The Project Gutenberg eBook of Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
Author: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Translator: Thomas Common
Release date: December 1, 1999 [eBook #1998]
Most recently updated: April 10, 2023
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1998
Credits: Sue Asscher and David Widger
Revised by Richard Tonsing.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA: A BOOK FOR ALL AND NONE ***
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
A BOOK FOR ALL AND NONE
By Friedrich Nietzsche
Translated By Thomas Common
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION BY MRS FORSTER-NIETZSCHE.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.
FIRST PART.
Zarathustra’s Prologue.
Zarathustra’s Discourses.
I. The Three Metamorphoses.
II. The Academic Chairs of Virtue.
III. Backworldsmen.
IV. The Despisers of the Body.
V. Joys and Passions.
VI. The Pale Criminal.
VII. Reading and Writing.
VIII. The Tree on the Hill.
IX. The Preachers of Death.
X. War and Warriors.
XI. The New Idol.
XII. The Flies in the Market-place.
XIII. Chastity.
XIV. The Friend.
XV. The Thousand and One Goals.
XVI. Neighbour-Love.
XVII. The Way of the Creating One.
XVIII. Old and Young Women.
XIX. The Bite of the Adder.
XX. Child and Marriage.
XXI. Voluntary Death.
XXII. The Bestowing Virtue.
SECOND PART.
XXIII. The Child with the Mirror.
XXIV. In the Happy Isles.
XXV. The Pitiful.
XXVI. The Priests.
XXVII. The Virtuous.
XXVIII. The Rabble.
XXIX. The Tarantulas.
XXX. The Famous Wise Ones.
XXXI. The Night-Song.
XXXII. The Dance-Song.
XXXIII. The Grave-Song.
XXXIV. Self-Surpassing.
XXXV. The Sublime Ones.
XXXVI. The Land of Culture.
XXXVII. Immaculate Perception.
XXXVIII. Scholars.
XXXIX. Poets.
XL. Great Events.
XLI. The Soothsayer.
XLII. Redemption.
XLIII. Manly Prudence.
XLIV. The Stillest Hour.
THIRD PART.
XLV. The Wanderer.
XLVI. The Vision and the Enigma.
XLVII. Involuntary Bliss.
XLVIII. Before Sunrise.
XLIX. The Bedwarfing Virtue.
L. On the Olive-Mount.
LI. On Passing-by.
LII. The Apostates.
LIII. The Return Home.
LIV. The Three Evil Things.
LV. The Spirit of Gravity.
LVI. Old and New Tables.
LVII. The Convalescent.
LVIII. The Great Longing.
LIX. The Second Dance-Song.
LX. The Seven Seals.
FOURTH AND LAST PART.
LXI. The Honey Sacrifice.
LXII. The Cry of Distress.
LXIII. Talk with the Kings.
LXIV. The Leech.
LXV. The Magician.
LXVI. Out of Service.
LXVII. The Ugliest Man.
LXVIII. The Voluntary Beggar.
LXIX. The Shadow.
LXX. Noon-Tide.
LXXI. The Greeting.
LXXII. The Supper.
LXXIII. The Higher Man.
LXXIV. The Song of Melancholy.
LXXV. Science.
LXXVI. Among Daughters of the Desert.
LXXVII. The Awakening.
LXXVIII. The Ass-Festival.
LXXIX. The Drunken Song.
LXXX. The Sign.
APPENDIX.
Notes on “Thus Spake Zarathustra” by Anthony M. Ludovici.
INTRODUCTION BY MRS FORSTER-NIETZSCHE.
HOW ZARATHUSTRA CAME INTO BEING.
“Zarathustra” is my brother’s most personal work; it is the history of
his most individual experiences, of his friendships, ideals, raptures,
bitterest disappointments and sorrows. Above it all, however, there
soars, transfiguring it, the image of his greatest hopes and remotest
aims. My brother had the figure of Zarathustra in his mind from his very
earliest youth: he once told me that even as a child he had dreamt of
him. At different periods in his life, he would call this haunter of his
dreams by different names; “but in the end,” he declares in a note on
the subject, “I had to do a PERSIAN the honour of identifying him with
this creature of my fancy. Persians were the first to take a broad and
comprehensive view of history. Every series of evolutions, according
to them, was presided over by a prophet; and every prophet had his
‘Hazar,’—his dynasty of a thousand years.”
All Zarathustra’s views, as also his personality, were early conceptions
of my brother’s mind. Whoever reads his posthumously published writings
for the years 1869–82 with care, will constantly meet with passages
suggestive of Zarathustra’s thoughts and doctrines. For instance, the
ideal of the Superman is put forth quite clearly in all his writings
during the years 1873–75; and in “We Philologists”, the following
remarkable observations occur:—
“How can one praise and glorify a nation as a whole?—Even among the
Greeks, it was the INDIVIDUALS that counted.”
“The Greeks are interesting and extremely important because they reared
such a vast number of great individuals. How was this possible? The
question is one which ought to be studied.
“I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of
the individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually
favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing
to the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their
evil instincts.
“WITH THE HELP OF FAVOURABLE MEASURES GREAT INDIVIDUALS MIGHT BE REARED
WHO WOULD BE BOTH DIFFERENT FROM AND HIGHER THAN THOSE WHO HERETOFORE
HAVE OWED THEIR EXISTENCE TO MERE CHANCE. Here we may still be hopeful:
in the rearing of exceptional men.”
The notion of rearing the Superman is only a new form of an ideal
Nietzsche already had in his youth, that “THE OBJECT OF MANKIND SHOULD
LIE IN ITS HIGHEST INDIVIDUALS” (or, as he writes in “Schopenhauer as
Educator”: “Mankind ought constantly to be striving to produce great
men—this and nothing else is its duty.”) But the ideals he most revered
in those days are no longer held to be the highest types of men. No,
around this future ideal of a coming humanity—the Superman—the poet
spread the veil of becoming. Who can tell to what glorious heights man
can still ascend? That is why, after having tested the worth of our
noblest ideal—that of the Saviour, in the light of the new valuations,
the poet cries with passionate emphasis in “Zarathustra”:
“Never yet hath there been a Superman. Naked have I seen both of them,
the greatest and the smallest man:—
All-too-similar are they still to each other. Verily even the greatest
found I—all-too-human!”—
The phrase “the rearing of the Superman,” has very often been
misunderstood. By the word “rearing,” in this case, is meant the act of
modifying by means of new and higher values—values which, as laws and
guides of conduct and opinion, are now to rule over mankind. In general
the doctrine of the Superman can only be understood correctly in
conjunction with other ideas of the author’s, such as:—the Order
of Rank, the Will to Power, and the Transvaluation of all Values. He
assumes that Christianity, as a product of the resentment of the botched
and the weak, has put in ban all that is beautiful, strong, proud, and
powerful, in fact all the qualities resulting from strength, and that,
in consequence, all forces which tend to promote or elevate life have
been seriously undermined. Now, however, a new table of valuations
must be placed over mankind—namely, that of the strong, mighty, and
magnificent man, overflowing with life and elevated to his zenith—the
Superman, who is now put before us with overpowering passion as the
aim of our life, hope, and will. And just as the old system of valuing,
which only extolled the qualities favourable to the weak, the suffering,
and the oppressed, has succeeded in producing a weak, suffering, and
“modern” race, so this new and reversed system of valuing ought to rear
a healthy, strong, lively, and courageous type, which would be a glory
to life itself. Stated briefly, the leading principle of this new system
of valuing would be: “All that proceeds from power is good, all that
springs from weakness is bad.”
This type must not be regarded as a fanciful figure: it is not a
nebulous hope which is to be realised at some indefinitely remote
period, thousands of years hence; nor is it a new species (in the
Darwinian sense) of which we can know nothing, and which it would
therefore be somewhat absurd to strive after. But it is meant to be
a possibility which men of the present could realise with all their
spiritual and physical energies, provided they adopted the new values.
The author of “Zarathustra” never lost sight of that egregious example
of a transvaluation of all values through Christianity, whereby the
whole of the deified mode of life and thought of the Greeks, as well as
strong Romedom, was almost annihilated or transvalued in a comparatively
short time. Could not a rejuvenated Graeco-Roman system of valuing (once
it had been refined and made more profound by the schooling which
two thousand years of Christianity had provided) effect another such
revolution within a calculable period of time, until that glorious type
of manhood shall finally appear which is to be our new faith and hope,
and in the creation of which Zarathustra exhorts us to participate?
In his private notes on the subject the author uses the expression
“Superman” (always in the singular, by-the-bye), as signifying “the most
thoroughly well-constituted type,” as opposed to “modern man”; above
all, however, he designates Zarathustra himself as an example of the
Superman. In “Ecco Homo” he is careful to enlighten us concerning the
precursors and prerequisites to the advent of this highest type, in
referring to a certain passage in the “Gay Science”:—
“In order to understand this type, we must first be quite clear in
regard to the leading physiological condition on which it depends: this
condition is what I call GREAT HEALTHINESS. I know not how to express my
meaning more plainly or more personally than I have done already in
one of the last chapters (Aphorism 382) of the fifth book of the ‘Gaya
Scienza’.”
“We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand,”—it says
there,—“we firstlings of a yet untried future—we require for a new end
also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher,
bolder and merrier than all healthiness hitherto. He whose soul
longeth to experience the whole range of hitherto recognised values
and desirabilities, and to circumnavigate all the coasts of this ideal
‘Mediterranean Sea’, who, from the adventures of his most personal
experience, wants to know how it feels to be a conqueror, and discoverer
of the ideal—as likewise how it is with the artist, the saint, the
legislator, the sage, the scholar, the devotee, the prophet, and the
godly non-conformist of the old style:—requires one thing above all
for that purpose, GREAT HEALTHINESS—such healthiness as one not only
possesses, but also constantly acquires and must acquire, because one
unceasingly sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice it!—And now, after
having been long on the way in this fashion, we Argonauts of the ideal,
more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often enough shipwrecked
and brought to grief, nevertheless dangerously healthy, always healthy
again,—it would seem as if, in recompense for it all, that we have a
still undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one
has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known
hitherto, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the
questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well
as our thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand—alas! that
nothing will now any longer satisfy us!—
“How could we still be content with THE MAN OF THE PRESENT DAY
after such outlooks, and with such a craving in our conscience and
consciousness? Sad enough; but it is unavoidable that we should look
on the worthiest aims and hopes of the man of the present-day with
ill-concealed amusement, and perhaps should no longer look at them.
Another ideal runs on before us, a strange, tempting ideal full of
danger, to which we should not like to persuade any one, because we
do not so readily acknowledge any one’s RIGHT THERETO: the ideal of
a spirit who plays naively (that is to say involuntarily and from
overflowing abundance and power) with everything that has hitherto
been called holy, good, intangible, or divine; to whom the loftiest
conception which the people have reasonably made their measure of value,
would already practically imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at least
relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal of
a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which will often enough
appear INHUMAN, for example, when put alongside of all past seriousness
on earth, and alongside of all past solemnities in bearing, word, tone,
look, morality, and pursuit, as their truest involuntary parody—and
WITH which, nevertheless, perhaps THE GREAT SERIOUSNESS only commences,
when the proper interrogative mark is set up, the fate of the soul
changes, the hour-hand moves, and tragedy begins...”
Although the figure of Zarathustra and a large number of the leading
thoughts in this work had appeared much earlier in the dreams and
writings of the author, “Thus Spake Zarathustra” did not actually come
into being until the month of August 1881 in Sils Maria; and it was the
idea of the Eternal Recurrence of all things which finally induced my
brother to set forth his new views in poetic language. In regard to his
first conception of this idea, his autobiographical sketch, “Ecce Homo”,
written in the autumn of 1888, contains the following passage:—
“The fundamental idea of my work—namely, the Eternal Recurrence of
all things—this highest of all possible formulae of a Yea-saying
philosophy, first occurred to me in August 1881. I made a note of the
thought on a sheet of paper, with the postscript: 6,000 feet beyond
men and time! That day I happened to be wandering through the woods
alongside of the lake of Silvaplana, and I halted beside a huge,
pyramidal and towering rock not far from Surlei. It was then that the
thought struck me. Looking back now, I find that exactly two months
previous to this inspiration, I had had an omen of its coming in the
form of a sudden and decisive alteration in my tastes—more particularly
in music. It would even be possible to consider all ‘Zarathustra’ as a
musical composition. At all events, a very necessary condition in its
production was a renaissance in myself of the art of hearing. In a small
mountain resort (Recoaro) near Vicenza, where I spent the spring of
1881, I and my friend and Maestro, Peter Gast—also one who had been
born again—discovered that the phoenix music that hovered over us, wore
lighter and brighter plumes than it had done theretofore.”
During the month of August 1881 my brother resolved to reveal the
teaching of the Eternal Recurrence, in dithyrambic and psalmodic form,
through the mouth of Zarathustra. Among the notes of this period, we
found a page on which is written the first definite plan of “Thus Spake
Zarathustra”:—
“MIDDAY AND ETERNITY.”
“GUIDE-POSTS TO A NEW WAY OF LIVING.”
Beneath this is written:—
“Zarathustra born on lake Urmi; left his home in his thirtieth year,
went into the province of Aria, and, during ten years of solitude in the
mountains, composed the Zend-Avesta.”
“The sun of knowledge stands once more at midday; and the serpent
of eternity lies coiled in its light—: It is YOUR time, ye midday
brethren.”
In that summer of 1881, my brother, after many years of steadily
declining health, began at last to rally, and it is to this first gush
of the recovery of his once splendid bodily condition that we owe not
only “The Gay Science”, which in its mood may be regarded as a prelude
to “Zarathustra”, but also “Zarathustra” itself. Just as he was
beginning to recuperate his health, however, an unkind destiny brought
him a number of most painful personal experiences. His friends caused
him many disappointments, which were the more bitter to him, inasmuch as
he regarded friendship as such a sacred institution; and for the first
time in his life he realised the whole horror of that loneliness to
which, perhaps, all greatness is condemned. But to be forsaken is
something very different from deliberately choosing blessed loneliness.
How he longed, in those days, for the ideal friend who would thoroughly
understand him, to whom he would be able to say all, and whom he
imagined he had found at various periods in his life from his earliest
youth onwards. Now, however, that the way he had chosen grew ever more
perilous and steep, he found nobody who could follow him: he therefore
created a perfect friend for himself in the ideal form of a majestic
philosopher, and made this creation the preacher of his gospel to the
world.
Whether my brother would ever have written “Thus Spake Zarathustra”
according to the first plan sketched in the summer of 1881, if he
had not had the disappointments already referred to, is now an idle
question; but perhaps where “Zarathustra” is concerned, we may also say
with Master Eckhardt: “The fleetest beast to bear you to perfection is
suffering.”
My brother writes as follows about the origin of the first part of
“Zarathustra”:—“In the winter of 1882–83, I was living on the charming
little Gulf of Rapallo, not far from Genoa, and between Chiavari and
Cape Porto Fino. My health was not very good; the winter was cold and
exceptionally rainy; and the small inn in which I lived was so close
to the water that at night my sleep would be disturbed if the sea were
high. These circumstances were surely the very reverse of favourable;
and yet in spite of it all, and as if in demonstration of my belief that
everything decisive comes to life in spite of every obstacle, it was
precisely during this winter and in the midst of these unfavourable
circumstances that my ‘Zarathustra’ originated. In the morning I used to
start out in a southerly direction up the glorious road to Zoagli, which
rises aloft through a forest of pines and gives one a view far out into
the sea. In the afternoon, as often as my health permitted, I walked
round the whole bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino. This
spot was all the more interesting to me, inasmuch as it was so dearly
loved by the Emperor Frederick III. In the autumn of 1886 I chanced to
be there again when he was revisiting this small, forgotten world
of happiness for the last time. It was on these two roads that all
‘Zarathustra’ came to me, above all Zarathustra himself as a type;—I
ought rather to say that it was on these walks that these ideas waylaid
me.”
The first part of “Zarathustra” was written in about ten days—that is
to say, from the beginning to about the middle of February 1883. “The
last lines were written precisely in the hallowed hour when Richard
Wagner gave up the ghost in Venice.”
With the exception of the ten days occupied in composing the first part
of this book, my brother often referred to this winter as the hardest
and sickliest he had ever experienced. He did not, however, mean thereby
that his former disorders were troubling him, but that he was suffering
from a severe attack of influenza which he had caught in Santa
Margherita, and which tormented him for several weeks after his arrival
in Genoa. As a matter of fact, however, what he complained of most was
his spiritual condition—that indescribable forsakenness—to which he
gives such heartrending expression in “Zarathustra”. Even the reception
which the first part met with at the hands of friends and acquaintances
was extremely disheartening: for almost all those to whom he presented
copies of the work misunderstood it. “I found no one ripe for many of my
thoughts; the case of ‘Zarathustra’ proves that one can speak with the
utmost clearness, and yet not be heard by any one.” My brother was very
much discouraged by the feebleness of the response he was given, and as
he was striving just then to give up the practice of taking hydrate
of chloral—a drug he had begun to take while ill with influenza,—the
following spring, spent in Rome, was a somewhat gloomy one for him.
He writes about it as follows:—“I spent a melancholy spring in Rome,
where I only just managed to live,—and this was no easy matter. This
city, which is absolutely unsuited to the poet-author of ‘Zarathustra’,
and for the choice of which I was not responsible, made me inordinately
miserable. I tried to leave it. I wanted to go to Aquila—the opposite
of Rome in every respect, and actually founded in a spirit of enmity
towards that city (just as I also shall found a city some day), as a
memento of an atheist and genuine enemy of the Church—a person very
closely related to me,—the great Hohenstaufen, the Emperor Frederick
II. But Fate lay behind it all: I had to return again to Rome. In the
end I was obliged to be satisfied with the Piazza Barberini, after I had
exerted myself in vain to find an anti-Christian quarter. I fear that
on one occasion, to avoid bad smells as much as possible, I actually
inquired at the Palazzo del Quirinale whether they could not provide a
quiet room for a philosopher. In a chamber high above the Piazza just
mentioned, from which one obtained a general view of Rome and could
hear the fountains plashing far below, the loneliest of all songs
was composed—‘The Night-Song’. About this time I was obsessed by an
unspeakably sad melody, the refrain of which I recognised in the words,
‘dead through immortality.’”
We remained somewhat too long in Rome that spring, and what with the
effect of the increasing heat and the discouraging circumstances already
described, my brother resolved not to write any more, or in any case,
not to proceed with “Zarathustra”, although I offered to relieve him
of all trouble in connection with the proofs and the publisher. When,
however, we returned to Switzerland towards the end of June, and he
found himself once more in the familiar and exhilarating air of the
mountains, all his joyous creative powers revived, and in a note to me
announcing the dispatch of some manuscript, he wrote as follows: “I have
engaged a place here for three months: forsooth, I am the greatest fool
to allow my courage to be sapped from me by the climate of Italy. Now
and again I am troubled by the thought: WHAT NEXT? My ‘future’ is the
darkest thing in the world to me, but as there still remains a great
deal for me to do, I suppose I ought rather to think of doing this than
of my future, and leave the rest to THEE and the gods.”
The second part of “Zarathustra” was written between the 26th of June
and the 6th July. “This summer, finding myself once more in the sacred
place where the first thought of ‘Zarathustra’ flashed across my mind,
I conceived the second part. Ten days sufficed. Neither for the second,
the first, nor the third part, have I required a day longer.”
He often used to speak of the ecstatic mood in which he wrote
“Zarathustra”; how in his walks over hill and dale the ideas would crowd
into his mind, and how he would note them down hastily in a note-book
from which he would transcribe them on his return, sometimes working
till midnight. He says in a letter to me: “You can have no idea of the
vehemence of such composition,” and in “Ecce Homo” (autumn 1888) he
describes as follows with passionate enthusiasm the incomparable mood in
which he created Zarathustra:—
“—Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion
of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? If
not, I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige of superstition
in one, it would hardly be possible to set aside completely the idea
that one is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece or medium of an almighty
power. The idea of revelation in the sense that something becomes
suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy,
which profoundly convulses and upsets one—describes simply the matter
of fact. One hears—one does not seek; one takes—one does not ask
who gives: a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with
necessity, unhesitatingly—I have never had any choice in the matter.
There is an ecstasy such that the immense strain of it is sometimes
relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one’s steps either rush
or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is
completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an
endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes;—there
is a depth of happiness in which the painfullest and gloomiest do not
operate as antitheses, but as conditioned, as demanded in the sense of
necessary shades of colour in such an overflow of light. There is an
instinct for rhythmic relations which embraces wide areas of forms
(length, the need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the measure of
the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its pressure and
tension). Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous
outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity. The
involuntariness of the figures and similes is the most remarkable
thing; one loses all perception of what constitutes the figure and
what constitutes the simile; everything seems to present itself as
the readiest, the correctest and the simplest means of expression.
It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra’s own phrases, as if all
things came unto one, and would fain be similes: ‘Here do all things
come caressingly to thy talk and flatter thee, for they want to ride
upon thy back. On every simile dost thou here ride to every truth. Here
fly open unto thee all being’s words and word-cabinets; here all being
wanteth to become words, here all becoming wanteth to learn of thee how
to talk.’ This is MY experience of inspiration. I do not doubt but that
one would have to go back thousands of years in order to find some one
who could say to me: It is mine also!—”
In the autumn of 1883 my brother left the Engadine for Germany and
stayed there a few weeks. In the following winter, after wandering
somewhat erratically through Stresa, Genoa, and Spezia, he landed in
Nice, where the climate so happily promoted his creative powers that
he wrote the third part of “Zarathustra”. “In the winter, beneath the
halcyon sky of Nice, which then looked down upon me for the first time
in my life, I found the third ‘Zarathustra’—and came to the end of my
task; the whole having occupied me scarcely a year. Many hidden corners
and heights in the landscapes round about Nice are hallowed to me by
unforgettable moments. That decisive chapter entitled ‘Old and New
Tables’ was composed in the very difficult ascent from the station
to Eza—that wonderful Moorish village in the rocks. My most creative
moments were always accompanied by unusual muscular activity. The body
is inspired: let us waive the question of the ‘soul.’ I might often have
been seen dancing in those days. Without a suggestion of fatigue I could
then walk for seven or eight hours on end among the hills. I slept well
and laughed well—I was perfectly robust and patient.”
As we have seen, each of the three parts of “Zarathustra” was written,
after a more or less short period of preparation, in about ten days.
The composition of the fourth part alone was broken by occasional
interruptions. The first notes relating to this part were written while
he and I were staying together in Zurich in September 1884. In the
following November, while staying at Mentone, he began to elaborate
these notes, and after a long pause, finished the manuscript at Nice
between the end of January and the middle of February 1885. My brother
then called this part the fourth and last; but even before, and shortly
after it had been privately printed, he wrote to me saying that he still
intended writing a fifth and sixth part, and notes relating to these
parts are now in my possession. This fourth part (the original MS. of
which contains this note: “Only for my friends, not for the public”)
is written in a particularly personal spirit, and those few to whom he
presented a copy of it, he pledged to the strictest secrecy concerning
its contents. He often thought of making this fourth part public also,
but doubted whether he would ever be able to do so without considerably
altering certain portions of it. At all events he resolved to distribute
this manuscript production, of which only forty copies were printed,
only among those who had proved themselves worthy of it, and it speaks
eloquently of his utter loneliness and need of sympathy in those days,
that he had occasion to present only seven copies of his book according
to this resolution.
Already at the beginning of this history I hinted at the reasons which
led my brother to select a Persian as the incarnation of his ideal of
the majestic philosopher. His reasons, however, for choosing Zarathustra
of all others to be his mouthpiece, he gives us in the following
words:—“People have never asked me, as they should have done, what the
name Zarathustra precisely means in my mouth, in the mouth of the first
Immoralist; for what distinguishes that philosopher from all others
in the past is the very fact that he was exactly the reverse of an
immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between
good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things. The
translation of morality into the metaphysical, as force, cause, end in
itself, was HIS work. But the very question suggests its own answer.
Zarathustra CREATED the most portentous error, MORALITY, consequently he
should also be the first to PERCEIVE that error, not only because he
has had longer and greater experience of the subject than any other
thinker—all history is the experimental refutation of the theory of
the so-called moral order of things:—the more important point is that
Zarathustra was more truthful than any other thinker. In his teaching
alone do we meet with truthfulness upheld as the highest virtue—i.e.:
the reverse of the COWARDICE of the ‘idealist’ who flees from reality.
Zarathustra had more courage in his body than any other thinker before
or after him. To tell the truth and TO AIM STRAIGHT: that is the first
Persian virtue. Am I understood?... The overcoming of morality through
itself—through truthfulness, the overcoming of the moralist through his
opposite—THROUGH ME—: that is what the name Zarathustra means in my
mouth.”
ELIZABETH FORSTER-NIETZSCHE.
Nietzsche Archives,
Weimar, December 1905.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.
FIRST PART. ZARATHUSTRA’S DISCOURSES.
ZARATHUSTRA’S PROLOGUE.
1.
When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of
his home, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and
solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart
changed,—and rising one morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the
sun, and spake thus unto it:
Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for
whom thou shinest!
For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave: thou wouldst have
wearied of thy light and of the journey, had it not been for me, mine
eagle, and my serpent.
But we awaited thee every morning, took from thee thine overflow and
blessed thee for it.
Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much
honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.
I would fain bestow and distribute, until the wise have once more become
joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their riches.
Therefore must I descend into the deep: as thou doest in the
evening, when thou goest behind the sea, and givest light also to the
nether-world, thou exuberant star!
Like thee must I GO DOWN, as men say, to whom I shall descend.
Bless me, then, thou tranquil eye, that canst behold even the greatest
happiness without envy!
Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow golden
out of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of thy bliss!
Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again
going to be a man.
Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going.
2.
Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, no one meeting him. When he
entered the forest, however, there suddenly stood before him an old man,
who had left his holy cot to seek roots. And thus spake the old man to
Zarathustra:
“No stranger to me is this wanderer: many years ago passed he by.
Zarathustra he was called; but he hath altered.
Then thou carriedst thine ashes into the mountains: wilt thou now carry
thy fire into the valleys? Fearest thou not the incendiary’s doom?
Yea, I recognise Zarathustra. Pure is his eye, and no loathing lurketh
about his mouth. Goeth he not along like a dancer?
Altered is Zarathustra; a child hath Zarathustra become; an awakened one
is Zarathustra: what wilt thou do in the land of the sleepers?
As in the sea hast thou lived in solitude, and it hath borne thee up.
Alas, wilt thou now go ashore? Alas, wilt thou again drag thy body
thyself?”
Zarathustra answered: “I love mankind.”
“Why,” said the saint, “did I go into the forest and the desert? Was it
not because I loved men far too well?
Now I love God: men, I do not love. Man is a thing too imperfect for me.
Love to man would be fatal to me.”
Zarathustra answered: “What spake I of love! I am bringing gifts unto
men.”
“Give them nothing,” said the saint. “Take rather part of their load,
and carry it along with them—that will be most agreeable unto them: if
only it be agreeable unto thee!
If, however, thou wilt give unto them, give them no more than an alms,
and let them also beg for it!”
“No,” replied Zarathustra, “I give no alms. I am not poor enough for
that.”
The saint laughed at Zarathustra, and spake thus: “Then see to it that
they accept thy treasures! They are distrustful of anchorites, and do
not believe that we come with gifts.
The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through their streets. And
just as at night, when they are in bed and hear a man abroad long before
sunrise, so they ask themselves concerning us: Where goeth the thief?
Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the animals! Why not
be like me—a bear amongst bears, a bird amongst birds?”
“And what doeth the saint in the forest?” asked Zarathustra.
The saint answered: “I make hymns and sing them; and in making hymns I
laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise God.
With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise the God who is
my God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift?”
When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the saint and said:
“What should I have to give thee! Let me rather hurry hence lest I take
aught away from thee!”—And thus they parted from one another, the old
man and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys.
When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: “Could it be
possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that
GOD IS DEAD!”
3.
When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoineth the forest,
he found many people assembled in the market-place; for it had been
announced that a rope-dancer would give a performance. And Zarathustra
spake thus unto the people:
I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What
have ye done to surpass man?
All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye
want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the
beast than surpass man?
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the
same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.
Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still
worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of
the apes.
Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and
phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?
Lo, 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 conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not
those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they,
whether they know it or not.
Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves,
of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died,
and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the
dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the
meaning of the earth!
Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt
was the supreme thing:—the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and
famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth.
Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was
the delight of that soul!
But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about
your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched
self-complacency?
Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a
polluted stream without becoming impure.
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great
contempt be submerged.
What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great
contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto
you, and so also your reason and virtue.
The hour when ye say: “What good is my happiness! It is poverty and
pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify
existence itself!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my reason! Doth it long for
knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and
wretched self-complacency!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made
me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty
and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my justice! I do not see that I am
fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on
which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion.”
Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had
heard you crying thus!
It is not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto
heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!
Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy
with which ye should be inoculated?
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!—
When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of the people called out: “We have
now heard enough of the rope-dancer; it is time now for us to see him!”
And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the rope-dancer, who
thought the words applied to him, began his performance.
4.
Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spake
thus:
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over
an abyss.
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a
dangerous trembling and halting.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is
lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING.
I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they
are the over-goers.
I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and
arrows of longing for the other shore.
I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going
down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that
the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.
I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in
order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own
down-going.
I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for
the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus
seeketh he his own down-going.
I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going,
and an arrow of longing.
I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to
be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the
bridge.
I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination and destiny: thus, for
the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live no more.
I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a
virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one’s destiny to cling
to.
I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and doth not give
back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not to keep for himself.
I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour, and who then
asketh: “Am I a dishonest player?”—for he is willing to succumb.
I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and
always doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going.
I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth the past ones:
for he is willing to succumb through the present ones.
I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he
must succumb through the wrath of his God.
I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb
through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.
I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all
things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.
I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his
head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his
down-going.
I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark
cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the lightning,
and succumb as heralds.
Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud:
the lightning, however, is the SUPERMAN.—
5.
When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he again looked at the people,
and was silent. “There they stand,” said he to his heart; “there they
laugh: they understand me not; I am not the mouth for these ears.
Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their
eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers? Or do
they only believe the stammerer?
They have something whereof they are proud. What do they call it, that
which maketh them proud? Culture, they call it; it distinguisheth them
from the goatherds.
They dislike, therefore, to hear of ‘contempt’ of themselves. So I will
appeal to their pride.
I will speak unto them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is
THE LAST MAN!”
And thus spake Zarathustra unto the people:
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ
of his highest hope.
Still is his soil rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be
poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow
thereon.
Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of
his longing beyond man—and the string of his bow will have unlearned to
whizz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing
star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.
Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any
star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no
longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you THE LAST MAN.
“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?”—so
asketh the last man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man
who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of
the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest.
“We have discovered happiness”—say the last men, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need
warmth. One still loveth one’s neighbour and rubbeth against him; for
one needeth warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk
warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much
poison at last for a pleasant death.
One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the
pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still
wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Every one wanteth the same; every one is
equal: he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse.
“Formerly all the world was insane,”—say the subtlest of them, and
blink thereby.
They are clever and know all that hath happened: so there is
no end to their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon
reconciled—otherwise it spoileth their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures
for the night, but they have a regard for health.
“We have discovered happiness,”—say the last men, and blink thereby.—
And here ended the first discourse of Zarathustra, which is also
called “The Prologue”: for at this point the shouting and mirth of the
multitude interrupted him. “Give us this last man, O Zarathustra,”—they
called out—“make us into these last men! Then will we make thee a
present of the Superman!” And all the people exulted and smacked their
lips. Zarathustra, however, turned sad, and said to his heart:
“They understand me not: I am not the mouth for these ears.
Too long, perhaps, have I lived in the mountains; too much have I
hearkened unto the brooks and trees: now do I speak unto them as unto
the goatherds.
Calm is my soul, and clear, like the mountains in the morning. But they
think me cold, and a mocker with terrible jests.
And now do they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh they hate me
too. There is ice in their laughter.”
6.
Then, however, something happened which made every mouth mute and every
eye fixed. In the meantime, of course, the rope-dancer had commenced his
performance: he had come out at a little door, and was going along the
rope which was stretched between two towers, so that it hung above the
market-place and the people. When he was just midway across, the little
door opened once more, and a gaudily-dressed fellow like a buffoon
sprang out, and went rapidly after the first one. “Go on, halt-foot,”
cried his frightful voice, “go on, lazy-bones, interloper,
sallow-face!—lest I tickle thee with my heel! What dost thou here
between the towers? In the tower is the place for thee, thou shouldst be
locked up; to one better than thyself thou blockest the way!”—And with
every word he came nearer and nearer the first one. When, however, he
was but a step behind, there happened the frightful thing which made
every mouth mute and every eye fixed—he uttered a yell like a devil,
and jumped over the other who was in his way. The latter, however, when
he thus saw his rival triumph, lost at the same time his head and his
footing on the rope; he threw his pole away, and shot downwards faster
than it, like an eddy of arms and legs, into the depth. The market-place
and the people were like the sea when the storm cometh on: they all flew
apart and in disorder, especially where the body was about to fall.
Zarathustra, however, remained standing, and just beside him fell the
body, badly injured and disfigured, but not yet dead. After a while
consciousness returned to the shattered man, and he saw Zarathustra
kneeling beside him. “What art thou doing there?” said he at last, “I
knew long ago that the devil would trip me up. Now he draggeth me to
hell: wilt thou prevent him?”
“On mine honour, my friend,” answered Zarathustra, “there is nothing of
all that whereof thou speakest: there is no devil and no hell. Thy soul
will be dead even sooner than thy body: fear, therefore, nothing any
more!”
The man looked up distrustfully. “If thou speakest the truth,” said he,
“I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal
which hath been taught to dance by blows and scanty fare.”
“Not at all,” said Zarathustra, “thou hast made danger thy calling;
therein there is nothing contemptible. Now thou perishest by thy
calling: therefore will I bury thee with mine own hands.”
When Zarathustra had said this the dying one did not reply further; but
he moved his hand as if he sought the hand of Zarathustra in gratitude.
7.
Meanwhile the evening came on, and the market-place veiled itself in
gloom. Then the people dispersed, for even curiosity and terror become
fatigued. Zarathustra, however, still sat beside the dead man on the
ground, absorbed in thought: so he forgot the time. But at last it
became night, and a cold wind blew upon the lonely one. Then arose
Zarathustra and said to his heart:
Verily, a fine catch of fish hath Zarathustra made to-day! It is not a
man he hath caught, but a corpse.
Sombre is human life, and as yet without meaning: a buffoon may be
fateful to it.
I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman,
the lightning out of the dark cloud—man.
But still am I far from them, and my sense speaketh not unto their
sense. To men I am still something between a fool and a corpse.
Gloomy is the night, gloomy are the ways of Zarathustra. Come, thou cold
and stiff companion! I carry thee to the place where I shall bury thee
with mine own hands.
8.
When Zarathustra had said this to his heart, he put the corpse upon his
shoulders and set out on his way. Yet had he not gone a hundred steps,
when there stole a man up to him and whispered in his ear—and lo!
he that spake was the buffoon from the tower. “Leave this town, O
Zarathustra,” said he, “there are too many here who hate thee. The
good and just hate thee, and call thee their enemy and despiser; the
believers in the orthodox belief hate thee, and call thee a danger to
the multitude. It was thy good fortune to be laughed at: and verily thou
spakest like a buffoon. It was thy good fortune to associate with the
dead dog; by so humiliating thyself thou hast saved thy life to-day.
Depart, however, from this town,—or to-morrow I shall jump over thee,
a living man over a dead one.” And when he had said this, the buffoon
vanished; Zarathustra, however, went on through the dark streets.
At the gate of the town the grave-diggers met him: they shone their
torch on his face, and, recognising Zarathustra, they sorely derided
him. “Zarathustra is carrying away the dead dog: a fine thing that
Zarathustra hath turned a grave-digger! For our hands are too cleanly
for that roast. Will Zarathustra steal the bite from the devil? Well
then, good luck to the repast! If only the devil is not a better thief
than Zarathustra!—he will steal them both, he will eat them both!” And
they laughed among themselves, and put their heads together.
Zarathustra made no answer thereto, but went on his way. When he had
gone on for two hours, past forests and swamps, he had heard too much of
the hungry howling of the wolves, and he himself became a-hungry. So he
halted at a lonely house in which a light was burning.
“Hunger attacketh me,” said Zarathustra, “like a robber. Among forests
and swamps my hunger attacketh me, and late in the night.
“Strange humours hath my hunger. Often it cometh to me only after a
repast, and all day it hath failed to come: where hath it been?”
And thereupon Zarathustra knocked at the door of the house. An old man
appeared, who carried a light, and asked: “Who cometh unto me and my bad
sleep?”
“A living man and a dead one,” said Zarathustra. “Give me something to
eat and drink, I forgot it during the day. He that feedeth the hungry
refresheth his own soul, saith wisdom.”
The old man withdrew, but came back immediately and offered Zarathustra
bread and wine. “A bad country for the hungry,” said he; “that is why
I live here. Animal and man come unto me, the anchorite. But bid thy
companion eat and drink also, he is wearier than thou.” Zarathustra
answered: “My companion is dead; I shall hardly be able to persuade him
to eat.” “That doth not concern me,” said the old man sullenly; “he
that knocketh at my door must take what I offer him. Eat, and fare ye
well!”—
Thereafter Zarathustra again went on for two hours, trusting to the path
and the light of the stars: for he was an experienced night-walker, and
liked to look into the face of all that slept. When the morning dawned,
however, Zarathustra found himself in a thick forest, and no path was
any longer visible. He then put the dead man in a hollow tree at his
head—for he wanted to protect him from the wolves—and laid himself
down on the ground and moss. And immediately he fell asleep, tired in
body, but with a tranquil soul.
9.
Long slept Zarathustra; and not only the rosy dawn passed over his head,
but also the morning. At last, however, his eyes opened, and amazedly he
gazed into the forest and the stillness, amazedly he gazed into himself.
Then he arose quickly, like a seafarer who all at once seeth the land;
and he shouted for joy: for he saw a new truth. And he spake thus to his
heart:
A light hath dawned upon me: I need companions—living ones; not dead
companions and corpses, which I carry with me where I will.
But I need living companions, who will follow me because they want to
follow themselves—and to the place where I will.
A light hath dawned upon me. Not to the people is Zarathustra to speak,
but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be the herd’s herdsman and
hound!
To allure many from the herd—for that purpose have I come. The people
and the herd must be angry with me: a robber shall Zarathustra be called
by the herdsmen.
Herdsmen, I say, but they call themselves the good and just. Herdsmen, I
say, but they call themselves the believers in the orthodox belief.
Behold the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up
their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker:—he, however, is
the creator.
Behold the believers of all beliefs! Whom do they hate most? Him who
breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker—he,
however, is the creator.
Companions, the creator seeketh, not corpses—and not herds or believers
either. Fellow-creators the creator seeketh—those who grave new values
on new tables.
Companions, the creator seeketh, and fellow-reapers: for everything is
ripe for the harvest with him. But he lacketh the hundred sickles: so he
plucketh the ears of corn and is vexed.
Companions, the creator seeketh, and such as know how to whet their
sickles. Destroyers, will they be called, and despisers of good and
evil. But they are the reapers and rejoicers.
Fellow-creators, Zarathustra seeketh; fellow-reapers and
fellow-rejoicers, Zarathustra seeketh: what hath he to do with herds and
herdsmen and corpses!
And thou, my first companion, rest in peace! Well have I buried thee in
thy hollow tree; well have I hid thee from the wolves.
But I part from thee; the time hath arrived. ‘Twixt rosy dawn and rosy
dawn there came unto me a new truth.
I am not to be a herdsman, I am not to be a grave-digger. Not any more
will I discourse unto the people; for the last time have I spoken unto
the dead.
With the creators, the reapers, and the rejoicers will I associate: the
rainbow will I show them, and all the stairs to the Superman.
To the lone-dwellers will I sing my song, and to the twain-dwellers;
and unto him who hath still ears for the unheard, will I make the heart
heavy with my happiness.
I make for my goal, I follow my course; over the loitering and tardy
will I leap. Thus let my on-going be their down-going!
10.
This had Zarathustra said to his heart when the sun stood at noontide.
Then he looked inquiringly aloft,—for he heard above him the sharp call
of a bird. And behold! An eagle swept through the air in wide circles,
and on it hung a serpent, not like a prey, but like a friend: for it
kept itself coiled round the eagle’s neck.
“They are mine animals,” said Zarathustra, and rejoiced in his heart.
“The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the
sun,—they have come out to reconnoitre.
They want to know whether Zarathustra still liveth. Verily, do I still
live?
More dangerous have I found it among men than among animals; in
dangerous paths goeth Zarathustra. Let mine animals lead me!”
When Zarathustra had said this, he remembered the words of the saint in
the forest. Then he sighed and spake thus to his heart:
“Would that I were wiser! Would that I were wise from the very heart,
like my serpent!
But I am asking the impossible. Therefore do I ask my pride to go always
with my wisdom!
And if my wisdom should some day forsake me:—alas! it loveth to fly
away!—may my pride then fly with my folly!”
Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going.
ZARATHUSTRA’S DISCOURSES.
I. THE THREE METAMORPHOSES.
Three metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit
becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.
Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing
spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest
longeth its strength.
What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down
like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden.
What is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit,
that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.
Is it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one’s pride? To
exhibit one’s folly in order to mock at one’s wisdom?
Or is it this: To desert our cause when it celebrateth its triumph? To
ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter?
Or is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the
sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul?
Or is it this: To be sick and dismiss comforters, and make friends of
the deaf, who never hear thy requests?
Or is it this: To go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and
not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: To love those who despise us, and give one’s hand to the
phantom when it is going to frighten us?
All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself:
and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so
hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness.
But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here
the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its
own wilderness.
Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to its
last God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon.
What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call
Lord and God? “Thou shalt,” is the great dragon called. But the spirit
of the lion saith, “I will.”
“Thou shalt,” lieth in its path, sparkling with gold—a scale-covered
beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, “Thou shalt!”
The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and
thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: “All the values of
things—glitter on me.
All values have already been created, and all created values—do I
represent. Verily, there shall be no ‘I will’ any more.” Thus speaketh
the dragon.
My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why
sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent?
To create new values—that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to
create itself freedom for new creating—that can the might of the lion
do.
To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that,
my brethren, there is need of the lion.
To assume the right to new values—that is the most formidable
assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Verily, unto such a
spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.
As its holiest, it once loved “Thou shalt”: now is it forced to find
illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may
capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture.
But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion
could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?
Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a
self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.
Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea
unto life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth
the world’s outcast.
Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the
spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.—
Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is
called The Pied Cow.
II. THE ACADEMIC CHAIRS OF VIRTUE.
People commended unto Zarathustra a wise man, as one who could discourse
well about sleep and virtue: greatly was he honoured and rewarded for
it, and all the youths sat before his chair. To him went Zarathustra,
and sat among the youths before his chair. And thus spake the wise man:
Respect and modesty in presence of sleep! That is the first thing! And
to go out of the way of all who sleep badly and keep awake at night!
Modest is even the thief in presence of sleep: he always stealeth softly
through the night. Immodest, however, is the night-watchman; immodestly
he carrieth his horn.
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep
awake all day.
Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome
weariness, and is poppy to the soul.
Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is
bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.
Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth
during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry.
Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy
stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.
Few people know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep
well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery?
Shall I covet my neighbour’s maidservant? All that would ill accord with
good sleep.
And even if one have all the virtues, there is still one thing needful:
to send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time.
That they may not quarrel with one another, the good females! And about
thee, thou unhappy one!
Peace with God and thy neighbour: so desireth good sleep. And peace also
with thy neighbour’s devil! Otherwise it will haunt thee in the night.
Honour to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked
government! So desireth good sleep. How can I help it, if power like to
walk on crooked legs?
He who leadeth his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for me
the best shepherd: so doth it accord with good sleep.
Many honours I want not, nor great treasures: they excite the spleen.
But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little treasure.
A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come
and go at the right time. So doth it accord with good sleep.
Well, also, do the poor in spirit please me: they promote sleep. Blessed
are they, especially if one always give in to them.
Thus passeth the day unto the virtuous. When night cometh, then take I
good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned—sleep, the
lord of the virtues!
But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus
ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy ten
overcomings?
And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten
laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself?
Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me all at
once—sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues.
Sleep tappeth on mine eye, and it turneth heavy. Sleep toucheth my
mouth, and it remaineth open.
Verily, on soft soles doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and
stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, like this academic
chair.
But not much longer do I then stand: I already lie.—
When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his heart:
for thereby had a light dawned upon him. And thus spake he to his heart:
A fool seemeth this wise man with his forty thoughts: but I believe he
knoweth well how to sleep.
Happy even is he who liveth near this wise man! Such sleep is
contagious—even through a thick wall it is contagious.
A magic resideth even in his academic chair. And not in vain did the
youths sit before the preacher of virtue.
His wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well. And verily, if
life had no sense, and had I to choose nonsense, this would be the
desirablest nonsense for me also.
Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they
sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and
poppy-head virtues to promote it!
To all those belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep
without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life.
Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of
virtue, and not always so honourable: but their time is past. And not
much longer do they stand: there they already lie.
Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
III. BACKWORLDSMEN.
Once on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all
backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world
then seem to me.
The dream—and diction—of a God, did the world then seem to me;
coloured vapours before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one.
Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou—coloured vapours did
they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away
from himself,—thereupon he created the world.
Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering
and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world
once seem to me.
This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction’s image
and imperfect image—an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:—thus
did the world once seem to me.
Thus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all
backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth?
Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human
madness, like all the Gods!
A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego. Out of mine own
ashes and glow it came unto me, that phantom. And verily, it came not
unto me from the beyond!
What happened, my brethren? I surpassed myself, the suffering one; I
carried mine own ashes to the mountain; a brighter flame I contrived for
myself. And lo! Thereupon the phantom WITHDREW from me!
To me the convalescent would it now be suffering and torment to believe
in such phantoms: suffering would it now be to me, and humiliation. Thus
speak I to backworldsmen.
Suffering was it, and impotence—that created all backworlds; and
the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer
experienceth.
Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with
a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any
longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.
Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the body—it
groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls.
Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the
earth—it heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it.
And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head—and
not with its head only—into “the other world.”
But that “other world” is well concealed from man, that dehumanised,
inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence
do not speak unto man, except as man.
Verily, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak.
Tell me, ye brethren, is not the strangest of all things best proved?
Yea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most
uprightly of its being—this creating, willing, evaluing ego, which is
the measure and value of things.
And this most upright existence, the ego—it speaketh of the body, and
still implieth the body, even when it museth and raveth and fluttereth
with broken wings.
Always more uprightly learneth it to speak, the ego; and the more it
learneth, the more doth it find titles and honours for the body and the
earth.
A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto men: no longer
to thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it
freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth!
A new will teach I unto men: to choose that path which man hath followed
blindly, and to approve of it—and no longer to slink aside from it,
like the sick and perishing!
The sick and perishing—it was they who despised the body and the earth,
and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming blood-drops; but even
those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth!
From their misery they sought escape, and the stars were too remote for
them. Then they sighed: “O that there were heavenly paths by which to
steal into another existence and into happiness!” Then they contrived
for themselves their by-paths and bloody draughts!
Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied
themselves transported, these ungrateful ones. But to what did they owe
the convulsion and rapture of their transport? To their body and this
earth.
Gentle is Zarathustra to the sickly. Verily, he is not indignant
at their modes of consolation and ingratitude. May they become
convalescents and overcomers, and create higher bodies for themselves!
Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looketh tenderly
on his delusions, and at midnight stealeth round the grave of his God;
but sickness and a sick frame remain even in his tears.
Many sickly ones have there always been among those who muse, and
languish for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the
latest of virtues, which is uprightness.
Backward they always gaze toward dark ages: then, indeed, were delusion
and faith something different. Raving of the reason was likeness to God,
and doubt was sin.
Too well do I know those godlike ones: they insist on being believed in,
and that doubt is sin. Too well, also, do I know what they themselves
most believe in.
Verily, not in backworlds and redeeming blood-drops: but in the body
do they also believe most; and their own body is for them the
thing-in-itself.
But it is a sickly thing to them, and gladly would they get out of their
skin. Therefore hearken they to the preachers of death, and themselves
preach backworlds.
Hearken rather, my brethren, to the voice of the healthy body; it is a
more upright and pure voice.
More uprightly and purely speaketh the healthy body, perfect and
square-built; and it speaketh of the meaning of the earth.—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
IV. THE DESPISERS OF THE BODY.
To the despisers of the body will I speak my word. I wish them neither
to learn afresh, nor teach anew, but only to bid farewell to their own
bodies,—and thus be dumb.
“Body am I, and soul”—so saith the child. And why should one not speak
like children?
But the awakened one, the knowing one, saith: “Body am I entirely, and
nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body.”
The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a
peace, a flock and a shepherd.
An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which
thou callest “spirit”—a little instrument and plaything of thy big
sagacity.
“Ego,” sayest thou, and art proud of that word. But the greater
thing—in which thou art unwilling to believe—is thy body with its big
sagacity; it saith not “ego,” but doeth it.
What the sense feeleth, what the spirit discerneth, hath never its end
in itself. But sense and spirit would fain persuade thee that they are
the end of all things: so vain are they.
Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there
is still the Self. The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it
hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit.
Ever hearkeneth the Self, and seeketh; it compareth, mastereth,
conquereth, and destroyeth. It ruleth, and is also the ego’s ruler.
Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord,
an unknown sage—it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy
body.
There is more sagacity in thy body than in thy best wisdom. And who then
knoweth why thy body requireth just thy best wisdom?
Thy Self laugheth at thine ego, and its proud prancings. “What are these
prancings and flights of thought unto me?” it saith to itself. “A by-way
to my purpose. I am the leading-string of the ego, and the prompter of
its notions.”
The Self saith unto the ego: “Feel pain!” And thereupon it suffereth,
and thinketh how it may put an end thereto—and for that very purpose it
IS MEANT to think.
The Self saith unto the ego: “Feel pleasure!” Thereupon it rejoiceth,
and thinketh how it may ofttimes rejoice—and for that very purpose it
IS MEANT to think.
To the despisers of the body will I speak a word. That they despise is
caused by their esteem. What is it that created esteeming and despising
and worth and will?
The creating Self created for itself esteeming and despising, it created
for itself joy and woe. The creating body created for itself spirit, as
a hand to its will.
Even in your folly and despising ye each serve your Self, ye despisers
of the body. I tell you, your very Self wanteth to die, and turneth away
from life.
No longer can your Self do that which it desireth most:—create beyond
itself. That is what it desireth most; that is all its fervour.
But it is now too late to do so:—so your Self wisheth to succumb, ye
despisers of the body.
To succumb—so wisheth your Self; and therefore have ye become despisers
of the body. For ye can no longer create beyond yourselves.
And therefore are ye now angry with life and with the earth. And
unconscious envy is in the sidelong look of your contempt.
I go not your way, ye despisers of the body! Ye are no bridges for me to
the Superman!—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
V. JOYS AND PASSIONS.
My brother, when thou hast a virtue, and it is thine own virtue, thou
hast it in common with no one.
To be sure, thou wouldst call it by name and caress it; thou wouldst
pull its ears and amuse thyself with it.
And lo! Then hast thou its name in common with the people, and hast
become one of the people and the herd with thy virtue!
Better for thee to say: “Ineffable is it, and nameless, that which is
pain and sweetness to my soul, and also the hunger of my bowels.”
Let thy virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if thou
must speak of it, be not ashamed to stammer about it.
Thus speak and stammer: “That is MY good, that do I love, thus doth it
please me entirely, thus only do _I_ desire the good.
Not as the law of a God do I desire it, not as a human law or a human
need do I desire it; it is not to be a guide-post for me to superearths
and paradises.
An earthly virtue is it which I love: little prudence is therein, and
the least everyday wisdom.
But that bird built its nest beside me: therefore, I love and cherish
it—now sitteth it beside me on its golden eggs.”
Thus shouldst thou stammer, and praise thy virtue.
Once hadst thou passions and calledst them evil. But now hast thou only
thy virtues: they grew out of thy passions.
Thou implantedst thy highest aim into the heart of those passions: then
became they thy virtues and joys.
And though thou wert of the race of the hot-tempered, or of the
voluptuous, or of the fanatical, or the vindictive;
All thy passions in the end became virtues, and all thy devils angels.
Once hadst thou wild dogs in thy cellar: but they changed at last into
birds and charming songstresses.
Out of thy poisons brewedst thou balsam for thyself; thy cow,
affliction, milkedst thou—now drinketh thou the sweet milk of her
udder.
And nothing evil groweth in thee any longer, unless it be the evil that
groweth out of the conflict of thy virtues.
My brother, if thou be fortunate, then wilt thou have one virtue and no
more: thus goest thou easier over the bridge.
Illustrious is it to have many virtues, but a hard lot; and many a one
hath gone into the wilderness and killed himself, because he was weary
of being the battle and battlefield of virtues.
My brother, are war and battle evil? Necessary, however, is the evil;
necessary are the envy and the distrust and the back-biting among the
virtues.
Lo! how each of thy virtues is covetous of the highest place; it wanteth
thy whole spirit to be ITS herald, it wanteth thy whole power, in wrath,
hatred, and love.
Jealous is every virtue of the others, and a dreadful thing is jealousy.
Even virtues may succumb by jealousy.
He whom the flame of jealousy encompasseth, turneth at last, like the
scorpion, the poisoned sting against himself.
Ah! my brother, hast thou never seen a virtue backbite and stab itself?
Man is something that hath to be surpassed: and therefore shalt thou
love thy virtues,—for thou wilt succumb by them.—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
VI. THE PALE CRIMINAL.
Ye do not mean to slay, ye judges and sacrificers, until the animal hath
bowed its head? Lo! the pale criminal hath bowed his head: out of his
eye speaketh the great contempt.
“Mine ego is something which is to be surpassed: mine ego is to me the
great contempt of man”: so speaketh it out of that eye.
When he judged himself—that was his supreme moment; let not the exalted
one relapse again into his low estate!
There is no salvation for him who thus suffereth from himself, unless it
be speedy death.
Your slaying, ye judges, shall be pity, and not revenge; and in that ye
slay, see to it that ye yourselves justify life!
It is not enough that ye should reconcile with him whom ye slay. Let
your sorrow be love to the Superman: thus will ye justify your own
survival!
“Enemy” shall ye say but not “villain,” “invalid” shall ye say but not
“wretch,” “fool” shall ye say but not “sinner.”
And thou, red judge, if thou would say audibly all thou hast done in
thought, then would every one cry: “Away with the nastiness and the
virulent reptile!”
But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another
thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll
between them.
An idea made this pale man pale. Adequate was he for his deed when he
did it, but the idea of it, he could not endure when it was done.
Evermore did he now see himself as the doer of one deed. Madness, I call
this: the exception reversed itself to the rule in him.
The streak of chalk bewitcheth the hen; the stroke he struck bewitched
his weak reason. Madness AFTER the deed, I call this.
Hearken, ye judges! There is another madness besides, and it is BEFORE
the deed. Ah! ye have not gone deep enough into this soul!
Thus speaketh the red judge: “Why did this criminal commit murder? He
meant to rob.” I tell you, however, that his soul wanted blood, not
booty: he thirsted for the happiness of the knife!
But his weak reason understood not this madness, and it persuaded him.
“What matter about blood!” it said; “wishest thou not, at least, to make
booty thereby? Or take revenge?”
And he hearkened unto his weak reason: like lead lay its words upon
him—thereupon he robbed when he murdered. He did not mean to be
ashamed of his madness.
And now once more lieth the lead of his guilt upon him, and once more is
his weak reason so benumbed, so paralysed, and so dull.
Could he only shake his head, then would his burden roll off; but who
shaketh that head?
What is this man? A mass of diseases that reach out into the world
through the spirit; there they want to get their prey.
What is this man? A coil of wild serpents that are seldom at peace among
themselves—so they go forth apart and seek prey in the world.
Look at that poor body! What it suffered and craved, the poor soul
interpreted to itself—it interpreted it as murderous desire, and
eagerness for the happiness of the knife.
Him who now turneth sick, the evil overtaketh which is now the evil: he
seeketh to cause pain with that which causeth him pain. But there have
been other ages, and another evil and good.
Once was doubt evil, and the will to Self. Then the invalid became a
heretic or sorcerer; as heretic or sorcerer he suffered, and sought to
cause suffering.
But this will not enter your ears; it hurteth your good people, ye tell
me. But what doth it matter to me about your good people!
Many things in your good people cause me disgust, and verily, not their
evil. I would that they had a madness by which they succumbed, like this
pale criminal!
Verily, I would that their madness were called truth, or fidelity,
or justice: but they have their virtue in order to live long, and in
wretched self-complacency.
I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me may
grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not.—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
VII. READING AND WRITING.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his
blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.
It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading
idlers.
He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another
century of readers—and spirit itself will stink.
Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not
only writing but also thinking.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becometh
populace.
He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but
learnt by heart.
In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that
route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those
spoken to should be big and tall.
The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a
joyful wickedness: thus are things well matched.
I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous. The courage which
scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins—it wanteth to laugh.
I no longer feel in common with you; the very cloud which I see
beneath me, the blackness and heaviness at which I laugh—that is your
thunder-cloud.
Ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation; and I look downward because I
am exalted.
Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted?
He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays
and tragic realities.
Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive—so wisdom wisheth us; she
is a woman, and ever loveth only a warrior.
Ye tell me, “Life is hard to bear.” But for what purpose should ye have
your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?
Life is hard to bear: but do not affect to be so delicate! We are all of
us fine sumpter asses and assesses.
What have we in common with the rose-bud, which trembleth because a drop
of dew hath formed upon it?
It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we
are wont to love.
There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some
method in madness.
And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles,
and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness.
To see these light, foolish, pretty, lively little sprites flit
about—that moveth Zarathustra to tears and songs.
I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.
And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound,
solemn: he was the spirit of gravity—through him all things fall.
Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit
of gravity!
I learned to walk; since then have I let myself run. I learned to fly;
since then I do not need pushing in order to move from a spot.
Now am I light, now do I fly; now do I see myself under myself. Now
there danceth a God in me.—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
VIII. THE TREE ON THE HILL.
Zarathustra’s eye had perceived that a certain youth avoided him. And as
he walked alone one evening over the hills surrounding the town called
“The Pied Cow,” behold, there found he the youth sitting leaning against
a tree, and gazing with wearied look into the valley. Zarathustra
thereupon laid hold of the tree beside which the youth sat, and spake
thus:
“If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to
do so.
But the wind, which we see not, troubleth and bendeth it as it listeth.
We are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands.”
Thereupon the youth arose disconcerted, and said: “I hear Zarathustra,
and just now was I thinking of him!” Zarathustra answered:
“Why art thou frightened on that account?—But it is the same with man
as with the tree.
The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more
vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and
deep—into the evil.”
“Yea, into the evil!” cried the youth. “How is it possible that thou
hast discovered my soul?”
Zarathustra smiled, and said: “Many a soul one will never discover,
unless one first invent it.”
“Yea, into the evil!” cried the youth once more.
“Thou saidst the truth, Zarathustra. I trust myself no longer since I
sought to rise into the height, and nobody trusteth me any longer; how
doth that happen?
I change too quickly: my to-day refuteth my yesterday. I often overleap
the steps when I clamber; for so doing, none of the steps pardons me.
When aloft, I find myself always alone. No one speaketh unto me; the
frost of solitude maketh me tremble. What do I seek on the height?
My contempt and my longing increase together; the higher I clamber, the
more do I despise him who clambereth. What doth he seek on the height?
How ashamed I am of my clambering and stumbling! How I mock at my
violent panting! How I hate him who flieth! How tired I am on the
height!”
Here the youth was silent. And Zarathustra contemplated the tree beside
which they stood, and spake thus:
“This tree standeth lonely here on the hills; it hath grown up high
above man and beast.
And if it wanted to speak, it would have none who could understand it:
so high hath it grown.
Now it waiteth and waiteth,—for what doth it wait? It dwelleth too
close to the seat of the clouds; it waiteth perhaps for the first
lightning?”
When Zarathustra had said this, the youth called out with violent
gestures: “Yea, Zarathustra, thou speakest the truth. My destruction
I longed for, when I desired to be on the height, and thou art the
lightning for which I waited! Lo! what have I been since thou hast
appeared amongst us? It is mine envy of thee that hath destroyed
me!”—Thus spake the youth, and wept bitterly. Zarathustra, however, put
his arm about him, and led the youth away with him.
And when they had walked a while together, Zarathustra began to speak
thus:
It rendeth my heart. Better than thy words express it, thine eyes tell
me all thy danger.
As yet thou art not free; thou still SEEKEST freedom. Too unslept hath
thy seeking made thee, and too wakeful.
On the open height wouldst thou be; for the stars thirsteth thy soul.
But thy bad impulses also thirst for freedom.
Thy wild dogs want liberty; they bark for joy in their cellar when thy
spirit endeavoureth to open all prison doors.
Still art thou a prisoner—it seemeth to me—who deviseth liberty
for himself: ah! sharp becometh the soul of such prisoners, but also
deceitful and wicked.
To purify himself, is still necessary for the freedman of the spirit.
Much of the prison and the mould still remaineth in him: pure hath his
eye still to become.
Yea, I know thy danger. But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not
thy love and hope away!
Noble thou feelest thyself still, and noble others also feel thee still,
though they bear thee a grudge and cast evil looks. Know this, that to
everybody a noble one standeth in the way.
Also to the good, a noble one standeth in the way: and even when they
call him a good man, they want thereby to put him aside.
The new, would the noble man create, and a new virtue. The old, wanteth
the good man, and that the old should be conserved.
But it is not the danger of the noble man to turn a good man, but lest
he should become a blusterer, a scoffer, or a destroyer.
Ah! I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope. And then they
disparaged all high hopes.
Then lived they shamelessly in temporary pleasures, and beyond the day
had hardly an aim.
“Spirit is also voluptuousness,”—said they. Then broke the wings of
their spirit; and now it creepeth about, and defileth where it gnaweth.
Once they thought of becoming heroes; but sensualists are they now. A
trouble and a terror is the hero to them.
But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not away the hero in thy
soul! Maintain holy thy highest hope!—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
IX. THE PREACHERS OF DEATH.
There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom
desistance from life must be preached.
Full is the earth of the superfluous; marred is life by the
many-too-many. May they be decoyed out of this life by the “life
eternal”!
“The yellow ones”: so are called the preachers of death, or “the black
ones.” But I will show them unto you in other colours besides.
There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of
prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their
lusts are self-laceration.
They have not yet become men, those terrible ones: may they preach
desistance from life, and pass away themselves!
There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when
they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation.
They would fain be dead, and we should approve of their wish! Let
us beware of awakening those dead ones, and of damaging those living
coffins!
They meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse—and immediately they
say: “Life is refuted!”
But they only are refuted, and their eye, which seeth only one aspect of
existence.
Shrouded in thick melancholy, and eager for the little casualties that
bring death: thus do they wait, and clench their teeth.
Or else, they grasp at sweetmeats, and mock at their childishness
thereby: they cling to their straw of life, and mock at their still
clinging to it.
Their wisdom speaketh thus: “A fool, he who remaineth alive; but so far
are we fools! And that is the foolishest thing in life!”
“Life is only suffering”: so say others, and lie not. Then see to it
that YE cease! See to it that the life ceaseth which is only suffering!
And let this be the teaching of your virtue: “Thou shalt slay thyself!
Thou shalt steal away from thyself!”—
“Lust is sin,”—so say some who preach death—“let us go apart and beget
no children!”
“Giving birth is troublesome,”—say others—“why still give birth? One
beareth only the unfortunate!” And they also are preachers of death.
“Pity is necessary,”—so saith a third party. “Take what I have! Take
what I am! So much less doth life bind me!”
Were they consistently pitiful, then would they make their neighbours
sick of life. To be wicked—that would be their true goodness.
But they want to be rid of life; what care they if they bind others
still faster with their chains and gifts!—
And ye also, to whom life is rough labour and disquiet, are ye not very
tired of life? Are ye not very ripe for the sermon of death?
All ye to whom rough labour is dear, and the rapid, new, and strange—ye
put up with yourselves badly; your diligence is flight, and the will to
self-forgetfulness.
If ye believed more in life, then would ye devote yourselves less to the
momentary. But for waiting, ye have not enough of capacity in you—nor
even for idling!
Everywhere resoundeth the voices of those who preach death; and the
earth is full of those to whom death hath to be preached.
Or “life eternal”; it is all the same to me—if only they pass away
quickly!—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
X. WAR AND WARRIORS.
By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either
whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth!
My brethren in war! I love you from the very heart. I am, and was ever,
your counterpart. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the
truth!
I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. Ye are not great enough not
to know of hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of
them!
And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least
its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship.
I see many soldiers; could I but see many warriors! “Uniform” one
calleth what they wear; may it not be uniform what they therewith hide!
Ye shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy—for YOUR enemy. And
with some of you there is hatred at first sight.
Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of
your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb, your uprightness shall
still shout triumph thereby!
Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more
than the long.
You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, but
to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory!
One can only be silent and sit peacefully when one hath arrow and bow;
otherwise one prateth and quarrelleth. Let your peace be a victory!
Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it
is the good war which halloweth every cause.
War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your
sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved the victims.
“What is good?” ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say:
“To be good is what is pretty, and at the same time touching.”
They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the
bashfulness of your good-will. Ye are ashamed of your flow, and others
are ashamed of their ebb.
Ye are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime about you, the
mantle of the ugly!
And when your soul becometh great, then doth it become haughty, and in
your sublimity there is wickedness. I know you.
In wickedness the haughty man and the weakling meet. But they
misunderstand one another. I know you.
Ye shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised.
Ye must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies
are also your successes.
Resistance—that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction
be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying!
To the good warrior soundeth “thou shalt” pleasanter than “I will.” And
all that is dear unto you, ye shall first have it commanded unto you.
Let your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest
hope be the highest thought of life!
Your highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded unto you by
me—and it is this: man is something that is to be surpassed.
So live your life of obedience and of war! What matter about long life!
What warrior wisheth to be spared!
I spare you not, I love you from my very heart, my brethren in war!—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XI. THE NEW IDOL.
Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my
brethren: here there are states.
A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I
say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples.
A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth
it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: “I, the state, am the
people.”
It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith
and a love over them: thus they served life.
Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state:
they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.
Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but
hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.
This sign I give unto you: every people speaketh its language of good
and evil: this its neighbour understandeth not. Its language hath it
devised for itself in laws and customs.
But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it
saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen.
False is everything in it; with stolen teeth it biteth, the biting one.
False are even its bowels.
Confusion of language of good and evil; this sign I give unto you as
the sign of the state. Verily, the will to death, indicateth this sign!
Verily, it beckoneth unto the preachers of death!
Many too many are born: for the superfluous ones was the state devised!
See just how it enticeth them to it, the many-too-many! How it
swalloweth and cheweth and recheweth them!
“On earth there is nothing greater than I: it is I who am the regulating
finger of God”—thus roareth the monster. And not only the long-eared
and short-sighted fall upon their knees!
Ah! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its gloomy lies!
Ah! it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves!
Yea, it findeth you out too, ye conquerors of the old God! Weary ye
became of the conflict, and now your weariness serveth the new idol!
Heroes and honourable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new
idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good consciences,—the cold
monster!
Everything will it give YOU, if YE worship it, the new idol: thus it
purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes.
It seeketh to allure by means of you, the many-too-many! Yea, a hellish
artifice hath here been devised, a death-horse jingling with the
trappings of divine honours!
Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as
life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death!
The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the
bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the
state, where the slow suicide of all—is called “life.”
Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors
and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft—and
everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them!
Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their
bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even
digest themselves.
Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer
thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much
money—these impotent ones!
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and
thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss.
Towards the throne they all strive: it is their madness—as if happiness
sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne.—and ofttimes
also the throne on filth.
Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly
smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me,
these idolaters.
My brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites!
Better break the windows and jump into the open air!
Do go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the idolatry of the
superfluous!
Do go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the steam of these
human sacrifices!
Open still remaineth the earth for great souls. Empty are still many
sites for lone ones and twain ones, around which floateth the odour of
tranquil seas.
Open still remaineth a free life for great souls. Verily, he who
possesseth little is so much the less possessed: blessed be moderate
poverty!
There, where the state ceaseth—there only commenceth the man who is not
superfluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single
and irreplaceable melody.
There, where the state CEASETH—pray look thither, my brethren! Do ye
not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman?—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XII. THE FLIES IN THE MARKET-PLACE.
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude! I see thee deafened with the noise
of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones.
Admirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with thee. Resemble
again the tree which thou lovest, the broad-branched one—silently and
attentively it o’erhangeth the sea.
Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the
market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great
actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.
In the world even the best things are worthless without those who
represent them: those representers, the people call great men.
Little do the people understand what is great—that is to say, the
creating agency. But they have a taste for all representers and actors
of great things.
Around the devisers of new values revolveth the world:—invisibly it
revolveth. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such
is the course of things.
Spirit, hath the actor, but little conscience of the spirit. He
believeth always in that wherewith he maketh believe most strongly—in
HIMSELF!
To-morrow he hath a new belief, and the day after, one still newer. Sharp
perceptions hath he, like the people, and changeable humours.
To upset—that meaneth with him to prove. To drive mad—that meaneth
with him to convince. And blood is counted by him as the best of all
arguments.
A truth which only glideth into fine ears, he calleth falsehood and
trumpery. Verily, he believeth only in Gods that make a great noise in
the world!
Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place,—and the people glory
in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour.
But the hour presseth them; so they press thee. And also from thee
they want Yea or Nay. Alas! thou wouldst set thy chair betwixt For and
Against?
On account of those absolute and impatient ones, be not jealous, thou
lover of truth! Never yet did truth cling to the arm of an absolute one.
On account of those abrupt ones, return into thy security: only in the
market-place is one assailed by Yea? or Nay?
Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait
until they know WHAT hath fallen into their depths.
Away from the market-place and from fame taketh place all that is great:
away from the market-place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of
new values.
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude: I see thee stung all over by the
poisonous flies. Flee thither, where a rough, strong breeze bloweth!
Flee into thy solitude! Thou hast lived too closely to the small and the
pitiable. Flee from their invisible vengeance! Towards thee they have
nothing but vengeance.
Raise no longer an arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not
thy lot to be a fly-flap.
Innumerable are the small and pitiable ones; and of many a proud
structure, rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin.
Thou art not stone; but already hast thou become hollow by the numerous
drops. Thou wilt yet break and burst by the numerous drops.
Exhausted I see thee, by poisonous flies; bleeding I see thee, and torn
at a hundred spots; and thy pride will not even upbraid.
Blood they would have from thee in all innocence; blood their bloodless
souls crave for—and they sting, therefore, in all innocence.
But thou, profound one, thou sufferest too profoundly even from small
wounds; and ere thou hadst recovered, the same poison-worm crawled over
thy hand.
Too proud art thou to kill these sweet-tooths. But take care lest it be
thy fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice!
They buzz around thee also with their praise: obtrusiveness, is their
praise. They want to be close to thy skin and thy blood.
They flatter thee, as one flattereth a God or devil; they whimper before
thee, as before a God or devil. What doth it come to! Flatterers are
they, and whimperers, and nothing more.
Often, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable ones. But that
hath ever been the prudence of the cowardly. Yea! the cowardly are wise!
They think much about thee with their circumscribed souls—thou art
always suspected by them! Whatever is much thought about is at last
thought suspicious.
They punish thee for all thy virtues. They pardon thee in their inmost
hearts only—for thine errors.
Because thou art gentle and of upright character, thou sayest:
“Blameless are they for their small existence.” But their circumscribed
souls think: “Blamable is all great existence.”
Even when thou art gentle towards them, they still feel themselves
despised by thee; and they repay thy beneficence with secret
maleficence.
Thy silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice if once
thou be humble enough to be frivolous.
What we recognise in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on
your guard against the small ones!
In thy presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleameth
and gloweth against thee in invisible vengeance.
Sawest thou not how often they became dumb when thou approachedst them,
and how their energy left them like the smoke of an extinguishing fire?
Yea, my friend, the bad conscience art thou of thy neighbours; for they
are unworthy of thee. Therefore they hate thee, and would fain suck thy
blood.
Thy neighbours will always be poisonous flies; what is great in
thee—that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more
fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude—and thither, where a rough strong
breeze bloweth. It is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XIII. CHASTITY.
I love the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there, there are too
many of the lustful.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the
dreams of a lustful woman?
And just look at these men: their eye saith it—they know nothing better
on earth than to lie with a woman.
Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! if their filth hath
still spirit in it!
Would that ye were perfect—at least as animals! But to animals
belongeth innocence.
Do I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel you to innocence in
your instincts.
Do I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue with some, but with
many almost a vice.
These are continent, to be sure: but doggish lust looketh enviously out
of all that they do.
Even into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit doth
this creature follow them, with its discord.
And how nicely can doggish lust beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece
of flesh is denied it!
Ye love tragedies and all that breaketh the heart? But I am distrustful
of your doggish lust.
Ye have too cruel eyes, and ye look wantonly towards the sufferers.
Hath not your lust just disguised itself and taken the name of
fellow-suffering?
And also this parable give I unto you: Not a few who meant to cast out
their devil, went thereby into the swine themselves.
To whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded: lest it become the
road to hell—to filth and lust of soul.
Do I speak of filthy things? That is not the worst thing for me to do.
Not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, doth the
discerning one go unwillingly into its waters.
Verily, there are chaste ones from their very nature; they are gentler
of heart, and laugh better and oftener than you.
They laugh also at chastity, and ask: “What is chastity?
Is chastity not folly? But the folly came unto us, and not we unto it.
We offered that guest harbour and heart: now it dwelleth with us—let it
stay as long as it will!”—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XIV. THE FRIEND.
“One, is always too many about me”—thinketh the anchorite. “Always once
one—that maketh two in the long run!”
I and me are always too earnestly in conversation: how could it be
endured, if there were not a friend?
The friend of the anchorite is always the third one: the third one is
the cork which preventeth the conversation of the two sinking into the
depth.
Ah! there are too many depths for all anchorites. Therefore, do they
long so much for a friend, and for his elevation.
Our faith in others betrayeth wherein we would fain have faith in
ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we
attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.
“Be at least mine enemy!”—thus speaketh the true reverence, which doth
not venture to solicit friendship.
If one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war
for him: and in order to wage war, one must be CAPABLE of being an
enemy.
One ought still to honour the enemy in one’s friend. Canst thou go nigh
unto thy friend, and not go over to him?
In one’s friend one shall have one’s best enemy. Thou shalt be closest
unto him with thy heart when thou withstandest him.
Thou wouldst wear no raiment before thy friend? It is in honour of thy
friend that thou showest thyself to him as thou art? But he wisheth thee
to the devil on that account!
He who maketh no secret of himself shocketh: so much reason have ye
to fear nakedness! Aye, if ye were Gods, ye could then be ashamed of
clothing!
Thou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend; for thou shalt
be unto him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.
Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep—to know how he looketh? What is
usually the countenance of thy friend? It is thine own countenance, in a
coarse and imperfect mirror.
Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep? Wert thou not dismayed at thy friend
looking so? O my friend, man is something that hath to be surpassed.
In divining and keeping silence shall the friend be a master: not
everything must thou wish to see. Thy dream shall disclose unto thee
what thy friend doeth when awake.
Let thy pity be a divining: to know first if thy friend wanteth pity.
Perhaps he loveth in thee the unmoved eye, and the look of eternity.
Let thy pity for thy friend be hid under a hard shell; thou shalt bite
out a tooth upon it. Thus will it have delicacy and sweetness.
Art thou pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to thy friend?
Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his
friend’s emancipator.
Art thou a slave? Then thou canst not be a friend. Art thou a tyrant?
Then thou canst not have friends.
Far too long hath there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman.
On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knoweth only
love.
In woman’s love there is injustice and blindness to all she doth not
love. And even in woman’s conscious love, there is still always surprise
and lightning and night, along with the light.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship: women are still cats, and
birds. Or at the best, cows.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship. But tell me, ye men, who of
you are capable of friendship?
Oh! your poverty, ye men, and your sordidness of soul! As much as ye
give to your friend, will I give even to my foe, and will not have
become poorer thereby.
There is comradeship: may there be friendship!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XV. THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS.
Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: thus he discovered the
good and bad of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on
earth than good and bad.
No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain
itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour valueth.
Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and
contempt by another: thus I found it. Much found I here called bad,
which was there decked with purple honours.
Never did the one neighbour understand the other: ever did his soul
marvel at his neighbour’s delusion and wickedness.
A table of excellencies hangeth over every people. Lo! it is the table
of their triumphs; lo! it is the voice of their Will to Power.
It is laudable, what they think hard; what is indispensable and hard
they call good; and what relieveth in the direst distress, the unique
and hardest of all,—they extol as holy.
Whatever maketh them rule and conquer and shine, to the dismay and envy
of their neighbours, they regard as the high and foremost thing, the
test and the meaning of all else.
Verily, my brother, if thou knewest but a people’s need, its land,
its sky, and its neighbour, then wouldst thou divine the law of its
surmountings, and why it climbeth up that ladder to its hope.
“Always shalt thou be the foremost and prominent above others: no one
shall thy jealous soul love, except a friend”—that made the soul of a
Greek thrill: thereby went he his way to greatness.
“To speak truth, and be skilful with bow and arrow”—so seemed it alike
pleasing and hard to the people from whom cometh my name—the name which
is alike pleasing and hard to me.
“To honour father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their
will”—this table of surmounting hung another people over them, and
became powerful and permanent thereby.
“To have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honour and
blood, even in evil and dangerous courses”—teaching itself so, another
people mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and
heavy with great hopes.
Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily,
they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice
from heaven.
Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself—he
created only the significance of things, a human significance!
Therefore, calleth he himself “man,” that is, the valuator.
Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! Valuation itself is the
treasure and jewel of the valued things.
Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of
existence would be hollow. Hear it, ye creating ones!
Change of values—that is, change of the creating ones. Always doth he
destroy who hath to be a creator.
Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times
individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest
creation.
Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule
and love which would obey, created for themselves such tables.
Older is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the ego: and as
long as the good conscience is for the herd, the bad conscience only
saith: ego.
Verily, the crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeketh its advantage in
the advantage of many—it is not the origin of the herd, but its ruin.
Loving ones, was it always, and creating ones, that created good and
bad. Fire of love gloweth in the names of all the virtues, and fire of
wrath.
Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did
Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones—“good”
and “bad” are they called.
Verily, a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me, ye
brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put a fetter upon the
thousand necks of this animal?
A thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples have
there been. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking;
there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity hath not a goal.
But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking,
is there not also still lacking—humanity itself?—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XVI. NEIGHBOUR-LOVE.
Ye crowd around your neighbour, and have fine words for it. But I say
unto you: your neighbour-love is your bad love of yourselves.
Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a
virtue thereof: but I fathom your “unselfishness.”
The THOU is older than the _I_; the THOU hath been consecrated, but not
yet the _I_: so man presseth nigh unto his neighbour.
Do I advise you to neighbour-love? Rather do I advise you to
neighbour-flight and to furthest love!
Higher than love to your neighbour is love to the furthest and future
ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms.
The phantom that runneth on before thee, my brother, is fairer than
thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou
fearest, and runnest unto thy neighbour.
Ye cannot endure it with yourselves, and do not love yourselves
sufficiently: so ye seek to mislead your neighbour into love, and would
fain gild yourselves with his error.
Would that ye could not endure it with any kind of near ones, or their
neighbours; then would ye have to create your friend and his overflowing
heart out of yourselves.
Ye call in a witness when ye want to speak well of yourselves; and
when ye have misled him to think well of you, ye also think well of
yourselves.
Not only doth he lie, who speaketh contrary to his knowledge, but more
so, he who speaketh contrary to his ignorance. And thus speak ye
of yourselves in your intercourse, and belie your neighbour with
yourselves.
Thus saith the fool: “Association with men spoileth the character,
especially when one hath none.”
The one goeth to his neighbour because he seeketh himself, and the other
because he would fain lose himself. Your bad love to yourselves maketh
solitude a prison to you.
The furthest ones are they who pay for your love to the near ones; and
when there are but five of you together, a sixth must always die.
I love not your festivals either: too many actors found I there, and
even the spectators often behaved like actors.
Not the neighbour do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the
festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman.
I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how
to be a sponge, if one would be loved by overflowing hearts.
I teach you the friend in whom the world standeth complete, a capsule
of the good,—the creating friend, who hath always a complete world to
bestow.
And as the world unrolled itself for him, so rolleth it together again
for him in rings, as the growth of good through evil, as the growth of
purpose out of chance.
Let the future and the furthest be the motive of thy to-day; in thy
friend shalt thou love the Superman as thy motive.
My brethren, I advise you not to neighbour-love—I advise you to
furthest love!—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XVII. THE WAY OF THE CREATING ONE.
Wouldst thou go into isolation, my brother? Wouldst t