my domain?” said Zarathustra to his heart in astonishment, and he quickly hid behind a thicket. But when the kings came near him, he said half aloud, like someone talking only to himself: “Strange! Strange! How does this fit together? I see two kings, and only one ass!”

At that the two kings stopped. They smiled, looked toward the place the voice had come from, and then looked into each other’s faces. “We think such things among ourselves too,” said the king on the right, “but we don’t say them out loud.”

The king on the left, however, shrugged and answered: “That may be a goatherd. Or a hermit who has lived too long among rocks and trees. For having no company at all also spoils good manners.”

“Good manners?” the other king replied, angry and bitter. “Then what is it we are running away from? Isn’t it ‘good manners’? Our ‘good society’?

Truly, it is better to live among hermits and goatherds than with our gilded, false, over-rouged mob, even if it calls itself ‘good society.’

Even if it calls itself ‘nobility.’ There everything is false and rotten, above all the blood, thanks to old, evil diseases and even worse doctors.

The best and dearest to me today is still a sound peasant: coarse, cunning, stubborn, and enduring. That is the noblest type today.

Today the peasant is the best, and the peasant type should be master! But this is the kingdom of the mob, and I no longer let anything be imposed on me. The mob, though, means hodgepodge.

Mob-hodgepodge: in it everything is mixed with everything, saint and swindler, gentleman and Jew, and every beast out of Noah’s ark.

Good manners! With us everything is false and rotten. No one knows how to revere anymore, and that is exactly what we are running away from. They are fawning, pushy dogs. They gild palm leaves.

This disgust chokes me: that we kings ourselves have become false, draped and disguised in the old faded pomp of our ancestors, showpieces for the stupidest, the craftiest, and anyone who trades in power these days.

We are NOT the first men, and yet we have to STAND IN for them. We have finally grown weary and sick of this pretense.

We have stepped out of the way of the rabble, of all those bawlers and scribbling blowflies, of the stench of traders, the fidgeting of ambition, the bad breath. Ugh, to live among the rabble—

—ugh, to pass for the first men among the rabble! Ah, disgust! Disgust! Disgust! What do we kings matter now!”

“Your old sickness is seizing you,” said the king on the left at this point. “Your disgust is seizing you, my poor brother. But you know that someone is listening to us.”

At once Zarathustra, who had been all ears and eyes during this talk, rose from his hiding place, walked toward the kings, and began:

“The one who listens to you, who gladly listens to you, is called Zarathustra.

I am Zarathustra, who once said: ‘What do kings matter now!’ Forgive me, but I was glad when you said to each other: ‘What do we kings matter!’

But here is MY domain and jurisdiction. What could you be seeking in my domain? Perhaps, though, you have FOUND on your way what I am looking for: namely, the higher man.”

When the kings heard this, they beat their breasts and said with one voice: “We have been recognized!

“With the sword of your words you cut through the thickest darkness of our hearts. You have discovered our distress. For look: we are on our way to find the higher man.

“We mean the man who is higher than we are, even though we are kings. We are bringing him this ass. For the highest man should also be the highest lord on earth.

“There is no worse misfortune in all of human destiny than when the powerful of the earth are not also the first among men. Then everything becomes false, distorted, and monstrous.

“And when the powerful are even the last of men, more beast than man, then the populace rises higher and higher in honor. At last the virtue of the populace itself declares: ‘Look, I alone am virtue!’”

“What have I just heard?” answered Zarathustra. “What wisdom in kings! I am enchanted. Indeed, I already feel the urge to make a rhyme about it.

“It may turn out to be a rhyme not suited to every ear. But I unlearned long ago any consideration for long ears. Well then! Here it is!”

(At this point, however, the ass also found its voice. It said clearly and maliciously: Y-E-A.)

‘Twas once—I think the first year of our blessed Lord—Drunk without wine, the Sibyl thus deplored: “How badly things go! Decline! Decline! The world has never sunk so low! Rome has turned harlot and brothel too, Rome’s Caesar a beast, and God—has turned Jew!”

The kings were delighted with Zarathustra’s rhymes. The king on the right said: “O Zarathustra, how good it was that we set out to see you!

“Your enemies showed us your likeness in their mirror. There you wore the grimace of a devil, sneering, and we were afraid of you.

“But what good did that do? Again and again your sayings pierced our hearts and ears. At last we said: What does it matter how he looks!

“We must HEAR him, the one who teaches: ‘You shall love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the long!’

“No one ever spoke such warlike words: ‘What is good? To be brave is good. It is the good war that makes every cause holy.’

“O Zarathustra, the blood of our fathers stirred in our veins at such words. It was like the voice of spring speaking to old wine casks.

“When swords crossed one another like red-spotted serpents, our fathers grew fond of life. The sun of every peace seemed weak and lukewarm to them, and a long peace made them ashamed.

“How our fathers sighed when they saw swords hanging on the wall, brightly polished and dried up! Like those swords, they thirsted for war. For a sword thirsts to drink blood, and it sparkles with desire.”

As the kings went on eagerly about the happiness of their fathers, Zarathustra felt no small desire to mock their eagerness. Clearly these were very peaceable kings standing before him, kings with old and refined faces. But he restrained himself.

“Well!” he said. “That way leads the path; up there lies Zarathustra’s cave. And this day is to have a long evening! For now, however, a cry of distress calls me away from you in haste.

“It will honor my cave if kings choose to sit and wait in it. But you will certainly have to wait a long time!

“Well, what of it? Where does anyone learn to wait better these days than at court? And the only virtue that kings have left, isn’t it called today: the ABILITY to wait?”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

LXIV. THE LEECH.

Zarathustra went on, deep in thought, further and lower down, through forests and past marshy hollows. And as happens to anyone who ponders hard matters, he stepped on a man without noticing.

At once a cry of pain spurted into his face, along with two curses and twenty foul insults. In his fright, Zarathustra raised his stick and struck the man he had stepped on. But immediately he regained his composure, and his heart laughed at the foolish thing he had just done.

“Forgive me,” he said to the man he had stepped on, who had gotten up furious and then sat down again. “Forgive me, and first of all hear a parable.

“Imagine a wanderer on a lonely road, dreaming of distant things, who stumbles without noticing onto a sleeping dog lying in the sun.

“Both of them start up and snap at each other like deadly enemies, two creatures frightened to death. That is what happened to us.

“And yet! And yet how little was missing for them to caress each other, that dog and that lonely man! Are they not both lonely ones?”

“Whoever you are,” said the man, still furious, “you tread too close to me with your parable, and not only with your foot!

“Look! Am I a dog, then?” With that, the seated man got up and pulled his bare arm out of the swamp. At first he had been lying stretched out on the ground, hidden and invisible, like someone lying in wait for swamp game.

“But what are you doing?” Zarathustra cried in alarm, for he saw a great deal of blood streaming over the bare arm. “What has hurt you? Has some evil beast bitten you, you poor man?”

The bleeding man laughed, still angry. “What does it matter to you?” he said, and was about to walk on. “Here I am at home, in my own province. Let anyone question me who likes. But I will hardly answer a blockhead.”

“You are mistaken,” said Zarathustra with sympathy, and held him fast. “You are mistaken. Here you are not at home but in my domain, and in it no one shall come to harm.

“Call me whatever you like. I am who I must be. I call myself Zarathustra.

“Well! Up there is the way to Zarathustra’s cave. It is not far. Won’t you come and tend your wounds at my home?

“Life has treated you badly, you poor man. First a beast bit you, and then a man stepped on you!”

When the man heard the name Zarathustra, however, he was transformed. “What is happening to me!” he exclaimed. “WHO occupies me more in this life than 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. My outstretched arm had already been bitten ten times, and now an even finer leech bites at my blood: Zarathustra himself!

“O happiness! O miracle! Blessed be this day that lured me into the swamp! Blessed be the best and liveliest cupping glass alive today! Blessed be the great leech of conscience, Zarathustra!”

So spoke the man who had been stepped on. Zarathustra was pleased with his words and their refined, reverent style. “Who are you?” he asked, and gave him his hand. “There is much to clear up and explain between us. But already, it seems to me, a pure, clear day is dawning.”

“I am THE CONSCIENTIOUS ONE OF THE SPIRIT,” answered the man. “In matters of the spirit, it would be hard for anyone to be more rigorous, more narrow, and more severe than I am, except the one from whom I learned it, Zarathustra himself.

“Better to know nothing than to half-know many things! Better to be a fool on one’s own account than a sage by other people’s approval! I go to the foundation.

“What does it matter whether it is great or small? Whether it is called swamp or sky? A handbreadth of foundation is enough for me, if it really is foundation and solid ground!

“On a handbreadth of foundation, one can stand. In true, knowing knowledge, there is nothing great and nothing small.”

“Then perhaps you are an expert on the leech?” asked Zarathustra. “And you investigate the leech down to its ultimate foundation, you conscientious one?”

“O Zarathustra,” answered the man, “that would be something enormous. How could I presume to do that!

“What I am master and knower of is the BRAIN of the leech. That is MY world!

“And it is a world too! Forgive me for letting my pride speak here, but in this I have no equal. That is why I said: ‘Here I am at home.’

“How long I have investigated this one thing, the brain of the leech, so that the slippery truth could no longer slip away from me here! This is MY domain!

“For its sake I cast everything else aside. For its sake everything else became indifferent to me. And right beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.

“My conscience of the spirit demands that it be so: that I know one thing and know nothing else. I loathe everything half-spiritual, everything hazy, hovering, and dreamy.

“Where my honesty ends, there I am blind, and I want to be blind. But where I want to know, there I also want to be honest, which means severe, rigorous, narrow, cruel, and relentless.

“Because YOU once said, O Zarathustra, ‘Spirit is life that itself cuts into life,’ I was led and drawn to your teaching. And truly, with my own blood I have increased my own knowledge!”

“As the evidence shows,” Zarathustra broke in. The blood was still flowing down the conscientious man’s bare arm, for ten leeches had bitten into it.

“O you strange fellow, how much this very evidence teaches me, namely you yourself! And perhaps I should not pour all of it into your rigorous ear!

“Well then! We part here. But I would gladly find you again. Up there is the way to my cave. Tonight you shall be my welcome guest there!

“I would also gladly make amends to your body for Zarathustra’s having stepped on you. I am thinking about that. But right now a cry of distress calls me away from you in haste.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

LXV. THE MAGICIAN.

When Zarathustra had gone around a rock, he saw on the same path, not far below him, a man throwing his limbs about like a madman, who at last fell flat on his belly. “Stop!” Zarathustra said to his heart. “That must surely be the higher man. That dreadful cry of distress came from him. I will see whether I can help him.”

But when he ran to the spot where the man lay on the ground, he found a trembling old man with fixed, staring eyes. Zarathustra tried hard to lift him and set him back on his feet, but it was all in vain.

The unfortunate man did not even seem to notice that anyone was beside him. Instead, he kept looking around with pathetic gestures, like someone abandoned and cut off from the whole world. At last, after much trembling, convulsing, and curling himself up, he began to lament like this:

Who warms me, who loves me still?
Give me burning fingers!
Give me heart-warming braziers!
Lying prone, stretched out, trembling,
Like one half dead and cold whose feet are warmed—
And shaken, ah! by unknown fevers,
Shivering under sharp, icy frost-arrows,
Hunted by you, my thought!
Unspeakable! Hidden! Terrifying!
You hunter behind the cloud-banks!
Now struck down by your lightning,
You mocking eye that watches me in darkness:
—So I lie,
Bend myself, twist myself, convulsed
With every eternal torment,
And struck
By you, cruelest hunter,
You unknown—GOD…

Strike deeper!
Strike once more!
Pierce and tear this heart!
What does this torture mean
With blunt, jagged arrows?
Why do you look down here,
Never weary of human pain,
With mischief-loving, godly lightning-glances?
You will not kill,
Only torture, torture?
Why torture—ME,
You mischief-loving, unknown God?—

Ha! Ha!
You creep near
In midnight’s gloomy hour?…
What do you want? Speak!
You crowd me, press me—
Ha! now far too closely!
You hear me breathing,
You overhear my heart,
You ever-jealous one!
—Jealous of what?

Away! Away!
Why the ladder?
Do you want to GET IN?
To climb into my heart?
To climb into my most secret
Thoughts?
Shameless one! Unknown one!—Thief!
What do you seek by your stealing?
What do you seek by your listening?
What do you seek by your torturing?
You torturer!
You—hangman-God!
Or shall I, as mastiffs do,
Roll over before you?
And cringing, enraptured, frantic,
Wag my tail—in friendship!

No use!
Goad me further!
Cruelest goader!
No dog—just your quarry am I,
Cruelest hunter!
Your proudest captive,
You robber behind the cloud-banks…
Speak at last!
You lightning-veiled one! You unknown one! Speak!
What do you want, highway ambusher, from—ME?
What do you WANT, unknown—God?
What?
Ransom?
How much ransom?
Ask for much—so my pride advises!
And be brief—so my other pride advises!

Ha! Ha!
ME—you want? Me?
—All of me?…

Ha! Ha!
And you torture me, fool that you are,
Torture my pride to death?
Give me LOVE—who warms me still?
Who loves me still?—
Give me burning fingers,
Give me heart-warming braziers,
Give me, the loneliest one,
Whom ice (ah! sevenfold frozen ice
Makes thirst for enemies,
Even for foes),
Give, yield to me,
Cruelest foe,
—YOURSELF!—

Gone!
He has surely fled,
My last, my only companion,
My greatest foe,
My unknown—
My hangman-God!…

—No!
Come back!
WITH all your great tortures!
To me, the last of the lonely,
Oh, come back!
All my hot tears run in streams
Their course to you!
And all my final heart’s fire—
Glows up to YOU!
Oh, come back,
My unknown God! My PAIN!
My final happiness!

At this point Zarathustra could restrain himself no longer. He took his staff and struck the wailing man with all his might. “Stop this!” he shouted at him with angry laughter. “Stop it, you play-actor! You counterfeiter! You liar from the very heart! I know you well!

“I’ll soon warm your legs for you, you evil magician. I know very well how to make things hot for the likes of you!”

“Stop,” said the old man, springing up from the ground. “Strike me no more, O Zarathustra! I did it only for amusement!

That kind of thing belongs to my art. I wanted to put you to the test when I gave this performance. And truly, you saw right through me!

But you have also given me no small proof of yourself. You are hard, wise Zarathustra! You strike hard with your ‘truths,’ and your cudgel forces this truth out of me!”

“Don’t flatter me,” answered Zarathustra, still agitated and frowning. “You are an actor to the core! You are false. Why do you talk about truth?

You peacock of peacocks, you sea of vanity, what were you acting out in front of me, you evil magician? Whom was I supposed to believe in when you wailed like that?”

“The penitent in spirit,” said the old man. “That is who I was playing. You yourself once coined that expression:

the poet and magician who finally turns his spirit against himself, the transformed one who freezes to death from his own bad science and bad conscience.

And just admit it, Zarathustra: it took you a long time to discover my trick and my lie! You believed in my distress when you held my head in both your hands.

I heard you lament, ‘We have loved him too little, loved him too little!’ My wickedness rejoiced inside me that I had deceived you so far.”

“You may have deceived people subtler than I am,” said Zarathustra sternly. “I do not guard myself against deceivers. I have to be without precautions. That is what my fate requires.

But you must deceive. That much I know about you! You must always speak with two meanings, three, four, and five! Even what you have just confessed is not nearly true enough, or false enough, for me!

You wretched counterfeiter, how could you do otherwise? Even if you stood naked before your doctor, you would whitewash your own illness.

That is how you whitewashed your lie in front of me when you said, ‘I did it only for amusement!’ There was also seriousness in it. You are something of a penitent in spirit!

I see through you well. You have become the enchanter of the whole world. But for yourself you have no lie or trick left. You are disenchanted with yourself!

You have harvested disgust as your one truth. None of your words is genuine anymore, but your mouth is: that is, the disgust that clings to your mouth.”

“Who are you, anyway?” the old magician cried at this, his voice defiant. “Who dares speak this way to me, the greatest man now living?” A green flash shot from his eye at Zarathustra. But immediately afterward he changed, and said sadly:

“O Zarathustra, I am weary of it. I am disgusted with my arts. I am not great. Why should I pretend? But you know it well: I sought greatness!

I wanted to look like a great man, and I persuaded many. But the lie has been beyond my strength. I am collapsing under it.

O Zarathustra, everything in me is a lie. But that I am collapsing, this collapse of mine, is genuine!”

“It does you honor,” said Zarathustra gloomily, looking down and to the side. “It does you honor that you sought greatness, but it also gives you away. You are not great.

You wretched old magician, this is the best and most honest thing I honor in you: that you have grown weary of yourself and have said it aloud, ‘I am not great.’

In this I honor you as a penitent in spirit. Even if only for the blink of an eye, in that one moment you were genuine.

But tell me, what are you looking for here in my forests and among my rocks? And if you have put yourself in my way, what proof of me did you want?

In what way did you put me to the test?”

So spoke Zarathustra, and his eyes flashed. The old magician was silent for a while. Then he said: “Did I put you to the test? I am only searching.

O Zarathustra, I am searching for someone genuine, someone true, someone simple and unambiguous, a man of perfect honesty, a vessel of wisdom, a saint of knowledge, a great man!

Don’t you know it, Zarathustra? I am searching for Zarathustra.”

A long silence fell between them. Zarathustra became so deeply absorbed in thought that he closed his eyes. Then, returning to the moment, he took the magician’s hand and spoke with great courtesy and shrewdness:

“Well! The path leads up there. That is Zarathustra’s cave. In it you may search for the one you hope to find.

And ask advice from my animals, my eagle and my serpent. They will help you search. My cave, after all, is large.

I myself, admittedly, have not yet seen a great man. Today even the sharpest eye cannot perceive what is great. This is the kingdom of the mob.

I have found many who stretched and puffed themselves up, while the people cried, ‘Look, a great man!’ But what good are all these bellows? In the end the wind comes out.

In the end the frog that has puffed itself up too long bursts, and out comes the wind. To prick a swollen one in the belly is what I call good sport. Listen to that, you boys!

Our today belongs to the mob. Who still knows what is great and what is small? Who could search for greatness here and succeed? Only a fool. Fools succeed at it.

You are looking for great men, you strange fool? Who taught you that? Is today the time for it? Oh, you bad searcher, why do you tempt me?”

So spoke Zarathustra, comforted in his heart, and he went on his way laughing.

LXVI. OUT OF SERVICE.

Not long after Zarathustra had freed himself from the magician, he again saw someone sitting beside the path he was following. It was a tall man dressed in black, with a gaunt, pale face, and this man troubled him greatly.

“Alas,” he said to his heart, “there sits affliction in disguise. He seems to me to be of the priestly type. What do they want in my domain?

What! I have barely escaped that magician, and now another sorcerer must cross my path:

some wizard of the laying-on of hands, some gloomy wonder-worker by the grace of God, some anointed slanderer of the world. May the devil take him!

But the devil is never where he belongs. He always comes too late, that cursed dwarf with the clubfoot!”

So Zarathustra cursed impatiently in his heart, and he considered how he might slip past the man in black without looking at him. But it turned out otherwise. At that very moment the seated man had already noticed him.

Like someone overtaken by unexpected good fortune, the man sprang to his feet and went straight toward Zarathustra.

“Whoever you are, traveler,” he said, “help a man who has lost his way, a seeker, an old man who could easily come to harm here!

This world is strange and remote to me. I have heard wild beasts howling. And the one who could have protected me no longer exists.

I was looking for the pious man, a saint and hermit who lived alone in his forest and had not yet heard what all the world knows now.”

“What does all the world know now?” asked Zarathustra. “Perhaps that the old God in whom all the world once believed no longer lives?”

“You have said it,” answered the old man sorrowfully. “And I served that old God until his last hour.

But now I am out of service, without a master, and still not free. Nor am I cheerful anymore, not even for an hour, except in memories.

That is why I climbed into these mountains: so that I might at last hold a festival for myself once more, as befits an old pope and father of the church. For know this: I am the last pope! I wanted a festival of pious memories and divine worship.

But now he too is dead, the most pious of men, the saint in the forest who constantly praised his God with singing and mumbling.

When I found his hut, I no longer found him. I found two wolves inside, howling over his death, for all the animals loved him. Then I hurried away.

Had I come into these forests and mountains for nothing? Then my heart resolved that I should seek another, the most pious of all those who do not believe in God. My heart resolved that I should seek Zarathustra!”

So spoke the white-haired man, and he looked sharply at the one standing before him. Zarathustra, however, took the old pope’s hand and gazed at it for a long time with admiration.

“Look, venerable one,” he then said, “what a fine, long hand! That is the hand of someone who has always given blessings. But now it holds the one you are looking for: me, Zarathustra.

It is I, the godless Zarathustra, who says: ‘Who is more godless than I, so that I may enjoy his teaching?’”

So spoke Zarathustra, and his gaze pierced the thoughts of the old pope, and the thoughts behind those thoughts. At last the old man began:

“The one who loved and possessed him most has now also lost him most.

Look, surely I myself am now the most godless of us both? But who could rejoice in that?”

After a deep silence, Zarathustra asked thoughtfully: “You served him to the end? Do you know how he died? Is it true what they say, that pity choked him?

That he saw man hanging on the cross and could not bear it? That his love for man became his hell, and in the end his death?”

The old pope did not answer. He looked away timidly, with a pained and gloomy expression.

After long reflection, still looking the old man straight in the eye, Zarathustra said: “Let him go.

Let him go. He is gone. And although it does you honor that you speak only in praise of this dead one, you know as well as I who he was, and that he went by strange ways.”

“Speaking just between the three eyes of us,” said the old pope cheerfully, for he was blind in one eye, “in divine matters I am better informed than Zarathustra himself, and I have every right to be.

My love served him for many years. My will followed all his will. But a good servant knows everything, including many things that a master hides even from himself.

He was a hidden God, full of secrets. Truly, he came by his son only through secret ways. 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 that God not also want to be a judge? But one who truly loves loves without regard to reward or repayment.

When he was young, that God from the East was harsh and vengeful. He built himself a hell for the delight of his favorites.

But at last he grew old and soft and mellow and full of pity, more like a grandfather than a father, but most of all like a tottering old grandmother.

There he sat, shriveled, in his corner by the fire, fretting over his weak legs, weary of the world, weary of willing. And one day he suffocated on his excessive pity.”

“Old pope,” Zarathustra broke in at this point, “did you see that with your own eyes? It may well have happened that way: that way, and otherwise as well. When gods die, they always die many kinds of death.

Well! In any case, one way or another, he is gone! He offended the taste of my ears and eyes. I would rather not say anything worse against him than that.

I love everything that looks bright and speaks honestly. But he, as you surely know, old priest, had something of your type in him, the priestly type. He was ambiguous.

He was also unclear. How he raged at us, this snorter of wrath, because we understood him badly! But why did he not speak more clearly?

And if the fault lay in our ears, why did he give us ears that heard him badly? If there was dirt in our ears, well, who put it there?

Too much went wrong for him, this potter who never fully learned his trade! But that he took revenge on his pots and creations because they turned out badly, that was a sin against good taste.

There is good taste in piety too. That taste finally said: ‘Away with such a God! Better to have no God, better to shape one’s destiny on one’s own account, better to be a fool, better to be God oneself!’”

“What do I hear!” said the old pope, listening intently. “O Zarathustra, with such unbelief you are more pious than you think! Some god in you has 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 lead you even beyond good and evil!

Look at what has been reserved for you! You have eyes and hands and a mouth that were destined from eternity to bless. One does not bless with the hand alone.

Near you, though you claim to be the most godless one, I sense a wholesome and holy fragrance of long blessings. It makes me both glad and sorrowful.

Let me be your guest, O Zarathustra, for a single night! Nowhere on earth will I now feel better than with you!”

“Amen! So be it!” said Zarathustra, greatly astonished. “The path leads up there. That is Zarathustra’s cave.

Truly, I would gladly take you there myself, venerable one, for I love all pious men. But just now a cry of distress calls me hastily away from you.

In my domain no one shall come to harm. My cave is a good harbor. And what I would like best is to set every sorrowful person back on firm ground and firm legs.

But who could lift your melancholy from your shoulders? For that I am too weak. Truly, we would have to wait a long time for someone to reawaken your God for you.

For that old God no longer lives. He is truly dead.”

So spoke Zarathustra.

LXVII. THE UGLIEST MAN.

—And once again Zarathustra’s feet ran through mountains and forests, and his eyes searched and searched. But nowhere could they find the one they wanted to see: the deeply distressed sufferer who had cried out.

All along the way, however, he rejoiced in his heart and was full of gratitude. “What good things this day has given me,” he said, “to make up for its bad beginning! What strange people I have found to talk with!

“I will chew on their words for a long while, as if they were good grain. My teeth will grind and crush them small, until they flow like milk into my soul!”—

But when the path curved around a rock once more, the landscape suddenly changed, and Zarathustra entered a realm of death. Black and red cliffs rose up here, with no grass, no tree, and no birdsong.

It was a valley that all animals avoided, even the beasts of prey. The only exception was a kind of ugly, thick, green serpent that came here to die when it grew old. For this reason the shepherds called the valley “Serpent-Death.”

Zarathustra, however, sank into dark memories, for it seemed to him that he had stood in this valley once before. A great heaviness settled on his mind, so that he walked slowly, then more slowly still, and finally stood still.

When he opened his eyes, he saw something sitting by the wayside. It was shaped like a man, and yet hardly like a man: something that could not be described.

All at once a great shame came over Zarathustra for having looked at such a thing. Blushing to the very roots of his white hair, he turned his eyes away and lifted his foot to leave this ill-fated place.

Then the dead wilderness found a voice. A noise welled up from the ground, gurgling and rattling, the way water gurgles and rattles at night through clogged pipes. At last it turned into a human voice and human speech, and it sounded like this:

“Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Solve my riddle! Speak, speak! What is the revenge on the witness?

“I am luring you back: here is slippery ice! Take care, take care that your pride doesn’t break its legs here!

“You think you are wise, proud Zarathustra! Then solve the riddle, you cracker of hard nuts—the riddle that I am! Tell me, then: who am I?”

—And when Zarathustra heard these words, what do you think happened in his soul? Pity overcame him. He collapsed all at once, like an oak that has long withstood many woodcutters and then falls heavily and suddenly, to the terror even of those who meant to fell it.

But he immediately got up from the ground again, and his face became stern.

“I know you well,” he said, in a voice like bronze. “You are the murderer of God! Let me go.

“You could not endure the one who saw you—who always saw you through and through, you ugliest man. You took revenge on this witness!”

So spoke Zarathustra, and he was about to leave. But the indescribable creature grabbed a corner of his robe and began again to gurgle and grope for words. “Stay,” he said at last—

—“Stay! Don’t pass me by! I have guessed what axe it was that struck you to the ground. Hail to you, Zarathustra, that you are back on your feet!

“You have guessed, I know it well, how the man feels who killed him—the murderer of God. Stay! Sit down here beside me. It will not be for nothing.

“To whom would I go, if not to you? Stay, sit down! But don’t look at me! Honor my ugliness in that way!

“They are persecuting me, and now you are my last refuge. Not with their hatred, not with their bailiffs. Oh, I would mock such persecution, and be proud and cheerful about it!

“Hasn’t all success so far belonged to those who were thoroughly persecuted? And whoever persecutes thoroughly readily learns to follow—once he has been left behind! But it is their pity—

“—it is their pity that I am fleeing from, fleeing to you. Zarathustra, protect me, my last refuge, the only one who has figured me out.

“You have guessed how the man feels who killed him. Stay! And if you must go, you impatient one, don’t take the road I came by. That road is bad.

“Are you angry with me because I have tortured language for too long? Because I have already been giving you advice? But know that it is I, the ugliest man,

“—who also has the largest, heaviest feet. Wherever I have walked, the road is bad. I trample every path into death and ruin.

“But I saw that you passed me by in silence, and that you blushed. That is how I knew you were Zarathustra.

“Anyone else would have tossed me his charity, his pity, in a look or a word. But I am not beggar enough for that, and you guessed as much.

“For that I am too rich: rich in what is great, terrible, ugliest, most unspeakable! Your shame, Zarathustra, honored me!

“With difficulty I escaped the crowd of the pitying, so that I might find the only one who now teaches that ‘pity is intrusive’—you, Zarathustra!

“Whether it is the pity of a God or human pity, it offends against modesty. And an unwillingness to help may be nobler than the virtue that rushes in to do so.

“Yet that, namely pity, is what all petty people now call virtue itself. They have no reverence for great misfortune, great ugliness, great failure.

“I look beyond all of them, the way a dog looks over the backs of crowded flocks of sheep. They are petty, well-fleeced, well-meaning, gray people.

“Just as the heron looks scornfully at shallow pools, with its head bent back, so I look at the throng of little gray waves and wills and souls.

“For too long we have conceded that they are right, these petty people. So in the end we have given them power as well. And now they teach that ‘good is only what petty people call good.’

“And ‘truth’ today is what was said by the preacher who sprang from among them, that strange saint and advocate of the petty people, who testified of himself: ‘I—am the truth.’

“That immodest man has long made the petty people very puffed up. He taught no small error when he taught: ‘I—am the truth.’

“Has an immodest man ever been answered more politely? But you, 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 for everyone, and not for no one, but for yourself and your kind.

“You are ashamed at the shame of the great sufferer. And truly, when you say, ‘From pity comes a heavy cloud; take heed, you men!’—

“—when you teach, ‘All creators are hard, all great love is beyond its pity’—Zarathustra, how well you seem to me to read the signs of the weather!

“But you yourself must also warn yourself against your pity! For many are on their way to you: many who are suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning, freezing—

“I warn you against myself as well. You have solved my best and worst riddle: myself, and what I have done. I know the axe that fells you.

“But he had to die. He looked with eyes that saw everything. He saw the depths and dregs of human beings, all their hidden disgrace and ugliness.

“His pity knew no modesty. He crept into my dirtiest corners. This most prying, overly intrusive, overly pitying one had to die.

“He always saw me. On such a witness I had to have revenge, or else not live myself.

“The God who saw everything, and man as well: that God had to die! Man cannot endure that such a witness should live.”

So spoke the ugliest man. Zarathustra, however, got up and prepared to go on, for he felt frozen to the very depths of his body.

“You indescribable one,” he said, “you warned me against your path. As thanks, I will recommend mine to you. Look, up there is Zarathustra’s cave.

“My cave is large and deep and has many corners. There even the most hidden one can find his hiding place. And close beside it are a hundred nooks and crannies for creatures that creep, flutter, and hop.

“You outcast, who have cast yourself out: you do not want to live among people and their pity? Well then, do as I do! That way you will also learn from me. Only the one who acts learns.

“And above all, talk to my animals! The proudest animal and the wisest animal—they may well be the right counselors for both of us!”

So spoke Zarathustra, and he went on his way even more thoughtfully and slowly than before. He was asking himself many things and hardly knew how to answer them.

“How poor man really is,” he thought in his heart, “how ugly, how wheezing, how full of hidden shame!

“They tell me that man loves himself. Ah, how great that self-love must be! How much contempt stands against it!

“Even this man loved himself as much as he despised himself. A great lover, I think he is, and a great despiser.

“I have never yet found anyone who despised himself more thoroughly. Even that is a kind of height. Alas, was this perhaps the higher man whose cry I heard?

“I love the great despisers. Man is something that must be overcome.”—

LXVIII. THE VOLUNTARY BEGGAR.

When Zarathustra had left the ugliest man, he felt chilled and lonely. So much coldness and loneliness came over his spirit that even his limbs grew colder.

But as he wandered on and on, uphill and down, sometimes past green meadows and sometimes over wild, stony beds where perhaps an impatient brook had once run, he suddenly grew warmer and more cheerful again.

“What has happened to me?” he asked himself. “Something warm and living is reviving me. It must be nearby.

“Already I am less alone. Companions and brothers I don’t yet know are roaming around me, and their warm breath touches my soul.”

He looked around and searched for whatever was comforting his loneliness. And there, standing together on a hilltop, were cows. It was their nearness and their smell that had warmed his heart.

The cows, however, seemed to be listening eagerly to someone speaking, and paid no attention to the man approaching. When Zarathustra came quite close, he clearly heard a human voice speaking in the middle of the herd. Apparently all of the cows had turned their heads toward the speaker.

Zarathustra ran up quickly and pushed the animals aside, for he feared that someone had been hurt here, and that the cows’ pity would hardly be able to help. But he was mistaken.

For there sat a man on the ground who seemed to be persuading the animals not to be afraid of him. He was a peaceful man, a Preacher-on-the-Mount, out of whose eyes kindness itself preached. “What are you looking for here?” Zarathustra called out in astonishment.

“What am I looking for here?” he answered. “The same thing you are looking for, you troublemaker: happiness on earth.

“For that purpose I would like to learn from these cows. I tell you, I have already been talking to them for half the morning, and they were just about to give me their answer. Why are you disturbing them?

“Unless we turn and become like cows, we shall by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. For there is one thing we ought to learn from them: ruminating.

“And truly, if a man should gain the whole world and yet not learn this one thing, ruminating, what would it profit him? He would not be rid of his affliction,

“—his great affliction, which today is called disgust. Who today does not have his heart, his mouth, and his eyes full of disgust? You too! You too! But look at these cows!”

So spoke the Preacher-on-the-Mount. Then he turned his own gaze toward Zarathustra, for until now it had rested lovingly on the cows. But at that moment his expression changed. “Who is this I am talking to?” he cried out in fright, and sprang up from the ground.

“This is the man without disgust. This is Zarathustra himself, the one who overcame the great disgust. This is the eye, this is the mouth, this is the heart of Zarathustra himself.”

As he spoke, he kissed the hands of the man he was speaking to, with tears overflowing from his eyes. He behaved exactly like someone to whom a precious gift, a jewel, has unexpectedly fallen from heaven. The cows, meanwhile, watched it all and wondered.

“Don’t speak about me, you strange one, you kind one!” said Zarathustra, holding back the man’s affection. “Tell me first about yourself! Aren’t you 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 would not accept him.”

“But they would not accept me,” said the voluntary beggar. “You know that well enough. So in the end I went to the animals and to these cows.”

“Then you learned,” Zarathustra interrupted, “how much harder it is to give well than to take well, and that giving well is an art: the final and subtlest master-art of kindness.”

“Especially nowadays,” answered the voluntary beggar. “That is, now that everything low has become rebellious, standoffish, and haughty in its manner—in the manner of the mob.

“For the hour has come, as you know well enough, for the great, wicked, long, slow uprising of the mob and the slaves. It keeps spreading and spreading!

“Now all charity and petty giving only provokes the lower classes. The over-rich had better be on their guard!

“Whoever gives today in drips, like bulging bottles with far too narrow necks: people are now glad to break the necks of such bottles.

“Greedy lust, bitter envy, brooding revenge, mob pride: all of these struck my eye. It is no longer true that the poor are blessed. The kingdom of heaven, however, is with the cows.”

“And why isn’t it with the rich?” asked Zarathustra, testing him, while he held back the cows, which were sniffing familiarly at the peaceful man.

“Why are you tempting me?” the other replied. “You know the answer even better than I do. What drove me to the poorest, Zarathustra? Wasn’t it my disgust at the richest?

—At the culprits of wealth, with their cold eyes and rank thoughts, who scrape profit out of every kind of rubbish. It was disgust at this rabble whose stench rises to heaven,

—At this gilded, counterfeit mob, whose fathers were pickpockets, or carrion crows, or rag-pickers, with wives who were compliant, lewd, and forgetful. None of them are much different from whores.

Mob above, mob below! What do ‘poor’ and ‘rich’ even mean nowadays? I unlearned that distinction. Then I fled farther and ever farther away, until I came to these cows.”

So spoke the peaceful man, and he puffed and sweated as he spoke, so that the cows wondered all over again. Zarathustra, however, kept looking into his face with a smile the whole time the man talked so harshly, and silently shook his head.

“You are doing violence to yourself, you Preacher-on-the-Mount, when you use such harsh words. Neither your mouth nor your eyes were made for such harshness.

Nor, I think, was your stomach. All this rage and hatred and frothing over disgusts it. Your stomach wants gentler things. You are no butcher.

You seem to me, rather, a plant-eater and a man of roots. Perhaps you grind grain. In any case, you are certainly averse to the pleasures of the flesh, and you love honey.”

“You have guessed me well,” answered the voluntary beggar, his heart lighter. “I love honey, and I also grind grain. I have sought out what tastes sweet and makes the breath pure,

—And also what takes a long time: a day’s work and a mouth’s work for gentle idlers and sluggards.

These cows, to be sure, have carried it furthest. They have invented chewing the cud and lying in the sun. They also abstain from all heavy thoughts, which bloat the heart.”

—“Well!” said Zarathustra. “You should also see MY animals, my eagle and my serpent. There are none like them on earth today.

Look, that way leads to my cave. Be its guest tonight. And talk to my animals about the happiness of animals,—

—Until I come home myself. For now a cry of distress calls me hurriedly away from you. And if you find fresh honey at my place, ice-cold, golden honey in the comb, eat it!

But now take leave of your cows at once, you strange one, you lovable one, however hard it may be for you. For they are your warmest friends and teachers!”—

—“Except for one whom I hold dearer still,” answered the voluntary beggar. “You yourself are good, Zarathustra, and better even than a cow!”

“Away, away with you, you wicked flatterer!” cried Zarathustra mischievously. “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 affectionate beggar, who nimbly ran off.

LXIX. THE SHADOW.

Hardly had the voluntary beggar hurried off, leaving Zarathustra alone again, when he heard a new voice behind him calling out: “Stop! Zarathustra! Wait! It’s me, Zarathustra, really me, your shadow!”

But Zarathustra did not wait. A sudden irritation came over him at the crowds and crowding in his mountains. “Where has my solitude gone?” he said.

“It is truly becoming 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 it run after me! I will run away from it.”

So Zarathustra spoke to his heart, and he ran away. But the one behind him followed, so that suddenly there were three runners, one behind another: first the voluntary beggar, then Zarathustra, and third and last, his shadow.

They had not run this way for long before Zarathustra became aware of his folly. With one jerk he shook off all his irritation and loathing.

“What!” he said. “Haven’t the most ridiculous things always happened to us old hermits and saints?

Truly, my folly has grown big in the mountains! Now I hear six old fools’ legs clattering one after another!

But does Zarathustra need to be frightened of his own shadow? Besides, I suspect that its legs are longer than mine after all.”

So spoke Zarathustra. Laughing with his eyes and his gut, he stopped and turned around quickly, and in doing so he nearly knocked his shadow and follower to the ground. The follower had kept so close at his heels, and was so weak.

When Zarathustra examined him with his gaze, he was startled as if by a sudden ghost, so thin, dark, hollow, and worn out this follower looked.

“Who are you?” Zarathustra demanded. “What are you doing here? And why do you call yourself my shadow? I don’t like you.”

“Forgive me,” answered the shadow, “that it is I. And if you don’t like me, well, Zarathustra, I admire you and your good taste for it.

I am a wanderer who has long walked at your heels. I am always on the road, but without a goal and without a home. So truly I fall little short of being the eternal Wandering Jew, except that I am not eternal and not a Jew.

What? Must I always be on the road? Whirled about by every wind, unsettled, driven on? O earth, you have become 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, and nothing gives. I grow thin. I am almost like a shadow.

But it was you, Zarathustra, whom I chased and pursued the longest. Though I hid myself from you, I was still your best shadow. Wherever you sat, I sat too.

With you I have wandered through the remotest, coldest worlds, like a ghost that chooses to haunt winter roofs and snows.

With you I have pushed into everything forbidden, everything worst and farthest. And if there is any virtue in me at all, it is that I have not feared any prohibition.

With you I have broken whatever my heart once revered. I have overturned every boundary stone and statue. I have chased the most dangerous wishes. Truly, I once went beyond every crime.

With you I unlearned my faith in words and values and great names. When the devil sheds his skin, doesn’t his name fall away too? A name is also skin. Perhaps the devil himself is nothing but skin.

‘Nothing is true, everything is permitted’: so I told myself. I plunged head and heart into the coldest water. Ah, how often I stood there naked because of it, like a red crab!

Ah, where have all my goodness and all my shame and all my belief in the good gone? 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, and then it kicked me in the face. Sometimes I meant to lie, and then, look! Only then did I hit upon the truth.

Too much has become clear to me, and now none of it concerns me anymore. Nothing that I love is still alive. How then could I still love myself?

‘To live as I please, or not to live at all’: that is what I want, and the holiest man wants it too. But alas! How do I still have anything that pleases me?

Do I still have a goal? A harbor toward which MY sail is set?

A good wind? Ah, only someone who knows WHERE he is sailing knows which wind is good, and which wind is fair for him.

What do I have left? A heart that is weary and flippant, an unstable will, fluttering wings, a broken backbone.

This searching for MY home: Zarathustra, do you know that this search has been MY homesickness? It is eating me up.

‘WHERE is MY home?’ I ask for it and look for it, and I have looked, but I have not found it. O eternal everywhere, O eternal nowhere, O eternal in vain!”

So spoke the shadow, and Zarathustra’s face lengthened at his words. “You are my shadow!” he said at last, sadly.

“Your danger is not small, you free spirit and wanderer! You have had a bad day. See to it that an even worse evening does not overtake you!

To restless people like you, even a prisoner finally seems blessed. Have you ever seen how captured criminals sleep? They sleep peacefully. They enjoy their new security.

Beware that a narrow faith does not capture you in the end, some hard, rigid delusion! For now everything narrow and fixed seduces and tempts you.

You have lost your goal. Alas, how will you get over that loss and forget it? In losing it, you have also lost your way!

You poor rover and rambler, you tired butterfly! Do you want rest and a home this evening? Then go up to my cave!

That way leads to my cave. And now I will run away from you again quickly. Already something like a shadow lies on me.

I will run alone, so that it may grow bright around me again. For that I must stay cheerfully on my legs a long while yet. But this evening there will be dancing at my place!”—

So spoke Zarathustra.

LXX. NOONTIDE.

—And Zarathustra ran and ran, but he found no one else. He was alone, and he kept finding himself again. For hours he enjoyed his solitude, drank it in, and thought of good things.

Around noon, however, when the sun stood directly over his head, he passed an old, bent, and gnarled tree. A vine had wrapped it all around in an ardent embrace and hidden it from itself. Yellow grapes hung from it in abundance, right in the wanderer’s path.

He felt like quenching a little thirst and breaking off a cluster of grapes for himself. But when he had already stretched out his arm to do so, he felt an even stronger wish for something else: to lie down beside the tree at the hour of perfect noon and sleep.

Zarathustra did this. No sooner had he laid himself on the ground, in the stillness and secrecy of the many-colored grass, than he forgot his little thirst and fell asleep. For as Zarathustra’s proverb says: “One thing is more necessary than the other.”

Only his eyes stayed open, for they never tired of gazing at and admiring the tree and the vine’s love. As he fell asleep, Zarathustra spoke to his heart:

“Hush! Hush! Hasn’t the world just become perfect? What has happened to me?

As a delicate wind dances unseen on a sea as smooth as a polished floor, light, feather-light, so sleep dances on me.

It closes none of my eyes. It leaves my soul awake. It is light, truly, feather-light.

It persuades me, I don’t know how. It touches me inwardly with a caressing hand. It compels me. Yes, it compels me, so that my soul stretches itself out:—

—How long and weary it grows, my strange soul! Has the evening of a seventh day come to it right at noon? Has it already wandered too long, blissfully, among good and ripe things?

It stretches itself out, long, longer! It lies still, my strange soul. It has already tasted too many good things. This golden sadness weighs on it and twists its mouth.

—Like a ship that puts into the calmest cove, it now draws up to land, weary of long voyages and uncertain seas. Isn’t the land more faithful?

When such a ship lies against the shore, nestled close to it, then a spider’s thread spun from ship to land is enough. No stronger ropes are needed there.

Like such a weary ship in the calmest cove, I too now rest close to the earth: faithful, trusting, waiting, bound to it by the lightest threads.

O happiness! O happiness! Will you sing, perhaps, my soul? You lie in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd plays his pipe.

Careful! Hot noon is sleeping on the fields. Don’t sing! Hush! The world is perfect.

Don’t sing, you prairie bird, my soul! Don’t even whisper! Look, hush! Old noon is sleeping. It moves its mouth. Isn’t it drinking a drop of happiness just now?

—An old brown drop of golden happiness, of golden wine? Something flits across it, and its happiness laughs. That is how a god laughs. Hush!

—‘How little it takes to be happy!’ I said that once and thought myself wise. But it was blasphemy: THAT I have now learned. Wise fools speak better.

Precisely the least thing, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a flit, a glance: it is LITTLE that makes up the BEST happiness. Hush!

—What has happened to me? Listen! Has time flown away? Am I not falling? Haven’t I fallen, listen! into the well of eternity?

—What is happening to me? Hush! Something stings me, alas, in the heart? In the heart! Oh, break, break, my heart, after such happiness, after such a sting!

—What? Hasn’t the world just become perfect? Round and ripe? Oh, the golden round ring, where is it flying? Let me run after it! Quick!

Hush—” (and here Zarathustra stretched himself, and felt that he was asleep.)

“Up!” he said to himself. “You sleeper! You noonday sleeper! Come on, up, you old legs! It is time, and more than time. Many a good stretch of road still awaits you.

Now you have slept your fill. For how long? Half an eternity! Come on, up now, my old heart! After such a sleep, how long can you stay awake?”

(But then he fell asleep again, and his soul argued against him, defended itself, and lay down again.) “Leave me alone! Hush! Hasn’t the world just become perfect? Oh, the golden round ball!—

“Get up,” said Zarathustra, “you little thief, you lazybones! What! Still stretching, yawning, sighing, falling into deep wells?

Who are you, then, my soul!” (and here he grew frightened, for a sunbeam shot down from the sky onto his face.)

“O sky above me,” he said with a sigh, and sat up, “are you gazing at me? Are you listening to my strange soul?

“When will you drink this drop of dew that has fallen on all earthly things? When will you drink this strange soul—

—when, you well of eternity, you joyful, terrifying abyss of noon? When will you drink my soul back into yourself?”

Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he rose from his resting place beside the tree as if waking from a strange drunkenness. And look! The sun still stood directly above his head. From this one could fairly conclude that Zarathustra had not slept long.

LXXI. THE GREETING.

It was not until late in the afternoon that Zarathustra, after much useless searching and wandering, came home to his cave again. But when he stood facing it, no more than twenty paces away, the thing he now least expected happened: he heard the great CRY OF DISTRESS once more.

And remarkably, this time the cry came from his own cave. It was a long, many-sided, peculiar cry. Zarathustra could clearly tell that it was made of many voices, although from a distance it might have sounded like the cry of a single mouth.

Then Zarathustra rushed toward his cave, and look! What a sight awaited him after that concert! There sat together all those he had passed 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 intellectually conscientious one, the sorrowful soothsayer, and the ass.

The ugliest man, however, had put a crown on his head and wrapped two purple sashes around himself. Like all ugly people, he liked to disguise himself and play the handsome one.

In the middle of that sorrowful company stood Zarathustra’s eagle, ruffled and uneasy. It had been asked to answer too many things for which its pride had no answer. The wise serpent, however, hung around its neck.

Zarathustra watched all this with great astonishment. Then he examined each guest with courteous curiosity, read their souls, and wondered again. Meanwhile the assembled company had risen from their seats and waited respectfully for Zarathustra to speak. Zarathustra spoke as follows:

“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 searched for in vain today: THE HIGHER MAN—

—he sits in my own cave, the higher man! But why am I surprised? Didn’t I myself lure him here with offerings of honey and the cunning calls of my happiness?

Yet it seems to me that you are poorly suited to one another’s company. You who cry for help, don’t you make each other’s hearts irritable when you sit here together? Someone else must come first,

—someone who will make you laugh again: a good, cheerful clown, a dancer, a wind, a wild romp, some old fool. What do you think?

Forgive me, you despairing ones, for speaking such trivial words in front of you. They are truly unworthy of such guests! But you do not guess WHAT makes my heart so playful—

—it is you yourselves, and the sight of you. Forgive me for it! For anyone who sees a despairing person grows courageous. Everyone thinks himself strong enough to encourage someone in despair.

You have given this power to me. It is a good gift, my honored guests! An excellent guest’s present! Well then, do not scold me if I offer you something of mine in return.

This is my empire and my domain. But what is mine shall be yours this evening and tonight. My animals shall serve you. Let my cave be your resting place!

In my house and home no one shall despair. Within my grounds I protect everyone from his wild beasts. That is the first thing I offer you: security!

The second thing is my little finger. And once you have THAT, take the whole hand too, yes, and the heart along with it! Welcome here, welcome, my guests!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra, laughing with love and mischief. After this greeting his guests bowed again and kept a respectful silence. The king on the right, however, answered him on their behalf.

“O Zarathustra, from the way you have given us your hand and your greeting, we recognize you as Zarathustra. You have humbled yourself before us. You have almost wounded our reverence—

—but who else could have humbled himself as you have, with such pride? THAT lifts us up. It refreshes our eyes and hearts.

Just to see this, we would gladly climb mountains higher than this one. We came as eager spectators. We wanted to see what makes dim eyes bright.

And look! Now our cries of distress are over. Our minds and hearts are open and enraptured. It would take little for our spirits to grow playful.

Nothing grows more pleasingly on earth, O Zarathustra, than a lofty, strong will. It is the finest growth. A whole landscape refreshes itself at one such tree.

I compare such a person, O Zarathustra, to the pine that grows up as you do: tall, silent, hardy, solitary, made of the best and most supple wood, stately—

—and in the end reaching out for ITS domain with strong green branches, putting weighty questions to the wind, the storm, and whatever else is at home in high places;

—and answering more weightily still, a commander, a victor! Oh, who would not climb high mountains to see such growths?

At your tree, O Zarathustra, even the gloomy and the badly made refresh themselves. At your gaze even the wavering grow steady and heal their hearts.

And truly, many eyes turn toward your mountain and your tree today. A great longing has arisen, and many have learned to ask: ‘Who is Zarathustra?’

And all those into whose ears you ever dripped your song and your honey have said to their hearts at the same time. All the hidden ones, those who live alone and those who live in pairs, have said:

‘Is Zarathustra still alive? Life is no longer worth living; everything is indifferent, everything is useless. Or else we must live with Zarathustra!’

‘Why doesn’t he come, after announcing himself for so long?’ many people ask. ‘Has solitude swallowed him up? Or should we perhaps go to him?’

Now it is happening that solitude itself grows fragile and breaks open, like a grave that bursts and can no longer hold its dead. Everywhere one sees people risen from the dead.

Now the waves rise and rise around your mountain, O Zarathustra. However high your height may be, many of them must rise up to you. Your boat will not rest much longer on dry ground.

We despairing ones have now come into your cave and already no longer despair. That is only an omen and a sign that better ones are on their way to you—

—for they themselves are on their way to you: the last remnant of God among men, that is, all the men of great longing, of great loathing, of great surfeit,

—all who do not want to live unless they learn to HOPE again, unless they learn from you, O Zarathustra, the GREAT hope!”

Thus spoke the king on the right, and he took Zarathustra’s hand to kiss it. But Zarathustra stopped this show of veneration and stepped back in alarm, silently and suddenly, as if fleeing into the far distance.

After a little while, however, he was back at home with his guests. He looked at them with clear, searching eyes and said:

“My guests, you higher men, I will speak plain language and speak plainly with you. It is not for YOU that I have waited here in these mountains.”

(“‘Plain language and plainly?’ Good God!” the king on the left said to himself at this point. “You can see he doesn’t know the good people of the West, this sage from the East!

But he means ‘blunt language and bluntly.’ Well! That is not the worst taste these days!”)

“You may all truly be higher men,” Zarathustra went on, “but for me you are neither high enough nor strong enough.

For me, that is, for the relentless thing that is silent in me now but will not always be silent. And even if you belong to me, it is not as my right arm.

For anyone who, like you, stands on sickly and tender legs wants above all to be TREATED GENTLY, whether he knows it or hides it from himself.

But I do not treat my arms and legs gently. I DO NOT TREAT MY WARRIORS GENTLY. How then could you be fit for MY warfare?

With you I would spoil all my victories. And many of you would topple over if you merely heard the loud beating of my drums.

Moreover, you are not beautiful enough or well-born enough for me. I need pure, smooth mirrors for my teachings. On your surface even my own image is distorted.

Many a burden and many a memory press on your shoulders. Many a malicious dwarf crouches in your corners. There is a hidden rabble in you too.

And though you are high and of a higher type, 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 cross over on you! You stand for steps, so do not scold the one who climbs beyond you into HIS height!

From your seed a true son and perfect heir may one day arise for me, but that time is distant. You yourselves are not the ones to whom my inheritance and my name belong.

It is not for you that I wait here in these mountains. It is not with you that I may go down for the last time. You have come to me only as an omen that higher ones are on their way to me—

—NOT the men of great longing, of great loathing, of great surfeit, and what you call the remnant of God.

—No! No! Three times No! I wait here in these mountains for OTHERS, and I will not lift my foot from here without them:

—for higher ones, stronger ones, more triumphant ones, merrier ones, for those who are built square in body and soul. LAUGHING LIONS must come!

O my guests, you strange ones, have you heard nothing yet of my children? Nothing of their being on their way to me?

Speak to me of my gardens, of my Happy Isles, of my new and beautiful race. Why do you not speak to me of them?

This is the guest’s present I ask of your love: that you speak to me of my children. For them I am rich, for them I became poor. What have I not given up,

—what would I not give up to have one thing: THESE children, THIS living plantation, THESE trees of life grown from my will and my highest hope!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he broke off suddenly in the middle of his speech. His longing had come over him, and he closed his eyes and his mouth because of the turmoil in his heart.

All his guests fell silent too, and stood still and bewildered, except that the old soothsayer made signs with his hands and gestures.

LXXII. THE SUPPER.

At this point the soothsayer interrupted the greeting between Zarathustra and his guests. He pushed 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, one thing is now more necessary TO ME than all the others.

A word at the right moment: didn’t you invite me to a MEAL? And here are many who have made long journeys. Surely you don’t mean to feed us on speeches alone?

Besides, all of you have thought too much about freezing, drowning, suffocating, and other bodily dangers. But none of you has thought about MY danger, which is dying of hunger—”

(So spoke the soothsayer. But when Zarathustra’s animals heard these words, they ran off in terror. They saw that everything they had brought home during the day would not be enough to fill the soothsayer alone.)

“And dying of thirst, too,” the soothsayer went on. “I hear water splashing here like words of wisdom, that is, abundantly and tirelessly. But I want WINE!

Not everyone is a born water-drinker like Zarathustra. Nor does water suit the weary and withered. WE deserve wine. It ALONE gives instant vigor and improvised health!”

On this occasion, as the soothsayer was longing for wine, the king on the left, the silent one, also found his voice for once.

“WE have seen to the wine,” he said, “I together with my brother, the king on the right. We have plenty of wine, a whole ass-load of it. So nothing is missing but bread.”

“Bread?” replied Zarathustra, laughing as he spoke. “Bread is exactly what hermits do not have. But man does not live by bread alone. He lives also by the meat of good lambs, and I have two of them.

THESE we shall slaughter quickly and cook spicily with sage. That is how I like them. And there is no shortage of roots and fruits, good enough even for the fussy and the dainty, nor of nuts and other riddles to crack.

So we shall have a good meal before long. But whoever wishes to eat with us must also lend a hand with the work, even the kings. For at Zarathustra’s, even a king may be a cook.”

This proposal pleased all of them, except that the voluntary beggar objected to the meat, the wine, and the spices.

“Just listen to this glutton Zarathustra!” he said jokingly. “Does anyone go into caves and up high mountains to hold such feasts?

Now I really understand what he once taught us: ‘Blessed be moderate poverty!’ And I understand why he wants to do away with beggars.”

“Be of good cheer,” replied Zarathustra, “as I am. Keep to your customs, you excellent one. Grind your grain, drink your water, praise your cooking, as long as it makes you glad!

I am a law only for my own; I am not a law for everyone. But whoever belongs to me must be strong of bone and light of foot,

—joyful in fighting and in feasting, no sulker, no idle daydreamer, as ready for the hardest task as for the feast, healthy and sound.

The best belongs to my own and to me. If it is not given to us, we take it: the best food, the purest sky, the strongest thoughts, the most beautiful women!”

So spoke Zarathustra. The king on the right answered: “How strange! Has anyone ever heard such sensible things from the mouth of a wise man?

And truly, the strangest thing in a wise man is when, on top of everything else, he is still sensible and not an ass.”

So spoke the king on the right, wondering. But the ass grudgingly said YE-A to his remark. This was the beginning of the long meal that the history books call “The Supper.” Throughout it, nothing was spoken of except THE HIGHER MAN.

LXXIII. THE HIGHER MAN.

When I first came to people, I committed the hermit’s folly, the great folly: I appeared in the marketplace.

And when I spoke to everyone, I spoke to no one. In the evening my companions were tightrope walkers 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 matter to me, and the mob’s noise, and the mob’s long ears!”

You higher men, learn THIS from me: in the marketplace nobody believes in higher men. If you want to speak there, very well! But the mob blinks and says: “We are all equal.”

“You higher men,” so the mob blinks, “there are no higher men. We are all equal; a man is a man; before God we are all equal!”

Before God! But now this God has died. And before the mob we will not be equal. You higher men, leave the marketplace!

Before God! But now this God has died! You higher men, this God was your greatest danger.

Only since he was laid in the grave have you risen again. Only now comes the great noon. Only now does the higher man become master!

Have you understood this saying, my brothers? You are frightened: are your hearts growing dizzy? Does the abyss gape open before you here? Does the hound of hell bark at you here?

Well then! Take heart, you higher men! Only now is the mountain of humanity’s future in labor. God has died: now WE want the Superman to live.

The most cautious people ask today: “How is man to be preserved?” But Zarathustra asks, as the first and only one to do so: “How is man to be SURPASSED?”

The Superman is what I have at heart. THAT is my first and only concern, and NOT man: not the neighbor, not the poorest, not the most wretched, not the best.

My brothers, what I can love in man is that he is a crossing-over and a going-under. And in you, too, there is much that makes me love and hope.

That you have despised, you higher men, gives me hope. For the great despisers are the great reverers.

That you have despaired deserves much honor. For you have not learned to submit, and you have not learned petty shrewdness.

Today the petty people have become master. They all preach submission and humility and shrewdness and diligence and consideration, and the long et cetera of petty virtues.

Whatever is effeminate, whatever comes from the servile kind, and above all the mob’s mishmash: THAT now wants to be master of all human destiny. Oh disgust! Disgust! Disgust!

THAT asks and asks and never tires: “How can man preserve himself best, longest, most pleasantly?” This is what makes them the masters of today.

Surpass these masters of today, my brothers, these petty people. THEY are the Superman’s greatest danger!

You higher men, surpass the petty virtues, the petty shrewdness, the grain-of-sand considerateness, the anthill rubbish, the pitiful comfort, the “happiness of the greatest number”!

Despair rather than submit. Truly, I love you because you do not know how to live today, you higher men! For that is how YOU live best!

Do you have courage, my brothers? Are you stout-hearted? I do NOT mean courage in front of witnesses. I mean the courage of hermits and eagles, which not even a God watches anymore.

Cold souls, mules, the blind, and the drunk I do not call stout-hearted. He has heart who knows fear but CONQUERS it; who sees the abyss, but with PRIDE.

He who sees the abyss, but with an eagle’s eyes; he who GRASPS the abyss with an eagle’s talons: he has courage.

“Man is evil”: all the wisest told me this as a consolation. Ah, if only it is still true today! For evil is man’s best strength.

“Man must become better and more evil”: that is what I teach. The most evil is necessary for the Superman’s best.

It may have been good for that preacher of the petty people to suffer and bear the burden of men’s sin. But I rejoice in great sin as my great CONSOLATION.

Such things, however, are not said for long ears. Not every word suits every mouth. These are fine, faraway things, and sheep’s hooves shall not grasp at them!

You higher men, do you think I am here to set right what you have done wrong?

Or that from now on I want to make softer beds for you sufferers? Or show you restless ones, who wander and climb astray, new and easier paths?

No! No! Three times no! More and more, and ever better ones of your kind shall perish, for you shall have it ever worse and harder. Only in this way,

—only in this way does man grow up to the height where lightning strikes and shatters him: high enough for the lightning!

My soul and my seeking go out toward the few, the long, the remote. What do your many small, short miseries matter to me!

You do not yet suffer enough for me! 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 have 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 gathered for a long time like a cloud, and it is growing stiller and darker. So does all wisdom that is one day to bring forth LIGHTNING.

To these people of today I will not be LIGHT, nor be called light. THEM I will blind. Lightning of my wisdom, put out their eyes!

Do not will anything beyond your strength. There is a nasty falseness in those who will beyond their strength.

This is especially true when they will great things! For these subtle counterfeiters and play-actors awaken distrust of great things,

—until at last they are false even toward themselves: squint-eyed, whitewashed sores, glossed over with strong words, with showy virtues and glittering false deeds.

Be careful here, you higher men! For nothing is more precious to me, or rarer, than honesty.

Does today not belong to the mob? But the mob does not know what is great and what is small, what is straight and what is honest. It is innocently crooked; it always lies.

Today, you higher men, keep a healthy distrust, you brave ones, you open-hearted ones! And keep your reasons secret! For today belongs to the mob.

What the mob once learned to believe without reasons, who could refute for them with reasons?

In the marketplace, people are convinced by gestures. Reasons only make the mob distrustful.

And when truth has once triumphed there, ask yourselves with healthy distrust: “What strong error fought on its side?”

Beware of the scholars too! They hate you because they are unproductive. They have cold, withered eyes, and before them every bird lies stripped of its feathers.

Such people boast that they do not lie. But being unable to lie is still far from loving truth. Be on your guard!

Being free of fever is still far from being knowledge! I do not believe in chilled spirits. He who cannot lie does not know what truth is.

If you want to climb 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 now ride briskly up to your goal? Well, my friend! But your lame foot is on horseback with you too!

When you reach your goal and climb down from your horse, precisely at 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 yourselves be talked into things or taken advantage of! Who, after all, is YOUR neighbor? Even if you act “for your neighbor,” you still do not create for him!

Unlearn this “for,” I beg you, you creators. Your very virtue wants you to have nothing to do with “for” and “on account of” and “because.” Stop your ears against these false little words.

“For one’s neighbor” is the virtue only of petty people. There they say “like for like” and “one hand washes the other.” They have neither the right nor the power for YOUR self-seeking!

In your self-seeking, you creators, lies the foresight and forethought of the pregnant! The fruit, which no eye has yet seen, is what shelters, saves, and nourishes your whole love.

Where your whole love is, with your child, there is also your whole virtue! Your work, your will is YOUR “neighbor.” Do not let false values impose on you!

You creators, you higher men! Whoever must give birth is sick. But whoever has given birth is unclean.

Ask women: one does not give birth because it gives pleasure. Pain makes hens and poets cackle.

You creators, there is much uncleanliness in you. That is because you have had to be mothers.

A new child: oh, how much new filth has come into the world with it! Go aside! Whoever has given birth should wash his soul!

Do not be virtuous beyond your strength! And demand nothing of yourselves that goes against probability!

Walk in the footsteps where your fathers’ virtue has already walked! How could you climb high if your fathers’ will did not climb with you?

But whoever wants to be the first of his line should take care not to become the last of it as well! And where your fathers’ vices are, you should not set yourselves up as saints!

Suppose a man’s fathers were fond of women, strong wine, and wild boar. What would it be if he demanded chastity of himself?

It would be folly! Truly, it seems to me a great deal for such a man if he is the husband of one, or two, or three women.

And if he founded monasteries and wrote over their gates, “The way to holiness,” I would still say: What good is it! It is a new folly!

He has founded a house of penance and refuge for himself: much good may it do him! But I do not believe in it.

In solitude, whatever a person brings into it grows, including the brute in his nature. That is why solitude is unwise for many.

Has there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints of the wilderness? AROUND THEM not only the devil ran loose, but the swine too.

Shy, ashamed, awkward, like a tiger whose leap has failed: that is how I have often seen you slink aside, you higher men. A THROW of the dice you had made had failed.

But what does it matter, you dice-players! You had not learned to play and mock as one must play and mock! Do we not always sit at a great table of mockery and play?

And if great things have failed for you, does that mean you yourselves have failed? And if you yourselves have failed, has man therefore failed? But if man has failed: well then! Never mind!

The higher its kind, the more rarely a thing succeeds. You higher men here, have you not all been failures?

Be of good cheer. What does it matter? How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves as you ought to laugh!

What wonder that you have failed and only half-succeeded, you half-shattered ones! Is it not man’s FUTURE that strives and struggles in you?

Man’s farthest, deepest, star-highest concerns, his immense powers: do they not all foam against one another in your vessel?

What wonder that many a vessel shatters! Learn to laugh at yourselves as you ought to 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 have turned out well!

Surround yourselves with small, good, perfect things, you higher men. Their golden ripeness heals the heart. What is perfect teaches us to hope.

What has been the greatest sin on earth so far? Was it not the word of the one who said: “Woe unto you that laugh now!”?

Did he himself find no reason to laugh on earth? Then he searched badly. Even a child finds reason for it.

He did not love enough; otherwise he would also have loved us, the laughing ones! But he hated and jeered at us, and he promised us wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Must one curse at once whenever one does not love? That seems to me bad taste. Yet that is what he did, this absolute one. He came from the mob.

And he himself simply did not love enough; otherwise he would have raged less because people did not love him. All great love does not SEEK love: it seeks more.

Get out of the way of all such absolute ones! They are a poor, sickly kind, a mob kind. They look at this life with ill will; they have an evil eye for this earth.

Get out of the way of all such absolute ones! They have heavy feet and sultry hearts, and they do not know how to dance. How could the earth be light for such as these!

All good things approach their goal by winding paths. Like cats, they arch their backs and purr inwardly at the happiness drawing near. All good things laugh.

A person’s step shows whether he is already walking on his own path. Just watch me walk! But whoever comes near his goal dances.

And truly, I have not become a statue. I do not yet stand there stiff, dull, and stony, like a pillar. I love to run fast.

And though there are swamps and thick miseries on earth, whoever has light feet runs even across the mud, and dances on it as if on swept ice.

Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And do not forget your legs! Lift up your legs as well, you good dancers, and better still, stand on your heads!

This crown of laughter, this crown of rose garlands: I have put this crown on myself. I myself have declared my laughter holy. I found no one else today strong enough to do it.

Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one, who beckons with his wings, ready for flight, beckoning to all the birds, ready and prepared, blissfully light in spirit:—

Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, not impatient, not absolute, one who loves leaps and sideways leaps: I myself have put on this crown!

Lift up your hearts, my brothers, high, higher! And do not forget your legs! Lift up your legs as well, you good dancers, and better still, stand on your heads!

There are also heavy animals in a state of happiness, and some are club-footed from birth. They strain themselves in a curious way, like an elephant trying to stand on its head.

But it is better to be foolish with happiness than foolish with misfortune, better to dance clumsily than to walk lamely. So learn my wisdom, I beg you, you higher men: even the worst thing has two good reverse sides,—

—even the worst thing has good legs for dancing. So learn, I beg you, you higher men, to stand on your proper legs!

So unlearn, I beg you, all the sorrowful sighing and all the sadness of the rabble! Oh, how sad the clowns of the rabble seem to me today! But this today belongs to the rabble.

Be like the wind 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.

That which gives wings to asses and milks lionesses: praise be to that good, unruly spirit that comes like a hurricane to everything of today and to all the rabble,—

—which is hostile to thistle-heads and puzzle-heads, and to all withered leaves and weeds. Praise be to this wild, good, free spirit of the storm, which dances on swamps and miseries as if on meadows!

It hates the consumptive rabble-dogs and the whole misbegotten, sullen brood. Praise be to this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing storm, which blows dust into the eyes of all the dark-sighted and the melancholy!

You higher men, the worst thing about you is that none of you has learned to dance as you ought to dance: to dance beyond yourselves! What does it matter that you have failed!

How many things are still possible! So learn to laugh beyond yourselves! Lift up your hearts, you good dancers, high! higher! And do not forget good laughter!

This crown of laughter, this crown of rose garlands: to you, my brothers, I throw this crown! I have declared laughter holy. You higher men, learn, I beg you, to laugh!

LXXIV. THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY.

As Zarathustra spoke these sayings, he was standing near the entrance of his cave. With the last words, however, he slipped away from his guests and fled for a little while into the open air.

“O pure scents around me,” he cried, “O blessed 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, do they perhaps not smell good? O pure scents 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!” As he spoke these words, the eagle and the serpent pressed close to him and looked up at him. In this pose all three were silent together, sniffing and sipping the good air with one another. For the air out here was better than among the higher men.

But hardly had Zarathustra left the cave when the old magician got up, looked slyly around, and said: “He is gone!

“And already, you higher men (let me tickle you with this complimentary, flattering name, as he himself does), already my evil spirit of deceit and magic is attacking me, my melancholy devil,

“—which is an enemy of this Zarathustra from the bottom of its heart. Forgive it for that! Now it wants to work its magic before you. This is just its hour, and I struggle in vain against this evil spirit.

“To all of you, whatever honorable names you like to give yourselves, whether you call yourselves ‘the free spirits’ or ‘the conscientious,’ or ‘the penitents of the spirit,’ or ‘the unfettered,’ or ‘the great longers,’

“—to all of you who, like me, suffer from the great loathing, for whom the old God has died while 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, too. I also know this fiend whom I love in spite of myself, this Zarathustra. He himself often seems to me like the beautiful mask of a saint,

“—like a strange new masquerade that my evil spirit, the melancholy devil, delights in. It often seems to me that I love Zarathustra for the sake of my evil spirit.

“But already it is attacking and compelling me, this spirit of melancholy, this devil of the evening twilight. And truly, you higher men, it has a longing—

“—open your eyes!—it longs to come naked. Whether as man or as woman, I do not yet know. But it is coming, it compels me, alas! Open your minds!

“The day is dying. Evening now comes to all things, even to the best things. Now hear and see, you higher men, what devil, man or woman, this spirit of evening melancholy is!”

Thus spoke the old magician. He looked slyly around, and then he seized his harp.

In evening’s clear air, When the dew’s comfort Pours down onto the earth, Unseen and unheard— For the comforting dew wears Soft shoes, like everything gently kind—: Do you remember then, do you remember, burning heart, How once you thirsted For heaven’s kindly tears and the dew’s soft dripping, Scorched and weary, how you thirsted, While on yellow grassy paths Wicked glances of the western sun Played around you through dark trees, Blinding glances of the glowing sun, delighting in the hurt they caused?

“The suitor of truth? You?”—so they mocked— “No! Only a poet! A cunning beast, preying and creeping, That must lie, That must lie knowingly and willingly: Lusting for prey, Masked in motley, Hidden from himself, shrouded, Himself his own prey— He, the suitor of truth? No! Only a fool! Only a poet! Speaking only in motley, Shouting confusedly from behind a fool’s mask, Clambering around on made-up word-bridges, On many-colored rainbows, Between false heavens And false earths, Roving around us, hovering around us,— Only a fool! Only a poet!

He, the suitor of truth? Not still, stiff, smooth and cold, Turned into an image, A godlike statue, Set up in front of temples, As a god’s own doorkeeper: No! hostile to all such statues of truthfulness, More at home in any desert than at temples, Full of a cat’s wantonness, Leaping through every window Quickly into every chance, Sniffing at every wild forest, Sniffing greedily, longingly,

So that you, in wild forests, Among the brightly spotted beasts of prey, Might roam, sinfully healthy and beautifully colored, Smacking your lips with longing, Blissfully mocking, blissfully hellish, blissfully bloodthirsty, Robbing, creeping, lying, roaming:—

Or like eagles that stare fixedly, Long, down into the abyss, Down into their abyss:— Oh, how they circle downward now, Down below, down within, Whirling into ever deeper depths!— Then, Suddenly, With straight aim, With quivering flight, Swooping on lambs, Headlong down, ravenous, Craving lambs, Fierce against all lamb-souls, Furiously fierce against all that look Sheepish, lamb-eyed, or curly-woolly, —Gray, with the kindliness of lambs and sheep!

Just so, Like eagles, like panthers, Are the poet’s desires, Are your own desires beneath a thousand masks, You fool! You poet! You who saw humankind As God as much as sheep—: To tear apart the God in humankind, As much as the sheep in humankind, And laughing while tearing— That, that is your own bliss! The bliss of a panther and an eagle! The bliss of a poet and a fool!—

In evening’s clear air, When the moon’s sickle, Green, between the purple glows, And jealous, creeps out: —Enemy of the day, With every step in secret The rosy hammocks of garlands Cutting down with its sickle, until they sink, Sink toward night, faded, sunk down:—

So I myself once sank From my madness for truth, From my burning longings for the day, Weary of the day, sick of the light, —Sank downward, toward evening, toward shadow: By one single truth Scorched and thirsty: —Do you still remember, do you remember, burning heart, How you thirsted then?— That I should be banished from all truth! Only a fool! Only a poet!

LXXV. SCIENCE.

Thus sang the magician, and everyone present walked like unwary birds into the net of his cunning, melancholy sensuality. Only the spiritually conscientious one was not caught. He immediately snatched the harp from the magician and called out: “Air! Let in good air! Let in Zarathustra! You are making this cave stuffy and poisonous, you wicked old magician!

“You false one, you subtle one, you seduce people toward unknown desires and wildernesses. And alas, that someone like you should talk and make a fuss about the truth!

“Alas for all free spirits who are not on guard against such magicians! Their freedom is finished. You teach and tempt them back into prisons,—

“—you old melancholy devil, a lure sounds out of your lament. You resemble those who praise chastity and thereby secretly invite people to lust!”

Thus spoke the conscientious one. The old magician, however, looked around, enjoying his triumph, and for that reason he put up with the annoyance the conscientious one caused him. “Be quiet!” he said in a modest voice. “Good songs want to echo well. After good songs, one should stay silent for a long time.

“That is what all those present are doing, the higher men. But you have perhaps understood little of my song? There is little of the magic spirit in you.”

“You praise me,” replied the conscientious one, “by separating me from yourself. Very well! But you others, what do I see? You are all still sitting there with lustful eyes—:

“You free spirits, where has your freedom gone! You almost seem to me like people who have spent a long time watching wicked girls dance naked: your very souls are dancing!

“In you, you higher men, there must be more of what the magician calls his evil spirit of magic and deceit. We must indeed be different.

“And truly, we talked and thought together long enough before Zarathustra came home to his cave for me to know that we are different.

“We seek different things even up here, you and I. For I seek more security, and that is why I came to Zarathustra. For he is still the firmest tower and will—

“—today, when everything is tottering and the whole earth is quaking. But when I see the eyes you are making, it almost seems to me that you seek more insecurity,

“—more horror, more danger, more earthquake. You long (so it almost seems to me; forgive my presumption, you higher men)—

“—you long for the worst and most dangerous life, the one that frightens me most: the life of wild beasts, of forests, caves, steep mountains, and labyrinthine gorges.

“And it is not those who lead you out of danger who please you best, but those who lead you away from all paths: the misleaders. But even if such a longing in you is real, it still seems to me impossible.

“For fear is humanity’s original and fundamental feeling. Everything can be explained through fear, original sin and original virtue alike. Through fear my virtue grew too, namely science.

“For the fear of wild animals has been cultivated in human beings the longest, including the animal that a person hides and fears within himself. Zarathustra calls it ‘the beast within.’

“This long, ancient fear, finally grown subtle, spiritual, and intellectual: today, I think, it is called science.”

Thus spoke the conscientious one. But Zarathustra had just come back into his cave and had heard and guessed the meaning of this last speech. He threw a handful of roses at the conscientious one and laughed at his “truths.” “What!” he exclaimed. “What did I just hear? Truly, it seems to me that you are a fool, or else I am one myself. And I will quietly and quickly turn your ‘truth’ upside down.

“For fear is the exception with us. But courage and adventure and delight in the uncertain, in the untried: courage seems to me the whole prehistory of humankind.

“Man envied the wildest and most courageous animals and robbed them of all their virtues. Only in this way did he become human.

“This courage, finally grown subtle, spiritual, and intellectual, this human courage with eagle’s wings and serpent’s wisdom: this, it seems to me, is today called—”

“Zarathustra!” cried everyone gathered there, as if with one voice, and at the same moment they burst into loud laughter. But something like a heavy cloud rose from them. Even the magician laughed, and said wisely: “Well! It is gone, my evil spirit!

“And did I not warn you about it myself when I said it was a deceiver, a lying and deceiving spirit?

“Especially when it shows itself naked. But what can I do about its tricks! Did I create it and the world?

“Well! Let us be good again, and cheerful! And although Zarathustra is looking at me with an evil eye (just look at him! he dislikes me)—:

“—before night comes he will learn again to love and praise me. He cannot live long without committing such follies.

“He loves his enemies. He knows this art better than anyone I have ever seen. But he takes his revenge for it on his friends!”

Thus spoke the old magician, and the higher men applauded him. Zarathustra then went around and shook hands with his friends, mischievously and lovingly, like someone who has to make amends and apologize to everyone for something. But when he had come in this way to the door of his cave, he again longed for the good air outside and for his animals, and he wanted to slip out.

LXXVI. AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT.

“Don’t go away!” said the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra’s shadow. “Stay with us, or else the old gloomy affliction might fall on us again.

That old magician has just given us the worst he has, for our own good. And look! The good, pious pope there has tears in his eyes and has set sail once more on the sea of melancholy.

Those kings may still put on a good face in front of us, for that is what THEY have learned best of us all at present! But if no one were watching them, I bet the bad game would start up again with them too,

—the bad game of drifting clouds, of damp melancholy, of curtained skies, of stolen suns, of howling autumn winds,

—the bad game of our howling and crying for help! Stay with us, O Zarathustra! Here there is much hidden misery that wants to speak, much evening, much cloud, much damp air!

You have fed us strong food for men and powerful sayings. Do not let the weak, womanish spirits attack us again over dessert!

You alone make the air around you strong and clear! Have I ever found air anywhere on earth as good as here with you in your cave?

I have seen many lands, and my nose has learned to test and judge many kinds of air. But with you my nostrils taste their greatest delight!

Unless it be… unless it be… forgive an old memory! Forgive me an old after-dinner song that I once composed among daughters of the desert.

For among them the air was just as good, clear, Oriental air. There I was furthest from cloudy, damp, melancholy Old Europe!

Back then I loved such Oriental maidens and other blue kingdoms of heaven, over which hang no clouds and no thoughts.

You would not believe how charmingly they sat there when they were not dancing: deep, but without thoughts, like little secrets, like riddles tied up in ribbons, like nuts served at dessert.

Colorful and foreign, certainly! But without clouds: riddles that can be guessed. To please such maidens I composed an after-dinner psalm back then.”

Thus spoke the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra’s shadow. Before anyone could answer him, he had seized the old magician’s harp, crossed his legs, and looked around him calmly and wisely.

With his nostrils, however, he breathed in the air slowly and questioningly, like someone tasting new, foreign air in new countries. Then he began to sing with a kind of roar.

2. THE DESERTS GROW: WOE TO HIM WHO HIDES THEM!

—Ha! Solemnly! Truly solemnly! A worthy beginning! Solemn in the African manner! Worthy of a lion, Or perhaps of a virtuous howler monkey— —But that means nothing to you, You friendly, dearly loved young women, At whose feet I, A European under palm trees, Am granted a seat For the first time. Selah.

Wonderful, truly! Here I sit now, Near the desert, and yet I am Still so far from the desert, Not yet deserted in any way: That is, I am swallowed down By this smallest of oases—: —It just opened up, yawning, Its loveliest mouth agape, The sweetest-smelling of all little mouths: Then I fell right in, Right down, right through—in among you, You friendly, dearly loved young women! Selah.

Hail, hail to that whale, that fish, If it made things so pleasant For its guest!—(You surely know My learned allusion?) Hail to its belly, If it ever had So lovely an oasis-belly As this one: though I doubt it, —For I come from Old Europe, Which doubts more eagerly than any Elderly married woman. May the Lord improve it! Amen!

Here I sit now, In this smallest of oases, Like a date indeed, Brown, sweet through and through, oozing gold, Longing for a girl’s round mouth, But even more for girlish, Ice-cold, snow-white, biting Front teeth: for these, surely, The hearts of all hot dates are pining. Selah.

Like the southern fruits just named, Similar, all too similar, I lie here, sniffed around And played around By little flying insects, And also by still smaller, More foolish, more sinful Wishes and fancies— Surrounded by you, You silent, foreboding Maiden-kittens, Dudu and Suleika, —ROUNDSPHINXED, if I may cram much feeling into one word: (Forgive me, O God, All such sins of speech!)

—I sit here sniffing the best of air, Truly the air of paradise, Bright, light air, flecked with gold, As good an air as ever Fell down from the moon— Did it come by chance, Or did it happen out of arrogance? As the ancient poets tell it. But I, a doubter, now call it Into question: for I come, after all, From Europe, Which doubts more eagerly than any Elderly married woman. May the Lord improve it! Amen.

Drinking this finest air, With nostrils swelled out like goblets, Without future, without memories, So I sit here, you Friendly, dearly loved young women, And watch the palm tree there, How, like a dancing girl, It bows and bends and sways its hips, —One does it too, if one watches it long enough!— Like a dancing girl who, it seems to me, Has stood too long, dangerously long, Always, always on just a SINGLE leg?

—Has she then forgotten, it seems to me, The OTHER leg? For I at least searched in vain For the missing Twin jewel —Namely, the other leg— In the sacred neighborhood Of her dearest, most delicate, Flapping, fluttering, flickering skirt. Yes, if you would, you lovely, friendly ones, Fully believe me: She has, alas, LOST it!

Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! It is gone! Gone forever! The other leg! Oh, what a pity for that loveliest other leg! Where might it be lingering now, forsaken and weeping? That loneliest leg? Afraid, perhaps, of some Furious, yellow, blond and curly Lion-monster? Or perhaps even Gnawed away, badly nibbled— How wretched, woeful, woeful! badly nibbled! Selah.

Oh, do not weep, Gentle spirits! Do not weep, you Date-fruit spirits! Milk-bosoms! You licorice-hearted Little purses! Weep no more, Pale Dudu! Be a man, Suleika! Courage! Courage! —Or perhaps something strengthening, Something heart-strengthening, Would be most fitting here? Some inspiring text? Some solemn exhortation?—

Ha! Rise up, honor! Moral honor! European honor! Blow again, keep going, Bellows of virtue! Ha! Roar once more, Your moral roar! Roar like a virtuous lion Before the daughters of the desert! —For virtue’s howling, You dearest maidens, Is more than all European fervor, European ravenous hunger! And here I stand now, As a European, I can do no other, So help me God! Amen!

THE DESERTS GROW: WOE TO HIM WHO HIDES THEM!

LXXVII. THE AWAKENING.

After the song of the wanderer and shadow, the cave suddenly filled with noise and laughter. All the assembled guests were talking at once, and even the ass, encouraged by this, no longer kept quiet.

Zarathustra felt a little aversion and scorn for his visitors, though he was glad of their happiness, for it seemed to him a sign of recovery. So he slipped out into the open air and spoke to his animals.

“Where has their distress gone now?” he said, and he already felt relieved of his petty disgust. “With me, it seems, they have unlearned their cries of distress!

—though not yet, alas, their crying.” And Zarathustra covered his ears, for just then the YE-A of the ass mixed strangely with the noisy rejoicing of those higher men.

“They are merry,” he began again, “and who knows? Perhaps at their host’s expense. And if they have learned to laugh from me, it is still not MY laughter they have learned.

But what does that matter! They are old people. They recover in their own way and laugh in their own way. My ears have already put up with worse without becoming sour.

This day is a victory. He is already giving way, he is fleeing: THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY, my old archenemy! How well this day is about to end, which began so badly and gloomily!

And it is ABOUT TO end. Evening is already coming. It rides here over the sea, the good rider! How it bobs along, the blessed one, the one returning home, in its purple saddles!

The sky gazes brightly at it, and the world lies deep. Oh, all you strange ones who have come to me, it is already worthwhile to have lived with me!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra. And again the cries and laughter of the higher men came out of the cave. Then he began again:

“They are biting, my bait is working. Their enemy, the spirit of gravity, is leaving them too. Now they are learning to laugh at themselves: am I hearing right?

My manly food is taking effect, my strong and savory sayings. And truly, I did not feed them vegetables that cause wind! I fed them warrior’s food, conqueror’s food. I awakened new desires.

New hopes are in their arms and legs, and their hearts are expanding. They are finding new words, and soon their spirits will breathe mischief.

Such food may certainly not be suitable for children, nor even for longing girls, old and young. Their insides must be persuaded in other ways. I am not their physician and teacher.

The DISGUST is leaving these higher men. Good! That is my victory. In my domain they grow confident, all foolish shame flees, and they unburden themselves.

They unburden their hearts. Good times return to them; they celebrate and chew things over. They become THANKFUL.

THAT I take as the best sign: they are becoming thankful. It will not be long before they devise festivals and set up memorials to their old joys.

They are CONVALESCENTS!” Thus spoke Zarathustra joyfully to his heart, and he gazed outward. His animals, however, pressed close to him and honored his happiness and his silence.

Suddenly, however, Zarathustra’s ear was startled. The cave, which until then had been full of noise and laughter, all at once became as still as death. And his nose smelled a sweet-scented smoke and incense, as if from burning pine cones.

“What is happening? What are they doing?” he asked himself, and he crept up to the entrance so that he could watch his guests without being seen. But wonder upon wonder! What was he then forced to see with his own eyes!

“They have all become PIOUS again, they are PRAYING, they are mad!” he said, and he was astonished beyond measure.

And indeed, all these higher men were kneeling like children and credulous old women, worshipping the ass: the two kings, the retired pope, the evil magician, the voluntary beggar, the wanderer and shadow, the old soothsayer, the spiritually conscientious one, and the ugliest man.

Just then the ugliest man began to gurgle and snort, as if something unspeakable in him were trying to find expression. When he had actually found words, behold! It was a pious, strange litany in praise of the adored and incensed ass. And the litany went like this:

Amen! And glory and honor and wisdom and thanks and praise and strength be to our God, forever and ever!

—But here the ass brayed YE-A.

He carries our burdens, he has taken on the form of a servant, he is patient of heart and never says No; and whoever loves his God chastises him.

—But here the ass brayed YE-A.

He does not speak, except that he always says Yes to the world he created: that is how he praises his world. It is his cunning that keeps him from speaking, and so he is rarely found to be wrong.

—But here the ass brayed YE-A.

He goes through the world unlovely. Gray is the favorite color in which he wraps his virtue. If he has any spirit, he hides it; but everyone believes in his long ears.

—But here the ass brayed YE-A.

What hidden wisdom it is to wear long ears and only ever say Yes and never No! Has he not created the world in his own image, namely, as stupid as possible?

—But here the ass brayed YE-A.

You walk straight paths and crooked ones; it matters little to you what seems straight or crooked to us humans. Your domain is beyond good and evil. It is your innocence not to know what innocence is.

—But here the ass brayed YE-A.

Look how you turn no one away, neither beggars nor kings. You let the little children come to you, and when the bad boys try to lure you, you simply say YE-A.

—But here the ass brayed YE-A.

You love she-asses and fresh figs; you are no despiser of food. A thistle tickles your heart when you happen to be hungry. There is the wisdom of a god in that.

—But here the ass brayed YE-A.

LXXVIII. THE ASS-FESTIVAL.

At this point in the litany, however, Zarathustra could no longer control himself. He himself cried out YE-A, even louder than the ass, and leaped into the middle of his crazed guests.

“Whatever are you doing, you grown-up children?” he exclaimed, pulling the praying ones up from the ground. “Alas, if anyone other than Zarathustra had seen you:

Everyone would think you the worst blasphemers, or the most foolish of old women, with your new faith!

And you yourself, old pope, how does it square with who you are to worship an ass like this, as if it were God?”

“O Zarathustra,” answered the pope, “forgive me, but in divine matters I am even more enlightened than you. And it is right that it should be so.

Better to worship God like this, in this form, than in no form at all! Think about this saying, my exalted friend: you will readily guess that there is wisdom in such a saying.

Whoever said ‘God is a spirit’ took the greatest stride and slide toward unbelief that has ever been made on earth. A saying like that is not easily undone on earth again!

My old heart leaps and bounds because there is still something on earth to worship. Forgive this, Zarathustra, in an old and pious pontiff’s heart!”

“And you,” said Zarathustra to the wanderer and shadow, “you call yourself a free spirit, and think you are one? And here you practice this kind of idol-worship and priestly devotion?

Truly, you are behaving worse here than you did with your wicked brown girls, you wicked new believer!”

“It is bad enough,” answered the wanderer and shadow. “You are right. But how can I help it? The old God lives again, Zarathustra, whatever you may say.

The ugliest man is to blame for all of it. He has woken God up again. And if he says that he once killed him, well, with gods, death is always just a prejudice.”

“And you,” said Zarathustra, “you wicked old magician, what have you done? In this free age, who should believe in you any longer, when you believe in such divine donkeyism?

That was a stupid thing you did. How could a shrewd man like you do something so stupid?”

“Zarathustra,” answered the shrewd magician, “you are right. It was a stupid thing. It also disgusted me.”

“And even you,” said Zarathustra to the spiritually conscientious one, “think it over, and put your finger to your nose! Does nothing here go against your conscience? Is your mind not too clean for this praying and the fumes of these worshippers?”

“There is something in it,” said the spiritually conscientious one, and put his finger to his nose. “There is something in this spectacle that even does my conscience good.

Perhaps I dare not believe in God. But one thing is certain: God seems to me most worthy of belief in this form.

According to the most pious witnesses, God is eternal. Whoever has so much time takes his time. As slow and as stupid as possible: and in that way such a being can still go very far.

And whoever has too much intellect might well fall in love with stupidity and folly. Think of yourself, Zarathustra!

You yourself, truly! Even you could become an ass through an excess of wisdom.

Does the true sage not gladly walk the most crooked paths? The evidence teaches it, Zarathustra: your own evidence!”

“And you, finally,” said Zarathustra, turning toward the ugliest man, who still lay on the ground, stretching his arm up to the ass (for he was giving it wine to drink). “Tell me, you unspeakable one, what have you been doing?

You seem transformed to me. Your eyes glow, and the cloak of the sublime covers your ugliness. What did you do?

Is it true, then, what they say, that you have woken him up again? And why? Was he not killed and done away with for good reasons?

You yourself seem awakened to me. What did you do? Why did you turn around? Why did you get converted? Speak, you unspeakable one!”

“Zarathustra,” answered the ugliest man, “you are a rogue!

Whether he still lives, or lives again, or is thoroughly dead, which of us two knows that best? I am asking you.

But one thing I do know, and I learned it from you once, Zarathustra: whoever wants to kill most thoroughly laughs.

‘Not by anger but by laughter does one kill.’ So you once said, Zarathustra, you hidden one, you destroyer without anger, you dangerous saint. You are a rogue!”

Then Zarathustra, astonished at such purely roguish answers, sprang back to the door of his cave. Turning toward all his guests, he cried out in a strong voice:

“You jokers, all of you, you clowns! Why do you pretend and disguise yourselves in front of me?

How all your hearts quivered with delight and mischief because at last you had become like little children again, that is, pious!

And because at last you did again what children do: you prayed, folded your hands, and said ‘dear God’!

But now, I beg you, leave this nursery, my own cave, where all today’s childishness has been going on. Out here, cool down your hot childish high spirits and the commotion in your hearts!

Certainly: unless you become as little children, you shall not enter into that kingdom of heaven.” (And Zarathustra pointed upward with his hands.)

“But we have no wish at all to enter the kingdom of heaven. We have become men, so we want the kingdom of earth.”

And once more Zarathustra began to speak. “My new friends,” he said, “you strange ones, you higher men, how well you please me now,

now that you have become joyful again! Truly, you have all blossomed. It seems to me that flowers such as you need new festivals.

You need a little brave nonsense, some divine service and ass-festival, some old, joyful Zarathustra-fool, some blustering wind to blow your souls clear.

Do not forget this night and this ass-festival, you higher men! That is something you invented while you were with me, and I take it as a good sign. Only those who are recovering invent such things.

And if you celebrate it again, this ass-festival, do it out of love for yourselves, and do it also out of love for me! And in remembrance of me!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

LXXIX. THE DRUNKEN SONG.

Meanwhile, one after another, they had gone out into the open air and the cool, thoughtful night. Zarathustra himself led the ugliest man by the hand, to show him his night-world, the great round moon, and the silvery waterfalls near his cave.

At last they all stood still beside one another. They were all old people, but their hearts were comforted and brave, and they were amazed at themselves that things were so good for them on earth. Meanwhile the mystery of the night came nearer and nearer to their hearts.

And again Zarathustra thought to himself: “Oh, how well these higher men please me now!” But he did not say it aloud, for he respected their happiness and their silence.

Then came the most astonishing thing in that long and astonishing day. The ugliest man began, once more and for the last time, to gurgle and snort. When at last he found words, a question sprang out of his mouth, round and plain: a good, deep, clear question that moved the hearts of all who heard it.

“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 even that I bear witness to this much is not enough for me. Living on earth is worthwhile. 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. It was not far from midnight. And what do you think happened then?

As soon as the higher men heard his question, they suddenly became aware of their own transformation and recovery, and of the one who had caused it. They rushed up to Zarathustra, thanking him, honoring him, caressing him, and kissing his hands, each in his own particular way, so that some laughed and some wept.

The old soothsayer danced with delight. Some storytellers suppose that he was full of sweet wine at the time. But he was certainly still fuller of sweet life, and he had given up all weariness.

There are even those who tell that the ass danced then, for the ugliest man had not given it wine to drink for nothing. That may be so, or it may be otherwise.

And if the ass truly did not dance that evening, greater and rarer wonders happened then than the dancing of an ass would have been. In short, as Zarathustra’s proverb says: “What does it matter!”

While this was happening with the ugliest man, Zarathustra stood there like someone drunk. His gaze grew dim, his tongue faltered, and his feet staggered. And who could guess what thoughts passed through Zarathustra’s soul then?

Apparently his spirit drew back and fled ahead, and was in far distances, “wandering on high mountain ridges,” 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. He pushed away with his hands the crowd of those honoring him and caring for him, but he did not speak.

Suddenly he turned his head quickly, for he seemed to hear something. Then he laid his finger on his lips and said: “Come!”

At once everything around grew still and mysterious, and from the depths there slowly rose the sound of a clock-bell. Zarathustra listened to it, as did the higher men. Then he laid his finger on his lips a second time and said again, “Come! Come! It is getting near midnight!” And his voice had changed. But still he had not moved from the spot.

Then it became stiller still and more mysterious, and everything listened: even the ass, and Zarathustra’s noble animals, the eagle and the serpent, and likewise Zarathustra’s cave, and the great cool moon, and the night itself. Then Zarathustra laid his hand on his mouth for the 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 near midnight. So I will say something into your ears, as that old clock-bell says it into mine,

as secretly, as terribly, and as warmly as that midnight clock-bell speaks it to me, the bell that has lived through more than any single human being,

the bell that has already counted the aching heartbeats of your fathers. Ah! Ah! How it sighs! How it laughs in its dream, the old, deep, deep midnight!

Hush! Hush! Many things are heard now that may not be heard by day. But now, in the cool air, when even all the commotion of your hearts has grown still,

now it speaks, now it is heard, now it creeps into over-wakeful souls of the night. Ah! Ah! How the midnight sighs! How it laughs in its dream!

Do you not hear how secretly, terribly, and warmly it speaks to you, the old, deep, deep midnight?

O MAN, TAKE HEED!

Woe is me! Where has time gone? Have I not sunk into deep wells? The world is asleep.

Ah! Ah! The dog howls, the moon shines. I would rather die, rather die, than tell you what my midnight heart is thinking now.

I have already died. It is all over. Spider, why are you spinning around me? Do you want blood? Ah! Ah! The dew is falling, the hour is coming,

the hour in which I shiver and freeze, the hour that asks and asks and asks: “Who has courage enough for it?

Who is to be master of the world? Who will say: This is how you shall flow, you great and small streams!”

The hour is approaching. O man, you higher man, take heed! This speech is for fine ears, for your ears. WHAT DOES DEEP MIDNIGHT’S VOICE SAY?

It carries me away, my soul is dancing. Day’s work! Day’s work! Who is to be master of the world?

The moon is cool, the wind is still. Ah! Ah! Have you flown high enough yet? You have danced, but a leg is still not a wing.

You good dancers, now all delight is over. The wine has turned to dregs, every cup has become brittle, the graves are muttering.

You have not flown high enough. Now the graves mutter: “Free the dead! Why is the night so long? Does the moon not make us drunk?”

You higher men, free the graves, wake the corpses! Ah, why does the worm still burrow? The hour is approaching, the hour is approaching.

The clock-bell booms, the heart still throbs, the woodworm still burrows, the heart-worm. Ah! Ah! THE WORLD IS DEEP!

Sweet lyre! Sweet lyre! I love your sound, your drunken, croaking, frog-like sound! From how long ago, from how far away your sound has come to me, from the distance, from the ponds of love!

You old clock-bell, you sweet lyre! Every pain has torn your heart, father-pain, fathers’ pain, forefathers’ pain. Your speech has grown ripe,

ripe like golden autumn and the afternoon, like my hermit’s heart. Now you say: the world itself has grown ripe, the grape is turning brown,

and now it wants to die, to die of happiness. You higher men, do you not feel it? A scent is rising mysteriously,

a perfume and scent of eternity, a rosy-blissful, brown, golden-wine scent of old happiness,

of drunken midnight-death happiness, which sings: the world is deep, AND DEEPER THAN THE DAY COULD READ!

Leave me alone! Leave me alone! 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 alone, you dull, doltish, stupid day! Is the midnight not brighter?

The purest are to be masters of the world: the least known, the strongest, the midnight souls, who are brighter and deeper than any day.

O day, are you groping for me? Are you feeling for my happiness? Do you think me rich, solitary, a treasure pit, a chamber of gold?

O world, do you want me? Am I worldly to you? Am I spiritual to you? Am I divine to you? But day and world, you are too coarse.

Have cleverer hands, reach for deeper happiness, for deeper unhappiness, reach for some God. Do not reach for me.

My unhappiness and my happiness are 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-frog that no one understands, but that must speak before the deaf, you higher men! For you do not understand me!

Gone! Gone! O youth! O noon! O afternoon! Now evening and night and midnight have come. The dog howls, the wind:

—Isn’t the wind a dog? It whines, it barks, it howls. Ah! Ah! How she sighs! How she laughs, how she wheezes and pants, the midnight!

How soberly she speaks just now, this drunken poetess! Has she perhaps drunk past her drunkenness? Has she become overawake? Is she chewing things over?

—It is her woe that she chews over in a dream, the old, deep midnight, and still more her joy. For joy, although woe is deep, JOY IS DEEPER STILL THAN GRIEF CAN BE.

You grapevine! Why do you praise me? Didn’t I cut you? I am cruel, and you bleed—: what does your praise of my drunken cruelty mean?

“Whatever has become perfect, everything ripe, wants to die!” So you say. Blessed, blessed be the vintner’s knife! But everything unripe wants to live: alas!

Woe says: “Away! Go! Away with you, woe!” But everything that suffers wants to live, so that it may become ripe and lively and longing,

—Longing for what is further, higher, brighter. “I want heirs,” says everything that suffers. “I want children. I do not want myself.”

Joy, however, does not want heirs, and it does not want children. Joy wants itself. It wants eternity, it wants recurrence, it wants everything to stay eternally the same as itself.

Woe says: “Break, bleed, heart! Wander, leg! Wing, fly! Onward! Upward! you pain!” Well then! Take heart, O my old heart: WOE SAYS: “AWAY! GO!”

You higher men, what do you think? Am I a soothsayer? Or a dreamer? Or a drunkard? Or an interpreter of dreams? Or a midnight bell?

Or a drop of dew? Or a mist and fragrance of eternity? Don’t you hear it? Don’t you smell it? Just now my world has become 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 that a sage is also a fool.

Did you ever say Yes to a single joy? O my friends, then you also said Yes to ALL woe. All things are chained together, entwined, in love with one another.

—If you ever wanted one moment to come a second time, if you ever said, “You please me, happiness! Instant! Moment!”, then you wanted EVERYTHING to come back!

—Everything anew, everything eternal, everything chained together, entwined, in love. Oh, then you LOVED the world.

—You eternal ones, you love it eternally and for all time. And to woe, too, you say: Away! Go! But come back! FOR ALL JOYS WANT ETERNITY!

All joy wants the eternity of all things. It wants honey, it wants dregs, it wants drunken midnight, it wants graves, it wants the consolation of tears shed at graves, it wants the gilded glow of evening.

—What does joy not want! It is thirstier, warmer, hungrier, more terrible, more mysterious than all woe. It wants itself, it bites into itself, and the will of the ring writhes within it.

—It wants love, it wants hate. It is overrich, it gives, it throws away, it begs someone to take from it, it thanks the one who takes, it would gladly be hated.

—So rich is joy that it thirsts for woe, for hell, for hate, for shame, for the lame, for the WORLD, for this world. Oh, you know it well!

You higher men, it longs for you, this joy, this irrepressible, blessed joy. It longs for your woe, you failures! All eternal joy longs for failures.

For all joys want themselves, and therefore they also want grief! O happiness, O pain! Oh break, my heart! You higher men, learn this: joys want eternity.

—Joys want the eternity of ALL things. They WANT DEEP, PROFOUND ETERNITY!

Have you learned my song now? Have you guessed what it means to say? Well then! Take heart! You higher men, sing my roundelay now!

Now sing the song yourselves, the song whose name is “Once more” and whose meaning is “For all eternity!” Sing, you higher men, Zarathustra’s roundelay!

O man! Take heed!
What does deep midnight’s voice say?
”I slept my sleep—
“From deepest dream I’ve woken, and I plead:—
“The world is deep,
“And deeper than the day could read.
”Deep is its woe—
“Joy—deeper still than grief can be:
“Woe says: Away! Go!
”But all joys want eternity—
“—Want deep, profound eternity!”

LXXX. THE SIGN.

In the morning after this night, Zarathustra leapt up from his bed and girded his loins. He came out of his cave glowing and strong, like a morning sun rising out of dark mountains.

“You great star,” he said, as he had said once before, “you deep eye of happiness, what would all your happiness be if you did not have those for whom you shine!

And if they stayed in their rooms while you are already awake, coming and giving and handing out your light, how your proud modesty would resent it!

Well! They are still asleep, these higher men, while I am awake. They are not my true companions! It is not for them that I wait here in my mountains.

I want to be at my work, at my day. But they do not understand the signs of my morning. My step is not the call that wakes them.

They are still asleep in my cave. Their dreams are still drinking from my drunken songs. The ear that listens for me, the obedient ear, is still lacking in their limbs.”

—Zarathustra had spoken this to his heart as the sun rose. Then he looked upward inquiringly, for he heard the sharp call of his eagle above him. “Well!” he called up. “This is how it pleases me, and how it should be. My animals are awake, because I am awake.

My eagle is awake, and like me it honors the sun. With eagle’s talons it grasps at the new light. You are my true animals. I love you.

But I still lack my true men!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra. Then, all of a sudden, he became aware that something was flocking and fluttering around him, as if countless birds surrounded him. The whirring of so many wings and the crowding around his head were so great that he shut his eyes.

And truly, something like a cloud came down upon him, like a cloud of arrows pouring down upon a new enemy. But look: here it was a cloud of love, showered upon a new friend.

“What is happening to me?” Zarathustra thought in his astonished heart, and he slowly sat down on the big stone that lay close to the mouth of his cave. He groped about with his hands, around him, above him, and below him, pushing away the tender birds.

Then something still stranger happened to him. Without realizing it, he reached into a mass of thick, warm, shaggy hair. At the same moment a roar sounded in front of him, a long, soft lion’s roar.

“THE SIGN IS COMING,” said Zarathustra, and a change came over his heart. And indeed, when his sight cleared, a yellow, powerful animal lay at his feet, resting its head on his knee. Out of love it would not leave him, and it behaved like a dog that has found its old master again.

The doves, however, were no less eager in their love than the lion. Whenever a dove brushed past its nose, the lion shook its head, wondered, and laughed.

While all this was going on, Zarathustra said only one thing: “MY CHILDREN ARE NEAR, MY CHILDREN.” Then he fell completely silent. But his heart was released, and tears dropped from his eyes and fell upon his hands.

He paid no more attention to anything, but sat there motionless, no longer pushing the animals away. The doves flew back and forth, perched on his shoulder, stroked his white hair, and never tired of their tenderness and joy. The strong lion kept licking the tears that fell on Zarathustra’s hands, roaring and growling shyly. This is what these animals did.

All this went on for a long time, or a short time. Strictly speaking, there is NO time on earth for such things. Meanwhile the higher men had woken up in Zarathustra’s cave. When they awoke, they found that he was no longer with them, so they lined up in a procession to go out, meet him, and give him their morning greeting.

But when they reached the door of the cave, the sound of their footsteps carried ahead of them, and the lion started violently. All at once it turned away from Zarathustra and, roaring wildly, sprang toward the cave. When the higher men heard the lion roar, they all cried out as with one voice, fled back inside, and vanished in an instant.

Zarathustra himself, stunned and bewildered, rose from his seat. He looked around, stood there astonished, questioned his heart, collected his thoughts, and found himself alone. “What did I hear?” he said at last, slowly. “What just happened to me?”

But soon his memory returned, and he took in at a glance everything that had happened between yesterday and today. “Here indeed is the stone,” he said, stroking his beard. “On it I sat yesterday morning. Here the soothsayer came to me, and here I first heard the cry I heard just now, the great cry of distress.

O you higher men, it was your distress that the old soothsayer foretold to me yesterday morning.

It was toward your distress that he wanted to lure and tempt me. ‘O Zarathustra,’ he said to me, ‘I have come to tempt you into your last sin.’

Into my last sin?” cried Zarathustra, and laughed angrily at his own words. “What has been saved up for me as my last sin?”

And once more Zarathustra became absorbed in himself. He sat down again on the big stone and reflected. Suddenly he sprang up.

“FELLOW-SUFFERING! FELLOW-SUFFERING WITH THE HIGHER MEN!” he cried out, and his face hardened like brass. “Well! That has had its time!

My suffering and my fellow-suffering, what do they matter! Am I striving for happiness? I am striving for my work!

Well! 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 NOW, RISE, YOU GREAT NOON!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun rising out of dark mountains.

End of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Choose another edition.