﻿SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman--what then? Is there not ground
for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been
dogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terrible
seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid
their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for
winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and
at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien--IF,
indeed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that it
has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground--nay more, that it is at
its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping
that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive
and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism
and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once
and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed for the basis of such
imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have
hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time
(such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subject- and
ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief): perhaps some
play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an
audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, very
human--all-too-human facts. The philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to
be hoped, was only a promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was
astrology in still earlier times, in the service of which probably more
labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any
actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its "super-terrestrial"
pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of architecture. It seems
that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with
everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the
earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has
been a caricature of this kind--for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in
Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although
it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome,
and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist
error--namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself.
But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare,
can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier--sleep,
we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength
which the struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted to
the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the PERSPECTIVE--the
fundamental condition--of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato
spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: "How did such a
malady attack that finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked
Socrates really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of
youths, and deserved his hemlock?" But the struggle against Plato,
or--to speak plainer, and for the "people"--the struggle against
the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR
CHRISTIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE "PEOPLE"), produced in Europe
a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere
previously; with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the
furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this tension as
a state of distress, and twice attempts have been made in grand style to
unbend the bow: once by means of Jesuitism, and the second time by means
of democratic enlightenment--which, with the aid of liberty of the press
and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit
would not so easily find itself in "distress"! (The Germans invented
gunpowder--all credit to them! but they again made things square--they
invented printing.) But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats,
nor even sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and free, VERY free
spirits--we have it still, all the distress of spirit and all the
tension of its bow! And perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who
knows? THE GOAL TO AIM AT....

Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885.




CHAPTER I. PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS


1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous
enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have
hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not
laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is
already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is
it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn
impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions
ourselves? WHO is it really that puts questions to us here? WHAT really
is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long halt at the
question as to the origin of this Will--until at last we came to an
absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired
about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT
RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the
value of truth presented itself before us--or was it we who presented
ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which
the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of
interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as
if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first
to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk
in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.

2. "HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth
out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the
generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the
wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams
of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest
value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own--in this
transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of
delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in
the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the
'Thing-in-itself--THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!"--This
mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which
metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation
is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this "belief" of
theirs, they exert themselves for their "knowledge," for something that
is in the end solemnly christened "the Truth." The fundamental belief of
metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred
even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where
doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn
vow, "DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM." For it may be doubted, firstly, whether
antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations
and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their
seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional
perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from
below--"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression current
among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the true,
the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher
and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to
pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It
might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and
respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously
related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed
things--perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps!
But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "Perhapses"!
For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of
philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the
reverse of those hitherto prevalent--philosophers of the dangerous
"Perhaps" in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I
see such new philosophers beginning to appear.

3. Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between
their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the greater part of
conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and
it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to
learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and "innateness." As
little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process
and procedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" OPPOSED
to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the
conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his
instincts, and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and
its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak
more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite
mode of life For example, that the certain is worth more than the
uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than "truth" such valuations,
in spite of their regulative importance for US, might notwithstanding be
only superficial valuations, special kinds of _niaiserie_, such as may
be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing,
in effect, that man is not just the "measure of things."

4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is
here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The
question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving,
species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally
inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic
judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that
without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of
reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable,
without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers,
man could not live--that the renunciation of false opinions would be
a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A
CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of
value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so,
has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.

5. That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully
and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they
are--how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in
short, how childish and childlike they are,--but that there is not
enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and
virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in
the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had
been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure,
divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics,
who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a
prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally
their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with
arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not
wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their
prejudices, which they dub "truths,"--and VERY far from having the
conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having
the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be
understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence
and self-ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally
stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic
by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical
imperative"--makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small
amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical
preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by
means of which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and
mask--in fact, the "love of HIS wisdom," to translate the term fairly
and squarely--in order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart
of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on that invincible
maiden, that Pallas Athene:--how much of personal timidity and
vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray!

6. It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up
till now has consisted of--namely, the confession of its originator, and
a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover
that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted
the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.
Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a
philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first
ask oneself: "What morality do they (or does he) aim at?" Accordingly,
I do not believe that an "impulse to knowledge" is the father of
philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made
use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. But whoever
considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining
how far they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and
cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time
or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to
look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate
LORD over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and as
SUCH, attempts to philosophize. To be sure, in the case of scholars, in
the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise--"better," if
you will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to
knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well
wound up, works away industriously to that end, WITHOUT the rest of
the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein. The actual
"interests" of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another
direction--in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics;
it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little
machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a
good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not
CHARACTERISED by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on the
contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all,
his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE
IS,--that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature
stand to each other.

7. How malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothing more stinging
than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the
Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense,
and on the face of it, the word signifies "Flatterers of
Dionysius"--consequently, tyrants' accessories and lick-spittles;
besides this, however, it is as much as to say, "They are all ACTORS,
there is nothing genuine about them" (for Dionysiokolax was a popular
name for an actor). And the latter is really the malignant reproach that
Epicurus cast upon Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the
mise en scene style of which Plato and his scholars were masters--of
which Epicurus was not a master! He, the old school-teacher of Samos,
who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens, and wrote three
hundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of Plato, who
knows! Greece took a hundred years to find out who the garden-god
Epicurus really was. Did she ever find out?

8. There is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of
the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an
ancient mystery:

Adventavit asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus.

9. You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what
fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly
extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration,
without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain:
imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power--how COULD you live
in accordance with such indifference? To live--is not that just
endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing,
preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different?
And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means
actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do
DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves
are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you:
while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature,
you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players
and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and
ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein;
you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would
like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal
glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth,
you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such
hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically,
that you are no longer able to see it otherwise--and to crown all, some
unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that
BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves--Stoicism is
self-tyranny--Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is
not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting
story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today,
as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always
creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy
is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the
will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.

10. The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness, with
which the problem of "the real and the apparent world" is dealt with at
present throughout Europe, furnishes food for thought and attention; and
he who hears only a "Will to Truth" in the background, and nothing else,
cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated
cases, it may really have happened that such a Will to Truth--a certain
extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the
forlorn hope--has participated therein: that which in the end always
prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful
possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience,
who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an
uncertain something. But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing,
mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a
virtue may display. It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger
and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they side
AGAINST appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in
that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the
credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and
thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession
to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than
in one's body?),--who knows if they are not really trying to win back
something which was formerly an even securer possession, something
of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal
soul," perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they could live
better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by
"modern ideas"? There is DISTRUST of these modern ideas in this mode
of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed
yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety
and scorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the
most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on
the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair
motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom
there is nothing either new or true, except this motleyness. Therein it
seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists and
knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct, which repels
them from MODERN reality, is unrefuted... what do their retrograde
by-paths concern us! The main thing about them is NOT that they wish
to go "back," but that they wish to get AWAY therefrom. A little MORE
strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they would be OFF--and
not back!

11. It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at present to
divert attention from the actual influence which Kant exercised on
German philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently the value which
he set upon himself. Kant was first and foremost proud of his Table of
Categories; with it in his hand he said: "This is the most difficult
thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics." Let us
only understand this "could be"! He was proud of having DISCOVERED a
new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori. Granting
that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid
flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and
on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible
something--at all events "new faculties"--of which to be still
prouder!--But let us reflect for a moment--it is high time to do so.
"How are synthetic judgments a priori POSSIBLE?" Kant asks himself--and
what is really his answer? "BY MEANS OF A MEANS (faculty)"--but
unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly,
and with such display of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that
one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved
in such an answer. People were beside themselves with delight over this
new faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when Kant further
discovered a moral faculty in man--for at that time Germans were still
moral, not yet dabbling in the "Politics of hard fact." Then came
the honeymoon of German philosophy. All the young theologians of the
Tubingen institution went immediately into the groves--all seeking for
"faculties." And what did they not find--in that innocent, rich, and
still youthful period of the German spirit, to which Romanticism, the
malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet distinguish
between "finding" and "inventing"! Above all a faculty for the
"transcendental"; Schelling christened it, intellectual intuition,
and thereby gratified the most earnest longings of the naturally
pious-inclined Germans. One can do no greater wrong to the whole of
this exuberant and eccentric movement (which was really youthfulness,
notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly, in hoary and senile
conceptions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it with moral
indignation. Enough, however--the world grew older, and the dream
vanished. A time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still
rub them today. People had been dreaming, and first and foremost--old
Kant. "By means of a means (faculty)"--he had said, or at least meant to
say. But, is that--an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely
a repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep? "By means of
a means (faculty)," namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor in
Moliere,

    Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva,
    Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.

But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time
to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic judgments a PRIORI
possible?" by another question, "Why is belief in such judgments
necessary?"--in effect, it is high time that we should understand
that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the
preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might
naturally be false judgments! Or, more plainly spoken, and roughly and
readily--synthetic judgments a priori should not "be possible" at all;
we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false
judgments. Only, of course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as
plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective view
of life. And finally, to call to mind the enormous influence which
"German philosophy"--I hope you understand its right to inverted commas
(goosefeet)?--has exercised throughout the whole of Europe, there is
no doubt that a certain VIRTUS DORMITIVA had a share in it; thanks to
German philosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the virtuous,
the mystics, the artiste, the three-fourths Christians, and the
political obscurantists of all nations, to find an antidote to the still
overwhelming sensualism which overflowed from the last century into
this, in short--"sensus assoupire."...

12. As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the best-refuted
theories that have been advanced, and in Europe there is now perhaps
no one in the learned world so unscholarly as to attach serious
signification to it, except for convenient everyday use (as an
abbreviation of the means of expression)--thanks chiefly to the Pole
Boscovich: he and the Pole Copernicus have hitherto been the greatest
and most successful opponents of ocular evidence. For while Copernicus
has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth
does NOT stand fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the
last thing that "stood fast" of the earth--the belief in "substance," in
"matter," in the earth-residuum, and particle-atom: it is the greatest
triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. One
must, however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war
to the knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a
dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the more
celebrated "metaphysical requirements": one must also above all give
the finishing stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which
Christianity has taught best and longest, the SOUL-ATOMISM. Let it be
permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the
soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad,
as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science! Between
ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby,
and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses--as
happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can hardly
touch on the soul without immediately losing it. But the way is open
for new acceptations and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such
conceptions as "mortal soul," and "soul of subjective multiplicity,"
and "soul as social structure of the instincts and passions," want
henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. In that the NEW
psychologist is about to put an end to the superstitions which have
hitherto flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of
the soul, he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a new desert
and a new distrust--it is possible that the older psychologists had a
merrier and more comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he finds
that precisely thereby he is also condemned to INVENT--and, who knows?
perhaps to DISCOVER the new.

13. Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the
instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic
being. A living thing seeks above all to DISCHARGE its strength--life
itself is WILL TO POWER; self-preservation is only one of the indirect
and most frequent RESULTS thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else,
let us beware of SUPERFLUOUS teleological principles!--one of which
is the instinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's
inconsistency). It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must
be essentially economy of principles.

14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural
philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-arrangement (according
to us, if I may say so!) and NOT a world-explanation; but in so far as
it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded as more, and for a
long time to come must be regarded as more--namely, as an explanation.
It has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evidence and
palpableness of its own: this operates fascinatingly, persuasively, and
CONVINCINGLY upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes--in fact, it
follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism.
What is clear, what is "explained"? Only that which can be seen and
felt--one must pursue every problem thus far. Obversely, however, the
charm of the Platonic mode of thought, which was an ARISTOCRATIC mode,
consisted precisely in RESISTANCE to obvious sense-evidence--perhaps
among men who enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our
contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining
masters of them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey conceptional
networks which they threw over the motley whirl of the senses--the
mob of the senses, as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and
interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato, there was an ENJOYMENT
different from that which the physicists of today offer us--and likewise
the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the physiological workers,
with their principle of the "smallest possible effort," and the greatest
possible blunder. "Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp, there
is also nothing more for men to do"--that is certainly an imperative
different from the Platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right
imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge-builders
of the future, who have nothing but ROUGH work to perform.

15. To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on
the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the
idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be causes!
Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as
heuristic principle. What? And others say even that the external world
is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external
world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves
would be the work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a
complete REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM, if the conception CAUSA SUI is something
fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is NOT the work
of our organs--?

16. There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are
"immediate certainties"; for instance, "I think," or as the superstition
of Schopenhauer puts it, "I will"; as though cognition here got hold
of its object purely and simply as "the thing in itself," without any
falsification taking place either on the part of the subject or the
object. I would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that "immediate
certainty," as well as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself,"
involve a CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO; we really ought to free ourselves
from the misleading significance of words! The people on their part may
think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher
must say to himself: "When I analyze the process that is expressed in
the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, the
argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible:
for instance, that it is _I_ who think, that there must necessarily be
something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the
part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,'
and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by
thinking--that I KNOW what thinking is. For if I had not already decided
within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether
that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'? In
short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I COMPARE my state at the
present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to
determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with
further 'knowledge,' it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for
me."--In place of the "immediate certainty" in which the people may
believe in the special case, the philosopher thus finds a series of
metaphysical questions presented to him, veritable conscience questions
of the intellect, to wit: "Whence did I get the notion of 'thinking'?
Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak
of an 'ego,' and even of an 'ego' as cause, and finally of an 'ego'
as cause of thought?" He who ventures to answer these metaphysical
questions at once by an appeal to a sort of INTUITIVE perception, like
the person who says, "I think, and know that this, at least, is
true, actual, and certain"--will encounter a smile and two notes of
interrogation in a philosopher nowadays. "Sir," the philosopher will
perhaps give him to understand, "it is improbable that you are not
mistaken, but why should it be the truth?"

17. With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire
of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by
these credulous minds--namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes,
and not when "I" wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the
case to say that the subject "I" is the condition of the predicate
"think." ONE thinks; but that this "one" is precisely the famous old
"ego," is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and
assuredly not an "immediate certainty." After all, one has even gone too
far with this "one thinks"--even the "one" contains an INTERPRETATION of
the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here
according to the usual grammatical formula--"To think is an activity;
every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently"... It
was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomism sought, besides
the operating "power," the material particle wherein it resides and out
of which it operates--the atom. More rigorous minds, however, learnt at
last to get along without this "earth-residuum," and perhaps some day we
shall accustom ourselves, even from the logician's point of view, to
get along without the little "one" (to which the worthy old "ego" has
refined itself).

18. It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is
refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle
minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will"
owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing
who feels himself strong enough to refute it.

19. Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though it were
the best-known thing in the world; indeed, Schopenhauer has given us
to understand that the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and
completely known, without deduction or addition. But it again and
again seems to me that in this case Schopenhauer also only did what
philosophers are in the habit of doing--he seems to have adopted a
POPULAR PREJUDICE and exaggerated it. Willing seems to me to be above
all something COMPLICATED, something that is a unity only in name--and
it is precisely in a name that popular prejudice lurks, which has got
the mastery over the inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages.
So let us for once be more cautious, let us be "unphilosophical": let
us say that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations,
namely, the sensation of the condition "AWAY FROM WHICH we go," the
sensation of the condition "TOWARDS WHICH we go," the sensation of this
"FROM" and "TOWARDS" itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscular
sensation, which, even without our putting in motion "arms and legs,"
commences its action by force of habit, directly we "will" anything.
Therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are
to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, in the second place,
thinking is also to be recognized; in every act of the will there is
a ruling thought;--and let us not imagine it possible to sever this
thought from the "willing," as if the will would then remain over!
In the third place, the will is not only a complex of sensation and
thinking, but it is above all an EMOTION, and in fact the emotion of the
command. That which is termed "freedom of the will" is essentially the
emotion of supremacy in respect to him who must obey: "I am free, 'he'
must obey"--this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally
so the straining of the attention, the straight look which fixes itself
exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgment that "this and
nothing else is necessary now," the inward certainty that obedience
will be rendered--and whatever else pertains to the position of the
commander. A man who WILLS commands something within himself which
renders obedience, or which he believes renders obedience. But now let
us notice what is the strangest thing about the will,--this affair so
extremely complex, for which the people have only one name. Inasmuch as
in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding AND
the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of
constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually
commence immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other
hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive
ourselves about it by means of the synthetic term "I": a whole series
of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false judgments about the
will itself, has become attached to the act of willing--to such a degree
that he who wills believes firmly that willing SUFFICES for action.
Since in the majority of cases there has only been exercise of will
when the effect of the command--consequently obedience, and therefore
action--was to be EXPECTED, the APPEARANCE has translated itself into
the sentiment, as if there were a NECESSITY OF EFFECT; in a word, he who
wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are
somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing,
to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation
of power which accompanies all success. "Freedom of Will"--that is the
expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising
volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with
the executor of the order--who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over
obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his own will
that overcame them. In this way the person exercising volition adds the
feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful
"underwills" or under-souls--indeed, our body is but a social structure
composed of many souls--to his feelings of delight as commander. L'EFFET
C'EST MOI. what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed
and happy commonwealth, namely, that the governing class identifies
itself with the successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is
absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as
already said, of a social structure composed of many "souls", on which
account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing-as-such
within the sphere of morals--regarded as the doctrine of the relations
of supremacy under which the phenomenon of "life" manifests itself.

20. That the separate philosophical ideas are not anything optional or
autonomously evolving, but grow up in connection and relationship with
each other, that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear
in the history of thought, they nevertheless belong just as much to
a system as the collective members of the fauna of a Continent--is
betrayed in the end by the circumstance: how unfailingly the most
diverse philosophers always fill in again a definite fundamental scheme
of POSSIBLE philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always revolve
once more in the same orbit, however independent of each other they
may feel themselves with their critical or systematic wills, something
within them leads them, something impels them in definite order the
one after the other--to wit, the innate methodology and relationship
of their ideas. Their thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a
re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off,
ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly
grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order.
The wonderful family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German
philosophizing is easily enough explained. In fact, where there is
affinity of language, owing to the common philosophy of grammar--I mean
owing to the unconscious domination and guidance of similar grammatical
functions--it cannot but be that everything is prepared at the outset
for a similar development and succession of philosophical systems,
just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of
world-interpretation. It is highly probable that philosophers within the
domain of the Ural-Altaic languages (where the conception of the subject
is least developed) look otherwise "into the world," and will be
found on paths of thought different from those of the Indo-Germans and
Mussulmans, the spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately
also the spell of PHYSIOLOGICAL valuations and racial conditions.--So
much by way of rejecting Locke's superficiality with regard to the
origin of ideas.

21. The CAUSA SUI is the best self-contradiction that has yet been
conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness; but the
extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and
frightfully with this very folly. The desire for "freedom of will"
in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway,
unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear
the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and
to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom,
involves nothing less than to be precisely this CAUSA SUI, and, with
more than Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the
hair, out of the slough of nothingness. If any one should find out in
this manner the crass stupidity of the celebrated conception of "free
will" and put it out of his head altogether, I beg of him to carry
his "enlightenment" a step further, and also put out of his head the
contrary of this monstrous conception of "free will": I mean "non-free
will," which is tantamount to a misuse of cause and effect. One
should not wrongly MATERIALISE "cause" and "effect," as the natural
philosophers do (and whoever like them naturalize in thinking at
present), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes
the cause press and push until it "effects" its end; one should use
"cause" and "effect" only as pure CONCEPTIONS, that is to say, as
conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual
understanding,--NOT for explanation. In "being-in-itself" there is
nothing of "casual-connection," of "necessity," or of "psychological
non-freedom"; there the effect does NOT follow the cause, there "law"
does not obtain. It is WE alone who have devised cause, sequence,
reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive,
and purpose; and when we interpret and intermix this symbol-world,
as "being-in-itself," with things, we act once more as we have always
acted--MYTHOLOGICALLY. The "non-free will" is mythology; in real life
it is only a question of STRONG and WEAK wills.--It is almost always
a symptom of what is lacking in himself, when a thinker, in every
"causal-connection" and "psychological necessity," manifests something
of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness, oppression, and non-freedom;
it is suspicious to have such feelings--the person betrays himself. And
in general, if I have observed correctly, the "non-freedom of the will"
is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but
always in a profoundly PERSONAL manner: some will not give up their
"responsibility," their belief in THEMSELVES, the personal right to
THEIR merits, at any price (the vain races belong to this class); others
on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed
for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to GET OUT OF
THE BUSINESS, no matter how. The latter, when they write books, are
in the habit at present of taking the side of criminals; a sort of
socialistic sympathy is their favourite disguise. And as a matter of
fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed embellishes itself surprisingly
when it can pose as "la religion de la souffrance humaine"; that is ITS
"good taste."

22. Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who cannot desist from
the mischief of putting his finger on bad modes of interpretation, but
"Nature's conformity to law," of which you physicists talk so proudly,
as though--why, it exists only owing to your interpretation and bad
"philology." It is no matter of fact, no "text," but rather just a
naively humanitarian adjustment and perversion of meaning, with which
you make abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the modern
soul! "Everywhere equality before the law--Nature is not different in
that respect, nor better than we": a fine instance of secret motive,
in which the vulgar antagonism to everything privileged and
autocratic--likewise a second and more refined atheism--is once more
disguised. "Ni dieu, ni maitre"--that, also, is what you want; and
therefore "Cheers for natural law!"--is it not so? But, as has been
said, that is interpretation, not text; and somebody might come along,
who, with opposite intentions and modes of interpretation, could read
out of the same "Nature," and with regard to the same phenomena, just
the tyrannically inconsiderate and relentless enforcement of the claims
of power--an interpreter who should so place the unexceptionalness and
unconditionalness of all "Will to Power" before your eyes, that almost
every word, and the word "tyranny" itself, would eventually seem
unsuitable, or like a weakening and softening metaphor--as being too
human; and who should, nevertheless, end by asserting the same about
this world as you do, namely, that it has a "necessary" and "calculable"
course, NOT, however, because laws obtain in it, but because they are
absolutely LACKING, and every power effects its ultimate consequences
every moment. Granted that this also is only interpretation--and you
will be eager enough to make this objection?--well, so much the better.

23. All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices and
timidities, it has not dared to launch out into the depths. In so far
as it is allowable to recognize in that which has hitherto been written,
evidence of that which has hitherto been kept silent, it seems as if
nobody had yet harboured the notion of psychology as the Morphology
and DEVELOPMENT-DOCTRINE OF THE WILL TO POWER, as I conceive of it.
The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most
intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent and
unprejudiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious, obstructive,
blinding, and distorting manner. A proper physio-psychology has to
contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator,
it has "the heart" against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal
conditionalness of the "good" and the "bad" impulses, causes (as
refined immorality) distress and aversion in a still strong and manly
conscience--still more so, a doctrine of the derivation of all good
impulses from bad ones. If, however, a person should regard even
the emotions of hatred, envy, covetousness, and imperiousness
as life-conditioning emotions, as factors which must be present,
fundamentally and essentially, in the general economy of life (which
must, therefore, be further developed if life is to be further
developed), he will suffer from such a view of things as from
sea-sickness. And yet this hypothesis is far from being the strangest
and most painful in this immense and almost new domain of dangerous
knowledge, and there are in fact a hundred good reasons why every one
should keep away from it who CAN do so! On the other hand, if one has
once drifted hither with one's bark, well! very good! now let us set our
teeth firmly! let us open our eyes and keep our hand fast on the helm!
We sail away right OVER morality, we crush out, we destroy perhaps the
remains of our own morality by daring to make our voyage thither--but
what do WE matter. Never yet did a PROFOUNDER world of insight reveal
itself to daring travelers and adventurers, and the psychologist who
thus "makes a sacrifice"--it is not the sacrifizio dell' intelletto,
on the contrary!--will at least be entitled to demand in return that
psychology shall once more be recognized as the queen of the sciences,
for whose service and equipment the other sciences exist. For psychology
is once more the path to the fundamental problems.



CHAPTER II. THE FREE SPIRIT


24. O sancta simplicitiatas! In what strange simplification and
falsification man lives! One can never cease wondering when once one has
got eyes for beholding this marvel! How we have made everything around
us clear and free and easy and simple! how we have been able to give
our senses a passport to everything superficial, our thoughts a godlike
desire for wanton pranks and wrong inferences!--how from the beginning,
we have contrived to retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost
inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence, heartiness,
and gaiety--in order to enjoy life! And only on this solidified,
granite-like foundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself
hitherto, the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful
will, the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as
its opposite, but--as its refinement! It is to be hoped, indeed, that
LANGUAGE, here as elsewhere, will not get over its awkwardness, and that
it will continue to talk of opposites where there are only degrees
and many refinements of gradation; it is equally to be hoped that the
incarnated Tartuffery of morals, which now belongs to our unconquerable
"flesh and blood," will turn the words round in the mouths of us
discerning ones. Here and there we understand it, and laugh at the way
in which precisely the best knowledge seeks most to retain us in this
SIMPLIFIED, thoroughly artificial, suitably imagined, and suitably
falsified world: at the way in which, whether it will or not, it loves
error, because, as living itself, it loves life!

25. After such a cheerful commencement, a serious word would fain be
heard; it appeals to the most serious minds. Take care, ye philosophers
and friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering "for the
truth's sake"! even in your own defense! It spoils all the innocence
and fine neutrality of your conscience; it makes you headstrong against
objections and red rags; it stupefies, animalizes, and brutalizes, when
in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even
worse consequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your last card
as protectors of truth upon earth--as though "the Truth" were such an
innocent and incompetent creature as to require protectors! and you of
all people, ye knights of the sorrowful countenance, Messrs Loafers and
Cobweb-spinners of the spirit! Finally, ye know sufficiently well that
it cannot be of any consequence if YE just carry your point; ye know
that hitherto no philosopher has carried his point, and that there might
be a more laudable truthfulness in every little interrogative mark
which you place after your special words and favourite doctrines (and
occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn pantomime and
trumping games before accusers and law-courts! Rather go out of the way!
Flee into concealment! And have your masks and your ruses, that ye may
be mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared! And pray, don't forget
the garden, the garden with golden trellis-work! And have people around
you who are as a garden--or as music on the waters at eventide, when
already the day becomes a memory. Choose the GOOD solitude, the free,
wanton, lightsome solitude, which also gives you the right still to
remain good in any sense whatsoever! How poisonous, how crafty, how bad,
does every long war make one, which cannot be waged openly by means
of force! How PERSONAL does a long fear make one, a long watching
of enemies, of possible enemies! These pariahs of society, these
long-pursued, badly-persecuted ones--also the compulsory recluses, the
Spinozas or Giordano Brunos--always become in the end, even under the
most intellectual masquerade, and perhaps without being themselves aware
of it, refined vengeance-seekers and poison-Brewers (just lay bare
the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!), not to speak of
the stupidity of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a
philosopher that the sense of philosophical humour has left him. The
martyrdom of the philosopher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth,"
forces into the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him;
and if one has hitherto contemplated him only with artistic curiosity,
with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous
desire to see him also in his deterioration (deteriorated into a
"martyr," into a stage-and-tribune-bawler). Only, that it is necessary
with such a desire to be clear WHAT spectacle one will see in any
case--merely a satyric play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the
continued proof that the long, real tragedy IS AT AN END, supposing that
every philosophy has been a long tragedy in its origin.

26. Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy,
where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority--where he may
forget "men who are the rule," as their exception;--exclusive only of
the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger
instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense. Whoever, in
intercourse with men, does not occasionally glisten in all the green
and grey colours of distress, owing to disgust, satiety, sympathy,
gloominess, and solitariness, is assuredly not a man of elevated tastes;
supposing, however, that he does not voluntarily take all this burden
and disgust upon himself, that he persistently avoids it, and remains,
as I said, quietly and proudly hidden in his citadel, one thing is then
certain: he was not made, he was not predestined for knowledge. For as
such, he would one day have to say to himself: "The devil take my good
taste! but 'the rule' is more interesting than the exception--than
myself, the exception!" And he would go DOWN, and above all, he would
go "inside." The long and serious study of the AVERAGE man--and
consequently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity, and bad
intercourse (all intercourse is bad intercourse except with one's
equals):--that constitutes a necessary part of the life-history of every
philosopher; perhaps the most disagreeable, odious, and disappointing
part. If he is fortunate, however, as a favourite child of knowledge
should be, he will meet with suitable auxiliaries who will shorten and
lighten his task; I mean so-called cynics, those who simply recognize
the animal, the commonplace and "the rule" in themselves, and at the
same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them
talk of themselves and their like BEFORE WITNESSES--sometimes they
wallow, even in books, as on their own dung-hill. Cynicism is the only
form in which base souls approach what is called honesty; and the
higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and
congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before
him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. There are even cases where
enchantment mixes with the disgust--namely, where by a freak of nature,
genius is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and ape, as in the
case of the Abbe Galiani, the profoundest, acutest, and perhaps also
filthiest man of his century--he was far profounder than Voltaire, and
consequently also, a good deal more silent. It happens more frequently,
as has been hinted, that a scientific head is placed on an ape's body, a
fine exceptional understanding in a base soul, an occurrence by no means
rare, especially among doctors and moral physiologists. And whenever
anyone speaks without bitterness, or rather quite innocently, of man
as a belly with two requirements, and a head with one; whenever any one
sees, seeks, and WANTS to see only hunger, sexual instinct, and vanity
as the real and only motives of human actions; in short, when any one
speaks "badly"--and not even "ill"--of man, then ought the lover of
knowledge to hearken attentively and diligently; he ought, in general,
to have an open ear wherever there is talk without indignation. For the
indignant man, and he who perpetually tears and lacerates himself with
his own teeth (or, in place of himself, the world, God, or society),
may indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the laughing and
self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more ordinary,
more indifferent, and less instructive case. And no one is such a LIAR
as the indignant man.

27. It is difficult to be understood, especially when one thinks and
lives gangasrotogati [Footnote: Like the river Ganges: presto.] among
those only who think and live otherwise--namely, kurmagati [Footnote:
Like the tortoise: lento.], or at best "froglike," mandeikagati
[Footnote: Like the frog: staccato.] (I do everything to be "difficultly
understood" myself!)--and one should be heartily grateful for the
good will to some refinement of interpretation. As regards "the good
friends," however, who are always too easy-going, and think that as
friends they have a right to ease, one does well at the very first to
grant them a play-ground and romping-place for misunderstanding--one can
thus laugh still; or get rid of them altogether, these good friends--and
laugh then also!

28. What is most difficult to render from one language into another
is the TEMPO of its style, which has its basis in the character of the
race, or to speak more physiologically, in the average TEMPO of the
assimilation of its nutriment. There are honestly meant translations,
which, as involuntary vulgarizations, are almost falsifications of the
original, merely because its lively and merry TEMPO (which overleaps and
obviates all dangers in word and expression) could not also be
rendered. A German is almost incapacitated for PRESTO in his language;
consequently also, as may be reasonably inferred, for many of the most
delightful and daring NUANCES of free, free-spirited thought. And just
as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in body and conscience,
so Aristophanes and Petronius are untranslatable for him. Everything
ponderous, viscous, and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying
species of style, are developed in profuse variety among Germans--pardon
me for stating the fact that even Goethe's prose, in its mixture of
stiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a reflection of the "good
old time" to which it belongs, and as an expression of German taste at a
time when there was still a "German taste," which was a rococo-taste
in moribus et artibus. Lessing is an exception, owing to his histrionic
nature, which understood much, and was versed in many things; he who was
not the translator of Bayle to no purpose, who took refuge willingly in
the shadow of Diderot and Voltaire, and still more willingly among the
Roman comedy-writers--Lessing loved also free-spiritism in the TEMPO,
and flight out of Germany. But how could the German language, even
in the prose of Lessing, imitate the TEMPO of Machiavelli, who in his
"Principe" makes us breathe the dry, fine air of Florence, and cannot
help presenting the most serious events in a boisterous allegrissimo,
perhaps not without a malicious artistic sense of the contrast he
ventures to present--long, heavy, difficult, dangerous thoughts, and
a TEMPO of the gallop, and of the best, wantonest humour? Finally, who
would venture on a German translation of Petronius, who, more than any
great musician hitherto, was a master of PRESTO in invention, ideas, and
words? What matter in the end about the swamps of the sick, evil world,
or of the "ancient world," when like him, one has the feet of a wind,
the rush, the breath, the emancipating scorn of a wind, which makes
everything healthy, by making everything RUN! And with regard to
Aristophanes--that transfiguring, complementary genius, for whose
sake one PARDONS all Hellenism for having existed, provided one has
understood in its full profundity ALL that there requires pardon and
transfiguration; there is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on
PLATO'S secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit
fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no
"Bible," nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic--but a book of
Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life--a Greek life which
he repudiated--without an Aristophanes!

29. It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a
privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best
right, but without being OBLIGED to do so, proves that he is probably
not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a
labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself
already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see
how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal
by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it
is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it, nor
sympathize with it. And he cannot any longer go back! He cannot even go
back again to the sympathy of men!

30. Our deepest insights must--and should--appear as follies, and under
certain circumstances as crimes, when they come unauthorizedly to
the ears of those who are not disposed and predestined for them. The
exoteric and the esoteric, as they were formerly distinguished by
philosophers--among the Indians, as among the Greeks, Persians, and
Mussulmans, in short, wherever people believed in gradations of rank and
NOT in equality and equal rights--are not so much in contradistinction
to one another in respect to the exoteric class, standing without, and
viewing, estimating, measuring, and judging from the outside, and not
from the inside; the more essential distinction is that the class in
question views things from below upwards--while the esoteric class views
things FROM ABOVE DOWNWARDS. There are heights of the soul from which
tragedy itself no longer appears to operate tragically; and if all the
woe in the world were taken together, who would dare to decide whether
the sight of it would NECESSARILY seduce and constrain to sympathy, and
thus to a doubling of the woe?... That which serves the higher class of
men for nourishment or refreshment, must be almost poison to an entirely
different and lower order of human beings. The virtues of the common
man would perhaps mean vice and weakness in a philosopher; it might be
possible for a highly developed man, supposing him to degenerate and go
to ruin, to acquire qualities thereby alone, for the sake of which he
would have to be honoured as a saint in the lower world into which he
had sunk. There are books which have an inverse value for the soul and
the health according as the inferior soul and the lower vitality, or the
higher and more powerful, make use of them. In the former case they are
dangerous, disturbing, unsettling books, in the latter case they are
herald-calls which summon the bravest to THEIR bravery. Books for the
general reader are always ill-smelling books, the odour of paltry people
clings to them. Where the populace eat and drink, and even where they
reverence, it is accustomed to stink. One should not go into churches if
one wishes to breathe PURE air.

31. In our youthful years we still venerate and despise without the art
of NUANCE, which is the best gain of life, and we have rightly to do
hard penance for having fallen upon men and things with Yea and Nay.
Everything is so arranged that the worst of all tastes, THE TASTE FOR
THE UNCONDITIONAL, is cruelly befooled and abused, until a man learns
to introduce a little art into his sentiments, and prefers to try
conclusions with the artificial, as do the real artists of life. The
angry and reverent spirit peculiar to youth appears to allow itself no
peace, until it has suitably falsified men and things, to be able
to vent its passion upon them: youth in itself even, is something
falsifying and deceptive. Later on, when the young soul, tortured by
continual disillusions, finally turns suspiciously against itself--still
ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience: how
it upbraids itself, how impatiently it tears itself, how it revenges
itself for its long self-blinding, as though it had been a voluntary
blindness! In this transition one punishes oneself by distrust of one's
sentiments; one tortures one's enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the
good conscience to be a danger, as if it were the self-concealment and
lassitude of a more refined uprightness; and above all, one espouses
upon principle the cause AGAINST "youth."--A decade later, and one
comprehends that all this was also still--youth!

32. Throughout the longest period of human history--one calls it the
prehistoric period--the value or non-value of an action was inferred
from its CONSEQUENCES; the action in itself was not taken into
consideration, any more than its origin; but pretty much as in China at
present, where the distinction or disgrace of a child redounds to
its parents, the retro-operating power of success or failure was what
induced men to think well or ill of an action. Let us call this period
the PRE-MORAL period of mankind; the imperative, "Know thyself!" was
then still unknown.--In the last ten thousand years, on the other hand,
on certain large portions of the earth, one has gradually got so far,
that one no longer lets the consequences of an action, but its origin,
decide with regard to its worth: a great achievement as a whole, an
important refinement of vision and of criterion, the unconscious effect
of the supremacy of aristocratic values and of the belief in "origin,"
the mark of a period which may be designated in the narrower sense as
the MORAL one: the first attempt at self-knowledge is thereby
made. Instead of the consequences, the origin--what an inversion
of perspective! And assuredly an inversion effected only after long
struggle and wavering! To be sure, an ominous new superstition, a
peculiar narrowness of interpretation, attained supremacy precisely
thereby: the origin of an action was interpreted in the most definite
sense possible, as origin out of an INTENTION; people were agreed in the
belief that the value of an action lay in the value of its intention.
The intention as the sole origin and antecedent history of an action:
under the influence of this prejudice moral praise and blame have been
bestowed, and men have judged and even philosophized almost up to the
present day.--Is it not possible, however, that the necessity may now
have arisen of again making up our minds with regard to the reversing
and fundamental shifting of values, owing to a new self-consciousness
and acuteness in man--is it not possible that we may be standing on
the threshold of a period which to begin with, would be distinguished
negatively as ULTRA-MORAL: nowadays when, at least among us immoralists,
the suspicion arises that the decisive value of an action lies precisely
in that which is NOT INTENTIONAL, and that all its intentionalness, all
that is seen, sensible, or "sensed" in it, belongs to its surface or
skin--which, like every skin, betrays something, but CONCEALS still
more? In short, we believe that the intention is only a sign or symptom,
which first requires an explanation--a sign, moreover, which has too
many interpretations, and consequently hardly any meaning in itself
alone: that morality, in the sense in which it has been understood
hitherto, as intention-morality, has been a prejudice, perhaps a
prematureness or preliminariness, probably something of the same rank
as astrology and alchemy, but in any case something which must be
surmounted. The surmounting of morality, in a certain sense even the
self-mounting of morality--let that be the name for the long-secret
labour which has been reserved for the most refined, the most upright,
and also the most wicked consciences of today, as the living touchstones
of the soul.

33. It cannot be helped: the sentiment of surrender, of sacrifice for
one's neighbour, and all self-renunciation-morality, must be mercilessly
called to account, and brought to judgment; just as the aesthetics
of "disinterested contemplation," under which the emasculation of art
nowadays seeks insidiously enough to create itself a good conscience.
There is far too much witchery and sugar in the sentiments "for others"
and "NOT for myself," for one not needing to be doubly distrustful here,
and for one asking promptly: "Are they not perhaps--DECEPTIONS?"--That
they PLEASE--him who has them, and him who enjoys their fruit, and also
the mere spectator--that is still no argument in their FAVOUR, but just
calls for caution. Let us therefore be cautious!

34. At whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place oneself nowadays,
seen from every position, the ERRONEOUSNESS of the world in which we
think we live is the surest and most certain thing our eyes can light
upon: we find proof after proof thereof, which would fain allure us into
surmises concerning a deceptive principle in the "nature of things."
He, however, who makes thinking itself, and consequently "the spirit,"
responsible for the falseness of the world--an honourable exit, which
every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei avails himself of--he
who regards this world, including space, time, form, and movement, as
falsely DEDUCED, would have at least good reason in the end to become
distrustful also of all thinking; has it not hitherto been playing upon
us the worst of scurvy tricks? and what guarantee would it give that
it would not continue to do what it has always been doing? In all
seriousness, the innocence of thinkers has something touching and
respect-inspiring in it, which even nowadays permits them to wait upon
consciousness with the request that it will give them HONEST answers:
for example, whether it be "real" or not, and why it keeps the outer
world so resolutely at a distance, and other questions of the same
description. The belief in "immediate certainties" is a MORAL NAIVETE
which does honour to us philosophers; but--we have now to cease being
"MERELY moral" men! Apart from morality, such belief is a folly which
does little honour to us! If in middle-class life an ever-ready distrust
is regarded as the sign of a "bad character," and consequently as an
imprudence, here among us, beyond the middle-class world and its Yeas
and Nays, what should prevent our being imprudent and saying: the
philosopher has at length a RIGHT to "bad character," as the being who
has hitherto been most befooled on earth--he is now under OBLIGATION
to distrustfulness, to the wickedest squinting out of every abyss of
suspicion.--Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of
expression; for I myself have long ago learned to think and estimate
differently with regard to deceiving and being deceived, and I keep at
least a couple of pokes in the ribs ready for the blind rage with which
philosophers struggle against being deceived. Why NOT? It is nothing
more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance; it
is, in fact, the worst proved supposition in the world. So much must be
conceded: there could have been no life at all except upon the basis
of perspective estimates and semblances; and if, with the virtuous
enthusiasm and stupidity of many philosophers, one wished to do away
altogether with the "seeming world"--well, granted that YOU could do
that,--at least nothing of your "truth" would thereby remain! Indeed,
what is it that forces us in general to the supposition that there is an
essential opposition of "true" and "false"? Is it not enough to suppose
degrees of seemingness, and as it were lighter and darker shades and
tones of semblance--different valeurs, as the painters say? Why might
not the world WHICH CONCERNS US--be a fiction? And to any one who
suggested: "But to a fiction belongs an originator?"--might it not be
bluntly replied: WHY? May not this "belong" also belong to the fiction?
Is it not at length permitted to be a little ironical towards the
subject, just as towards the predicate and object? Might not the
philosopher elevate himself above faith in grammar? All respect
to governesses, but is it not time that philosophy should renounce
governess-faith?

35. O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in
"the truth," and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it
too humanely--"il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien"--I wager he
finds nothing!

36. Supposing that nothing else is "given" as real but our world of
desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any other "reality"
but just that of our impulses--for thinking is only a relation of these
impulses to one another:--are we not permitted to make the attempt and
to ask the question whether this which is "given" does not SUFFICE, by
means of our counterparts, for the understanding even of the so-called
mechanical (or "material") world? I do not mean as an illusion, a
"semblance," a "representation" (in the Berkeleyan and Schopenhauerian
sense), but as possessing the same degree of reality as our emotions
themselves--as a more primitive form of the world of emotions, in
which everything still lies locked in a mighty unity, which afterwards
branches off and develops itself in organic processes (naturally also,
refines and debilitates)--as a kind of instinctive life in which all
organic functions, including self-regulation, assimilation, nutrition,
secretion, and change of matter, are still synthetically united with
one another--as a PRIMARY FORM of life?--In the end, it is not only
permitted to make this attempt, it is commanded by the conscience of
LOGICAL METHOD. Not to assume several kinds of causality, so long as
the attempt to get along with a single one has not been pushed to its
furthest extent (to absurdity, if I may be allowed to say so): that is
a morality of method which one may not repudiate nowadays--it follows
"from its definition," as mathematicians say. The question is ultimately
whether we really recognize the will as OPERATING, whether we believe in
the causality of the will; if we do so--and fundamentally our belief IN
THIS is just our belief in causality itself--we MUST make the attempt
to posit hypothetically the causality of the will as the only causality.
"Will" can naturally only operate on "will"--and not on "matter" (not
on "nerves," for instance): in short, the hypothesis must be
hazarded, whether will does not operate on will wherever "effects"
are recognized--and whether all mechanical action, inasmuch as a power
operates therein, is not just the power of will, the effect of will.
Granted, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive
life as the development and ramification of one fundamental form of
will--namely, the Will to Power, as my thesis puts it; granted that all
organic functions could be traced back to this Will to Power, and that
the solution of the problem of generation and nutrition--it is one
problem--could also be found therein: one would thus have acquired the
right to define ALL active force unequivocally as WILL TO POWER. The
world seen from within, the world defined and designated according to
its "intelligible character"--it would simply be "Will to Power," and
nothing else.

37. "What? Does not that mean in popular language: God is disproved, but
not the devil?"--On the contrary! On the contrary, my friends! And who
the devil also compels you to speak popularly!

38. As happened finally in all the enlightenment of modern times with
the French Revolution (that terrible farce, quite superfluous when
judged close at hand, into which, however, the noble and visionary
spectators of all Europe have interpreted from a distance their own
indignation and enthusiasm so long and passionately, UNTIL THE TEXT HAS
DISAPPEARED UNDER THE INTERPRETATION), so a noble posterity might once
more misunderstand the whole of the past, and perhaps only thereby make
ITS aspect endurable.--Or rather, has not this already happened? Have
not we ourselves been--that "noble posterity"? And, in so far as we now
comprehend this, is it not--thereby already past?

39. Nobody will very readily regard a doctrine as true merely because
it makes people happy or virtuous--excepting, perhaps, the amiable
"Idealists," who are enthusiastic about the good, true, and beautiful,
and let all kinds of motley, coarse, and good-natured desirabilities
swim about promiscuously in their pond. Happiness and virtue are no
arguments. It is willingly forgotten, however, even on the part of
thoughtful minds, that to make unhappy and to make bad are just as
little counter-arguments. A thing could be TRUE, although it were in
the highest degree injurious and dangerous; indeed, the fundamental
constitution of existence might be such that one succumbed by a full
knowledge of it--so that the strength of a mind might be measured by
the amount of "truth" it could endure--or to speak more plainly, by the
extent to which it REQUIRED truth attenuated, veiled, sweetened, damped,
and falsified. But there is no doubt that for the discovery of certain
PORTIONS of truth the wicked and unfortunate are more favourably
situated and have a greater likelihood of success; not to speak of the
wicked who are happy--a species about whom moralists are silent. Perhaps
severity and craft are more favourable conditions for the development of
strong, independent spirits and philosophers than the gentle, refined,
yielding good-nature, and habit of taking things easily, which are
prized, and rightly prized in a learned man. Presupposing always,
to begin with, that the term "philosopher" be not confined to the
philosopher who writes books, or even introduces HIS philosophy into
books!--Stendhal furnishes a last feature of the portrait of the
free-spirited philosopher, which for the sake of German taste I will
not omit to underline--for it is OPPOSED to German taste. "Pour etre
bon philosophe," says this last great psychologist, "il faut etre sec,
clair, sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie du
caractere requis pour faire des decouvertes en philosophie, c'est-a-dire
pour voir clair dans ce qui est."

40. Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest things
have a hatred even of figure and likeness. Should not the CONTRARY only
be the right disguise for the shame of a God to go about in? A question
worth asking!--it would be strange if some mystic has not already
ventured on the same kind of thing. There are proceedings of such a
delicate nature that it is well to overwhelm them with coarseness
and make them unrecognizable; there are actions of love and of an
extravagant magnanimity after which nothing can be wiser than to take
a stick and thrash the witness soundly: one thereby obscures his
recollection. Many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory, in
order at least to have vengeance on this sole party in the secret:
shame is inventive. They are not the worst things of which one is
most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask--there is so much
goodness in craft. I could imagine that a man with something costly and
fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like
an old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask: the refinement of his shame
requiring it to be so. A man who has depths in his shame meets his
destiny and his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach,
and with regard to the existence of which his nearest and most intimate
friends may be ignorant; his mortal danger conceals itself from their
eyes, and equally so his regained security. Such a hidden nature,
which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment, and is
inexhaustible in evasion of communication, DESIRES and insists that a
mask of himself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his
friends; and supposing he does not desire it, his eyes will some day be
opened to the fact that there is nevertheless a mask of him there--and
that it is well to be so. Every profound spirit needs a mask; nay, more,
around every profound spirit there continually grows a mask, owing to
the constantly false, that is to say, SUPERFICIAL interpretation
of every word he utters, every step he takes, every sign of life he
manifests.

41. One must subject oneself to one's own tests that one is destined
for independence and command, and do so at the right time. One must not
avoid one's tests, although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous
game one can play, and are in the end tests made only before ourselves
and before no other judge. Not to cleave to any person, be it even the
dearest--every person is a prison and also a recess. Not to cleave to
a fatherland, be it even the most suffering and necessitous--it is even
less difficult to detach one's heart from a victorious fatherland. Not
to cleave to a sympathy, be it even for higher men, into whose peculiar
torture and helplessness chance has given us an insight. Not to cleave
to a science, though it tempt one with the most valuable discoveries,
apparently specially reserved for us. Not to cleave to one's own
liberation, to the voluptuous distance and remoteness of the bird, which
always flies further aloft in order always to see more under it--the
danger of the flier. Not to cleave to our own virtues, nor become as
a whole a victim to any of our specialties, to our "hospitality" for
instance, which is the danger of dangers for highly developed
and wealthy souls, who deal prodigally, almost indifferently with
themselves, and push the virtue of liberality so far that it becomes
a vice. One must know how TO CONSERVE ONESELF--the best test of
independence.

42. A new order of philosophers is appearing; I shall venture to baptize
them by a name not without danger. As far as I understand them, as far
as they allow themselves to be understood--for it is their nature to
WISH to remain something of a puzzle--these philosophers of the
future might rightly, perhaps also wrongly, claim to be designated as
"tempters." This name itself is after all only an attempt, or, if it be
preferred, a temptation.

43. Will they be new friends of "truth," these coming philosophers? Very
probably, for all philosophers hitherto have loved their truths. But
assuredly they will not be dogmatists. It must be contrary to their
pride, and also contrary to their taste, that their truth should still
be truth for every one--that which has hitherto been the secret wish
and ultimate purpose of all dogmatic efforts. "My opinion is MY opinion:
another person has not easily a right to it"--such a philosopher of the
future will say, perhaps. One must renounce the bad taste of wishing to
agree with many people. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbour
takes it into his mouth. And how could there be a "common good"! The
expression contradicts itself; that which can be common is always of
small value. In the end things must be as they are and have always
been--the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the
profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up
shortly, everything rare for the rare.


44. Need I say expressly after all this that they will be free, VERY
free spirits, these philosophers of the future--as certainly also they
will not be merely free spirits, but something more, higher, greater,
and fundamentally different, which does not wish to be misunderstood and
mistaken? But while I say this, I feel under OBLIGATION almost as much
to them as to ourselves (we free spirits who are their heralds and
forerunners), to sweep away from ourselves altogether a stupid old
prejudice and misunderstanding, which, like a fog, has too long made the
conception of "free spirit" obscure. In every country of Europe, and the
same in America, there is at present something which makes an abuse of
this name a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class of spirits,
who desire almost the opposite of what our intentions and instincts
prompt--not to mention that in respect to the NEW philosophers who are
appearing, they must still more be closed windows and bolted doors.
Briefly and regrettably, they belong to the LEVELLERS, these wrongly
named "free spirits"--as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of
the democratic taste and its "modern ideas" all of them men without
solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom
neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied, only, they
are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their
innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost ALL human misery and
failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed--a notion
which happily inverts the truth entirely! What they would fain attain
with all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happiness of the
herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life
for every one, their two most frequently chanted songs and doctrines
are called "Equality of Rights" and "Sympathy with All Sufferers"--and
suffering itself is looked upon by them as something which must be
DONE AWAY WITH. We opposite ones, however, who have opened our eye and
conscience to the question how and where the plant "man" has hitherto
grown most vigorously, believe that this has always taken place under
the opposite conditions, that for this end the dangerousness of his
situation had to be increased enormously, his inventive faculty and
dissembling power (his "spirit") had to develop into subtlety and daring
under long oppression and compulsion, and his Will to Life had to be
increased to the unconditioned Will to Power--we believe that severity,
violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy,
stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind,--that everything
wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and serpentine in man, serves
as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite--we do
not even say enough when we only say THIS MUCH, and in any case we
find ourselves here, both with our speech and our silence, at the OTHER
extreme of all modern ideology and gregarious desirability, as their
antipodes perhaps? What wonder that we "free spirits" are not exactly
the most communicative spirits? that we do not wish to betray in every
respect WHAT a spirit can free itself from, and WHERE perhaps it will
then be driven? And as to the import of the dangerous formula, "Beyond
Good and Evil," with which we at least avoid confusion, we ARE something
else than "libres-penseurs," "liben pensatori" "free-thinkers,"
and whatever these honest advocates of "modern ideas" like to call
themselves. Having been at home, or at least guests, in many realms of
the spirit, having escaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeable
nooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident
of men and books, or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us,
full of malice against the seductions of dependency which he concealed
in honours, money, positions, or exaltation of the senses, grateful even
for distress and the vicissitudes of illness, because they always free
us from some rule, and its "prejudice," grateful to the God, devil,
sheep, and worm in us, inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the
point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with
teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business
that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure,
owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posterior souls,
into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with
foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden
ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble
heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till
night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical
in learning and forgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of
tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of
work even in full day, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows--and it is
necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn,
jealous friends of SOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnight and midday
solitude--such kind of men are we, we free spirits! And perhaps ye are
also something of the same kind, ye coming ones? ye NEW philosophers?



CHAPTER III. THE RELIGIOUS MOOD


45. The human soul and its limits, the range of man's inner experiences
hitherto attained, the heights, depths, and distances of these
experiences, the entire history of the soul UP TO THE PRESENT TIME,
and its still unexhausted possibilities: this is the preordained
hunting-domain for a born psychologist and lover of a "big hunt". But
how often must he say despairingly to himself: "A single individual!
alas, only a single individual! and this great forest, this virgin
forest!" So he would like to have some hundreds of hunting assistants,
and fine trained hounds, that he could send into the history of the
human soul, to drive HIS game together. In vain: again and again he
experiences, profoundly and bitterly, how difficult it is to find
assistants and dogs for all the things that directly excite his
curiosity. The evil of sending scholars into new and dangerous
hunting-domains, where courage, sagacity, and subtlety in every sense
are required, is that they are no longer serviceable just when the "BIG
hunt," and also the great danger commences,--it is precisely then that
they lose their keen eye and nose. In order, for instance, to divine and
determine what sort of history the problem of KNOWLEDGE AND CONSCIENCE
has hitherto had in the souls of homines religiosi, a person would
perhaps himself have to possess as profound, as bruised, as immense an
experience as the intellectual conscience of Pascal; and then he would
still require that wide-spread heaven of clear, wicked spirituality,
which, from above, would be able to oversee, arrange, and effectively
formulize this mass of dangerous and painful experiences.--But who
could do me this service! And who would have time to wait for such
servants!--they evidently appear too rarely, they are so improbable at
all times! Eventually one must do everything ONESELF in order to know
something; which means that one has MUCH to do!--But a curiosity like
mine is once for all the most agreeable of vices--pardon me! I mean to
say that the love of truth has its reward in heaven, and already upon
earth.

46. Faith, such as early Christianity desired, and not infrequently
achieved in the midst of a skeptical and southernly free-spirited world,
which had centuries of struggle between philosophical schools behind
it and in it, counting besides the education in tolerance which
the Imperium Romanum gave--this faith is NOT that sincere, austere
slave-faith by which perhaps a Luther or a Cromwell, or some other
northern barbarian of the spirit remained attached to his God and
Christianity, it is much rather the faith of Pascal, which resembles in
a terrible manner a continuous suicide of reason--a tough, long-lived,
worm-like reason, which is not to be slain at once and with a single
blow. The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice the sacrifice
of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at
the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation. There is
cruelty and religious Phoenicianism in this faith, which is adapted to a
tender, many-sided, and very fastidious conscience, it takes for granted
that the subjection of the spirit is indescribably PAINFUL, that all the
past and all the habits of such a spirit resist the absurdissimum, in
the form of which "faith" comes to it. Modern men, with their obtuseness
as regards all Christian nomenclature, have no longer the sense for the
terribly superlative conception which was implied to an antique taste by
the paradox of the formula, "God on the Cross". Hitherto there had never
and nowhere been such boldness in inversion, nor anything at once so
dreadful, questioning, and questionable as this formula: it promised a
transvaluation of all ancient values--It was the Orient, the PROFOUND
Orient, it was the Oriental slave who thus took revenge on Rome and its
noble, light-minded toleration, on the Roman "Catholicism" of non-faith,
and it was always not the faith, but the freedom from the faith, the
half-stoical and smiling indifference to the seriousness of the faith,
which made the slaves indignant at their masters and revolt against
them. "Enlightenment" causes revolt, for the slave desires the
unconditioned, he understands nothing but the tyrannous, even in morals,
he loves as he hates, without NUANCE, to the very depths, to the point
of pain, to the point of sickness--his many HIDDEN sufferings make
him revolt against the noble taste which seems to DENY suffering. The
skepticism with regard to suffering, fundamentally only an attitude of
aristocratic morality, was not the least of the causes, also, of the
last great slave-insurrection which began with the French Revolution.

47. Wherever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth so far,
we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen:
solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence--but without its being possible
to determine with certainty which is cause and which is effect, or IF
any relation at all of cause and effect exists there. This latter doubt
is justified by the fact that one of the most regular symptoms among
savage as well as among civilized peoples is the most sudden and
excessive sensuality, which then with equal suddenness transforms into
penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation, and will-renunciation, both
symptoms perhaps explainable as disguised epilepsy? But nowhere is it
MORE obligatory to put aside explanations around no other type has there
grown such a mass of absurdity and superstition, no other type seems to
have been more interesting to men and even to philosophers--perhaps it
is time to become just a little indifferent here, to learn caution, or,
better still, to look AWAY, TO GO AWAY--Yet in the background of the
most recent philosophy, that of Schopenhauer, we find almost as the
problem in itself, this terrible note of interrogation of the religious
crisis and awakening. How is the negation of will POSSIBLE? how is the
saint possible?--that seems to have been the very question with which
Schopenhauer made a start and became a philosopher. And thus it was a
genuine Schopenhauerian consequence, that his most convinced adherent
(perhaps also his last, as far as Germany is concerned), namely, Richard
Wagner, should bring his own life-work to an end just here, and should
finally put that terrible and eternal type upon the stage as Kundry,
type vecu, and as it loved and lived, at the very time that the
mad-doctors in almost all European countries had an opportunity to study
the type close at hand, wherever the religious neurosis--or as I call
it, "the religious mood"--made its latest epidemical outbreak and
display as the "Salvation Army"--If it be a question, however, as to
what has been so extremely interesting to men of all sorts in all ages,
and even to philosophers, in the whole phenomenon of the saint, it
is undoubtedly the appearance of the miraculous therein--namely, the
immediate SUCCESSION OF OPPOSITES, of states of the soul regarded as
morally antithetical: it was believed here to be self-evident that
a "bad man" was all at once turned into a "saint," a good man. The
hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at this point, is it not
possible it may have happened principally because psychology had placed
itself under the dominion of morals, because it BELIEVED in oppositions
of moral values, and saw, read, and INTERPRETED these oppositions
into the text and facts of the case? What? "Miracle" only an error of
interpretation? A lack of philology?

48. It seems that the Latin races are far more deeply attached to their
Catholicism than we Northerners are to Christianity generally, and
that consequently unbelief in Catholic countries means something quite
different from what it does among Protestants--namely, a sort of revolt
against the spirit of the race, while with us it is rather a return to
the spirit (or non-spirit) of the race.

We Northerners undoubtedly derive our origin from barbarous races, even
as regards our talents for religion--we have POOR talents for it. One
may make an exception in the case of the Celts, who have theretofore
furnished also the best soil for Christian infection in the North: the
Christian ideal blossomed forth in France as much as ever the pale sun
of the north would allow it. How strangely pious for our taste are still
these later French skeptics, whenever there is any Celtic blood in their
origin! How Catholic, how un-German does Auguste Comte's Sociology
seem to us, with the Roman logic of its instincts! How Jesuitical, that
amiable and shrewd cicerone of Port Royal, Sainte-Beuve, in spite of all
his hostility to Jesuits! And even Ernest Renan: how inaccessible to
us Northerners does the language of such a Renan appear, in whom
every instant the merest touch of religious thrill throws his refined
voluptuous and comfortably couching soul off its balance! Let us repeat
after him these fine sentences--and what wickedness and haughtiness is
immediately aroused by way of answer in our probably less beautiful but
harder souls, that is to say, in our more German souls!--"DISONS DONC
HARDIMENT QUE LA RELIGION EST UN PRODUIT DE L'HOMME NORMAL, QUE L'HOMME
EST LE PLUS DANS LE VRAI QUANT IL EST LE PLUS RELIGIEUX ET LE PLUS
ASSURE D'UNE DESTINEE INFINIE.... C'EST QUAND IL EST BON QU'IL VEUT QUE
LA VIRTU CORRESPONDE A UN ORDER ETERNAL, C'EST QUAND IL CONTEMPLE LES
CHOSES D'UNE MANIERE DESINTERESSEE QU'IL TROUVE LA MORT REVOLTANTE ET
ABSURDE. COMMENT NE PAS SUPPOSER QUE C'EST DANS CES MOMENTS-LA, QUE
L'HOMME VOIT LE MIEUX?"... These sentences are so extremely ANTIPODAL
to my ears and habits of thought, that in my first impulse of rage
on finding them, I wrote on the margin, "LA NIAISERIE RELIGIEUSE PAR
EXCELLENCE!"--until in my later rage I even took a fancy to them, these
sentences with their truth absolutely inverted! It is so nice and such a
distinction to have one's own antipodes!

49. That which is so astonishing in the religious life of the ancient
Greeks is the irrestrainable stream of GRATITUDE which it pours
forth--it is a very superior kind of man who takes SUCH an attitude
towards nature and life.--Later on, when the populace got the upper hand
in Greece, FEAR became rampant also in religion; and Christianity was
preparing itself.

50. The passion for God: there are churlish, honest-hearted, and
importunate kinds of it, like that of Luther--the whole of Protestantism
lacks the southern DELICATEZZA. There is an Oriental exaltation of the
mind in it, like that of an undeservedly favoured or elevated slave, as
in the case of St. Augustine, for instance, who lacks in an offensive
manner, all nobility in bearing and desires. There is a feminine
tenderness and sensuality in it, which modestly and unconsciously longs
for a UNIO MYSTICA ET PHYSICA, as in the case of Madame de Guyon. In
many cases it appears, curiously enough, as the disguise of a girl's
or youth's puberty; here and there even as the hysteria of an old maid,
also as her last ambition. The Church has frequently canonized the woman
in such a case.

51. The mightiest men have hitherto always bowed reverently before
the saint, as the enigma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary
privation--why did they thus bow? They divined in him--and as it were
behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance--the
superior force which wished to test itself by such a subjugation; the
strength of will, in which they recognized their own strength and
love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something
in themselves when they honoured the saint. In addition to this, the
contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion: such an
enormity of self-negation and anti-naturalness will not have been
coveted for nothing--they have said, inquiringly. There is perhaps a
reason for it, some very great danger, about which the ascetic might
wish to be more accurately informed through his secret interlocutors and
visitors? In a word, the mighty ones of the world learned to have a new
fear before him, they divined a new power, a strange, still unconquered
enemy:--it was the "Will to Power" which obliged them to halt before the
saint. They had to question him.

52. In the Jewish "Old Testament," the book of divine justice, there are
men, things, and sayings on such an immense scale, that Greek and Indian
literature has nothing to compare with it. One stands with fear and
reverence before those stupendous remains of what man was formerly, and
one has sad thoughts about old Asia and its little out-pushed peninsula
Europe, which would like, by all means, to figure before Asia as the
"Progress of Mankind." To be sure, he who is himself only a slender,
tame house-animal, and knows only the wants of a house-animal (like
our cultured people of today, including the Christians of "cultured"
Christianity), need neither be amazed nor even sad amid those ruins--the
taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone with respect to "great" and
"small": perhaps he will find that the New Testament, the book of grace,
still appeals more to his heart (there is much of the odour of the
genuine, tender, stupid beadsman and petty soul in it). To have bound
up this New Testament (a kind of ROCOCO of taste in every respect) along
with the Old Testament into one book, as the "Bible," as "The Book in
Itself," is perhaps the greatest audacity and "sin against the Spirit"
which literary Europe has upon its conscience.

53. Why Atheism nowadays? "The father" in God is thoroughly refuted;
equally so "the judge," "the rewarder." Also his "free will": he does
not hear--and even if he did, he would not know how to help. The worst
is that he seems incapable of communicating himself clearly; is he
uncertain?--This is what I have made out (by questioning and listening
at a variety of conversations) to be the cause of the decline of
European theism; it appears to me that though the religious instinct is
in vigorous growth,--it rejects the theistic satisfaction with profound
distrust.

54. What does all modern philosophy mainly do? Since Descartes--and
indeed more in defiance of him than on the basis of his procedure--an
ATTENTAT has been made on the part of all philosophers on the old
conception of the soul, under the guise of a criticism of the subject
and predicate conception--that is to say, an ATTENTAT on the
fundamental presupposition of Christian doctrine. Modern philosophy,
as epistemological skepticism, is secretly or openly ANTI-CHRISTIAN,
although (for keener ears, be it said) by no means anti-religious.
Formerly, in effect, one believed in "the soul" as one believed in
grammar and the grammatical subject: one said, "I" is the condition,
"think" is the predicate and is conditioned--to think is an activity for
which one MUST suppose a subject as cause. The attempt was then made,
with marvelous tenacity and subtlety, to see if one could not get out
of this net,--to see if the opposite was not perhaps true: "think" the
condition, and "I" the conditioned; "I," therefore, only a synthesis
which has been MADE by thinking itself. KANT really wished to prove
that, starting from the subject, the subject could not be proved--nor
the object either: the possibility of an APPARENT EXISTENCE of the
subject, and therefore of "the soul," may not always have been strange
to him,--the thought which once had an immense power on earth as the
Vedanta philosophy.

55. There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, with many rounds; but
three of these are the most important. Once on a time men sacrificed
human beings to their God, and perhaps just those they loved the
best--to this category belong the firstling sacrifices of all primitive
religions, and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Tiberius in the
Mithra-Grotto on the Island of Capri, that most terrible of all Roman
anachronisms. Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, they sacrificed
to their God the strongest instincts they possessed, their "nature";
THIS festal joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics and
"anti-natural" fanatics. Finally, what still remained to be sacrificed?
Was it not necessary in the end for men to sacrifice everything
comforting, holy, healing, all hope, all faith in hidden harmonies, in
future blessedness and justice? Was it not necessary to sacrifice God
himself, and out of cruelty to themselves to worship stone, stupidity,
gravity, fate, nothingness? To sacrifice God for nothingness--this
paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been reserved for the
rising generation; we all know something thereof already.

56. Whoever, like myself, prompted by some enigmatical desire, has long
endeavoured to go to the bottom of the question of pessimism and free it
from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and stupidity in which
it has finally presented itself to this century, namely, in the form of
Schopenhauer's philosophy; whoever, with an Asiatic and super-Asiatic
eye, has actually looked inside, and into the most world-renouncing of
all possible modes of thought--beyond good and evil, and no longer
like Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the dominion and delusion of
morality,--whoever has done this, has perhaps just thereby, without
really desiring it, opened his eyes to behold the opposite ideal: the
ideal of the most world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious man, who has
not only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and
is, but wishes to have it again AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity,
insatiably calling out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole
piece and play; and not only the play, but actually to him who requires
the play--and makes it necessary; because he always requires
himself anew--and makes himself necessary.--What? And this would not
be--circulus vitiosus deus?

57. The distance, and as it were the space around man, grows with the
strength of his intellectual vision and insight: his world becomes
profounder; new stars, new enigmas, and notions are ever coming into
view. Perhaps everything on which the intellectual eye has exercised
its acuteness and profundity has just been an occasion for its exercise,
something of a game, something for children and childish minds. Perhaps
the most solemn conceptions that have caused the most fighting and
suffering, the conceptions "God" and "sin," will one day seem to us of
no more importance than a child's plaything or a child's pain seems to
an old man;--and perhaps another plaything and another pain will then
be necessary once more for "the old man"--always childish enough, an
eternal child!

58. Has it been observed to what extent outward idleness, or
semi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike for its
favourite microscopic labour of self-examination, and for its soft
placidity called "prayer," the state of perpetual readiness for the
"coming of God"), I mean the idleness with a good conscience, the
idleness of olden times and of blood, to which the aristocratic
sentiment that work is DISHONOURING--that it vulgarizes body and
soul--is not quite unfamiliar? And that consequently the modern, noisy,
time-engrossing, conceited, foolishly proud laboriousness educates
and prepares for "unbelief" more than anything else? Among these, for
instance, who are at present living apart from religion in Germany, I
find "free-thinkers" of diversified species and origin, but above all
a majority of those in whom laboriousness from generation to generation
has dissolved the religious instincts; so that they no longer know what
purpose religions serve, and only note their existence in the world
with a kind of dull astonishment. They feel themselves already fully
occupied, these good people, be it by their business or by their
pleasures, not to mention the "Fatherland," and the newspapers, and
their "family duties"; it seems that they have no time whatever left
for religion; and above all, it is not obvious to them whether it is a
question of a new business or a new pleasure--for it is impossible, they
say to themselves, that people should go to church merely to spoil
their tempers. They are by no means enemies of religious customs;
should certain circumstances, State affairs perhaps, require their
participation in such customs, they do what is required, as so many
things are done--with a patient and unassuming seriousness, and without
much curiosity or discomfort;--they live too much apart and outside
to feel even the necessity for a FOR or AGAINST in such matters. Among
those indifferent persons may be reckoned nowadays the majority of
German Protestants of the middle classes, especially in the great
laborious centres of trade and commerce; also the majority of laborious
scholars, and the entire University personnel (with the exception of
the theologians, whose existence and possibility there always gives
psychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve). On the part of
pious, or merely church-going people, there is seldom any idea of HOW
MUCH good-will, one might say arbitrary will, is now necessary for a
German scholar to take the problem of religion seriously; his whole
profession (and as I have said, his whole workmanlike laboriousness, to
which he is compelled by his modern conscience) inclines him to a
lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards religion, with which is
occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the "uncleanliness" of spirit
which he takes for granted wherever any one still professes to belong
to the Church. It is only with the help of history (NOT through his own
personal experience, therefore) that the scholar succeeds in bringing
himself to a respectful seriousness, and to a certain timid deference
in presence of religions; but even when his sentiments have reached the
stage of gratitude towards them, he has not personally advanced one
step nearer to that which still maintains itself as Church or as piety;
perhaps even the contrary. The practical indifference to religious
matters in the midst of which he has been born and brought up, usually
sublimates itself in his case into circumspection and cleanliness, which
shuns contact with religious men and things; and it may be just the
depth of his tolerance and humanity which prompts him to avoid the
delicate trouble which tolerance itself brings with it.--Every age has
its own divine type of naivete, for the discovery of which other ages
may envy it: and how much naivete--adorable, childlike, and boundlessly
foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in
his superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the
unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats the
religious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, before, and
ABOVE which he himself has developed--he, the little arrogant dwarf
and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-hand drudge of "ideas," of
"modern ideas"!

59. Whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtless divined what
wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial. It is their
preservative instinct which teaches them to be flighty, lightsome, and
false. Here and there one finds a passionate and exaggerated adoration
of "pure forms" in philosophers as well as in artists: it is not to be
doubted that whoever has NEED of the cult of the superficial to that
extent, has at one time or another made an unlucky dive BENEATH it.
Perhaps there is even an order of rank with respect to those burnt
children, the born artists who find the enjoyment of life only in trying
to FALSIFY its image (as if taking wearisome revenge on it), one might
guess to what degree life has disgusted them, by the extent to which
they wish to see its image falsified, attenuated, ultrified, and
deified,--one might reckon the homines religiosi among the artists, as
their HIGHEST rank. It is the profound, suspicious fear of an incurable
pessimism which compels whole centuries to fasten their teeth into a
religious interpretation of existence: the fear of the instinct which
divines that truth might be attained TOO soon, before man has become
strong enough, hard enough, artist enough.... Piety, the "Life in God,"
regarded in this light, would appear as the most elaborate and
ultimate product of the FEAR of truth, as artist-adoration
and artist-intoxication in presence of the most logical of all
falsifications, as the will to the inversion of truth, to untruth at
any price. Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective means of
beautifying man than piety, by means of it man can become so artful, so
superficial, so iridescent, and so good, that his appearance no longer
offends.

60. To love mankind FOR GOD'S SAKE--this has so far been the noblest and
remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained. That love to mankind,
without any redeeming intention in the background, is only an ADDITIONAL
folly and brutishness, that the inclination to this love has first to
get its proportion, its delicacy, its gram of salt and sprinkling
of ambergris from a higher inclination--whoever first perceived
and "experienced" this, however his tongue may have stammered as it
attempted to express such a delicate matter, let him for all time be
holy and respected, as the man who has so far flown highest and gone
astray in the finest fashion!

61. The philosopher, as WE free spirits understand him--as the man of
the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for the general
development of mankind,--will use religion for his disciplining and
educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political
and economic conditions. The selecting and disciplining
influence--destructive, as well as creative and fashioning--which can be
exercised by means of religion is manifold and varied, according to the
sort of people placed under its spell and protection. For those who are
strong and independent, destined and trained to command, in whom the
judgment and skill of a ruling race is incorporated, religion is
an additional means for overcoming resistance in the exercise of
authority--as a bond which binds rulers and subjects in common,
betraying and surrendering to the former the conscience of the latter,
their inmost heart, which would fain escape obedience. And in the
case of the unique natures of noble origin, if by virtue of superior
spirituality they should incline to a more retired and contemplative
life, reserving to themselves only the more refined forms of government
(over chosen disciples or members of an order), religion itself may
be used as a means for obtaining peace from the noise and trouble of
managing GROSSER affairs, and for securing immunity from the UNAVOIDABLE
filth of all political agitation. The Brahmins, for instance, understood
this fact. With the help of a religious organization, they secured to
themselves the power of nominating kings for the people, while their
sentiments prompted them to keep apart and outside, as men with a higher
and super-regal mission. At the same time religion gives inducement and
opportunity to some of the subjects to qualify themselves for future
ruling and commanding the slowly ascending ranks and classes, in which,
through fortunate marriage customs, volitional power and delight in
self-control are on the increase. To them religion offers sufficient
incentives and temptations to aspire to higher intellectuality, and to
experience the sentiments of authoritative self-control, of silence, and
of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of
educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary
baseness and work itself upwards to future supremacy. And finally, to
ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and
general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives
invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart,
ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy,
with something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of
justification of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all
the semi-animal poverty of their souls. Religion, together with the
religious significance of life, sheds sunshine over such perpetually
harassed men, and makes even their own aspect endurable to them, it
operates upon them as the Epicurean philosophy usually operates upon
sufferers of a higher order, in a refreshing and refining manner,
almost TURNING suffering TO ACCOUNT, and in the end even hallowing and
vindicating it. There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity
and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate
themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby
to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it
difficult enough to live--this very difficulty being necessary.

62. To be sure--to make also the bad counter-reckoning against such
religions, and to bring to light their secret dangers--the cost is
always excessive and terrible when religions do NOT operate as an
educational and disciplinary medium in the hands of the philosopher, but
rule voluntarily and PARAMOUNTLY, when they wish to be the final end,
and not a means along with other means. Among men, as among all other
animals, there is a surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating,
infirm, and necessarily suffering individuals; the successful cases,
among men also, are always the exception; and in view of the fact that
man is THE ANIMAL NOT YET PROPERLY ADAPTED TO HIS ENVIRONMENT, the rare
exception. But worse still. The higher the type a man represents, the
greater is the improbability that he will SUCCEED; the accidental, the
law of irrationality in the general constitution of mankind, manifests
itself most terribly in its destructive effect on the higher orders of
men, the conditions of whose lives are delicate, diverse, and difficult
to determine. What, then, is the attitude of the two greatest religions
above-mentioned to the SURPLUS of failures in life? They endeavour
to preserve and keep alive whatever can be preserved; in fact, as the
religions FOR SUFFERERS, they take the part of these upon principle;
they are always in favour of those who suffer from life as from a
disease, and they would fain treat every other experience of life as
false and impossible. However highly we may esteem this indulgent and
preservative care (inasmuch as in applying to others, it has applied,
and applies also to the highest and usually the most suffering type of
man), the hitherto PARAMOUNT religions--to give a general appreciation
of them--are among the principal causes which have kept the type of
"man" upon a lower level--they have preserved too much THAT WHICH SHOULD
HAVE PERISHED. One has to thank them for invaluable services; and who is
sufficiently rich in gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplation
of all that the "spiritual men" of Christianity have done for Europe
hitherto! But when they had given comfort to the sufferers, courage to
the oppressed and despairing, a staff and support to the helpless,
and when they had allured from society into convents and spiritual
penitentiaries the broken-hearted and distracted: what else had they
to do in order to work systematically in that fashion, and with a good
conscience, for the preservation of all the sick and suffering, which
means, in deed and in truth, to work for the DETERIORATION OF THE
EUROPEAN RACE? To REVERSE all estimates of value--THAT is what they
had to do! And to shatter the strong, to spoil great hopes, to cast
suspicion on the delight in beauty, to break down everything autonomous,
manly, conquering, and imperious--all instincts which are natural to the
highest and most successful type of "man"--into uncertainty, distress
of conscience, and self-destruction; forsooth, to invert all love of the
earthly and of supremacy over the earth, into hatred of the earth and
earthly things--THAT is the task the Church imposed on itself, and
was obliged to impose, until, according to its standard of value,
"unworldliness," "unsensuousness," and "higher man" fused into one
sentiment. If one could observe the strangely painful, equally coarse
and refined comedy of European Christianity with the derisive and
impartial eye of an Epicurean god, I should think one would never cease
marvelling and laughing; does it not actually seem that some single will
has ruled over Europe for eighteen centuries in order to make a SUBLIME
ABORTION of man? He, however, who, with opposite requirements (no longer
Epicurean) and with some divine hammer in his hand, could approach this
almost voluntary degeneration and stunting of mankind, as exemplified in
the European Christian (Pascal, for instance), would he not have to
cry aloud with rage, pity, and horror: "Oh, you bunglers, presumptuous
pitiful bunglers, what have you done! Was that a work for your hands?
How you have hacked and botched my finest stone! What have you presumed
to do!"--I should say that Christianity has hitherto been the most
portentous of presumptions. Men, not great enough, nor hard enough,
to be entitled as artists to take part in fashioning MAN; men,
not sufficiently strong and far-sighted to ALLOW, with sublime
self-constraint, the obvious law of the thousandfold failures and
perishings to prevail; men, not sufficiently noble to see the radically
different grades of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from
man:--SUCH men, with their "equality before God," have hitherto swayed
the destiny of Europe; until at last a dwarfed, almost ludicrous species
has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obliging, sickly,
mediocre, the European of the present day.



CHAPTER IV. APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES


63. He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously--and even
himself--only in relation to his pupils.

64. "Knowledge for its own sake"--that is the last snare laid by
morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once more.

65. The charm of knowledge would be small, were it not so much shame has
to be overcome on the way to it.

65A. We are most dishonourable towards our God: he is not PERMITTED to
sin.

66. The tendency of a person to allow himself to be degraded, robbed,
deceived, and exploited might be the diffidence of a God among men.

67. Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense
of all others. Love to God also!

68. "I did that," says my memory. "I could not have done that," says my
pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually--the memory yields.

69. One has regarded life carelessly, if one has failed to see the hand
that--kills with leniency.

70. If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which
always recurs.

71. THE SAGE AS ASTRONOMER.--So long as thou feelest the stars as an
"above thee," thou lackest the eye of the discerning one.

72. It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments that
makes great men.

73. He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it.

73A. Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye--and calls it his
pride.

74. A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at least two things
besides: gratitude and purity.

75. The degree and nature of a man's sensuality extends to the highest
altitudes of his spirit.

76. Under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself.

77. With his principles a man seeks either to dominate, or justify,
or honour, or reproach, or conceal his habits: two men with the same
principles probably seek fundamentally different ends therewith.

78. He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself thereby, as a
despiser.

79. A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love,
betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.

80. A thing that is explained ceases to concern us--What did the God
mean who gave the advice, "Know thyself!" Did it perhaps imply "Cease to
be concerned about thyself! become objective!"--And Socrates?--And the
"scientific man"?

81. It is terrible to die of thirst at sea. Is it necessary that you
should so salt your truth that it will no longer--quench thirst?

82. "Sympathy for all"--would be harshness and tyranny for THEE, my good
neighbour.

83. INSTINCT--When the house is on fire one forgets even the
dinner--Yes, but one recovers it from among the ashes.

84. Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she--forgets how to charm.

85. The same emotions are in man and woman, but in different TEMPO, on
that account man and woman never cease to misunderstand each other.

86. In the background of all their personal vanity, women themselves
have still their impersonal scorn--for "woman".

87. FETTERED HEART, FREE SPIRIT--When one firmly fetters one's heart
and keeps it prisoner, one can allow one's spirit many liberties: I said
this once before But people do not believe it when I say so, unless they
know it already.

88. One begins to distrust very clever persons when they become
embarrassed.

89. Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences
them is not something dreadful also.

90. Heavy, melancholy men turn lighter, and come temporarily to their
surface, precisely by that which makes others heavy--by hatred and love.

91. So cold, so icy, that one burns one's finger at the touch of him!
Every hand that lays hold of him shrinks back!--And for that very reason
many think him red-hot.

92. Who has not, at one time or another--sacrificed himself for the sake
of his good name?

93. In affability there is no hatred of men, but precisely on that
account a great deal too much contempt of men.

94. The maturity of man--that means, to have reacquired the seriousness
that one had as a child at play.

95. To be ashamed of one's immorality is a step on the ladder at the end
of which one is ashamed also of one's morality.

96. One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa--blessing
it rather than in love with it.

97. What? A great man? I always see merely the play-actor of his own
ideal.

98. When one trains one's conscience, it kisses one while it bites.

99. THE DISAPPOINTED ONE SPEAKS--"I listened for the echo and I heard
only praise."

100. We all feign to ourselves that we are simpler than we are, we thus
relax ourselves away from our fellows.

101. A discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the
animalization of God.

102. Discovering reciprocal love should really disenchant the lover with
regard to the beloved. "What! She is modest enough to love even you? Or
stupid enough? Or--or---"

103. THE DANGER IN HAPPINESS.--"Everything now turns out best for me, I
now love every fate:--who would like to be my fate?"

104. Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love,
prevents the Christians of today--burning us.

105. The pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the "piety")
of the free spirit (the "pious man of knowledge") than the impia fraus.
Hence the profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the Church,
characteristic of the type "free spirit"--as ITS non-freedom.

106. By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves.

107. A sign of strong character, when once the resolution has been
taken, to shut the ear even to the best counter-arguments. Occasionally,
therefore, a will to stupidity.

108. There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral
interpretation of phenomena.

109. The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he extenuates
and maligns it.

110. The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to turn the
beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer.

111. Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride has been
wounded.

112. To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to
belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against
them.

113. "You want to prepossess him in your favour? Then you must be
embarrassed before him."

114. The immense expectation with regard to sexual love, and the coyness
in this expectation, spoils all the perspectives of women at the outset.

115. Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game, woman's play is
mediocre.

116. The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage
to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.

117. The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will of
another, or of several other, emotions.

118. There is an innocence of admiration: it is possessed by him to whom
it has not yet occurred that he himself may be admired some day.

119. Our loathing of dirt may be so great as to prevent our cleaning
ourselves--"justifying" ourselves.

120. Sensuality often forces the growth of love too much, so that its
root remains weak, and is easily torn up.

121. It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn
author--and that he did not learn it better.

122. To rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merely politeness
of heart--and the very opposite of vanity of spirit.

123. Even concubinage has been corrupted--by marriage.

124. He who exults at the stake, does not triumph over pain, but because
of the fact that he does not feel pain where he expected it. A parable.

125. When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily
to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.

126. A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great
men.--Yes, and then to get round them.

127. In the eyes of all true women science is hostile to the sense of
shame. They feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with it--or
worse still! under their dress and finery.

128. The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you
allure the senses to it.

129. The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; on that
account he keeps so far away from him:--the devil, in effect, as the
oldest friend of knowledge.

130. What a person IS begins to betray itself when his talent
decreases,--when he ceases to show what he CAN do. Talent is also an
adornment; an adornment is also a concealment.

131. The sexes deceive themselves about each other: the reason is that
in reality they honour and love only themselves (or their own ideal, to
express it more agreeably). Thus man wishes woman to be peaceable: but
in fact woman is ESSENTIALLY unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she
may have assumed the peaceable demeanour.

132. One is punished best for one's virtues.

133. He who cannot find the way to HIS ideal, lives more frivolously and
shamelessly than the man without an ideal.

134. From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience,
all evidence of truth.

135. Pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man; a considerable
part of it is rather an essential condition of being good.

136. The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the other seeks some
one whom he can assist: a good conversation thus originates.

137. In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes
of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds
a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very
remarkable man.

138. We do the same when awake as when dreaming: we only invent and
imagine him with whom we have intercourse--and forget it immediately.

139. In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.

140. ADVICE AS A RIDDLE.--"If the band is not to break, bite it
first--secure to make!"

141. The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself
for a God.

142. The chastest utterance I ever heard: "Dans le veritable amour c'est
l'ame qui enveloppe le corps."

143. Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for what is
most difficult to us.--Concerning the origin of many systems of morals.

144. When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally
something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a
certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if I may say so, is "the barren
animal."

145. Comparing man and woman generally, one may say that woman would
not have the genius for adornment, if she had not the instinct for the
SECONDARY role.

146. He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.

147. From old Florentine novels--moreover, from life: Buona femmina e
mala femmina vuol bastone.--Sacchetti, Nov. 86.

148. To seduce their neighbour to a favourable opinion, and afterwards
to believe implicitly in this opinion of their neighbour--who can do
this conjuring trick so well as women?

149. That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of
what was formerly considered good--the atavism of an old ideal.

150. Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the
demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God everything
becomes--what? perhaps a "world"?

151. It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your
permission to possess it;--eh, my friends?

152. "Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Paradise":
so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents.

153. What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

154. Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of
health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.

155. The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness.

156. Insanity in individuals is something rare--but in groups, parties,
nations, and epochs it is the rule.

157. The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one
gets successfully through many a bad night.

158. Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our
strongest impulse--the tyrant in us.

159. One MUST repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us
good or ill?

160. One no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently after one has
communicated it.

161. Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them.

162. "Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour's
neighbour":--so thinks every nation.

163. Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover--his
rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his
normal character.

164. Jesus said to his Jews: "The law was for servants;--love God as I
love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of God to do with morals!"

165. IN SIGHT OF EVERY PARTY.--A shepherd has always need of a
bell-wether--or he has himself to be a wether occasionally.

166. One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying
grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.

167. To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame--and something
precious.

168. Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it,
certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

169. To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing
oneself.

170. In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

171. Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like
tender hands on a Cyclops.

172. One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind
(because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never
confess to the individual.

173. One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one
esteems equal or superior.

174. Ye Utilitarians--ye, too, love the UTILE only as a VEHICLE for
your inclinations,--ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels
insupportable!

175. One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.

176. The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is
counter to our vanity.

177. With regard to what "truthfulness" is, perhaps nobody has ever been
sufficiently truthful.

178. One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a
forfeiture of the rights of man!

179. The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very
indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile "reformed."

180. There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a
cause.

181. It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.

182. The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not be
returned.

183. "I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can
no longer believe in you."

184. There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of
wickedness.

185. "I dislike him."--Why?--"I am not a match for him."--Did any one
ever answer so?



CHAPTER V. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS


186. The moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as subtle,
belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the "Science of Morals"
belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and coarse-fingered:--an
interesting contrast, which sometimes becomes incarnate and obvious
in the very person of a moralist. Indeed, the expression, "Science
of Morals" is, in respect to what is designated thereby, far too
presumptuous and counter to GOOD taste,--which is always a foretaste of
more modest expressions. One ought to avow with the utmost fairness WHAT
is still necessary here for a long time, WHAT is alone proper for the
present: namely, the collection of material, the comprehensive survey
and classification of an immense domain of delicate sentiments of worth,
and distinctions of worth, which live, grow, propagate, and perish--and
perhaps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring and more common
forms of these living crystallizations--as preparation for a THEORY OF
TYPES of morality. To be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest.
All the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness,
demanded of themselves something very much higher, more pretentious, and
ceremonious, when they concerned themselves with morality as a science:
they wanted to GIVE A BASIC to morality--and every philosopher hitherto
has believed that he has given it a basis; morality itself, however, has
been regarded as something "given." How far from their awkward pride
was the seemingly insignificant problem--left in dust and decay--of a
description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands
and senses could hardly be fine enough for it! It was precisely owing to
moral philosophers' knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary
epitome, or an accidental abridgement--perhaps as the morality of
their environment, their position, their church, their Zeitgeist, their
climate and zone--it was precisely because they were badly instructed
with regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by no means eager
to know about these matters, that they did not even come in sight of the
real problems of morals--problems which only disclose themselves by
a comparison of MANY kinds of morality. In every "Science of Morals"
hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself
has been OMITTED: there has been no suspicion that there was anything
problematic there! That which philosophers called "giving a basis to
morality," and endeavoured to realize, has, when seen in a right light,
proved merely a learned form of good FAITH in prevailing morality, a new
means of its EXPRESSION, consequently just a matter-of-fact within the
sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort of
denial that it is LAWFUL for this morality to be called in question--and
in any case the reverse of the testing, analyzing, doubting, and
vivisecting of this very faith. Hear, for instance, with what
innocence--almost worthy of honour--Schopenhauer represents his own
task, and draw your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a
"Science" whose latest master still talks in the strain of children and
old wives: "The principle," he says (page 136 of the Grundprobleme der
Ethik), [Footnote: Pages 54-55 of Schopenhauer's Basis of Morality,
translated by Arthur B. Bullock, M.A. (1903).] "the axiom about the
purport of which all moralists are PRACTICALLY agreed: neminem laede,
immo omnes quantum potes juva--is REALLY the proposition which all moral
teachers strive to establish, ... the REAL basis of ethics which
has been sought, like the philosopher's stone, for centuries."--The
difficulty of establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be
great--it is well known that Schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his
efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false and
sentimental this proposition is, in a world whose essence is Will
to Power, may be reminded that Schopenhauer, although a pessimist,
ACTUALLY--played the flute... daily after dinner: one may read about
the matter in his biography. A question by the way: a pessimist, a
repudiator of God and of the world, who MAKES A HALT at morality--who
assents to morality, and plays the flute to laede-neminem morals, what?
Is that really--a pessimist?

187. Apart from the value of such assertions as "there is a categorical
imperative in us," one can always ask: What does such an assertion
indicate about him who makes it? There are systems of morals which are
meant to justify their author in the eyes of other people; other systems
of morals are meant to tranquilize him, and make him self-satisfied;
with other systems he wants to crucify and humble himself, with others
he wishes to take revenge, with others to conceal himself, with others
to glorify himself and gave superiority and distinction,--this system of
morals helps its author to forget, that system makes him, or something
of him, forgotten, many a moralist would like to exercise power and
creative arbitrariness over mankind, many another, perhaps, Kant
especially, gives us to understand by his morals that "what is estimable
in me, is that I know how to obey--and with you it SHALL not be
otherwise than with me!" In short, systems of morals are only a
SIGN-LANGUAGE OF THE EMOTIONS.

188. In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a sort of
tyranny against "nature" and also against "reason", that is, however, no
objection, unless one should again decree by some system of morals, that
all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful What is
essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a
long constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or Port Royal,
or Puritanism, one should remember the constraint under which every
language has attained to strength and freedom--the metrical constraint,
the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. How much trouble have the poets and
orators of every nation given themselves!--not excepting some of
the prose writers of today, in whose ear dwells an inexorable
conscientiousness--"for the sake of a folly," as utilitarian bunglers
say, and thereby deem themselves wise--"from submission to arbitrary
laws," as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves "free," even
free-spirited. The singular fact remains, however, that everything
of the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly
certainty, which exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself,
or in administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as in
conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary
law, and in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely
this is "nature" and "natural"--and not laisser-aller! Every artist
knows how different from the state of letting himself go, is his
"most natural" condition, the free arranging, locating, disposing,
and constructing in the moments of "inspiration"--and how strictly and
delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their very rigidness
and precision, defy all formulation by means of ideas (even the most
stable idea has, in comparison therewith, something floating, manifold,
and ambiguous in it). The essential thing "in heaven and in earth" is,
apparently (to repeat it once more), that there should be long OBEDIENCE
in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in
the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance,
virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality--anything whatever
that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. The long bondage of
the spirit, the distrustful constraint in the communicability of
ideas, the discipline which the thinker imposed on himself to think
in accordance with the rules of a church or a court, or conformable
to Aristotelian premises, the persistent spiritual will to interpret
everything that happened according to a Christian scheme, and in every
occurrence to rediscover and justify the Christian God:--all this
violence, arbitrariness, severity, dreadfulness, and unreasonableness,
has proved itself the disciplinary means whereby the European spirit has
attained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and subtle mobility;
granted also that much irrecoverable strength and spirit had to be
stifled, suffocated, and spoilt in the process (for here, as everywhere,
"nature" shows herself as she is, in all her extravagant and INDIFFERENT
magnificence, which is shocking, but nevertheless noble). That
for centuries European thinkers only thought in order to prove
something--nowadays, on the contrary, we are suspicious of every thinker
who "wishes to prove something"--that it was always settled beforehand
what WAS TO BE the result of their strictest thinking, as it was perhaps
in the Asiatic astrology of former times, or as it is still at the
present day in the innocent, Christian-moral explanation of immediate
personal events "for the glory of God," or "for the good of the
soul":--this tyranny, this arbitrariness, this severe and magnificent
stupidity, has EDUCATED the spirit; slavery, both in the coarser and
the finer sense, is apparently an indispensable means even of spiritual
education and discipline. One may look at every system of morals in this
light: it is "nature" therein which teaches to hate the laisser-aller,
the too great freedom, and implants the need for limited horizons, for
immediate duties--it teaches the NARROWING OF PERSPECTIVES, and thus, in
a certain sense, that stupidity is a condition of life and development.
"Thou must obey some one, and for a long time; OTHERWISE thou wilt come
to grief, and lose all respect for thyself"--this seems to me to be the
moral imperative of nature, which is certainly neither "categorical,"
as old Kant wished (consequently the "otherwise"), nor does it address
itself to the individual (what does nature care for the individual!),
but to nations, races, ages, and ranks; above all, however, to the
animal "man" generally, to MANKIND.

189. Industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle: it was a
master stroke of ENGLISH instinct to hallow and begloom Sunday to such
an extent that the Englishman unconsciously hankers for his week--and
work-day again:--as a kind of cleverly devised, cleverly intercalated
FAST, such as is also frequently found in the ancient world (although,
as is appropriate in southern nations, not precisely with respect
to work). Many kinds of fasts are necessary; and wherever powerful
influences and habits prevail, legislators have to see that intercalary
days are appointed, on which such impulses are fettered, and learn to
hunger anew. Viewed from a higher standpoint, whole generations and
epochs, when they show themselves infected with any moral fanaticism,
seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and fasting, during
which an impulse learns to humble and submit itself--at the same time
also to PURIFY and SHARPEN itself; certain philosophical sects likewise
admit of a similar interpretation (for instance, the Stoa, in the midst
of Hellenic culture, with the atmosphere rank and overcharged with
Aphrodisiacal odours).--Here also is a hint for the explanation of the
paradox, why it was precisely in the most Christian period of European
history, and in general only under the pressure of Christian sentiments,
that the sexual impulse sublimated into love (amour-passion).

190. There is something in the morality of Plato which does not really
belong to Plato, but which only appears in his philosophy, one might
say, in spite of him: namely, Socratism, for which he himself was
too noble. "No one desires to injure himself, hence all evil is done
unwittingly. The evil man inflicts injury on himself; he would not do
so, however, if he knew that evil is evil. The evil man, therefore, is
only evil through error; if one free him from error one will necessarily
make him--good."--This mode of reasoning savours of the POPULACE, who
perceive only the unpleasant consequences of evil-doing, and practically
judge that "it is STUPID to do wrong"; while they accept "good" as
identical with "useful and pleasant," without further thought. As
regards every system of utilitarianism, one may at once assume that it
has the same origin, and follow the scent: one will seldom err.--Plato
did all he could to interpret something refined and noble into the
tenets of his teacher, and above all to interpret himself into them--he,
the most daring of all interpreters, who lifted the entire Socrates out
of the street, as a popular theme and song, to exhibit him in endless
and impossible modifications--namely, in all his own disguises and
multiplicities. In jest, and in Homeric language as well, what is the
Platonic Socrates, if not--[Greek words inserted here.]

191. The old theological problem of "Faith" and "Knowledge," or more
plainly, of instinct and reason--the question whether, in respect to the
valuation of things, instinct deserves more authority than rationality,
which wants to appreciate and act according to motives, according to
a "Why," that is to say, in conformity to purpose and utility--it
is always the old moral problem that first appeared in the person of
Socrates, and had divided men's minds long before Christianity. Socrates
himself, following, of course, the taste of his talent--that of a
surpassing dialectician--took first the side of reason; and, in fact,
what did he do all his life but laugh at the awkward incapacity of the
noble Athenians, who were men of instinct, like all noble men, and could
never give satisfactory answers concerning the motives of their actions?
In the end, however, though silently and secretly, he laughed also
at himself: with his finer conscience and introspection, he found
in himself the same difficulty and incapacity. "But why"--he said
to himself--"should one on that account separate oneself from the
instincts! One must set them right, and the reason ALSO--one must follow
the instincts, but at the same time persuade the reason to support them
with good arguments." This was the real FALSENESS of that great and
mysterious ironist; he brought his conscience up to the point that he
was satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting: in fact, he perceived
the irrationality in the moral judgment.--Plato, more innocent in such
matters, and without the craftiness of the plebeian, wished to prove to
himself, at the expenditure of all his strength--the greatest strength
a philosopher had ever expended--that reason and instinct lead
spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to "God"; and since Plato, all
theologians and philosophers have followed the same path--which means
that in matters of morality, instinct (or as Christians call it,
"Faith," or as I call it, "the herd") has hitherto triumphed. Unless
one should make an exception in the case of Descartes, the father of
rationalism (and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution), who
recognized only the authority of reason: but reason is only a tool, and
Descartes was superficial.

192. Whoever has followed the history of a single science, finds in
its development a clue to the understanding of the oldest and commonest
processes of all "knowledge and cognizance": there, as here, the
premature hypotheses, the fictions, the good stupid will to "belief,"
and the lack of distrust and patience are first developed--our senses
learn late, and never learn completely, to be subtle, reliable, and
cautious organs of knowledge. Our eyes find it easier on a given
occasion to produce a picture already often produced, than to seize upon
the divergence and novelty of an impression: the latter requires more
force, more "morality." It is difficult and painful for the ear to
listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly. When we hear
another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds
into words with which we are more familiar and conversant--it was thus,
for example, that the Germans modified the spoken word ARCUBALISTA into
ARMBRUST (cross-bow). Our senses are also hostile and averse to the
new; and generally, even in the "simplest" processes of sensation, the
emotions DOMINATE--such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotion
of indolence.--As little as a reader nowadays reads all the single words
(not to speak of syllables) of a page--he rather takes about five out
of every twenty words at random, and "guesses" the probably appropriate
sense to them--just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely
in respect to its leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so
much easier to fancy the chance of a tree. Even in the midst of the
most remarkable experiences, we still do just the same; we fabricate the
greater part of the experience, and can hardly be made to contemplate
any event, EXCEPT as "inventors" thereof. All this goes to prove
that from our fundamental nature and from remote ages we have
been--ACCUSTOMED TO LYING. Or, to express it more politely and
hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly--one is much more of an artist
than one is aware of.--In an animated conversation, I often see the face
of the person with whom I am speaking so clearly and sharply defined
before me, according to the thought he expresses, or which I believe to
be evoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctness far exceeds the
STRENGTH of my visual faculty--the delicacy of the play of the muscles
and of the expression of the eyes MUST therefore be imagined by me.
Probably the person put on quite a different expression, or none at all.

193. Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also contrariwise. What we
experience in dreams, provided we experience it often, pertains at
last just as much to the general belongings of our soul as anything
"actually" experienced; by virtue thereof we are richer or poorer, we
have a requirement more or less, and finally, in broad daylight, and
even in the brightest moments of our waking life, we are ruled to some
extent by the nature of our dreams. Supposing that someone has often
flown in his dreams, and that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is
conscious of the power and art of flying as his privilege and his
peculiarly enviable happiness; such a person, who believes that on the
slightest impulse, he can actualize all sorts of curves and angles, who
knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an "upwards"
without effort or constraint, a "downwards" without descending
or lowering--without TROUBLE!--how could the man with such
dream-experiences and dream-habits fail to find "happiness" differently
coloured and defined, even in his waking hours! How could he fail--to
long DIFFERENTLY for happiness? "Flight," such as is described by poets,
must, when compared with his own "flying," be far too earthly, muscular,
violent, far too "troublesome" for him.

194. The difference among men does not manifest itself only in the
difference of their lists of desirable things--in their regarding
different good things as worth striving for, and being disagreed as to
the greater or less value, the order of rank, of the commonly recognized
desirable things:--it manifests itself much more in what they regard as
actually HAVING and POSSESSING a desirable thing. As regards a woman,
for instance, the control over her body and her sexual gratification
serves as an amply sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the
more modest man; another with a more suspicious and ambitious thirst for
possession, sees the "questionableness," the mere apparentness of such
ownership, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know especially
whether the woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives up for
his sake what she has or would like to have--only THEN does he look upon
her as "possessed." A third, however, has not even here got to the limit
of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself whether
the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps do
so for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed,
profoundly well known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let
himself be found out. Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in
his possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when
she loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry and concealed
insatiability, as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. One
man would like to possess a nation, and he finds all the higher arts of
Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for his purpose. Another, with a more
refined thirst for possession, says to himself: "One may not deceive
where one desires to possess"--he is irritated and impatient at the idea
that a mask of him should rule in the hearts of the people: "I must,
therefore, MAKE myself known, and first of all learn to know myself!"
Among helpful and charitable people, one almost always finds the awkward
craftiness which first gets up suitably him who has to be helped, as
though, for instance, he should "merit" help, seek just THEIR help, and
would show himself deeply grateful, attached, and subservient to them
for all help. With these conceits, they take control of the needy as a
property, just as in general they are charitable and helpful out of a
desire for property. One finds them jealous when they are crossed or
forestalled in their charity. Parents involuntarily make something like
themselves out of their children--they call that "education"; no mother
doubts at the bottom of her heart that the child she has borne is
thereby her property, no father hesitates about his right to HIS OWN
ideas and notions of worth. Indeed, in former times fathers deemed it
right to use their discretion concerning the life or death of the newly
born (as among the ancient Germans). And like the father, so also do the
teacher, the class, the priest, and the prince still see in every new
individual an unobjectionable opportunity for a new possession. The
consequence is...

195. The Jews--a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the whole
ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the nations," as
they themselves say and believe--the Jews performed the miracle of the
inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new
and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused
into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent,"
"sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of
reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included
the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the
significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with THEM that
the SLAVE-INSURRECTION IN MORALS commences.

196. It is to be INFERRED that there are countless dark bodies near the
sun--such as we shall never see. Among ourselves, this is an allegory;
and the psychologist of morals reads the whole star-writing merely as an
allegorical and symbolic language in which much may be unexpressed.

197. The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Caesar Borgia)
are fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as
one seeks a "morbidness" in the constitution of these healthiest of
all tropical monsters and growths, or even an innate "hell" in them--as
almost all moralists have done hitherto. Does it not seem that there is
a hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists? And
that the "tropical man" must be discredited at all costs, whether
as disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own hell and
self-torture? And why? In favour of the "temperate zones"? In favour
of the temperate men? The "moral"? The mediocre?--This for the chapter:
"Morals as Timidity."

198. All the systems of morals which address themselves with a view to
their "happiness," as it is called--what else are they but suggestions
for behaviour adapted to the degree of DANGER from themselves in which
the individuals live; recipes for their passions, their good and bad
propensities, insofar as such have the Will to Power and would like
to play the master; small and great expediencies and elaborations,
permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife
wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form--because
they address themselves to "all," because they generalize where
generalization is not authorized; all of them speaking unconditionally,
and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely
with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even
seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell dangerously,
especially of "the other world." That is all of little value when
estimated intellectually, and is far from being "science," much less
"wisdom"; but, repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is
expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity,
stupidity--whether it be the indifference and statuesque coldness
towards the heated folly of the emotions, which the Stoics advised and
fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-weeping of Spinoza, the
destruction of the emotions by their analysis and vivisection, which he
recommended so naively; or the lowering of the emotions to an innocent
mean at which they may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals;
or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary
attenuation and spiritualization by the symbolism of art, perhaps as
music, or as love of God, and of mankind for God's sake--for in religion
the passions are once more enfranchised, provided that...; or, finally,
even the complaisant and wanton surrender to the emotions, as has
been taught by Hafis and Goethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the
spiritual and corporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of
wise old codgers and drunkards, with whom it "no longer has much
danger."--This also for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity."

199. Inasmuch as in all ages, as long as mankind has existed, there have
also been human herds (family alliances, communities, tribes, peoples,
states, churches), and always a great number who obey in proportion
to the small number who command--in view, therefore, of the fact that
obedience has been most practiced and fostered among mankind hitherto,
one may reasonably suppose that, generally speaking, the need thereof is
now innate in every one, as a kind of FORMAL CONSCIENCE which gives
the command "Thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally
refrain from something", in short, "Thou shalt". This need tries to
satisfy itself and to fill its form with a content, according to its
strength, impatience, and eagerness, it at once seizes as an omnivorous
appetite with little selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into
its ear by all sorts of commanders--parents, teachers, laws, class
prejudices, or public opinion. The extraordinary limitation of human
development, the hesitation, protractedness, frequent retrogression, and
turning thereof, is attributable to the fact that the herd-instinct of
obedience is transmitted best, and at the cost of the art of command. If
one imagine this instinct increasing to its greatest extent, commanders
and independent individuals will finally be lacking altogether, or they
will suffer inwardly from a bad conscience, and will have to impose
a deception on themselves in the first place in order to be able to
command just as if they also were only obeying. This condition of things
actually exists in Europe at present--I call it the moral hypocrisy of
the commanding class. They know no other way of protecting themselves
from their bad conscience than by playing the role of executors of older
and higher orders (of predecessors, of the constitution, of justice, of
the law, or of God himself), or they even justify themselves by maxims
from the current opinions of the herd, as "first servants of their
people," or "instruments of the public weal". On the other hand, the
gregarious European man nowadays assumes an air as if he were the only
kind of man that is allowable, he glorifies his qualities, such as
public spirit, kindness, deference, industry, temperance, modesty,
indulgence, sympathy, by virtue of which he is gentle, endurable, and
useful to the herd, as the peculiarly human virtues. In cases, however,
where it is believed that the leader and bell-wether cannot be dispensed
with, attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace commanders
by the summing together of clever gregarious men all representative
constitutions, for example, are of this origin. In spite of all, what a
blessing, what a deliverance from a weight becoming unendurable, is the
appearance of an absolute ruler for these gregarious Europeans--of this
fact the effect of the appearance of Napoleon was the last great proof
the history of the influence of Napoleon is almost the history of
the higher happiness to which the entire century has attained in its
worthiest individuals and periods.

200. The man of an age of dissolution which mixes the races with
one another, who has the inheritance of a diversified descent in his
body--that is to say, contrary, and often not only contrary, instincts
and standards of value, which struggle with one another and are seldom
at peace--such a man of late culture and broken lights, will, on an
average, be a weak man. His fundamental desire is that the war which is
IN HIM should come to an end; happiness appears to him in the character
of a soothing medicine and mode of thought (for instance, Epicurean
or Christian); it is above all things the happiness of repose, of
undisturbedness, of repletion, of final unity--it is the "Sabbath of
Sabbaths," to use the expression of the holy rhetorician, St. Augustine,
who was himself such a man.--Should, however, the contrariety and
conflict in such natures operate as an ADDITIONAL incentive and stimulus
to life--and if, on the other hand, in addition to their powerful and
irreconcilable instincts, they have also inherited and indoctrinated
into them a proper mastery and subtlety for carrying on the conflict
with themselves (that is to say, the faculty of self-control and
self-deception), there then arise those marvelously incomprehensible and
inexplicable beings, those enigmatical men, predestined for conquering
and circumventing others, the finest examples of which are Alcibiades
and Caesar (with whom I should like to associate the FIRST of Europeans
according to my taste, the Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Second), and
among artists, perhaps Leonardo da Vinci. They appear precisely in the
same periods when that weaker type, with its longing for repose, comes
to the front; the two types are complementary to each other, and spring
from the same causes.

201. As long as the utility which determines moral estimates is only
gregarious utility, as long as the preservation of the community is only
kept in view, and the immoral is sought precisely and exclusively in
what seems dangerous to the maintenance of the community, there can be
no "morality of love to one's neighbour." Granted even that there is
already a little constant exercise of consideration, sympathy, fairness,
gentleness, and mutual assistance, granted that even in this condition
of society all those instincts are already active which are latterly
distinguished by honourable names as "virtues," and eventually almost
coincide with the conception "morality": in that period they do not
as yet belong to the domain of moral valuations--they are still
ULTRA-MORAL. A sympathetic action, for instance, is neither called good
nor bad, moral nor immoral, in the best period of the Romans; and should
it be praised, a sort of resentful disdain is compatible with this
praise, even at the best, directly the sympathetic action is compared
with one which contributes to the welfare of the whole, to the RES
PUBLICA. After all, "love to our neighbour" is always a secondary
matter, partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to
our FEAR OF OUR NEIGHBOUR. After the fabric of society seems on the
whole established and secured against external dangers, it is this
fear of our neighbour which again creates new perspectives of moral
valuation. Certain strong and dangerous instincts, such as the love of
enterprise, foolhardiness, revengefulness, astuteness, rapacity, and
love of power, which up till then had not only to be honoured from the
point of view of general utility--under other names, of course, than
those here given--but had to be fostered and cultivated (because they
were perpetually required in the common danger against the common
enemies), are now felt in their dangerousness to be doubly strong--when
the outlets for them are lacking--and are gradually branded as immoral
and given over to calumny. The contrary instincts and inclinations now
attain to moral honour, the gregarious instinct gradually draws its
conclusions. How much or how little dangerousness to the community or
to equality is contained in an opinion, a condition, an emotion, a
disposition, or an endowment--that is now the moral perspective, here
again fear is the mother of morals. It is by the loftiest and strongest
instincts, when they break out passionately and carry the individual
far above and beyond the average, and the low level of the gregarious
conscience, that the self-reliance of the community is destroyed, its
belief in itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks, consequently these
very instincts will be most branded and defamed. The lofty independent
spirituality, the will to stand alone, and even the cogent reason, are
felt to be dangers, everything that elevates the individual above the
herd, and is a source of fear to the neighbour, is henceforth called
EVIL, the tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalizing
disposition, the MEDIOCRITY of desires, attains to moral distinction and
honour. Finally, under very peaceful circumstances, there is always
less opportunity and necessity for training the feelings to severity
and rigour, and now every form of severity, even in justice, begins
to disturb the conscience, a lofty and rigorous nobleness and
self-responsibility almost offends, and awakens distrust, "the lamb,"
and still more "the sheep," wins respect. There is a point of diseased
mellowness and effeminacy in the history of society, at which society
itself takes the part of him who injures it, the part of the CRIMINAL,
and does so, in fact, seriously and honestly. To punish, appears to it
to be somehow unfair--it is certain that the idea of "punishment" and
"the obligation to punish" are then painful and alarming to people. "Is
it not sufficient if the criminal be rendered HARMLESS? Why should we
still punish? Punishment itself is terrible!"--with these questions
gregarious morality, the morality of fear, draws its ultimate
conclusion. If one could at all do away with danger, the cause of fear,
one would have done away with this morality at the same time, it
would no longer be necessary, it WOULD NOT CONSIDER ITSELF any longer
necessary!--Whoever examines the conscience of the present-day European,
will always elicit the same imperative from its thousand moral folds
and hidden recesses, the imperative of the timidity of the herd "we wish
that some time or other there may be NOTHING MORE TO FEAR!" Some time
or other--the will and the way THERETO is nowadays called "progress" all
over Europe.

202. Let us at once say again what we have already said a hundred
times, for people's ears nowadays are unwilling to hear such truths--OUR
truths. We know well enough how offensive it sounds when any one
plainly, and without metaphor, counts man among the animals, but it will
be accounted to us almost a CRIME, that it is precisely in respect to
men of "modern ideas" that we have constantly applied the terms "herd,"
"herd-instincts," and such like expressions. What avail is it? We cannot
do otherwise, for it is precisely here that our new insight is. We
have found that in all the principal moral judgments, Europe has become
unanimous, including likewise the countries where European influence
prevails in Europe people evidently KNOW what Socrates thought he
did not know, and what the famous serpent of old once promised to
teach--they "know" today what is good and evil. It must then sound hard
and be distasteful to the ear, when we always insist that that which
here thinks it knows, that which here glorifies itself with praise
and blame, and calls itself good, is the instinct of the herding human
animal, the instinct which has come and is ever coming more and more
to the front, to preponderance and supremacy over other instincts,
according to the increasing physiological approximation and resemblance
of which it is the symptom. MORALITY IN EUROPE AT PRESENT IS
HERDING-ANIMAL MORALITY, and therefore, as we understand the matter,
only one kind of human morality, beside which, before which, and after
which many other moralities, and above all HIGHER moralities, are or
should be possible. Against such a "possibility," against such a "should
be," however, this morality defends itself with all its strength, it
says obstinately and inexorably "I am morality itself and nothing else
is morality!" Indeed, with the help of a religion which has humoured
and flattered the sublimest desires of the herding-animal, things have
reached such a point that we always find a more visible expression of
this morality even in political and social arrangements: the DEMOCRATIC
movement is the inheritance of the Christian movement. That its TEMPO,
however, is much too slow and sleepy for the more impatient ones, for
those who are sick and distracted by the herding-instinct, is indicated
by the increasingly furious howling, and always less disguised
teeth-gnashing of the anarchist dogs, who are now roving through the
highways of European culture. Apparently in opposition to the peacefully
industrious democrats and Revolution-ideologues, and still more so
to the awkward philosophasters and fraternity-visionaries who call
themselves Socialists and want a "free society," those are really at one
with them all in their thorough and instinctive hostility to every form
of society other than that of the AUTONOMOUS herd (to the extent even of
repudiating the notions "master" and "servant"--ni dieu ni maitre, says
a socialist formula); at one in their tenacious opposition to every
special claim, every special right and privilege (this means ultimately
opposition to EVERY right, for when all are equal, no one needs "rights"
any longer); at one in their distrust of punitive justice (as though it
were a violation of the weak, unfair to the NECESSARY consequences of
all former society); but equally at one in their religion of sympathy,
in their compassion for all that feels, lives, and suffers (down to the
very animals, up even to "God"--the extravagance of "sympathy for
God" belongs to a democratic age); altogether at one in the cry and
impatience of their sympathy, in their deadly hatred of suffering
generally, in their almost feminine incapacity for witnessing it or
ALLOWING it; at one in their involuntary beglooming and heart-softening,
under the spell of which Europe seems to be threatened with a new
Buddhism; at one in their belief in the morality of MUTUAL sympathy, as
though it were morality in itself, the climax, the ATTAINED climax of
mankind, the sole hope of the future, the consolation of the present,
the great discharge from all the obligations of the past; altogether at
one in their belief in the community as the DELIVERER, in the herd, and
therefore in "themselves."

203. We, who hold a different belief--we, who regard the democratic
movement, not only as a degenerating form of political organization, but
as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type of man, as involving his
mediocrising and depreciation: where have WE to fix our hopes? In
NEW PHILOSOPHERS--there is no other alternative: in minds strong and
original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue
and invert "eternal valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future,
who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which
will compel millenniums to take NEW paths. To teach man the future
of humanity as his WILL, as depending on human will, and to make
preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in
rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful
rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of
"history" (the folly of the "greatest number" is only its last
form)--for that purpose a new type of philosopher and commander will
some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that
has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might
look pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders hovers before OUR
eyes:--is it lawful for me to say it aloud, ye free spirits? The
conditions which one would partly have to create and partly utilize for
their genesis; the presumptive methods and tests by virtue of which
a soul should grow up to such an elevation and power as to feel a
CONSTRAINT to these tasks; a transvaluation of values, under the new
pressure and hammer of which a conscience should be steeled and a heart
transformed into brass, so as to bear the weight of such responsibility;
and on the other hand the necessity for such leaders, the dreadful
danger that they might be lacking, or miscarry and degenerate:--these
are OUR real anxieties and glooms, ye know it well, ye free spirits!
these are the heavy distant thoughts and storms which sweep across the
heaven of OUR life. There are few pains so grievous as to have seen,
divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and
deteriorated; but he who has the rare eye for the universal danger
of "man" himself DETERIORATING, he who like us has recognized the
extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto played its game in
respect to the future of mankind--a game in which neither the hand, nor
even a "finger of God" has participated!--he who divines the fate that
is hidden under the idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of
"modern ideas," and still more under the whole of Christo-European
morality--suffers from an anguish with which no other is to be compared.
He sees at a glance all that could still BE MADE OUT OF MAN through
a favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and
arrangements; he knows with all the knowledge of his conviction how
unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and how often
in the past the type man has stood in presence of mysterious decisions
and new paths:--he knows still better from his painfulest recollections
on what wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank
have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become
contemptible. The UNIVERSAL DEGENERACY OF MANKIND to the level of
the "man of the future"--as idealized by the socialistic fools and
shallow-pates--this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely
gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society"),
this brutalizing of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is
undoubtedly POSSIBLE! He who has thought out this possibility to its
ultimate conclusion knows ANOTHER loathing unknown to the rest of
mankind--and perhaps also a new MISSION!



CHAPTER VI. WE SCHOLARS


204. At the risk that moralizing may also reveal itself here as that
which it has always been--namely, resolutely MONTRER SES PLAIES,
according to Balzac--I would venture to protest against an improper and
injurious alteration of rank, which quite unnoticed, and as if with the
best conscience, threatens nowadays to establish itself in the relations
of science and philosophy. I mean to say that one must have the right
out of one's own EXPERIENCE--experience, as it seems to me, always
implies unfortunate experience?--to treat of such an important question
of rank, so as not to speak of colour like the blind, or AGAINST science
like women and artists ("Ah! this dreadful science!" sigh their instinct
and their shame, "it always FINDS THINGS OUT!"). The declaration of
independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy,
is one of the subtler after-effects of democratic organization and
disorganization: the self-glorification and self-conceitedness of
the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom, and in its best
springtime--which does not mean to imply that in this case self-praise
smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populace cries, "Freedom
from all masters!" and after science has, with the happiest results,
resisted theology, whose "hand-maid" it had been too long, it now
proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for
philosophy, and in its turn to play the "master"--what am I saying!
to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account. My memory--the memory of
a scientific man, if you please!--teems with the naivetes of insolence
which I have heard about philosophy and philosophers from young
naturalists and old physicians (not to mention the most cultured and
most conceited of all learned men, the philologists and schoolmasters,
who are both the one and the other by profession). On one occasion it
was the specialist and the Jack Horner who instinctively stood on the
defensive against all synthetic tasks and capabilities; at another time
it was the industrious worker who had got a scent of OTIUM and refined
luxuriousness in the internal economy of the philosopher, and felt
himself aggrieved and belittled thereby. On another occasion it was the
colour-blindness of the utilitarian, who sees nothing in philosophy but
a series of REFUTED systems, and an extravagant expenditure which "does
nobody any good". At another time the fear of disguised mysticism and of
the boundary-adjustment of knowledge became conspicuous, at another
time the disregard of individual philosophers, which had involuntarily
extended to disregard of philosophy generally. In fine, I found most
frequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy in young scholars,
the evil after-effect of some particular philosopher, to whom on the
whole obedience had been foresworn, without, however, the spell of his
scornful estimates of other philosophers having been got rid of--the
result being a general ill-will to all philosophy. (Such seems to
me, for instance, the after-effect of Schopenhauer on the most modern
Germany: by his unintelligent rage against Hegel, he has succeeded in
severing the whole of the last generation of Germans from its connection
with German culture, which culture, all things considered, has been
an elevation and a divining refinement of the HISTORICAL SENSE, but
precisely at this point Schopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive,
and un-German to the extent of ingeniousness.) On the whole, speaking
generally, it may just have been the humanness, all-too-humanness of the
modern philosophers themselves, in short, their contemptibleness, which
has injured most radically the reverence for philosophy and opened the
doors to the instinct of the populace. Let it but be acknowledged to
what an extent our modern world diverges from the whole style of the
world of Heraclitus, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever else all the royal
and magnificent anchorites of the spirit were called, and with what
justice an honest man of science MAY feel himself of a better family and
origin, in view of such representatives of philosophy, who, owing to
the fashion of the present day, are just as much aloft as they are down
below--in Germany, for instance, the two lions of Berlin, the anarchist
Eugen Duhring and the amalgamist Eduard von Hartmann. It is especially
the sight of those hotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves
"realists," or "positivists," which is calculated to implant a
dangerous distrust in the soul of a young and ambitious scholar those
philosophers, at the best, are themselves but scholars and specialists,
that is very evident! All of them are persons who have been vanquished
and BROUGHT BACK AGAIN under the dominion of science, who at one time
or another claimed more from themselves, without having a right to the
"more" and its responsibility--and who now, creditably, rancorously, and
vindictively, represent in word and deed, DISBELIEF in the master-task
and supremacy of philosophy After all, how could it be otherwise?
Science flourishes nowadays and has the good conscience clearly visible
on its countenance, while that to which the entire modern philosophy has
gradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy of the present day, excites
distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and pity Philosophy reduced to
a "theory of knowledge," no more in fact than a diffident science of
epochs and doctrine of forbearance a philosophy that never even
gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously DENIES itself the right
to enter--that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony,
something that awakens pity. How could such a philosophy--RULE!

205. The dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopher are, in
fact, so manifold nowadays, that one might doubt whether this fruit
could still come to maturity. The extent and towering structure of the
sciences have increased enormously, and therewith also the probability
that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner, or will attach
himself somewhere and "specialize" so that he will no longer attain to
his elevation, that is to say, to his superspection, his circumspection,
and his DESPECTION. Or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his
maturity and strength is past, or when he is impaired, coarsened, and
deteriorated, so that his view, his general estimate of things, is no
longer of much importance. It is perhaps just the refinement of his
intellectual conscience that makes him hesitate and linger on the
way, he dreads the temptation to become a dilettante, a millepede, a
milleantenna, he knows too well that as a discerner, one who has lost
his self-respect no longer commands, no longer LEADS, unless he should
aspire to become a great play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and
spiritual rat-catcher--in short, a misleader. This is in the last
instance a question of taste, if it has not really been a question of
conscience. To double once more the philosopher's difficulties, there is
also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict, a Yea or Nay, not
concerning science, but concerning life and the worth of life--he learns
unwillingly to believe that it is his right and even his duty to obtain
this verdict, and he has to seek his way to the right and the belief
only through the most extensive (perhaps disturbing and destroying)
experiences, often hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. In fact, the
philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either
with the scientific man and ideal scholar, or with the religiously
elevated, desensualized, desecularized visionary and God-intoxicated
man; and even yet when one hears anybody praised, because he lives
"wisely," or "as a philosopher," it hardly means anything more than
"prudently and apart." Wisdom: that seems to the populace to be a kind
of flight, a means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from a
bad game; but the GENUINE philosopher--does it not seem so to US,
my friends?--lives "unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all,
IMPRUDENTLY, and feels the obligation and burden of a hundred attempts
and temptations of life--he risks HIMSELF constantly, he plays THIS bad
game.

206. In relation to the genius, that is to say, a being who either
ENGENDERS or PRODUCES--both words understood in their fullest sense--the
man of learning, the scientific average man, has always something of
the old maid about him; for, like her, he is not conversant with the two
principal functions of man. To both, of course, to the scholar and
to the old maid, one concedes respectability, as if by way of
indemnification--in these cases one emphasizes the respectability--and
yet, in the compulsion of this concession, one has the same admixture
of vexation. Let us examine more closely: what is the scientific man?
Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is
to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type
of man; he possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank and file,
equability and moderation in capacity and requirement; he has the
instinct for people like himself, and for that which they require--for
instance: the portion of independence and green meadow without which
there is no rest from labour, the claim to honour and consideration
(which first and foremost presupposes recognition and recognisability),
the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual ratification of his value and
usefulness, with which the inward DISTRUST which lies at the bottom of
the heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and
again to be overcome. The learned man, as is appropriate, has also
maladies and faults of an ignoble kind: he is full of petty envy, and
has a lynx-eye for the weak points in those natures to whose elevations
he cannot attain. He is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go,
but does not FLOW; and precisely before the man of the great current he
stands all the colder and more reserved--his eye is then like a smooth
and irresponsive lake, which is no longer moved by rapture or sympathy.
The worst and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results
from the instinct of mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of
mediocrity, which labours instinctively for the destruction of
the exceptional man, and endeavours to break--or still better, to
relax--every bent bow To relax, of course, with consideration, and
naturally with an indulgent hand--to RELAX with confiding sympathy
that is the real art of Jesuitism, which has always understood how to
introduce itself as the religion of sympathy.

207. However gratefully one may welcome the OBJECTIVE spirit--and
who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity and its confounded
IPSISIMOSITY!--in the end, however, one must learn caution even with
regard to one's gratitude, and put a stop to the exaggeration with
which the unselfing and depersonalizing of the spirit has recently been
celebrated, as if it were the goal in itself, as if it were salvation
and glorification--as is especially accustomed to happen in the
pessimist school, which has also in its turn good reasons for paying the
highest honours to "disinterested knowledge" The objective man, who no
longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the IDEAL man of learning
in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand
complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly
instruments that exist, but his place is in the hand of one who is more
powerful He is only an instrument, we may say, he is a MIRROR--he is no
"purpose in himself" The objective man is in truth a mirror accustomed
to prostration before everything that wants to be known, with such
desires only as knowing or "reflecting" implies--he waits until
something comes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that even the
light footsteps and gliding-past of spiritual beings may not be lost on
his surface and film Whatever "personality" he still possesses seems to
him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing, so much has he
come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms
and events He calls up the recollection of "himself" with an effort,
and not infrequently wrongly, he readily confounds himself with other
persons, he makes mistakes with regard to his own needs, and here only
is he unrefined and negligent Perhaps he is troubled about the health,
or the pettiness and confined atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack
of companions and society--indeed, he sets himself to reflect on his
suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already rove away to the MORE
GENERAL case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew yesterday how
to help himself He does not now take himself seriously and devote time
to himself he is serene, NOT from lack of trouble, but from lack
of capacity for grasping and dealing with HIS trouble The habitual
complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant
and impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that
comes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous
indifference as to Yea and Nay: alas! there are enough of cases in which
he has to atone for these virtues of his!--and as man generally, he
becomes far too easily the CAPUT MORTUUM of such virtues. Should one
wish love or hatred from him--I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and
animal understand them--he will do what he can, and furnish what he can.
But one must not be surprised if it should not be much--if he should
show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and
deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and
rather UN TOUR DE FORCE, a slight ostentation and exaggeration. He is
only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in his serene totality
is he still "nature" and "natural." His mirroring and eternally
self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to
deny; he does not command; neither does he destroy. "JE NE MEPRISE
PRESQUE RIEN"--he says, with Leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue
the PRESQUE! Neither is he a model man; he does not go in advance of any
one, nor after, either; he places himself generally too far off to have
any reason for espousing the cause of either good or evil. If he has
been so long confounded with the PHILOSOPHER, with the Caesarian trainer
and dictator of civilization, he has had far too much honour, and what
is more essential in him has been overlooked--he is an instrument,
something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of slave, but
nothing in himself--PRESQUE RIEN! The objective man is an instrument,
a costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring instrument and
mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of and respected; but he
is no goal, not outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary man in whom the
REST of existence justifies itself, no termination--and still less a
commencement, an engendering, or primary cause, nothing hardy, powerful,
self-centred, that wants to be master; but rather only a soft, inflated,
delicate, movable potter's-form, that must wait for some kind of content
and frame to "shape" itself thereto--for the most part a man without
frame and content, a "selfless" man. Consequently, also, nothing for
women, IN PARENTHESI.

208. When a philosopher nowadays makes known that he is not a skeptic--I
hope that has been gathered from the foregoing description of the
objective spirit?--people all hear it impatiently; they regard him on
that account with some apprehension, they would like to ask so many,
many questions... indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so
many, he is henceforth said to be dangerous. With his repudiation of
skepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-threatening
sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive were being tried
somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered Russian
NIHILINE, a pessimism BONAE VOLUNTATIS, that not only denies, means
denial, but--dreadful thought! PRACTISES denial. Against this kind of
"good-will"--a will to the veritable, actual negation of life--there is,
as is generally acknowledged nowadays, no better soporific and sedative
than skepticism, the mild, pleasing, lulling poppy of skepticism;
and Hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doctors of the day as an
antidote to the "spirit," and its underground noises. "Are not our ears
already full of bad sounds?" say the skeptics, as lovers of repose, and
almost as a kind of safety police; "this subterranean Nay is terrible!
Be still, ye pessimistic moles!" The skeptic, in effect, that delicate
creature, is far too easily frightened; his conscience is schooled so
as to start at every Nay, and even at that sharp, decided Yea, and feels
something like a bite thereby. Yea! and Nay!--they seem to him opposed
to morality; he loves, on the contrary, to make a festival to his virtue
by a noble aloofness, while perhaps he says with Montaigne: "What do I
know?" Or with Socrates: "I know that I know nothing." Or: "Here I do
not trust myself, no door is open to me." Or: "Even if the door were
open, why should I enter immediately?" Or: "What is the use of any hasty
hypotheses? It might quite well be in good taste to make no hypotheses
at all. Are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once what is
crooked? to stuff every hole with some kind of oakum? Is there not time
enough for that? Has not the time leisure? Oh, ye demons, can ye not
at all WAIT? The uncertain also has its charms, the Sphinx, too, is a
Circe, and Circe, too, was a philosopher."--Thus does a skeptic console
himself; and in truth he needs some consolation. For skepticism is
the most spiritual expression of a certain many-sided physiological
temperament, which in ordinary language is called nervous debility and
sickliness; it arises whenever races or classes which have been long
separated, decisively and suddenly blend with one another. In the new
generation, which has inherited as it were different standards and
valuations in its blood, everything is disquiet, derangement, doubt, and
tentativeness; the best powers operate restrictively, the very virtues
prevent each other growing and becoming strong, equilibrium, ballast,
and perpendicular stability are lacking in body and soul. That, however,
which is most diseased and degenerated in such nondescripts is the
WILL; they are no longer familiar with independence of decision, or
the courageous feeling of pleasure in willing--they are doubtful of the
"freedom of the will" even in their dreams Our present-day Europe,
the scene of a senseless, precipitate attempt at a radical blending of
classes, and CONSEQUENTLY of races, is therefore skeptical in all its
heights and depths, sometimes exhibiting the mobile skepticism which
springs impatiently and wantonly from branch to branch, sometimes with
gloomy aspect, like a cloud over-charged with interrogative signs--and
often sick unto death of its will! Paralysis of will, where do we not
find this cripple sitting nowadays! And yet how bedecked oftentimes' How
seductively ornamented! There are the finest gala dresses and disguises
for this disease, and that, for instance, most of what places itself
nowadays in the show-cases as "objectiveness," "the scientific spirit,"
"L'ART POUR L'ART," and "pure voluntary knowledge," is only decked-out
skepticism and paralysis of will--I am ready to answer for this
diagnosis of the European disease--The disease of the will is diffused
unequally over Europe, it is worst and most varied where civilization
has longest prevailed, it decreases according as "the barbarian"
still--or again--asserts his claims under the loose drapery of Western
culture It is therefore in the France of today, as can be readily
disclosed and comprehended, that the will is most infirm, and France,
which has always had a masterly aptitude for converting even the
portentous crises of its spirit into something charming and seductive,
now manifests emphatically its intellectual ascendancy over Europe,
by being the school and exhibition of all the charms of skepticism The
power to will and to persist, moreover, in a resolution, is already
somewhat stronger in Germany, and again in the North of Germany it
is stronger than in Central Germany, it is considerably stronger in
England, Spain, and Corsica, associated with phlegm in the former and
with hard skulls in the latter--not to mention Italy, which is too young
yet to know what it wants, and must first show whether it can exercise
will, but it is strongest and most surprising of all in that immense
middle empire where Europe as it were flows back to Asia--namely, in
Russia There the power to will has been long stored up and accumulated,
there the will--uncertain whether to be negative or affirmative--waits
threateningly to be discharged (to borrow their pet phrase from our
physicists) Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in Asia would
be necessary to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal
subversion, the shattering of the empire into small states, and above
all the introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the
obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast I do not
say this as one who desires it, in my heart I should rather prefer the
contrary--I mean such an increase in the threatening attitude of
Russia, that Europe would have to make up its mind to become equally
threatening--namely, TO ACQUIRE ONE WILL, by means of a new caste to
rule over the Continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its own, that
can set its aims thousands of years ahead; so that the long spun-out
comedy of its petty-statism, and its dynastic as well as its democratic
many-willed-ness, might finally be brought to a close. The time for
petty politics is past; the next century will bring the struggle for the
dominion of the world--the COMPULSION to great politics.

209. As to how far the new warlike age on which we Europeans have
evidently entered may perhaps favour the growth of another and stronger
kind of skepticism, I should like to express myself preliminarily
merely by a parable, which the lovers of German history will already
understand. That unscrupulous enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers
(who, as King of Prussia, brought into being a military and skeptical
genius--and therewith, in reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged
type of German), the problematic, crazy father of Frederick the Great,
had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of the genius: he knew
what was then lacking in Germany, the want of which was a hundred times
more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social form--his
ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety of a profound
instinct. MEN WERE LACKING; and he suspected, to his bitterest regret,
that his own son was not man enough. There, however, he deceived
himself; but who would not have deceived himself in his place? He saw
his son lapsed to atheism, to the ESPRIT, to the pleasant frivolity of
clever Frenchmen--he saw in the background the great bloodsucker, the
spider skepticism; he suspected the incurable wretchedness of a heart no
longer hard enough either for evil or good, and of a broken will that no
longer commands, is no longer ABLE to command. Meanwhile, however,
there grew up in his son that new kind of harder and more dangerous
skepticism--who knows TO WHAT EXTENT it was encouraged just by
his father's hatred and the icy melancholy of a will condemned to
solitude?--the skepticism of daring manliness, which is closely related
to the genius for war and conquest, and made its first entrance into
Germany in the person of the great Frederick. This skepticism despises
and nevertheless grasps; it undermines and takes possession; it does
not believe, but it does not thereby lose itself; it gives the spirit a
dangerous liberty, but it keeps strict guard over the heart. It is the
GERMAN form of skepticism, which, as a continued Fredericianism, risen
to the highest spirituality, has kept Europe for a considerable time
under the dominion of the German spirit and its critical and historical
distrust Owing to the insuperably strong and tough masculine character
of the great German philologists and historical critics (who,
rightly estimated, were also all of them artists of destruction
and dissolution), a NEW conception of the German spirit gradually
established itself--in spite of all Romanticism in music and
philosophy--in which the leaning towards masculine skepticism was
decidedly prominent whether, for instance, as fearlessness of gaze, as
courage and sternness of the dissecting hand, or as resolute will to
dangerous voyages of discovery, to spiritualized North Pole expeditions
under barren and dangerous skies. There may be good grounds for it when
warm-blooded and superficial humanitarians cross themselves before this
spirit, CET ESPRIT FATALISTE, IRONIQUE, MEPHISTOPHELIQUE, as Michelet
calls it, not without a shudder. But if one would realize how
characteristic is this fear of the "man" in the German spirit which
awakened Europe out of its "dogmatic slumber," let us call to mind the
former conception which had to be overcome by this new one--and that
it is not so very long ago that a masculinized woman could dare, with
unbridled presumption, to recommend the Germans to the interest of
Europe as gentle, good-hearted, weak-willed, and poetical fools.
Finally, let us only understand profoundly enough Napoleon's
astonishment when he saw Goethe it reveals what had been regarded for
centuries as the "German spirit" "VOILA UN HOMME!"--that was as much as
to say "But this is a MAN! And I only expected to see a German!"

210. Supposing, then, that in the picture of the philosophers of the
future, some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps
be skeptics in the last-mentioned sense, something in them would only be
designated thereby--and not they themselves. With equal right they might
call themselves critics, and assuredly they will be men of experiments.
By the name with which I ventured to baptize them, I have already
expressly emphasized their attempting and their love of attempting is
this because, as critics in body and soul, they will love to make use
of experiments in a new, and perhaps wider and more dangerous sense? In
their passion for knowledge, will they have to go further in daring and
painful attempts than the sensitive and pampered taste of a democratic
century can approve of?--There is no doubt these coming ones will be
least able to dispense with the serious and not unscrupulous qualities
which distinguish the critic from the skeptic I mean the certainty as to
standards of worth, the conscious employment of a unity of method,
the wary courage, the standing-alone, and the capacity for
self-responsibility, indeed, they will avow among themselves a DELIGHT
in denial and dissection, and a certain considerate cruelty, which knows
how to handle the knife surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds
They will be STERNER (and perhaps not always towards themselves only)
than humane people may desire, they will not deal with the "truth" in
order that it may "please" them, or "elevate" and "inspire" them--they
will rather have little faith in "TRUTH" bringing with it such revels
for the feelings. They will smile, those rigorous spirits, when any one
says in their presence "That thought elevates me, why should it not be
true?" or "That work enchants me, why should it not be beautiful?" or
"That artist enlarges me, why should he not be great?" Perhaps they
will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is thus
rapturous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic, and if any one
could look into their inmost hearts, he would not easily find therein
the intention to reconcile "Christian sentiments" with "antique taste,"
or even with "modern parliamentarism" (the kind of reconciliation
necessarily found even among philosophers in our very uncertain and
consequently very conciliatory century). Critical discipline, and every
habit that conduces to purity and rigour in intellectual matters,
will not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers of
the future, they may even make a display thereof as their special
adornment--nevertheless they will not want to be called critics on that
account. It will seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to
have it decreed, as is so welcome nowadays, that "philosophy itself is
criticism and critical science--and nothing else whatever!" Though this
estimate of philosophy may enjoy the approval of all the Positivists of
France and Germany (and possibly it even flattered the heart and taste
of KANT: let us call to mind the titles of his principal works), our new
philosophers will say, notwithstanding, that critics are instruments of
the philosopher, and just on that account, as instruments, they are
far from being philosophers themselves! Even the great Chinaman of
Konigsberg was only a great critic.

211. I insist upon it that people finally cease confounding
philosophical workers, and in general scientific men, with
philosophers--that precisely here one should strictly give "each his
own," and not give those far too much, these far too little. It may
be necessary for the education of the real philosopher that he himself
should have once stood upon all those steps upon which his servants,
the scientific workers of philosophy, remain standing, and MUST remain
standing he himself must perhaps have been critic, and dogmatist,
and historian, and besides, poet, and collector, and traveler, and
riddle-reader, and moralist, and seer, and "free spirit," and almost
everything, in order to traverse the whole range of human values
and estimations, and that he may BE ABLE with a variety of eyes and
consciences to look from a height to any distance, from a depth up
to any height, from a nook into any expanse. But all these are only
preliminary conditions for his task; this task itself demands something
else--it requires him TO CREATE VALUES. The philosophical workers, after
the excellent pattern of Kant and Hegel, have to fix and formalize some
great existing body of valuations--that is to say, former DETERMINATIONS
OF VALUE, creations of value, which have become prevalent, and are for
a time called "truths"--whether in the domain of the LOGICAL, the
POLITICAL (moral), or the ARTISTIC. It is for these investigators to
make whatever has happened and been esteemed hitherto, conspicuous,
conceivable, intelligible, and manageable, to shorten everything long,
even "time" itself, and to SUBJUGATE the entire past: an immense and
wonderful task, in the carrying out of which all refined pride, all
tenacious will, can surely find satisfaction. THE REAL PHILOSOPHERS,
HOWEVER, ARE COMMANDERS AND LAW-GIVERS; they say: "Thus SHALL it be!"
They determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind, and thereby
set aside the previous labour of all philosophical workers, and all
subjugators of the past--they grasp at the future with a creative
hand, and whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a means, an
instrument, and a hammer. Their "knowing" is CREATING, their creating
is a law-giving, their will to truth is--WILL TO POWER.--Are there at
present such philosophers? Have there ever been such philosophers? MUST
there not be such philosophers some day? ...

212. It is always more obvious to me that the philosopher, as a man
INDISPENSABLE for the morrow and the day after the morrow, has ever
found himself, and HAS BEEN OBLIGED to find himself, in contradiction
to the day in which he lives; his enemy has always been the ideal of his
day. Hitherto all those extraordinary furtherers of humanity whom one
calls philosophers--who rarely regarded themselves as lovers of wisdom,
but rather as disagreeable fools and dangerous interrogators--have found
their mission, their hard, involuntary, imperative mission (in the end,
however, the greatness of their mission), in being the bad conscience of
their age. In putting the vivisector's knife to the breast of the very
VIRTUES OF THEIR AGE, they have betrayed their own secret; it has been
for the sake of a NEW greatness of man, a new untrodden path to
his aggrandizement. They have always disclosed how much hypocrisy,
indolence, self-indulgence, and self-neglect, how much falsehood was
concealed under the most venerated types of contemporary morality, how
much virtue was OUTLIVED, they have always said "We must remove hence to
where YOU are least at home" In the face of a world of "modern ideas,"
which would like to confine every one in a corner, in a "specialty," a
philosopher, if there could be philosophers nowadays, would be compelled
to place the greatness of man, the conception of "greatness," precisely
in his comprehensiveness and multifariousness, in his all-roundness, he
would even determine worth and rank according to the amount and variety
of that which a man could bear and take upon himself, according to the
EXTENT to which a man could stretch his responsibility Nowadays the
taste and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate the will, nothing is
so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness of will consequently, in
the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will, sternness, and capacity
for prolonged resolution, must specially be included in the conception
of "greatness", with as good a right as the opposite doctrine, with its
ideal of a silly, renouncing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to
an opposite age--such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its
accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and floods
of selfishness In the time of Socrates, among men only of worn-out
instincts, old conservative Athenians who let themselves go--"for the
sake of happiness," as they said, for the sake of pleasure, as their
conduct indicated--and who had continually on their lips the old pompous
words to which they had long forfeited the right by the life they led,
IRONY was perhaps necessary for greatness of soul, the wicked Socratic
assurance of the old physician and plebeian, who cut ruthlessly into his
own flesh, as into the flesh and heart of the "noble," with a look that
said plainly enough "Do not dissemble before me! here--we are equal!"
At present, on the contrary, when throughout Europe the herding-animal
alone attains to honours, and dispenses honours, when "equality of
right" can too readily be transformed into equality in wrong--I mean to
say into general war against everything rare, strange, and privileged,
against the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty, the higher
responsibility, the creative plenipotence and lordliness--at present
it belongs to the conception of "greatness" to be noble, to wish to be
apart, to be capable of being different, to stand alone, to have to live
by personal initiative, and the philosopher will betray something of his
own ideal when he asserts "He shall be the greatest who can be the most
solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond good
and evil, the master of his virtues, and of super-abundance of will;
precisely this shall be called GREATNESS: as diversified as can be
entire, as ample as can be full." And to ask once more the question: Is
greatness POSSIBLE--nowadays?

213. It is difficult to learn what a philosopher is, because it cannot
be taught: one must "know" it by experience--or one should have the
pride NOT to know it. The fact that at present people all talk of things
of which they CANNOT have any experience, is true more especially
and unfortunately as concerns the philosopher and philosophical
matters:--the very few know them, are permitted to know them, and
all popular ideas about them are false. Thus, for instance, the truly
philosophical combination of a bold, exuberant spirituality which runs
at presto pace, and a dialectic rigour and necessity which makes no
false step, is unknown to most thinkers and scholars from their own
experience, and therefore, should any one speak of it in their
presence, it is incredible to them. They conceive of every necessity as
troublesome, as a painful compulsory obedience and state of constraint;
thinking itself is regarded by them as something slow and hesitating,
almost as a trouble, and often enough as "worthy of the SWEAT of the
noble"--but not at all as something easy and divine, closely related
to dancing and exuberance! "To think" and to take a matter "seriously,"
"arduously"--that is one and the same thing to them; such only has been
their "experience."--Artists have here perhaps a finer intuition; they
who know only too well that precisely when they no longer do anything
"arbitrarily," and everything of necessity, their feeling of freedom,
of subtlety, of power, of creatively fixing, disposing, and shaping,
reaches its climax--in short, that necessity and "freedom of will" are
then the same thing with them. There is, in fine, a gradation of rank
in psychical states, to which the gradation of rank in the problems
corresponds; and the highest problems repel ruthlessly every one who
ventures too near them, without being predestined for their solution
by the loftiness and power of his spirituality. Of what use is it for
nimble, everyday intellects, or clumsy, honest mechanics and empiricists
to press, in their plebeian ambition, close to such problems, and as
it were into this "holy of holies"--as so often happens nowadays! But
coarse feet must never tread upon such carpets: this is provided for in
the primary law of things; the doors remain closed to those intruders,
though they may dash and break their heads thereon. People have always
to be born to a high station, or, more definitely, they have to be BRED
for it: a person has only a right to philosophy--taking the word in
its higher significance--in virtue of his descent; the ancestors, the
"blood," decide here also. Many generations must have prepared the way
for the coming of the philosopher; each of his virtues must have been
separately acquired, nurtured, transmitted, and embodied; not only the
bold, easy, delicate course and current of his thoughts, but above all
the readiness for great responsibilities, the majesty of ruling glance
and contemning look, the feeling of separation from the multitude with
their duties and virtues, the kindly patronage and defense of whatever
is misunderstood and calumniated, be it God or devil, the delight and
practice of supreme justice, the art of commanding, the amplitude of
will, the lingering eye which rarely admires, rarely looks up, rarely
loves....



CHAPTER VII. OUR VIRTUES


214. OUR Virtues?--It is probable that we, too, have still our virtues,
although naturally they are not those sincere and massive virtues on
account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem and also at a little
distance from us. We Europeans of the day after tomorrow, we firstlings
of the twentieth century--with all our dangerous curiosity, our
multifariousness and art of disguising, our mellow and seemingly
sweetened cruelty in sense and spirit--we shall presumably, IF we must
have virtues, have those only which have come to agreement with our most
secret and heartfelt inclinations, with our most ardent requirements:
well, then, let us look for them in our labyrinths!--where, as we know,
so many things lose themselves, so many things get quite lost! And is
there anything finer than to SEARCH for one's own virtues? Is it not
almost to BELIEVE in one's own virtues? But this "believing in one's
own virtues"--is it not practically the same as what was formerly called
one's "good conscience," that long, respectable pigtail of an idea,
which our grandfathers used to hang behind their heads, and often enough
also behind their understandings? It seems, therefore, that however
little we may imagine ourselves to be old-fashioned and grandfatherly
respectable in other respects, in one thing we are nevertheless the
worthy grandchildren of our grandfathers, we last Europeans with good
consciences: we also still wear their pigtail.--Ah! if you only knew how
soon, so very soon--it will be different!

215. As in the stellar firmament there are sometimes two suns which
determine the path of one planet, and in certain cases suns of different
colours shine around a single planet, now with red light, now with
green, and then simultaneously illumine and flood it with motley
colours: so we modern men, owing to the complicated mechanism of our
"firmament," are determined by DIFFERENT moralities; our actions shine
alternately in different colours, and are seldom unequivocal--and there
are often cases, also, in which our actions are MOTLEY-COLOURED.

216. To love one's enemies? I think that has been well learnt: it takes
place thousands of times at present on a large and small scale; indeed,
at times the higher and sublimer thing takes place:--we learn to DESPISE
when we love, and precisely when we love best; all of it, however,
unconsciously, without noise, without ostentation, with the shame and
secrecy of goodness, which forbids the utterance of the pompous word
and the formula of virtue. Morality as attitude--is opposed to our taste
nowadays. This is ALSO an advance, as it was an advance in our fathers
that religion as an attitude finally became opposed to their taste,
including the enmity and Voltairean bitterness against religion (and all
that formerly belonged to freethinker-pantomime). It is the music in our
conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral
sermons, and goody-goodness won't chime.

217. Let us be careful in dealing with those who attach great importance
to being credited with moral tact and subtlety in moral discernment!
They never forgive us if they have once made a mistake BEFORE us
(or even with REGARD to us)--they inevitably become our instinctive
calumniators and detractors, even when they still remain our
"friends."--Blessed are the forgetful: for they "get the better" even of
their blunders.

218. The psychologists of France--and where else are there still
psychologists nowadays?--have never yet exhausted their bitter and
manifold enjoyment of the betise bourgeoise, just as though... in
short, they betray something thereby. Flaubert, for instance, the honest
citizen of Rouen, neither saw, heard, nor tasted anything else in the
end; it was his mode of self-torment and refined cruelty. As this is
growing wearisome, I would now recommend for a change something else
for a pleasure--namely, the unconscious astuteness with which good, fat,
honest mediocrity always behaves towards loftier spirits and the tasks
they have to perform, the subtle, barbed, Jesuitical astuteness, which
is a thousand times subtler than the taste and understanding of the
middle-class in its best moments--subtler even than the understanding of
its victims:--a repeated proof that "instinct" is the most intelligent
of all kinds of intelligence which have hitherto been discovered. In
short, you psychologists, study the philosophy of the "rule" in its
struggle with the "exception": there you have a spectacle fit for Gods
and godlike malignity! Or, in plainer words, practise vivisection on
"good people," on the "homo bonae voluntatis," ON YOURSELVES!

219. The practice of judging and condemning morally, is the favourite
revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so, it is
also a kind of indemnity for their being badly endowed by nature,
and finally, it is an opportunity for acquiring spirit and BECOMING
subtle--malice spiritualises. They are glad in their inmost heart that
there is a standard according to which those who are over-endowed with
intellectual goods and privileges, are equal to them, they contend for
the "equality of all before God," and almost NEED the belief in God for
this purpose. It is among them that the most powerful antagonists of
atheism are found. If any one were to say to them "A lofty spirituality
is beyond all comparison with the honesty and respectability of a merely
moral man"--it would make them furious, I shall take care not to say
so. I would rather flatter them with my theory that lofty spirituality
itself exists only as the ultimate product of moral qualities, that it
is a synthesis of all qualities attributed to the "merely moral" man,
after they have been acquired singly through long training and practice,
perhaps during a whole series of generations, that lofty spirituality
is precisely the spiritualising of justice, and the beneficent severity
which knows that it is authorized to maintain GRADATIONS OF RANK in the
world, even among things--and not only among men.

220. Now that the praise of the "disinterested person" is so popular
one must--probably not without some danger--get an idea of WHAT people
actually take an interest in, and what are the things generally which
fundamentally and profoundly concern ordinary men--including the
cultured, even the learned, and perhaps philosophers also, if
appearances do not deceive. The fact thereby becomes obvious that the
greater part of what interests and charms higher natures, and more
refined and fastidious tastes, seems absolutely "uninteresting" to
the average man--if, notwithstanding, he perceive devotion to these
interests, he calls it desinteresse, and wonders how it is possible to
act "disinterestedly." There have been philosophers who could give this
popular astonishment a seductive and mystical, other-worldly expression
(perhaps because they did not know the higher nature by experience?),
instead of stating the naked and candidly reasonable truth that
"disinterested" action is very interesting and "interested" action,
provided that... "And love?"--What! Even an action for love's sake
shall be "unegoistic"? But you fools--! "And the praise of the
self-sacrificer?"--But whoever has really offered sacrifice knows that
he wanted and obtained something for it--perhaps something from himself
for something from himself; that he relinquished here in order to have
more there, perhaps in general to be more, or even feel himself "more."
But this is a realm of questions and answers in which a more fastidious
spirit does not like to stay: for here truth has to stifle her yawns so
much when she is obliged to answer. And after all, truth is a woman; one
must not use force with her.

221. "It sometimes happens," said a moralistic pedant and
trifle-retailer, "that I honour and respect an unselfish man: not,
however, because he is unselfish, but because I think he has a right to
be useful to another man at his own expense. In short, the question
is always who HE is, and who THE OTHER is. For instance, in a person
created and destined for command, self-denial and modest retirement,
instead of being virtues, would be the waste of virtues: so it seems
to me. Every system of unegoistic morality which takes itself
unconditionally and appeals to every one, not only sins against good
taste, but is also an incentive to sins of omission, an ADDITIONAL
seduction under the mask of philanthropy--and precisely a seduction and
injury to the higher, rarer, and more privileged types of men. Moral
systems must be compelled first of all to bow before the GRADATIONS OF
RANK; their presumption must be driven home to their conscience--until
they thoroughly understand at last that it is IMMORAL to say that 'what
is right for one is proper for another.'"--So said my moralistic pedant
and bonhomme. Did he perhaps deserve to be laughed at when he thus
exhorted systems of morals to practise morality? But one should not be
too much in the right if one wishes to have the laughers on ONE'S OWN
side; a grain of wrong pertains even to good taste.

222. Wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached nowadays--and,
if I gather rightly, no other religion is any longer preached--let the
psychologist have his ears open through all the vanity, through all the
noise which is natural to these preachers (as to all preachers), he will
hear a hoarse, groaning, genuine note of SELF-CONTEMPT. It belongs
to the overshadowing and uglifying of Europe, which has been on
the increase for a century (the first symptoms of which are already
specified documentarily in a thoughtful letter of Galiani to Madame
d'Epinay)--IF IT IS NOT REALLY THE CAUSE THEREOF! The man of
"modern ideas," the conceited ape, is excessively dissatisfied with
himself--this is perfectly certain. He suffers, and his vanity wants him
only "to suffer with his fellows."

223. The hybrid European--a tolerably ugly plebeian, taken all in
all--absolutely requires a costume: he needs history as a storeroom
of costumes. To be sure, he notices that none of the costumes fit him
properly--he changes and changes. Let us look at the nineteenth century
with respect to these hasty preferences and changes in its masquerades
of style, and also with respect to its moments of desperation on account
of "nothing suiting" us. It is in vain to get ourselves up as romantic,
or classical, or Christian, or Florentine, or barocco, or "national,"
in moribus et artibus: it does not "clothe us"! But the "spirit,"
especially the "historical spirit," profits even by this desperation:
once and again a new sample of the past or of the foreign is tested,
put on, taken off, packed up, and above all studied--we are the first
studious age in puncto of "costumes," I mean as concerns morals,
articles of belief, artistic tastes, and religions; we are prepared as
no other age has ever been for a carnival in the grand style, for the
most spiritual festival--laughter and arrogance, for the transcendental
height of supreme folly and Aristophanic ridicule of the world. Perhaps
we are still discovering the domain of our invention just here, the
domain where even we can still be original, probably as parodists of
the world's history and as God's Merry-Andrews,--perhaps, though nothing
else of the present have a future, our laughter itself may have a
future!

224. The historical sense (or the capacity for divining quickly
the order of rank of the valuations according to which a people, a
community, or an individual has lived, the "divining instinct" for the
relationships of these valuations, for the relation of the authority
of the valuations to the authority of the operating forces),--this
historical sense, which we Europeans claim as our specialty, has come
to us in the train of the enchanting and mad semi-barbarity into which
Europe has been plunged by the democratic mingling of classes and
races--it is only the nineteenth century that has recognized this
faculty as its sixth sense. Owing to this mingling, the past of every
form and mode of life, and of cultures which were formerly closely
contiguous and superimposed on one another, flows forth into us "modern
souls"; our instincts now run back in all directions, we ourselves are
a kind of chaos: in the end, as we have said, the spirit perceives its
advantage therein. By means of our semi-barbarity in body and in desire,
we have secret access everywhere, such as a noble age never had; we have
access above all to the labyrinth of imperfect civilizations, and to
every form of semi-barbarity that has at any time existed on earth; and
in so far as the most considerable part of human civilization hitherto
has just been semi-barbarity, the "historical sense" implies almost the
sense and instinct for everything, the taste and tongue for everything:
whereby it immediately proves itself to be an IGNOBLE sense. For
instance, we enjoy Homer once more: it is perhaps our happiest
acquisition that we know how to appreciate Homer, whom men of
distinguished culture (as the French of the seventeenth century, like
Saint-Evremond, who reproached him for his ESPRIT VASTE, and even
Voltaire, the last echo of the century) cannot and could not so easily
appropriate--whom they scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy. The very
decided Yea and Nay of their palate, their promptly ready disgust, their
hesitating reluctance with regard to everything strange, their horror of
the bad taste even of lively curiosity, and in general the averseness of
every distinguished and self-sufficing culture to avow a new desire,
a dissatisfaction with its own condition, or an admiration of what is
strange: all this determines and disposes them unfavourably even towards
the best things of the world which are not their property or could not
become their prey--and no faculty is more unintelligible to such men
than just this historical sense, with its truckling, plebeian
curiosity. The case is not different with Shakespeare, that marvelous
Spanish-Moorish-Saxon synthesis of taste, over whom an ancient Athenian
of the circle of AEschylus would have half-killed himself with laughter
or irritation: but we--accept precisely this wild motleyness, this
medley of the most delicate, the most coarse, and the most artificial,
with a secret confidence and cordiality; we enjoy it as a refinement
of art reserved expressly for us, and allow ourselves to be as little
disturbed by the repulsive fumes and the proximity of the English
populace in which Shakespeare's art and taste lives, as perhaps on
the Chiaja of Naples, where, with all our senses awake, we go our way,
enchanted and voluntarily, in spite of the drain-odour of the lower
quarters of the town. That as men of the "historical sense" we have
our virtues, is not to be disputed:--we are unpretentious, unselfish,
modest, brave, habituated to self-control and self-renunciation, very
grateful, very patient, very complaisant--but with all this we are
perhaps not very "tasteful." Let us finally confess it, that what is
most difficult for us men of the "historical sense" to grasp, feel,
taste, and love, what finds us fundamentally prejudiced and almost
hostile, is precisely the perfection and ultimate maturity in every
culture and art, the essentially noble in works and men, their moment
of smooth sea and halcyon self-sufficiency, the goldenness and coldness
which all things show that have perfected themselves. Perhaps our great
virtue of the historical sense is in necessary contrast to GOOD taste,
at least to the very bad taste; and we can only evoke in ourselves
imperfectly, hesitatingly, and with compulsion the small, short, and
happy godsends and glorifications of human life as they shine here and
there: those moments and marvelous experiences when a great power has
voluntarily come to a halt before the boundless and infinite,--when a
super-abundance of refined delight has been enjoyed by a sudden checking
and petrifying, by standing firmly and planting oneself fixedly on still
trembling ground. PROPORTIONATENESS is strange to us, let us confess it
to ourselves; our itching is really the itching for the infinite, the
immeasurable. Like the rider on his forward panting horse, we let the
reins fall before the infinite, we modern men, we semi-barbarians--and
are only in OUR highest bliss when we--ARE IN MOST DANGER.

225. Whether it be hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, or eudaemonism,
all those modes of thinking which measure the worth of things according
to PLEASURE and PAIN, that is, according to accompanying circumstances
and secondary considerations, are plausible modes of thought and
naivetes, which every one conscious of CREATIVE powers and an artist's
conscience will look down upon with scorn, though not without sympathy.
Sympathy for you!--to be sure, that is not sympathy as you understand
it: it is not sympathy for social "distress," for "society" with its
sick and misfortuned, for the hereditarily vicious and defective who lie
on the ground around us; still less is it sympathy for the grumbling,
vexed, revolutionary slave-classes who strive after power--they call it
"freedom." OUR sympathy is a loftier and further-sighted sympathy:--we
see how MAN dwarfs himself, how YOU dwarf him! and there are moments
when we view YOUR sympathy with an indescribable anguish, when we resist
it,--when we regard your seriousness as more dangerous than any kind
of levity. You want, if possible--and there is not a more foolish "if
possible"--TO DO AWAY WITH SUFFERING; and we?--it really seems that WE
would rather have it increased and made worse than it has ever been!
Well-being, as you understand it--is certainly not a goal; it seems
to us an END; a condition which at once renders man ludicrous and
contemptible--and makes his destruction DESIRABLE! The discipline
of suffering, of GREAT suffering--know ye not that it is only THIS
discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto?
The tension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it its energy,
its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery
in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune, and
whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has
been bestowed upon the soul--has it not been bestowed through suffering,
through the discipline of great suffering? In man CREATURE and CREATOR
are united: in man there is not only matter, shred, excess, clay, mire,
folly, chaos; but there is also the creator, the sculptor, the hardness
of the hammer, the divinity of the spectator, and the seventh day--do
ye understand this contrast? And that YOUR sympathy for the "creature
in man" applies to that which has to be fashioned, bruised, forged,
stretched, roasted, annealed, refined--to that which must necessarily
SUFFER, and IS MEANT to suffer? And our sympathy--do ye not understand
what our REVERSE sympathy applies to, when it resists your sympathy as
the worst of all pampering and enervation?--So it is sympathy AGAINST
sympathy!--But to repeat it once more, there are higher problems than
the problems of pleasure and pain and sympathy; and all systems of
philosophy which deal only with these are naivetes.

226. WE IMMORALISTS.--This world with which WE are concerned, in which
we have to fear and love, this almost invisible, inaudible world of
delicate command and delicate obedience, a world of "almost" in every
respect, captious, insidious, sharp, and tender--yes, it is well
protected from clumsy spectators and familiar curiosity! We are
woven into a strong net and garment of duties, and CANNOT disengage
ourselves--precisely here, we are "men of duty," even we! Occasionally,
it is true, we dance in our "chains" and betwixt our "swords"; it
is none the less true that more often we gnash our teeth under the
circumstances, and are impatient at the secret hardship of our lot. But
do what we will, fools and appearances say of us: "These are men WITHOUT
duty,"--we have always fools and appearances against us!

227. Honesty, granting that it is the virtue of which we cannot rid
ourselves, we free spirits--well, we will labour at it with all our
perversity and love, and not tire of "perfecting" ourselves in OUR
virtue, which alone remains: may its glance some day overspread like
a gilded, blue, mocking twilight this aging civilization with its dull
gloomy seriousness! And if, nevertheless, our honesty should one day
grow weary, and sigh, and stretch its limbs, and find us too hard, and
would fain have it pleasanter, easier, and gentler, like an agreeable
vice, let us remain HARD, we latest Stoics, and let us send to its
help whatever devilry we have in us:--our disgust at the clumsy
and undefined, our "NITIMUR IN VETITUM," our love of adventure,
our sharpened and fastidious curiosity, our most subtle, disguised,
intellectual Will to Power and universal conquest, which rambles and
roves avidiously around all the realms of the future--let us go with all
our "devils" to the help of our "God"! It is probable that people will
misunderstand and mistake us on that account: what does it matter! They
will say: "Their 'honesty'--that is their devilry, and nothing else!"
What does it matter! And even if they were right--have not all Gods
hitherto been such sanctified, re-baptized devils? And after all, what
do we know of ourselves? And what the spirit that leads us wants TO BE
CALLED? (It is a question of names.) And how many spirits we harbour?
Our honesty, we free spirits--let us be careful lest it become our
vanity, our ornament and ostentation, our limitation, our stupidity!
Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid
to the point of sanctity," they say in Russia,--let us be careful lest
out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores! Is not life
a hundred times too short for us--to bore ourselves? One would have to
believe in eternal life in order to...

228. I hope to be forgiven for discovering that all moral philosophy
hitherto has been tedious and has belonged to the soporific
appliances--and that "virtue," in my opinion, has been MORE injured
by the TEDIOUSNESS of its advocates than by anything else; at the same
time, however, I would not wish to overlook their general usefulness. It
is desirable that as few people as possible should reflect upon morals,
and consequently it is very desirable that morals should not some day
become interesting! But let us not be afraid! Things still remain today
as they have always been: I see no one in Europe who has (or DISCLOSES)
an idea of the fact that philosophizing concerning morals might be
conducted in a dangerous, captious, and ensnaring manner--that CALAMITY
might be involved therein. Observe, for example, the indefatigable,
inevitable English utilitarians: how ponderously and respectably they
stalk on, stalk along (a Homeric metaphor expresses it better) in the
footsteps of Bentham, just as he had already stalked in the footsteps of
the respectable Helvetius! (no, he was not a dangerous man, Helvetius,
CE SENATEUR POCOCURANTE, to use an expression of Galiani). No new
thought, nothing of the nature of a finer turning or better expression
of an old thought, not even a proper history of what has been previously
thought on the subject: an IMPOSSIBLE literature, taking it all in all,
unless one knows how to leaven it with some mischief. In effect, the
old English vice called CANT, which is MORAL TARTUFFISM, has insinuated
itself also into these moralists (whom one must certainly read with an
eye to their motives if one MUST read them), concealed this time under
the new form of the scientific spirit; moreover, there is not absent
from them a secret struggle with the pangs of conscience, from which a
race of former Puritans must naturally suffer, in all their scientific
tinkering with morals. (Is not a moralist the opposite of a Puritan?
That is to say, as a thinker who regards morality as questionable,
as worthy of interrogation, in short, as a problem? Is moralizing
not-immoral?) In the end, they all want English morality to be
recognized as authoritative, inasmuch as mankind, or the "general
utility," or "the happiness of the greatest number,"--no! the happiness
of ENGLAND, will be best served thereby. They would like, by all means,
to convince themselves that the striving after English happiness, I
mean after COMFORT and FASHION (and in the highest instance, a seat in
Parliament), is at the same time the true path of virtue; in fact, that
in so far as there has been virtue in the world hitherto, it has
just consisted in such striving. Not one of those ponderous,
conscience-stricken herding-animals (who undertake to advocate the
cause of egoism as conducive to the general welfare) wants to have
any knowledge or inkling of the facts that the "general welfare" is
no ideal, no goal, no notion that can be at all grasped, but is only a
nostrum,--that what is fair to one MAY NOT at all be fair to another,
that the requirement of one morality for all is really a detriment to
higher men, in short, that there is a DISTINCTION OF RANK between man
and man, and consequently between morality and morality. They are an
unassuming and fundamentally mediocre species of men, these utilitarian
Englishmen, and, as already remarked, in so far as they are tedious, one
cannot think highly enough of their utility. One ought even to ENCOURAGE
them, as has been partially attempted in the following rhymes:--

    Hail, ye worthies, barrow-wheeling,
    "Longer--better," aye revealing,

    Stiffer aye in head and knee;
    Unenraptured, never jesting,
    Mediocre everlasting,

    SANS GENIE ET SANS ESPRIT!


229. In these later ages, which may be proud of their humanity, there
still remains so much fear, so much SUPERSTITION of the fear, of the
"cruel wild beast," the mastering of which constitutes the very pride of
these humaner ages--that even obvious truths, as if by the agreement
of centuries, have long remained unuttered, because they have the
appearance of helping the finally slain wild beast back to life again.
I perhaps risk something when I allow such a truth to escape; let
others capture it again and give it so much "milk of pious sentiment"
[FOOTNOTE: An expression from Schiller's William Tell, Act IV, Scene
3.] to drink, that it will lie down quiet and forgotten, in its old
corner.--One ought to learn anew about cruelty, and open one's eyes;
one ought at last to learn impatience, in order that such immodest
gross errors--as, for instance, have been fostered by ancient and
modern philosophers with regard to tragedy--may no longer wander about
virtuously and boldly. Almost everything that we call "higher culture"
is based upon the spiritualising and intensifying of CRUELTY--this is
my thesis; the "wild beast" has not been slain at all, it lives, it
flourishes, it has only been--transfigured. That which constitutes the
painful delight of tragedy is cruelty; that which operates agreeably in
so-called tragic sympathy, and at the basis even of everything sublime,
up to the highest and most delicate thrills of metaphysics, obtains its
sweetness solely from the intermingled ingredient of cruelty. What the
Roman enjoys in the arena, the Christian in the ecstasies of the cross,
the Spaniard at the sight of the faggot and stake, or of the bull-fight,
the present-day Japanese who presses his way to the tragedy, the workman
of the Parisian suburbs who has a homesickness for bloody revolutions,
the Wagnerienne who, with unhinged will, "undergoes" the performance of
"Tristan and Isolde"--what all these enjoy, and strive with mysterious
ardour to drink in, is the philtre of the great Circe "cruelty." Here,
to be sure, we must put aside entirely the blundering psychology of
former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that
it originated at the sight of the suffering of OTHERS: there is an
abundant, super-abundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering, in
causing one's own suffering--and wherever man has allowed himself to be
persuaded to self-denial in the RELIGIOUS sense, or to self-mutilation,
as among the Phoenicians and ascetics, or in general, to
desensualisation, decarnalisation, and contrition, to Puritanical
repentance-spasms, to vivisection of conscience and to Pascal-like
SACRIFIZIA DELL' INTELLETO, he is secretly allured and impelled
forwards by his cruelty, by the dangerous thrill of cruelty TOWARDS
HIMSELF.--Finally, let us consider that even the seeker of knowledge
operates as an artist and glorifier of cruelty, in that he compels his
spirit to perceive AGAINST its own inclination, and often enough against
the wishes of his heart:--he forces it to say Nay, where he would like
to affirm, love, and adore; indeed, every instance of taking a thing
profoundly and fundamentally, is a violation, an intentional injuring
of the fundamental will of the spirit, which instinctively aims at
appearance and superficiality,--even in every desire for knowledge there
is a drop of cruelty.

230. Perhaps what I have said here about a "fundamental will of the
spirit" may not be understood without further details; I may be allowed
a word of explanation.--That imperious something which is popularly
called "the spirit," wishes to be master internally and externally,
and to feel itself master; it has the will of a multiplicity for a
simplicity, a binding, taming, imperious, and essentially ruling will.
Its requirements and capacities here, are the same as those assigned by
physiologists to everything that lives, grows, and multiplies. The power
of the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals itself in a strong
tendency to assimilate the new to the old, to simplify the manifold,
to overlook or repudiate the absolutely contradictory; just as it
arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent, and falsifies for itself
certain traits and lines in the foreign elements, in every portion of
the "outside world." Its object thereby is the incorporation of new
"experiences," the assortment of new things in the old arrangements--in
short, growth; or more properly, the FEELING of growth, the feeling of
increased power--is its object. This same will has at its service an
apparently opposed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly adopted preference
of ignorance, of arbitrary shutting out, a closing of windows, an inner
denial of this or that, a prohibition to approach, a sort of defensive
attitude against much that is knowable, a contentment with obscurity,
with the shutting-in horizon, an acceptance and approval of ignorance:
as that which is all necessary according to the degree of its
appropriating power, its "digestive power," to speak figuratively (and
in fact "the spirit" resembles a stomach more than anything else). Here
also belong an occasional propensity of the spirit to let itself be
deceived (perhaps with a waggish suspicion that it is NOT so and so,
but is only allowed to pass as such), a delight in uncertainty and
ambiguity, an exulting enjoyment of arbitrary, out-of-the-way narrowness
and mystery, of the too-near, of the foreground, of the magnified,
the diminished, the misshapen, the beautified--an enjoyment of the
arbitrariness of all these manifestations of power. Finally, in this
connection, there is the not unscrupulous readiness of the spirit to
deceive other spirits and dissemble before them--the constant pressing
and straining of a creating, shaping, changeable power: the spirit
enjoys therein its craftiness and its variety of disguises, it enjoys
also its feeling of security therein--it is precisely by its Protean
arts that it is best protected and concealed!--COUNTER TO this
propensity for appearance, for simplification, for a disguise, for a
cloak, in short, for an outside--for every outside is a cloak--there
operates the sublime tendency of the man of knowledge, which takes, and
INSISTS on taking things profoundly, variously, and thoroughly; as a
kind of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste, which every
courageous thinker will acknowledge in himself, provided, as it ought
to be, that he has sharpened and hardened his eye sufficiently long for
introspection, and is accustomed to severe discipline and even severe
words. He will say: "There is something cruel in the tendency of my
spirit": let the virtuous and amiable try to convince him that it is not
so! In fact, it would sound nicer, if, instead of our cruelty, perhaps
our "extravagant honesty" were talked about, whispered about, and
glorified--we free, VERY free spirits--and some day perhaps SUCH will
actually be our--posthumous glory! Meanwhile--for there is plenty of
time until then--we should be least inclined to deck ourselves out in
such florid and fringed moral verbiage; our whole former work has
just made us sick of this taste and its sprightly exuberance. They are
beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive words: honesty, love of truth,
love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, heroism of the truthful--there
is something in them that makes one's heart swell with pride. But we
anchorites and marmots have long ago persuaded ourselves in all the
secrecy of an anchorite's conscience, that this worthy parade of
verbiage also belongs to the old false adornment, frippery, and
gold-dust of unconscious human vanity, and that even under such
flattering colour and repainting, the terrible original text HOMO NATURA
must again be recognized. In effect, to translate man back again into
nature; to master the many vain and visionary interpretations and
subordinate meanings which have hitherto been scratched and daubed over
the eternal original text, HOMO NATURA; to bring it about that man shall
henceforth stand before man as he now, hardened by the discipline
of science, stands before the OTHER forms of nature, with fearless
Oedipus-eyes, and stopped Ulysses-ears, deaf to the enticements of old
metaphysical bird-catchers, who have piped to him far too long: "Thou
art more! thou art higher! thou hast a different origin!"--this may be
a strange and foolish task, but that it is a TASK, who can deny! Why did
we choose it, this foolish task? Or, to put the question differently:
"Why knowledge at all?" Every one will ask us about this. And thus
pressed, we, who have asked ourselves the question a hundred times, have
not found and cannot find any better answer....

231. Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment does that does not
merely "conserve"--as the physiologist knows. But at the bottom of our
souls, quite "down below," there is certainly something unteachable,
a granite of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to
predetermined, chosen questions. In each cardinal problem there speaks
an unchangeable "I am this"; a thinker cannot learn anew about man and
woman, for instance, but can only learn fully--he can only follow to the
end what is "fixed" about them in himself. Occasionally we find certain
solutions of problems which make strong beliefs for us; perhaps they
are henceforth called "convictions." Later on--one sees in them only
footsteps to self-knowledge, guide-posts to the problem which we
ourselves ARE--or more correctly to the great stupidity which we embody,
our spiritual fate, the UNTEACHABLE in us, quite "down below."--In view
of this liberal compliment which I have just paid myself, permission
will perhaps be more readily allowed me to utter some truths about
"woman as she is," provided that it is known at the outset how literally
they are merely--MY truths.

232. Woman wishes to be independent, and therefore she begins to
enlighten men about "woman as she is"--THIS is one of the worst
developments of the general UGLIFYING of Europe. For what must these
clumsy attempts of feminine scientificality and self-exposure bring
to light! Woman has so much cause for shame; in woman there is so
much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmasterliness, petty presumption,
unbridledness, and indiscretion concealed--study only woman's behaviour
towards children!--which has really been best restrained and dominated
hitherto by the FEAR of man. Alas, if ever the "eternally tedious in
woman"--she has plenty of it!--is allowed to venture forth! if she
begins radically and on principle to unlearn her wisdom and art-of
charming, of playing, of frightening away sorrow, of alleviating and
taking easily; if she forgets her delicate aptitude for agreeable
desires! Female voices are already raised, which, by Saint Aristophanes!
make one afraid:--with medical explicitness it is stated in a
threatening manner what woman first and last REQUIRES from man. Is
it not in the very worst taste that woman thus sets herself up to be
scientific? Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately been men's affair,
men's gift--we remained therewith "among ourselves"; and in the end,
in view of all that women write about "woman," we may well have
considerable doubt as to whether woman really DESIRES enlightenment
about herself--and CAN desire it. If woman does not thereby seek a new
ORNAMENT for herself--I believe ornamentation belongs to the eternally
feminine?--why, then, she wishes to make herself feared: perhaps she
thereby wishes to get the mastery. But she does not want truth--what
does woman care for truth? From the very first, nothing is more foreign,
more repugnant, or more hostile to woman than truth--her great art is
falsehood, her chief concern is appearance and beauty. Let us confess
it, we men: we honour and love this very art and this very instinct in
woman: we who have the hard task, and for our recreation gladly seek the
company of beings under whose hands, glances, and delicate follies, our
seriousness, our gravity, and profundity appear almost like follies to
us. Finally, I ask the question: Did a woman herself ever acknowledge
profundity in a woman's mind, or justice in a woman's heart? And is it
not true that on the whole "woman" has hitherto been most despised by
woman herself, and not at all by us?--We men desire that woman should
not continue to compromise herself by enlightening us; just as it was
man's care and the consideration for woman, when the church decreed:
mulier taceat in ecclesia. It was to the benefit of woman when Napoleon
gave the too eloquent Madame de Stael to understand: mulier taceat in
politicis!--and in my opinion, he is a true friend of woman who calls
out to women today: mulier taceat de mulierel.

233. It betrays corruption of the instincts--apart from the fact that
it betrays bad taste--when a woman refers to Madame Roland, or Madame de
Stael, or Monsieur George Sand, as though something were proved thereby
in favour of "woman as she is." Among men, these are the three comical
women as they are--nothing more!--and just the best involuntary
counter-arguments against feminine emancipation and autonomy.

234. Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook; the terrible
thoughtlessness with which the feeding of the family and the master of
the house is managed! Woman does not understand what food means, and she
insists on being cook! If woman had been a thinking creature, she should
certainly, as cook for thousands of years, have discovered the most
important physiological facts, and should likewise have got possession
of the healing art! Through bad female cooks--through the entire lack
of reason in the kitchen--the development of mankind has been longest
retarded and most interfered with: even today matters are very little
better. A word to High School girls.

235. There are turns and casts of fancy, there are sentences, little
handfuls of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society suddenly
crystallises itself. Among these is the incidental remark of Madame de
Lambert to her son: "MON AMI, NE VOUS PERMETTEZ JAMAIS QUE DES FOLIES,
QUI VOUS FERONT GRAND PLAISIR"--the motherliest and wisest remark, by
the way, that was ever addressed to a son.

236. I have no doubt that every noble woman will oppose what Dante and
Goethe believed about woman--the former when he sang, "ELLA GUARDAVA
SUSO, ED IO IN LEI," and the latter when he interpreted it, "the
eternally feminine draws us ALOFT"; for THIS is just what she believes
of the eternally masculine.

237.

SEVEN APOPHTHEGMS FOR WOMEN

How the longest ennui flees, When a man comes to our knees!

Age, alas! and science staid, Furnish even weak virtue aid.

Sombre garb and silence meet: Dress for every dame--discreet.

Whom I thank when in my bliss? God!--and my good tailoress!

Young, a flower-decked cavern home; Old, a dragon thence doth roam.

Noble title, leg that's fine, Man as well: Oh, were HE mine!

Speech in brief and sense in mass--Slippery for the jenny-ass!

237A. Woman has hitherto been treated by men like birds, which, losing
their way, have come down among them from an elevation: as something
delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet, and animating--but as something
also which must be cooped up to prevent it flying away.

238. To be mistaken in the fundamental problem of "man and woman," to
deny here the profoundest antagonism and the necessity for an eternally
hostile tension, to dream here perhaps of equal rights, equal
training, equal claims and obligations: that is a TYPICAL sign of
shallow-mindedness; and a thinker who has proved himself shallow at
this dangerous spot--shallow in instinct!--may generally be regarded as
suspicious, nay more, as betrayed, as discovered; he will probably prove
too "short" for all fundamental questions of life, future as well as
present, and will be unable to descend into ANY of the depths. On the
other hand, a man who has depth of spirit as well as of desires, and
has also the depth of benevolence which is capable of severity and
harshness, and easily confounded with them, can only think of woman as
ORIENTALS do: he must conceive of her as a possession, as confinable
property, as a being predestined for service and accomplishing her
mission therein--he must take his stand in this matter upon the immense
rationality of Asia, upon the superiority of the instinct of Asia, as
the Greeks did formerly; those best heirs and scholars of Asia--who,
as is well known, with their INCREASING culture and amplitude of power,
from Homer to the time of Pericles, became gradually STRICTER towards
woman, in short, more Oriental. HOW necessary, HOW logical, even HOW
humanely desirable this was, let us consider for ourselves!

239. The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so
much respect by men as at present--this belongs to the tendency and
fundamental taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to
old age--what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of
this respect? They want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute
of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling; rivalry for rights,
indeed actual strife itself, would be preferred: in a word, woman is
losing modesty. And let us immediately add that she is also losing
taste. She is unlearning to FEAR man: but the woman who "unlearns to
fear" sacrifices her most womanly instincts. That woman should venture
forward when the fear-inspiring quality in man--or more definitely,
the MAN in man--is no longer either desired or fully developed, is
reasonable enough and also intelligible enough; what is more difficult
to understand is that precisely thereby--woman deteriorates. This is
what is happening nowadays: let us not deceive ourselves about it!
Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military
and aristocratic spirit, woman strives for the economic and legal
independence of a clerk: "woman as clerkess" is inscribed on the portal
of the modern society which is in course of formation. While she
thus appropriates new rights, aspires to be "master," and inscribes
"progress" of woman on her flags and banners, the very opposite realises
itself with terrible obviousness: WOMAN RETROGRADES. Since the French
Revolution the influence of woman in Europe has DECLINED in proportion
as she has increased her rights and claims; and the "emancipation of
woman," insofar as it is desired and demanded by women themselves (and
not only by masculine shallow-pates), thus proves to be a remarkable
symptom of the increased weakening and deadening of the most womanly
instincts. There is STUPIDITY in this movement, an almost masculine
stupidity, of which a well-reared woman--who is always a sensible
woman--might be heartily ashamed. To lose the intuition as to the ground
upon which she can most surely achieve victory; to neglect exercise in
the use of her proper weapons; to let-herself-go before man, perhaps
even "to the book," where formerly she kept herself in control and in
refined, artful humility; to neutralize with her virtuous audacity man's
faith in a VEILED, fundamentally different ideal in woman, something
eternally, necessarily feminine; to emphatically and loquaciously
dissuade man from the idea that woman must be preserved, cared for,
protected, and indulged, like some delicate, strangely wild, and
often pleasant domestic animal; the clumsy and indignant collection of
everything of the nature of servitude and bondage which the position of
woman in the hitherto existing order of society has entailed and still
entails (as though slavery were a counter-argument, and not rather a
condition of every higher culture, of every elevation of culture):--what
does all this betoken, if not a disintegration of womanly instincts,
a defeminising? Certainly, there are enough of idiotic friends and
corrupters of woman among the learned asses of the masculine sex, who
advise woman to defeminize herself in this manner, and to imitate
all the stupidities from which "man" in Europe, European "manliness,"
suffers,--who would like to lower woman to "general culture," indeed
even to newspaper reading and meddling with politics. Here and there
they wish even to make women into free spirits and literary workers: as
though a woman without piety would not be something perfectly obnoxious
or ludicrous to a profound and godless man;--almost everywhere her
nerves are being ruined by the most morbid and dangerous kind of music
(our latest German music), and she is daily being made more hysterical
and more incapable of fulfilling her first and last function, that of
bearing robust children. They wish to "cultivate" her in general still
more, and intend, as they say, to make the "weaker sex" STRONG by
culture: as if history did not teach in the most emphatic manner that
the "cultivating" of mankind and his weakening--that is to say, the
weakening, dissipating, and languishing of his FORCE OF WILL--have
always kept pace with one another, and that the most powerful and
influential women in the world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon)
had just to thank their force of will--and not their schoolmasters--for
their power and ascendancy over men. That which inspires respect
in woman, and often enough fear also, is her NATURE, which is more
"natural" than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-like, cunning
flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove, her NAIVETE in egoism,
her untrainableness and innate wildness, the incomprehensibleness,
extent, and deviation of her desires and virtues. That which, in spite
of fear, excites one's sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat,
"woman," is that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more
necessitous of love, and more condemned to disillusionment than any
other creature. Fear and sympathy it is with these feelings that man has
hitherto stood in the presence of woman, always with one foot already in
tragedy, which rends while it delights--What? And all that is now to
be at an end? And the DISENCHANTMENT of woman is in progress? The
tediousness of woman is slowly evolving? Oh Europe! Europe! We know
the horned animal which was always most attractive to thee, from which
danger is ever again threatening thee! Thy old fable might once more
become "history"--an immense stupidity might once again overmaster
thee and carry thee away! And no God concealed beneath it--no! only an
"idea," a "modern idea"!



CHAPTER VIII. PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES


240. I HEARD, once again for the first time, Richard Wagner's overture
to the Mastersinger: it is a piece of magnificent, gorgeous, heavy,
latter-day art, which has the pride to presuppose two centuries of music
as still living, in order that it may be understood:--it is an honour
to Germans that such a pride did not miscalculate! What flavours
and forces, what seasons and climes do we not find mingled in it! It
impresses us at one time as ancient, at another time as foreign, bitter,
and too modern, it is as arbitrary as it is pompously traditional, it
is not infrequently roguish, still oftener rough and coarse--it has fire
and courage, and at the same time the loose, dun-coloured skin of fruits
which ripen too late. It flows broad and full: and suddenly there is a
moment of inexplicable hesitation, like a gap that opens between cause
and effect, an oppression that makes us dream, almost a nightmare; but
already it broadens and widens anew, the old stream of delight--the most
manifold delight,--of old and new happiness; including ESPECIALLY
the joy of the artist in himself, which he refuses to conceal, his
astonished, happy cognizance of his mastery of the expedients here
employed, the new, newly acquired, imperfectly tested expedients of art
which he apparently betrays to us. All in all, however, no beauty, no
South, nothing of the delicate southern clearness of the sky, nothing
of grace, no dance, hardly a will to logic; a certain clumsiness even,
which is also emphasized, as though the artist wished to say to us: "It
is part of my intention"; a cumbersome drapery, something arbitrarily
barbaric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and venerable conceits
and witticisms; something German in the best and worst sense of
the word, something in the German style, manifold, formless, and
inexhaustible; a certain German potency and super-plenitude of
soul, which is not afraid to hide itself under the RAFFINEMENTS of
decadence--which, perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real,
genuine token of the German soul, which is at the same time young and
aged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity. This kind of music
expresses best what I think of the Germans: they belong to the day
before yesterday and the day after tomorrow--THEY HAVE AS YET NO TODAY.

241. We "good Europeans," we also have hours when we allow ourselves a
warm-hearted patriotism, a plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow
views--I have just given an example of it--hours of national excitement,
of patriotic anguish, and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of
sentiment. Duller spirits may perhaps only get done with what confines
its operations in us to hours and plays itself out in hours--in a
considerable time: some in half a year, others in half a lifetime,
according to the speed and strength with which they digest and "change
their material." Indeed, I could think of sluggish, hesitating races,
which even in our rapidly moving Europe, would require half a century
ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and
soil-attachment, and return once more to reason, that is to say, to
"good Europeanism." And while digressing on this possibility, I
happen to become an ear-witness of a conversation between two old
patriots--they were evidently both hard of hearing and consequently
spoke all the louder. "HE has as much, and knows as much, philosophy as
a peasant or a corps-student," said the one--"he is still innocent. But
what does that matter nowadays! It is the age of the masses: they lie on
their belly before everything that is massive. And so also in politicis.
A statesman who rears up for them a new Tower of Babel, some monstrosity
of empire and power, they call 'great'--what does it matter that we more
prudent and conservative ones do not meanwhile give up the old belief
that it is only the great thought that gives greatness to an action or
affair. Supposing a statesman were to bring his people into the position
of being obliged henceforth to practise 'high politics,' for which they
were by nature badly endowed and prepared, so that they would have
to sacrifice their old and reliable virtues, out of love to a new and
doubtful mediocrity;--supposing a statesman were to condemn his people
generally to 'practise politics,' when they have hitherto had something
better to do and think about, and when in the depths of their souls
they have been unable to free themselves from a prudent loathing of
the restlessness, emptiness, and noisy wranglings of the essentially
politics-practising nations;--supposing such a statesman were to
stimulate the slumbering passions and avidities of his people, were to
make a stigma out of their former diffidence and delight in aloofness,
an offence out of their exoticism and hidden permanency, were to
depreciate their most radical proclivities, subvert their consciences,
make their minds narrow, and their tastes 'national'--what! a statesman
who should do all this, which his people would have to do penance for
throughout their whole future, if they had a future, such a statesman
would be GREAT, would he?"--"Undoubtedly!" replied the other old patriot
vehemently, "otherwise he COULD NOT have done it! It was mad perhaps to
wish such a thing! But perhaps everything great has been just as mad
at its commencement!"--"Misuse of words!" cried his interlocutor,
contradictorily--"strong! strong! Strong and mad! NOT great!"--The old
men had obviously become heated as they thus shouted their "truths" in
each other's faces, but I, in my happiness and apartness, considered how
soon a stronger one may become master of the strong, and also that
there is a compensation for the intellectual superficialising of a
nation--namely, in the deepening of another.

242. Whether we call it "civilization," or "humanising," or "progress,"
which now distinguishes the European, whether we call it simply, without
praise or blame, by the political formula the DEMOCRATIC movement in
Europe--behind all the moral and political foregrounds pointed to by
such formulas, an immense PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESS goes on, which is ever
extending the process of the assimilation of Europeans, their
increasing detachment from the conditions under which, climatically and
hereditarily, united races originate, their increasing independence of
every definite milieu, that for centuries would fain inscribe itself
with equal demands on soul and body,--that is to say, the slow emergence
of an essentially SUPER-NATIONAL and nomadic species of man, who
possesses, physiologically speaking, a maximum of the art and power
of adaptation as his typical distinction. This process of the EVOLVING
EUROPEAN, which can be retarded in its TEMPO by great relapses, but
will perhaps just gain and grow thereby in vehemence and depth--the
still-raging storm and stress of "national sentiment" pertains to it,
and also the anarchism which is appearing at present--this process
will probably arrive at results on which its naive propagators and
panegyrists, the apostles of "modern ideas," would least care to reckon.
The same new conditions under which on an average a levelling and
mediocrising of man will take place--a useful, industrious, variously
serviceable, and clever gregarious man--are in the highest degree
suitable to give rise to exceptional men of the most dangerous and
attractive qualities. For, while the capacity for adaptation, which is
every day trying changing conditions, and begins a new work with every
generation, almost with every decade, makes the POWERFULNESS of the type
impossible; while the collective impression of such future Europeans
will probably be that of numerous, talkative, weak-willed, and very
handy workmen who REQUIRE a master, a commander, as they require their
daily bread; while, therefore, the democratising of Europe will tend to
the production of a type prepared for SLAVERY in the most subtle
sense of the term: the STRONG man will necessarily in individual and
exceptional cases, become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever
been before--owing to the unprejudicedness of his schooling, owing to
the immense variety of practice, art, and disguise. I meant to say
that the democratising of Europe is at the same time an involuntary
arrangement for the rearing of TYRANTS--taking the word in all its
meanings, even in its most spiritual sense.

243. I hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly towards the
constellation Hercules: and I hope that the men on this earth will do
like the sun. And we foremost, we good Europeans!

244. There was a time when it was customary to call Germans "deep"
by way of distinction; but now that the most successful type of new
Germanism is covetous of quite other honours, and perhaps misses
"smartness" in all that has depth, it is almost opportune and patriotic
to doubt whether we did not formerly deceive ourselves with that
commendation: in short, whether German depth is not at bottom something
different and worse--and something from which, thank God, we are on the
point of successfully ridding ourselves. Let us try, then, to relearn
with regard to German depth; the only thing necessary for the purpose is
a little vivisection of the German soul.--The German soul is above all
manifold, varied in its source, aggregated and super-imposed, rather
than actually built: this is owing to its origin. A German who would
embolden himself to assert: "Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast," would
make a bad guess at the truth, or, more correctly, he would come far
short of the truth about the number of souls. As a people made up of
the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races, perhaps even with a
preponderance of the pre-Aryan element as the "people of the centre" in
every sense of the term, the Germans are more intangible, more ample,
more contradictory, more unknown, more incalculable, more surprising,
and even more terrifying than other peoples are to themselves:--they
escape DEFINITION, and are thereby alone the despair of the French. It
IS characteristic of the Germans that the question: "What is German?"
never dies out among them. Kotzebue certainly knew his Germans well
enough: "We are known," they cried jubilantly to him--but Sand also
thought he knew them. Jean Paul knew what he was doing when he declared
himself incensed at Fichte's lying but patriotic flatteries and
exaggerations,--but it is probable that Goethe thought differently about
Germans from Jean Paul, even though he acknowledged him to be right with
regard to Fichte. It is a question what Goethe really thought about the
Germans?--But about many things around him he never spoke explicitly,
and all his life he knew how to keep an astute silence--probably he
had good reason for it. It is certain that it was not the "Wars of
Independence" that made him look up more joyfully, any more than it was
the French Revolution,--the event on account of which he RECONSTRUCTED
his "Faust," and indeed the whole problem of "man," was the appearance
of Napoleon. There are words of Goethe in which he condemns with
impatient severity, as from a foreign land, that which Germans take a
pride in, he once defined the famous German turn of mind as "Indulgence
towards its own and others' weaknesses." Was he wrong? it is
characteristic of Germans that one is seldom entirely wrong about them.
The German soul has passages and galleries in it, there are caves,
hiding-places, and dungeons therein, its disorder has much of the charm
of the mysterious, the German is well acquainted with the bypaths to
chaos. And as everything loves its symbol, so the German loves the
clouds and all that is obscure, evolving, crepuscular, damp, and
shrouded, it seems to him that everything uncertain, undeveloped,
self-displacing, and growing is "deep". The German himself does not
EXIST, he is BECOMING, he is "developing himself". "Development" is
therefore the essentially German discovery and hit in the great domain
of philosophical formulas,--a ruling idea, which, together with German
beer and German music, is labouring to Germanise all Europe. Foreigners
are astonished and attracted by the riddles which the conflicting nature
at the basis of the German soul propounds to them (riddles which
Hegel systematised and Richard Wagner has in the end set to music).
"Good-natured and spiteful"--such a juxtaposition, preposterous in the
case of every other people, is unfortunately only too often justified
in Germany one has only to live for a while among Swabians to know this!
The clumsiness of the German scholar and his social distastefulness
agree alarmingly well with his physical rope-dancing and nimble
boldness, of which all the Gods have learnt to be afraid. If any one
wishes to see the "German soul" demonstrated ad oculos, let him
only look at German taste, at German arts and manners what boorish
indifference to "taste"! How the noblest and the commonest stand there
in juxtaposition! How disorderly and how rich is the whole constitution
of this soul! The German DRAGS at his soul, he drags at everything he
experiences. He digests his events badly; he never gets "done"
with them; and German depth is often only a difficult, hesitating
"digestion." And just as all chronic invalids, all dyspeptics like what
is convenient, so the German loves "frankness" and "honesty"; it is
so CONVENIENT to be frank and honest!--This confidingness, this
complaisance, this showing-the-cards of German HONESTY, is probably the
most dangerous and most successful disguise which the German is up to
nowadays: it is his proper Mephistophelean art; with this he can "still
achieve much"! The German lets himself go, and thereby gazes with
faithful, blue, empty German eyes--and other countries immediately
confound him with his dressing-gown!--I meant to say that, let "German
depth" be what it will--among ourselves alone we perhaps take the
liberty to laugh at it--we shall do well to continue henceforth to
honour its appearance and good name, and not barter away too cheaply our
old reputation as a people of depth for Prussian "smartness," and
Berlin wit and sand. It is wise for a people to pose, and LET itself
be regarded, as profound, clumsy, good-natured, honest, and foolish: it
might even be--profound to do so! Finally, we should do honour to
our name--we are not called the "TIUSCHE VOLK" (deceptive people) for
nothing....

245. The "good old" time is past, it sang itself out in Mozart--how
happy are WE that his ROCOCO still speaks to us, that his "good
company," his tender enthusiasm, his childish delight in the Chinese and
its flourishes, his courtesy of heart, his longing for the elegant, the
amorous, the tripping, the tearful, and his belief in the South, can
still appeal to SOMETHING LEFT in us! Ah, some time or other it will be
over with it!--but who can doubt that it will be over still sooner with
the intelligence and taste for Beethoven! For he was only the last echo
of a break and transition in style, and NOT, like Mozart, the last echo
of a great European taste which had existed for centuries. Beethoven
is the intermediate event between an old mellow soul that is constantly
breaking down, and a future over-young soul that is always COMING;
there is spread over his music the twilight of eternal loss and eternal
extravagant hope,--the same light in which Europe was bathed when it
dreamed with Rousseau, when it danced round the Tree of Liberty of the
Revolution, and finally almost fell down in adoration before Napoleon.
But how rapidly does THIS very sentiment now pale, how difficult
nowadays is even the APPREHENSION of this sentiment, how strangely does
the language of Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley, and Byron sound to our ear,
in whom COLLECTIVELY the same fate of Europe was able to SPEAK, which
knew how to SING in Beethoven!--Whatever German music came afterwards,
belongs to Romanticism, that is to say, to a movement which,
historically considered, was still shorter, more fleeting, and more
superficial than that great interlude, the transition of Europe from
Rousseau to Napoleon, and to the rise of democracy. Weber--but what do
WE care nowadays for "Freischutz" and "Oberon"! Or Marschner's "Hans
Heiling" and "Vampyre"! Or even Wagner's "Tannhauser"! That is extinct,
although not yet forgotten music. This whole music of Romanticism,
besides, was not noble enough, was not musical enough, to maintain its
position anywhere but in the theatre and before the masses; from the
beginning it was second-rate music, which was little thought of by
genuine musicians. It was different with Felix Mendelssohn, that halcyon
master, who, on account of his lighter, purer, happier soul, quickly
acquired admiration, and was equally quickly forgotten: as the beautiful
EPISODE of German music. But with regard to Robert Schumann, who took
things seriously, and has been taken seriously from the first--he
was the last that founded a school,--do we not now regard it as a
satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance, that this very Romanticism
of Schumann's has been surmounted? Schumann, fleeing into the "Saxon
Switzerland" of his soul, with a half Werther-like, half Jean-Paul-like
nature (assuredly not like Beethoven! assuredly not like Byron!)--his
MANFRED music is a mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of
injustice; Schumann, with his taste, which was fundamentally a PETTY
taste (that is to say, a dangerous propensity--doubly dangerous among
Germans--for quiet lyricism and intoxication of the feelings), going
constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and retiring, a noble weakling who
revelled in nothing but anonymous joy and sorrow, from the beginning
a sort of girl and NOLI ME TANGERE--this Schumann was already merely a
GERMAN event in music, and no longer a European event, as Beethoven had
been, as in a still greater degree Mozart had been; with Schumann German
music was threatened with its greatest danger, that of LOSING THE VOICE
FOR THE SOUL OF EUROPE and sinking into a merely national affair.

246. What a torture are books written in German to a reader who has a
THIRD ear! How indignantly he stands beside the slowly turning swamp
of sounds without tune and rhythms without dance, which Germans call
a "book"! And even the German who READS books! How lazily, how
reluctantly, how badly he reads! How many Germans know, and consider it
obligatory to know, that there is ART in every good sentence--art which
must be divined, if the sentence is to be understood! If there is a
misunderstanding about its TEMPO, for instance, the sentence itself
is misunderstood! That one must not be doubtful about the
rhythm-determining syllables, that one should feel the breaking of the
too-rigid symmetry as intentional and as a charm, that one should lend a
fine and patient ear to every STACCATO and every RUBATO, that one should
divine the sense in the sequence of the vowels and diphthongs, and how
delicately and richly they can be tinted and retinted in the order of
their arrangement--who among book-reading Germans is complaisant enough
to recognize such duties and requirements, and to listen to so much art
and intention in language? After all, one just "has no ear for it";
and so the most marked contrasts of style are not heard, and the most
delicate artistry is as it were SQUANDERED on the deaf.--These were my
thoughts when I noticed how clumsily and unintuitively two masters in
the art of prose-writing have been confounded: one, whose words drop
down hesitatingly and coldly, as from the roof of a damp cave--he counts
on their dull sound and echo; and another who manipulates his language
like a flexible sword, and from his arm down into his toes feels the
dangerous bliss of the quivering, over-sharp blade, which wishes to
bite, hiss, and cut.

247. How little the German style has to do with harmony and with the
ear, is shown by the fact that precisely our good musicians themselves
write badly. The German does not read aloud, he does not read for the
ear, but only with his eyes; he has put his ears away in the drawer for
the time. In antiquity when a man read--which was seldom enough--he read
something to himself, and in a loud voice; they were surprised when
any one read silently, and sought secretly the reason of it. In a
loud voice: that is to say, with all the swellings, inflections, and
variations of key and changes of TEMPO, in which the ancient PUBLIC
world took delight. The laws of the written style were then the same
as those of the spoken style; and these laws depended partly on the
surprising development and refined requirements of the ear and larynx;
partly on the strength, endurance, and power of the ancient lungs. In
the ancient sense, a period is above all a physiological whole, inasmuch
as it is comprised in one breath. Such periods as occur in Demosthenes
and Cicero, swelling twice and sinking twice, and all in one breath,
were pleasures to the men of ANTIQUITY, who knew by their own schooling
how to appreciate the virtue therein, the rareness and the difficulty
in the deliverance of such a period;--WE have really no right to the
BIG period, we modern men, who are short of breath in every sense! Those
ancients, indeed, were all of them dilettanti in speaking, consequently
connoisseurs, consequently critics--they thus brought their orators to
the highest pitch; in the same manner as in the last century, when all
Italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing, the virtuosoship of song
(and with it also the art of melody) reached its elevation. In Germany,
however (until quite recently when a kind of platform eloquence began
shyly and awkwardly enough to flutter its young wings), there was
properly speaking only one kind of public and APPROXIMATELY artistical
discourse--that delivered from the pulpit. The preacher was the only one
in Germany who knew the weight of a syllable or a word, in what manner a
sentence strikes, springs, rushes, flows, and comes to a close; he alone
had a conscience in his ears, often enough a bad conscience: for reasons
are not lacking why proficiency in oratory should be especially seldom
attained by a German, or almost always too late. The masterpiece of
German prose is therefore with good reason the masterpiece of its
greatest preacher: the BIBLE has hitherto been the best German
book. Compared with Luther's Bible, almost everything else is merely
"literature"--something which has not grown in Germany, and therefore
has not taken and does not take root in German hearts, as the Bible has
done.

248. There are two kinds of geniuses: one which above all engenders and
seeks to engender, and another which willingly lets itself be fructified
and brings forth. And similarly, among the gifted nations, there are
those on whom the woman's problem of pregnancy has devolved, and the
secret task of forming, maturing, and perfecting--the Greeks, for
instance, were a nation of this kind, and so are the French; and others
which have to fructify and become the cause of new modes of life--like
the Jews, the Romans, and, in all modesty be it asked: like the
Germans?--nations tortured and enraptured by unknown fevers and
irresistibly forced out of themselves, amorous and longing for
foreign races (for such as "let themselves be fructified"), and withal
imperious, like everything conscious of being full of generative force,
and consequently empowered "by the grace of God." These two kinds of
geniuses seek each other like man and woman; but they also misunderstand
each other--like man and woman.

249. Every nation has its own "Tartuffery," and calls that its
virtue.--One does not know--cannot know, the best that is in one.

250. What Europe owes to the Jews?--Many things, good and bad, and above
all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst: the grand
style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of
infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral
questionableness--and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring,
and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life,
in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture, its evening
sky, now glows--perhaps glows out. For this, we artists among the
spectators and philosophers, are--grateful to the Jews.

251. It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and
disturbances--in short, slight attacks of stupidity--pass over the
spirit of a people that suffers and WANTS to suffer from national
nervous fever and political ambition: for instance, among present-day
Germans there is alternately the anti-French folly, the anti-Semitic
folly, the anti-Polish folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the
Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just look at
those poor historians, the Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely
bandaged heads), and whatever else these little obscurations of the
German spirit and conscience may be called. May it be forgiven me that
I, too, when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not
remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one else, began
to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me--the first
symptom of political infection. About the Jews, for instance, listen
to the following:--I have never yet met a German who was favourably
inclined to the Jews; and however decided the repudiation of actual
anti-Semitism may be on the part of all prudent and political men, this
prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature of the
sentiment itself, but only against its dangerous excess, and especially
against the distasteful and infamous expression of this excess of
sentiment;--on this point we must not deceive ourselves. That Germany
has amply SUFFICIENT Jews, that the German stomach, the German blood,
has difficulty (and will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this
quantity of "Jew"--as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the Englishman
have done by means of a stronger digestion:--that is the unmistakable
declaration and language of a general instinct, to which one must listen
and according to which one must act. "Let no more Jews come in! And shut
the doors, especially towards the East (also towards Austria)!"--thus
commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and
uncertain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished, by
a stronger race. The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest,
toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe, they know how
to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better than under
favourable ones), by means of virtues of some sort, which one would like
nowadays to label as vices--owing above all to a resolute faith which
does not need to be ashamed before "modern ideas", they alter only,
WHEN they do alter, in the same way that the Russian Empire makes
its conquest--as an empire that has plenty of time and is not of
yesterday--namely, according to the principle, "as slowly as possible"!
A thinker who has the future of Europe at heart, will, in all his
perspectives concerning the future, calculate upon the Jews, as he
will calculate upon the Russians, as above all the surest and likeliest
factors in the great play and battle of forces. That which is at present
called a "nation" in Europe, and is really rather a RES FACTA than NATA
(indeed, sometimes confusingly similar to a RES FICTA ET PICTA), is in
every case something evolving, young, easily displaced, and not yet
a race, much less such a race AERE PERENNUS, as the Jews are such
"nations" should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry and
hostility! It is certain that the Jews, if they desired--or if they
were driven to it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish--COULD now have the
ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe, that they are NOT
working and planning for that end is equally certain. Meanwhile, they
rather wish and desire, even somewhat importunely, to be insorbed and
absorbed by Europe, they long to be finally settled, authorized, and
respected somewhere, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life, to the
"wandering Jew",--and one should certainly take account of this impulse
and tendency, and MAKE ADVANCES to it (it possibly betokens a mitigation
of the Jewish instincts) for which purpose it would perhaps be useful
and fair to banish the anti-Semitic bawlers out of the country. One
should make advances with all prudence, and with selection, pretty much
as the English nobility do It stands to reason that the more powerful
and strongly marked types of new Germanism could enter into relation
with the Jews with the least hesitation, for instance, the nobleman
officer from the Prussian border it would be interesting in many ways
to see whether the genius for money and patience (and especially some
intellect and intellectuality--sadly lacking in the place referred to)
could not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of
commanding and obeying--for both of which the country in question has
now a classic reputation But here it is expedient to break off my festal
discourse and my sprightly Teutonomania for I have already reached my
SERIOUS TOPIC, the "European problem," as I understand it, the rearing
of a new ruling caste for Europe.

252. They are not a philosophical race--the English: Bacon represents an
ATTACK on the philosophical spirit generally, Hobbes, Hume, and Locke,
an abasement, and a depreciation of the idea of a "philosopher" for more
than a century. It was AGAINST Hume that Kant uprose and raised himself;
it was Locke of whom Schelling RIGHTLY said, "JE MEPRISE LOCKE"; in the
struggle against the English mechanical stultification of the world,
Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were of one accord; the
two hostile brother-geniuses in philosophy, who pushed in different
directions towards the opposite poles of German thought, and thereby
wronged each other as only brothers will do.--What is lacking in
England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician
knew well enough, the absurd muddle-head, Carlyle, who sought to conceal
under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what was
LACKING in Carlyle--real POWER of intellect, real DEPTH of intellectual
perception, in short, philosophy. It is characteristic of such an
unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to Christianity--they NEED its
discipline for "moralizing" and humanizing. The Englishman, more gloomy,
sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German--is for that very
reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the
MORE NEED of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity
itself has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic
excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote--the
finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning is
in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, a step towards
spiritualization. The English coarseness and rustic demureness is still
most satisfactorily disguised by Christian pantomime, and by praying
and psalm-singing (or, more correctly, it is thereby explained and
differently expressed); and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who
formerly learned moral grunting under the influence of Methodism (and
more recently as the "Salvation Army"), a penitential fit may really be
the relatively highest manifestation of "humanity" to which they can
be elevated: so much may reasonably be admitted. That, however, which
offends even in the humanest Englishman is his lack of music, to speak
figuratively (and also literally): he has neither rhythm nor dance in
the movements of his soul and body; indeed, not even the desire for
rhythm and dance, for "music." Listen to him speaking; look at the most
beautiful Englishwoman WALKING--in no country on earth are there more
beautiful doves and swans; finally, listen to them singing! But I ask
too much...

253. There are truths which are best recognized by mediocre minds,
because they are best adapted for them, there are truths which only
possess charms and seductive power for mediocre spirits:--one is pushed
to this probably unpleasant conclusion, now that the influence of
respectable but mediocre Englishmen--I may mention Darwin, John
Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer--begins to gain the ascendancy in the
middle-class region of European taste. Indeed, who could doubt that it
is a useful thing for SUCH minds to have the ascendancy for a time? It
would be an error to consider the highly developed and independently
soaring minds as specially qualified for determining and collecting many
little common facts, and deducing conclusions from them; as exceptions,
they are rather from the first in no very favourable position towards
those who are "the rules." After all, they have more to do than merely
to perceive:--in effect, they have to BE something new, they have to
SIGNIFY something new, they have to REPRESENT new values! The gulf
between knowledge and capacity is perhaps greater, and also more
mysterious, than one thinks: the capable man in the grand style, the
creator, will possibly have to be an ignorant person;--while on the
other hand, for scientific discoveries like those of Darwin, a certain
narrowness, aridity, and industrious carefulness (in short, something
English) may not be unfavourable for arriving at them.--Finally, let
it not be forgotten that the English, with their profound mediocrity,
brought about once before a general depression of European intelligence.

What is called "modern ideas," or "the ideas of the eighteenth century,"
or "French ideas"--that, consequently, against which the GERMAN mind
rose up with profound disgust--is of English origin, there is no doubt
about it. The French were only the apes and actors of these ideas, their
best soldiers, and likewise, alas! their first and profoundest VICTIMS;
for owing to the diabolical Anglomania of "modern ideas," the AME
FRANCAIS has in the end become so thin and emaciated, that at present
one recalls its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profound,
passionate strength, its inventive excellency, almost with disbelief.
One must, however, maintain this verdict of historical justice in
a determined manner, and defend it against present prejudices and
appearances: the European NOBLESSE--of sentiment, taste, and manners,
taking the word in every high sense--is the work and invention of
FRANCE; the European ignobleness, the plebeianism of modern ideas--is
ENGLAND'S work and invention.

254. Even at present France is still the seat of the most intellectual
and refined culture of Europe, it is still the high school of taste; but
one must know how to find this "France of taste." He who belongs to it
keeps himself well concealed:--they may be a small number in whom it
lives and is embodied, besides perhaps being men who do not stand upon
the strongest legs, in part fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids, in
part persons over-indulged, over-refined, such as have the AMBITION to
conceal themselves.

They have all something in common: they keep their ears closed in
presence of the delirious folly and noisy spouting of the democratic
BOURGEOIS. In fact, a besotted and brutalized France at present sprawls
in the foreground--it recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste,
and at the same time of self-admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo.
There is also something else common to them: a predilection to resist
intellectual Germanizing--and a still greater inability to do so!
In this France of intellect, which is also a France of pessimism,
Schopenhauer has perhaps become more at home, and more indigenous than
he has ever been in Germany; not to speak of Heinrich Heine, who has
long ago been re-incarnated in the more refined and fastidious lyrists
of Paris; or of Hegel, who at present, in the form of Taine--the FIRST
of living historians--exercises an almost tyrannical influence. As
regards Richard Wagner, however, the more French music learns to
adapt itself to the actual needs of the AME MODERNE, the more will it
"Wagnerite"; one can safely predict that beforehand,--it is already
taking place sufficiently! There are, however, three things which the
French can still boast of with pride as their heritage and possession,
and as indelible tokens of their ancient intellectual superiority
in Europe, in spite of all voluntary or involuntary Germanizing and
vulgarizing of taste. FIRSTLY, the capacity for artistic emotion, for
devotion to "form," for which the expression, L'ART POUR L'ART, along
with numerous others, has been invented:--such capacity has not been
lacking in France for three centuries; and owing to its reverence for
the "small number," it has again and again made a sort of chamber
music of literature possible, which is sought for in vain elsewhere
in Europe.--The SECOND thing whereby the French can lay claim to
a superiority over Europe is their ancient, many-sided, MORALISTIC
culture, owing to which one finds on an average, even in the petty
ROMANCIERS of the newspapers and chance BOULEVARDIERS DE PARIS, a
psychological sensitiveness and curiosity, of which, for example, one
has no conception (to say nothing of the thing itself!) in Germany.
The Germans lack a couple of centuries of the moralistic work requisite
thereto, which, as we have said, France has not grudged: those who call
the Germans "naive" on that account give them commendation for a defect.
(As the opposite of the German inexperience and innocence IN VOLUPTATE
PSYCHOLOGICA, which is not too remotely associated with the tediousness
of German intercourse,--and as the most successful expression of
genuine French curiosity and inventive talent in this domain of delicate
thrills, Henri Beyle may be noted; that remarkable anticipatory and
forerunning man, who, with a Napoleonic TEMPO, traversed HIS Europe,
in fact, several centuries of the European soul, as a surveyor and
discoverer thereof:--it has required two generations to OVERTAKE him
one way or other, to divine long afterwards some of the riddles
that perplexed and enraptured him--this strange Epicurean and man of
interrogation, the last great psychologist of France).--There is yet
a THIRD claim to superiority: in the French character there is a
successful half-way synthesis of the North and South, which makes them
comprehend many things, and enjoins upon them other things, which an
Englishman can never comprehend. Their temperament, turned alternately
to and from the South, in which from time to time the Provencal and
Ligurian blood froths over, preserves them from the dreadful, northern
grey-in-grey, from sunless conceptual-spectrism and from poverty of
blood--our GERMAN infirmity of taste, for the excessive prevalence
of which at the present moment, blood and iron, that is to say "high
politics," has with great resolution been prescribed (according to
a dangerous healing art, which bids me wait and wait, but not yet
hope).--There is also still in France a pre-understanding and
ready welcome for those rarer and rarely gratified men, who are too
comprehensive to find satisfaction in any kind of fatherlandism, and
know how to love the South when in the North and the North when in the
South--the born Midlanders, the "good Europeans." For them BIZET
has made music, this latest genius, who has seen a new beauty and
seduction,--who has discovered a piece of the SOUTH IN MUSIC.

255. I hold that many precautions should be taken against German music.
Suppose a person loves the South as I love it--as a great school
of recovery for the most spiritual and the most sensuous ills, as a
boundless solar profusion and effulgence which o'erspreads a sovereign
existence believing in itself--well, such a person will learn to be
somewhat on his guard against German music, because, in injuring his
taste anew, it will also injure his health anew. Such a Southerner, a
Southerner not by origin but by BELIEF, if he should dream of the future
of music, must also dream of it being freed from the influence of the
North; and must have in his ears the prelude to a deeper, mightier, and
perhaps more perverse and mysterious music, a super-German music, which
does not fade, pale, and die away, as all German music does, at the
sight of the blue, wanton sea and the Mediterranean clearness of sky--a
super-European music, which holds its own even in presence of the brown
sunsets of the desert, whose soul is akin to the palm-tree, and can be
at home and can roam with big, beautiful, lonely beasts of prey... I
could imagine a music of which the rarest charm would be that it knew
nothing more of good and evil; only that here and there perhaps some
sailor's home-sickness, some golden shadows and tender weaknesses might
sweep lightly over it; an art which, from the far distance, would see
the colours of a sinking and almost incomprehensible MORAL world fleeing
towards it, and would be hospitable enough and profound enough to
receive such belated fugitives.

256. Owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-craze has
induced and still induces among the nations of Europe, owing also to the
short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians, who with the help of this
craze, are at present in power, and do not suspect to what extent the
disintegrating policy they pursue must necessarily be only an interlude
policy--owing to all this and much else that is altogether unmentionable
at present, the most unmistakable signs that EUROPE WISHES TO BE ONE,
are now overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted. With all
the more profound and large-minded men of this century, the real general
tendency of the mysterious labour of their souls was to prepare the way
for that new SYNTHESIS, and tentatively to anticipate the European of
the future; only in their simulations, or in their weaker moments, in
old age perhaps, did they belong to the "fatherlands"--they only rested
from themselves when they became "patriots." I think of such men as
Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer: it
must not be taken amiss if I also count Richard Wagner among them, about
whom one must not let oneself be deceived by his own misunderstandings
(geniuses like him have seldom the right to understand themselves),
still less, of course, by the unseemly noise with which he is now
resisted and opposed in France: the fact remains, nevertheless, that
Richard Wagner and the LATER FRENCH ROMANTICISM of the forties, are
most closely and intimately related to one another. They are akin,
fundamentally akin, in all the heights and depths of their requirements;
it is Europe, the ONE Europe, whose soul presses urgently and longingly,
outwards and upwards, in their multifarious and boisterous art--whither?
into a new light? towards a new sun? But who would attempt to express
accurately what all these masters of new modes of speech could not
express distinctly? It is certain that the same storm and stress
tormented them, that they SOUGHT in the same manner, these last great
seekers! All of them steeped in literature to their eyes and ears--the
first artists of universal literary culture--for the most part even
themselves writers, poets, intermediaries and blenders of the arts and
the senses (Wagner, as musician is reckoned among painters, as poet
among musicians, as artist generally among actors); all of them fanatics
for EXPRESSION "at any cost"--I specially mention Delacroix, the nearest
related to Wagner; all of them great discoverers in the realm of the
sublime, also of the loathsome and dreadful, still greater discoverers
in effect, in display, in the art of the show-shop; all of them talented
far beyond their genius, out and out VIRTUOSI, with mysterious accesses
to all that seduces, allures, constrains, and upsets; born enemies of
logic and of the straight line, hankering after the strange, the
exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, and the self-contradictory; as men,
Tantaluses of the will, plebeian parvenus, who knew themselves to be
incapable of a noble TEMPO or of a LENTO in life and action--think
of Balzac, for instance,--unrestrained workers, almost destroying
themselves by work; antinomians and rebels in manners, ambitious and
insatiable, without equilibrium and enjoyment; all of them finally
shattering and sinking down at the Christian cross (and with right
and reason, for who of them would have been sufficiently profound and
sufficiently original for an ANTI-CHRISTIAN philosophy?);--on the
whole, a boldly daring, splendidly overbearing, high-flying, and
aloft-up-dragging class of higher men, who had first to teach their
century--and it is the century of the MASSES--the conception "higher
man."... Let the German friends of Richard Wagner advise together as to
whether there is anything purely German in the Wagnerian art, or whether
its distinction does not consist precisely in coming from SUPER-GERMAN
sources and impulses: in which connection it may not be underrated
how indispensable Paris was to the development of his type, which the
strength of his instincts made him long to visit at the most
decisive time--and how the whole style of his proceedings, of his
self-apostolate, could only perfect itself in sight of the French
socialistic original. On a more subtle comparison it will perhaps be
found, to the honour of Richard Wagner's German nature, that he has
acted in everything with more strength, daring, severity, and elevation
than a nineteenth-century Frenchman could have done--owing to the
circumstance that we Germans are as yet nearer to barbarism than the
French;--perhaps even the most remarkable creation of Richard Wagner is
not only at present, but for ever inaccessible, incomprehensible, and
inimitable to the whole latter-day Latin race: the figure of Siegfried,
that VERY FREE man, who is probably far too free, too hard, too
cheerful, too healthy, too ANTI-CATHOLIC for the taste of old and mellow
civilized nations. He may even have been a sin against Romanticism, this
anti-Latin Siegfried: well, Wagner atoned amply for this sin in his old
sad days, when--anticipating a taste which has meanwhile passed into
politics--he began, with the religious vehemence peculiar to him, to
preach, at least, THE WAY TO ROME, if not to walk therein.--That
these last words may not be misunderstood, I will call to my aid a few
powerful rhymes, which will even betray to less delicate ears what I
mean--what I mean COUNTER TO the "last Wagner" and his Parsifal music:--

--Is this our mode?--From German heart came this vexed ululating? From
German body, this self-lacerating? Is ours this priestly hand-dilation,
This incense-fuming exaltation? Is ours this faltering, falling,
shambling, This quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling? This sly
nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing, This wholly false enraptured
heaven-o'erspringing?--Is this our mode?--Think well!--ye still wait for
admission--For what ye hear is ROME--ROME'S FAITH BY INTUITION!



CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS NOBLE?


257. EVERY elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the work of an
aristocratic society and so it will always be--a society believing in
a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human
beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. Without the PATHOS
OF DISTANCE, such as grows out of the incarnated difference of classes,
out of the constant out-looking and down-looking of the ruling caste on
subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant
practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a
distance--that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the
longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself,
the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended, more
comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation of the type "man,"
the continued "self-surmounting of man," to use a moral formula in
a supermoral sense. To be sure, one must not resign oneself to
any humanitarian illusions about the history of the origin of an
aristocratic society (that is to say, of the preliminary condition for
the elevation of the type "man"): the truth is hard. Let us acknowledge
unprejudicedly how every higher civilization hitherto has ORIGINATED!
Men with a still natural nature, barbarians in every terrible sense of
the word, men of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of will
and desire for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more moral, more
peaceful races (perhaps trading or cattle-rearing communities), or upon
old mellow civilizations in which the final vital force was flickering
out in brilliant fireworks of wit and depravity. At the commencement,
the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their superiority did
not consist first of all in their physical, but in their psychical
power--they were more COMPLETE men (which at every point also implies
the same as "more complete beasts").

258. Corruption--as the indication that anarchy threatens to break out
among the instincts, and that the foundation of the emotions, called
"life," is convulsed--is something radically different according to
the organization in which it manifests itself. When, for instance, an
aristocracy like that of France at the beginning of the Revolution,
flung away its privileges with sublime disgust and sacrificed itself
to an excess of its moral sentiments, it was corruption:--it was really
only the closing act of the corruption which had existed for centuries,
by virtue of which that aristocracy had abdicated step by step its
lordly prerogatives and lowered itself to a FUNCTION of royalty (in
the end even to its decoration and parade-dress). The essential thing,
however, in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should not regard
itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth, but
as the SIGNIFICANCE and highest justification thereof--that it should
therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion
of individuals, who, FOR ITS SAKE, must be suppressed and reduced to
imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its fundamental belief must
be precisely that society is NOT allowed to exist for its own sake, but
only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class
of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties, and
in general to a higher EXISTENCE: like those sun-seeking climbing plants
in Java--they are called Sipo Matador,--which encircle an oak so
long and so often with their arms, until at last, high above it, but
supported by it, they can unfold their tops in the open light, and
exhibit their happiness.

259. To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation,
and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a
certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary
conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals
in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one
organization). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle
more generally, and if possible even as the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF
SOCIETY, it would immediately disclose what it really is--namely, a Will
to the DENIAL of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one
must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental
weakness: life itself is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest
of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of
peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest,
exploitation;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words
on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the
organization within which, as was previously supposed, the
individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every
healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying
organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals
within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the
incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground,
attract to itself and acquire ascendancy--not owing to any morality or
immorality, but because it LIVES, and because life IS precisely Will to
Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans
more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter, people now rave
everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of
society in which "the exploiting character" is to be absent--that sounds
to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should
refrain from all organic functions. "Exploitation" does not belong to a
depraved, or imperfect and primitive society it belongs to the nature of
the living being as a primary organic function, it is a consequence
of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to
Life--Granting that as a theory this is a novelty--as a reality it is
the FUNDAMENTAL FACT of all history let us be so far honest towards
ourselves!

260. In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have
hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain traits
recurring regularly together, and connected with one another, until
finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical
distinction was brought to light. There is MASTER-MORALITY and
SLAVE-MORALITY,--I would at once add, however, that in all higher and
mixed civilizations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of
the two moralities, but one finds still oftener the confusion and
mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close
juxtaposition--even in the same man, within one soul. The distinctions
of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly
conscious of being different from the ruled--or among the ruled class,
the slaves and dependents of all sorts. In the first case, when it is
the rulers who determine the conception "good," it is the exalted, proud
disposition which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and that
which determines the order of rank. The noble type of man separates
from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud
disposition displays itself he despises them. Let it at once be noted
that in this first kind of morality the antithesis "good" and "bad"
means practically the same as "noble" and "despicable",--the antithesis
"good" and "EVIL" is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid, the
insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised;
moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the
self-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused,
the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars:--it is a fundamental
belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful. "We
truthful ones"--the nobility in ancient Greece called themselves. It is
obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first
applied to MEN; and were only derivatively and at a later period applied
to ACTIONS; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of morals
start with questions like, "Why have sympathetic actions been praised?"
The noble type of man regards HIMSELF as a determiner of values; he
does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: "What is
injurious to me is injurious in itself;" he knows that it is he himself
only who confers honour on things; he is a CREATOR OF VALUES. He
honours whatever he recognizes in himself: such morality equals
self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude,
of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the
consciousness of a wealth which would fain give and bestow:--the noble
man also helps the unfortunate, but not--or scarcely--out of pity, but
rather from an impulse generated by the super-abundance of power. The
noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power
over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who
takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has
reverence for all that is severe and hard. "Wotan placed a hard heart in
my breast," says an old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly expressed
from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud of not
being made for sympathy; the hero of the Saga therefore adds warningly:
"He who has not a hard heart when young, will never have one." The noble
and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality
which sees precisely in sympathy, or in acting for the good of others,
or in DESINTERESSEMENT, the characteristic of the moral; faith
in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards
"selflessness," belong as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless
scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the "warm heart."--It
is the powerful who KNOW how to honour, it is their art, their domain
for invention. The profound reverence for age and for tradition--all law
rests on this double reverence,--the belief and prejudice in favour of
ancestors and unfavourable to newcomers, is typical in the morality of
the powerful; and if, reversely, men of "modern ideas" believe almost
instinctively in "progress" and the "future," and are more and more
lacking in respect for old age, the ignoble origin of these "ideas" has
complacently betrayed itself thereby. A morality of the ruling class,
however, is more especially foreign and irritating to present-day taste
in the sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one's
equals; that one may act towards beings of a lower rank, towards all
that is foreign, just as seems good to one, or "as the heart desires,"
and in any case "beyond good and evil": it is here that sympathy and
similar sentiments can have a place. The ability and obligation to
exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge--both only within the
circle of equals,--artfulness in retaliation, RAFFINEMENT of the idea
in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (as outlets for the
emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance--in fact, in order to be
a good FRIEND): all these are typical characteristics of the noble
morality, which, as has been pointed out, is not the morality of "modern
ideas," and is therefore at present difficult to realize, and also to
unearth and disclose.--It is otherwise with the second type of morality,
SLAVE-MORALITY. Supposing that the abused, the oppressed, the suffering,
the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves should
moralize, what will be the common element in their moral estimates?
Probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of
man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man, together with
his situation. The slave has an unfavourable eye for the virtues of the
powerful; he has a skepticism and distrust, a REFINEMENT of distrust of
everything "good" that is there honoured--he would fain persuade himself
that the very happiness there is not genuine. On the other hand, THOSE
qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are
brought into prominence and flooded with light; it is here that
sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence,
humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for here these are the most
useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of
existence. Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility.
Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis "good" and
"evil":--power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil,
a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of
being despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the "evil" man
arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the "good"
man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is
regarded as the despicable being. The contrast attains its maximum when,
in accordance with the logical consequences of slave-morality, a shade
of depreciation--it may be slight and well-intentioned--at last attaches
itself to the "good" man of this morality; because, according to the
servile mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the SAFE
man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un
bonhomme. Everywhere that slave-morality gains the ascendancy, language
shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the words "good"
and "stupid."--A last fundamental difference: the desire for FREEDOM,
the instinct for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty
belong as necessarily to slave-morals and morality, as artifice and
enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular symptoms of an
aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating.--Hence we can understand
without further detail why love AS A PASSION--it is our European
specialty--must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its
invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant,
ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and
almost owes itself.

261. Vanity is one of the things which are perhaps most difficult for
a noble man to understand: he will be tempted to deny it, where another
kind of man thinks he sees it self-evidently. The problem for him is
to represent to his mind beings who seek to arouse a good opinion of
themselves which they themselves do not possess--and consequently also
do not "deserve,"--and who yet BELIEVE in this good opinion
afterwards. This seems to him on the one hand such bad taste and so
self-disrespectful, and on the other hand so grotesquely unreasonable,
that he would like to consider vanity an exception, and is doubtful
about it in most cases when it is spoken of. He will say, for
instance: "I may be mistaken about my value, and on the other hand
may nevertheless demand that my value should be acknowledged by others
precisely as I rate it:--that, however, is not vanity (but self-conceit,
or, in most cases, that which is called 'humility,' and also
'modesty')." Or he will even say: "For many reasons I can delight in
the good opinion of others, perhaps because I love and honour them,
and rejoice in all their joys, perhaps also because their good opinion
endorses and strengthens my belief in my own good opinion, perhaps
because the good opinion of others, even in cases where I do not share
it, is useful to me, or gives promise of usefulness:--all this, however,
is not vanity." The man of noble character must first bring it home
forcibly to his mind, especially with the aid of history, that, from
time immemorial, in all social strata in any way dependent, the ordinary
man WAS only that which he PASSED FOR:--not being at all accustomed to
fix values, he did not assign even to himself any other value than that
which his master assigned to him (it is the peculiar RIGHT OF MASTERS to
create values). It may be looked upon as the result of an extraordinary
atavism, that the ordinary man, even at present, is still always WAITING
for an opinion about himself, and then instinctively submitting himself
to it; yet by no means only to a "good" opinion, but also to a bad
and unjust one (think, for instance, of the greater part of the
self-appreciations and self-depreciations which believing women learn
from their confessors, and which in general the believing Christian
learns from his Church). In fact, conformably to the slow rise of the
democratic social order (and its cause, the blending of the blood
of masters and slaves), the originally noble and rare impulse of
the masters to assign a value to themselves and to "think well" of
themselves, will now be more and more encouraged and extended; but
it has at all times an older, ampler, and more radically ingrained
propensity opposed to it--and in the phenomenon of "vanity" this older
propensity overmasters the younger. The vain person rejoices over EVERY
good opinion which he hears about himself (quite apart from the point
of view of its usefulness, and equally regardless of its truth or
falsehood), just as he suffers from every bad opinion: for he subjects
himself to both, he feels himself subjected to both, by that oldest
instinct of subjection which breaks forth in him.--It is "the slave"
in the vain man's blood, the remains of the slave's craftiness--and how
much of the "slave" is still left in woman, for instance!--which
seeks to SEDUCE to good opinions of itself; it is the slave, too, who
immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before these opinions, as
though he had not called them forth.--And to repeat it again: vanity is
an atavism.

262. A SPECIES originates, and a type becomes established and strong in
the long struggle with essentially constant UNFAVOURABLE conditions. On
the other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species
which receive super-abundant nourishment, and in general a surplus of
protection and care, immediately tend in the most marked way to develop
variations, and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities (also in
monstrous vices). Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say
an ancient Greek polis, or Venice, as a voluntary or involuntary
contrivance for the purpose of REARING human beings; there are there men
beside one another, thrown upon their own resources, who want to make
their species prevail, chiefly because they MUST prevail, or else
run the terrible danger of being exterminated. The favour, the
super-abundance, the protection are there lacking under which variations
are fostered; the species needs itself as species, as something which,
precisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity, and simplicity of
structure, can in general prevail and make itself permanent in
constant struggle with its neighbours, or with rebellious or
rebellion-threatening vassals. The most varied experience teaches it
what are the qualities to which it principally owes the fact that
it still exists, in spite of all Gods and men, and has hitherto been
victorious: these qualities it calls virtues, and these virtues alone
it develops to maturity. It does so with severity, indeed it desires
severity; every aristocratic morality is intolerant in the education
of youth, in the control of women, in the marriage customs, in the
relations of old and young, in the penal laws (which have an eye only
for the degenerating): it counts intolerance itself among the virtues,
under the name of "justice." A type with few, but very marked features,
a species of severe, warlike, wisely silent, reserved, and reticent
men (and as such, with the most delicate sensibility for the charm and
nuances of society) is thus established, unaffected by the vicissitudes
of generations; the constant struggle with uniform UNFAVOURABLE
conditions is, as already remarked, the cause of a type becoming
stable and hard. Finally, however, a happy state of things results, the
enormous tension is relaxed; there are perhaps no more enemies among the
neighbouring peoples, and the means of life, even of the enjoyment
of life, are present in superabundance. With one stroke the bond and
constraint of the old discipline severs: it is no longer regarded as
necessary, as a condition of existence--if it would continue, it can
only do so as a form of LUXURY, as an archaizing TASTE. Variations,
whether they be deviations (into the higher, finer, and rarer), or
deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenly on the scene in the
greatest exuberance and splendour; the individual dares to be individual
and detach himself. At this turning-point of history there manifest
themselves, side by side, and often mixed and entangled together, a
magnificent, manifold, virgin-forest-like up-growth and up-striving, a
kind of TROPICAL TEMPO in the rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary
decay and self-destruction, owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly
exploding egoisms, which strive with one another "for sun and light,"
and can no longer assign any limit, restraint, or forbearance for
themselves by means of the hitherto existing morality. It was this
morality itself which piled up the strength so enormously, which bent
the bow in so threatening a manner:--it is now "out of date," it is
getting "out of date." The dangerous and disquieting point has been
reached when the greater, more manifold, more comprehensive life IS
LIVED BEYOND the old morality; the "individual" stands out, and is
obliged to have recourse to his own law-giving, his own arts and
artifices for self-preservation, self-elevation, and self-deliverance.
Nothing but new "Whys," nothing but new "Hows," no common formulas any
longer, misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other, decay,
deterioration, and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled, the
genius of the race overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad,
a portentous simultaneousness of Spring and Autumn, full of new charms
and mysteries peculiar to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied
corruption. Danger is again present, the mother of morality, great
danger; this time shifted into the individual, into the neighbour and
friend, into the street, into their own child, into their own heart,
into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and
volitions. What will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have
to preach? They discover, these sharp onlookers and loafers, that the
end is quickly approaching, that everything around them decays and
produces decay, that nothing will endure until the day after tomorrow,
except one species of man, the incurably MEDIOCRE. The mediocre alone
have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves--they will
be the men of the future, the sole survivors; "be like them! become
mediocre!" is now the only morality which has still a significance,
which still obtains a hearing.--But it is difficult to preach this
morality of mediocrity! it can never avow what it is and what it
desires! it has to talk of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly
love--it will have difficulty IN CONCEALING ITS IRONY!

263. There is an INSTINCT FOR RANK, which more than anything else is
already the sign of a HIGH rank; there is a DELIGHT in the NUANCES
of reverence which leads one to infer noble origin and habits. The
refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a perilous test
when something passes by that is of the highest rank, but is not
yet protected by the awe of authority from obtrusive touches and
incivilities: something that goes its way like a living touchstone,
undistinguished, undiscovered, and tentative, perhaps voluntarily veiled
and disguised. He whose task and practice it is to investigate souls,
will avail himself of many varieties of this very art to determine the
ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable, innate order of rank to which
it belongs: he will test it by its INSTINCT FOR REVERENCE. DIFFERENCE
ENGENDRE HAINE: the vulgarity of many a nature spurts up suddenly like
dirty water, when any holy vessel, any jewel from closed shrines, any
book bearing the marks of great destiny, is brought before it; while
on the other hand, there is an involuntary silence, a hesitation of the
eye, a cessation of all gestures, by which it is indicated that a soul
FEELS the nearness of what is worthiest of respect. The way in which, on
the whole, the reverence for the BIBLE has hitherto been maintained
in Europe, is perhaps the best example of discipline and refinement of
manners which Europe owes to Christianity: books of such profoundness
and supreme significance require for their protection an external
tyranny of authority, in order to acquire the PERIOD of thousands of
years which is necessary to exhaust and unriddle them. Much has been
achieved when the sentiment has been at last instilled into the masses
(the shallow-pates and the boobies of every kind) that they are not
allowed to touch everything, that there are holy experiences before
which they must take off their shoes and keep away the unclean hand--it
is almost their highest advance towards humanity. On the contrary, in
the so-called cultured classes, the believers in "modern ideas," nothing
is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of
eye and hand with which they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it
is possible that even yet there is more RELATIVE nobility of taste, and
more tact for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of
the people, especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading
DEMIMONDE of intellect, the cultured class.

264. It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his ancestors have
preferably and most constantly done: whether they were perhaps diligent
economizers attached to a desk and a cash-box, modest and citizen-like
in their desires, modest also in their virtues; or whether they were
accustomed to commanding from morning till night, fond of rude pleasures
and probably of still ruder duties and responsibilities; or whether,
finally, at one time or another, they have sacrificed old privileges of
birth and possession, in order to live wholly for their faith--for their
"God,"--as men of an inexorable and sensitive conscience, which blushes
at every compromise. It is quite impossible for a man NOT to have
the qualities and predilections of his parents and ancestors in his
constitution, whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary. This is
the problem of race. Granted that one knows something of the parents,
it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child: any kind
of offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy
self-vaunting--the three things which together have constituted the
genuine plebeian type in all times--such must pass over to the child, as
surely as bad blood; and with the help of the best education and culture
one will only succeed in DECEIVING with regard to such heredity.--And
what else does education and culture try to do nowadays! In our very
democratic, or rather, very plebeian age, "education" and "culture" MUST
be essentially the art of deceiving--deceiving with regard to origin,
with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul. An educator
who nowadays preached truthfulness above everything else, and called out
constantly to his pupils: "Be true! Be natural! Show yourselves as you
are!"--even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time
to have recourse to the FURCA of Horace, NATURAM EXPELLERE: with what
results? "Plebeianism" USQUE RECURRET. [FOOTNOTE: Horace's "Epistles,"
I. x. 24.]

265. At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I submit that egoism
belongs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean the unalterable belief
that to a being such as "we," other beings must naturally be in
subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. The noble soul accepts the
fact of his egoism without question, and also without consciousness of
harshness, constraint, or arbitrariness therein, but rather as something
that may have its basis in the primary law of things:--if he sought a
designation for it he would say: "It is justice itself." He acknowledges
under certain circumstances, which made him hesitate at first, that
there are other equally privileged ones; as soon as he has settled this
question of rank, he moves among those equals and equally privileged
ones with the same assurance, as regards modesty and delicate respect,
which he enjoys in intercourse with himself--in accordance with an
innate heavenly mechanism which all the stars understand. It is an
ADDITIONAL instance of his egoism, this artfulness and self-limitation
in intercourse with his equals--every star is a similar egoist; he
honours HIMSELF in them, and in the rights which he concedes to them, he
has no doubt that the exchange of honours and rights, as the ESSENCE of
all intercourse, belongs also to the natural condition of things. The
noble soul gives as he takes, prompted by the passionate and sensitive
instinct of requital, which is at the root of his nature. The notion of
"favour" has, INTER PARES, neither significance nor good repute; there
may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it were light upon one from
above, and of drinking them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those
arts and displays the noble soul has no aptitude. His egoism hinders him
here: in general, he looks "aloft" unwillingly--he looks either FORWARD,
horizontally and deliberately, or downwards--HE KNOWS THAT HE IS ON A
HEIGHT.

266. "One can only truly esteem him who does not LOOK OUT FOR
himself."--Goethe to Rath Schlosser.

267. The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their children:
"SIAO-SIN" ("MAKE THY HEART SMALL"). This is the essentially fundamental
tendency in latter-day civilizations. I have no doubt that an ancient
Greek, also, would first of all remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans
of today--in this respect alone we should immediately be "distasteful"
to him.

268. What, after all, is ignobleness?--Words are vocal symbols for
ideas; ideas, however, are more or less definite mental symbols
for frequently returning and concurring sensations, for groups of
sensations. It is not sufficient to use the same words in order to
understand one another: we must also employ the same words for the same
kind of internal experiences, we must in the end have experiences IN
COMMON. On this account the people of one nation understand one another
better than those belonging to different nations, even when they use
the same language; or rather, when people have lived long together under
similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil) there
ORIGINATES therefrom an entity that "understands itself"--namely, a
nation. In all souls a like number of frequently recurring experiences
have gained the upper hand over those occurring more rarely: about
these matters people understand one another rapidly and always more
rapidly--the history of language is the history of a process of
abbreviation; on the basis of this quick comprehension people always
unite closer and closer. The greater the danger, the greater is the
need of agreeing quickly and readily about what is necessary; not to
misunderstand one another in danger--that is what cannot at all be
dispensed with in intercourse. Also in all loves and friendships one has
the experience that nothing of the kind continues when the discovery
has been made that in using the same words, one of the two parties has
feelings, thoughts, intuitions, wishes, or fears different from those of
the other. (The fear of the "eternal misunderstanding": that is the good
genius which so often keeps persons of different sexes from too
hasty attachments, to which sense and heart prompt them--and NOT some
Schopenhauerian "genius of the species"!) Whichever groups of sensations
within a soul awaken most readily, begin to speak, and give the word of
command--these decide as to the general order of rank of its values, and
determine ultimately its list of desirable things. A man's estimates of
value betray something of the STRUCTURE of his soul, and wherein it
sees its conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Supposing now that
necessity has from all time drawn together only such men as could
express similar requirements and similar experiences by similar symbols,
it results on the whole that the easy COMMUNICABILITY of need,
which implies ultimately the undergoing only of average and COMMON
experiences, must have been the most potent of all the forces which
have hitherto operated upon mankind. The more similar, the more ordinary
people, have always had and are still having the advantage; the more
select, more refined, more unique, and difficultly comprehensible, are
liable to stand alone; they succumb to accidents in their isolation, and
seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense opposing forces,
in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural PROGRESSUS IN SIMILE,
the evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the average, the
gregarious--to the IGNOBLE--!

269. The more a psychologist--a born, an unavoidable psychologist
and soul-diviner--turns his attention to the more select cases and
individuals, the greater is his danger of being suffocated by sympathy:
he NEEDS sternness and cheerfulness more than any other man. For
the corruption, the ruination of higher men, of the more unusually
constituted souls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a
rule always before one's eyes. The manifold torment of the psychologist
who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and then
discovers ALMOST repeatedly throughout all history, this universal
inner "desperateness" of higher men, this eternal "too late!" in every
sense--may perhaps one day be the cause of his turning with
bitterness against his own lot, and of his making an attempt at
self-destruction--of his "going to ruin" himself. One may perceive
in almost every psychologist a tell-tale inclination for delightful
intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men; the fact is thereby
disclosed that he always requires healing, that he needs a sort
of flight and forgetfulness, away from what his insight and
incisiveness--from what his "business"--has laid upon his conscience.
The fear of his memory is peculiar to him. He is easily silenced by the
judgment of others; he hears with unmoved countenance how people honour,
admire, love, and glorify, where he has PERCEIVED--or he even conceals
his silence by expressly assenting to some plausible opinion. Perhaps
the paradox of his situation becomes so dreadful that, precisely
where he has learnt GREAT SYMPATHY, together with great CONTEMPT, the
multitude, the educated, and the visionaries, have on their part learnt
great reverence--reverence for "great men" and marvelous animals, for
the sake of whom one blesses and honours the fatherland, the earth, the
dignity of mankind, and one's own self, to whom one points the young,
and in view of whom one educates them. And who knows but in all great
instances hitherto just the same happened: that the multitude worshipped
a God, and that the "God" was only a poor sacrificial animal! SUCCESS
has always been the greatest liar--and the "work" itself is a success;
the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in
their creations until they are unrecognizable; the "work" of the artist,
of the philosopher, only invents him who has created it, is REPUTED
to have created it; the "great men," as they are reverenced, are poor
little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical values
spurious coinage PREVAILS. Those great poets, for example, such as
Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not venture to mention
much greater names, but I have them in my mind), as they now appear, and
were perhaps obliged to be: men of the moment, enthusiastic, sensuous,
and childish, light-minded and impulsive in their trust and distrust;
with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed; often taking
revenge with their works for an internal defilement, often seeking
forgetfulness in their soaring from a too true memory, often lost in
the mud and almost in love with it, until they become like the
Will-o'-the-Wisps around the swamps, and PRETEND TO BE stars--the people
then call them idealists,--often struggling with protracted disgust,
with an ever-reappearing phantom of disbelief, which makes them cold,
and obliges them to languish for GLORIA and devour "faith as it is"
out of the hands of intoxicated adulators:--what a TORMENT these great
artists are and the so-called higher men in general, to him who has once
found them out! It is thus conceivable that it is just from woman--who
is clairvoyant in the world of suffering, and also unfortunately eager
to help and save to an extent far beyond her powers--that THEY have
learnt so readily those outbreaks of boundless devoted SYMPATHY, which
the multitude, above all the reverent multitude, do not understand,
and overwhelm with prying and self-gratifying interpretations. This
sympathizing invariably deceives itself as to its power; woman would
like to believe that love can do EVERYTHING--it is the SUPERSTITION
peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor,
helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love
is--he finds that it rather DESTROYS than saves!--It is possible that
under the holy fable and travesty of the life of Jesus there is hidden
one of the most painful cases of the martyrdom of KNOWLEDGE ABOUT LOVE:
the martyrdom of the most innocent and most craving heart, that
never had enough of any human love, that DEMANDED love, that demanded
inexorably and frantically to be loved and nothing else, with terrible
outbursts against those who refused him their love; the story of a poor
soul insatiated and insatiable in love, that had to invent hell to send
thither those who WOULD NOT love him--and that at last, enlightened
about human love, had to invent a God who is entire love, entire
CAPACITY for love--who takes pity on human love, because it is so
paltry, so ignorant! He who has such sentiments, he who has such
KNOWLEDGE about love--SEEKS for death!--But why should one deal with
such painful matters? Provided, of course, that one is not obliged to do
so.

270. The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has
suffered deeply--it almost determines the order of rank HOW deeply men
can suffer--the chilling certainty, with which he is thoroughly imbued
and coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he KNOWS MORE than the
shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with,
and "at home" in, many distant, dreadful worlds of which "YOU know
nothing"!--this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this
pride of the elect of knowledge, of the "initiated," of the almost
sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from
contact with officious and sympathizing hands, and in general from all
that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble:
it separates.--One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism,
along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes
suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that
is sorrowful and profound. They are "gay men" who make use of gaiety,
because they are misunderstood on account of it--they WISH to be
misunderstood. There are "scientific minds" who make use of science,
because it gives a gay appearance, and because scientificness leads to
the conclusion that a person is superficial--they WISH to mislead to a
false conclusion. There are free insolent minds which would fain conceal
and deny that they are broken, proud, incurable hearts (the cynicism of
Hamlet--the case of Galiani); and occasionally folly itself is the mask
of an unfortunate OVER-ASSURED knowledge.--From which it follows that it
is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence "for the mask,"
and not to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.

271. That which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense
and grade of purity. What does it matter about all their honesty and
reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all their mutual
good-will: the fact still remains--they "cannot smell each other!" The
highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the
most extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just
holiness--the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question. Any
kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath,
any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out
of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of "affliction" into
clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:--just as much as such a
tendency DISTINGUISHES--it is a noble tendency--it also SEPARATES.--The
pity of the saint is pity for the FILTH of the human, all-too-human.
And there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as
impurity, as filth.

272. Signs of nobility: never to think of lowering our duties to the
rank of duties for everybody; to be unwilling to renounce or to share
our responsibilities; to count our prerogatives, and the exercise of
them, among our DUTIES.

273. A man who strives after great things, looks upon every one whom
he encounters on his way either as a means of advance, or a delay and
hindrance--or as a temporary resting-place. His peculiar lofty BOUNTY
to his fellow-men is only possible when he attains his elevation and
dominates. Impatience, and the consciousness of being always condemned
to comedy up to that time--for even strife is a comedy, and conceals the
end, as every means does--spoil all intercourse for him; this kind of
man is acquainted with solitude, and what is most poisonous in it.

274. THE PROBLEM OF THOSE WHO WAIT.--Happy chances are necessary, and
many incalculable elements, in order that a higher man in whom the
solution of a problem is dormant, may yet take action, or "break forth,"
as one might say--at the right moment. On an average it DOES NOT happen;
and in all corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting who
hardly know to what extent they are waiting, and still less that they
wait in vain. Occasionally, too, the waking call comes too late--the
chance which gives "permission" to take action--when their best youth,
and strength for action have been used up in sitting still; and how many
a one, just as he "sprang up," has found with horror that his limbs are
benumbed and his spirits are now too heavy! "It is too late," he has
said to himself--and has become self-distrustful and henceforth for ever
useless.--In the domain of genius, may not the "Raphael without
hands" (taking the expression in its widest sense) perhaps not be the
exception, but the rule?--Perhaps genius is by no means so rare: but
rather the five hundred HANDS which it requires in order to tyrannize
over the [GREEK INSERTED HERE], "the right time"--in order to take
chance by the forelock!

275. He who does not WISH to see the height of a man, looks all the
more sharply at what is low in him, and in the foreground--and thereby
betrays himself.

276. In all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is
better off than the nobler soul: the dangers of the latter must be
greater, the probability that it will come to grief and perish is in
fact immense, considering the multiplicity of the conditions of its
existence.--In a lizard a finger grows again which has been lost; not so
in man.--

277. It is too bad! Always the old story! When a man has finished
building his house, he finds that he has learnt unawares something
which he OUGHT absolutely to have known before he--began to build. The
eternal, fatal "Too late!" The melancholia of everything COMPLETED--!

278.--Wanderer, who art thou? I see thee follow thy path without scorn,
without love, with unfathomable eyes, wet and sad as a plummet which has
returned to the light insatiated out of every depth--what did it seek
down there?--with a bosom that never sighs, with lips that conceal their
loathing, with a hand which only slowly grasps: who art thou? what
hast thou done? Rest thee here: this place has hospitality for every
one--refresh thyself! And whoever thou art, what is it that now pleases
thee? What will serve to refresh thee? Only name it, whatever I have
I offer thee! "To refresh me? To refresh me? Oh, thou prying one,
what sayest thou! But give me, I pray thee---" What? what? Speak out!
"Another mask! A second mask!"

279. Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they
have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and
strangle it, out of jealousy--ah, they know only too well that it will
flee from them!

280. "Bad! Bad! What? Does he not--go back?" Yes! But you misunderstand
him when you complain about it. He goes back like every one who is about
to make a great spring.

281.--"Will people believe it of me? But I insist that they believe it
of me: I have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about
myself, only in very rare cases, only compulsorily, always without
delight in 'the subject,' ready to digress from 'myself,' and always
without faith in the result, owing to an unconquerable distrust of the
POSSIBILITY of self-knowledge, which has led me so far as to feel a
CONTRADICTIO IN ADJECTO even in the idea of 'direct knowledge' which
theorists allow themselves:--this matter of fact is almost the most
certain thing I know about myself. There must be a sort of repugnance
in me to BELIEVE anything definite about myself.--Is there perhaps
some enigma therein? Probably; but fortunately nothing for my own
teeth.--Perhaps it betrays the species to which I belong?--but not to
myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me."

282.--"But what has happened to you?"--"I do not know," he said,
hesitatingly; "perhaps the Harpies have flown over my table."--It
sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle, sober, retiring man becomes
suddenly mad, breaks the plates, upsets the table, shrieks, raves,
and shocks everybody--and finally withdraws, ashamed, and raging at
himself--whither? for what purpose? To famish apart? To suffocate with
his memories?--To him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul,
and only seldom finds his table laid and his food prepared, the danger
will always be great--nowadays, however, it is extraordinarily so.
Thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with which he does
not like to eat out of the same dish, he may readily perish of hunger
and thirst--or, should he nevertheless finally "fall to," of sudden
nausea.--We have probably all sat at tables to which we did not belong;
and precisely the most spiritual of us, who are most difficult to
nourish, know the dangerous DYSPEPSIA which originates from a sudden
insight and disillusionment about our food and our messmates--the
AFTER-DINNER NAUSEA.

283. If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and at the
same time a noble self-control, to praise only where one DOES NOT
agree--otherwise in fact one would praise oneself, which is contrary
to good taste:--a self-control, to be sure, which offers excellent
opportunity and provocation to constant MISUNDERSTANDING. To be able to
allow oneself this veritable luxury of taste and morality, one must
not live among intellectual imbeciles, but rather among men whose
misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement--or one will
have to pay dearly for it!--"He praises me, THEREFORE he acknowledges me
to be right"--this asinine method of inference spoils half of the life
of us recluses, for it brings the asses into our neighbourhood and
friendship.

284. To live in a vast and proud tranquility; always beyond... To have,
or not to have, one's emotions, one's For and Against, according to
choice; to lower oneself to them for hours; to SEAT oneself on them as
upon horses, and often as upon asses:--for one must know how to make
use of their stupidity as well as of their fire. To conserve one's
three hundred foregrounds; also one's black spectacles: for there are
circumstances when nobody must look into our eyes, still less into our
"motives." And to choose for company that roguish and cheerful vice,
politeness. And to remain master of one's four virtues, courage,
insight, sympathy, and solitude. For solitude is a virtue with us, as
a sublime bent and bias to purity, which divines that in the contact of
man and man--"in society"--it must be unavoidably impure. All society
makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometime--"commonplace."

285. The greatest events and thoughts--the greatest thoughts, however,
are the greatest events--are longest in being comprehended: the
generations which are contemporary with them do not EXPERIENCE such
events--they live past them. Something happens there as in the realm of
stars. The light of the furthest stars is longest in reaching man; and
before it has arrived man DENIES--that there are stars there. "How
many centuries does a mind require to be understood?"--that is also a
standard, one also makes a gradation of rank and an etiquette therewith,
such as is necessary for mind and for star.

286. "Here is the prospect free, the mind exalted." [FOOTNOTE: Goethe's
"Faust," Part II, Act V. The words of Dr. Marianus.]--But there is a
reverse kind of man, who is also upon a height, and has also a free
prospect--but looks DOWNWARDS.

287. What is noble? What does the word "noble" still mean for us
nowadays? How does the noble man betray himself, how is he recognized
under this heavy overcast sky of the commencing plebeianism, by which
everything is rendered opaque and leaden?--It is not his actions which
establish his claim--actions are always ambiguous, always inscrutable;
neither is it his "works." One finds nowadays among artists and scholars
plenty of those who betray by their works that a profound longing for
nobleness impels them; but this very NEED of nobleness is radically
different from the needs of the noble soul itself, and is in fact the
eloquent and dangerous sign of the lack thereof. It is not the works,
but the BELIEF which is here decisive and determines the order of
rank--to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper
meaning--it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about
itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and
perhaps, also, is not to be lost.--THE NOBLE SOUL HAS REVERENCE FOR
ITSELF.--

288. There are men who are unavoidably intellectual, let them turn
and twist themselves as they will, and hold their hands before their
treacherous eyes--as though the hand were not a betrayer; it always
comes out at last that they have something which they hide--namely,
intellect. One of the subtlest means of deceiving, at least as long as
possible, and of successfully representing oneself to be stupider
than one really is--which in everyday life is often as desirable as
an umbrella,--is called ENTHUSIASM, including what belongs to it, for
instance, virtue. For as Galiani said, who was obliged to know it: VERTU
EST ENTHOUSIASME.

289. In the writings of a recluse one always hears something of the echo
of the wilderness, something of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance
of solitude; in his strongest words, even in his cry itself, there
sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence, of concealment. He who
has sat day and night, from year's end to year's end, alone with his
soul in familiar discord and discourse, he who has become a cave-bear,
or a treasure-seeker, or a treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave--it
may be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine--his ideas themselves
eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, as much
of the depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative and repulsive,
which blows chilly upon every passer-by. The recluse does not believe
that a philosopher--supposing that a philosopher has always in the first
place been a recluse--ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in
books: are not books written precisely to hide what is in us?--indeed,
he will doubt whether a philosopher CAN have "ultimate and actual"
opinions at all; whether behind every cave in him there is not, and must
necessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler, stranger, richer
world beyond the surface, an abyss behind every bottom, beneath every
"foundation." Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy--this is a
recluse's verdict: "There is something arbitrary in the fact that the
PHILOSOPHER came to a stand here, took a retrospect, and looked around;
that he HERE laid his spade aside and did not dig any deeper--there
is also something suspicious in it." Every philosophy also CONCEALS a
philosophy; every opinion is also a LURKING-PLACE, every word is also a
MASK.

290. Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being
misunderstood. The latter perhaps wounds his vanity; but the former
wounds his heart, his sympathy, which always says: "Ah, why would you
also have as hard a time of it as I have?"

291. Man, a COMPLEX, mendacious, artful, and inscrutable animal, uncanny
to the other animals by his artifice and sagacity, rather than by his
strength, has invented the good conscience in order finally to enjoy his
soul as something SIMPLE; and the whole of morality is a long, audacious
falsification, by virtue of which generally enjoyment at the sight of
the soul becomes possible. From this point of view there is perhaps much
more in the conception of "art" than is generally believed.

292. A philosopher: that is a man who constantly experiences, sees,
hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck
by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside, from above and
below, as a species of events and lightning-flashes PECULIAR TO HIM; who
is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous
man, around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and
something uncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being who often
runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself--but whose curiosity
always makes him "come to himself" again.

293. A man who says: "I like that, I take it for my own, and mean to
guard and protect it from every one"; a man who can conduct a case,
carry out a resolution, remain true to an opinion, keep hold of a woman,
punish and overthrow insolence; a man who has his indignation and his
sword, and to whom the weak, the suffering, the oppressed, and even the
animals willingly submit and naturally belong; in short, a man who is a
MASTER by nature--when such a man has sympathy, well! THAT sympathy has
value! But of what account is the sympathy of those who suffer! Or of
those even who preach sympathy! There is nowadays, throughout almost the
whole of Europe, a sickly irritability and sensitiveness towards pain,
and also a repulsive irrestrainableness in complaining, an effeminizing,
which, with the aid of religion and philosophical nonsense, seeks
to deck itself out as something superior--there is a regular cult of
suffering. The UNMANLINESS of that which is called "sympathy" by such
groups of visionaries, is always, I believe, the first thing that
strikes the eye.--One must resolutely and radically taboo this latest
form of bad taste; and finally I wish people to put the good amulet,
"GAI SABER" ("gay science," in ordinary language), on heart and neck, as
a protection against it.

294. THE OLYMPIAN VICE.--Despite the philosopher who, as a genuine
Englishman, tried to bring laughter into bad repute in all thinking
minds--"Laughing is a bad infirmity of human nature, which every
thinking mind will strive to overcome" (Hobbes),--I would even
allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality of their
laughing--up to those who are capable of GOLDEN laughter. And supposing
that Gods also philosophize, which I am strongly inclined to believe,
owing to many reasons--I have no doubt that they also know how to laugh
thereby in an overman-like and new fashion--and at the expense of all
serious things! Gods are fond of ridicule: it seems that they cannot
refrain from laughter even in holy matters.

295. The genius of the heart, as that great mysterious one possesses
it, the tempter-god and born rat-catcher of consciences, whose voice can
descend into the nether-world of every soul, who neither speaks a word
nor casts a glance in which there may not be some motive or touch
of allurement, to whose perfection it pertains that he knows how to
appear,--not as he is, but in a guise which acts as an ADDITIONAL
constraint on his followers to press ever closer to him, to follow him
more cordially and thoroughly;--the genius of the heart, which imposes
silence and attention on everything loud and self-conceited, which
smoothes rough souls and makes them taste a new longing--to lie placid
as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in them;--the genius
of the heart, which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate,
and to grasp more delicately; which scents the hidden and forgotten
treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick dark
ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold, long buried and
imprisoned in mud and sand; the genius of the heart, from contact with
which every one goes away richer; not favoured or surprised, not as
though gratified and oppressed by the good things of others; but richer
in himself, newer than before, broken up, blown upon, and sounded by a
thawing wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more
bruised, but full of hopes which as yet lack names, full of a new will
and current, full of a new ill-will and counter-current... but what am I
doing, my friends? Of whom am I talking to you? Have I forgotten myself
so far that I have not even told you his name? Unless it be that you
have already divined of your own accord who this questionable God
and spirit is, that wishes to be PRAISED in such a manner? For, as it
happens to every one who from childhood onward has always been on his
legs, and in foreign lands, I have also encountered on my path many
strange and dangerous spirits; above all, however, and again and again,
the one of whom I have just spoken: in fact, no less a personage than
the God DIONYSUS, the great equivocator and tempter, to whom, as you
know, I once offered in all secrecy and reverence my first-fruits--the
last, as it seems to me, who has offered a SACRIFICE to him, for I
have found no one who could understand what I was then doing. In
the meantime, however, I have learned much, far too much, about the
philosophy of this God, and, as I said, from mouth to mouth--I, the last
disciple and initiate of the God Dionysus: and perhaps I might at last
begin to give you, my friends, as far as I am allowed, a little taste of
this philosophy? In a hushed voice, as is but seemly: for it has to do
with much that is secret, new, strange, wonderful, and uncanny. The
very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that therefore Gods also
philosophize, seems to me a novelty which is not unensnaring, and might
perhaps arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers;--among you, my
friends, there is less to be said against it, except that it comes too
late and not at the right time; for, as it has been disclosed to me, you
are loth nowadays to believe in God and gods. It may happen, too, that
in the frankness of my story I must go further than is agreeable to the
strict usages of your ears? Certainly the God in question went further,
very much further, in such dialogues, and was always many paces ahead of
me... Indeed, if it were allowed, I should have to give him, according
to human usage, fine ceremonious tides of lustre and merit, I should
have to extol his courage as investigator and discoverer, his fearless
honesty, truthfulness, and love of wisdom. But such a God does not know
what to do with all that respectable trumpery and pomp. "Keep that," he
would say, "for thyself and those like thee, and whoever else require
it! I--have no reason to cover my nakedness!" One suspects that this
kind of divinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame?--He once said:
"Under certain circumstances I love mankind"--and referred thereby to
Ariadne, who was present; "in my opinion man is an agreeable, brave,
inventive animal, that has not his equal upon earth, he makes his way
even through all labyrinths. I like man, and often think how I can
still further advance him, and make him stronger, more evil, and more
profound."--"Stronger, more evil, and more profound?" I asked in horror.
"Yes," he said again, "stronger, more evil, and more profound; also more
beautiful"--and thereby the tempter-god smiled with his halcyon smile,
as though he had just paid some charming compliment. One here sees at
once that it is not only shame that this divinity lacks;--and in general
there are good grounds for supposing that in some things the Gods could
all of them come to us men for instruction. We men are--more human.--

296. Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! Not
long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, so full of thorns
and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and laugh--and now? You
have already doffed your novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready
to become truths, so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, so
tedious! And was it ever otherwise? What then do we write and paint,
we mandarins with Chinese brush, we immortalisers of things which LEND
themselves to writing, what are we alone capable of painting? Alas, only
that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour! Alas,
only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments! Alas,
only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves be
captured with the hand--with OUR hand! We immortalize what cannot live
and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and mellow! And it
is only for your AFTERNOON, you, my written and painted thoughts, for
which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, many variegated
softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;--but
nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning, you sudden
sparks and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved--EVIL thoughts!




FROM THE HEIGHTS

By F W Nietzsche

Translated by L. A. Magnus


                       1.

     MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight!
                      My summer's park!
     Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark--
     I peer for friends, am ready day and night,--
     Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right!

                       2.

     Is not the glacier's grey today for you
                         Rose-garlanded?
     The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread
     And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue,
     To spy for you from farthest eagle's view.

                       3.

     My table was spread out for you on high--
                      Who dwelleth so
     Star-near, so near the grisly pit below?--
     My realm--what realm hath wider boundary?
     My honey--who hath sipped its fragrancy?

                       4.

     Friends, ye are there! Woe me,--yet I am not
                        He whom ye seek?
     Ye stare and stop--better your wrath could speak!
     I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And what
     I am, to you my friends, now am I not?

                       5.

     Am I an other? Strange am I to Me?
                      Yet from Me sprung?
     A wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung?
     Hindering too oft my own self's potency,
     Wounded and hampered by self-victory?

                       6.

     I sought where-so the wind blows keenest. There
                     I learned to dwell
     Where no man dwells, on lonesome ice-lorn fell,
     And unlearned Man and God and curse and prayer?
     Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare?

                       7.

     Ye, my old friends! Look! Ye turn pale, filled o'er
                      With love and fear!
     Go! Yet not in wrath. Ye could ne'er live here.
     Here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur,
     A huntsman must one be, like chamois soar.

                       8.

     An evil huntsman was I? See how taut
                    My bow was bent!
     Strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent--
     Woe now! That arrow is with peril fraught,
     Perilous as none.--Have yon safe home ye sought!

                       9.

     Ye go! Thou didst endure enough, oh, heart;--
                     Strong was thy hope;
     Unto new friends thy portals widely ope,
     Let old ones be. Bid memory depart!
     Wast thou young then, now--better young thou art!

                       10.

     What linked us once together, one hope's tie--
                    (Who now doth con
     Those lines, now fading, Love once wrote thereon?)--
     Is like a parchment, which the hand is shy
     To touch--like crackling leaves, all seared, all dry.

                       11.

     Oh! Friends no more! They are--what name for those?--
                           Friends' phantom-flight
     Knocking at my heart's window-pane at night,
     Gazing on me, that speaks "We were" and goes,--
     Oh, withered words, once fragrant as the rose!

                       12.

     Pinings of youth that might not understand!
                       For which I pined,
     Which I deemed changed with me, kin of my kind:
     But they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned:
     None but new kith are native of my land!

                       13.

     Midday of life! My second youth's delight!
                       My summer's park!
     Unrestful joy to long, to lurk, to hark!
     I peer for friends!--am ready day and night,
     For my new friends. Come! Come! The time is right!

                       14.

     This song is done,--the sweet sad cry of rue
                       Sang out its end;
     A wizard wrought it, he the timely friend,
     The midday-friend,--no, do not ask me who;
     At midday 'twas, when one became as two.

                       15.

     We keep our Feast of Feasts, sure of our bourne,
                      Our aims self-same:
     The Guest of Guests, friend Zarathustra, came!
     The world now laughs, the grisly veil was torn,
     And Light and Dark were one that wedding-morn.



It is often enough, and always with great surprise, intimated to me that
there is something both ordinary and unusual in all my writings, from
the "Birth of Tragedy" to the recently published "Prelude to a
Philosophy of the Future": they all contain, I have been told, snares
and nets for short sighted birds, and something that is almost a
constant, subtle, incitement to an overturning of habitual opinions and
of approved customs. What!? Everything is merely--human--all too human?
With this exclamation my writings are gone through, not without a
certain dread and mistrust of ethic itself and not without a disposition
to ask the exponent of evil things if those things be not simply
misrepresented. My writings have been termed a school of distrust, still
more of disdain: also, and more happily, of courage, audacity even. And
in fact, I myself do not believe that anybody ever looked into the world
with a distrust as deep as mine, seeming, as I do, not simply the timely
advocate of the devil, but, to employ theological terms, an enemy and
challenger of God; and whosoever has experienced any of the consequences
of such deep distrust, anything of the chills and the agonies of
isolation to which such an unqualified difference of standpoint condemns
him endowed with it, will also understand how often I must have sought
relief and self-forgetfulness from any source--through any object of
veneration or enmity, of scientific seriousness or wanton lightness;
also why I, when I could not find what I was in need of, had to fashion
it for myself, counterfeiting it or imagining it (and what poet or
writer has ever done anything else, and what other purpose can all the
art in the world possibly have?) That which I always stood most in need
of in order to effect my cure and self-recovery was faith, faith enough
not to be thus isolated, not to look at life from so singular a point of
view--a magic apprehension (in eye and mind) of relationship and
equality, a calm confidence in friendship, a blindness, free from
suspicion and questioning, to two sidedness; a pleasure in externals,
superficialities, the near, the accessible, in all things possessed of
color, skin and seeming. Perhaps I could be fairly reproached with much
"art" in this regard, many fine counterfeitings; for example, that,
wisely or wilfully, I had shut my eyes to Schopenhauer's blind will
towards ethic, at a time when I was already clear sighted enough on the
subject of ethic; likewise that I had deceived myself concerning Richard
Wagner's incurable romanticism, as if it were a beginning and not an
end; likewise concerning the Greeks, likewise concerning the Germans and
their future--and there may be, perhaps, a long list of such likewises.
Granted, however, that all this were true, and with justice urged
against me, what does it signify, what can it signify in regard to how
much of the self-sustaining capacity, how much of reason and higher
protection are embraced in such self-deception?--and how much more
falsity is still necessary to me that I may therewith always reassure
myself regarding the luxury of my truth. Enough, I still live; and life
is not considered now apart from ethic; it _will_ [have] deception; it
thrives (lebt) on deception ... but am I not beginning to do all over
again what I have always done, I, the old immoralist, and bird
snarer--talk unmorally, ultramorally, "beyond good and evil"?


2

Thus, then, have I evolved for myself the "free spirits" to whom this
discouraging-encouraging work, under the general title "Human, All Too
Human," is dedicated. Such "free spirits" do not really exist and never
did exist. But I stood in need of them, as I have pointed out, in order
that some good might be mixed with my evils (illness, loneliness,
strangeness, _acedia_, incapacity): to serve as gay spirits and
comrades, with whom one may talk and laugh when one is disposed to talk
and laugh, and whom one may send to the devil when they grow wearisome.
They are some compensation for the lack of friends. That such free
spirits can possibly exist, that our Europe will yet number among her
sons of to-morrow or of the day after to-morrow, such a brilliant and
enthusiastic company, alive and palpable and not merely, as in my case,
fantasms and imaginary shades, I, myself, can by no means doubt. I see
them already coming, slowly, slowly. May it not be that I am doing a
little something to expedite their coming when I describe in advance the
influences under which I see them evolving and the ways along which they
travel?


3

It may be conjectured that a soul in which the type of "free spirit" can
attain maturity and completeness had its decisive and deciding event in
the form of a great emancipation or unbinding, and that prior to that
event it seemed only the more firmly and forever chained to its place
and pillar. What binds strongest? What cords seem almost unbreakable? In
the case of mortals of a choice and lofty nature they will be those of
duty: that reverence, which in youth is most typical, that timidity and
tenderness in the presence of the traditionally honored and the worthy,
that gratitude to the soil from which we sprung, for the hand that
guided us, for the relic before which we were taught to pray--their
sublimest moments will themselves bind these souls most strongly. The
great liberation comes suddenly to such prisoners, like an earthquake:
the young soul is all at once shaken, torn apart, cast forth--it
comprehends not itself what is taking place. An involuntary onward
impulse rules them with the mastery of command; a will, a wish are
developed to go forward, anywhere, at any price; a strong, dangerous
curiosity regarding an undiscovered world flames and flashes in all
their being. "Better to die than live _here_"--so sounds the tempting
voice: and this "here," this "at home" constitutes all they have
hitherto loved. A sudden dread and distrust of that which they loved, a
flash of contempt for that which is called their "duty," a mutinous,
wilful, volcanic-like longing for a far away journey, strange scenes and
people, annihilation, petrifaction, a hatred surmounting love, perhaps a
sacrilegious impulse and look backwards, to where they so long prayed
and loved, perhaps a flush of shame for what they did and at the same
time an exultation at having done it, an inner, intoxicating,
delightful tremor in which is betrayed the sense of victory--a victory?
over what? over whom? a riddle-like victory, fruitful in questioning and
well worth questioning, but the _first_ victory, for all--such things of
pain and ill belong to the history of the great liberation. And it is at
the same time a malady that can destroy a man, this first outbreak of
strength and will for self-destination, self-valuation, this will for
free will: and how much illness is forced to the surface in the frantic
strivings and singularities with which the freedman, the liberated seeks
henceforth to attest his mastery over things! He roves fiercely around,
with an unsatisfied longing and whatever objects he may encounter must
suffer from the perilous expectancy of his pride; he tears to pieces
whatever attracts him. With a sardonic laugh he overturns whatever he
finds veiled or protected by any reverential awe: he would see what
these things look like when they are overturned. It is wilfulness and
delight in the wilfulness of it, if he now, perhaps, gives his approval
to that which has heretofore been in ill repute--if, in curiosity and
experiment, he penetrates stealthily to the most forbidden things. In
the background during all his plunging and roaming--for he is as
restless and aimless in his course as if lost in a wilderness--is the
interrogation mark of a curiosity growing ever more dangerous. "Can we
not upset every standard? and is good perhaps evil? and God only an
invention and a subtlety of the devil? Is everything, in the last
resort, false? And if we are dupes are we not on that very account
dupers also? _must_ we not be dupers also?" Such reflections lead and
mislead him, ever further on, ever further away. Solitude, that dread
goddess and mater saeva cupidinum, encircles and besets him, ever more
threatening, more violent, more heart breaking--but who to-day knows
what solitude is?


4

From this morbid solitude, from the deserts of such trial years, the way
is yet far to that great, overflowing certainty and healthiness which
cannot dispense even with sickness as a means and a grappling hook of
knowledge; to that matured freedom of the spirit which is, in an equal
degree, self mastery and discipline of the heart, and gives access to
the path of much and various reflection--to that inner comprehensiveness
and self satisfaction of over-richness which precludes all danger that
the spirit has gone astray even in its own path and is sitting
intoxicated in some corner or other; to that overplus of plastic,
healing, imitative and restorative power which is the very sign of
vigorous health, that overplus which confers upon the free spirit the
perilous prerogative of spending a life in experiment and of running
adventurous risks: the past-master-privilege of the free spirit. In the
interval there may be long years of convalescence, years filled with
many hued painfully-bewitching transformations, dominated and led to the
goal by a tenacious will for health that is often emboldened to assume
the guise and the disguise of health. There is a middle ground to this,
which a man of such destiny can not subsequently recall without emotion;
he basks in a special fine sun of his own, with a feeling of birdlike
freedom, birdlike visual power, birdlike irrepressibleness, a something
extraneous (Drittes) in which curiosity and delicate disdain have
united. A "free spirit"--this refreshing term is grateful in any mood,
it almost sets one aglow. One lives--no longer in the bonds of love and
hate, without a yes or no, here or there indifferently, best pleased to
evade, to avoid, to beat about, neither advancing nor retreating. One is
habituated to the bad, like a person who all at once sees a fearful
hurly-burly _beneath_ him--and one was the counterpart of him who
bothers himself with things that do not concern him. As a matter of fact
the free spirit is bothered with mere things--and how many
things--which no longer _concern_ him.


5

A step further in recovery: and the free spirit draws near to life
again, slowly indeed, almost refractorily, almost distrustfully. There
is again warmth and mellowness: feeling and fellow feeling acquire
depth, lambent airs stir all about him. He almost feels: it seems as if
now for the first time his eyes are open to things _near_. He is in
amaze and sits hushed: for where had he been? These near and immediate
things: how changed they seem to him! He looks gratefully back--grateful
for his wandering, his self exile and severity, his lookings afar and
his bird flights in the cold heights. How fortunate that he has not,
like a sensitive, dull home body, remained always "in the house" and "at
home!" He had been beside himself, beyond a doubt. Now for the first
time he really sees himself--and what surprises in the process. What
hitherto unfelt tremors! Yet what joy in the exhaustion, the old
sickness, the relapses of the convalescent! How it delights him,
suffering, to sit still, to exercise patience, to lie in the sun! Who so
well as he appreciates the fact that there comes balmy weather even in
winter, who delights more in the sunshine athwart the wall? They are
the most appreciative creatures in the world, and also the most humble,
these convalescents and lizards, crawling back towards life: there are
some among them who can let no day slip past them without addressing
some song of praise to its retreating light. And speaking seriously, it
is a fundamental cure for all pessimism (the cankerous vice, as is well
known, of all idealists and humbugs), to become ill in the manner of
these free spirits, to remain ill quite a while and then bit by bit grow
healthy--I mean healthier. It is wisdom, worldly wisdom, to administer
even health to oneself for a long time in small doses.


6

About this time it becomes at last possible, amid the flash lights of a
still unestablished, still precarious health, for the free, the ever
freer spirit to begin to read the riddle of that great liberation, a
riddle which has hitherto lingered, obscure, well worth questioning,
almost impalpable, in his memory. If once he hardly dared to ask "why so
apart? so alone? renouncing all I loved? renouncing respect itself? why
this coldness, this suspicion, this hate for one's very virtues?"--now
he dares, and asks it loudly, already hearing the answer, "you had to
become master over yourself, master of your own good qualities. Formerly
they were your masters: but they should be merely your tools along with
other tools. You had to acquire power over your aye and no and learn to
hold and withhold them in accordance with your higher aims. You had to
grasp the perspective of every representation (Werthschätzung)--the
dislocation, distortion and the apparent end or teleology of the
horizon, besides whatever else appertains to the perspective: also the
element of demerit in its relation to opposing merit, and the whole
intellectual cost of every affirmative, every negative. You had to find
out the _inevitable_ error[1] in every Yes and in every No, error as
inseparable from life, life itself as conditioned by the perspective and
its inaccuracy.[1] Above all, you had to see with your own eyes where
the error[1] is always greatest: there, namely, where life is littlest,
narrowest, meanest, least developed and yet cannot help looking upon
itself as the goal and standard of things, and smugly and ignobly and
incessantly tearing to tatters all that is highest and greatest and
richest, and putting the shreds into the form of questions from the
standpoint of its own well being. You had to see with your own eyes the
problem of classification, (Rangordnung, regulation concerning rank and
station) and how strength and sweep and reach of perspective wax upward
together: You had"--enough, the free spirit knows henceforward which
"you had" it has obeyed and also what it now can do and what it now, for
the first time, _dare_.

[1] Ungerechtigkeit, literally wrongfulness, injustice, unrighteousness.


7

Accordingly, the free spirit works out for itself an answer to that
riddle of its liberation and concludes by generalizing upon its
experience in the following fashion: "What I went through everyone must
go through" in whom any problem is germinated and strives to body itself
forth. The inner power and inevitability of this problem will assert
themselves in due course, as in the case of any unsuspected
pregnancy--long before the spirit has seen this problem in its true
aspect and learned to call it by its right name. Our destiny exercises
its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature:
it is our future that lays down the law to our to-day. Granted, that it
is the problem of classification[2] of which we free spirits may say,
this is _our_ problem, yet it is only now, in the midday of our life,
that we fully appreciate what preparations, shifts, trials, ordeals,
stages, were essential to that problem before it could emerge to our
view, and why we had to go through the various and contradictory
longings and satisfactions of body and soul, as circumnavigators and
adventurers of that inner world called "man"; as surveyors of that
"higher" and of that "progression"[3] that is also called
"man"--crowding in everywhere, almost without fear, disdaining nothing,
missing nothing, testing everything, sifting everything and eliminating
the chance impurities--until at last we could say, we free spirits:
"Here--a _new_ problem! Here, a long ladder on the rungs of which we
ourselves have rested and risen, which we have actually been at times.
Here is a something higher, a something deeper, a something below us, a
vastly extensive order, (Ordnung) a comparative classification
(Rangordnung), that we perceive: here--_our_ problem!"

[2] Rangordnung: the meaning is "the problem of grasping the relative
importance of things."

[3] Uebereinander: one over another.


8

To what stage in the development just outlined the present book belongs
(or is assigned) is something that will be hidden from no augur or
psychologist for an instant. But where are there psychologists to-day?
In France, certainly; in Russia, perhaps; certainly not in Germany.
Grounds are not wanting, to be sure, upon which the Germans of to-day
may adduce this fact to their credit: unhappily for one who in this
matter is fashioned and mentored in an un-German school! This _German_
book, which has found its readers in a wide circle of lands and
peoples--it has been some ten years on its rounds--and which must make
its way by means of any musical art and tune that will captivate the
foreign ear as well as the native--this book has been read most
indifferently in Germany itself and little heeded there: to what is that
due? "It requires too much," I have been told, "it addresses itself to
men free from the press of petty obligations, it demands fine and
trained perceptions, it requires a surplus, a surplus of time, of the
lightness of heaven and of the heart, of otium in the most unrestricted
sense: mere good things that we Germans of to-day have not got and
therefore cannot give." After so graceful a retort, my philosophy bids
me be silent and ask no more questions: at times, as the proverb says,
one remains a philosopher only because one says--nothing!

Nice, Spring, 1886.




OF THE FIRST AND LAST THINGS.


1

=Chemistry of the Notions and the Feelings.=--Philosophical problems, in
almost all their aspects, present themselves in the same interrogative
formula now that they did two thousand years ago: how can a thing
develop out of its antithesis? for example, the reasonable from the
non-reasonable, the animate from the inanimate, the logical from the
illogical, altruism from egoism, disinterestedness from greed, truth
from error? The metaphysical philosophy formerly steered itself clear of
this difficulty to such extent as to repudiate the evolution of one
thing from another and to assign a miraculous origin to what it deemed
highest and best, due to the very nature and being of the
"thing-in-itself." The historical philosophy, on the other hand, which
can no longer be viewed apart from physical science, the youngest of all
philosophical methods, discovered experimentally (and its results will
probably always be the same) that there is no antithesis whatever,
except in the usual exaggerations of popular or metaphysical
comprehension, and that an error of the reason is at the bottom of such
contradiction. According to its explanation, there is, strictly
speaking, neither unselfish conduct, nor a wholly disinterested point of
view. Both are simply sublimations in which the basic element seems
almost evaporated and betrays its presence only to the keenest
observation. All that we need and that could possibly be given us in the
present state of development of the sciences, is a chemistry of the
moral, religious, aesthetic conceptions and feeling, as well as of those
emotions which we experience in the affairs, great and small, of society
and civilization, and which we are sensible of even in solitude. But
what if this chemistry established the fact that, even in _its_ domain,
the most magnificent results were attained with the basest and most
despised ingredients? Would many feel disposed to continue such
investigations? Mankind loves to put by the questions of its origin and
beginning: must one not be almost inhuman in order to follow the
opposite course?


2

=The Traditional Error of Philosophers.=--All philosophers make the
common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of
trying, through an analysis of him, to reach a conclusion. "Man"
involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a
passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yet
everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the
last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man
during a very limited period of time. Lack of the historical sense is
the traditional defect in all philosophers. Many innocently take man in
his most childish state as fashioned through the influence of certain
religious and even of certain political developments, as the permanent
form under which man must be viewed. They will not learn that man has
evolved,[4] that the intellectual faculty itself is an evolution,
whereas some philosophers make the whole cosmos out of this intellectual
faculty. But everything essential in human evolution took place aeons
ago, long before the four thousand years or so of which we know
anything: during these man may not have changed very much. However, the
philosopher ascribes "instinct" to contemporary man and assumes that
this is one of the unalterable facts regarding man himself, and hence
affords a clue to the understanding of the universe in general. The
whole teleology is so planned that man during the last four thousand
years shall be spoken of as a being existing from all eternity, and
with reference to whom everything in the cosmos from its very inception
is naturally ordered. Yet everything evolved: there are no eternal facts
as there are no absolute truths. Accordingly, historical philosophising
is henceforth indispensable, and with it honesty of judgment.

[4] geworden.


3

=Appreciation of Simple Truths.=--It is the characteristic of an
advanced civilization to set a higher value upon little, simple truths,
ascertained by scientific method, than upon the pleasing and magnificent
errors originating in metaphysical and æsthetical epochs and peoples. To
begin with, the former are spoken of with contempt as if there could be
no question of comparison respecting them, so rigid, homely, prosaic and
even discouraging is the aspect of the first, while so beautiful,
decorative, intoxicating and perhaps beatific appear the last named.
Nevertheless, the hardwon, the certain, the lasting and, therefore, the
fertile in new knowledge, is the higher; to hold fast to it is manly and
evinces courage, directness, endurance. And not only individual men but
all mankind will by degrees be uplifted to this manliness when they are
finally habituated to the proper appreciation of tenable, enduring
knowledge and have lost all faith in inspiration and in the miraculous
revelation of truth. The reverers of forms, indeed, with their standards
of beauty and taste, may have good reason to laugh when the appreciation
of little truths and the scientific spirit begin to prevail, but that
will be only because their eyes are not yet opened to the charm of the
utmost simplicity of form or because men though reared in the rightly
appreciative spirit, will still not be fully permeated by it, so that
they continue unwittingly imitating ancient forms (and that ill enough,
as anybody does who no longer feels any interest in a thing). Formerly
the mind was not brought into play through the medium of exact thought.
Its serious business lay in the working out of forms and symbols. That
has now changed. Any seriousness in symbolism is at present the
indication of a deficient education. As our very acts become more
intellectual, our tendencies more rational, and our judgment, for
example, as to what seems reasonable, is very different from what it was
a hundred years ago: so the forms of our lives grow ever more
intellectual and, to the old fashioned eye, perhaps, uglier, but only
because it cannot see that the richness of inner, rational beauty always
spreads and deepens, and that the inner, rational aspect of all things
should now be of more consequence to us than the most beautiful
externality and the most exquisite limning.


4

=Astrology and the Like.=--It is presumable that the objects of the
religious, moral, aesthetic and logical notions pertain simply to the
superficialities of things, although man flatters himself with the
thought that here at least he is getting to the heart of the cosmos. He
deceives himself because these things have power to make him so happy
and so wretched, and so he evinces, in this respect, the same conceit
that characterises astrology. Astrology presupposes that the heavenly
bodies are regulated in their movements in harmony with the destiny of
mortals: the moral man presupposes that that which concerns himself most
nearly must also be the heart and soul of things.


5

=Misconception of Dreams.=--In the dream, mankind, in epochs of crude
primitive civilization, thought they were introduced to a second,
substantial world: here we have the source of all metaphysic. Without
the dream, men would never have been incited to an analysis of the
world. Even the distinction between soul and body is wholly due to the
primitive conception of the dream, as also the hypothesis of the
embodied soul, whence the development of all superstition, and also,
probably, the belief in god. "The dead still live: for they appear to
the living in dreams." So reasoned mankind at one time, and through many
thousands of years.


6

=The Scientific Spirit Prevails only Partially, not Wholly.=--The
specialized, minutest departments of science are dealt with purely
objectively. But the general universal sciences, considered as a great,
basic unity, posit the question--truly a very living question--: to what
purpose? what is the use? Because of this reference to utility they are,
as a whole, less impersonal than when looked at in their specialized
aspects. Now in the case of philosophy, as forming the apex of the
scientific pyramid, this question of the utility of knowledge is
necessarily brought very conspicuously forward, so that every philosophy
has, unconsciously, the air of ascribing the highest utility to itself.
It is for this reason that all philosophies contain such a great amount
of high flying metaphysic, and such a shrinking from the seeming
insignificance of the deliverances of physical science: for the
significance of knowledge in relation to life must be made to appear as
great as possible. This constitutes the antagonism between the
specialties of science and philosophy. The latter aims, as art aims, at
imparting to life and conduct the utmost depth and significance: in the
former mere knowledge is sought and nothing else--whatever else be
incidentally obtained. Heretofore there has never been a philosophical
system in which philosophy itself was not made the apologist of
knowledge [in the abstract]. On this point, at least, each is optimistic
and insists that to knowledge the highest utility must be ascribed. They
are all under the tyranny of logic, which is, from its very nature,
optimism.


7

=The Discordant Element in Science.=--Philosophy severed itself from
science when it put the question: what is that knowledge of the world
and of life through which mankind may be made happiest? This happened
when the Socratic school arose: with the standpoint of _happiness_ the
arteries of investigating science were compressed too tightly to permit
of any circulation of the blood--and are so compressed to-day.


8

=Pneumatic Explanation of Nature.=[5]--Metaphysic reads the message of
nature as if it were written purely pneumatically, as the church and its
learned ones formerly did where the bible was concerned. It requires a
great deal of expertness to apply to nature the same strict science of
interpretation that the philologists have devised for all literature,
and to apply it for the purpose of a simple, direct interpretation of
the message, and at the same time, not bring out a double meaning. But,
as in the case of books and literature, errors of exposition are far
from being completely eliminated, and vestiges of allegorical and
mystical interpretations are still to be met with in the most cultivated
circles, so where nature is concerned the case is--actually much worse.

[5] Pneumatic is here used in the sense of spiritual. Pneuma being the
Greek word in the New Testament for the Holy Spirit.--Ed.


9

=Metaphysical World.=--It is true, there may be a metaphysical world;
the absolute possibility of it can scarcely be disputed. We see all
things through the medium of the human head and we cannot well cut off
this head: although there remains the question what part of the world
would be left after it had been cut off. But that is a purely abstract
scientific problem and one not much calculated to give men uneasiness:
yet everything that has heretofore made metaphysical assumptions
valuable, fearful or delightful to men, all that gave rise to them is
passion, error and self deception: the worst systems of knowledge, not
the best, pin their tenets of belief thereto. When such methods are once
brought to view as the basis of all existing religions and metaphysics,
they are already discredited. There always remains, however, the
possibility already conceded: but nothing at all can be made out of
that, to say not a word about letting happiness, salvation and life hang
upon the threads spun from such a possibility. Accordingly, nothing
could be predicated of the metaphysical world beyond the fact that it is
an elsewhere,[6] another sphere, inaccessible and incomprehensible to
us: it would become a thing of negative properties. Even were the
existence of such a world absolutely established, it would nevertheless
remain incontrovertible that of all kinds of knowledge, knowledge of
such a world would be of least consequence--of even less consequence
than knowledge of the chemical analysis of water would be to a storm
tossed mariner.

[6] Anderssein.


10

=The Harmlessness of Metaphysic in the Future.=--As soon as religion,
art and ethics are so understood that a full comprehension of them can
be gained without taking refuge in the postulates of metaphysical
claptrap at any point in the line of reasoning, there will be a complete
cessation of interest in the purely theoretical problem of the "thing in
itself" and the "phenomenon." For here, too, the same truth applies: in
religion, art and ethics we are not concerned with the "essence of the
cosmos".[7] We are in the sphere of pure conception. No presentiment [or
intuition] can carry us any further. With perfect tranquility the
question of how our conception of the world could differ so sharply from
the actual world as it is manifest to us, will be relegated to the
physiological sciences and to the history of the evolution of ideas and
organisms.

[7] "Wesen der Welt an sich."


11

=Language as a Presumptive Science.=--The importance of language in the
development of civilization consists in the fact that by means of it
man placed one world, his own, alongside another, a place of leverage
that he thought so firm as to admit of his turning the rest of the
cosmos on a pivot that he might master it. In so far as man for ages
looked upon mere ideas and names of things as upon aeternae veritates,
he evinced the very pride with which he raised himself above the brute.
He really supposed that in language he possessed a knowledge of the
cosmos. The language builder was not so modest as to believe that he was
only giving names to things. On the contrary he thought he embodied the
highest wisdom concerning things in [mere] words; and, in truth,
language is the first movement in all strivings for wisdom. Here, too,
it is _faith in ascertained truth_[8] from which the mightiest fountains
of strength have flowed. Very tardily--only now--it dawns upon men that
they have propagated a monstrous error in their belief in language.
Fortunately, it is too late now to arrest and turn back the evolutionary
process of the reason, which had its inception in this belief. Logic
itself rests upon assumptions to which nothing in the world of reality
corresponds. For example, the correspondence of certain things to one
another and the identity of those things at different periods of time
are assumptions pure and simple, but the science of logic originated in
the positive belief that they were not assumptions at all but
established facts. It is the same with the science of mathematics which
certainly would never have come into existence if mankind had known from
the beginning that in all nature there is no perfectly straight line, no
true circle, no standard of measurement.

[8] Glaube an die gefundene Wahrheit, as distinguished from faith in
what is taken on trust as truth.


12

=Dream and Civilization.=--The function of the brain which is most
encroached upon in slumber is the memory; not that it is wholly
suspended, but it is reduced to a state of imperfection as, in primitive
ages of mankind, was probably the case with everyone, whether waking or
sleeping. Uncontrolled and entangled as it is, it perpetually confuses
things as a result of the most trifling similarities, yet in the same
mental confusion and lack of control the nations invented their
mythologies, while nowadays travelers habitually observe how prone the
savage is to forgetfulness, how his mind, after the least exertion of
memory, begins to wander and lose itself until finally he utters
falsehood and nonsense from sheer exhaustion. Yet, in dreams, we all
resemble this savage. Inadequacy of distinction and error of comparison
are the basis of the preposterous things we do and say in dreams, so
that when we clearly recall a dream we are startled that so much idiocy
lurks within us. The absolute distinctness of all dream-images, due to
implicit faith in their substantial reality, recalls the conditions in
which earlier mankind were placed, for whom hallucinations had
extraordinary vividness, entire communities and even entire nations
laboring simultaneously under them. Therefore: in sleep and in dream we
make the pilgrimage of early mankind over again.


13

=Logic of the Dream.=--During sleep the nervous system, through various
inner provocatives, is in constant agitation. Almost all the organs act
independently and vigorously. The blood circulates rapidly. The posture
of the sleeper compresses some portions of the body. The coverlets
influence the sensations in different ways. The stomach carries on the
digestive process and acts upon other organs thereby. The intestines are
in motion. The position of the head induces unaccustomed action. The
feet, shoeless, no longer pressing the ground, are the occasion of other
sensations of novelty, as is, indeed, the changed garb of the entire
body. All these things, following the bustle and change of the day,
result, through their novelty, in a movement throughout the entire
system that extends even to the brain functions. Thus there are a
hundred circumstances to induce perplexity in the mind, a questioning as
to the cause of this excitation. Now, the dream is a _seeking and
presenting of reasons_ for these excitations of feeling, of the supposed
reasons, that is to say. Thus, for example, whoever has his feet bound
with two threads will probably dream that a pair of serpents are coiled
about his feet. This is at first a hypothesis, then a belief with an
accompanying imaginative picture and the argument: "these snakes must be
the _causa_ of those sensations which I, the sleeper, now have." So
reasons the mind of the sleeper. The conditions precedent, as thus
conjectured, become, owing to the excitation of the fancy, present
realities. Everyone knows from experience how a dreamer will transform
one piercing sound, for example, that of a bell, into another of quite a
different nature, say, the report of cannon. In his dream he becomes
aware first of the effects, which he explains by a subsequent hypothesis
and becomes persuaded of the purely conjectural nature of the sound. But
how comes it that the mind of the dreamer goes so far astray when the
same mind, awake, is habitually cautious, careful, and so conservative
in its dealings with hypotheses? why does the first plausible
hypothesis of the cause of a sensation gain credit in the dreaming
state? (For in a dream we look upon that dream as reality, that is, we
accept our hypotheses as fully established). I have no doubt that as men
argue in their dreams to-day, mankind argued, even in their waking
moments, for thousands of years: the first _causa_, that occurred to the
mind with reference to anything that stood in need of explanation, was
accepted as the true explanation and served as such. (Savages show the
same tendency in operation, as the reports of travelers agree). In the
dream this atavistic relic of humanity manifests its existence within
us, for it is the foundation upon which the higher rational faculty
developed itself and still develops itself in every individual. Dreams
carry us back to the earlier stages of human culture and afford us a
means of understanding it more clearly. Dream thought comes so easily to
us now because we are so thoroughly trained to it through the
interminable stages of evolution during which this fanciful and facile
form of theorising has prevailed. To a certain extent the dream is a
restorative for the brain, which, during the day, is called upon to meet
the many demands for trained thought made upon it by the conditions of a
higher civilization.--We may, if we please, become sensible, even in our
waking moments, of a condition that is as a door and vestibule to
dreaming. If we close our eyes the brain immediately conjures up a
medley of impressions of light and color, apparently a sort of imitation
and echo of the impressions forced in upon the brain during its waking
moments. And now the mind, in co-operation with the imagination,
transforms this formless play of light and color into definite figures,
moving groups, landscapes. What really takes place is a sort of
reasoning from effect back to cause. As the brain inquires: whence these
impressions of light and color? it posits as the inducing causes of such
lights and colors, those shapes and figures. They serve the brain as the
occasions of those lights and colors because the brain, when the eyes
are open and the senses awake, is accustomed to perceiving the cause of
every impression of light and color made upon it. Here again the
imagination is continually interposing its images inasmuch as it
participates in the production of the impressions made through the
senses day by day: and the dream-fancy does exactly the same thing--that
is, the presumed cause is determined from the effect and _after_ the
effect: all this, too, with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this
matter, as in a matter of jugglery or sleight-of-hand, a confusion of
the mind is produced and an after effect is made to appear a
simultaneous action, an inverted succession of events, even.--From
these considerations we can see how _late_ strict, logical thought, the
true notion of cause and effect must have been in developing, since our
intellectual and rational faculties to this very day revert to these
primitive processes of deduction, while practically half our lifetime is
spent in the super-inducing conditions.--Even the poet, the artist,
ascribes to his sentimental and emotional states causes which are not
the true ones. To that extent he is a reminder of early mankind and can
aid us in its comprehension.


14

=Association.=[9]--All strong feelings are associated with a variety of
allied sentiments and emotions. They stir up the memory at the same
time. When we are under their influence we are reminded of similar
states and we feel a renewal of them within us. Thus are formed habitual
successions of feelings and notions, which, at last, when they follow
one another with lightning rapidity are no longer felt as complexities
but as unities. In this sense we hear of moral feelings, of religious
feelings, as if they were absolute unities. In reality they are streams
with a hundred sources and tributaries. Here again, the unity of the
word speaks nothing for the unity of the thing.

[9] Miterklingen: to sound simultaneously with.


15

=No Within and Without in the World.=[10]--As Democritus transferred the
notions above and below to limitless space, where they are destitute of
meaning, so the philosophers do generally with the idea "within and
without," as regards the form and substance (Wesen und Erscheinung) of
the world. What they claim is that through the medium of profound
feelings one can penetrate deep into the soul of things (Innre), draw
close to the heart of nature. But these feelings are deep only in so far
as with them are simultaneously aroused, although almost imperceptibly,
certain complicated groups of thoughts (Gedankengruppen) which we call
deep: a feeling is deep because we deem the thoughts accompanying it
deep. But deep thought can nevertheless be very widely sundered from
truth, as for instance every metaphysical thought. Take from deep
feeling the element of thought blended with it and all that remains is
_strength_ of feeling which is no voucher for the validity of
knowledge, as intense faith is evidence only of its own intensity and
not of the truth of that in which the faith is felt.

[10] Kein Innen und Aussen in der Welt: the above translation may seem
too literal but some dispute has arisen concerning the precise idea the
author means to convey.


16

=Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself.=--The philosophers are in the habit of
placing themselves in front of life and experience--that which they call
the world of phenomena--as if they were standing before a picture that
is unrolled before them in its final completeness. This panorama, they
think, must be studied in every detail in order to reach some conclusion
regarding the object represented by the picture. From effect,
accordingly is deduced cause and from cause is deduced the
unconditioned. This process is generally looked upon as affording the
all sufficient explanation of the world of phenomena. On the other hand
one must, (while putting the conception of the metaphysical distinctly
forward as that of the unconditioned, and consequently of the
unconditioning) absolutely deny any connection between the unconditioned
(of the metaphysical world) and the world known to us: so that
throughout phenomena there is no manifestation of the thing-in-itself,
and getting from one to the other is out of the question. Thus is left
quite ignored the circumstance that the picture--that which we now call
life and experience--is a gradual evolution, is, indeed, still in
process of evolution and for that reason should not be regarded as an
enduring whole from which any conclusion as to its author (the
all-sufficient reason) could be arrived at, or even pronounced out of
the question. It is because we have for thousands of years looked into
the world with moral, aesthetic, religious predispositions, with blind
prejudice, passion or fear, and surfeited ourselves with indulgence in
the follies of illogical thought, that the world has gradually become so
wondrously motley, frightful, significant, soulful: it has taken on
tints, but we have been the colorists: the human intellect, upon the
foundation of human needs, of human passions, has reared all these
"phenomena" and injected its own erroneous fundamental conceptions into
things. Late, very late, the human intellect checks itself: and now the
world of experience and the thing-in-itself seem to it so severed and so
antithetical that it denies the possibility of one's hinging upon the
other--or else summons us to surrender our intellect, our personal will,
to the secret and the awe-inspiring in order that thereby we may attain
certainty of certainty hereafter. Again, there are those who have
combined all the characteristic features of our world of
phenomena--that is, the conception of the world which has been formed
and inherited through a series of intellectual vagaries--and instead of
holding the intellect responsible for it all, have pronounced the very
nature of things accountable for the present very sinister aspect of the
world, and preached annihilation of existence. Through all these views
and opinions the toilsome, steady process of science (which now for the
first time begins to celebrate its greatest triumph in the genesis of
thought) will definitely work itself out, the result, being, perhaps, to
the following effect: That which we now call the world is the result of
a crowd of errors and fancies which gradually developed in the general
evolution of organic nature, have grown together and been transmitted to
us as the accumulated treasure of all the past--as the _treasure_, for
whatever is worth anything in our humanity rests upon it. From this
world of conception it is in the power of science to release us only to
a slight extent--and this is all that could be wished--inasmuch as it
cannot eradicate the influence of hereditary habits of feeling, but it
can light up by degrees the stages of the development of that world of
conception, and lift us, at least for a time, above the whole spectacle.
Perhaps we may then perceive that the thing-in-itself is a meet subject
for Homeric laughter: that it seemed so much, everything, indeed, and
is really a void--void, that is to say, of meaning.


17

=Metaphysical Explanation.=--Man, when he is young, prizes metaphysical
explanations, because they make him see matters of the highest import in
things he found disagreeable or contemptible: and if he is not satisfied
with himself, this feeling of dissatisfaction is soothed when he sees
the most hidden world-problem or world-pain in that which he finds so
displeasing in himself. To feel himself more unresponsible and at the
same time to find things (Dinge) more interesting--that is to him the
double benefit he owes to metaphysics. Later, indeed, he acquires
distrust of the whole metaphysical method of explaining things: he then
perceives, perhaps, that those effects could have been attained just as
well and more scientifically by another method: that physical and
historical explanations would, at least, have given that feeling of
freedom from personal responsibility just as well, while interest in
life and its problems would be stimulated, perhaps, even more.


18

=The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics.=--If a history of the
development of thought is ever written, the following proposition,
advanced by a distinguished logician, will be illuminated with a new
light: "The universal, primordial law of the apprehending subject
consists in the inner necessity of cognizing every object by itself, as
in its essence a thing unto itself, therefore as self-existing and
unchanging, in short, as a substance." Even this law, which is here
called "primordial," is an evolution: it has yet to be shown how
gradually this evolution takes place in lower organizations: how the
dim, mole eyes of such organizations see, at first, nothing but a blank
sameness: how later, when the various excitations of desire and aversion
manifest themselves, various substances are gradually distinguished, but
each with an attribute, that is, a special relationship to such an
organization. The first step towards the logical is judgment, the
essence of which, according to the best logicians, is belief. At the
foundation of all beliefs lie sensations of pleasure or pain in relation
to the apprehending subject. A third feeling, as the result of two
prior, single, separate feelings, is judgment in its crudest form. We
organic beings are primordially interested by nothing whatever in any
thing (Ding) except its relation to ourselves with reference to pleasure
and pain. Between the moments in which we are conscious of this
relation, (the states of feeling) lie the moments of rest, of
not-feeling: then the world and every thing (Ding) have no interest for
us: we observe no change in them (as at present a person absorbed in
something does not notice anyone passing by). To plants all things are,
as a rule, at rest, eternal, every object like itself. From the period
of lower organisms has been handed down to man the belief that there are
like things (gleiche Dinge): only the trained experience attained
through the most advanced science contradicts this postulate. The
primordial belief of all organisms is, perhaps, that all the rest of the
world is one thing and motionless.--Furthest away from this first step
towards the logical is the notion of causation: even to-day we think
that all our feelings and doings are, at bottom, acts of the free will;
when the sentient individual contemplates himself he deems every
feeling, every change, a something isolated, disconnected, that is to
say, unqualified by any thing; it comes suddenly to the surface,
independent of anything that went before or came after. We are hungry,
but originally we do not know that the organism must be nourished: on
the contrary that feeling seems to manifest itself without reason or
purpose; it stands out by itself and seems quite independent. Therefore:
the belief in the freedom of the will is a primordial error of
everything organic as old as the very earliest inward prompting of the
logical faculty; belief in unconditioned substances and in like things
(gleiche Dinge) is also a primordial and equally ancient error of
everything organic. Inasmuch as all metaphysic has concerned itself
particularly with substance and with freedom of the will, it should be
designated as the science that deals with the fundamental errors of
mankind as if they were fundamental truths.


19

=Number.=--The invention of the laws of number has as its basis the
primordial and prior-prevailing delusion that many like things exist
(although in point of fact there is no such thing is a duplicate), or
that, at least, there are things (but there is no "thing"). The
assumption of plurality always presupposes that _something_ exists which
manifests itself repeatedly, but just here is where the delusion
prevails; in this very matter we feign realities, unities, that have no
existence. Our feelings, notions, of space and time are false for they
lead, when duly tested, to logical contradictions. In all scientific
demonstrations we always unavoidably base our calculation upon some
false standards [of duration or measurement] but as these standards are
at least _constant_, as, for example, our notions of time and space, the
results arrived at by science possess absolute accuracy and certainty in
their relationship to one another: one can keep on building upon
them--until is reached that final limit at which the erroneous
fundamental conceptions, (the invariable breakdown) come into conflict
with the results established--as, for example, in the case of the atomic
theory. Here we always find ourselves obliged to give credence to a
"thing" or material "substratum" that is set in motion, although, at the
same time, the whole scientific programme has had as its aim the
resolving of everything material into motions [themselves]: here again
we distinguish with our feeling [that which does the] moving and [that
which is] moved,[11] and we never get out of this circle, because the
belief in things[12] has been from time immemorial rooted in our
nature.--When Kant says "the intellect does not derive its laws from
nature, but dictates them to her" he states the full truth as regards
the _idea of nature_ which we form (nature = world, as notion, that is,
as error) but which is merely the synthesis of a host of errors of the
intellect. To a world not [the outcome of] our conception, the laws of
number are wholly inapplicable: such laws are valid only in the world of
mankind.

[11] Wir scheiden auch hier noch mit unserer Empfindung Bewegendes und
Bewegtes.

[12] Glaube an Dinge.


20

=Some Backward Steps.=--One very forward step in education is taken when
man emerges from his superstitious and religious ideas and fears and,
for instance, no longer believes in the dear little angels or in
original sin, and has stopped talking about the salvation of the soul:
when he has taken this step to freedom he has, nevertheless, through the
utmost exertion of his mental power, to overcome metaphysics. Then a
backward movement is necessary: he must appreciate the historical
justification, and to an equal extent the psychological considerations,
in such a movement. He must understand that the greatest advances made
by mankind have resulted from such a course and that without this very
backward movement the highest achievements of man hitherto would have
been impossible.--With regard to philosophical metaphysics I see ever
more and more who have arrived at the negative goal (that all positive
metaphysic is a delusion) but as yet very few who go a few steps
backward: one should look out over the last rungs of the ladder, but not
try to stand on them, that is to say. The most advanced as yet go only
far enough to free themselves from metaphysic and look back at it with
an air of superiority: whereas here, no less than in the hippodrome, it
is necessary to turn around in order to reach the end of the course.


21

=Presumable [Nature of the] Victory of Doubt.=--Let us assume for a
moment the validity of the skeptical standpoint: granted that there is
no metaphysical world, and that all the metaphysical explanations of the
only world we know are useless to us, how would we then contemplate men
and things? [Menschen und Dinge]. This can be thought out and it is
worth while doing so, even if the question whether anything metaphysical
has ever been demonstrated by or through Kant and Schopenhauer, be put
altogether aside. For it is, to all appearances, highly probable that
men, on this point, will be, in the mass, skeptical. The question thus
becomes: what sort of a notion will human society, under the influence
of such a state of mind, form of itself? Perhaps the _scientific
demonstration_ of any metaphysical world is now so difficult that
mankind will never be free from a distrust of it. And when there is
formed a feeling of distrust of metaphysics, the results are, in the
mass, the same as if metaphysics were refuted altogether and _could_ no
longer be believed. In both cases the historical question, with regard
to an unmetaphysical disposition in mankind, remains the same.


22

=Disbelief in the "monumentum aere perennius".=[13]--A decided
disadvantage, attending the termination of metaphysical modes of
thought, is that the individual fixes his mind too attentively upon his
own brief lifetime and feels no strong inducement to aid in the
foundation of institutions capable of enduring for centuries: he wishes
himself to gather the fruit from the tree that he plants and
consequently he no longer plants those trees which require centuries of
constant cultivation and are destined to afford shade to generation
after generation in the future. For metaphysical views inspire the
belief that in them is afforded the final sure foundation upon which
henceforth the whole future of mankind may rest and be built up: the
individual promotes his own salvation; when, for example, he builds a
church or a monastery he is of opinion that he is doing something for
the salvation of his immortal soul:--Can science, as well, inspire such
faith in the efficacy of her results? In actual fact, science requires
doubt and distrust as her surest auxiliaries; nevertheless, the sum of
the irresistible (that is all the onslaughts of skepticism, all the
disintegrating effects of surviving truths) can easily become so great
(as, for instance, in the case of hygienic science) as to inspire the
determination to build "eternal" works upon it. At present the contrast
between our excitated ephemeral existence and the tranquil repose of
metaphysical epochs is too great because both are as yet in too close
juxtaposition. The individual man himself now goes through too many
stages of inner and outer evolution for him to venture to make a plan
even for his life time alone. A perfectly modern man, indeed, who wants
to build himself a house feels as if he were walling himself up alive in
a mausoleum.

[13] Monument more enduring than brass: Horace, Odes III:XXX.


23

=Age of Comparison.=--The less men are bound by tradition, the greater
is the inner activity of motives, the greater, correspondingly, the
outer restlessness, the promiscuous flow of humanity, the polyphony of
strivings. Who now feels any great impulse to establish himself and his
posterity in a particular place? For whom, moreover, does there exist,
at present, any strong tie? As all the methods of the arts were copied
from one another, so were all the methods and advancements of moral
codes, of manners, of civilizations.--Such an age derives its
significance from the fact that in it the various ideas, codes, manners
and civilizations can be compared and experienced side by side; which
was impossible at an earlier period in view of the localised nature of
the rule of every civilization, corresponding to the limitation of all
artistic effects by time and place. To-day the growth of the aesthetic
feeling is decided, owing to the great number of [artistic] forms which
offer themselves for comparison. The majority--those that are condemned
by the method of comparison--will be allowed to die out. In the same way
there is to-day taking place a selection of the forms and customs of the
higher morality which can result only in the extinction of the vulgar
moralities. This is the age of comparison! That is its glory--but also
its pain. Let us not, however shrink from this pain. Rather would we
comprehend the nature of the task imposed upon us by our age as
adequately as we can: posterity will bless us for doing so--a posterity
that knows itself to be [developed] through and above the narrow, early
race-civilizations as well as the culture-civilization of comparison,
but yet looks gratefully back upon both as venerable monuments of
antiquity.


24

=Possibility of Progress.=--When a master of the old civilization (den
alten Cultur) vows to hold no more discussion with men who believe in
progress, he is quite right. For the old civilization[14] has its
greatness and its advantages behind it, and historic training forces one
to acknowledge that it can never again acquire vigor: only intolerable
stupidity or equally intolerable fanaticism could fail to perceive this
fact. But men may consciously determine to evolve to a new civilization
where formerly they evolved unconsciously and accidentally. They can now
devise better conditions for the advancement of mankind, for their
nourishment, training and education, they can administer the earth as an
economic power, and, particularly, compare the capacities of men and
select them accordingly. This new, conscious civilization is killing the
other which, on the whole, has led but an unreflective animal and plant
life: it is also destroying the doubt of progress itself--progress is
possible. I mean: it is hasty and almost unreflective to assume that
progress must _necessarily_ take place: but how can it be doubted that
progress is possible? On the other hand, progress in the sense and along
the lines of the old civilization is not even conceivable. If romantic
fantasy employs the word progress in connection with certain aims and
ends identical with those of the circumscribed primitive national
civilizations, the picture presented of progress is always borrowed from
the past. The idea and the image of progress thus formed are quite
without originality.

[14] Cultur, culture, civilisation etc., but there is no exact English
equivalent.


25

=Private Ethics and World Ethics.=--Since the extinction of the belief
that a god guides the general destiny of the world and, notwithstanding
all the contortions and windings of the path of mankind, leads it
gloriously forward, men must shape oecumenical, world-embracing ends for
themselves. The older ethics, namely Kant's, required of the individual
such a course of conduct as he wishes all men to follow. This evinces
much simplicity--as if any individual could determine off hand what
course of conduct would conduce to the welfare of humanity, and what
course of conduct is preëminently desirable! This is a theory like that
of freedom of competition, which takes it for granted that the general
harmony [of things] _must_ prevail of itself in accordance with some
inherent law of betterment or amelioration. It may be that a later
contemplation of the needs of mankind will reveal that it is by no means
desirable that all men should regulate their conduct according to the
same principle; it may be best, from the standpoint of certain ends yet
to be attained, that men, during long periods should regulate their
conduct with reference to special, and even, in certain circumstances,
evil, objects. At any rate, if mankind is not to be led astray by such a
universal rule of conduct, it behooves it to attain a _knowledge of the
condition of culture_ that will serve as a scientific standard of
comparison in connection with cosmical ends. Herein is comprised the
tremendous mission of the great spirits of the next century.


26

=Reaction as Progress.=--Occasionally harsh, powerful, impetuous, yet
nevertheless backward spirits, appear, who try to conjure back some past
era in the history of mankind: they serve as evidence that the new
tendencies which they oppose, are not yet potent enough, that there is
something lacking in them: otherwise they [the tendencies] would better
withstand the effects of this conjuring back process. Thus Luther's
reformation shows that in his century all the impulses to freedom of the
spirit were still uncertain, lacking in vigor, and immature. Science
could not yet rear her head. Indeed the whole Renaissance appears but as
an early spring smothered in snow. But even in the present century
Schopenhauer's metaphysic shows that the scientific spirit is not yet
powerful enough: for the whole mediaeval Christian world-standpoint
(Weltbetrachtung) and conception of man (Mensch-Empfindung)[15] once
again, notwithstanding the slowly wrought destruction of all Christian
dogma, celebrated a resurrection in Schopenhauer's doctrine. There is
much science in his teaching although the science does not dominate,
but, instead of it, the old, trite "metaphysical necessity." It is one
of the greatest and most priceless advantages of Schopenhauer's teaching
that by it our feelings are temporarily forced back to those old human
and cosmical standpoints to which no other path could conduct us so
easily. The gain for history and justice is very great. I believe that
without Schopenhauer's aid it would be no easy matter for anyone now to
do justice to Christianity and its Asiatic relatives--a thing impossible
as regards the christianity that still survives. After according this
great triumph to justice, after we have corrected in so essential a
respect the historical point of view which the age of learning brought
with it, we may begin to bear still farther onward the banner of
enlightenment--a banner bearing the three names: Petrarch, Erasmus,
Voltaire. We have taken a forward step out of reaction.

[15] Literally man-feeling or human outlook.


27

=A Substitute for Religion.=--It is supposed to be a recommendation for
philosophy to say of it that it provides the people with a substitute
for religion. And in fact, the training of the intellect does
necessitate the convenient laying out of the track of thought, since the
transition from religion by way of science entails a powerful, perilous
leap,--something that should be advised against. With this
qualification, the recommendation referred to is a just one. At the same
time, it should be further explained that the needs which religion
satisfies and which science must now satisfy, are not immutable. Even
they can be diminished and uprooted. Think, for instance, of the
christian soul-need, the sighs over one's inner corruption, the anxiety
regarding salvation--all notions that arise simply out of errors of the
reason and require no satisfaction at all, but annihilation. A
philosophy can either so affect these needs as to appease them or else
put them aside altogether, for they are acquired, circumscribed needs,
based upon hypotheses which those of science explode. Here, for the
purpose of affording the means of transition, for the sake of lightening
the spirit overburdened with feeling, art can be employed to far better
purpose, as these hypotheses receive far less support from art than from
a metaphysical philosophy. Then from art it is easier to go over to a
really emancipating philosophical science.


28

=Discredited Words.=--Away with the disgustingly over-used words
optimism and pessimism! For the occasion for using them grows daily
less; only drivelers now find them indispensably necessary. What earthly
reason could anyone have for being an optimist unless he had a god to
defend who _must_ have created the best of all possible worlds, since he
is himself all goodness and perfection?--but what thinking man has now
any need for the hypothesis that there is a god?--There is also no
occasion whatever for a pessimistic confession of faith, unless one has
a personal interest in denouncing the advocate of god, the theologian or
the theological philosopher, and maintaining the counter proposition
that evil reigns, that wretchedness is more potent than joy, that the
world is a piece of botch work, that phenomenon (Erscheinung) is but the
manifestation of some evil spirit. But who bothers his head about the
theologians any more--except the theologians themselves? Apart from all
theology and its antagonism, it is manifest that the world is neither
good nor bad, (to say nothing about its being the best or the worst) and
that these ideas of "good" and "bad" have significance only in relation
to men, indeed, are without significance at all, in view of the sense in
which they are usually employed. The contemptuous and the eulogistic
point of view must, in every case, be repudiated.


29

=Intoxicated by the Perfume of Flowers.=--The ship of humanity, it is
thought, acquires an ever deeper draught the more it is laden. It is
believed that the more profoundly man thinks, the more exquisitely he
feels, the higher the standard he sets for himself, the greater his
distance from the other animals--the more he appears as a genius
(Genie) among animals--the nearer he gets to the true nature of the
world and to comprehension thereof: this, indeed, he really does through
science, but he thinks he does it far more adequately through his
religions and arts. These are, certainly, a blossoming of the world, but
not, therefore, _nearer the roots of the world_ than is the stalk. One
cannot learn best from it the nature of the world, although nearly
everyone thinks so. _Error_ has made men so deep, sensitive and
imaginative in order to bring forth such flowers as religions and arts.
Pure apprehension would be unable to do that. Whoever should disclose to
us the essence of the world would be undeceiving us most cruelly. Not
the world as thing-in-itself but the world as idea[16] (as error) is
rich in portent, deep, wonderful, carrying happiness and unhappiness in
its womb. This result leads to a philosophy of world negation: which, at
any rate, can be as well combined with a practical world affirmation as
with its opposite.

[16] Vorstellung: this word sometimes corresponds to the English word
"idea", at others to "conception" or "notion."


30

=Evil Habits in Reaching Conclusions.=--The most usual erroneous
conclusions of men are these: a thing[17] exists, therefore it is right:
Here from capacity to live is deduced fitness, from fitness, is deduced
justification. So also: an opinion gives happiness, therefore it is the
true one, its effect is good, therefore it is itself good and true. Here
is predicated of the effect that it gives happiness, that it is good in
the sense of utility, and there is likewise predicated of the cause that
it is good, but good in the sense of logical validity. Conversely, the
proposition would run: a thing[17] cannot attain success, cannot
maintain itself, therefore it is evil: a belief troubles [the believer],
occasions pain, therefore it is false. The free spirit, who is sensible
of the defect in this method of reaching conclusions and has had to
suffer its consequences, often succumbs to the temptation to come to the
very opposite conclusions (which, in general, are, of course, equally
erroneous): a thing cannot maintain itself: therefore it is good; a
belief is troublesome, therefore it is true.

[17] Sache, thing but not in the sense of Ding. Sache is of very
indefinite application (res).


31

=The Illogical is Necessary.=--Among the things which can bring a
thinker to distraction is the knowledge that the illogical is necessary
to mankind and that from the illogical springs much that is good. The
illogical is so imbedded in the passions, in language, in art, in
religion and, above all, in everything that imparts value to life that
it cannot be taken away without irreparably injuring those beautiful
things. Only men of the utmost simplicity can believe that the nature
man knows can be changed into a purely logical nature. Yet were there
steps affording approach to this goal, how utterly everything would be
lost on the way! Even the most rational man needs nature again, from
time to time, that is, his illogical fundamental relation
(Grundstellung) to all things.


32

=Being Unjust is Essential.=--All judgments of the value of life are
illogically developed and therefore unjust. The vice of the judgment
consists, first, in the way in which the subject matter comes under
observation, that is, very incompletely; secondly in the way in which
the total is summed up; and, thirdly, in the fact that each single item
in the totality of the subject matter is itself the result of defective
perception, and this from absolute necessity. No practical knowledge of
a man, for example, stood he never so near to us, can be complete--so
that we could have a logical right to form a total estimate of him; all
estimates are summary and must be so. Then the standard by which we
measure, (our being) is not an immutable quantity; we have moods and
variations, and yet we should know ourselves as an invariable standard
before we undertake to establish the nature of the relation of any thing
(Sache) to ourselves. Perhaps it will follow from all this that one
should form no judgments whatever; if one could but merely _live_
without having to form estimates, without aversion and without
partiality!--for everything most abhorred is closely connected with an
estimate, as well as every strongest partiality. An inclination towards
a thing, or from a thing, without an accompanying feeling that the
beneficial is desired and the pernicious contemned, an inclination
without a sort of experiential estimation of the desirability of an end,
does not exist in man. We are primordially illogical and hence unjust
beings _and can recognise this fact_: this is one of the greatest and
most baffling discords of existence.


33

=Error Respecting Living for the Sake of Living Essential.=--Every
belief in the value and worthiness of life rests upon defective
thinking; it is for this reason alone possible that sympathy with the
general life and suffering of mankind is so imperfectly developed in the
individual. Even exceptional men, who can think beyond their own
personalities, do not have this general life in view, but isolated
portions of it. If one is capable of fixing his observation upon
exceptional cases, I mean upon highly endowed individuals and pure
souled beings, if their development is taken as the true end of
world-evolution and if joy be felt in their existence, then it is
possible to believe in the value of life, because in that case the rest
of humanity is overlooked: hence we have here defective thinking. So,
too, it is even if all mankind be taken into consideration, and one
species only of impulses (the less egoistic) brought under review and
those, in consideration of the other impulses, exalted: then something
could still be hoped of mankind in the mass and to that extent there
could exist belief in the value of life: here, again, as a result of
defective thinking. Whatever attitude, thus, one may assume, one is, as
a result of this attitude, an exception among mankind. Now, the great
majority of mankind endure life without any great protest, and believe,
to this extent, in the value of existence, but that is because each
individual decides and determines alone, and never comes out of his own
personality like these exceptions: everything outside of the personal
has no existence for them or at the utmost is observed as but a faint
shadow. Consequently the value of life for the generality of mankind
consists simply in the fact that the individual attaches more importance
to himself than he does to the world. The great lack of imagination from
which he suffers is responsible for his inability to enter into the
feelings of beings other than himself, and hence his sympathy with their
fate and suffering is of the slightest possible description. On the
other hand, whosoever really _could_ sympathise, necessarily doubts the
value of life; were it possible for him to sum up and to feel in himself
the total consciousness of mankind, he would collapse with a malediction
against existence,--for mankind is, in the mass, without a goal, and
hence man cannot find, in the contemplation of his whole course,
anything to serve him as a mainstay and a comfort, but rather a reason
to despair. If he looks beyond the things that immediately engage him to
the final aimlessness of humanity, his own conduct assumes in his eyes
the character of a frittering away. To feel oneself, however, as
humanity (not alone as an individual) frittered away exactly as we see
the stray leaves frittered away by nature, is a feeling transcending all
feeling. But who is capable of it? Only a poet, certainly: and poets
always know how to console themselves.


34

=For Tranquility.=--But will not our philosophy become thus a tragedy?
Will not truth prove the enemy of life, of betterment? A question seems
to weigh upon our tongue and yet will not put itself into words: whether
one _can_ knowingly remain in the domain of the untruthful? or, if one
_must_, whether, then, death would not be preferable? For there is no
longer any ought (Sollen), morality; so far as it is involved "ought,"
is, through our point of view, as utterly annihilated as religion. Our
knowledge can permit only pleasure and pain, benefit and injury, to
subsist as motives. But how can these motives be distinguished from the
desire for truth? Even they rest upon error (in so far, as already
stated, partiality and dislike and their very inaccurate estimates
palpably modify our pleasure and our pain). The whole of human life is
deeply involved in _untruth_. The individual cannot extricate it from
this pit without thereby fundamentally clashing with his whole past,
without finding his present motives of conduct, (as that of honor)
illegitimate, and without opposing scorn and contempt to the ambitions
which prompt one to have regard for the future and for one's happiness
in the future. Is it true, does there, then, remain but one way of
thinking, which, as a personal consequence brings in its train despair,
and as a theoretical [consequence brings in its train] a philosophy of
decay, disintegration, self annihilation? I believe the deciding
influence, as regards the after-effect of knowledge, will be the
_temperament_ of a man; I can, in addition to this after-effect just
mentioned, suppose another, by means of which a much simpler life, and
one freer from disturbances than the present, could be lived; so that at
first the old motives of vehement passion might still have strength,
owing to hereditary habit, but they would gradually grow weaker under
the influence of purifying knowledge. A man would live, at last, both
among men and unto himself, as in the natural state, without praise,
reproach, competition, feasting one's eyes, as if it were a play, upon
much that formerly inspired dread. One would be rid of the strenuous
element, and would no longer feel the goad of the reflection that man is
not even [as much as] nature, nor more than nature. To be sure, this
requires, as already stated, a good temperament, a fortified, gentle and
naturally cheerful soul, a disposition that has no need to be on its
guard against its own eccentricities and sudden outbreaks and that in
its utterances manifests neither sullenness nor a snarling tone--those
familiar, disagreeable characteristics of old dogs and old men that have
been a long time chained up. Rather must a man, from whom the ordinary
bondages of life have fallen away to so great an extent, so do that he
only lives on in order to grow continually in knowledge, and to learn to
resign, without envy and without disappointment, much, yes nearly
everything, that has value in the eyes of men. He must be content with
such a free, fearless soaring above men, manners, laws and traditional
estimates of things, as the most desirable of all situations. He will
freely share the joy of being in such a situation, and he has, perhaps,
nothing else to share--in which renunciation and self-denial really most
consist. But if more is asked of him, he will, with a benevolent shake
of the head, refer to his brother, the free man of fact, and will,
perhaps, not dissemble a little contempt: for, as regards his "freedom,"
thereby hangs a tale.[18]

[18] den mit dessen "Freiheit" hat es eine eigene Bewandtniss.




HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS.


35

=Advantages of Psychological Observation.=--That reflection regarding
the human, all-too-human--or as the learned jargon is: psychological
observation--is among the means whereby the burden of life can be made
lighter, that practice in this art affords presence of mind in difficult
situations and entertainment amid a wearisome environment, aye, that
maxims may be culled in the thorniest and least pleasing paths of life
and invigoration thereby obtained: this much was believed, was known--in
former centuries. Why was this forgotten in our own century, during
which, at least in Germany, yes in Europe, poverty as regards
psychological observation would have been manifest in many ways had
there been anyone to whom this poverty could have manifested itself. Not
only in the novel, in the romance, in philosophical standpoints--these
are the works of exceptional men; still more in the state of opinion
regarding public events and personages; above all in general society,
which says much about men but nothing whatever about man, there is
totally lacking the art of psychological analysis and synthesis. But why
is the richest and most harmless source of entertainment thus allowed to
run to waste? Why is the greatest master of the psychological maxim no
longer read?--for, with no exaggeration whatever be it said: the
educated person in Europe who has read La Rochefoucauld and his
intellectual and artistic affinities is very hard to find; still harder,
the person who knows them and does not disparage them. Apparently, too,
this unusual reader takes far less pleasure in them than the form
adopted by these artists should afford him: for the subtlest mind cannot
adequately appreciate the art of maxim-making unless it has had training
in it, unless it has competed in it. Without such practical
acquaintance, one is apt to look upon this making and forming as a much
easier thing than it really is; one is not keenly enough alive to the
felicity and the charm of success. Hence present day readers of maxims
have but a moderate, tempered pleasure in them, scarcely, indeed, a true
perception of their merit, so that their experiences are about the same
as those of the average beholder of cameos: people who praise because
they cannot appreciate, and are very ready to admire and still readier
to turn away.


36

=Objection.=--Or is there a counter-proposition to the dictum that
psychological observation is one of the means of consoling, lightening,
charming existence? Have enough of the unpleasant effects of this art
been experienced to justify the person striving for culture in turning
his regard away from it? In all truth, a certain blind faith in the
goodness of human nature, an implanted distaste for any disparagement of
human concerns, a sort of shamefacedness at the nakedness of the soul,
may be far more desirable things in the general happiness of a man, than
this only occasionally advantageous quality of psychological
sharpsightedness; and perhaps belief in the good, in virtuous men and
actions, in a plenitude of disinterested benevolence has been more
productive of good in the world of men in so far as it has made men less
distrustful. If Plutarch's heroes are enthusiastically imitated and a
reluctance is experienced to looking too critically into the motives of
their actions, not the knowledge but the welfare of human society is
promoted thereby: psychological error and above all obtuseness in regard
to it, help human nature forward, whereas knowledge of the truth is more
promoted by means of the stimulating strength of a hypothesis; as La
Rochefoucauld in the first edition of his "Sentences and Moral Maxims"
has expressed it: "What the world calls virtue is ordinarily but a
phantom created by the passions, and to which we give a good name in
order to do whatever we please with impunity." La Rochefoucauld and
those other French masters of soul-searching (to the number of whom has
lately been added a German, the author of "Psychological Observations")
are like expert marksmen who again and again hit the black spot--but it
is the black spot in human nature. Their art inspires amazement, but
finally some spectator, inspired, not by the scientific spirit but by a
humanitarian feeling, execrates an art that seems to implant in the soul
a taste for belittling and impeaching mankind.


37

=Nevertheless.=--The matter therefore, as regards pro and con, stands
thus: in the present state of philosophy an awakening of the moral
observation is essential. The repulsive aspect of psychological
dissection, with the knife and tweezers entailed by the process, can no
longer be spared humanity. Such is the imperative duty of any science
that investigates the origin and history of the so-called moral feelings
and which, in its progress, is called upon to posit and to solve
advanced social problems:--The older philosophy does not recognize the
newer at all and, through paltry evasions, has always gone astray in the
investigation of the origin and history of human estimates
(Werthschätzungen). With what results may now be very clearly perceived,
since it has been shown by many examples, how the errors of the greatest
philosophers have their origin in a false explanation of certain human
actions and feelings; how upon the foundation of an erroneous analysis
(for example, of the so called disinterested actions), a false ethic is
reared, to support which religion and like mythological monstrosities
are called in, until finally the shades of these troubled spirits
collapse in physics and in the comprehensive world point of view. But if
it be established that superficiality of psychological observation has
heretofore set the most dangerous snares for human judgment and
deduction, and will continue to do so, all the greater need is there of
that steady continuance of labor that never wearies putting stone upon
stone, little stone upon little stone; all the greater need is there of
a courage that is not ashamed of such humble labor and that will oppose
persistence, to all contempt. It is, finally, also true that countless
single observations concerning the human, all-too-human, have been
first made and uttered in circles accustomed, not to furnish matter for
scientific knowledge, but for intellectual pleasure-seeking; and the
original home atmosphere--a very seductive atmosphere--of the moral
maxim has almost inextricably interpenetrated the entire species, so
that the scientific man involuntarily manifests a sort of mistrust of
this species and of its seriousness. But it is sufficient to point to
the consequences: for already it is becoming evident that events of the
most portentous nature are developing in the domain of psychological
observation. What is the leading conclusion arrived at by one of the
subtlest and calmest of thinkers, the author of the work "Concerning the
Origin of the Moral Feelings", as a result of his thorough and incisive
analysis of human conduct? "The moral man," he says, "stands no nearer
the knowable (metaphysical) world than the physical man."[19] This
dictum, grown hard and cutting beneath the hammer-blow of historical
knowledge, can some day, perhaps, in some future or other, serve as the
axe that will be laid to the root of the "metaphysical necessities" of
men--whether more to the blessing than to the banning of universal well
being who can say?--but in any event a dictum fraught with the most
momentous consequences, fruitful and fearful at once, and confronting
the world in the two faced way characteristic of all great facts.

[19] "Der moralische Mensch, sagt er, steht der intelligiblen
(metaphysischen) Welt nicht näher, als der physische Mensch."


38

=To What Extent Useful.=--Therefore, whether psychological observation
is more an advantage than a disadvantage to mankind may always remain
undetermined: but there is no doubt that it is necessary, because
science can no longer dispense with it. Science, however, recognizes no
considerations of ultimate goals or ends any more than nature does; but
as the latter duly matures things of the highest fitness for certain
ends without any intention of doing it, so will true science, doing with
ideas what nature does with matter,[20] promote the purposes and the
welfare of humanity, (as occasion may afford, and in many ways) and
attain fitness [to ends]--but likewise without having intended it.

[20] als die Nachahmung der Natur in Begriffen, literally: "as the
counterfeit of nature in (regard to) ideas."

He to whom the atmospheric conditions of such a prospect are too wintry,
has too little fire in him: let him look about him, and he will become
sensible of maladies requiring an icy air, and of people who are so
"kneaded together" out of ardor and intellect that they can scarcely
find anywhere an atmosphere too cold and cutting for them. Moreover: as
too serious individuals and nations stand in need of trivial
relaxations; as others, too volatile and excitable require onerous,
weighty ordeals to render them entirely healthy: should not we, the more
intellectual men of this age, which is swept more and more by
conflagrations, catch up every cooling and extinguishing appliance we
can find that we may always remain as self contained, steady and calm as
we are now, and thereby perhaps serve this age as its mirror and self
reflector, when the occasion arises?


39

=The Fable of Discretionary Freedom.=--The history of the feelings, on
the basis of which we make everyone responsible, hence, the so-called
moral feelings, is traceable in the following leading phases. At first
single actions are termed good or bad without any reference to their
motive, but solely because of the utilitarian or prejudicial
consequences they have for the community. In time, however, the origin
of these designations is forgotten [but] it is imagined that action in
itself, without reference to its consequences, contains the property
"good" or "bad": with the same error according to which language
designates the stone itself as hard[ness] the tree itself as
green[ness]--for the reason, therefore, that what is a consequence is
comprehended as a cause. Accordingly, the good[ness] or bad[ness] is
incorporated into the motive and [any] deed by itself is regarded as
morally ambiguous. A step further is taken, and the predication good or
bad is no longer made of the particular motives but of the entire nature
of a man, out of which motive grows as grow the plants out of the soil.
Thus man is successively made responsible for his [particular] acts,
then for his [course of] conduct, then for his motives and finally for
his nature. Now, at last, is it discovered that this nature, even,
cannot be responsible, inasmuch as it is only and wholly a necessary
consequence and is synthesised out of the elements and influence of past
and present things: therefore, that man is to be made responsible for
nothing, neither for his nature, nor his motives, nor his [course of]
conduct nor his [particular] acts. By this [process] is gained the
knowledge that the history of moral estimates is the history of error,
of the error of responsibility: as is whatever rests upon the error of
the freedom of the will. Schopenhauer concluded just the other way,
thus: since certain actions bring depression ("consciousness of guilt")
in their train, there must, then, exist responsibility, for there would
be no basis for this depression at hand if all man's affairs did not
follow their course of necessity--as they do, indeed, according to the
opinion of this philosopher, follow their course--but man himself,
subject to the same necessity, would be just the man that he is--which
Schopenhauer denies. From the fact of such depression Schopenhauer
believes himself able to prove a freedom which man in some way must have
had, not indeed in regard to his actions but in regard to his nature:
freedom, therefore, to be thus and so, not to act thus and so. Out of
the _esse_, the sphere of freedom and responsibility, follows, according
to his opinion, the _operari_, the spheres of invariable causation,
necessity and irresponsibility. This depression, indeed, is due
apparently to the _operari_--in so far as it be delusive--but in truth
to whatever _esse_ be the deed of a free will, the basic cause of the
existence of an individual: [in order to] let man become whatever he
wills to become, his [to] will (Wollen) must precede his
existence.--Here, apart from the absurdity of the statement just made,
there is drawn the wrong inference that the fact of the depression
explains its character, the rational admissibility of it: from such a
wrong inference does Schopenhauer first come to his fantastic consequent
of the so called discretionary freedom (intelligibeln Freiheit). (For
the origin of this fabulous entity Plato and Kant are equally
responsible). But depression after the act does not need to be rational:
indeed, it is certainly not so at all, for it rests upon the erroneous
assumption that the act need not necessarily have come to pass.
Therefore: only because man deems himself free, but not because
he is free, does he experience remorse and the stings of
conscience.--Moreover, this depression is something that can be grown
out of; in many men it is not present at all as a consequence of acts
which inspire it in many other men. It is a very varying thing and one
closely connected with the development of custom and civilization, and
perhaps manifest only during a relatively brief period of the world's
history.--No one is responsible for his acts, no one for his nature; to
judge is tantamount to being unjust. This applies as well when the
individual judges himself. The proposition is as clear as sunlight, and
yet here everyone prefers to go back to darkness and untruth: for fear
of the consequences.


40

=Above Animal.=--The beast in us must be wheedled: ethic is necessary,
that we may not be torn to pieces. Without the errors involved in the
assumptions of ethics, man would have remained an animal. Thus has he
taken himself as something higher and imposed rigid laws upon himself.
He feels hatred, consequently, for states approximating the animal:
whence the former contempt for the slave as a not-yet-man, as a thing,
is to be explained.


41

=Unalterable Character.=--That character is unalterable is not, in the
strict sense, true; rather is this favorite proposition valid only to
the extent that during the brief life period of a man the potent new
motives can not, usually, press down hard enough to obliterate the lines
imprinted by ages. Could we conceive of a man eighty thousand years old,
we should have in him an absolutely alterable character; so that the
maturities of successive, varying individuals would develop in him. The
shortness of human life leads to many erroneous assertions concerning
the qualities of man.


42

=Classification of Enjoyments and Ethic.=--The once accepted comparative
classification of enjoyments, according to which an inferior, higher,
highest egoism may crave one or another enjoyment, now decides as to
ethical status or unethical status. A lower enjoyment (for example,
sensual pleasure) preferred to a more highly esteemed one (for example,
health) rates as unethical, as does welfare preferred to freedom. The
comparative classification of enjoyments is not, however, alike or the
same at all periods; when anyone demands satisfaction of the law, he is,
from the point of view of an earlier civilization, moral, from that of
the present, non-moral. "Unethical" indicates, therefore, that a man is
not sufficiently sensible to the higher, finer impulses which the
present civilization has brought with it, or is not sensible to them at
all; it indicates backwardness, but only from the point of view of the
contemporary degree of distinction.--The comparative classification of
enjoyments itself is not determined according to absolute ethics; but
after each new ethical adjustment, it is then decided whether conduct be
ethical or the reverse.


43

=Inhuman Men as Survivals.=--Men who are now inhuman must serve us as
surviving specimens of earlier civilizations. The mountain height of
humanity here reveals its lower formations, which might otherwise remain
hidden from view. There are surviving specimens of humanity whose brains
through the vicissitudes of heredity, have escaped proper development.
They show us what we all were and thus appal us; but they are as little
responsible on this account as is a piece of granite for being granite.
In our own brains there must be courses and windings corresponding to
such characters, just as in the forms of some human organs there survive
traces of fishhood. But these courses and windings are no longer the bed
in which flows the stream of our feeling.


44

=Gratitude and Revenge.=--The reason the powerful man is grateful is
this. His benefactor has, through his benefaction, invaded the domain of
the powerful man and established himself on an equal footing: the
powerful man in turn invades the domain of the benefactor and gets
satisfaction through the act of gratitude. It is a mild form of revenge.
By not obtaining the satisfaction of gratitude the powerful would have
shown himself powerless and have ranked as such thenceforward. Hence
every society of the good, that is to say, of the powerful originally,
places gratitude among the first of duties.--Swift has added the dictum
that man is grateful in the same degree that he is revengeful.


45

=Two-fold Historical Origin of Good and Evil.=--The notion of good and
bad has a two-fold historical origin: namely, first, in the spirit of
ruling races and castes. Whoever has power to requite good with good and
evil with evil and actually brings requital, (that is, is grateful and
revengeful) acquires the name of being good; whoever is powerless and
cannot requite is called bad. A man belongs, as a good individual, to
the "good" of a community, who have a feeling in common, because all the
individuals are allied with one another through the requiting sentiment.
A man belongs, as a bad individual, to the "bad," to a mass of
subjugated, powerless men who have no feeling in common. The good are a
caste, the bad are a quantity, like dust. Good and bad is, for a
considerable period, tantamount to noble and servile, master and slave.
On the other hand an enemy is not looked upon as bad: he can requite.
The Trojan and the Greek are in Homer both good. Not he, who does no
harm, but he who is despised, is deemed bad. In the community of the
good individuals [the quality of] good[ness] is inherited; it is
impossible for a bad individual to grow from such a rich soil. If,
notwithstanding, one of the good individuals does something unworthy of
his goodness, recourse is had to exorcism; thus the guilt is ascribed to
a deity, the while it is declared that this deity bewitched the good man
into madness and blindness.--Second, in the spirit of the subjugated,
the powerless. Here every other man is, to the individual, hostile,
inconsiderate, greedy, inhuman, avaricious, be he noble or servile; bad
is the characteristic term for man, for every living being, indeed, that
is recognized at all, even for a god: human, divine, these notions are
tantamount to devilish, bad. Manifestations of goodness, sympathy,
helpfulness, are regarded with anxiety as trickiness, preludes to an
evil end, deception, subtlety, in short, as refined badness. With such a
predisposition in individuals, a feeling in common can scarcely arise at
all, at most only the rudest form of it: so that everywhere that this
conception of good and evil prevails, the destruction of the
individuals, their race and nation, is imminent.--Our existing morality
has developed upon the foundation laid by ruling races and castes.


46

=Sympathy Greater than Suffering.=--There are circumstances in which
sympathy is stronger than the suffering itself. We feel more pain, for
instance, when one of our friends becomes guilty of a reprehensible
action than if we had done the deed ourselves. We once, that is, had
more faith in the purity of his character than he had himself. Hence our
love for him, (apparently because of this very faith) is stronger than
is his own love for himself. If, indeed, his egoism really suffers more,
as a result, than our egoism, inasmuch as he must take the consequences
of his fault to a greater extent than ourselves, nevertheless, the
unegoistic--this word is not to be taken too strictly, but simply as a
modified form of expression--in us is more affected by his guilt than
the unegoistic in him.


47

=Hypochondria.=--There are people who, from sympathy and anxiety for
others become hypochondriacal. The resulting form of compassion is
nothing else than sickness. So, also, is there a Christian hypochondria,
from which those singular, religiously agitated people suffer who place
always before their eyes the suffering and death of Christ.


48

=Economy of Blessings.=--The advantageous and the pleasing, as the
healthiest growths and powers in the intercourse of men, are such
precious treasures that it is much to be wished the use made of these
balsamic means were as economical as possible: but this is impossible.
Economy in the use of blessings is the dream of the craziest of
Utopians.


49

=Well-Wishing.=--Among the small, but infinitely plentiful and therefore
very potent things to which science must pay more attention than to the
great, uncommon things, well-wishing[21] must be reckoned; I mean those
manifestations of friendly disposition in intercourse, that laughter of
the eye, every hand pressure, every courtesy from which, in general,
every human act gets its quality. Every teacher, every functionary adds
this element as a gratuity to whatever he does as a duty; it is the
perpetual well spring of humanity, like the waves of light in which
everything grows; thus, in the narrowest circles, within the family,
life blooms and flowers only through this kind feeling. The
cheerfulness, friendliness and kindness of a heart are unfailing
sources of unegoistic impulse and have made far more for civilization
than those other more noised manifestations of it that are styled
sympathy, benevolence and sacrifice. But it is customary to depreciate
these little tokens of kindly feeling, and, indeed, there is not much of
the unegoistic in them. The sum of these little doses is very great,
nevertheless; their combined strength is of the greatest of
strengths.--Thus, too, much more happiness is to be found in the world
than gloomy eyes discover: that is, if the calculation be just, and all
these pleasing moments in which every day, even the meanest human life,
is rich, be not forgotten.

[21] Wohl-wollen, kind feeling. It stands here for benevolence but not
benevolence in the restricted sense of the word now prevailing.


50

=The Desire to Inspire Compassion.=--La Rochefoucauld, in the most
notable part of his self portraiture (first printed 1658) reaches the
vital spot of truth when he warns all those endowed with reason to be on
their guard against compassion, when he advises that this sentiment be
left to men of the masses who stand in need of the promptings of the
emotions (since they are not guided by reason) to induce them to give
aid to the suffering and to be of service in misfortune: whereas
compassion, in his (and Plato's) view, deprives the heart of strength.
To be sure, sympathy should be manifested but men should take care not
to feel it; for the unfortunate are rendered so dull that the
manifestation of sympathy affords them the greatest happiness in the
world.--Perhaps a more effectual warning against this compassion can be
given if this need of the unfortunate be considered not simply as
stupidity and intellectual weakness, not as a sort of distraction of the
spirit entailed by misfortune itself (and thus, indeed, does La
Rochefoucauld seem to view it) but as something quite different and more
momentous. Let note be taken of children who cry and scream in order to
be compassionated and who, therefore, await the moment when their
condition will be observed; come into contact with the sick and the
oppressed in spirit and try to ascertain if the wailing and sighing, the
posturing and posing of misfortune do not have as end and aim the
causing of pain to the beholder: the sympathy which each beholder
manifests is a consolation to the weak and suffering only in as much as
they are made to perceive that at least they have the power,
notwithstanding all their weakness, to inflict pain. The unfortunate
experiences a species of joy in the sense of superiority which the
manifestation of sympathy entails; his imagination is exalted; he is
always strong enough, then, to cause the world pain. Thus is the thirst
for sympathy a thirst for self enjoyment and at the expense of one's
fellow creatures: it shows man in the whole ruthlessness of his own dear
self: not in his mere "dullness" as La Rochefoucauld thinks.--In social
conversation three fourths of all the questions are asked, and three
fourths of all the replies are made in order to inflict some little
pain; that is why so many people crave social intercourse: it gives them
a sense of their power. In these countless but very small doses in which
the quality of badness is administered it proves a potent stimulant of
life: to the same extent that well wishing--(Wohl-wollen) distributed
through the world in like manner, is one of the ever ready
restoratives.--But will many honorable people be found to admit that
there is any pleasure in administering pain? that entertainment--and
rare entertainment--is not seldom found in causing others, at least in
thought, some pain, and in raking them with the small shot of
wickedness? The majority are too ignoble and a few are too good to know
anything of this pudendum: the latter may, consequently, be prompt to
deny that Prosper Mérimée is right when he says: "Know, also, that
nothing is more common than to do wrong for the pleasure of doing it."


51

=How Appearance Becomes Reality.=--The actor cannot, at last, refrain,
even in moments of the deepest pain, from thinking of the effect
produced by his deportment and by his surroundings--for example, even at
the funeral of his own child: he will weep at his own sorrow and its
manifestations as though he were his own audience. The hypocrite who
always plays one and the same part, finally ceases to be a hypocrite; as
in the case of priests who, when young men, are always, either
consciously or unconsciously, hypocrites, and finally become naturally
and then really, without affectation, mere priests: or if the father
does not carry it to this extent, the son, who inherits his father's
calling and gets the advantage of the paternal progress, does. When
anyone, during a long period, and persistently, wishes to appear
something, it will at last prove difficult for him to be anything else.
The calling of almost every man, even of the artist, begins with
hypocrisy, with an imitation of deportment, with a copying of the
effective in manner. He who always wears the mask of a friendly man must
at last gain a power over friendliness of disposition, without which the
expression itself of friendliness is not to be gained--and finally
friendliness of disposition gains the ascendancy over him--he _is_
benevolent.


52

=The Point of Honor in Deception.=--In all great deceivers one
characteristic is prominent, to which they owe their power. In the very
act of deception, amid all the accompaniments, the agitation in the
voice, the expression, the bearing, in the crisis of the scene, there
comes over them a belief in themselves; this it is that acts so
effectively and irresistibly upon the beholders. Founders of religions
differ from such great deceivers in that they never come out of this
state of self deception, or else they have, very rarely, a few moments
of enlightenment in which they are overcome by doubt; generally,
however, they soothe themselves by ascribing such moments of
enlightenment to the evil adversary. Self deception must exist that both
classes of deceivers may attain far reaching results. For men believe in
the truth of all that is manifestly believed with due implicitness by
others.


53

=Presumed Degrees of Truth.=--One of the most usual errors of deduction
is: because someone truly and openly is against us, therefore he speaks
the truth. Hence the child has faith in the judgments of its elders, the
Christian in the assertions of the founder of the church. So, too, it
will not be admitted that all for which men sacrificed life and
happiness in former centuries was nothing but delusion: perhaps it is
alleged these things were degrees of truth. But what is really meant is
that, if a person sincerely believes a thing and has fought and died for
his faith, it would be too _unjust_ if only delusion had inspired him.
Such a state of affairs seems to contradict eternal justice. For that
reason the heart of a sensitive man pronounces against his head the
judgment: between moral conduct and intellectual insight there must
always exist an inherent connection. It is, unfortunately, otherwise:
for there is no eternal justice.


54

=Falsehood.=--Why do men, as a rule, speak the truth in the ordinary
affairs of life? Certainly not for the reason that a god has forbidden
lying. But because first: it is more convenient, as falsehood entails
invention, make-believe and recollection (wherefore Swift says that
whoever invents a lie seldom realises the heavy burden he takes up: he
must, namely, for every lie that he tells, insert twenty more).
Therefore, because in plain ordinary relations of life it is expedient
to say without circumlocution: I want this, I have done this, and the
like; therefore, because the way of freedom and certainty is surer than
that of ruse.--But if it happens that a child is brought up in sinister
domestic circumstances, it will then indulge in falsehood as matter of
course, and involuntarily say anything its own interests may prompt: an
inclination for truth, an aversion to falsehood, is quite foreign and
uncongenial to it, and hence it lies in all innocence.


55

=Ethic Discredited for Faith's Sake.=--No power can sustain itself when
it is represented by mere humbugs: the Catholic Church may possess ever
so many "worldly" sources of strength, but its true might is comprised
in those still numberless priestly natures who make their lives stern
and strenuous and whose looks and emaciated bodies are eloquent of night
vigils, fasts, ardent prayer, perhaps even of whip lashes: these things
make men tremble and cause them anxiety: what, if it be really
imperative to live thus? This is the dreadful question which their
aspect occasions. As they spread this doubt, they lay anew the prop of
their power: even the free thinkers dare not oppose such
disinterestedness with severe truth and cry: "Thou deceived one,
deceive not!"--Only the difference of standpoint separates them from
him: no difference in goodness or badness. But things we cannot
accomplish ourselves, we are apt to criticise unfairly. Thus we are told
of the cunning and perverted acts of the Jesuits, but we overlook the
self mastery that each Jesuit imposes upon himself and also the fact
that the easy life which the Jesuit manuals advocate is for the benefit,
not of the Jesuits but the laity. Indeed, it may be questioned whether
we enlightened ones would become equally competent workers as the result
of similar tactics and organization, and equally worthy of admiration as
the result of self mastery, indefatigable industry and devotion.


56

=Victory of Knowledge over Radical Evil.=--It proves a material gain to
him who would attain knowledge to have had during a considerable period
the idea that mankind is a radically bad and perverted thing: it is a
false idea, as is its opposite, but it long held sway and its roots have
reached down even to ourselves and our present world. In order to
understand _ourselves_ we must understand _it_; but in order to attain a
loftier height we must step above it. We then perceive that there is no
such thing as sin in the metaphysical sense: but also, in the same
sense, no such thing as virtue; that this whole domain of ethical
notions is one of constant variation; that there are higher and deeper
conceptions of good and evil, moral and immoral. Whoever desires no more
of things than knowledge of them attains speedily to peace of mind and
will at most err through lack of knowledge, but scarcely through
eagerness for knowledge (or through sin, as the world calls it). He will
not ask that eagerness for knowledge be interdicted and rooted out; but
his single, all powerful ambition to _know_ as thoroughly and as fully
as possible, will soothe him and moderate all that is strenuous in his
circumstances. Moreover, he is now rid of a number of disturbing
notions; he is no longer beguiled by such words as hell-pain,
sinfulness, unworthiness: he sees in them merely the flitting shadow
pictures of false views of life and of the world.


57

=Ethic as Man's Self-Analysis.=--A good author, whose heart is really in
his work, wishes that someone would arise and wholly refute him if only
thereby his subject be wholly clarified and made plain. The maid in love
wishes that she could attest the fidelity of her own passion through
the faithlessness of her beloved. The soldier wishes to sacrifice his
life on the field of his fatherland's victory: for in the victory of his
fatherland his highest end is attained. The mother gives her child what
she deprives herself of--sleep, the best nourishment and, in certain
circumstances, her health, her self.--But are all these acts unegoistic?
Are these moral deeds miracles because they are, in Schopenhauer's
phrase "impossible and yet accomplished"? Is it not evident that in all
four cases man loves one part of himself, (a thought, a longing, an
experience) more than he loves another part of himself? that he thus
analyses his being and sacrifices one part of it to another part? Is
this essentially different from the behavior of the obstinate man who
says "I would rather be shot than go a step out of my way for this
fellow"?--Preference for something (wish, impulse, longing) is present
in all four instances: to yield to it, with all its consequences, is not
"unegoistic."--In the domain of the ethical man conducts himself not as
individuum but as dividuum.


58

=What Can be Promised.=--Actions can be promised, but not feelings, for
these are involuntary. Whoever promises somebody to love him always, or
to hate him always, or to be ever true to him, promises something that
it is out of his power to bestow. But he really can promise such courses
of conduct as are the ordinary accompaniments of love, of hate, of
fidelity, but which may also have their source in motives quite
different: for various ways and motives lead to the same conduct. The
promise to love someone always, means, consequently: as long as I love
you, I will manifest the deportment of love; but if I cease to love you
my deportment, although from some other motive, will be just the same,
so that to the people about us it will seem as if my love remained
unchanged.--Hence it is the continuance of the deportment of love that
is promised in every instance in which eternal love (provided no element
of self deception be involved) is sworn.


59

=Intellect and Ethic.=--One must have a good memory to be able to keep
the promises one makes. One must have a strong imagination in order to
feel sympathy. So closely is ethics connected with intellectual
capacity.


60

=Desire for Vengeance and Vengeance Itself.=--To meditate revenge and
attain it is tantamount to an attack of fever, that passes away: but to
meditate revenge without possessing the strength or courage to attain it
is tantamount to suffering from a chronic malady, or poisoning of body
and soul. Ethics, which takes only the motive into account, rates both
cases alike: people generally estimate the first case as the worst
(because of the consequences which the deed of vengeance may entail).
Both views are short sighted.


61

=Ability to Wait.=--Ability to wait is so hard to acquire that great
poets have not disdained to make inability to wait the central motive of
their poems. So Shakespeare in Othello, Sophocles in Ajax, whose suicide
would not have seemed to him so imperative had he only been able to cool
his ardor for a day, as the oracle foreboded: apparently he would then
have repulsed somewhat the fearful whispers of distracted thought and
have said to himself: Who has not already, in my situation, mistaken a
sheep for a hero? is it so extraordinary a thing? On the contrary it is
something universally human: Ajax should thus have soothed himself.
Passion will not wait: the tragic element in the lives of great men does
not generally consist in their conflict with time and the inferiority
of their fellowmen but in their inability to put off their work a year
or two: they cannot wait.--In all duels, the friends who advise have but
to ascertain if the principals can wait: if this be not possible, a duel
is rational inasmuch as each of the combatants may say: "either I
continue to live and the other dies instantly, or vice versa." To wait
in such circumstances would be equivalent to the frightful martyrdom of
enduring dishonor in the presence of him responsible for the dishonor:
and this can easily cost more anguish than life is worth.


62

=Glutting Revenge.=--Coarse men, who feel a sense of injury, are in the
habit of rating the extent of their injury as high as possible and of
stating the occasion of it in greatly exaggerated language, in order to
be able to feast themselves on the sentiments of hatred and revenge thus
aroused.


63

=Value of Disparagement.=--Not a few, perhaps the majority of men, find
it necessary, in order to retain their self esteem and a certain
uprightness in conduct, to mentally disparage and belittle all the
people they know. But as the inferior natures are in the majority and as
a great deal depends upon whether they retain or lose this uprightness,
so--


64

=The Man in a Rage.=--We should be on our guard against the man who is
enraged against us, as against one who has attempted our life, for the
fact that we still live consists solely in the inability to kill: were
looks sufficient, it would have been all up with us long since. To
reduce anyone to silence by physical manifestations of savagery or by a
terrorizing process is a relic of under civilization. So, too, that cold
look which great personages cast upon their servitors is a remnant of
the caste distinction between man and man; a specimen of rude antiquity:
women, the conservers of the old, have maintained this survival, too,
more perfectly than men.


65

=Whither Honesty May Lead.=--Someone once had the bad habit of
expressing himself upon occasion, and with perfect honesty, on the
subject of the motives of his conduct, which were as good or as bad as
the motives of all men. He aroused first disfavor, then suspicion,
became gradually of ill repute and was pronounced a person of whom
society should beware, until at last the law took note of such a
perverted being for reasons which usually have no weight with it or to
which it closes its eyes. Lack of taciturnity concerning what is
universally held secret, and an irresponsible predisposition to see what
no one wants to see--oneself--brought him to prison and to early death.


66

=Punishable, not Punished.=--Our crime against criminals consists in the
fact that we treat them as rascals.


67

=Sancta simplicitas of Virtue.=--Every virtue has its privilege: for
example, that of contributing its own little bundle of wood to the
funeral pyre of one condemned.


68

=Morality and Consequence.=--Not alone the beholders of an act generally
estimate the ethical or unethical element in it by the result: no, the
one who performed the act does the same. For the motives and the
intentions are seldom sufficiently apparent, and amid them the memory
itself seems to become clouded by the results of the act, so that a man
often ascribes the wrong motives to his acts or regards the remote
motives as the direct ones. Success often imparts to an action all the
brilliance and honor of good intention, while failure throws the shadow
of conscience over the most estimable deeds. Hence arises the familiar
maxim of the politician: "Give me only success: with it I can win all
the noble souls over to my side--and make myself noble even in my own
eyes."--In like manner will success prove an excellent substitute for a
better argument. To this very day many well educated men think the
triumph of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior
truth of the former--although in this case it was simply the coarser and
more powerful that triumphed over the more delicate and intellectual. As
regards superiority of truth, it is evident that because of it the
reviving sciences have connected themselves, point for point, with the
philosophy of Epicurus, while Christianity has, point for point,
recoiled from it.


69

=Love and Justice.=--Why is love so highly prized at the expense of
justice and why are such beautiful things spoken of the former as if it
were a far higher entity than the latter? Is the former not palpably a
far more stupid thing than the latter?--Certainly, and on that very
account so much the more agreeable to everybody: it is blind and has a
rich horn of plenty out of which it distributes its gifts to everyone,
even when they are unmerited, even when no thanks are returned. It is
impartial like the rain, which according to the bible and experience,
wets not alone the unjust but, in certain circumstances, the just as
well, and to their skins at that.


70

=Execution.=--How comes it that every execution causes us more pain than
a murder? It is the coolness of the executioner, the painful
preparation, the perception that here a man is being used as an
instrument for the intimidation of others. For the guilt is not punished
even if there be any: this is ascribable to the teachers, the parents,
the environment, in ourselves, not in the murderer--I mean the
predisposing circumstances.


71

=Hope.=--Pandora brought the box containing evils and opened it. It was
the gift of the gods to men, a gift of most enticing appearance
externally and called the "box of happiness." Thereupon all the evils,
(living, moving things) flew out: from that time to the present they fly
about and do ill to men by day and night. One evil only did not fly out
of the box: Pandora shut the lid at the behest of Zeus and it remained
inside. Now man has this box of happiness perpetually in the house and
congratulates himself upon the treasure inside of it; it is at his
service: he grasps it whenever he is so disposed, for he knows not that
the box which Pandora brought was a box of evils. Hence he looks upon
the one evil still remaining as the greatest source of happiness--it is
hope.--Zeus intended that man, notwithstanding the evils oppressing him,
should continue to live and not rid himself of life, but keep on making
himself miserable. For this purpose he bestowed hope upon man: it is, in
truth, the greatest of evils for it lengthens the ordeal of man.


72

=Degree of Moral Susceptibility Unknown.=--The fact that one has or has
not had certain profoundly moving impressions and insights into
things--for example, an unjustly executed, slain or martyred father, a
faithless wife, a shattering, serious accident,--is the factor upon
which the excitation of our passions to white heat principally depends,
as well as the course of our whole lives. No one knows to what lengths
circumstances (sympathy, emotion) may lead him. He does not know the
full extent of his own susceptibility. Wretched environment makes him
wretched. It is as a rule not the quality of our experience but its
quantity upon which depends the development of our superiority or
inferiority, from the point of view of good and evil.


73

=The Martyr Against His Will.=--In a certain movement there was a man
who was too cowardly and vacillating ever to contradict his comrades. He
was made use of in each emergency, every sacrifice was demanded of him
because he feared the disfavor of his comrades more than he feared
death: he was a petty, abject spirit. They perceived this and upon the
foundation of the qualities just mentioned they elevated him to the
altitude of a hero, and finally even of a martyr. Although the cowardly
creature always inwardly said No, he always said Yes with his lips, even
upon the scaffold, where he died for the tenets of his party: for beside
him stood one of his old associates who so domineered him with look and
word that he actually went to his death with the utmost fortitude and
has ever since been celebrated as a martyr and exalted character.


74

=General Standard.=--One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed
to vanity, ordinary actions to habit and mean actions to fear.


75

=Misunderstanding of Virtue.=--Whoever has obtained his experience of
vice in connection with pleasure as in the case of one with a youth of
wild oats behind him, comes to the conclusion that virtue must be
connected with self denial. Whoever, on the other hand, has been very
much plagued by his passions and vices, longs to find in virtue the rest
and peace of the soul. That is why it is possible for two virtuous
people to misunderstand one another wholly.


76

=The Ascetic.=--The ascetic makes out of virtue a slavery.


77

=Honor Transferred from Persons to Things.=--Actions prompted by love or
by the spirit of self sacrifice for others are universally honored
wherever they are manifest. Hence is magnified the value set upon
whatever things may be loved or whatever things conduce to self
sacrifice: although in themselves they may be worth nothing much. A
valiant army is evidence of the value of the thing it fights for.


78

=Ambition a Substitute for Moral Feeling.=--Moral feeling should never
become extinct in natures that are destitute of ambition. The ambitious
can get along without moral feeling just as well as with it.--Hence the
sons of retired, ambitionless families, generally become by a series of
rapid gradations, when they lose moral feeling, the most absolute
lunkheads.


79

=Vanity Enriches.=--How poor the human mind would be without vanity! As
it is, it resembles a well stacked and ever renewed ware-emporium that
attracts buyers of every class: they can find almost everything, have
almost everything, provided they bring with them the right kind of
money--admiration.


80

=Senility and Death.=--Apart from the demands made by religion, it may
well be asked why it is more honorable in an aged man, who feels the
decline of his powers, to await slow extinction than to fix a term to
his existence himself? Suicide in such a case is a quite natural and due
proceeding that ought to command respect as a triumph of reason: and did
in fact command respect during the times of the masters of Greek
philosophy and the bravest Roman patriots, who usually died by their own
hand. Eagerness, on the other hand, to keep alive from day to day with
the anxious counsel of physicians, without capacity to attain any nearer
to one's ideal of life, is far less worthy of respect.--Religions are
very rich in refuges from the mandate of suicide: hence they ingratiate
themselves with those who cling to life.


81

=Delusions Regarding Victim and Regarding Evil Doer.=--When the rich man
takes a possession away from the poor man (for example, a prince who
deprives a plebeian of his beloved) there arises in the mind of the poor
man a delusion: he thinks the rich man must be wholly perverted to take
from him the little that he has. But the rich man appreciates the value
of a single possession much less because he is accustomed to many
possessions, so that he cannot put himself in the place of the poor man
and does not act by any means as ill as the latter supposes. Both have a
totally false idea of each other. The iniquities of the mighty which
bulk most largely in history are not nearly so monstrous as they seem.
The hereditary consciousness of being a superior being with superior
environment renders one very callous and lulls the conscience to rest.
We all feel, when the difference between ourselves and some other being
is exceedingly great, that no element of injustice can be involved, and
we kill a fly with no qualms of conscience whatever. So, too, it is no
indication of wickedness in Xerxes (whom even the Greeks represent as
exceptionally noble) that he deprived a father of his son and had him
drawn and quartered because the latter had manifested a troublesome,
ominous distrust of an entire expedition: the individual was in this
case brushed aside as a pestiferous insect. He was too low and mean to
justify continued sentiments of compunction in the ruler of the world.
Indeed no cruel man is ever as cruel, in the main, as his victim thinks.
The idea of pain is never the same as the sensation. The rule is
precisely analogous in the case of the unjust judge, and of the
journalist who by means of devious rhetorical methods, leads public
opinion astray. Cause and effect are in all these instances entwined
with totally different series of feeling and thoughts, whereas it is
unconsciously assumed that principal and victim feel and think exactly
alike, and because of this assumption the guilt of the one is based upon
the pain of the other.


82

=The Soul's Skin.=--As the bones, flesh, entrails and blood vessels are
enclosed by a skin that renders the aspect of men endurable, so the
impulses and passions of the soul are enclosed by vanity: it is the skin
of the soul.


83

=Sleep of Virtue.=--If virtue goes to sleep, it will be more vigorous
when it awakes.


84

=Subtlety of Shame.=--Men are not ashamed of obscene thoughts, but they
are ashamed when they suspect that obscene thoughts are attributed to
them.


85

=Naughtiness Is Rare.=--Most people are too much absorbed in themselves
to be bad.


86

=The Mite in the Balance.=--We are praised or blamed, as the one or the
other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of
discernment.


87

=Luke 18:14 Improved.=--He that humbleth himself wisheth to be exalted.


88

=Prevention of Suicide.=--There is a justice according to which we may
deprive a man of life, but none that permits us to deprive him of death:
this is merely cruelty.


89

=Vanity.=--We set store by the good opinion of men, first because it is
of use to us and next because we wish to give them pleasure (children
their parents, pupils their teacher, and well disposed persons all
others generally). Only when the good opinion of men is important to
somebody, apart from personal advantage or the desire to give pleasure,
do we speak of vanity. In this last case, a man wants to give himself
pleasure, but at the expense of his fellow creatures, inasmuch as he
inspires them with a false opinion of himself or else inspires "good
opinion" in such a way that it is a source of pain to others (by
arousing envy). The individual generally seeks, through the opinion of
others, to attest and fortify the opinion he has of himself; but the
potent influence of authority--an influence as old as man himself--leads
many, also, to strengthen their own opinion of themselves by means of
authority, that is, to borrow from others the expedient of relying more
upon the judgment of their fellow men than upon their own.--Interest in
oneself, the wish to please oneself attains, with the vain man, such
proportions that he first misleads others into a false, unduly exalted
estimate of himself and then relies upon the authority of others for his
self estimate; he thus creates the delusion that he pins his faith
to.--It must, however, be admitted that the vain man does not desire to
please others so much as himself and he will often go so far, on this
account, as to overlook his own interests: for he often inspires his
fellow creatures with malicious envy and renders them ill disposed in
order that he may thus increase his own delight in himself.


90

=Limits of the Love of Mankind.=--Every man who has declared that some
other man is an ass or a scoundrel, gets angry when the other man
conclusively shows that the assertion was erroneous.


91

=Weeping Morality.=--How much delight morality occasions! Think of the
ocean of pleasing tears that has flowed from the narration of noble,
great-hearted deeds!--This charm of life would disappear if the belief
in complete irresponsibility gained the upper hand.


92

=Origin of Justice.=--Justice (reasonableness) has its origin among
approximate equals in power, as Thucydides (in the dreadful conferences
of the Athenian and Melian envoys) has rightly conceived. Thus, where
there exists no demonstrable supremacy and a struggle leads but to
mutual, useless damage, the reflection arises that an understanding
would best be arrived at and some compromise entered into. The
reciprocal nature is hence the first nature of justice. Each party makes
the other content inasmuch as each receives what it prizes more highly
than the other. Each surrenders to the other what the other wants and
receives in return its own desire. Justice is therefore reprisal and
exchange upon the basis of an approximate equality of power. Thus
revenge pertains originally to the domain of justice as it is a sort of
reciprocity. Equally so, gratitude.--Justice reverts naturally to the
standpoint of self preservation, therefore to the egoism of this
consideration: "why should I injure myself to no purpose and perhaps
never attain my end?"--So much for the origin of justice. Only because
men, through mental habits, have forgotten the original motive of so
called just and rational acts, and also because for thousands of years
children have been brought to admire and imitate such acts, have they
gradually assumed the appearance of being unegotistical. Upon this
appearance is founded the high estimate of them, which, moreover, like
all estimates, is continually developing, for whatever is highly
esteemed is striven for, imitated, made the object of self sacrifice,
while the merit of the pain and emulation thus expended is, by each
individual, ascribed to the thing esteemed.--How slightly moral would
the world appear without forgetfulness! A poet could say that God had
posted forgetfulness as a sentinel at the portal of the temple of human
merit!


93

=Concerning the Law of the Weaker.=--Whenever any party, for instance, a
besieged city, yields to a stronger party, under stipulated conditions,
the counter stipulation is that there be a reduction to insignificance,
a burning and destruction of the city and thus a great damage inflicted
upon the stronger party. Thus arises a sort of equalization principle
upon the basis of which a law can be established. The enemy has an
advantage to gain by its maintenance.--To this extent there is also a
law between slaves and masters, limited only by the extent to which the
slave may be useful to his master. The law goes originally only so far
as the one party may appear to the other potent, invincible, stable, and
the like. To such an extent, then, the weaker has rights, but very
limited ones. Hence the famous dictum that each has as much law on his
side as his power extends (or more accurately, as his power is believed
to extend).


94

=The Three Phases of Morality Hitherto.=--It is the first evidence that
the animal has become human when his conduct ceases to be based upon the
immediately expedient, but upon the permanently useful; when he has,
therefore, grown utilitarian, capable of purpose. Thus is manifested the
first rule of reason. A still higher stage is attained when he regulates
his conduct upon the basis of honor, by means of which he gains mastery
of himself and surrenders his desires to principles; this lifts him far
above the phase in which he was actuated only by considerations of
personal advantage as he understood it. He respects and wishes to be
respected. This means that he comprehends utility as a thing dependent
upon what his opinion of others is and their opinion of him. Finally he
regulates his conduct (the highest phase of morality hitherto attained)
by his own standard of men and things. He himself decides, for himself
and for others, what is honorable and what is useful. He has become a
law giver to opinion, upon the basis of his ever higher developing
conception of the utilitarian and the honorable. Knowledge makes him
capable of placing the highest utility, (that is, the universal,
enduring utility) before merely personal utility,--of placing ennobling
recognition of the enduring and universal before the merely temporary:
he lives and acts as a collective individuality.


95

=Ethic of the Developed Individual.=--Hitherto the altruistic has been
looked upon as the distinctive characteristic of moral conduct, and it
is manifest that it was the consideration of universal utility that
prompted praise and recognition of altruistic conduct. Must not a
radical departure from this point of view be imminent, now that it is
being ever more clearly perceived that in the most personal
considerations the most general welfare is attained: so that conduct
inspired by the most personal considerations of advantage is just the
sort which has its origin in the present conception of morality (as a
universal utilitarianism)? To contemplate oneself as a complete
personality and bear the welfare of that personality in mind in all that
one does--this is productive of better results than any sympathetic
susceptibility and conduct in behalf of others. Indeed we all suffer
from such disparagement of our own personalities, which are at present
made to deteriorate from neglect. Capacity is, in fact, divorced from
our personality in most cases, and sacrificed to the state, to science,
to the needy, as if it were the bad which deserved to be made a
sacrifice. Now, we are willing to labor for our fellowmen but only to
the extent that we find our own highest advantage in so doing, no more,
no less. The whole matter depends upon what may be understood as one's
advantage: the crude, undeveloped, rough individualities will be the
very ones to estimate it most inadequately.


96

=Usage and Ethic.=--To be moral, virtuous, praiseworthy means to yield
obedience to ancient law and hereditary usage. Whether this obedience be
rendered readily or with difficulty is long immaterial. Enough that it
be rendered. "Good" finally comes to mean him who acts in the
traditional manner, as a result of heredity or natural disposition, that
is to say does what is customary with scarcely an effort, whatever that
may be (for example revenges injuries when revenge, as with the ancient
Greeks, was part of good morals). He is called good because he is good
"to some purpose," and as benevolence, sympathy, considerateness,
moderation and the like come, in the general course of conduct, to be
finally recognized as "good to some purpose" (as utilitarian) the
benevolent man, the helpful man, is duly styled "good". (At first other
and more important kinds of utilitarian qualities stand in the
foreground.) Bad is "not habitual" (unusual), to do things not in
accordance with usage, to oppose the traditional, however rational or
the reverse the traditional may be. To do injury to one's social group
or community (and to one's neighbor as thus understood) is looked upon,
through all the variations of moral laws, in different ages, as the
peculiarly "immoral" act, so that to-day we associate the word "bad"
with deliberate injury to one's neighbor or community. "Egoistic" and
"non-egoistic" do not constitute the fundamental opposites that have
brought mankind to make a distinction between moral and immoral, good
and bad; but adherence to traditional custom, and emancipation from it.
How the traditional had its origin is quite immaterial; in any event it
had no reference to good and bad or any categorical imperative but to
the all important end of maintaining and sustaining the community, the
race, the confederation, the nation. Every superstitious custom that
originated in a misinterpreted event or casualty entailed some
tradition, to adhere to which is moral. To break loose from it is
dangerous, more prejudicial to the community than to the individual
(because divinity visits the consequences of impiety and sacrilege upon
the community rather than upon the individual). Now every tradition
grows ever more venerable--the more remote is its origin, the more
confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from
generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and
inspires awe. Thus it is that the precept of piety is a far loftier
morality than that inculcated by altruistic conduct.


97

=Delight in the Moral.=--A potent species of joy (and thereby the source
of morality) is custom. The customary is done more easily, better,
therefore preferably. A pleasure is felt in it and experience thus shows
that since this practice has held its own it must be good. A manner or
moral that lives and lets live is thus demonstrated advantageous,
necessary, in contradistinction to all new and not yet adopted
practices. The custom is therefore the blending of the agreeable and the
useful. Moreover it does not require deliberation. As soon as man can
exercise compulsion, he exercises it to enforce and establish his
customs, for they are to him attested lifewisdom. So, too, a community
of individuals constrains each one of their number to adopt the same
moral or custom. The error herein is this: Because a certain custom has
been agreeable to the feelings or at least because it proves a means of
maintenance, this custom must be imperative, for it is regarded as the
only thing that can possibly be consistent with well being. The well
being of life seems to spring from it alone. This conception of the
customary as a condition of existence is carried into the slightest
detail of morality. Inasmuch as insight into true causation is quite
restricted in all inferior peoples, a superstitious anxiety is felt that
everything be done in due routine. Even when a custom is exceedingly
burdensome it is preserved because of its supposed vital utility. It is
not known that the same degree of satisfaction can be experienced
through some other custom and even higher degrees of satisfaction, too.
But it is fully appreciated that all customs do become more agreeable
with the lapse of time, no matter how difficult they may have been found
in the beginning, and that even the severest way of life may be rendered
a matter of habit and therefore a pleasure.


98

=Pleasure and Social Instinct.=--Through his relations with other men,
man derives a new species of delight in those pleasurable emotions which
his own personality affords him; whereby the domain of pleasurable
emotions is made infinitely more comprehensive. No doubt he has
inherited many of these feelings from the brutes, which palpably feel
delight when they sport with one another, as mothers with their young.
So, too, the sexual relations must be taken into account: they make
every young woman interesting to every young man from the standpoint of
pleasure, and conversely. The feeling of pleasure originating in human
relationships makes men in general better. The delight in common, the
pleasures enjoyed together heighten one another. The individual feels a
sense of security. He becomes better natured. Distrust and malice
dissolve. For the man feels the sense of benefit and observes the same
feeling in others. Mutual manifestations of pleasure inspire mutual
sympathy, the sentiment of homogeneity. The same effect is felt also at
mutual sufferings, in a common danger, in stormy weather. Upon such a
foundation are built the earliest alliances: the object of which is the
mutual protection and safety from threatening misfortunes, and the
welfare of each individual. And thus the social instinct develops from
pleasure.


99

=The Guiltless Nature of So-Called Bad Acts.=--All "bad" acts are
inspired by the impulse to self preservation or, more accurately, by
the desire for pleasure and for the avoidance of pain in the individual.
Thus are they occasioned, but they are not, therefore, bad. "Pain self
prepared" does not exist, except in the brains of the philosophers, any
more than "pleasure self prepared" (sympathy in the Schopenhauer sense).
In the condition anterior to the state we kill the creature, be it man
or ape, that attempts to pluck the fruit of a tree before we pluck it
ourselves should we happen to be hungry at the time and making for that
tree: as we would do to-day, so far as the brute is concerned, if we
were wandering in savage regions.--The bad acts which most disturb us at
present do so because of the erroneous supposition that the one who is
guilty of them towards us has a free will in the matter and that it was
within his discretion not to have done these evil things. This belief in
discretionary power inspires hate, thirst for revenge, malice, the
entire perversion of the mental processes, whereas we would feel in no
way incensed against the brute, as we hold it irresponsible. To inflict
pain not from the instinct of self preservation but in requital--this is
the consequence of false judgment and is equally a guiltless course of
conduct. The individual can, in that condition which is anterior to the
state, act with fierceness and violence for the intimidation of another
creature, in order to render his own power more secure as a result of
such acts of intimidation. Thus acts the powerful, the superior, the
original state founder, who subjugates the weaker. He has the right to
do so, as the state nowadays assumes the same right, or, to be more
accurate, there is no right that can conflict with this. A foundation
for all morality can first be laid only when a stronger individuality or
a collective individuality, for example society, the state, subjects the
single personalities, hence builds upon their unification and
establishes a bond of union. Morality results from compulsion, it is
indeed itself one long compulsion to which obedience is rendered in
order that pain may be avoided. At first it is but custom, later free
obedience and finally almost instinct. At last it is (like everything
habitual and natural) associated with pleasure--and is then called
virtue.


100

=Shame.=--Shame exists wherever a "mystery" exists: but this is a
religious notion which in the earlier period of human civilization had
great vogue. Everywhere there were circumscribed spots to which access
was denied on account of some divine law, except in special
circumstances. At first these spots were quite extensive, inasmuch as
stipulated areas could not be trod by the uninitiated, who, when near
them, felt tremors and anxieties. This sentiment was frequently
transferred to other relationships, for example to sexual relations,
which, as the privilege and gateway of mature age, must be withdrawn
from the contemplation of youth for its own advantage: relations which
many divinities were busy in preserving and sanctifying, images of which
divinities were duly placed in marital chambers as guardians. (In
Turkish such an apartment is termed a harem or holy thing, the same word
also designating the vestibule of a mosque). So, too, Kingship is
regarded as a centre from which power and brilliance stream forth, as a
mystery to the subjects, impregnated with secrecy and shame, sentiments
still quite operative among peoples who in other respects are without
any shame at all. So, too, is the whole world of inward states, the
so-called "soul," even now, for all non-philosophical persons, a
"mystery," and during countless ages it was looked upon as a something
of divine origin, in direct communion with deity. It is, therefore, an
adytum and occasions shame.


101

=Judge Not.=--Care must be taken, in the contemplation of earlier ages,
that there be no falling into unjust scornfulness. The injustice in
slavery, the cruelty in the subjugation of persons and peoples must not
be estimated by our standard. For in that period the instinct of justice
was not so highly developed. Who dare reproach the Genoese Calvin for
burning the physician Servetus at the stake? It was a proceeding growing
out of his convictions. And the Inquisition, too, had its justification.
The only thing is that the prevailing views were false and led to those
proceedings which seem so cruel to us, simply because such views have
become foreign to us. Besides, what is the burning alive of one
individual compared with eternal hell pains for everybody else? And yet
this idea then had hold of all the world without in the least vitiating,
with its frightfulness, the other idea of a god. Even we nowadays are
hard and merciless to political revolutionists, but that is because we
are in the habit of believing the state a necessity, and hence the
cruelty of the proceeding is not so much understood as in the other
cases where the points of view are repudiated. The cruelty to animals
shown by children and Italians is due to the same misunderstanding. The
animal, owing to the exigencies of the church catechism, is placed too
far below the level of mankind.--Much, too, that is frightful and
inhuman in history, and which is almost incredible, is rendered less
atrocious by the reflection that the one who commands and the one who
executes are different persons. The former does not witness the
performance and hence it makes no strong impression on him. The latter
obeys a superior and hence feels no responsibility. Most princes and
military chieftains appear, through lack of true perception, cruel and
hard without really being so.--Egoism is not bad because the idea of the
"neighbor"--the word is of Christian origin and does not correspond to
truth--is very weak in us, and we feel ourselves, in regard to him, as
free from responsibility as if plants and stones were involved. That
another is in suffering must be learned and it can never be wholly
learned.


102

"=Man Always Does Right.="--We do not blame nature when she sends a
thunder storm and makes us wet: why then do we term the man who inflicts
injury immoral? Because in the latter case we assume a voluntary,
ruling, free will, and in the former necessity. But this distinction is
a delusion. Moreover, even the intentional infliction of injury is not,
in all circumstances termed immoral. Thus, we kill a fly intentionally
without thinking very much about it, simply because its buzzing about is
disagreeable; and we punish a criminal and inflict pain upon him in
order to protect ourselves and society. In the first case it is the
individual who, for the sake of preserving himself or in order to spare
himself pain, does injury with design: in the second case, it is the
state. All ethic deems intentional infliction of injury justified by
necessity; that is when it is a matter of self preservation. But these
two points of view are sufficient to explain all bad acts done by man to
men. It is desired to obtain pleasure or avoid pain. In any sense, it is
a question, always, of self preservation. Socrates and Plato are right:
whatever man does he always does right: that is, does what seems to him
good (advantageous) according to the degree of advancement his intellect
has attained, which is always the measure of his rational capacity.


103

=The Inoffensive in Badness.=--Badness has not for its object the
infliction of pain upon others but simply our own satisfaction as, for
instance, in the case of thirst for vengeance or of nerve excitation.
Every act of teasing shows what pleasure is caused by the display of
our power over others and what feelings of delight are experienced in
the sense of domination. Is there, then, anything immoral in feeling
pleasure in the pain of others? Is malicious joy devilish, as
Schopenhauer says? In the realm of nature we feel joy in breaking
boughs, shattering rocks, fighting with wild beasts, simply to attest
our strength thereby. Should not the knowledge that another suffers on
our account here, in this case, make the same kind of act, (which, by
the way, arouses no qualms of conscience in us) immoral also? But if we
had not this knowledge there would be no pleasure in one's own
superiority or power, for this pleasure is experienced only in the
suffering of another, as in the case of teasing. All pleasure is, in
itself, neither good nor bad. Whence comes the conviction that one
should not cause pain in others in order to feel pleasure oneself?
Simply from the standpoint of utility, that is, in consideration of the
consequences, of ultimate pain, since the injured party or state will
demand satisfaction and revenge. This consideration alone can have led
to the determination to renounce such pleasure.--Sympathy has the
satisfaction of others in view no more than, as already stated, badness
has the pain of others in view. For there are at least two (perhaps many
more) elementary ingredients in personal gratification which enter
largely into our self satisfaction: one of them being the pleasure of
the emotion, of which species is sympathy with tragedy, and another,
when the impulse is to action, being the pleasure of exercising one's
power. Should a sufferer be very dear to us, we divest ourselves of pain
by the performance of acts of sympathy.--With the exception of some few
philosophers, men have placed sympathy very low in the rank of moral
feelings: and rightly.


104

=Self Defence.=--If self defence is in general held a valid
justification, then nearly every manifestation of so called immoral
egoism must be justified, too. Pain is inflicted, robbery or killing
done in order to maintain life or to protect oneself and ward off harm.
A man lies when cunning and delusion are valid means of self
preservation. To injure intentionally when our safety and our existence
are involved, or the continuance of our well being, is conceded to be
moral. The state itself injures from this motive when it hangs
criminals. In unintentional injury the immoral, of course, can not be
present, as accident alone is involved. But is there any sort of
intentional injury in which our existence and the maintenance of our
well being be not involved? Is there such a thing as injuring from
absolute badness, for example, in the case of cruelty? If a man does not
know what pain an act occasions, that act is not one of wickedness. Thus
the child is not bad to the animal, not evil. It disturbs and rends it
as if it were one of its playthings. Does a man ever fully know how much
pain an act may cause another? As far as our nervous system extends, we
shield ourselves from pain. If it extended further, that is, to our
fellow men, we would never cause anyone else any pain (except in such
cases as we cause it to ourselves, when we cut ourselves, surgically, to
heal our ills, or strive and trouble ourselves to gain health). We
conclude from analogy that something pains somebody and can in
consequence, through recollection and the power of imagination, feel
pain also. But what a difference there always is between the tooth ache
and the pain (sympathy) that the spectacle of tooth ache occasions!
Therefore when injury is inflicted from so called badness the degree of
pain thereby experienced is always unknown to us: in so far, however, as
pleasure is felt in the act (a sense of one's own power, of one's own
excitation) the act is committed to maintain the well being of the
individual and hence comes under the purview of self defence and lying
for self preservation. Without pleasure, there is no life; the struggle
for pleasure is the struggle for life. Whether the individual shall
carry on this struggle in such a way that he be called good or in such a
way that he be called bad is something that the standard and the
capacity of his own intellect must determine for him.


105

=Justice that Rewards.=--Whoever has fully understood the doctrine of
absolute irresponsibility can no longer include the so called rewarding
and punishing justice in the idea of justice, if the latter be taken to
mean that to each be given his due. For he who is punished does not
deserve the punishment. He is used simply as a means to intimidate
others from certain acts. Equally, he who is rewarded does not merit the
reward. He could not act any differently than he did act. Hence the
reward has only the significance of an encouragement to him and others
as a motive for subsequent acts. The praise is called out only to him
who is running in the race and not to him who has arrived at the goal.
Something that comes to someone as his own is neither a punishment nor a
reward. It is given to him from utiliarian considerations, without his
having any claim to it in justice. Hence one must say "the wise man
praises not because a good act has been done" precisely as was once
said: "the wise man punishes not because a bad act has been done but in
order that a bad act may not be done." If punishment and reward ceased,
there would cease with them the most powerful incentives to certain acts
and away from other acts. The purposes of men demand their continuance
[of punishment and reward] and inasmuch as punishment and reward, blame
and praise operate most potently upon vanity, these same purposes of men
imperatively require the continuance of vanity.


106

=The Water Fall.=--At the sight of a water fall we may opine that in the
countless curves, spirations and dashes of the waves we behold freedom
of the will and of the impulses. But everything is compulsory,
everything can be mathematically calculated. Thus it is, too, with human
acts. We would be able to calculate in advance every single action if we
were all knowing, as well as every advance in knowledge, every delusion,
every bad deed. The acting individual himself is held fast in the
illusion of volition. If, on a sudden, the entire movement of the world
stopped short, and an all knowing and reasoning intelligence were there
to take advantage of this pause, he could foretell the future of every
being to the remotest ages and indicate the path that would be taken in
the world's further course. The deception of the acting individual as
regards himself, the assumption of the freedom of the will, is a part of
this computable mechanism.


107

=Non-Responsibility and Non-Guilt.=--The absolute irresponsibility of
man for his acts and his nature is the bitterest drop in the cup of him
who has knowledge, if he be accustomed to behold in responsibility and
duty the patent of nobility of his human nature. All his estimates,
preferences, dislikes are thus made worthless and false. His deepest
sentiment, with which he honored the sufferer, the hero, sprang from an
error. He may no longer praise, no longer blame, for it is irrational to
blame and praise nature and necessity. Just as he cherishes the
beautiful work of art, but does not praise it (as it is incapable of
doing anything for itself), just as he stands in the presence of plants,
he must stand in the presence of human conduct, his own included. He may
admire strength, beauty, capacity, therein, but he can discern no merit.
The chemical process and the conflict of the elements, the ordeal of
the invalid who strives for convalescence, are no more merits than the
soul-struggles and extremities in which one is torn this way and that by
contending motives until one finally decides in favor of the
strongest--as the phrase has it, although, in fact, it is the strongest
motive that decides for us. All these motives, however, whatever fine
names we may give them, have grown from the same roots in which we
believe the baneful poisons lurk. Between good and bad actions there is
no difference in kind but, at most, in degree. Good acts are sublimated
evil. Bad acts are degraded, imbruted good. The very longing of the
individual for self gratification (together with the fear of being
deprived of it) obtains satisfaction in all circumstances, let the
individual act as he may, that is, as he must: be it in deeds of vanity,
revenge, pleasure, utility, badness, cunning, be it in deeds of self
sacrifice, sympathy or knowledge. The degrees of rational capacity
determine the direction in which this longing impels: every society,
every individual has constantly present a comparative classification of
benefits in accordance with which conduct is determined and others are
judged. But this standard perpetually changes. Many acts are called bad
that are only stupid, because the degree of intelligence that decided
for them was low. Indeed, in a certain sense, all acts now are stupid,
for the highest degree of human intelligence that has yet been attained
will in time most certainly be surpassed and then, in retrospection, all
our present conduct and opinion will appear as narrow and petty as we
now deem the conduct and opinion of savage peoples and ages.--To
perceive all these things may occasion profound pain but there is,
nevertheless, a consolation. Such pains are birth pains. The butterfly
insists upon breaking through the cocoon, he presses through it, tears
it to pieces, only to be blinded and confused by the strange light, by
the realm of liberty. By such men as are capable of this sadness--how
few there are!--will the first attempt be made to see if humanity may
convert itself from a thing of morality to a thing of wisdom. The sun of
a new gospel sheds its first ray upon the loftiest height in the souls
of those few: but the clouds are massed there, too, thicker than ever,
and not far apart are the brightest sunlight and the deepest gloom.
Everything is necessity--so says the new knowledge: and this knowledge
is itself necessity. All is guiltlessness, and knowledge is the way to
insight into this guiltlessness. If pleasure, egoism, vanity be
necessary to attest the moral phenomena and their richest blooms, the
instinct for truth and accuracy of knowledge; if delusion and confusion
of the imagination were the only means whereby mankind could gradually
lift itself up to this degree of self enlightenment and self
emancipation--who would venture to disparage the means? Who would have
the right to feel sad if made aware of the goal to which those paths
lead? Everything in the domain of ethic is evolved, changeable,
tottering; all things flow, it is true--but all things are also in the
stream: to their goal. Though within us the hereditary habit of
erroneous judgment, love, hate, may be ever dominant, yet under the
influence of awaking knowledge it will ever become weaker: a new habit,
that of understanding, not-loving, not-hating, looking from above, grows
up within us gradually and in the same soil, and may, perhaps, in
thousands of years be powerful enough to endow mankind with capacity to
develop the wise, guiltless man (conscious of guiltlessness) as
unfailingly as it now developes the unwise, irrational, guilt-conscious
man--that is to say, the necessary higher step, not the opposite of it.




THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.


108

=The Double Contest Against Evil.=--If an evil afflicts us we can either
so deal with it as to remove its cause or else so deal with it that its
effect upon our feeling is changed: hence look upon the evil as a
benefit of which the uses will perhaps first become evident in some
subsequent period. Religion and art (and also the metaphysical
philosophy) strive to effect an alteration of the feeling, partly by an
alteration of our judgment respecting the experience (for example, with
the aid of the dictum "whom God loves, he chastizes") partly by the
awakening of a joy in pain, in emotion especially (whence the art of
tragedy had its origin). The more one is disposed to interpret away and
justify, the less likely he is to look directly at the causes of evil
and eliminate them. An instant alleviation and narcotizing of pain, as
is usual in the case of tooth ache, is sufficient for him even in the
severest suffering. The more the domination of religions and of all
narcotic arts declines, the more searchingly do men look to the
elimination of evil itself, which is a rather bad thing for the tragic
poets--for there is ever less and less material for tragedy, since the
domain of unsparing, immutable destiny grows constantly more
circumscribed--and a still worse thing for the priests, for these last
have lived heretofore upon the narcoticizing of human ill.


109

=Sorrow is Knowledge.=--How willingly would not one exchange the false
assertions of the homines religiosi that there is a god who commands us
to be good, who is the sentinel and witness of every act, every moment,
every thought, who loves us, who plans our welfare in every
misfortune--how willingly would not one exchange these for truths as
healing, beneficial and grateful as those delusions! But there are no
such truths. Philosophy can at most set up in opposition to them other
metaphysical plausibilities (fundamental untruths as well). The tragedy
of it all is that, although one cannot believe these dogmas of religion
and metaphysics if one adopts in heart and head the potent methods of
truth, one has yet become, through human evolution, so tender,
susceptible, sensitive, as to stand in need of the most effective means
of rest and consolation. From this state of things arises the danger
that, through the perception of truth or, more accurately, seeing
through delusion, one may bleed to death. Byron has put this into
deathless verse:

     "Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
     Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
     The tree of knowledge is not that of life."

Against such cares there is no better protective than the light fancy of
Horace, (at any rate during the darkest hours and sun eclipses of the
soul) expressed in the words

     "quid aeternis minorem
     consiliis animum fatigas?
     cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac
     pinu jacentes."[22]

[22] Then wherefore should you, who are mortal, outwear
     Your soul with a profitless burden of care
     Say, why should we not, flung at ease neath this pine,
     Or a plane-tree's broad umbrage, quaff gaily our wine?
                      (Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.)

At any rate, light fancy or heavy heartedness of any degree must be
better than a romantic retrogression and desertion of one's flag, an
approach to Christianity in any form: for with it, in the present state
of knowledge, one can have nothing to do without hopelessly defiling
one's intellectual integrity and surrendering it unconditionally. These
woes may be painful enough, but without pain one cannot become a leader
and guide of humanity: and woe to him who would be such and lacks this
pure integrity of the intellect!


110

=The Truth in Religion.=--In the ages of enlightenment justice was not
done to the importance of religion, of this there can be no doubt. It is
also equally certain that in the ensuing reaction of enlightenment, the
demands of justice were far exceeded inasmuch as religion was treated
with love, even with infatuation and proclaimed as a profound, indeed
the most profound knowledge of the world, which science had but to
divest of its dogmatic garb in order to possess "truth" in its
unmythical form. Religions must therefore--this was the contention of
all foes of enlightenment--sensu allegorico, with regard for the
comprehension of the masses, give expression to that ancient truth which
is wisdom in itself, inasmuch as all science of modern times has led up
to it instead of away from it. So that between the most ancient wisdom
of man and all later wisdom there prevails harmony, even similarity of
viewpoint; and the advancement of knowledge--if one be disposed to
concede such a thing--has to do not with its nature but with its
propagation. This whole conception of religion and science is through
and through erroneous, and none would to-day be hardy enough to
countenance it had not Schopenhauer's rhetoric taken it under
protection, this high sounding rhetoric which now gains auditors after
the lapse of a generation. Much as may be gained from Schopenhauer's
religio-ethical human and cosmical oracle as regards the comprehension
of Christianity and other religions, it is nevertheless certain that he
erred regarding the value of religion to knowledge. He himself was in
this but a servile pupil of the scientific teachers of his time who had
all taken romanticism under their protection and renounced the spirit of
enlightenment. Had he been born in our own time it would have been
impossible for him to have spoken of the sensus allegoricus of religion.
He would instead have done truth the justice to say: never has a
religion, directly or indirectly, either as dogma or as allegory,
contained a truth. For all religions grew out of dread or necessity, and
came into existence through an error of the reason. They have, perhaps,
in times of danger from science, incorporated some philosophical
doctrine or other into their systems in order to make it possible to
continue one's existence within them. But this is but a theological work
of art dating from the time in which a religion began to doubt of
itself. These theological feats of art, which are most common in
Christianity as the religion of a learned age, impregnated with
philosophy, have led to this superstition of the sensus allegoricus, as
has, even more, the habit of the philosophers (namely those
half-natures, the poetical philosophers and the philosophising artists)
of dealing with their own feelings as if they constituted the
fundamental nature of humanity and hence of giving their own religious
feelings a predominant influence over the structure of their systems. As
the philosophers mostly philosophised under the influence of hereditary
religious habits, or at least under the traditional influence of this
"metaphysical necessity," they naturally arrived at conclusions
closely resembling the Judaic or Christian or Indian religious
tenets--resembling, in the way that children are apt to look like their
mothers: only in this case the fathers were not certain as to the
maternity, as easily happens--but in the innocence of their admiration,
they fabled regarding the family likeness of all religion and science.
In reality, there exists between religion and true science neither
relationship nor friendship, not even enmity: they dwell in different
spheres. Every philosophy that lets the religious comet gleam through
the darkness of its last outposts renders everything within it that
purports to be science, suspicious. It is all probably religion,
although it may assume the guise of science.--Moreover, though all the
peoples agree concerning certain religious things, for example, the
existence of a god (which, by the way, as regards this point, is not
the case) this fact would constitute an argument against the thing
agreed upon, for example the very existence of a god. The consensus
gentium and especially hominum can probably amount only to an absurdity.
Against it there is no consensus omnium sapientium whatever, on any
point, with the exception of which Goethe's verse speaks:

     "All greatest sages to all latest ages
         Will smile, wink and slily agree
     'Tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate
         Has learned to be knowing and free.
     So children of wisdom must look upon fools
     As creatures who're never the better for schools."

Stated without rhyme or metre and adapted to our case: the consensus
sapientium is to the effect that the consensus gentium amounts to an
absurdity.


111

=Origin of Religious Worship.=--Let us transport ourselves back to the
times in which religious life flourished most vigorously and we will
find a fundamental conviction prevalent which we no longer share and
which has resulted in the closing of the door to religious life once for
all so far as we are concerned: this conviction has to do with nature
and intercourse with her. In those times nothing is yet known of
nature's laws. Neither for earth nor for heaven is there a must. A
season, sunshine, rain can come or stay away as it pleases. There is
wanting, in particular, all idea of natural causation. If a man rows, it
is not the oar that moves the boat, but rowing is a magical ceremony
whereby a demon is constrained to move the boat. All illness, death
itself, is a consequence of magical influences. In sickness and death
nothing natural is conceived. The whole idea of "natural course" is
wanting. The idea dawns first upon the ancient Greeks, that is to say in
a very late period of humanity, in the conception of a Moira [fate]
ruling over the gods. If any person shoots off a bow, there is always an
irrational strength and agency in the act. If the wells suddenly run
dry, the first thought is of subterranean demons and their pranks. It
must have been the dart of a god beneath whose invisible influence a
human being suddenly collapses. In India, the carpenter (according to
Lubbock) is in the habit of making devout offerings to his hammer and
hatchet. A Brahmin treats the plume with which he writes, a soldier the
weapon that he takes into the field, a mason his trowel, a laborer his
plow, in the same way. All nature is, in the opinion of religious
people, a sum total of the doings of conscious and willing beings, an
immense mass of complex volitions. In regard to all that takes place
outside of us no conclusion is permissible that anything will result
thus and so, must result thus and so, that we are comparatively
calculable and certain in our experiences, that man is the rule, nature
the ruleless. This view forms the fundamental conviction that dominates
crude, religion-producing, early civilizations. We contemporary men feel
exactly the opposite: the richer man now feels himself inwardly, the
more polyphone the music and the sounding of his soul, the more
powerfully does the uniformity of nature impress him. We all, with
Goethe, recognize in nature the great means of repose for the soul. We
listen to the pendulum stroke of this great clock with longing for rest,
for absolute calm and quiescence, as if we could drink in the uniformity
of nature and thereby arrive first at an enjoyment of oneself. Formerly
it was the reverse: if we carry ourselves back to the periods of crude
civilization, or if we contemplate contemporary savages, we will find
them most strongly influenced by rule, by tradition. The individual is
almost automatically bound to rule and tradition and moves with the
uniformity of a pendulum. To him nature--the uncomprehended, fearful,
mysterious nature--must seem the domain of freedom, of volition, of
higher power, indeed as an ultra-human degree of destiny, as god. Every
individual in such periods and circumstances feels that his existence,
his happiness, the existence and happiness of the family, the state,
the success or failure of every undertaking, must depend upon these
dispositions of nature. Certain natural events must occur at the proper
time and certain others must not occur. How can influence be exercised
over this fearful unknown, how can this domain of freedom be brought
under subjection? thus he asks himself, thus he worries: Is there no
means to render these powers of nature as subject to rule and tradition
as you are yourself?--The cogitation of the superstitious and
magic-deluded man is upon the theme of imposing a law upon nature: and
to put it briefly, religious worship is the result of such cogitation.
The problem which is present to every man is closely connected with this
one: how can the weaker party dictate laws to the stronger, control its
acts in reference to the weaker? At first the most harmless form of
influence is recollected, that influence which is acquired when the
partiality of anyone has been won. Through beseeching and prayer,
through abject humiliation, through obligations to regular gifts and
propitiations, through flattering homages, it is possible, therefore, to
impose some guidance upon the forces of nature, to the extent that their
partiality be won: love binds and is bound. Then agreements can be
entered into by means of which certain courses of conduct are mutually
concluded, vows are made and authorities prescribed. But far more potent
is that species of power exercised by means of magic and incantation. As
a man is able to injure a powerful enemy by means of the magician and
render him helpless with fear, as the love potion operates at a
distance, so can the mighty forces of nature, in the opinion of weaker
mankind, be controlled by similar means. The principal means of
effecting incantations is to acquire control of something belonging to
the party to be influenced, hair, finger nails, food from his table,
even his picture or his name. With such apparatus it is possible to act
by means of magic, for the basic principle is that to everything
spiritual corresponds something corporeal. With the aid of this
corporeal element the spirit may be bound, injured or destroyed. The
corporeal affords the handle by which the spiritual can be laid hold of.
In the same way that man influences mankind does he influences some
spirit of nature, for this latter has also its corporeal element that
can be grasped. The tree, and on the same basis, the seed from which it
grew: this puzzling sequence seems to demonstrate that in both forms the
same spirit is embodied, now large, now small. A stone that suddenly
rolls, is the body in which the spirit works. Does a huge boulder lie in
a lonely moor? It is impossible to think of mortal power having placed
it there. The stone must have moved itself there. That is to say some
spirit must dominate it. Everything that has a body is subject to magic,
including, therefore, the spirits of nature. If a god is directly
connected with his portrait, a direct influence (by refraining from
devout offerings, by whippings, chainings and the like) can be brought
to bear upon him. The lower classes in China tie cords around the
picture of their god in order to defy his departing favor, when he has
left them in the lurch, and tear the picture to pieces, drag it through
the streets into dung heaps and gutters, crying: "You dog of a spirit,
we housed you in a beautiful temple, we gilded you prettily, we fed you
well, we brought you offerings, and yet how ungrateful you are!" Similar
displays of resentment have been made against pictures of the mother of
god and pictures of saints in Catholic countries during the present
century when such pictures would not do their duty during times of
pestilence and drought.

Through all these magical relationships to nature countless ceremonies
are occasioned, and finally, when their complexity and confusion grow
too great, pains are taken to systematize them, to arrange them so that
the favorable course of nature's progress, namely the great yearly
circle of the seasons, may be brought about by a corresponding course of
the ceremonial progress. The aim of religious worship is to influence
nature to human advantage, and hence to instil a subjection to law into
her that originally she has not, whereas at present man desires to find
out the subjection to law of nature in order to guide himself thereby.
In brief, the system of religious worship rests upon the idea of magic
between man and man, and the magician is older than the priest. But it
rests equally upon other and higher ideas. It brings into prominence the
sympathetic relation of man to man, the existence of benevolence,
gratitude, prayer, of truces between enemies, of loans upon security, of
arrangements for the protection of property. Man, even in very inferior
degrees of civilization, does not stand in the presence of nature as a
helpless slave, he is not willy-nilly the absolute servant of nature. In
the Greek development of religion, especially in the relationship to the
Olympian gods, it becomes possible to entertain the idea of an existence
side by side of two castes, a higher, more powerful, and a lower, less
powerful: but both are bound together in some way, on account of their
origin and are one species. They need not be ashamed of one another.
This is the element of distinction in Greek religion.


112

=At the Contemplation of Certain Ancient Sacrificial Proceedings.=--How
many sentiments are lost to us is manifest in the union of the farcical,
even of the obscene, with the religious feeling. The feeling that this
mixture is possible is becoming extinct. We realize the mixture only
historically, in the mysteries of Demeter and Dionysos and in the
Christian Easter festivals and religious mysteries. But we still
perceive the sublime in connection with the ridiculous, and the like,
the emotional with the absurd. Perhaps a later age will be unable to
understand even these combinations.


113

=Christianity as Antiquity.=--When on a Sunday morning we hear the old
bells ringing, we ask ourselves: Is it possible? All this for a Jew
crucified two thousand years ago who said he was God's son? The proof of
such an assertion is lacking.--Certainly, the Christian religion
constitutes in our time a protruding bit of antiquity from very remote
ages and that its assertions are still generally believed--although men
have become so keen in the scrutiny of claims--constitutes the oldest
relic of this inheritance. A god who begets children by a mortal woman;
a sage who demands that no more work be done, that no more justice be
administered but that the signs of the approaching end of the world be
heeded; a system of justice that accepts an innocent as a vicarious
sacrifice in the place of the guilty; a person who bids his disciples
drink his blood; prayers for miracles; sins against a god expiated upon
a god; fear of a hereafter to which death is the portal; the figure of
the cross as a symbol in an age that no longer knows the purpose and the
ignominy of the cross--how ghostly all these things flit before us out
of the grave of their primitive antiquity! Is one to believe that such
things can still be believed?


114

=The Un-Greek in Christianity.=--The Greeks did not look upon the
Homeric gods above them as lords nor upon themselves beneath as
servants, after the fashion of the Jews. They saw but the counterpart as
in a mirror of the most perfect specimens of their own caste, hence an
ideal, but no contradiction of their own nature. There was a feeling of
mutual relationship, resulting in a mutual interest, a sort of alliance.
Man thinks well of himself when he gives himself such gods and places
himself in a relationship akin to that of the lower nobility with the
higher; whereas the Italian races have a decidedly vulgar religion,
involving perpetual anxiety because of bad and mischievous powers and
soul disturbers. Wherever the Olympian gods receded into the background,
there even Greek life became gloomier and more perturbed.--Christianity,
on the other hand, oppressed and degraded humanity completely and sank
it into deepest mire: into the feeling of utter abasement it suddenly
flashed the gleam of divine compassion, so that the amazed and
grace-dazzled stupefied one gave a cry of delight and for a moment
believed that the whole of heaven was within him. Upon this unhealthy
excess of feeling, upon the accompanying corruption of heart and head,
Christianity attains all its psychological effects. It wants to
annihilate, debase, stupefy, amaze, bedazzle. There is but one thing
that it does not want: measure, standard (das Maas) and therefore is it
in the worst sense barbarous, asiatic, vulgar, un-Greek.


115

=Being Religious to Some Purpose.=--There are certain insipid,
traffic-virtuous people to whom religion is pinned like the hem of some
garb of a higher humanity. These people do well to remain religious: it
adorns them. All who are not versed in some professional
weapon--including tongue and pen as weapons--are servile: to all such
the Christian religion is very useful, for then their servility assumes
the aspect of Christian virtue and is amazingly adorned.--People whose
daily lives are empty and colorless are readily religious. This is
comprehensible and pardonable, but they have no right to demand that
others, whose daily lives are not empty and colorless, should be
religious also.


116

=The Everyday Christian.=--If Christianity, with its allegations of an
avenging God, universal sinfulness, choice of grace, and the danger of
eternal damnation, were true, it would be an indication of weakness of
mind and character not to be a priest or an apostle or a hermit, and
toil for one's own salvation. It would be irrational to lose sight of
one's eternal well being in comparison with temporary advantage:
Assuming these dogmas to be generally believed, the every day Christian
is a pitiable figure, a man who really cannot count as far as three, and
who, for the rest, just because of his intellectual incapacity, does not
deserve to be as hard punished as Christianity promises he shall be.


117

=Concerning the Cleverness of Christianity.=--It is a master stroke of
Christianity to so emphasize the unworthiness, sinfulness and
degradation of men in general that contempt of one's fellow creatures
becomes impossible. "He may sin as much as he pleases, he is not by
nature different from me. It is I who in every way am unworthy and
contemptible." So says the Christian to himself. But even this feeling
has lost its keenest sting for the Christian does not believe in his
individual degradation. He is bad in his general human capacity and he
soothes himself a little with the assertion that we are all alike.


118

=Personal Change.=--As soon as a religion rules, it has for its
opponents those who were its first disciples.


119

=Fate of Christianity.=--Christianity arose to lighten the heart, but
now it must first make the heart heavy in order to be able to lighten it
afterwards. Christianity will consequently go down.


120

=The Testimony of Pleasure.=--The agreeable opinion is accepted as true.
This is the testimony of pleasure (or as the church says, the evidence
of strength) of which all religions are so proud, although they should
all be ashamed of it. If a belief did not make blessed it would not be
believed. How little it would be worth, then!


121

=Dangerous Play.=--Whoever gives religious feeling room, must then also
let it grow. He can do nothing else. Then his being gradually changes.
The religious element brings with it affinities and kinships. The whole
circle of his judgment and feeling is clouded and draped in religious
shadows. Feeling cannot stand still. One should be on one's guard.


122

=The Blind Pupil.=--As long as one knows very well the strength and the
weakness of one's dogma, one's art, one's religion, its strength is
still low. The pupil and apostle who has no eye for the weaknesses of a
dogma, a religion and so on, dazzled by the aspect of the master and by
his own reverence for him, has, on that very account, generally more
power than the master. Without blind pupils the influence of a man and
his work has never become great. To give victory to knowledge, often
amounts to no more than so allying it with stupidity that the brute
force of the latter forces triumph for the former.


123

=The Breaking off of Churches.=--There is not sufficient religion in the
world merely to put an end to the number of religions.


124

=Sinlessness of Men.=--If one have understood how "Sin came into the
world," namely through errors of the reason, through which men in their
intercourse with one another and even individual men looked upon
themselves as much blacker and wickeder than was really the case, one's
whole feeling is much lightened and man and the world appear together in
such a halo of harmlessness that a sentiment of well being is instilled
into one's whole nature. Man in the midst of nature is as a child left
to its own devices. This child indeed dreams a heavy, anxious dream. But
when it opens its eyes it finds itself always in paradise.


125

=Irreligiousness of Artists.=--Homer is so much at home among his gods
and is as a poet so good natured to them that he must have been
profoundly irreligious. That which was brought to him by the popular
faith--a mean, crude and partially repulsive superstition--he dealt with
as freely as the Sculptor with his clay, therefore with the same freedom
that Æschylus and Aristophanes evinced and with which in later times the
great artists of the renaissance, and also Shakespeare and Goethe, drew
their pictures.


126

=Art and Strength of False Interpretation.=--All the visions, fears,
exhaustions and delights of the saint are well known symptoms of
sickness, which in him, owing to deep rooted religious and psychological
delusions, are explained quite differently, that is not as symptoms of
sickness.--So, too, perhaps, the demon of Socrates was nothing but a
malady of the ear that he explained, in view of his predominant moral
theory, in a manner different from what would be thought rational
to-day. Nor is the case different with the frenzy and the frenzied
speeches of the prophets and of the priests of the oracles. It is always
the degree of wisdom, imagination, capacity and morality in the heart
and mind of the interpreters that got so much out of them. It is among
the greatest feats of the men who are called geniuses and saints that
they made interpreters for themselves who, fortunately for mankind, did
not understand them.


127

=Reverence for Madness.=--Because it was perceived that an excitement of
some kind often made the head clearer and occasioned fortunate
inspirations, it was concluded that the utmost excitement would occasion
the most fortunate inspirations. Hence the frenzied being was revered as
a sage and an oracle giver. A false conclusion lies at the bottom of all
this.


128

=Promises of Wisdom.=--Modern science has as its object as little pain
as possible, as long a life as possible--hence a sort of eternal
blessedness, but of a very limited kind in comparison with the promises
of religion.


129

=Forbidden Generosity.=--There is not enough of love and goodness in the
world to throw any of it away on conceited people.


130

=Survival of Religious Training in the Disposition.=--The Catholic
Church, and before it all ancient education, controlled the whole domain
of means through which man was put into certain unordinary moods and
withdrawn from the cold calculation of personal advantage and from calm,
rational reflection. A church vibrating with deep tones; gloomy,
regular, restraining exhortations from a priestly band, who
involuntarily communicate their own tension to their congregation and
lead them to listen almost with anxiety as if some miracle were in
course of preparation; the awesome pile of architecture which, as the
house of a god, rears itself vastly into the vague and in all its
shadowy nooks inspires fear of its nerve-exciting power--who would care
to reduce men to the level of these things if the ideas upon which they
rest became extinct? But the results of all these things are
nevertheless not thrown away: the inner world of exalted, emotional,
prophetic, profoundly repentant, hope-blessed moods has become inborn in
man largely through cultivation. What still exists in his soul was
formerly, as he germinated, grew and bloomed, thoroughly disciplined.


131

=Religious After-Pains.=--Though one believe oneself absolutely weaned
away from religion, the process has yet not been so thorough as to make
impossible a feeling of joy at the presence of religious feelings and
dispositions without intelligible content, as, for example, in music;
and if a philosophy alleges to us the validity of metaphysical hopes,
through the peace of soul therein attainable, and also speaks of "the
whole true gospel in the look of Raphael's Madonna," we greet such
declarations and innuendoes with a welcome smile. The philosopher has
here a matter easy of demonstration. He responds with that which he is
glad to give, namely a heart that is glad to accept. Hence it is
observable how the less reflective free spirits collide only with dogmas
but yield readily to the magic of religious feelings; it is a source of
pain to them to let the latter go simply on account of the
former.--Scientific philosophy must be very much on its guard lest on
account of this necessity--an evolved and hence, also, a transitory
necessity--delusions are smuggled in. Even logicians speak of
"presentiments" of truth in ethics and in art (for example of the
presentiment that the essence of things is unity) a thing which,
nevertheless, ought to be prohibited. Between carefully deduced truths
and such "foreboded" things there lies the abysmal distinction that the
former are products of the intellect and the latter of the necessity.
Hunger is no evidence that there is food at hand to appease it. Hunger
merely craves food. "Presentiment" does not denote that the existence of
a thing is known in any way whatever. It denotes merely that it is
deemed possible to the extent that it is desired or feared. The
"presentiment" is not one step forward in the domain of certainty.--It
is involuntarily believed that the religious tinted sections of a
philosophy are better attested than the others, but the case is at
bottom just the opposite: there is simply the inner wish that it may be
so, that the thing which beautifies may also be true. This wish leads us
to accept bad grounds as good.


132

=Of the Christian Need of Salvation.=--Careful consideration must render
it possible to propound some explanation of that process in the soul of
a Christian which is termed need of salvation, and to propound an
explanation, too, free from mythology: hence one purely psychological.
Heretofore psychological explanations of religious conditions and
processes have really been in disrepute, inasmuch as a theology calling
itself free gave vent to its unprofitable nature in this domain; for its
principal aim, so far as may be judged from the spirit of its creator,
Schleier-macher, was the preservation of the Christian religion and the
maintenance of the Christian theology. It appeared that in the
psychological analysis of religious "facts" a new anchorage and above
all a new calling were to be gained. Undisturbed by such predecessors,
we venture the following exposition of the phenomena alluded to. Man is
conscious of certain acts which are very firmly implanted in the general
course of conduct: indeed he discovers in himself a predisposition to
such acts that seems to him to be as unalterable as his very being. How
gladly he would essay some other kind of acts which in the general
estimate of conduct are rated the best and highest, how gladly he would
welcome the consciousness of well doing which ought to follow unselfish
motive! Unfortunately, however, it goes no further than this longing:
the discontent consequent upon being unable to satisfy it is added to
all other kinds of discontent which result from his life destiny in
particular or which may be due to so called bad acts; so that a deep
depression ensues accompanied by a desire for some physician to remove
it and all its causes.--This condition would not be found so bitter if
the individual but compared himself freely with other men: for then he
would have no reason to be discontented with himself in particular as he
is merely bearing his share of the general burden of human discontent
and incompleteness. But he compares himself with a being who alone must
be capable of the conduct that is called unegoistic and of an enduring
consciousness of unselfish motive, with God. It is because he gazes into
this clear mirror, that his own self seems so extraordinarily distracted
and so troubled. Thereupon the thought of that being, in so far as it
flits before his fancy as retributive justice, occasions him anxiety. In
every conceivable small and great experience he believes he sees the
anger of the being, his threats, the very implements and manacles of his
judge and prison. What succors him in this danger, which, in the
prospect of an eternal duration of punishment, transcends in hideousness
all the horrors that can be presented to the imagination?


133

Before we consider this condition in its further effects, we would admit
to ourselves that man is betrayed into this condition not through his
"fault" and "sin" but through a series of delusions of the reason; that
it was the fault of the mirror if his own self appeared to him in the
highest degree dark and hateful, and that that mirror was his own work,
the very imperfect work of human imagination and judgment. In the first
place a being capable of absolutely unegoistic conduct is as fabulous as
the phoenix. Such a being is not even thinkable for the very reason that
the whole notion of "unegoistic conduct," when closely examined,
vanishes into air. Never yet has a man done anything solely for others
and entirely without reference to a personal motive; indeed how could he
possibly do anything that had no reference to himself, that is without
inward compulsion (which must always have its basis in a personal need)?
How could the ego act without ego?--A god, who, on the other hand, is
all love, as he is usually represented, would not be capable of a
solitary unegoistic act: whence one is reminded of a reflection of
Lichtenberg's which is, in truth, taken from a lower sphere: "We cannot
possibly feel for others, as the expression goes; we feel only for
ourselves. The assertion sounds hard, but it is not, if rightly
understood. A man loves neither his father nor his mother nor his wife
nor his child, but simply the feelings which they inspire." Or, as La
Rochefoucauld says: "If you think you love your mistress for the mere
love of her, you are very much mistaken." Why acts of love are more
highly prized than others, namely not on account of their nature, but on
account of their utility, has already been explained in the section on
the origin of moral feelings. But if a man should wish to be all love
like the god aforesaid, and want to do all things for others and nothing
for himself, the procedure would be fundamentally impossible because he
_must_ do a great deal for himself before there would be any possibility
of doing anything for the love of others. It is also essential that
others be sufficiently egoistic to accept always and at all times this
self sacrifice and living for others, so that the men of love and self
sacrifice have an interest in the survival of unloving and selfish
egoists, while the highest morality, in order to maintain itself must
formally enforce the existence of immorality (wherein it would be really
destroying itself.)--Further: the idea of a god perturbs and discourages
as long as it is accepted but as to how it originated can no longer, in
the present state of comparative ethnological science, be a matter of
doubt, and with the insight into the origin of this belief all faith
collapses. What happens to the Christian who compares his nature with
that of God is exactly what happened to Don Quixote, who depreciated his
own prowess because his head was filled with the wondrous deeds of the
heroes of chivalrous romance. The standard of measurement which both
employ belongs to the domain of fable.--But if the idea of God
collapses, so too, does the feeling of "sin" as a violation of divine
rescript, as a stain upon a god-like creation. There still apparently
remains that discouragement which is closely allied with fear of the
punishment of worldly justice or of the contempt of one's fellow men.
The keenest thorn in the sentiment of sin is dulled when it is perceived
that one's acts have contravened human tradition, human rules and human
laws without having thereby endangered the "eternal salvation of the
soul" and its relations with deity. If finally men attain to the
conviction of the absolute necessity of all acts and of their utter
irresponsibility and then absorb it into their flesh and blood, every
relic of conscience pangs will disappear.


134

If now, as stated, the Christian, through certain delusive feelings, is
betrayed into self contempt, that is by a false and unscientific view of
his acts and feelings, he must, nevertheless, perceive with the utmost
amazement that this state of self contempt, of conscience pangs, of
despair in particular, does not last, that there are hours during which
all these things are wafted away from the soul and he feels himself once
more free and courageous. The truth is that joy in his own being, the
fulness of his own powers in connection with the inevitable decline of
his profound excitation with the lapse of time, bore off the palm of
victory. The man loves himself once more, he feels it--but this very new
love, this new self esteem seems to him incredible. He can see in it
only the wholly unmerited stream of the light of grace shed down upon
him. If he formerly saw in every event merely warnings, threats,
punishments and every kind of indication of divine anger, he now reads
into his experiences the grace of god. The latter circumstance seems to
him full of love, the former as a helpful pointing of the way, and his
entirely joyful frame of mind now seems to him to be an absolute proof
of the goodness of God. As formerly in his states of discouragement he
interpreted his conduct falsely so now he does the same with his
experiences. His state of consolation is now regarded as the effect
produced by some external power. The love with which, at bottom, he
loves himself, seems to be the divine love. That which he calls grace
and the preliminary of salvation is in reality self-grace,
self-salvation.


135

Therefore a certain false psychology, a certain kind of imaginativeness
in the interpretation of motives and experiences is the essential
preliminary to being a Christian and to experiencing the need of
salvation. Upon gaining an insight into this wandering of the reason and
the imagination, one ceases to be a Christian.


136

=Of Christian Asceticism and Sanctity.=--Much as some thinkers have
exerted themselves to impart an air of the miraculous to those singular
phenomena known as asceticism and sanctity, to question which or to
account for which upon a rational basis would be wickedness and
sacrilege, the temptation to this wickedness is none the less great. A
powerful impulse of nature has in every age led to protest against such
phenomena. At any rate science, inasmuch as it is the imitation of
nature, permits the casting of doubts upon the inexplicable character
and the supernal degree of such phenomena. It is true that heretofore
science has not succeeded in its attempts at explanation. The phenomena
remain unexplained still, to the great satisfaction of those who revere
moral miracles. For, speaking generally, the unexplained must rank as
the inexplicable, the inexplicable as the non-natural, supernatural,
miraculous--so runs the demand in the souls of all the religious and all
the metaphysicians (even the artists if they happen to be thinkers),
whereas the scientific man sees in this demand the "evil
principle."--The universal, first, apparent truth that is encountered in
the contemplation of sanctity and asceticism is that their nature is
complicated; for nearly always, within the physical world as well as in
the moral, the apparently miraculous may be traced successfully to the
complex, the obscure, the multi-conditioned. Let us venture then to
isolate a few impulses in the soul of the saint and the ascetic, to
consider them separately and then view them as a synthetic development.


137

There is an obstinacy against oneself, certain sublimated forms of which
are included in asceticism. Certain kinds of men are under such a strong
necessity of exercising their power and dominating impulses that, if
other objects are lacking or if they have not succeeded with other
objects they will actually tyrannize over some portions of their own
nature or over sections and stages of their own personality. Thus do
many thinkers bring themselves to views which are far from likely to
increase or improve their fame. Many deliberately bring down the
contempt of others upon themselves although they could easily have
retained consideration by silence. Others contradict earlier opinions
and do not shrink from the ordeal of being deemed inconsistent. On the
contrary they strive for this and act like eager riders who enjoy
horseback exercise most when the horse is skittish. Thus will men in
dangerous paths ascend to the highest steeps in order to laugh to scorn
their own fear and their own trembling limbs. Thus will the philosopher
embrace the dogmas of asceticism, humility, sanctity, in the light of
which his own image appears in its most hideous aspect. This crushing of
self, this mockery of one's own nature, this spernere se sperni out of
which religions have made so much is in reality but a very high
development of vanity. The whole ethic of the sermon on the mount
belongs in this category: man has a true delight in mastering himself
through exaggerated pretensions or excessive expedients and later
deifying this tyrannically exacting something within him. In every
scheme of ascetic ethics, man prays to one part of himself as if it were
god and hence it is necessary for him to treat the rest of himself as
devil.


138

=Man is Not at All Hours Equally Moral=; this is established. If one's
morality be judged according to one's capacity for great, self
sacrificing resolutions and abnegations (which when continual, and made
a habit are known as sanctity) one is, in affection, or disposition, the
most moral: while higher excitement supplies wholly new impulses which,
were one calm and cool as ordinarily, one would not deem oneself even
capable of. How comes this? Apparently from the propinquity of all great
and lofty emotional states. If a man is brought to an extraordinary
pitch of feeling he can resolve upon a fearful revenge or upon a fearful
renunciation of his thirst for vengeance indifferently. He craves, under
the influences of powerful emotion, the great, the powerful, the
immense, and if he chances to perceive that the sacrifice of himself
will afford him as much satisfaction as the sacrifice of another, or
will afford him more, he will choose self sacrifice. What concerns him
particularly is simply the unloading of his emotion. Hence he readily,
to relieve his tension, grasps the darts of the enemy and buries them in
his own breast. That in self abnegation and not in revenge the element
of greatness consisted must have been brought home to mankind only after
long habituation. A god who sacrifices himself would be the most
powerful and most effective symbol of this sort of greatness. As the
conquest of the most hardly conquered enemy, the sudden mastering of a
passion--thus does such abnegation _appear_: hence it passes for the
summit of morality. In reality all that is involved is the exchange of
one idea for another whilst the temperament remained at a like altitude,
a like tidal state. Men when coming out of the spell, or resting from
such passionate excitation, no longer understand the morality of such
instants, but the admiration of all who participated in the occasion
sustains them. Pride is their support if the passion and the
comprehension of their act weaken. Therefore, at bottom even such acts
of self-abnegation are not moral inasmuch as they are not done with a
strict regard for others. Rather do others afford the high strung
temperament an opportunity to lighten itself through such abnegation.


139

=Even the Ascetic Seeks to Make Life Easier=, and generally by means of
absolute subjection to another will or to an all inclusive rule and
ritual, pretty much as the Brahmin leaves absolutely nothing to his own
volition but is guided in every moment of his life by some holy
injunction or other. This subjection is a potent means of acquiring
dominion over oneself. One is occupied, hence time does not bang heavy
and there is no incitement of the personal will and of the individual
passion. The deed once done there is no feeling of responsibility nor
the sting of regret. One has given up one's own will once for all and
this is easier than to give it up occasionally, as it is also easier
wholly to renounce a desire than to yield to it in measured degree. When
we consider the present relation of man to the state we perceive
unconditional obedience is easier than conditional. The holy person also
makes his lot easier through the complete surrender of his life
personality and it is all delusion to admire such a phenomenon as the
loftiest heroism of morality. It is always more difficult to assert
one's personality without shrinking and without hesitation than to give
it up altogether in the manner indicated, and it requires moreover more
intellect and thought.


140

After having discovered in many of the less comprehensible actions mere
manifestations of pleasure in emotion for its own sake, I fancy I can
detect in the self contempt which characterises holy persons, and also
in their acts of self torture (through hunger and scourgings,
distortions and chaining of the limbs, acts of madness) simply a means
whereby such natures may resist the general exhaustion of their will to
live (their nerves). They employ the most painful expedients to escape
if only for a time from the heaviness and weariness in which they are
steeped by their great mental indolence and their subjection to a will
other than their own.


141

=The Most Usual Means= by which the ascetic and the sanctified
individual seeks to make life more endurable comprises certain combats
of an inner nature involving alternations of victory and prostration.
For this purpose an enemy is necessary and he is found in the so called
"inner enemy." That is, the holy individual makes use of his tendency to
vanity, domineering and pride, and of his mental longings in order to
contemplate his life as a sort of continuous battle and himself as a
battlefield, in which good and evil spirits wage war with varying
fortune. It is an established fact that the imagination is restrained
through the regularity and adequacy of sexual intercourse while on the
other hand abstention from or great irregularity in sexual intercourse
will cause the imagination to run riot. The imaginations of many of the
Christian saints were obscene to a degree; and because of the theory
that sexual desires were in reality demons that raged within them, the
saints did not feel wholly responsible for them. It is to this
conviction that we are indebted for the highly instructive sincerity of
their evidence against themselves. It was to their interest that this
contest should always be kept up in some fashion because by means of
this contest, as already stated, their empty lives gained distraction.
In order that the contest might seem sufficiently great to inspire
sympathy and admiration in the unsanctified, it was essential that
sexual capacity be ever more and more damned and denounced. Indeed the
danger of eternal damnation was so closely allied to this capacity that
for whole generations Christians showed their children with actual
conscience pangs. What evil may not have been done to humanity through
this! And yet here the truth is just upside down: an exceedingly
unseemly attitude for the truth. Christianity, it is true, had said that
every man is conceived and born in sin, and in the intolerable and
excessive Christianity of Calderon this thought is again perverted and
entangled into the most distorted paradox extant in the well known lines

     The greatest sin of man
     Is the sin of being born.

In all pessimistic religions the act of procreation is looked upon as
evil in itself. This is far from being the general human opinion. It is
not even the opinion of all pessimists. Empedocles, for example, knows
nothing of anything shameful, devilish and sinful in it. He sees rather
in the great field of bliss of unholiness simply a healthful and hopeful
phenomenon, Aphrodite. She is to him an evidence that strife does not
always rage but that some time a gentle demon is to wield the sceptre.
The Christian pessimists of practice, had, as stated, a direct interest
in the prevalence of an opposite belief. They needed in the loneliness
and the spiritual wilderness of their lives an ever living enemy, and a
universally known enemy through whose conquest they might appear to the
unsanctified as utterly incomprehensible and half unnatural beings. When
this enemy at last, as a result of their mode of life and their
shattered health, took flight forever, they were able immediately to
people their inner selves with new demons. The rise and fall of the
balance of cheerfulness and despair maintained their addled brains in a
totally new fluctuation of longing and peace of soul. And in that period
psychology served not only to cast suspicion on everything human but to
wound and scourge it, to crucify it. Man wanted to find himself as base
and evil as possible. Man sought to become anxious about the state of
his soul, he wished to be doubtful of his own capacity. Everything
natural with which man connects the idea of badness and sinfulness (as,
for instance, is still customary in regard to the erotic) injures and
degrades the imagination, occasions a shamed aspect, leads man to war
upon himself and makes him uncertain, distrustful of himself. Even his
dreams acquire a tincture of the unclean conscience. And yet this
suffering because of the natural element in certain things is wholly
superfluous. It is simply the result of opinions regarding the things.
It is easy to understand why men become worse than they are if they are
brought to look upon the unavoidably natural as bad and later to feel it
as of evil origin. It is the master stroke of religions and metaphysics
that wish to make man out bad and sinful by nature, to render nature
suspicious in his eyes and to so make himself evil, for he learns to
feel himself evil when he cannot divest himself of nature. He gradually
comes to look upon himself, after a long life lived naturally, so
oppressed by a weight of sin that supernatural powers become necessary
to relieve him of the burden; and with this notion comes the so called
need of salvation, which is the result not of a real but of an imaginary
sinfulness. Go through the separate moral expositions in the vouchers of
christianity and it will always be found that the demands are excessive
in order that it may be impossible for man to satisfy them. The object
is not that he may become moral but that he may feel as sinful as
possible. If this feeling had not been rendered agreeable to man--why
should he have improvised such an ideal and clung to it so long? As in
the ancient world an incalculable strength of intellect and capacity for
feeling was squandered in order to increase the joy of living through
feastful systems of worship, so in the era of christianity an equally
incalculable quantity of intellectual capacity has been sacrificed in
another endeavor: that man should in every way feel himself sinful and
thereby be moved, inspired, inspirited. To move, to inspire, to inspirit
at any cost--is not this the freedom cry of an exhausted, over-ripe,
over cultivated age? The circle of all the natural sensations had been
gone through a hundred times: the soul had grown weary. Then the saints
and the ascetics found a new order of ecstacies. They set themselves
before the eyes of all not alone as models for imitation to many, but as
fearful and yet delightful spectacles on the boundary line between this
world and the next world, where in that period everyone thought he saw
at one time rays of heavenly light, at another fearful, threatening
tongues of flame. The eye of the saint, directed upon the fearful
significance of the shortness of earthly life, upon the imminence of the
last judgment, upon eternal life hereafter; this glowering eye in an
emaciated body caused men, in the old time world, to tremble to the
depths of their being. To look, to look away and shudder, to feel anew
the fascination of the spectacle, to yield to it, sate oneself upon it
until the soul trembled with ardor and fever--that was the last pleasure
left to classical antiquity when its sensibilities had been blunted by
the arena and the gladiatorial show.


142

=To Sum Up All That Has Been Said=: that condition of soul at which the
saint or expectant saint is rejoiced is a combination of elements which
we are all familiar with, except that under other influences than those
of mere religious ideation they customarily arouse the censure of men in
the same way that when combined with religion itself and regarded as the
supreme attainment of sanctity, they are object of admiration and even
of prayer--at least in more simple times. Very soon the saint turns upon
himself that severity that is so closely allied to the instinct of
domination at any price and which inspire even in the most solitary
individual the sense of power. Soon his swollen sensitiveness of feeling
breaks forth from the longing to restrain his passions within it and is
transformed into a longing to master them as if they were wild steeds,
the master impulse being ever that of a proud spirit; next he craves a
complete cessation of all perturbing, fascinating feelings, a waking
sleep, an enduring repose in the lap of a dull, animal, plant-like
indolence. Next he seeks the battle and extinguishes it within himself
because weariness and boredom confront him. He binds his
self-deification with self-contempt. He delights in the wild tumult of
his desires and the sharp pain of sin, in the very idea of being lost.
He is able to play his very passions, for instance the desire to
domineer, a trick so that he goes to the other extreme of abject
humiliation and subjection, so that his overwrought soul is without any
restraint through this antithesis. And, finally, when indulgence in
visions, in talks with the dead or with divine beings overcomes him,
this is really but a form of gratification that he craves, perhaps a
form of gratification in which all other gratifications are blended.
Novalis, one of the authorities in matters of sanctity, because of his
experience and instinct, betrays the whole secret with the utmost
simplicity when he says: "It is remarkable that the close connection of
gratification, religion and cruelty has not long ago made men aware of
their inner relationship and common tendency."


143

=Not What the Saint is but what he was in= the eyes of the
non-sanctified gives him his historical importance. Because there
existed a delusion respecting the saint, his soul states being falsely
viewed and his personality being sundered as much as possible from
humanity as a something incomparable and supernatural, because of these
things he attained the extraordinary with which he swayed the
imaginations of whole nations and whole ages. Even he knew himself not
for even he regarded his dispositions, passions and actions in
accordance with a system of interpretation as artificial and exaggerated
as the pneumatic interpretation of the bible. The distorted and diseased
in his own nature with its blending of spiritual poverty, defective
knowledge, ruined health, overwrought nerves, remained as hidden from
his view as from the view of his beholders. He was neither a
particularly good man nor a particularly bad man but he stood for
something that was far above the human standard in wisdom and goodness.
Faith in him sustained faith in the divine and miraculous, in a
religious significance of all existence, in an impending day of
judgment. In the last rays of the setting sun of the ancient world,
which fell upon the christian peoples, the shadowy form of the saint
attained enormous proportions--to such enormous proportions, indeed,
that down even to our own age, which no longer believes in god, there
are thinkers who believe in the saints.


144

It stands to reason that this sketch of the saint, made upon the model
of the whole species, can be confronted with many opposing sketches that
would create a more agreeable impression. There are certain exceptions
among the species who distinguish themselves either by especial
gentleness or especial humanity, and perhaps by the strength of their
own personality. Others are in the highest degree fascinating because
certain of their delusions shed a particular glow over their whole
being, as is the case with the founder of christianity who took himself
for the only begotten son of God and hence felt himself sinless; so that
through his imagination--that should not be too harshly judged since the
whole of antiquity swarmed with sons of god--he attained the same goal,
the sense of complete sinlessness, complete irresponsibility, that can
now be attained by every individual through science.--In the same manner
I have viewed the saints of India who occupy an intermediate station
between the christian saints and the Greek philosophers and hence are
not to be regarded as a pure type. Knowledge and science--as far as they
existed--and superiority to the rest of mankind by logical discipline
and training of the intellectual powers were insisted upon by the
Buddhists as essential to sanctity, just as they were denounced by the
christian world as the indications of sinfulness.

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 tomorrow 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 lawbreaker:--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 noon-tide.
Then he looked inquiringly aloft,--for he heard above him the sharp call
of a bird. And behold! An eagle swept through the air in wide circles,
and on it hung a serpent, not like a prey, but like a friend: for it
kept itself coiled round the eagle's neck.

"They are 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 goodwill. 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!

Tomorrow 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 thou seek the way
unto thyself? Tarry yet a little and hearken unto me.

"He who seeketh may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong": so
say the herd. And long didst thou belong to the herd.

The voice of the herd will still echo in thee. And when thou sayest,
"I have no longer a conscience in common with you," then will it be a
plaint and a pain.

Lo, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and the last gleam
of that conscience still gloweth on thine affliction.

But thou wouldst go the way of thine affliction, which is the way unto
thyself? Then show me thine authority and thy strength to do so!

Art thou a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A
self-rolling wheel? Canst thou also compel stars to revolve around thee?

Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many
convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that thou art not a lusting and
ambitious one!

Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than the
bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than ever.

Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and
not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.

Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away
his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.

Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however,
shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?

Canst thou give unto thyself thy bad and thy good, and set up thy will
as a law over thee? Canst thou be judge for thyself, and avenger of thy
law?

Terrible is aloneness with the judge and avenger of one's own law.
Thus is a star projected into desert space, and into the icy breath of
aloneness.

To-day sufferest thou still from the multitude, thou individual; to-day
hast thou still thy courage unabated, and thy hopes.

But one day will the solitude weary thee; one day will thy pride yield,
and thy courage quail. Thou wilt one day cry: "I am alone!"

One day wilt thou see no longer thy loftiness, and see too closely thy
lowliness; thy sublimity itself will frighten thee as a phantom. Thou
wilt one day cry: "All is false!"

There are feelings which seek to slay the lonesome one; if they do not
succeed, then must they themselves die! But art thou capable of it--to
be a murderer?

Hast thou ever known, my brother, the word "disdain"? And the anguish of
thy justice in being just to those that disdain thee?

Thou forcest many to think differently about thee; that, charge they
heavily to thine account. Thou camest nigh unto them, and yet wentest
past: for that they never forgive thee.

Thou goest beyond them: but the higher thou risest, the smaller doth the
eye of envy see thee. Most of all, however, is the flying one hated.

"How could ye be just unto me!"--must thou say--"I choose your injustice
as my allotted portion."

Injustice and filth cast they at the lonesome one: but, my brother, if
thou wouldst be a star, thou must shine for them none the less on that
account!

And be on thy guard against the good and just! They would fain crucify
those who devise their own virtue--they hate the lonesome ones.

Be on thy guard, also, against holy simplicity! All is unholy to it that
is not simple; fain, likewise, would it play with the fire--of the fagot
and stake.

And be on thy guard, also, against the assaults of thy love! Too readily
doth the recluse reach his hand to any one who meeteth him.

To many a one mayest thou not give thy hand, but only thy paw; and I
wish thy paw also to have claws.

But the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be; thou
waylayest thyself in caverns and forests.

Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And past thyself and
thy seven devils leadeth thy way!

A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a sooth-sayer, and a
fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain.

Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou
become new if thou have not first become ashes!

Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the creating one: a God wilt
thou create for thyself out of thy seven devils!

Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the loving one: thou lovest
thyself, and on that account despisest thou thyself, as only the loving
ones despise.

To create, desireth the loving one, because he despiseth! What knoweth
he of love who hath not been obliged to despise just what he loved!

With thy love, go into thine isolation, my brother, and with thy
creating; and late only will justice limp after thee.

With my tears, go into thine isolation, my brother. I love him who
seeketh to create beyond himself, and thus succumbeth.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XVIII. OLD AND YOUNG WOMEN.

"Why stealest thou along so furtively in the twilight, Zarathustra? And
what hidest thou so carefully under thy mantle?

Is it a treasure that hath been given thee? Or a child that hath been
born thee? Or goest thou thyself on a thief's errand, thou friend of the
evil?"--

Verily, my brother, said Zarathustra, it is a treasure that hath been
given me: it is a little truth which I carry.

But it is naughty, like a young child; and if I hold not its mouth, it
screameth too loudly.

As I went on my way alone to-day, at the hour when the sun declineth,
there met me an old woman, and she spake thus unto my soul:

"Much hath Zarathustra spoken also to us women, but never spake he unto
us concerning woman."

And I answered her: "Concerning woman, one should only talk unto men."

"Talk also unto me of woman," said she; "I am old enough to forget it
presently."

And I obliged the old woman and spake thus unto her:

Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one
solution--it is called pregnancy.

Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is
woman for man?

Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion.
Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the
warrior: all else is folly.

Too sweet fruits--these the warrior liketh not. Therefore liketh he
woman;--bitter is even the sweetest woman.

Better than man doth woman understand children, but man is more childish
than woman.

In the true man there is a child hidden: it wanteth to play. Up then, ye
women, and discover the child in man!

A plaything let woman be, pure and fine like the precious stone,
illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come.

Let the beam of a star shine in your love! Let your hope say: "May I
bear the Superman!"

In your love let there be valour! With your love shall ye assail him who
inspireth you with fear!

In your love be your honour! Little doth woman understand otherwise
about honour. But let this be your honour: always to love more than ye
are loved, and never be the second.

Let man fear woman when she loveth: then maketh she every sacrifice, and
everything else she regardeth as worthless.

Let man fear woman when she hateth: for man in his innermost soul is
merely evil; woman, however, is mean.

Whom hateth woman most?--Thus spake the iron to the loadstone: "I hate
thee most, because thou attractest, but art too weak to draw unto thee."

The happiness of man is, "I will." The happiness of woman is, "He will."

"Lo! now hath the world become perfect!"--thus thinketh every woman when
she obeyeth with all her love.

Obey, must the woman, and find a depth for her surface. Surface, is
woman's soul, a mobile, stormy film on shallow water.

Man's soul, however, is deep, its current gusheth in subterranean
caverns: woman surmiseth its force, but comprehendeth it not.--

Then answered me the old woman: "Many fine things hath Zarathustra said,
especially for those who are young enough for them.

Strange! Zarathustra knoweth little about woman, and yet he is right
about them! Doth this happen, because with women nothing is impossible?

And now accept a little truth by way of thanks! I am old enough for it!

Swaddle it up and hold its mouth: otherwise it will scream too loudly,
the little truth."

"Give me, woman, thy little truth!" said I. And thus spake the old
woman:

"Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XIX. THE BITE OF THE ADDER.

One day had Zarathustra fallen asleep under a fig-tree, owing to the
heat, with his arms over his face. And there came an adder and bit him
in the neck, so that Zarathustra screamed with pain. When he had
taken his arm from his face he looked at the serpent; and then did it
recognise the eyes of Zarathustra, wriggled awkwardly, and tried to get
away. "Not at all," said Zarathustra, "as yet hast thou not received
my thanks! Thou hast awakened me in time; my journey is yet long."
"Thy journey is short," said the adder sadly; "my poison is fatal."
Zarathustra smiled. "When did ever a dragon die of a serpent's
poison?"--said he. "But take thy poison back! Thou art not rich enough
to present it to me." Then fell the adder again on his neck, and licked
his wound.

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

The destroyer of morality, the good and just call me: my story is
immoral.

When, however, ye have an enemy, then return him not good for evil: for
that would abash him. But prove that he hath done something good to you.

And rather be angry than abash any one! And when ye are cursed, it
pleaseth me not that ye should then desire to bless. Rather curse a
little also!

And should a great injustice befall you, then do quickly five small ones
besides. Hideous to behold is he on whom injustice presseth alone.

Did ye ever know this? Shared injustice is half justice. And he who can
bear it, shall take the injustice upon himself!

A small revenge is humaner than no revenge at all. And if the punishment
be not also a right and an honour to the transgressor, I do not like
your punishing.

Nobler is it to own oneself in the wrong than to establish one's right,
especially if one be in the right. Only, one must be rich enough to do
so.

I do not like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there
always glanceth the executioner and his cold steel.

Tell me: where find we justice, which is love with seeing eyes?

Devise me, then, the love which not only beareth all punishment, but
also all guilt!

Devise me, then, the justice which acquitteth every one except the
judge!

And would ye hear this likewise? To him who seeketh to be just from the
heart, even the lie becometh philanthropy.

But how could I be just from the heart! How can I give every one his
own! Let this be enough for me: I give unto every one mine own.

Finally, my brethren, guard against doing wrong to any anchorite. How
could an anchorite forget! How could he requite!

Like a deep well is an anchorite. Easy is it to throw in a stone: if
it should sink to the bottom, however, tell me, who will bring it out
again?

Guard against injuring the anchorite! If ye have done so, however, well
then, kill him also!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XX. CHILD AND MARRIAGE.

I have a question for thee alone, my brother: like a sounding-lead, cast
I this question into thy soul, that I may know its depth.

Thou art young, and desirest child and marriage. But I ask thee: Art
thou a man ENTITLED to desire a child?

Art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy
passions, the master of thy virtues? Thus do I ask thee.

Or doth the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? Or isolation? Or
discord in thee?

I would have thy victory and freedom long for a child. Living monuments
shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation.

Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built
thyself, rectangular in body and soul.

Not only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward! For that
purpose may the garden of marriage help thee!

A higher body shalt thou create, a first movement, a spontaneously
rolling wheel--a creating one shalt thou create.

Marriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is
more than those who created it. The reverence for one another, as those
exercising such a will, call I marriage.

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

Ah, the poverty of soul in the twain! Ah, the filth of soul in the
twain! Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain!

Marriage they call it all; and they say their marriages are made in
heaven.

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

Far from me also be the God who limpeth thither to bless what he hath
not matched!

Laugh not at such marriages! What child hath not had reason to weep over
its parents?

Worthy did this man seem, and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but
when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for madcaps.

Yea, I would that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a
goose mate with one another.

This one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for
himself a small decked-up lie: his marriage he calleth it.

That one was reserved in intercourse and chose choicely. But one time he
spoilt his company for all time: his marriage he calleth it.

Another sought a handmaid with the virtues of an angel. But all at once
he became the handmaid of a woman, and now would he need also to become
an angel.

Careful, have I found all buyers, and all of them have astute eyes. But
even the astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack.

Many short follies--that is called love by you. And your marriage
putteth an end to many short follies, with one long stupidity.

Your love to woman, and woman's love to man--ah, would that it were
sympathy for suffering and veiled deities! But generally two animals
alight on one another.

But even your best love is only an enraptured simile and a painful
ardour. It is a torch to light you to loftier paths.

Beyond yourselves shall ye love some day! Then LEARN first of all to
love. And on that account ye had to drink the bitter cup of your love.

Bitterness is in the cup even of the best love: thus doth it cause
longing for the Superman; thus doth it cause thirst in thee, the
creating one!

Thirst in the creating one, arrow and longing for the Superman: tell me,
my brother, is this thy will to marriage?

Holy call I such a will, and such a marriage.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXI. VOLUNTARY DEATH.

Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the
precept: "Die at the right time!

Die at the right time: so teacheth Zarathustra.

To be sure, he who never liveth at the right time, how could he ever die
at the right time? Would that he might never be born!--Thus do I advise
the superfluous ones.

But even the superfluous ones make much ado about their death, and even
the hollowest nut wanteth to be cracked.

Every one regardeth dying as a great matter: but as yet death is not
a festival. Not yet have people learned to inaugurate the finest
festivals.

The consummating death I show unto you, which becometh a stimulus and
promise to the living.

His death, dieth the consummating one triumphantly, surrounded by hoping
and promising ones.

Thus should one learn to die; and there should be no festival at which
such a dying one doth not consecrate the oaths of the living!

Thus to die is best; the next best, however, is to die in battle, and
sacrifice a great soul.

But to the fighter equally hateful as to the victor, is your grinning
death which stealeth nigh like a thief,--and yet cometh as master.

My death, praise I unto you, the voluntary death, which cometh unto me
because _I_ want it.

And when shall I want it?--He that hath a goal and an heir, wanteth
death at the right time for the goal and the heir.

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

Verily, not the rope-makers will I resemble: they lengthen out their
cord, and thereby go ever backward.

Many a one, also, waxeth too old for his truths and triumphs; a
toothless mouth hath no longer the right to every truth.

And whoever wanteth to have fame, must take leave of honour betimes, and
practise the difficult art of--going at the right time.

One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth best: that is
known by those who want to be long loved.

Sour apples are there, no doubt, whose lot is to wait until the last
day of autumn: and at the same time they become ripe, yellow, and
shrivelled.

In some ageth the heart first, and in others the spirit. And some are
hoary in youth, but the late young keep long young.

To many men life is a failure; a poison-worm gnaweth at their heart.
Then let them see to it that their dying is all the more a success.

Many never become sweet; they rot even in the summer. It is cowardice
that holdeth them fast to their branches.

Far too many live, and far too long hang they on their branches. Would
that a storm came and shook all this rottenness and worm-eatenness from
the tree!

Would that there came preachers of SPEEDY death! Those would be the
appropriate storms and agitators of the trees of life! But I hear only
slow death preached, and patience with all that is "earthly."

Ah! ye preach patience with what is earthly? This earthly is it that
hath too much patience with you, ye blasphemers!

Verily, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death
honour: and to many hath it proved a calamity that he died too early.

As yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews,
together with the hatred of the good and just--the Hebrew Jesus: then
was he seized with the longing for death.

Had he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the good and just!
Then, perhaps, would he have learned to live, and love the earth--and
laughter also!

Believe it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would have
disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble enough was he to
disavow!

But he was still immature. Immaturely loveth the youth, and immaturely
also hateth he man and earth. Confined and awkward are still his soul
and the wings of his spirit.

But in man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less of
melancholy: better understandeth he about life and death.

Free for death, and free in death; a holy Naysayer, when there is no
longer time for Yea: thus understandeth he about death and life.

That your dying may not be a reproach to man and the earth, my friends:
that do I solicit from the honey of your soul.

In your dying shall your spirit and your virtue still shine like an
evening after-glow around the earth: otherwise your dying hath been
unsatisfactory.

Thus will I die myself, that ye friends may love the earth more for my
sake; and earth will I again become, to have rest in her that bore me.

Verily, a goal had Zarathustra; he threw his ball. Now be ye friends the
heirs of my goal; to you throw I the golden ball.

Best of all, do I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball! And so
tarry I still a little while on the earth--pardon me for it!

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXII. THE BESTOWING VIRTUE.

1.

When Zarathustra had taken leave of the town to which his heart was
attached, the name of which is "The Pied Cow," there followed him many
people who called themselves his disciples, and kept him company. Thus
came they to a crossroad. Then Zarathustra told them that he now wanted
to go alone; for he was fond of going alone. His disciples, however,
presented him at his departure with a staff, on the golden handle of
which a serpent twined round the sun. Zarathustra rejoiced on account
of the staff, and supported himself thereon; then spake he thus to his
disciples:

Tell me, pray: how came gold to the highest value? Because it is
uncommon, and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in lustre; it always
bestoweth itself.

Only as image of the highest virtue came gold to the highest value.
Goldlike, beameth the glance of the bestower. Gold-lustre maketh peace
between moon and sun.

Uncommon is the highest virtue, and unprofiting, beaming is it, and soft
of lustre: a bestowing virtue is the highest virtue.

Verily, I divine you well, my disciples: ye strive like me for the
bestowing virtue. What should ye have in common with cats and wolves?

It is your thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves: and
therefore have ye the thirst to accumulate all riches in your soul.

Insatiably striveth your soul for treasures and jewels, because your
virtue is insatiable in desiring to bestow.

Ye constrain all things to flow towards you and into you, so that they
shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of your love.

Verily, an appropriator of all values must such bestowing love become;
but healthy and holy, call I this selfishness.--

Another selfishness is there, an all-too-poor and hungry kind, which
would always steal--the selfishness of the sick, the sickly selfishness.

With the eye of the thief it looketh upon all that is lustrous; with the
craving of hunger it measureth him who hath abundance; and ever doth it
prowl round the tables of bestowers.

Sickness speaketh in such craving, and invisible degeneration; of a
sickly body, speaketh the larcenous craving of this selfishness.

Tell me, my brother, what do we think bad, and worst of all? Is it not
DEGENERATION?--And we always suspect degeneration when the bestowing
soul is lacking.

Upward goeth our course from genera on to super-genera. But a horror to
us is the degenerating sense, which saith: "All for myself."

Upward soareth our sense: thus is it a simile of our body, a simile of
an elevation. Such similes of elevations are the names of the virtues.

Thus goeth the body through history, a becomer and fighter. And the
spirit--what is it to the body? Its fights' and victories' herald, its
companion and echo.

Similes, are all names of good and evil; they do not speak out, they
only hint. A fool who seeketh knowledge from them!

Give heed, my brethren, to every hour when your spirit would speak in
similes: there is the origin of your virtue.

Elevated is then your body, and raised up; with its delight, enraptureth
it the spirit; so that it becometh creator, and valuer, and lover, and
everything's benefactor.

When your heart overfloweth broad and full like the river, a blessing
and a danger to the lowlanders: there is the origin of your virtue.

When ye are exalted above praise and blame, and your will would command
all things, as a loving one's will: there is the origin of your virtue.

When ye despise pleasant things, and the effeminate couch, and cannot
couch far enough from the effeminate: there is the origin of your
virtue.

When ye are willers of one will, and when that change of every need is
needful to you: there is the origin of your virtue.

Verily, a new good and evil is it! Verily, a new deep murmuring, and the
voice of a new fountain!

Power is it, this new virtue; a ruling thought is it, and around it a
subtle soul: a golden sun, with the serpent of knowledge around it.

2.

Here paused Zarathustra awhile, and looked lovingly on his disciples.
Then he continued to speak thus--and his voice had changed:

Remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue!
Let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning
of the earth! Thus do I pray and conjure you.

Let it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal walls with
its wings! Ah, there hath always been so much flown-away virtue!

Lead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth--yea, back
to body and life: that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human
meaning!

A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue flown away
and blundered. Alas! in our body dwelleth still all this delusion and
blundering: body and will hath it there become.

A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue attempted and
erred. Yea, an attempt hath man been. Alas, much ignorance and error
hath become embodied in us!

Not only the rationality of millenniums--also their madness, breaketh
out in us. Dangerous is it to be an heir.

Still fight we step by step with the giant Chance, and over all mankind
hath hitherto ruled nonsense, the lack-of-sense.

Let your spirit and your virtue be devoted to the sense of the earth,
my brethren: let the value of everything be determined anew by you!
Therefore shall ye be fighters! Therefore shall ye be creators!

Intelligently doth the body purify itself; attempting with intelligence
it exalteth itself; to the discerners all impulses sanctify themselves;
to the exalted the soul becometh joyful.

Physician, heal thyself: then wilt thou also heal thy patient. Let it be
his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole.

A thousand paths are there which have never yet been trodden; a thousand
salubrities and hidden islands of life. Unexhausted and undiscovered is
still man and man's world.

Awake and hearken, ye lonesome ones! From the future come winds with
stealthy pinions, and to fine ears good tidings are proclaimed.

Ye lonesome ones of to-day, ye seceding ones, ye shall one day be a
people: out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall a chosen people
arise:--and out of it the Superman.

Verily, a place of healing shall the earth become! And already is a new
odour diffused around it, a salvation-bringing odour--and a new hope!

3.

When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he paused, like one who had not
said his last word; and long did he balance the staff doubtfully in his
hand. At last he spake thus--and his voice had changed:

I now go alone, my disciples! Ye also now go away, and alone! So will I
have it.

Verily, I advise you: depart from me, and guard yourselves against
Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he hath
deceived you.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also
to hate his friends.

One requiteth a teacher badly if one remain merely a scholar. And why
will ye not pluck at my wreath?

Ye venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day collapse?
Take heed lest a statue crush you!

Ye say, ye believe in Zarathustra? But of what account is Zarathustra!
Ye are my believers: but of what account are all believers!

Ye had not yet sought yourselves: then did ye find me. So do all
believers; therefore all belief is of so little account.

Now do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all
denied me, will I return unto you.

Verily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my lost ones;
with another love shall I then love you.

And once again shall ye have become friends unto me, and children of one
hope: then will I be with you for the third time, to celebrate the great
noontide with you.

And it is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of his course
between animal and Superman, and celebrateth his advance to the evening
as his highest hope: for it is the advance to a new morning.

At such time will the down-goer bless himself, that he should be an
over-goer; and the sun of his knowledge will be at noontide.

"DEAD ARE ALL THE GODS: NOW DO WE DESIRE THE SUPERMAN TO LIVE."--Let
this be our final will at the great noontide!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. SECOND PART.

"--and only when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you.

Verily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my lost ones;
with another love shall I then love you."--ZARATHUSTRA, I., "The
Bestowing Virtue."




XXIII. THE CHILD WITH THE MIRROR.

After this Zarathustra returned again into the mountains to the solitude
of his cave, and withdrew himself from men, waiting like a sower who
hath scattered his seed. His soul, however, became impatient and full of
longing for those whom he loved: because he had still much to give them.
For this is hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep
modest as a giver.

Thus passed with the lonesome one months and years; his wisdom meanwhile
increased, and caused him pain by its abundance.

One morning, however, he awoke ere the rosy dawn, and having meditated
long on his couch, at last spake thus to his heart:

Why did I startle in my dream, so that I awoke? Did not a child come to
me, carrying a mirror?

"O Zarathustra"--said the child unto me--"look at thyself in the
mirror!"

But when I looked into the mirror, I shrieked, and my heart throbbed:
for not myself did I see therein, but a devil's grimace and derision.

Verily, all too well do I understand the dream's portent and monition:
my DOCTRINE is in danger; tares want to be called wheat!

Mine enemies have grown powerful and have disfigured the likeness of
my doctrine, so that my dearest ones have to blush for the gifts that I
gave them.

Lost are my friends; the hour hath come for me to seek my lost ones!--

With these words Zarathustra started up, not however like a person in
anguish seeking relief, but rather like a seer and a singer whom the
spirit inspireth. With amazement did his eagle and serpent gaze upon
him: for a coming bliss overspread his countenance like the rosy dawn.

What hath happened unto me, mine animals?--said Zarathustra. Am I not
transformed? Hath not bliss come unto me like a whirlwind?

Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still
too young--so have patience with it!

Wounded am I by my happiness: all sufferers shall be physicians unto me!

To my friends can I again go down, and also to mine enemies! Zarathustra
can again speak and bestow, and show his best love to his loved ones!

My impatient love overfloweth in streams,--down towards sunrise and
sunset. Out of silent mountains and storms of affliction, rusheth my
soul into the valleys.

Too long have I longed and looked into the distance. Too long hath
solitude possessed me: thus have I unlearned to keep silence.

Utterance have I become altogether, and the brawling of a brook from
high rocks: downward into the valleys will I hurl my speech.

And let the stream of my love sweep into unfrequented channels! How
should a stream not finally find its way to the sea!

Forsooth, there is a lake in me, sequestered and self-sufficing; but the
stream of my love beareth this along with it, down--to the sea!

New paths do I tread, a new speech cometh unto me; tired have I become--
like all creators--of the old tongues. No longer will my spirit walk on
worn-out soles.

Too slowly runneth all speaking for me:--into thy chariot, O storm, do I
leap! And even thee will I whip with my spite!

Like a cry and an huzza will I traverse wide seas, till I find the Happy
Isles where my friends sojourn;--

And mine enemies amongst them! How I now love every one unto whom I may
but speak! Even mine enemies pertain to my bliss.

And when I want to mount my wildest horse, then doth my spear always
help me up best: it is my foot's ever ready servant:--

The spear which I hurl at mine enemies! How grateful am I to mine
enemies that I may at last hurl it!

Too great hath been the tension of my cloud: 'twixt laughters of
lightnings will I cast hail-showers into the depths.

Violently will my breast then heave; violently will it blow its storm
over the mountains: thus cometh its assuagement.

Verily, like a storm cometh my happiness, and my freedom! But mine
enemies shall think that THE EVIL ONE roareth over their heads.

Yea, ye also, my friends, will be alarmed by my wild wisdom; and perhaps
ye will flee therefrom, along with mine enemies.

Ah, that I knew how to lure you back with shepherds' flutes! Ah, that
my lioness wisdom would learn to roar softly! And much have we already
learned with one another!

My wild wisdom became pregnant on the lonesome mountains; on the rough
stones did she bear the youngest of her young.

Now runneth she foolishly in the arid wilderness, and seeketh and
seeketh the soft sward--mine old, wild wisdom!

On the soft sward of your hearts, my friends!--on your love, would she
fain couch her dearest one!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXIV. IN THE HAPPY ISLES.

The figs fall from the trees, they are good and sweet; and in falling
the red skins of them break. A north wind am I to ripe figs.

Thus, like figs, do these doctrines fall for you, my friends: imbibe
now their juice and their sweet substance! It is autumn all around, and
clear sky, and afternoon.

Lo, what fullness is around us! And out of the midst of superabundance,
it is delightful to look out upon distant seas.

Once did people say God, when they looked out upon distant seas; now,
however, have I taught you to say, Superman.

God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond
your creating will.

Could ye CREATE a God?--Then, I pray you, be silent about all Gods! But
ye could well create the Superman.

Not perhaps ye yourselves, my brethren! But into fathers and forefathers
of the Superman could ye transform yourselves: and let that be your best
creating!--

God is a conjecture: but I should like your conjecturing restricted to
the conceivable.

Could ye CONCEIVE a God?--But let this mean Will to Truth unto you,
that everything be transformed into the humanly conceivable, the humanly
visible, the humanly sensible! Your own discernment shall ye follow out
to the end!

And what ye have called the world shall but be created by you: your
reason, your likeness, your will, your love, shall it itself become! And
verily, for your bliss, ye discerning ones!

And how would ye endure life without that hope, ye discerning ones?
Neither in the inconceivable could ye have been born, nor in the
irrational.

But that I may reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends: IF there
were gods, how could I endure it to be no God! THEREFORE there are no
Gods.

Yea, I have drawn the conclusion; now, however, doth it draw me.--

God is a conjecture: but who could drink all the bitterness of this
conjecture without dying? Shall his faith be taken from the creating
one, and from the eagle his flights into eagle-heights?

God is a thought--it maketh all the straight crooked, and all that
standeth reel. What? Time would be gone, and all the perishable would be
but a lie?

To think this is giddiness and vertigo to human limbs, and even vomiting
to the stomach: verily, the reeling sickness do I call it, to conjecture
such a thing.

Evil do I call it and misanthropic: all that teaching about the one, and
the plenum, and the unmoved, and the sufficient, and the imperishable!

All the imperishable--that's but a simile, and the poets lie too much.--

But of time and of becoming shall the best similes speak: a praise shall
they be, and a justification of all perishableness!

Creating--that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's
alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed,
and much transformation.

Yea, much bitter dying must there be in your life, ye creators! Thus are
ye advocates and justifiers of all perishableness.

For the creator himself to be the new-born child, he must also
be willing to be the child-bearer, and endure the pangs of the
child-bearer.

Verily, through a hundred souls went I my way, and through a hundred
cradles and birth-throes. Many a farewell have I taken; I know the
heart-breaking last hours.

But so willeth it my creating Will, my fate. Or, to tell you it more
candidly: just such a fate--willeth my Will.

All FEELING suffereth in me, and is in prison: but my WILLING ever
cometh to me as mine emancipator and comforter.

Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and
emancipation--so teacheth you Zarathustra.

No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer creating! Ah,
that that great debility may ever be far from me!

And also in discerning do I feel only my will's procreating and evolving
delight; and if there be innocence in my knowledge, it is because there
is will to procreation in it.

Away from God and Gods did this will allure me; what would there be to
create if there were--Gods!

But to man doth it ever impel me anew, my fervent creative will; thus
impelleth it the hammer to the stone.

Ah, ye men, within the stone slumbereth an image for me, the image of my
visions! Ah, that it should slumber in the hardest, ugliest stone!

Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prison. From the stone fly
the fragments: what's that to me?

I will complete it: for a shadow came unto me--the stillest and lightest
of all things once came unto me!

The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a shadow. Ah, my brethren! Of
what account now are--the Gods to me!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXV. THE PITIFUL.

My friends, there hath arisen a satire on your friend: "Behold
Zarathustra! Walketh he not amongst us as if amongst animals?"

But it is better said in this wise: "The discerning one walketh amongst
men AS amongst animals."

Man himself is to the discerning one: the animal with red cheeks.

How hath that happened unto him? Is it not because he hath had to be
ashamed too oft?

O my friends! Thus speaketh the discerning one: shame, shame,
shame--that is the history of man!

And on that account doth the noble one enjoin upon himself not to abash:
bashfulness doth he enjoin on himself in presence of all sufferers.

Verily, I like them not, the merciful ones, whose bliss is in their
pity: too destitute are they of bashfulness.

If I must be pitiful, I dislike to be called so; and if I be so, it is
preferably at a distance.

Preferably also do I shroud my head, and flee, before being recognised:
and thus do I bid you do, my friends!

May my destiny ever lead unafflicted ones like you across my path, and
those with whom I MAY have hope and repast and honey in common!

Verily, I have done this and that for the afflicted: but something
better did I always seem to do when I had learned to enjoy myself
better.

Since humanity came into being, man hath enjoyed himself too little:
that alone, my brethren, is our original sin!

And when we learn better to enjoy ourselves, then do we unlearn best to
give pain unto others, and to contrive pain.

Therefore do I wash the hand that hath helped the sufferer; therefore do
I wipe also my soul.

For in seeing the sufferer suffering--thereof was I ashamed on account
of his shame; and in helping him, sorely did I wound his pride.

Great obligations do not make grateful, but revengeful; and when a small
kindness is not forgotten, it becometh a gnawing worm.

"Be shy in accepting! Distinguish by accepting!"--thus do I advise those
who have naught to bestow.

I, however, am a bestower: willingly do I bestow as friend to friends.
Strangers, however, and the poor, may pluck for themselves the fruit
from my tree: thus doth it cause less shame.

Beggars, however, one should entirely do away with! Verily, it annoyeth
one to give unto them, and it annoyeth one not to give unto them.

And likewise sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: the
sting of conscience teacheth one to sting.

The worst things, however, are the petty thoughts. Verily, better to
have done evilly than to have thought pettily!

To be sure, ye say: "The delight in petty evils spareth one many a great
evil deed." But here one should not wish to be sparing.

Like a boil is the evil deed: it itcheth and irritateth and breaketh
forth--it speaketh honourably.

"Behold, I am disease," saith the evil deed: that is its honourableness.

But like infection is the petty thought: it creepeth and hideth, and
wanteth to be nowhere--until the whole body is decayed and withered by
the petty infection.

To him however, who is possessed of a devil, I would whisper this word
in the ear: "Better for thee to rear up thy devil! Even for thee there
is still a path to greatness!"--

Ah, my brethren! One knoweth a little too much about every one! And many
a one becometh transparent to us, but still we can by no means penetrate
him.

It is difficult to live among men because silence is so difficult.

And not to him who is offensive to us are we most unfair, but to him who
doth not concern us at all.

If, however, thou hast a suffering friend, then be a resting-place for
his suffering; like a hard bed, however, a camp-bed: thus wilt thou
serve him best.

And if a friend doeth thee wrong, then say: "I forgive thee what thou
hast done unto me; that thou hast done it unto THYSELF, however--how
could I forgive that!"

Thus speaketh all great love: it surpasseth even forgiveness and pity.

One should hold fast one's heart; for when one letteth it go, how
quickly doth one's head run away!

Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the
pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the
follies of the pitiful?

Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their
pity!

Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: "Even God hath his hell:
it is his love for man."

And lately, did I hear him say these words: "God is dead: of his pity
for man hath God died."--

So be ye warned against pity: FROM THENCE there yet cometh unto men a
heavy cloud! Verily, I understand weather-signs!

But attend also to this word: All great love is above all its pity: for
it seeketh--to create what is loved!

"Myself do I offer unto my love, AND MY NEIGHBOUR AS MYSELF"--such is
the language of all creators.

All creators, however, are hard.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXVI. THE PRIESTS.

And one day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples, and spake these
words unto them:

"Here are priests: but although they are mine enemies, pass them quietly
and with sleeping swords!

Even among them there are heroes; many of them have suffered too much--:
so they want to make others suffer.

Bad enemies are they: nothing is more revengeful than their meekness.
And readily doth he soil himself who toucheth them.

But my blood is related to theirs; and I want withal to see my blood
honoured in theirs."--

And when they had passed, a pain attacked Zarathustra; but not long had
he struggled with the pain, when he began to speak thus:

It moveth my heart for those priests. They also go against my taste; but
that is the smallest matter unto me, since I am among men.

But I suffer and have suffered with them: prisoners are they unto me,
and stigmatised ones. He whom they call Saviour put them in fetters:--

In fetters of false values and fatuous words! Oh, that some one would
save them from their Saviour!

On an isle they once thought they had landed, when the sea tossed them
about; but behold, it was a slumbering monster!

False values and fatuous words: these are the worst monsters for
mortals--long slumbereth and waiteth the fate that is in them.

But at last it cometh and awaketh and devoureth and engulfeth whatever
hath built tabernacles upon it.

Oh, just look at those tabernacles which those priests have built
themselves! Churches, they call their sweet-smelling caves!

Oh, that falsified light, that mustified air! Where the soul--may not
fly aloft to its height!

But so enjoineth their belief: "On your knees, up the stair, ye
sinners!"

Verily, rather would I see a shameless one than the distorted eyes of
their shame and devotion!

Who created for themselves such caves and penitence-stairs? Was it not
those who sought to conceal themselves, and were ashamed under the clear
sky?

And only when the clear sky looketh again through ruined roofs, and down
upon grass and red poppies on ruined walls--will I again turn my heart
to the seats of this God.

They called God that which opposed and afflicted them: and verily, there
was much hero-spirit in their worship!

And they knew not how to love their God otherwise than by nailing men to
the cross!

As corpses they thought to live; in black draped they their corpses;
even in their talk do I still feel the evil flavour of charnel-houses.

And he who liveth nigh unto them liveth nigh unto black pools, wherein
the toad singeth his song with sweet gravity.

Better songs would they have to sing, for me to believe in their
Saviour: more like saved ones would his disciples have to appear unto
me!

Naked, would I like to see them: for beauty alone should preach
penitence. But whom would that disguised affliction convince!

Verily, their Saviours themselves came not from freedom and freedom's
seventh heaven! Verily, they themselves never trod the carpets of
knowledge!

Of defects did the spirit of those Saviours consist; but into every
defect had they put their illusion, their stop-gap, which they called
God.

In their pity was their spirit drowned; and when they swelled and
o'erswelled with pity, there always floated to the surface a great
folly.

Eagerly and with shouts drove they their flock over their foot-bridge;
as if there were but one foot-bridge to the future! Verily, those
shepherds also were still of the flock!

Small spirits and spacious souls had those shepherds: but, my brethren,
what small domains have even the most spacious souls hitherto been!

Characters of blood did they write on the way they went, and their folly
taught that truth is proved by blood.

But blood is the very worst witness to truth; blood tainteth the purest
teaching, and turneth it into delusion and hatred of heart.

And when a person goeth through fire for his teaching--what doth that
prove! It is more, verily, when out of one's own burning cometh one's
own teaching!

Sultry heart and cold head; where these meet, there ariseth the
blusterer, the "Saviour."

Greater ones, verily, have there been, and higher-born ones, than those
whom the people call Saviours, those rapturous blusterers!

And by still greater ones than any of the Saviours must ye be saved, my
brethren, if ye would find the way to freedom!

Never yet hath there been a Superman. Naked have I seen both of them,
the greatest man and the smallest man:--

All-too-similar are they still to each other. Verily, even the greatest
found I--all-too-human!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXVII. THE VIRTUOUS.

With thunder and heavenly fireworks must one speak to indolent and
somnolent senses.

But beauty's voice speaketh gently: it appealeth only to the most
awakened souls.

Gently vibrated and laughed unto me to-day my buckler; it was beauty's
holy laughing and thrilling.

At you, ye virtuous ones, laughed my beauty to-day. And thus came its
voice unto me: "They want--to be paid besides!"

Ye want to be paid besides, ye virtuous ones! Ye want reward for virtue,
and heaven for earth, and eternity for your to-day?

And now ye upbraid me for teaching that there is no reward-giver,
nor paymaster? And verily, I do not even teach that virtue is its own
reward.

Ah! this is my sorrow: into the basis of things have reward and
punishment been insinuated--and now even into the basis of your souls,
ye virtuous ones!

But like the snout of the boar shall my word grub up the basis of your
souls; a ploughshare will I be called by you.

All the secrets of your heart shall be brought to light; and when ye
lie in the sun, grubbed up and broken, then will also your falsehood be
separated from your truth.

For this is your truth: ye are TOO PURE for the filth of the words:
vengeance, punishment, recompense, retribution.

Ye love your virtue as a mother loveth her child; but when did one hear
of a mother wanting to be paid for her love?

It is your dearest Self, your virtue. The ring's thirst is in you: to
reach itself again struggleth every ring, and turneth itself.

And like the star that goeth out, so is every work of your virtue: ever
is its light on its way and travelling--and when will it cease to be on
its way?

Thus is the light of your virtue still on its way, even when its work
is done. Be it forgotten and dead, still its ray of light liveth and
travelleth.

That your virtue is your Self, and not an outward thing, a skin, or
a cloak: that is the truth from the basis of your souls, ye virtuous
ones!--

But sure enough there are those to whom virtue meaneth writhing under
the lash: and ye have hearkened too much unto their crying!

And others are there who call virtue the slothfulness of their vices;
and when once their hatred and jealousy relax the limbs, their "justice"
becometh lively and rubbeth its sleepy eyes.

And others are there who are drawn downwards: their devils draw them.
But the more they sink, the more ardently gloweth their eye, and the
longing for their God.

Ah! their crying also hath reached your ears, ye virtuous ones: "What I
am NOT, that, that is God to me, and virtue!"

And others are there who go along heavily and creakingly, like carts
taking stones downhill: they talk much of dignity and virtue--their drag
they call virtue!

And others are there who are like eight-day clocks when wound up; they
tick, and want people to call ticking--virtue.

Verily, in those have I mine amusement: wherever I find such clocks I
shall wind them up with my mockery, and they shall even whirr thereby!

And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake
of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned in their
unrighteousness.

Ah! how ineptly cometh the word "virtue" out of their mouth! And when
they say: "I am just," it always soundeth like: "I am just--revenged!"

With their virtues they want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies;
and they elevate themselves only that they may lower others.

And again there are those who sit in their swamp, and speak thus from
among the bulrushes: "Virtue--that is to sit quietly in the swamp.

We bite no one, and go out of the way of him who would bite; and in all
matters we have the opinion that is given us."

And again there are those who love attitudes, and think that virtue is a
sort of attitude.

Their knees continually adore, and their hands are eulogies of virtue,
but their heart knoweth naught thereof.

And again there are those who regard it as virtue to say: "Virtue
is necessary"; but after all they believe only that policemen are
necessary.

And many a one who cannot see men's loftiness, calleth it virtue to see
their baseness far too well: thus calleth he his evil eye virtue.--

And some want to be edified and raised up, and call it virtue: and
others want to be cast down,--and likewise call it virtue.

And thus do almost all think that they participate in virtue; and at
least every one claimeth to be an authority on "good" and "evil."

But Zarathustra came not to say unto all those liars and fools: "What do
YE know of virtue! What COULD ye know of virtue!"--

But that ye, my friends, might become weary of the old words which ye
have learned from the fools and liars:

That ye might become weary of the words "reward," "retribution,"
"punishment," "righteous vengeance."--

That ye might become weary of saying: "That an action is good is because
it is unselfish."

Ah! my friends! That YOUR very Self be in your action, as the mother is
in the child: let that be YOUR formula of virtue!

Verily, I have taken from you a hundred formulae and your virtue's
favourite playthings; and now ye upbraid me, as children upbraid.

They played by the sea--then came there a wave and swept their
playthings into the deep: and now do they cry.

But the same wave shall bring them new playthings, and spread before
them new speckled shells!

Thus will they be comforted; and like them shall ye also, my friends,
have your comforting--and new speckled shells!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXVIII. THE RABBLE.

Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all
fountains are poisoned.

To everything cleanly am I well disposed; but I hate to see the grinning
mouths and the thirst of the unclean.

They cast their eye down into the fountain: and now glanceth up to me
their odious smile out of the fountain.

The holy water have they poisoned with their lustfulness; and when they
called their filthy dreams delight, then poisoned they also the words.

Indignant becometh the flame when they put their damp hearts to the
fire; the spirit itself bubbleth and smoketh when the rabble approach
the fire.

Mawkish and over-mellow becometh the fruit in their hands: unsteady, and
withered at the top, doth their look make the fruit-tree.

And many a one who hath turned away from life, hath only turned away
from the rabble: he hated to share with them fountain, flame, and fruit.

And many a one who hath gone into the wilderness and suffered thirst
with beasts of prey, disliked only to sit at the cistern with filthy
camel-drivers.

And many a one who hath come along as a destroyer, and as a hailstorm
to all cornfields, wanted merely to put his foot into the jaws of the
rabble, and thus stop their throat.

And it is not the mouthful which hath most choked me, to know that life
itself requireth enmity and death and torture-crosses:--

But I asked once, and suffocated almost with my question: What? is the
rabble also NECESSARY for life?

Are poisoned fountains necessary, and stinking fires, and filthy dreams,
and maggots in the bread of life?

Not my hatred, but my loathing, gnawed hungrily at my life! Ah, ofttimes
became I weary of spirit, when I found even the rabble spiritual!

And on the rulers turned I my back, when I saw what they now call
ruling: to traffic and bargain for power--with the rabble!

Amongst peoples of a strange language did I dwell, with stopped ears: so
that the language of their trafficking might remain strange unto me, and
their bargaining for power.

And holding my nose, I went morosely through all yesterdays and to-days:
verily, badly smell all yesterdays and to-days of the scribbling rabble!

Like a cripple become deaf, and blind, and dumb--thus have I lived long;
that I might not live with the power-rabble, the scribe-rabble, and the
pleasure-rabble.

Toilsomely did my spirit mount stairs, and cautiously; alms of delight
were its refreshment; on the staff did life creep along with the blind
one.

What hath happened unto me? How have I freed myself from loathing?
Who hath rejuvenated mine eye? How have I flown to the height where no
rabble any longer sit at the wells?

Did my loathing itself create for me wings and fountain-divining powers?
Verily, to the loftiest height had I to fly, to find again the well of
delight!

Oh, I have found it, my brethren! Here on the loftiest height bubbleth
up for me the well of delight! And there is a life at whose waters none
of the rabble drink with me!

Almost too violently dost thou flow for me, thou fountain of delight!
And often emptiest thou the goblet again, in wanting to fill it!

And yet must I learn to approach thee more modestly: far too violently
doth my heart still flow towards thee:--

My heart on which my summer burneth, my short, hot, melancholy,
over-happy summer: how my summer heart longeth for thy coolness!

Past, the lingering distress of my spring! Past, the wickedness of my
snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely, and summer-noontide!

A summer on the loftiest height, with cold fountains and blissful
stillness: oh, come, my friends, that the stillness may become more
blissful!

For this is OUR height and our home: too high and steep do we here dwell
for all uncleanly ones and their thirst.

Cast but your pure eyes into the well of my delight, my friends! How
could it become turbid thereby! It shall laugh back to you with ITS
purity.

On the tree of the future build we our nest; eagles shall bring us lone
ones food in their beaks!

Verily, no food of which the impure could be fellow-partakers! Fire,
would they think they devoured, and burn their mouths!

Verily, no abodes do we here keep ready for the impure! An ice-cave to
their bodies would our happiness be, and to their spirits!

And as strong winds will we live above them, neighbours to the eagles,
neighbours to the snow, neighbours to the sun: thus live the strong
winds.

And like a wind will I one day blow amongst them, and with my spirit,
take the breath from their spirit: thus willeth my future.

Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low places; and this counsel
counselleth he to his enemies, and to whatever spitteth and speweth:
"Take care not to spit AGAINST the wind!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXIX. THE TARANTULAS.

Lo, this is the tarantula's den! Wouldst thou see the tarantula itself?
Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it may tremble.

There cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on thy
back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in thy soul.

Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab;
with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy!

Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy,
ye preachers of EQUALITY! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly
revengeful ones!

But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I
laugh in your face my laughter of the height.

Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your
den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word
"justice."

Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE--that is for me the bridge
to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.

Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. "Let it be
very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our
vengeance"--thus do they talk to one another.

"Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like
us"--thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.

"And 'Will to Equality'--that itself shall henceforth be the name of
virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!"

Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in
you for "equality": your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves
thus in virtue-words!

Fretted conceit and suppressed envy--perhaps your fathers' conceit and
envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance.

What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in
the son the father's revealed secret.

Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspireth
them--but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not
spirit, but envy, that maketh them so.

Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers' paths; and this is the
sign of their jealousy--they always go too far: so that their fatigue
hath at last to go to sleep on the snow.

In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is
maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse
to punish is powerful!

They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer
the hangman and the sleuth-hound.

Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their
souls not only honey is lacking.

And when they call themselves "the good and just," forget not, that for
them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but--power!

My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others.

There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time
preachers of equality, and tarantulas.

That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their den, these
poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life--is because they would thereby
do injury.

To those would they thereby do injury who have power at present: for
with those the preaching of death is still most at home.

Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise: and they
themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners.

With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded.
For thus speaketh justice UNTO ME: "Men are not equal."

And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Superman,
if I spake otherwise?

On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and
always shall there be more war and inequality among them: thus doth my
great love make me speak!

Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities;
and with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other
the supreme fight!

Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of
values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again
and again surpass itself!

Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs--life itself: into
remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties--
THEREFORE doth it require elevation!

And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it require steps, and
variance of steps and climbers! To rise striveth life, and in rising to
surpass itself.

And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula's den is, riseth
aloft an ancient temple's ruins--just behold it with enlightened eyes!

Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as
the wisest ones about the secret of life!

That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power
and supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable.

How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with
light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving
ones.--

Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends!
Divinely will we strive AGAINST one another!--

Alas! There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old enemy! Divinely
steadfast and beautiful, it hath bit me on the finger!

"Punishment must there be, and justice"--so thinketh it: "not
gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honour of enmity!"

Yea, it hath revenged itself! And alas! now will it make my soul also
dizzy with revenge!

That I may NOT turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my friends, to this
pillar! Rather will I be a pillar-saint than a whirl of vengeance!

Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer,
he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXX. THE FAMOUS WISE ONES.

The people have ye served and the people's superstition--NOT the
truth!--all ye famous wise ones! And just on that account did they pay
you reverence.

And on that account also did they tolerate your unbelief, because it
was a pleasantry and a by-path for the people. Thus doth the master give
free scope to his slaves, and even enjoyeth their presumptuousness.

But he who is hated by the people, as the wolf by the dogs--is the free
spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-adorer, the dweller in the woods.

To hunt him out of his lair--that was always called "sense of right" by
the people: on him do they still hound their sharpest-toothed dogs.

"For there the truth is, where the people are! Woe, woe to the seeking
ones!"--thus hath it echoed through all time.

Your people would ye justify in their reverence: that called ye "Will to
Truth," ye famous wise ones!

And your heart hath always said to itself: "From the people have I come:
from thence came to me also the voice of God."

Stiff-necked and artful, like the ass, have ye always been, as the
advocates of the people.

And many a powerful one who wanted to run well with the people, hath
harnessed in front of his horses--a donkey, a famous wise man.

And now, ye famous wise ones, I would have you finally throw off
entirely the skin of the lion!

The skin of the beast of prey, the speckled skin, and the dishevelled
locks of the investigator, the searcher, and the conqueror!

Ah! for me to learn to believe in your "conscientiousness," ye would
first have to break your venerating will.

Conscientious--so call I him who goeth into God-forsaken wildernesses,
and hath broken his venerating heart.

In the yellow sands and burnt by the sun, he doubtless peereth thirstily
at the isles rich in fountains, where life reposeth under shady trees.

But his thirst doth not persuade him to become like those comfortable
ones: for where there are oases, there are also idols.

Hungry, fierce, lonesome, God-forsaken: so doth the lion-will wish
itself.

Free from the happiness of slaves, redeemed from Deities and adorations,
fearless and fear-inspiring, grand and lonesome: so is the will of the
conscientious.

In the wilderness have ever dwelt the conscientious, the free spirits,
as lords of the wilderness; but in the cities dwell the well-foddered,
famous wise ones--the draught-beasts.

For, always, do they draw, as asses--the PEOPLE'S carts!

Not that I on that account upbraid them: but serving ones do they
remain, and harnessed ones, even though they glitter in golden harness.

And often have they been good servants and worthy of their hire. For
thus saith virtue: "If thou must be a servant, seek him unto whom thy
service is most useful!

The spirit and virtue of thy master shall advance by thou being his
servant: thus wilt thou thyself advance with his spirit and virtue!"

And verily, ye famous wise ones, ye servants of the people! Ye
yourselves have advanced with the people's spirit and virtue--and the
people by you! To your honour do I say it!

But the people ye remain for me, even with your virtues, the people with
purblind eyes--the people who know not what SPIRIT is!

Spirit is life which itself cutteth into life: by its own torture doth
it increase its own knowledge,--did ye know that before?

And the spirit's happiness is this: to be anointed and consecrated with
tears as a sacrificial victim,--did ye know that before?

And the blindness of the blind one, and his seeking and groping, shall
yet testify to the power of the sun into which he hath gazed,--did ye
know that before?

And with mountains shall the discerning one learn to BUILD! It is
a small thing for the spirit to remove mountains,--did ye know that
before?

Ye know only the sparks of the spirit: but ye do not see the anvil which
it is, and the cruelty of its hammer!

Verily, ye know not the spirit's pride! But still less could ye endure
the spirit's humility, should it ever want to speak!

And never yet could ye cast your spirit into a pit of snow: ye are not
hot enough for that! Thus are ye unaware, also, of the delight of its
coldness.

In all respects, however, ye make too familiar with the spirit; and out
of wisdom have ye often made an almshouse and a hospital for bad poets.

Ye are not eagles: thus have ye never experienced the happiness of the
alarm of the spirit. And he who is not a bird should not camp above
abysses.

Ye seem to me lukewarm ones: but coldly floweth all deep knowledge.
Ice-cold are the innermost wells of the spirit: a refreshment to hot
hands and handlers.

Respectable do ye there stand, and stiff, and with straight backs, ye
famous wise ones!--no strong wind or will impelleth you.

Have ye ne'er seen a sail crossing the sea, rounded and inflated, and
trembling with the violence of the wind?

Like the sail trembling with the violence of the spirit, doth my wisdom
cross the sea--my wild wisdom!

But ye servants of the people, ye famous wise ones--how COULD ye go with
me!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXXI. THE NIGHT-SONG.

'Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also
is a gushing fountain.

'Tis night: now only do all songs of the loving ones awake. And my soul
also is the song of a loving one.

Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me; it longeth to find
expression. A craving for love is within me, which speaketh itself the
language of love.

Light am I: ah, that I were night! But it is my lonesomeness to be
begirt with light!

Ah, that I were dark and nightly! How would I suck at the breasts of
light!

And you yourselves would I bless, ye twinkling starlets and glow-worms
aloft!--and would rejoice in the gifts of your light.

But I live in mine own light, I drink again into myself the flames that
break forth from me.

I know not the happiness of the receiver; and oft have I dreamt that
stealing must be more blessed than receiving.

It is my poverty that my hand never ceaseth bestowing; it is mine envy
that I see waiting eyes and the brightened nights of longing.

Oh, the misery of all bestowers! Oh, the darkening of my sun! Oh, the
craving to crave! Oh, the violent hunger in satiety!

They take from me: but do I yet touch their soul? There is a gap 'twixt
giving and receiving; and the smallest gap hath finally to be bridged
over.

A hunger ariseth out of my beauty: I should like to injure those I
illumine; I should like to rob those I have gifted:--thus do I hunger
for wickedness.

Withdrawing my hand when another hand already stretcheth out to it;
hesitating like the cascade, which hesitateth even in its leap:--thus do
I hunger for wickedness!

Such revenge doth mine abundance think of: such mischief welleth out of
my lonesomeness.

My happiness in bestowing died in bestowing; my virtue became weary of
itself by its abundance!

He who ever bestoweth is in danger of losing his shame; to him who ever
dispenseth, the hand and heart become callous by very dispensing.

Mine eye no longer overfloweth for the shame of suppliants; my hand hath
become too hard for the trembling of filled hands.

Whence have gone the tears of mine eye, and the down of my heart? Oh,
the lonesomeness of all bestowers! Oh, the silence of all shining ones!

Many suns circle in desert space: to all that is dark do they speak with
their light--but to me they are silent.

Oh, this is the hostility of light to the shining one: unpityingly doth
it pursue its course.

Unfair to the shining one in its innermost heart, cold to the
suns:--thus travelleth every sun.

Like a storm do the suns pursue their courses: that is their travelling.
Their inexorable will do they follow: that is their coldness.

Oh, ye only is it, ye dark, nightly ones, that extract warmth from the
shining ones! Oh, ye only drink milk and refreshment from the light's
udders!

Ah, there is ice around me; my hand burneth with the iciness! Ah, there
is thirst in me; it panteth after your thirst!

'Tis night: alas, that I have to be light! And thirst for the nightly!
And lonesomeness!

'Tis night: now doth my longing break forth in me as a fountain,--for
speech do I long.

'Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And my soul also
is a gushing fountain.

'Tis night: now do all songs of loving ones awake. And my soul also is
the song of a loving one.--

Thus sang Zarathustra.




XXXII. THE DANCE-SONG.

One evening went Zarathustra and his disciples through the forest; and
when he sought for a well, lo, he lighted upon a green meadow peacefully
surrounded with trees and bushes, where maidens were dancing together.
As soon as the maidens recognised Zarathustra, they ceased dancing;
Zarathustra, however, approached them with friendly mien and spake these
words:

Cease not your dancing, ye lovely maidens! No game-spoiler hath come to
you with evil eye, no enemy of maidens.

God's advocate am I with the devil: he, however, is the spirit of
gravity. How could I, ye light-footed ones, be hostile to divine dances?
Or to maidens' feet with fine ankles?

To be sure, I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not
afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

And even the little God may he find, who is dearest to maidens: beside
the well lieth he quietly, with closed eyes.

Verily, in broad daylight did he fall asleep, the sluggard! Had he
perhaps chased butterflies too much?

Upbraid me not, ye beautiful dancers, when I chasten the little God
somewhat! He will cry, certainly, and weep--but he is laughable even
when weeping!

And with tears in his eyes shall he ask you for a dance; and I myself
will sing a song to his dance:

A dance-song and satire on the spirit of gravity my supremest,
powerfulest devil, who is said to be "lord of the world."--

And this is the song that Zarathustra sang when Cupid and the maidens
danced together:

Of late did I gaze into thine eye, O Life! And into the unfathomable did
I there seem to sink.

But thou pulledst me out with a golden angle; derisively didst thou
laugh when I called thee unfathomable.

"Such is the language of all fish," saidst thou; "what THEY do not
fathom is unfathomable.

But changeable am I only, and wild, and altogether a woman, and no
virtuous one:

Though I be called by you men the 'profound one,' or the 'faithful one,'
'the eternal one,' 'the mysterious one.'

But ye men endow us always with your own virtues--alas, ye virtuous
ones!"

Thus did she laugh, the unbelievable one; but never do I believe her and
her laughter, when she speaketh evil of herself.

And when I talked face to face with my wild Wisdom, she said to me
angrily: "Thou willest, thou cravest, thou lovest; on that account alone
dost thou PRAISE Life!"

Then had I almost answered indignantly and told the truth to the angry
one; and one cannot answer more indignantly than when one "telleth the
truth" to one's Wisdom.

For thus do things stand with us three. In my heart do I love only
Life--and verily, most when I hate her!

But that I am fond of Wisdom, and often too fond, is because she
remindeth me very strongly of Life!

She hath her eye, her laugh, and even her golden angle-rod: am I
responsible for it that both are so alike?

And when once Life asked me: "Who is she then, this Wisdom?"--then said
I eagerly: "Ah, yes! Wisdom!

One thirsteth for her and is not satisfied, one looketh through veils,
one graspeth through nets.

Is she beautiful? What do I know! But the oldest carps are still lured
by her.

Changeable is she, and wayward; often have I seen her bite her lip, and
pass the comb against the grain of her hair.

Perhaps she is wicked and false, and altogether a woman; but when she
speaketh ill of herself, just then doth she seduce most."

When I had said this unto Life, then laughed she maliciously, and shut
her eyes. "Of whom dost thou speak?" said she. "Perhaps of me?

And if thou wert right--is it proper to say THAT in such wise to my
face! But now, pray, speak also of thy Wisdom!"

Ah, and now hast thou again opened thine eyes, O beloved Life! And into
the unfathomable have I again seemed to sink.--

Thus sang Zarathustra. But when the dance was over and the maidens had
departed, he became sad.

"The sun hath been long set," said he at last, "the meadow is damp, and
from the forest cometh coolness.

An unknown presence is about me, and gazeth thoughtfully. What! Thou
livest still, Zarathustra?

Why? Wherefore? Whereby? Whither? Where? How? Is it not folly still to
live?--

Ah, my friends; the evening is it which thus interrogateth in me.
Forgive me my sadness!

Evening hath come on: forgive me that evening hath come on!"

Thus sang Zarathustra.




XXXIII. THE GRAVE-SONG.

"Yonder is the grave-island, the silent isle; yonder also are the graves
of my youth. Thither will I carry an evergreen wreath of life."

Resolving thus in my heart, did I sail o'er the sea.--

Oh, ye sights and scenes of my youth! Oh, all ye gleams of love, ye
divine fleeting gleams! How could ye perish so soon for me! I think of
you to-day as my dead ones.

From you, my dearest dead ones, cometh unto me a sweet savour,
heart-opening and melting. Verily, it convulseth and openeth the heart
of the lone seafarer.

Still am I the richest and most to be envied--I, the lonesomest one!
For I HAVE POSSESSED you, and ye possess me still. Tell me: to whom hath
there ever fallen such rosy apples from the tree as have fallen unto me?

Still am I your love's heir and heritage, blooming to your memory with
many-hued, wild-growing virtues, O ye dearest ones!

Ah, we were made to remain nigh unto each other, ye kindly strange
marvels; and not like timid birds did ye come to me and my longing--nay,
but as trusting ones to a trusting one!

Yea, made for faithfulness, like me, and for fond eternities, must I now
name you by your faithlessness, ye divine glances and fleeting gleams:
no other name have I yet learnt.

Verily, too early did ye die for me, ye fugitives. Yet did ye not flee
from me, nor did I flee from you: innocent are we to each other in our
faithlessness.

To kill ME, did they strangle you, ye singing birds of my hopes! Yea, at
you, ye dearest ones, did malice ever shoot its arrows--to hit my heart!

And they hit it! Because ye were always my dearest, my possession and my
possessedness: ON THAT ACCOUNT had ye to die young, and far too early!

At my most vulnerable point did they shoot the arrow--namely, at you,
whose skin is like down--or more like the smile that dieth at a glance!

But this word will I say unto mine enemies: What is all manslaughter in
comparison with what ye have done unto me!

Worse evil did ye do unto me than all manslaughter; the irretrievable
did ye take from me:--thus do I speak unto you, mine enemies!

Slew ye not my youth's visions and dearest marvels! My playmates took ye
from me, the blessed spirits! To their memory do I deposit this wreath
and this curse.

This curse upon you, mine enemies! Have ye not made mine eternal short,
as a tone dieth away in a cold night! Scarcely, as the twinkle of divine
eyes, did it come to me--as a fleeting gleam!

Thus spake once in a happy hour my purity: "Divine shall everything be
unto me."

Then did ye haunt me with foul phantoms; ah, whither hath that happy
hour now fled!

"All days shall be holy unto me"--so spake once the wisdom of my youth:
verily, the language of a joyous wisdom!

But then did ye enemies steal my nights, and sold them to sleepless
torture: ah, whither hath that joyous wisdom now fled?

Once did I long for happy auspices: then did ye lead an owl-monster
across my path, an adverse sign. Ah, whither did my tender longing then
flee?

All loathing did I once vow to renounce: then did ye change my nigh ones
and nearest ones into ulcerations. Ah, whither did my noblest vow then
flee?

As a blind one did I once walk in blessed ways: then did ye cast
filth on the blind one's course: and now is he disgusted with the old
footpath.

And when I performed my hardest task, and celebrated the triumph of
my victories, then did ye make those who loved me call out that I then
grieved them most.

Verily, it was always your doing: ye embittered to me my best honey, and
the diligence of my best bees.

To my charity have ye ever sent the most impudent beggars; around my
sympathy have ye ever crowded the incurably shameless. Thus have ye
wounded the faith of my virtue.

And when I offered my holiest as a sacrifice, immediately did your
"piety" put its fatter gifts beside it: so that my holiest suffocated in
the fumes of your fat.

And once did I want to dance as I had never yet danced: beyond all
heavens did I want to dance. Then did ye seduce my favourite minstrel.

And now hath he struck up an awful, melancholy air; alas, he tooted as a
mournful horn to mine ear!

Murderous minstrel, instrument of evil, most innocent instrument!
Already did I stand prepared for the best dance: then didst thou slay my
rapture with thy tones!

Only in the dance do I know how to speak the parable of the highest
things:--and now hath my grandest parable remained unspoken in my limbs!

Unspoken and unrealised hath my highest hope remained! And there have
perished for me all the visions and consolations of my youth!

How did I ever bear it? How did I survive and surmount such wounds? How
did my soul rise again out of those sepulchres?

Yea, something invulnerable, unburiable is with me, something that would
rend rocks asunder: it is called MY WILL. Silently doth it proceed, and
unchanged throughout the years.

Its course will it go upon my feet, mine old Will; hard of heart is its
nature and invulnerable.

Invulnerable am I only in my heel. Ever livest thou there, and art like
thyself, thou most patient one! Ever hast thou burst all shackles of the
tomb!

In thee still liveth also the unrealisedness of my youth; and as life
and youth sittest thou here hopeful on the yellow ruins of graves.

Yea, thou art still for me the demolisher of all graves: Hail to thee,
my Will! And only where there are graves are there resurrections.--

Thus sang Zarathustra.




XXXIV. SELF-SURPASSING.

"Will to Truth" do ye call it, ye wisest ones, that which impelleth you
and maketh you ardent?

Will for the thinkableness of all being: thus do _I_ call your will!

All being would ye MAKE thinkable: for ye doubt with good reason whether
it be already thinkable.

But it shall accommodate and bend itself to you! So willeth your will.
Smooth shall it become and subject to the spirit, as its mirror and
reflection.

That is your entire will, ye wisest ones, as a Will to Power; and even
when ye speak of good and evil, and of estimates of value.

Ye would still create a world before which ye can bow the knee: such is
your ultimate hope and ecstasy.

The ignorant, to be sure, the people--they are like a river on which a
boat floateth along: and in the boat sit the estimates of value, solemn
and disguised.

Your will and your valuations have ye put on the river of becoming; it
betrayeth unto me an old Will to Power, what is believed by the people
as good and evil.

It was ye, ye wisest ones, who put such guests in this boat, and gave
them pomp and proud names--ye and your ruling Will!

Onward the river now carrieth your boat: it MUST carry it. A small
matter if the rough wave foameth and angrily resisteth its keel!

It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your good and
evil, ye wisest ones: but that Will itself, the Will to Power--the
unexhausted, procreating life-will.

But that ye may understand my gospel of good and evil, for that purpose
will I tell you my gospel of life, and of the nature of all living
things.

The living thing did I follow; I walked in the broadest and narrowest
paths to learn its nature.

With a hundred-faced mirror did I catch its glance when its mouth was
shut, so that its eye might speak unto me. And its eye spake unto me.

But wherever I found living things, there heard I also the language of
obedience. All living things are obeying things.

And this heard I secondly: Whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded.
Such is the nature of living things.

This, however, is the third thing which I heard--namely, that commanding
is more difficult than obeying. And not only because the commander
beareth the burden of all obeyers, and because this burden readily
crusheth him:--

An attempt and a risk seemed all commanding unto me; and whenever it
commandeth, the living thing risketh itself thereby.

Yea, even when it commandeth itself, then also must it atone for its
commanding. Of its own law must it become the judge and avenger and
victim.

How doth this happen! so did I ask myself. What persuadeth the living
thing to obey, and command, and even be obedient in commanding?

Hearken now unto my word, ye wisest ones! Test it seriously, whether
I have crept into the heart of life itself, and into the roots of its
heart!

Wherever I found a living thing, there found I Will to Power; and even
in the will of the servant found I the will to be master.

That to the stronger the weaker shall serve--thereto persuadeth he his
will who would be master over a still weaker one. That delight alone he
is unwilling to forego.

And as the lesser surrendereth himself to the greater that he may have
delight and power over the least of all, so doth even the greatest
surrender himself, and staketh--life, for the sake of power.

It is the surrender of the greatest to run risk and danger, and play
dice for death.

And where there is sacrifice and service and love-glances, there also
is the will to be master. By by-ways doth the weaker then slink into
the fortress, and into the heart of the mightier one--and there stealeth
power.

And this secret spake Life herself unto me. "Behold," said she, "I am
that WHICH MUST EVER SURPASS ITSELF.

To be sure, ye call it will to procreation, or impulse towards a goal,
towards the higher, remoter, more manifold: but all that is one and the
same secret.

Rather would I succumb than disown this one thing; and verily, where
there is succumbing and leaf-falling, lo, there doth Life sacrifice
itself--for power!

That I have to be struggle, and becoming, and purpose, and
cross-purpose--ah, he who divineth my will, divineth well also on what
CROOKED paths it hath to tread!

Whatever I create, and however much I love it,--soon must I be adverse
to it, and to my love: so willeth my will.

And even thou, discerning one, art only a path and footstep of my will:
verily, my Will to Power walketh even on the feet of thy Will to Truth!

He certainly did not hit the truth who shot at it the formula: 'Will to
existence': that will--doth not exist!

For what is not, cannot will; that, however, which is in existence--how
could it still strive for existence!

Only where there is life, is there also will: not, however, Will to
Life, but--so teach I thee--Will to Power!

Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the living one; but out of
the very reckoning speaketh--the Will to Power!"--

Thus did Life once teach me: and thereby, ye wisest ones, do I solve you
the riddle of your hearts.

Verily, I say unto you: good and evil which would be everlasting--it
doth not exist! Of its own accord must it ever surpass itself anew.

With your values and formulae of good and evil, ye exercise power,
ye valuing ones: and that is your secret love, and the sparkling,
trembling, and overflowing of your souls.

But a stronger power groweth out of your values, and a new surpassing:
by it breaketh egg and egg-shell.

And he who hath to be a creator in good and evil--verily, he hath first
to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces.

Thus doth the greatest evil pertain to the greatest good: that, however,
is the creating good.--

Let us SPEAK thereof, ye wisest ones, even though it be bad. To be
silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous.

And let everything break up which--can break up by our truths! Many a
house is still to be built!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXXV. THE SUBLIME ONES.

Calm is the bottom of my sea: who would guess that it hideth droll
monsters!

Unmoved is my depth: but it sparkleth with swimming enigmas and
laughters.

A sublime one saw I to-day, a solemn one, a penitent of the spirit: Oh,
how my soul laughed at his ugliness!

With upraised breast, and like those who draw in their breath: thus did
he stand, the sublime one, and in silence:

O'erhung with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting, and rich in torn
raiment; many thorns also hung on him--but I saw no rose.

Not yet had he learned laughing and beauty. Gloomy did this hunter
return from the forest of knowledge.

From the fight with wild beasts returned he home: but even yet a wild
beast gazeth out of his seriousness--an unconquered wild beast!

As a tiger doth he ever stand, on the point of springing; but I do not
like those strained souls; ungracious is my taste towards all those
self-engrossed ones.

And ye tell me, friends, that there is to be no dispute about taste and
tasting? But all life is a dispute about taste and tasting!

Taste: that is weight at the same time, and scales and weigher; and alas
for every living thing that would live without dispute about weight and
scales and weigher!

Should he become weary of his sublimeness, this sublime one, then only
will his beauty begin--and then only will I taste him and find him
savoury.

And only when he turneth away from himself will he o'erleap his own
shadow--and verily! into HIS sun.

Far too long did he sit in the shade; the cheeks of the penitent of the
spirit became pale; he almost starved on his expectations.

Contempt is still in his eye, and loathing hideth in his mouth. To be
sure, he now resteth, but he hath not yet taken rest in the sunshine.

As the ox ought he to do; and his happiness should smell of the earth,
and not of contempt for the earth.

As a white ox would I like to see him, which, snorting and lowing,
walketh before the plough-share: and his lowing should also laud all
that is earthly!

Dark is still his countenance; the shadow of his hand danceth upon it.
O'ershadowed is still the sense of his eye.

His deed itself is still the shadow upon him: his doing obscureth the
doer. Not yet hath he overcome his deed.

To be sure, I love in him the shoulders of the ox: but now do I want to
see also the eye of the angel.

Also his hero-will hath he still to unlearn: an exalted one shall he
be, and not only a sublime one:--the ether itself should raise him, the
will-less one!

He hath subdued monsters, he hath solved enigmas. But he should also
redeem his monsters and enigmas; into heavenly children should he
transform them.

As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be without
jealousy; as yet hath his gushing passion not become calm in beauty.

Verily, not in satiety shall his longing cease and disappear, but in
beauty! Gracefulness belongeth to the munificence of the magnanimous.

His arm across his head: thus should the hero repose; thus should he
also surmount his repose.

But precisely to the hero is BEAUTY the hardest thing of all.
Unattainable is beauty by all ardent wills.

A little more, a little less: precisely this is much here, it is the
most here.

To stand with relaxed muscles and with unharnessed will: that is the
hardest for all of you, ye sublime ones!

When power becometh gracious and descendeth into the visible--I call
such condescension, beauty.

And from no one do I want beauty so much as from thee, thou powerful
one: let thy goodness be thy last self-conquest.

All evil do I accredit to thee: therefore do I desire of thee the good.

Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think themselves good
because they have crippled paws!

The virtue of the pillar shalt thou strive after: more beautiful doth
it ever become, and more graceful--but internally harder and more
sustaining--the higher it riseth.

Yea, thou sublime one, one day shalt thou also be beautiful, and hold up
the mirror to thine own beauty.

Then will thy soul thrill with divine desires; and there will be
adoration even in thy vanity!

For this is the secret of the soul: when the hero hath abandoned it,
then only approacheth it in dreams--the superhero.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXXVI. THE LAND OF CULTURE.

Too far did I fly into the future: a horror seized upon me.

And when I looked around me, lo! there time was my sole contemporary.

Then did I fly backwards, homewards--and always faster. Thus did I come
unto you, ye present-day men, and into the land of culture.

For the first time brought I an eye to see you, and good desire: verily,
with longing in my heart did I come.

But how did it turn out with me? Although so alarmed--I had yet to
laugh! Never did mine eye see anything so motley-coloured!

I laughed and laughed, while my foot still trembled, and my heart as
well. "Here forsooth, is the home of all the paintpots,"--said I.

With fifty patches painted on faces and limbs--so sat ye there to mine
astonishment, ye present-day men!

And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play of colours,
and repeated it!

Verily, ye could wear no better masks, ye present-day men, than your own
faces! Who could--RECOGNISE you!

Written all over with the characters of the past, and these characters
also pencilled over with new characters--thus have ye concealed
yourselves well from all decipherers!

And though one be a trier of the reins, who still believeth that ye have
reins! Out of colours ye seem to be baked, and out of glued scraps.

All times and peoples gaze divers-coloured out of your veils; all
customs and beliefs speak divers-coloured out of your gestures.

He who would strip you of veils and wrappers, and paints and gestures,
would just have enough left to scare the crows.

Verily, I myself am the scared crow that once saw you naked, and without
paint; and I flew away when the skeleton ogled at me.

Rather would I be a day-labourer in the nether-world, and among the
shades of the by-gone!--Fatter and fuller than ye, are forsooth the
nether-worldlings!

This, yea this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure
you naked nor clothed, ye present-day men!

All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever maketh strayed birds
shiver, is verily more homelike and familiar than your "reality."

For thus speak ye: "Real are we wholly, and without faith and
superstition": thus do ye plume yourselves--alas! even without plumes!

Indeed, how would ye be ABLE to believe, ye divers-coloured ones!--ye
who are pictures of all that hath ever been believed!

Perambulating refutations are ye, of belief itself, and a dislocation of
all thought. UNTRUSTWORTHY ONES: thus do _I_ call you, ye real ones!

All periods prate against one another in your spirits; and the dreams
and pratings of all periods were even realer than your awakeness!

Unfruitful are ye: THEREFORE do ye lack belief. But he who had to
create, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions--and
believed in believing!--

Half-open doors are ye, at which grave-diggers wait. And this is YOUR
reality: "Everything deserveth to perish."

Alas, how ye stand there before me, ye unfruitful ones; how lean your
ribs! And many of you surely have had knowledge thereof.

Many a one hath said: "There hath surely a God filched something from
me secretly whilst I slept? Verily, enough to make a girl for himself
therefrom!

"Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!" thus hath spoken many a present-day
man.

Yea, ye are laughable unto me, ye present-day men! And especially when
ye marvel at yourselves!

And woe unto me if I could not laugh at your marvelling, and had to
swallow all that is repugnant in your platters!

As it is, however, I will make lighter of you, since I have to carry
what is heavy; and what matter if beetles and May-bugs also alight on my
load!

Verily, it shall not on that account become heavier to me! And not from
you, ye present-day men, shall my great weariness arise.--

Ah, whither shall I now ascend with my longing! From all mountains do I
look out for fatherlands and motherlands.

But a home have I found nowhere: unsettled am I in all cities, and
decamping at all gates.

Alien to me, and a mockery, are the present-day men, to whom of late my
heart impelled me; and exiled am I from fatherlands and motherlands.

Thus do I love only my CHILDREN'S LAND, the undiscovered in the remotest
sea: for it do I bid my sails search and search.

Unto my children will I make amends for being the child of my fathers:
and unto all the future--for THIS present-day!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXXVII. IMMACULATE PERCEPTION.

When yester-eve the moon arose, then did I fancy it about to bear a sun:
so broad and teeming did it lie on the horizon.

But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and sooner will I believe in the
man in the moon than in the woman.

To be sure, little of a man is he also, that timid night-reveller.
Verily, with a bad conscience doth he stalk over the roofs.

For he is covetous and jealous, the monk in the moon; covetous of the
earth, and all the joys of lovers.

Nay, I like him not, that tom-cat on the roofs! Hateful unto me are all
that slink around half-closed windows!

Piously and silently doth he stalk along on the star-carpets:--but I
like no light-treading human feet, on which not even a spur jingleth.

Every honest one's step speaketh; the cat however, stealeth along over
the ground. Lo! cat-like doth the moon come along, and dishonestly.--

This parable speak I unto you sentimental dissemblers, unto you, the
"pure discerners!" You do _I_ call--covetous ones!

Also ye love the earth, and the earthly: I have divined you well!--but
shame is in your love, and a bad conscience--ye are like the moon!

To despise the earthly hath your spirit been persuaded, but not your
bowels: these, however, are the strongest in you!

And now is your spirit ashamed to be at the service of your bowels, and
goeth by-ways and lying ways to escape its own shame.

"That would be the highest thing for me"--so saith your lying spirit
unto itself--"to gaze upon life without desire, and not like the dog,
with hanging-out tongue:

To be happy in gazing: with dead will, free from the grip and greed
of selfishness--cold and ashy-grey all over, but with intoxicated
moon-eyes!

That would be the dearest thing to me"--thus doth the seduced one seduce
himself,--"to love the earth as the moon loveth it, and with the eye
only to feel its beauty.

And this do I call IMMACULATE perception of all things: to want nothing
else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a
hundred facets."--

Oh, ye sentimental dissemblers, ye covetous ones! Ye lack innocence in
your desire: and now do ye defame desiring on that account!

Verily, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do ye love the
earth!

Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation. And he who
seeketh to create beyond himself, hath for me the purest will.

Where is beauty? Where I MUST WILL with my whole Will; where I will love
and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image.

Loving and perishing: these have rhymed from eternity. Will to love:
that is to be ready also for death. Thus do I speak unto you cowards!

But now doth your emasculated ogling profess to be "contemplation!"
And that which can be examined with cowardly eyes is to be christened
"beautiful!" Oh, ye violators of noble names!

But it shall be your curse, ye immaculate ones, ye pure discerners, that
ye shall never bring forth, even though ye lie broad and teeming on the
horizon!

Verily, ye fill your mouth with noble words: and we are to believe that
your heart overfloweth, ye cozeners?

But MY words are poor, contemptible, stammering words: gladly do I pick
up what falleth from the table at your repasts.

Yet still can I say therewith the truth--to dissemblers! Yea, my
fish-bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall--tickle the noses of
dissemblers!

Bad air is always about you and your repasts: your lascivious thoughts,
your lies, and secrets are indeed in the air!

Dare only to believe in yourselves--in yourselves and in your inward
parts! He who doth not believe in himself always lieth.

A God's mask have ye hung in front of you, ye "pure ones": into a God's
mask hath your execrable coiling snake crawled.

Verily ye deceive, ye "contemplative ones!" Even Zarathustra was once
the dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not divine the serpent's coil
with which it was stuffed.

A God's soul, I once thought I saw playing in your games, ye pure
discerners! No better arts did I once dream of than your arts!

Serpents' filth and evil odour, the distance concealed from me: and that
a lizard's craft prowled thereabouts lasciviously.

But I came NIGH unto you: then came to me the day,--and now cometh it to
you,--at an end is the moon's love affair!

See there! Surprised and pale doth it stand--before the rosy dawn!

For already she cometh, the glowing one,--HER love to the earth cometh!
Innocence and creative desire, is all solar love!

See there, how she cometh impatiently over the sea! Do ye not feel the
thirst and the hot breath of her love?

At the sea would she suck, and drink its depths to her height: now
riseth the desire of the sea with its thousand breasts.

Kissed and sucked WOULD it be by the thirst of the sun; vapour WOULD it
become, and height, and path of light, and light itself!

Verily, like the sun do I love life, and all deep seas.

And this meaneth TO ME knowledge: all that is deep shall ascend--to my
height!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXXVIII. SCHOLARS.

When I lay asleep, then did a sheep eat at the ivy-wreath on my
head,--it ate, and said thereby: "Zarathustra is no longer a scholar."

It said this, and went away clumsily and proudly. A child told it to me.

I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined wall,
among thistles and red poppies.

A scholar am I still to the children, and also to the thistles and red
poppies. Innocent are they, even in their wickedness.

But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar: so willeth my lot--blessings
upon it!

For this is the truth: I have departed from the house of the scholars,
and the door have I also slammed behind me.

Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table: not like them have I got
the knack of investigating, as the knack of nut-cracking.

Freedom do I love, and the air over fresh soil; rather would I sleep on
ox-skins than on their honours and dignities.

I am too hot and scorched with mine own thought: often is it ready to
take away my breath. Then have I to go into the open air, and away from
all dusty rooms.

But they sit cool in the cool shade: they want in everything to be
merely spectators, and they avoid sitting where the sun burneth on the
steps.

Like those who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do
they also wait, and gape at the thoughts which others have thought.

Should one lay hold of them, then do they raise a dust like flour-sacks,
and involuntarily: but who would divine that their dust came from corn,
and from the yellow delight of the summer fields?

When they give themselves out as wise, then do their petty sayings and
truths chill me: in their wisdom there is often an odour as if it came
from the swamp; and verily, I have even heard the frog croak in it!

Clever are they--they have dexterous fingers: what doth MY simplicity
pretend to beside their multiplicity! All threading and knitting and
weaving do their fingers understand: thus do they make the hose of the
spirit!

Good clockworks are they: only be careful to wind them up properly!
Then do they indicate the hour without mistake, and make a modest noise
thereby.

Like millstones do they work, and like pestles: throw only seed-corn
unto them!--they know well how to grind corn small, and make white dust
out of it.

They keep a sharp eye on one another, and do not trust each other the
best. Ingenious in little artifices, they wait for those whose knowledge
walketh on lame feet,--like spiders do they wait.

I saw them always prepare their poison with precaution; and always did
they put glass gloves on their fingers in doing so.

They also know how to play with false dice; and so eagerly did I find
them playing, that they perspired thereby.

We are alien to each other, and their virtues are even more repugnant to
my taste than their falsehoods and false dice.

And when I lived with them, then did I live above them. Therefore did
they take a dislike to me.

They want to hear nothing of any one walking above their heads; and so
they put wood and earth and rubbish betwixt me and their heads.

Thus did they deafen the sound of my tread: and least have I hitherto
been heard by the most learned.

All mankind's faults and weaknesses did they put betwixt themselves and
me:--they call it "false ceiling" in their houses.

But nevertheless I walk with my thoughts ABOVE their heads; and even
should I walk on mine own errors, still would I be above them and their
heads.

For men are NOT equal: so speaketh justice. And what I will, THEY may
not will!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XXXIX. POETS.

"Since I have known the body better"--said Zarathustra to one of his
disciples--"the spirit hath only been to me symbolically spirit; and all
the 'imperishable'--that is also but a simile."

"So have I heard thee say once before," answered the disciple, "and then
thou addedst: 'But the poets lie too much.' Why didst thou say that the
poets lie too much?"

"Why?" said Zarathustra. "Thou askest why? I do not belong to those who
may be asked after their Why.

Is my experience but of yesterday? It is long ago that I experienced the
reasons for mine opinions.

Should I not have to be a cask of memory, if I also wanted to have my
reasons with me?

It is already too much for me even to retain mine opinions; and many a
bird flieth away.

And sometimes, also, do I find a fugitive creature in my dovecote, which
is alien to me, and trembleth when I lay my hand upon it.

But what did Zarathustra once say unto thee? That the poets lie too
much?--But Zarathustra also is a poet.

Believest thou that he there spake the truth? Why dost thou believe it?"

The disciple answered: "I believe in Zarathustra." But Zarathustra shook
his head and smiled.--

Belief doth not sanctify me, said he, least of all the belief in myself.

But granting that some one did say in all seriousness that the poets lie
too much: he was right--WE do lie too much.

We also know too little, and are bad learners: so we are obliged to lie.

And which of us poets hath not adulterated his wine? Many a poisonous
hotchpotch hath evolved in our cellars: many an indescribable thing hath
there been done.

And because we know little, therefore are we pleased from the heart with
the poor in spirit, especially when they are young women!

And even of those things are we desirous, which old women tell one
another in the evening. This do we call the eternally feminine in us.

And as if there were a special secret access to knowledge, which CHOKETH
UP for those who learn anything, so do we believe in the people and in
their "wisdom."

This, however, do all poets believe: that whoever pricketh up his ears
when lying in the grass or on lonely slopes, learneth something of the
things that are betwixt heaven and earth.

And if there come unto them tender emotions, then do the poets always
think that nature herself is in love with them:

And that she stealeth to their ear to whisper secrets into it, and
amorous flatteries: of this do they plume and pride themselves, before
all mortals!

Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the
poets have dreamed!

And especially ABOVE the heavens: for all Gods are poet-symbolisations,
poet-sophistications!

Verily, ever are we drawn aloft--that is, to the realm of the clouds:
on these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then call them Gods and
Supermen:--

Are not they light enough for those chairs!--all these Gods and
Supermen?--

Ah, how I am weary of all the inadequate that is insisted on as actual!
Ah, how I am weary of the poets!

When Zarathustra so spake, his disciple resented it, but was silent. And
Zarathustra also was silent; and his eye directed itself inwardly, as if
it gazed into the far distance. At last he sighed and drew breath.--

I am of to-day and heretofore, said he thereupon; but something is in me
that is of the morrow, and the day following, and the hereafter.

I became weary of the poets, of the old and of the new: superficial are
they all unto me, and shallow seas.

They did not think sufficiently into the depth; therefore their feeling
did not reach to the bottom.

Some sensation of voluptuousness and some sensation of tedium: these
have as yet been their best contemplation.

Ghost-breathing and ghost-whisking, seemeth to me all the
jingle-jangling of their harps; what have they known hitherto of the
fervour of tones!--

They are also not pure enough for me: they all muddle their water that
it may seem deep.

And fain would they thereby prove themselves reconcilers: but mediaries
and mixers are they unto me, and half-and-half, and impure!--

Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish;
but always did I draw up the head of some ancient God.

Thus did the sea give a stone to the hungry one. And they themselves may
well originate from the sea.

Certainly, one findeth pearls in them: thereby they are the more like
hard molluscs. And instead of a soul, I have often found in them salt
slime.

They have learned from the sea also its vanity: is not the sea the
peacock of peacocks?

Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes doth it spread out its tail;
never doth it tire of its lace-fan of silver and silk.

Disdainfully doth the buffalo glance thereat, nigh to the sand with its
soul, nigher still to the thicket, nighest, however, to the swamp.

What is beauty and sea and peacock-splendour to it! This parable I speak
unto the poets.

Verily, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks, and a sea of
vanity!

Spectators, seeketh the spirit of the poet--should they even be
buffaloes!--

But of this spirit became I weary; and I see the time coming when it
will become weary of itself.

Yea, changed have I seen the poets, and their glance turned towards
themselves.

Penitents of the spirit have I seen appearing; they grew out of the
poets.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XL. GREAT EVENTS.

There is an isle in the sea--not far from the Happy Isles of
Zarathustra--on which a volcano ever smoketh; of which isle the people,
and especially the old women amongst them, say that it is placed as a
rock before the gate of the nether-world; but that through the volcano
itself the narrow way leadeth downwards which conducteth to this gate.

Now about the time that Zarathustra sojourned on the Happy Isles, it
happened that a ship anchored at the isle on which standeth the smoking
mountain, and the crew went ashore to shoot rabbits. About the noontide
hour, however, when the captain and his men were together again, they
saw suddenly a man coming towards them through the air, and a voice said
distinctly: "It is time! It is the highest time!" But when the figure
was nearest to them (it flew past quickly, however, like a shadow, in
the direction of the volcano), then did they recognise with the greatest
surprise that it was Zarathustra; for they had all seen him before
except the captain himself, and they loved him as the people love: in
such wise that love and awe were combined in equal degree.

"Behold!" said the old helmsman, "there goeth Zarathustra to hell!"

About the same time that these sailors landed on the fire-isle, there
was a rumour that Zarathustra had disappeared; and when his friends were
asked about it, they said that he had gone on board a ship by night,
without saying whither he was going.

Thus there arose some uneasiness. After three days, however, there came
the story of the ship's crew in addition to this uneasiness--and
then did all the people say that the devil had taken Zarathustra. His
disciples laughed, sure enough, at this talk; and one of them said even:
"Sooner would I believe that Zarathustra hath taken the devil." But at
the bottom of their hearts they were all full of anxiety and longing: so
their joy was great when on the fifth day Zarathustra appeared amongst
them.

And this is the account of Zarathustra's interview with the fire-dog:

The earth, said he, hath a skin; and this skin hath diseases. One of
these diseases, for example, is called "man."

And another of these diseases is called "the fire-dog": concerning HIM
men have greatly deceived themselves, and let themselves be deceived.

To fathom this mystery did I go o'er the sea; and I have seen the truth
naked, verily! barefooted up to the neck.

Now do I know how it is concerning the fire-dog; and likewise concerning
all the spouting and subversive devils, of which not only old women are
afraid.

"Up with thee, fire-dog, out of thy depth!" cried I, "and confess how
deep that depth is! Whence cometh that which thou snortest up?

Thou drinkest copiously at the sea: that doth thine embittered eloquence
betray! In sooth, for a dog of the depth, thou takest thy nourishment
too much from the surface!

At the most, I regard thee as the ventriloquist of the earth: and ever,
when I have heard subversive and spouting devils speak, I have found
them like thee: embittered, mendacious, and shallow.

Ye understand how to roar and obscure with ashes! Ye are the best
braggarts, and have sufficiently learned the art of making dregs boil.

Where ye are, there must always be dregs at hand, and much that is
spongy, hollow, and compressed: it wanteth to have freedom.

'Freedom' ye all roar most eagerly: but I have unlearned the belief in
'great events,' when there is much roaring and smoke about them.

And believe me, friend Hullabaloo! The greatest events--are not our
noisiest, but our stillest hours.

Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new
values, doth the world revolve; INAUDIBLY it revolveth.

And just own to it! Little had ever taken place when thy noise and smoke
passed away. What, if a city did become a mummy, and a statue lay in the
mud!

And this do I say also to the o'erthrowers of statues: It is certainly
the greatest folly to throw salt into the sea, and statues into the mud.

In the mud of your contempt lay the statue: but it is just its law, that
out of contempt, its life and living beauty grow again!

With diviner features doth it now arise, seducing by its suffering; and
verily! it will yet thank you for o'erthrowing it, ye subverters!

This counsel, however, do I counsel to kings and churches, and to all
that is weak with age or virtue--let yourselves be o'erthrown! That ye
may again come to life, and that virtue--may come to you!--"

Thus spake I before the fire-dog: then did he interrupt me sullenly, and
asked: "Church? What is that?"

"Church?" answered I, "that is a kind of state, and indeed the most
mendacious. But remain quiet, thou dissembling dog! Thou surely knowest
thine own species best!

Like thyself the state is a dissembling dog; like thee doth it like
to speak with smoke and roaring--to make believe, like thee, that it
speaketh out of the heart of things.

For it seeketh by all means to be the most important creature on earth,
the state; and people think it so."

When I had said this, the fire-dog acted as if mad with envy. "What!"
cried he, "the most important creature on earth? And people think it
so?" And so much vapour and terrible voices came out of his throat, that
I thought he would choke with vexation and envy.

At last he became calmer and his panting subsided; as soon, however, as
he was quiet, I said laughingly:

"Thou art angry, fire-dog: so I am in the right about thee!

And that I may also maintain the right, hear the story of another
fire-dog; he speaketh actually out of the heart of the earth.

Gold doth his breath exhale, and golden rain: so doth his heart desire.
What are ashes and smoke and hot dregs to him!

Laughter flitteth from him like a variegated cloud; adverse is he to thy
gargling and spewing and grips in the bowels!

The gold, however, and the laughter--these doth he take out of the heart
of the earth: for, that thou mayst know it,--THE HEART OF THE EARTH IS
OF GOLD."

When the fire-dog heard this, he could no longer endure to listen to me.
Abashed did he draw in his tail, said "bow-wow!" in a cowed voice, and
crept down into his cave.--

Thus told Zarathustra. His disciples, however, hardly listened to him:
so great was their eagerness to tell him about the sailors, the rabbits,
and the flying man.

"What am I to think of it!" said Zarathustra. "Am I indeed a ghost?

But it may have been my shadow. Ye have surely heard something of the
Wanderer and his Shadow?

One thing, however, is certain: I must keep a tighter hold of it;
otherwise it will spoil my reputation."

And once more Zarathustra shook his head and wondered. "What am I to
think of it!" said he once more.

"Why did the ghost cry: 'It is time! It is the highest time!'

For WHAT is it then--the highest time?"--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XLI. THE SOOTHSAYER.

"-And I saw a great sadness come over mankind. The best turned weary of
their works.

A doctrine appeared, a faith ran beside it: 'All is empty, all is alike,
all hath been!'

And from all hills there re-echoed: 'All is empty, all is alike, all
hath been!'

To be sure we have harvested: but why have all our fruits become rotten
and brown? What was it fell last night from the evil moon?

In vain was all our labour, poison hath our wine become, the evil eye
hath singed yellow our fields and hearts.

Arid have we all become; and fire falling upon us, then do we turn dust
like ashes:--yea, the fire itself have we made aweary.

All our fountains have dried up, even the sea hath receded. All the
ground trieth to gape, but the depth will not swallow!

'Alas! where is there still a sea in which one could be drowned?' so
soundeth our plaint--across shallow swamps.

Verily, even for dying have we become too weary; now do we keep awake
and live on--in sepulchres."

Thus did Zarathustra hear a soothsayer speak; and the foreboding touched
his heart and transformed him. Sorrowfully did he go about and wearily;
and he became like unto those of whom the soothsayer had spoken.--

Verily, said he unto his disciples, a little while, and there cometh the
long twilight. Alas, how shall I preserve my light through it!

That it may not smother in this sorrowfulness! To remoter worlds shall
it be a light, and also to remotest nights!

Thus did Zarathustra go about grieved in his heart, and for three days
he did not take any meat or drink: he had no rest, and lost his speech.
At last it came to pass that he fell into a deep sleep. His disciples,
however, sat around him in long night-watches, and waited anxiously to
see if he would awake, and speak again, and recover from his affliction.

And this is the discourse that Zarathustra spake when he awoke; his
voice, however, came unto his disciples as from afar:

Hear, I pray you, the dream that I dreamed, my friends, and help me to
divine its meaning!

A riddle is it still unto me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it
and encaged, and doth not yet fly above it on free pinions.

All life had I renounced, so I dreamed. Night-watchman and
grave-guardian had I become, aloft, in the lone mountain-fortress of
Death.

There did I guard his coffins: full stood the musty vaults of those
trophies of victory. Out of glass coffins did vanquished life gaze upon
me.

The odour of dust-covered eternities did I breathe: sultry and
dust-covered lay my soul. And who could have aired his soul there!

Brightness of midnight was ever around me; lonesomeness cowered beside
her; and as a third, death-rattle stillness, the worst of my female
friends.

Keys did I carry, the rustiest of all keys; and I knew how to open with
them the most creaking of all gates.

Like a bitterly angry croaking ran the sound through the long corridors
when the leaves of the gate opened: ungraciously did this bird cry,
unwillingly was it awakened.

But more frightful even, and more heart-strangling was it, when it again
became silent and still all around, and I alone sat in that malignant
silence.

Thus did time pass with me, and slip by, if time there still was: what
do I know thereof! But at last there happened that which awoke me.

Thrice did there peal peals at the gate like thunders, thrice did the
vaults resound and howl again: then did I go to the gate.

Alpa! cried I, who carrieth his ashes unto the mountain? Alpa! Alpa! who
carrieth his ashes unto the mountain?

And I pressed the key, and pulled at the gate, and exerted myself. But
not a finger's-breadth was it yet open:

Then did a roaring wind tear the folds apart: whistling, whizzing, and
piercing, it threw unto me a black coffin.

And in the roaring, and whistling, and whizzing the coffin burst up, and
spouted out a thousand peals of laughter.

And a thousand caricatures of children, angels, owls, fools, and
child-sized butterflies laughed and mocked, and roared at me.

Fearfully was I terrified thereby: it prostrated me. And I cried with
horror as I ne'er cried before.

But mine own crying awoke me:--and I came to myself.--

Thus did Zarathustra relate his dream, and then was silent: for as yet
he knew not the interpretation thereof. But the disciple whom he loved
most arose quickly, seized Zarathustra's hand, and said:

"Thy life itself interpreteth unto us this dream, O Zarathustra!

Art thou not thyself the wind with shrill whistling, which bursteth open
the gates of the fortress of Death?

Art thou not thyself the coffin full of many-hued malices and
angel-caricatures of life?

Verily, like a thousand peals of children's laughter cometh
Zarathustra into all sepulchres, laughing at those night-watchmen and
grave-guardians, and whoever else rattleth with sinister keys.

With thy laughter wilt thou frighten and prostrate them: fainting and
recovering will demonstrate thy power over them.

And when the long twilight cometh and the mortal weariness, even then
wilt thou not disappear from our firmament, thou advocate of life!

New stars hast thou made us see, and new nocturnal glories: verily,
laughter itself hast thou spread out over us like a many-hued canopy.

Now will children's laughter ever from coffins flow; now will a strong
wind ever come victoriously unto all mortal weariness: of this thou art
thyself the pledge and the prophet!

Verily, THEY THEMSELVES DIDST THOU DREAM, thine enemies: that was thy
sorest dream.

But as thou awokest from them and camest to thyself, so shall they
awaken from themselves--and come unto thee!"

Thus spake the disciple; and all the others then thronged around
Zarathustra, grasped him by the hands, and tried to persuade him to
leave his bed and his sadness, and return unto them. Zarathustra,
however, sat upright on his couch, with an absent look. Like one
returning from long foreign sojourn did he look on his disciples, and
examined their features; but still he knew them not. When, however, they
raised him, and set him upon his feet, behold, all on a sudden his eye
changed; he understood everything that had happened, stroked his beard,
and said with a strong voice:

"Well! this hath just its time; but see to it, my disciples, that we
have a good repast; and without delay! Thus do I mean to make amends for
bad dreams!

The soothsayer, however, shall eat and drink at my side: and verily, I
will yet show him a sea in which he can drown himself!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra. Then did he gaze long into the face of the
disciple who had been the dream-interpreter, and shook his head.--




XLII. REDEMPTION.

When Zarathustra went one day over the great bridge, then did the
cripples and beggars surround him, and a hunchback spake thus unto him:

"Behold, Zarathustra! Even the people learn from thee, and acquire faith
in thy teaching: but for them to believe fully in thee, one thing is
still needful--thou must first of all convince us cripples! Here hast
thou now a fine selection, and verily, an opportunity with more than one
forelock! The blind canst thou heal, and make the lame run; and from
him who hath too much behind, couldst thou well, also, take away a
little;--that, I think, would be the right method to make the cripples
believe in Zarathustra!"

Zarathustra, however, answered thus unto him who so spake: When one
taketh his hump from the hunchback, then doth one take from him his
spirit--so do the people teach. And when one giveth the blind man eyes,
then doth he see too many bad things on the earth: so that he curseth
him who healed him. He, however, who maketh the lame man run, inflicteth
upon him the greatest injury; for hardly can he run, when his vices
run away with him--so do the people teach concerning cripples. And why
should not Zarathustra also learn from the people, when the people learn
from Zarathustra?

It is, however, the smallest thing unto me since I have been amongst
men, to see one person lacking an eye, another an ear, and a third a
leg, and that others have lost the tongue, or the nose, or the head.

I see and have seen worse things, and divers things so hideous, that I
should neither like to speak of all matters, nor even keep silent about
some of them: namely, men who lack everything, except that they have
too much of one thing--men who are nothing more than a big eye, or a big
mouth, or a big belly, or something else big,--reversed cripples, I call
such men.

And when I came out of my solitude, and for the first time passed over
this bridge, then I could not trust mine eyes, but looked again and
again, and said at last: "That is an ear! An ear as big as a man!" I
looked still more attentively--and actually there did move under the ear
something that was pitiably small and poor and slim. And in truth this
immense ear was perched on a small thin stalk--the stalk, however, was a
man! A person putting a glass to his eyes, could even recognise further
a small envious countenance, and also that a bloated soullet dangled at
the stalk. The people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a
man, but a great man, a genius. But I never believed in the people when
they spake of great men--and I hold to my belief that it was a reversed
cripple, who had too little of everything, and too much of one thing.

When Zarathustra had spoken thus unto the hunchback, and unto those of
whom the hunchback was the mouthpiece and advocate, then did he turn to
his disciples in profound dejection, and said:

Verily, my friends, I walk amongst men as amongst the fragments and
limbs of human beings!

This is the terrible thing to mine eye, that I find man broken up, and
scattered about, as on a battle- and butcher-ground.

And when mine eye fleeth from the present to the bygone, it findeth ever
the same: fragments and limbs and fearful chances--but no men!

The present and the bygone upon earth--ah! my friends--that is MY most
unbearable trouble; and I should not know how to live, if I were not a
seer of what is to come.

A seer, a purposer, a creator, a future itself, and a bridge to the
future--and alas! also as it were a cripple on this bridge: all that is
Zarathustra.

And ye also asked yourselves often: "Who is Zarathustra to us? What
shall he be called by us?" And like me, did ye give yourselves questions
for answers.

Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? A
harvest? Or a ploughshare? A physician? Or a healed one?

Is he a poet? Or a genuine one? An emancipator? Or a subjugator? A good
one? Or an evil one?

I walk amongst men as the fragments of the future: that future which I
contemplate.

And it is all my poetisation and aspiration to compose and collect into
unity what is fragment and riddle and fearful chance.

And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the composer,
and riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance!

To redeem what is past, and to transform every "It was" into "Thus would
I have it!"--that only do I call redemption!

Will--so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught
you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a
prisoner.

Willing emancipateth: but what is that called which still putteth the
emancipator in chains?

"It was": thus is the Will's teeth-gnashing and lonesomest tribulation
called. Impotent towards what hath been done--it is a malicious
spectator of all that is past.

Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time's
desire--that is the Will's lonesomest tribulation.

Willing emancipateth: what doth Willing itself devise in order to get
free from its tribulation and mock at its prison?

Ah, a fool becometh every prisoner! Foolishly delivereth itself also the
imprisoned Will.

That time doth not run backward--that is its animosity: "That which
was": so is the stone which it cannot roll called.

And thus doth it roll stones out of animosity and ill-humour, and taketh
revenge on whatever doth not, like it, feel rage and ill-humour.

Thus did the Will, the emancipator, become a torturer; and on all
that is capable of suffering it taketh revenge, because it cannot go
backward.

This, yea, this alone is REVENGE itself: the Will's antipathy to time,
and its "It was."

Verily, a great folly dwelleth in our Will; and it became a curse unto
all humanity, that this folly acquired spirit!

THE SPIRIT OF REVENGE: my friends, that hath hitherto been man's best
contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was
always penalty.

"Penalty," so calleth itself revenge. With a lying word it feigneth a
good conscience.

And because in the willer himself there is suffering, because he cannot
will backwards--thus was Willing itself, and all life, claimed--to be
penalty!

And then did cloud after cloud roll over the spirit, until at last
madness preached: "Everything perisheth, therefore everything deserveth
to perish!"

"And this itself is justice, the law of time--that he must devour his
children:" thus did madness preach.

"Morally are things ordered according to justice and penalty. Oh, where
is there deliverance from the flux of things and from the 'existence' of
penalty?" Thus did madness preach.

"Can there be deliverance when there is eternal justice? Alas,
unrollable is the stone, 'It was': eternal must also be all penalties!"
Thus did madness preach.

"No deed can be annihilated: how could it be undone by the penalty!
This, this is what is eternal in the 'existence' of penalty, that
existence also must be eternally recurring deed and guilt!

Unless the Will should at last deliver itself, and Willing become
non-Willing--:" but ye know, my brethren, this fabulous song of madness!

Away from those fabulous songs did I lead you when I taught you: "The
Will is a creator."

All "It was" is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance--until the
creating Will saith thereto: "But thus would I have it."--

Until the creating Will saith thereto: "But thus do I will it! Thus
shall I will it!"

But did it ever speak thus? And when doth this take place? Hath the Will
been unharnessed from its own folly?

Hath the Will become its own deliverer and joy-bringer? Hath it
unlearned the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing?

And who hath taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher
than all reconciliation?

Something higher than all reconciliation must the Will will which is the
Will to Power--: but how doth that take place? Who hath taught it also
to will backwards?

--But at this point in his discourse it chanced that Zarathustra
suddenly paused, and looked like a person in the greatest alarm. With
terror in his eyes did he gaze on his disciples; his glances pierced as
with arrows their thoughts and arrear-thoughts. But after a brief space
he again laughed, and said soothedly:

"It is difficult to live amongst men, because silence is so difficult--
especially for a babbler."--

Thus spake Zarathustra. The hunchback, however, had listened to the
conversation and had covered his face during the time; but when he heard
Zarathustra laugh, he looked up with curiosity, and said slowly:

"But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto us than unto his
disciples?"

Zarathustra answered: "What is there to be wondered at! With hunchbacks
one may well speak in a hunchbacked way!"

"Very good," said the hunchback; "and with pupils one may well tell
tales out of school.

But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto his pupils--than unto
himself?"--




XLIII. MANLY PRUDENCE.

Not the height, it is the declivity that is terrible!

The declivity, where the gaze shooteth DOWNWARDS, and the hand graspeth
UPWARDS. There doth the heart become giddy through its double will.

Ah, friends, do ye divine also my heart's double will?

This, this is MY declivity and my danger, that my gaze shooteth towards
the summit, and my hand would fain clutch and lean--on the depth!

To man clingeth my will; with chains do I bind myself to man, because
I am pulled upwards to the Superman: for thither doth mine other will
tend.

And THEREFORE do I live blindly among men, as if I knew them not: that
my hand may not entirely lose belief in firmness.

I know not you men: this gloom and consolation is often spread around
me.

I sit at the gateway for every rogue, and ask: Who wisheth to deceive
me?

This is my first manly prudence, that I allow myself to be deceived, so
as not to be on my guard against deceivers.

Ah, if I were on my guard against man, how could man be an anchor to my
ball! Too easily would I be pulled upwards and away!

This providence is over my fate, that I have to be without foresight.

And he who would not languish amongst men, must learn to drink out of
all glasses; and he who would keep clean amongst men, must know how to
wash himself even with dirty water.

And thus spake I often to myself for consolation: "Courage! Cheer up!
old heart! An unhappiness hath failed to befall thee: enjoy that as
thy--happiness!"

This, however, is mine other manly prudence: I am more forbearing to the
VAIN than to the proud.

Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies? Where, however, pride
is wounded, there there groweth up something better than pride.

That life may be fair to behold, its game must be well played; for that
purpose, however, it needeth good actors.

Good actors have I found all the vain ones: they play, and wish people
to be fond of beholding them--all their spirit is in this wish.

They represent themselves, they invent themselves; in their
neighbourhood I like to look upon life--it cureth of melancholy.

Therefore am I forbearing to the vain, because they are the physicians
of my melancholy, and keep me attached to man as to a drama.

And further, who conceiveth the full depth of the modesty of the vain
man! I am favourable to him, and sympathetic on account of his modesty.

From you would he learn his belief in himself; he feedeth upon your
glances, he eateth praise out of your hands.

Your lies doth he even believe when you lie favourably about him: for in
its depths sigheth his heart: "What am _I_?"

And if that be the true virtue which is unconscious of itself--well, the
vain man is unconscious of his modesty!--

This is, however, my third manly prudence: I am not put out of conceit
with the WICKED by your timorousness.

I am happy to see the marvels the warm sun hatcheth: tigers and palms
and rattle-snakes.

Also amongst men there is a beautiful brood of the warm sun, and much
that is marvellous in the wicked.

In truth, as your wisest did not seem to me so very wise, so found I
also human wickedness below the fame of it.

And oft did I ask with a shake of the head: Why still rattle, ye
rattle-snakes?

Verily, there is still a future even for evil! And the warmest south is
still undiscovered by man.

How many things are now called the worst wickedness, which are only
twelve feet broad and three months long! Some day, however, will greater
dragons come into the world.

For that the Superman may not lack his dragon, the superdragon that
is worthy of him, there must still much warm sun glow on moist virgin
forests!

Out of your wild cats must tigers have evolved, and out of your
poison-toads, crocodiles: for the good hunter shall have a good hunt!

And verily, ye good and just! In you there is much to be laughed at, and
especially your fear of what hath hitherto been called "the devil!"

So alien are ye in your souls to what is great, that to you the Superman
would be FRIGHTFUL in his goodness!

And ye wise and knowing ones, ye would flee from the solar-glow of the
wisdom in which the Superman joyfully batheth his nakedness!

Ye highest men who have come within my ken! this is my doubt of you, and
my secret laughter: I suspect ye would call my Superman--a devil!

Ah, I became tired of those highest and best ones: from their "height"
did I long to be up, out, and away to the Superman!

A horror came over me when I saw those best ones naked: then there grew
for me the pinions to soar away into distant futures.

Into more distant futures, into more southern souths than ever artist
dreamed of: thither, where Gods are ashamed of all clothes!

But disguised do I want to see YOU, ye neighbours and fellowmen, and
well-attired and vain and estimable, as "the good and just;"--

And disguised will I myself sit amongst you--that I may MISTAKE you and
myself: for that is my last manly prudence.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XLIV. THE STILLEST HOUR.

What hath happened unto me, my friends? Ye see me troubled, driven
forth, unwillingly obedient, ready to go--alas, to go away from YOU!

Yea, once more must Zarathustra retire to his solitude: but unjoyously
this time doth the bear go back to his cave!

What hath happened unto me? Who ordereth this?--Ah, mine angry mistress
wisheth it so; she spake unto me. Have I ever named her name to you?

Yesterday towards evening there spake unto me MY STILLEST HOUR: that is
the name of my terrible mistress.

And thus did it happen--for everything must I tell you, that your heart
may not harden against the suddenly departing one!

Do ye know the terror of him who falleth asleep?--

To the very toes he is terrified, because the ground giveth way under
him, and the dream beginneth.

This do I speak unto you in parable. Yesterday at the stillest hour did
the ground give way under me: the dream began.

The hour-hand moved on, the timepiece of my life drew breath--never did
I hear such stillness around me, so that my heart was terrified.

Then was there spoken unto me without voice: "THOU KNOWEST IT,
ZARATHUSTRA?"--

And I cried in terror at this whispering, and the blood left my face:
but I was silent.

Then was there once more spoken unto me without voice: "Thou knowest it,
Zarathustra, but thou dost not speak it!"--

And at last I answered, like one defiant: "Yea, I know it, but I will
not speak it!"

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "Thou WILT not,
Zarathustra? Is this true? Conceal thyself not behind thy defiance!"--

And I wept and trembled like a child, and said: "Ah, I would indeed, but
how can I do it! Exempt me only from this! It is beyond my power!"

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What matter about
thyself, Zarathustra! Speak thy word, and succumb!"

And I answered: "Ah, is it MY word? Who am _I_? I await the worthier
one; I am not worthy even to succumb by it."

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What matter about
thyself? Thou art not yet humble enough for me. Humility hath the
hardest skin."--

And I answered: "What hath not the skin of my humility endured! At the
foot of my height do I dwell: how high are my summits, no one hath yet
told me. But well do I know my valleys."

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "O Zarathustra, he
who hath to remove mountains removeth also valleys and plains."--

And I answered: "As yet hath my word not removed mountains, and what I
have spoken hath not reached man. I went, indeed, unto men, but not yet
have I attained unto them."

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What knowest thou
THEREOF! The dew falleth on the grass when the night is most silent."--

And I answered: "They mocked me when I found and walked in mine own
path; and certainly did my feet then tremble.

And thus did they speak unto me: Thou forgottest the path before, now
dost thou also forget how to walk!"

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What matter about
their mockery! Thou art one who hast unlearned to obey: now shalt thou
command!

Knowest thou not who is most needed by all? He who commandeth great
things.

To execute great things is difficult: but the more difficult task is to
command great things.

This is thy most unpardonable obstinacy: thou hast the power, and thou
wilt not rule."--

And I answered: "I lack the lion's voice for all commanding."

Then was there again spoken unto me as a whispering: "It is the stillest
words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps
guide the world.

O Zarathustra, thou shalt go as a shadow of that which is to come: thus
wilt thou command, and in commanding go foremost."--

And I answered: "I am ashamed."

Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "Thou must yet become
a child, and be without shame.

The pride of youth is still upon thee; late hast thou become young: but
he who would become a child must surmount even his youth."--

And I considered a long while, and trembled. At last, however, did I say
what I had said at first. "I will not."

Then did a laughing take place all around me. Alas, how that laughing
lacerated my bowels and cut into my heart!

And there was spoken unto me for the last time: "O Zarathustra, thy
fruits are ripe, but thou art not ripe for thy fruits!

So must thou go again into solitude: for thou shalt yet become
mellow."--

And again was there a laughing, and it fled: then did it become still
around me, as with a double stillness. I lay, however, on the ground,
and the sweat flowed from my limbs.

--Now have ye heard all, and why I have to return into my solitude.
Nothing have I kept hidden from you, my friends.

But even this have ye heard from me, WHO is still the most reserved of
men--and will be so!

Ah, my friends! I should have something more to say unto you! I should
have something more to give unto you! Why do I not give it? Am I then a
niggard?--

When, however, Zarathustra had spoken these words, the violence of his
pain, and a sense of the nearness of his departure from his friends came
over him, so that he wept aloud; and no one knew how to console him. In
the night, however, he went away alone and left his friends.





THIRD PART.

"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."--ZARATHUSTRA, I., "Reading and Writing."




XLV. THE WANDERER.

Then, when it was about midnight, Zarathustra went his way over the
ridge of the isle, that he might arrive early in the morning at the
other coast; because there he meant to embark. For there was a good
roadstead there, in which foreign ships also liked to anchor: those
ships took many people with them, who wished to cross over from the
Happy Isles. So when Zarathustra thus ascended the mountain, he thought
on the way of his many solitary wanderings from youth onwards, and how
many mountains and ridges and summits he had already climbed.

I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not
the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.

And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience--a wandering
will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth
only oneself.

The time is now past when accidents could befall me; and what COULD now
fall to my lot which would not already be mine own!

It returneth only, it cometh home to me at last--mine own Self, and
such of it as hath been long abroad, and scattered among things and
accidents.

And one thing more do I know: I stand now before my last summit, and
before that which hath been longest reserved for me. Ah, my hardest path
must I ascend! Ah, I have begun my lonesomest wandering!

He, however, who is of my nature doth not avoid such an hour: the hour
that saith unto him: Now only dost thou go the way to thy greatness!
Summit and abyss--these are now comprised together!

Thou goest the way to thy greatness: now hath it become thy last refuge,
what was hitherto thy last danger!

Thou goest the way to thy greatness: it must now be thy best courage
that there is no longer any path behind thee!

Thou goest the way to thy greatness: here shall no one steal after thee!
Thy foot itself hath effaced the path behind thee, and over it standeth
written: Impossibility.

And if all ladders henceforth fail thee, then must thou learn to mount
upon thine own head: how couldst thou mount upward otherwise?

Upon thine own head, and beyond thine own heart! Now must the gentlest
in thee become the hardest.

He who hath always much-indulged himself, sickeneth at last by his
much-indulgence. Praises on what maketh hardy! I do not praise the land
where butter and honey--flow!

To learn TO LOOK AWAY FROM oneself, is necessary in order to see MANY
THINGS:--this hardiness is needed by every mountain-climber.

He, however, who is obtrusive with his eyes as a discerner, how can he
ever see more of anything than its foreground!

But thou, O Zarathustra, wouldst view the ground of everything, and its
background: thus must thou mount even above thyself--up, upwards, until
thou hast even thy stars UNDER thee!

Yea! To look down upon myself, and even upon my stars: that only would I
call my SUMMIT, that hath remained for me as my LAST summit!--

Thus spake Zarathustra to himself while ascending, comforting his heart
with harsh maxims: for he was sore at heart as he had never been before.
And when he had reached the top of the mountain-ridge, behold, there
lay the other sea spread out before him: and he stood still and was
long silent. The night, however, was cold at this height, and clear and
starry.

I recognise my destiny, said he at last, sadly. Well! I am ready. Now
hath my last lonesomeness begun.

Ah, this sombre, sad sea, below me! Ah, this sombre nocturnal vexation!
Ah, fate and sea! To you must I now GO DOWN!

Before my highest mountain do I stand, and before my longest wandering:
therefore must I first go deeper down than I ever ascended:

--Deeper down into pain than I ever ascended, even into its darkest
flood! So willeth my fate. Well! I am ready.

Whence come the highest mountains? so did I once ask. Then did I learn
that they come out of the sea.

That testimony is inscribed on their stones, and on the walls of their
summits. Out of the deepest must the highest come to its height.--

Thus spake Zarathustra on the ridge of the mountain where it was cold:
when, however, he came into the vicinity of the sea, and at last stood
alone amongst the cliffs, then had he become weary on his way, and
eagerer than ever before.

Everything as yet sleepeth, said he; even the sea sleepeth. Drowsily and
strangely doth its eye gaze upon me.

But it breatheth warmly--I feel it. And I feel also that it dreameth. It
tosseth about dreamily on hard pillows.

Hark! Hark! How it groaneth with evil recollections! Or evil
expectations?

Ah, I am sad along with thee, thou dusky monster, and angry with myself
even for thy sake.

Ah, that my hand hath not strength enough! Gladly, indeed, would I free
thee from evil dreams!--

And while Zarathustra thus spake, he laughed at himself with melancholy
and bitterness. What! Zarathustra, said he, wilt thou even sing
consolation to the sea?

Ah, thou amiable fool, Zarathustra, thou too-blindly confiding one! But
thus hast thou ever been: ever hast thou approached confidently all that
is terrible.

Every monster wouldst thou caress. A whiff of warm breath, a little soft
tuft on its paw--: and immediately wert thou ready to love and lure it.

LOVE is the danger of the lonesomest one, love to anything, IF IT ONLY
LIVE! Laughable, verily, is my folly and my modesty in love!--

Thus spake Zarathustra, and laughed thereby a second time. Then,
however, he thought of his abandoned friends--and as if he had done them
a wrong with his thoughts, he upbraided himself because of his thoughts.
And forthwith it came to pass that the laugher wept--with anger and
longing wept Zarathustra bitterly.




XLVI. THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA.

1.

When it got abroad among the sailors that Zarathustra was on board the
ship--for a man who came from the Happy Isles had gone on board along
with him,--there was great curiosity and expectation. But Zarathustra
kept silent for two days, and was cold and deaf with sadness; so that he
neither answered looks nor questions. On the evening of the second day,
however, he again opened his ears, though he still kept silent: for
there were many curious and dangerous things to be heard on board the
ship, which came from afar, and was to go still further. Zarathustra,
however, was fond of all those who make distant voyages, and dislike to
live without danger. And behold! when listening, his own tongue was
at last loosened, and the ice of his heart broke. Then did he begin to
speak thus:

To you, the daring venturers and adventurers, and whoever hath embarked
with cunning sails upon frightful seas,--

To you the enigma-intoxicated, the twilight-enjoyers, whose souls are
allured by flutes to every treacherous gulf:

--For ye dislike to grope at a thread with cowardly hand; and where ye
can DIVINE, there do ye hate to CALCULATE--

To you only do I tell the enigma that I SAW--the vision of the
lonesomest one.--

Gloomily walked I lately in corpse-coloured twilight--gloomily and
sternly, with compressed lips. Not only one sun had set for me.

A path which ascended daringly among boulders, an evil, lonesome path,
which neither herb nor shrub any longer cheered, a mountain-path,
crunched under the daring of my foot.

Mutely marching over the scornful clinking of pebbles, trampling the
stone that let it slip: thus did my foot force its way upwards.

Upwards:--in spite of the spirit that drew it downwards, towards the
abyss, the spirit of gravity, my devil and arch-enemy.

Upwards:--although it sat upon me, half-dwarf, half-mole; paralysed,
paralysing; dripping lead in mine ear, and thoughts like drops of lead
into my brain.

"O Zarathustra," it whispered scornfully, syllable by syllable, "thou
stone of wisdom! Thou threwest thyself high, but every thrown stone
must--fall!

O Zarathustra, thou stone of wisdom, thou sling-stone, thou
star-destroyer! Thyself threwest thou so high,--but every thrown
stone--must fall!

Condemned of thyself, and to thine own stoning: O Zarathustra, far
indeed threwest thou thy stone--but upon THYSELF will it recoil!"

Then was the dwarf silent; and it lasted long. The silence, however,
oppressed me; and to be thus in pairs, one is verily lonesomer than when
alone!

I ascended, I ascended, I dreamt, I thought,--but everything oppressed
me. A sick one did I resemble, whom bad torture wearieth, and a worse
dream reawakeneth out of his first sleep.--

But there is something in me which I call courage: it hath hitherto
slain for me every dejection. This courage at last bade me stand still
and say: "Dwarf! Thou! Or I!"--

For courage is the best slayer,--courage which ATTACKETH: for in every
attack there is sound of triumph.

Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby hath he overcome
every animal. With sound of triumph hath he overcome every pain; human
pain, however, is the sorest pain.

Courage slayeth also giddiness at abysses: and where doth man not stand
at abysses! Is not seeing itself--seeing abysses?

Courage is the best slayer: courage slayeth also fellow-suffering.
Fellow-suffering, however, is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man
looketh into life, so deeply also doth he look into suffering.

Courage, however, is the best slayer, courage which attacketh: it
slayeth even death itself; for it saith: "WAS THAT life? Well! Once
more!"

In such speech, however, there is much sound of triumph. He who hath
ears to hear, let him hear.--

2.

"Halt, dwarf!" said I. "Either I--or thou! I, however, am the stronger
of the two:--thou knowest not mine abysmal thought! IT--couldst thou not
endure!"

Then happened that which made me lighter: for the dwarf sprang from my
shoulder, the prying sprite! And it squatted on a stone in front of me.
There was however a gateway just where we halted.

"Look at this gateway! Dwarf!" I continued, "it hath two faces. Two
roads come together here: these hath no one yet gone to the end of.

This long lane backwards: it continueth for an eternity. And that long
lane forward--that is another eternity.

They are antithetical to one another, these roads; they directly abut on
one another:--and it is here, at this gateway, that they come together.
The name of the gateway is inscribed above: 'This Moment.'

But should one follow them further--and ever further and further
on, thinkest thou, dwarf, that these roads would be eternally
antithetical?"--

"Everything straight lieth," murmured the dwarf, contemptuously. "All
truth is crooked; time itself is a circle."

"Thou spirit of gravity!" said I wrathfully, "do not take it too
lightly! Or I shall let thee squat where thou squattest, Haltfoot,--and
I carried thee HIGH!"

"Observe," continued I, "This Moment! From the gateway, This Moment,
there runneth a long eternal lane BACKWARDS: behind us lieth an
eternity.

Must not whatever CAN run its course of all things, have already run
along that lane? Must not whatever CAN happen of all things have already
happened, resulted, and gone by?

And if everything have already existed, what thinkest thou, dwarf, of
This Moment? Must not this gateway also--have already existed?

And are not all things closely bound together in such wise that This
Moment draweth all coming things after it? CONSEQUENTLY--itself also?

For whatever CAN run its course of all things, also in this long lane
OUTWARD--MUST it once more run!--

And this slow spider which creepeth in the moonlight, and this moonlight
itself, and thou and I in this gateway whispering together, whispering
of eternal things--must we not all have already existed?

--And must we not return and run in that other lane out before us, that
long weird lane--must we not eternally return?"--

Thus did I speak, and always more softly: for I was afraid of mine own
thoughts, and arrear-thoughts. Then, suddenly did I hear a dog HOWL near
me.

Had I ever heard a dog howl thus? My thoughts ran back. Yes! When I was
a child, in my most distant childhood:

--Then did I hear a dog howl thus. And saw it also, with hair bristling,
its head upwards, trembling in the stillest midnight, when even dogs
believe in ghosts:

--So that it excited my commiseration. For just then went the full moon,
silent as death, over the house; just then did it stand still, a glowing
globe--at rest on the flat roof, as if on some one's property:--

Thereby had the dog been terrified: for dogs believe in thieves and
ghosts. And when I again heard such howling, then did it excite my
commiseration once more.

Where was now the dwarf? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the
whispering? Had I dreamt? Had I awakened? 'Twixt rugged rocks did I
suddenly stand alone, dreary in the dreariest moonlight.

BUT THERE LAY A MAN! And there! The dog leaping, bristling, whining--now
did it see me coming--then did it howl again, then did it CRY:--had I
ever heard a dog cry so for help?

And verily, what I saw, the like had I never seen. A young shepherd did
I see, writhing, choking, quivering, with distorted countenance, and
with a heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth.

Had I ever seen so much loathing and pale horror on one countenance?
He had perhaps gone to sleep? Then had the serpent crawled into his
throat--there had it bitten itself fast.

My hand pulled at the serpent, and pulled:--in vain! I failed to pull
the serpent out of his throat. Then there cried out of me: "Bite! Bite!

Its head off! Bite!"--so cried it out of me; my horror, my hatred, my
loathing, my pity, all my good and my bad cried with one voice out of
me.--

Ye daring ones around me! Ye venturers and adventurers, and whoever
of you have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas! Ye
enigma-enjoyers!

Solve unto me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret unto me the
vision of the lonesomest one!

For it was a vision and a foresight:--WHAT did I then behold in parable?
And WHO is it that must come some day?

WHO is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus crawled? WHO is
the man into whose throat all the heaviest and blackest will thus crawl?

--The shepherd however bit as my cry had admonished him; he bit with a
strong bite! Far away did he spit the head of the serpent--: and sprang
up.--

No longer shepherd, no longer man--a transfigured being, a
light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as HE
laughed!

O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,--and now
gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed.

My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me: oh, how can I still endure
to live! And how could I endure to die at present!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XLVII. INVOLUNTARY BLISS.

With such enigmas and bitterness in his heart did Zarathustra sail o'er
the sea. When, however, he was four day-journeys from the Happy
Isles and from his friends, then had he surmounted all his pain--:
triumphantly and with firm foot did he again accept his fate. And then
talked Zarathustra in this wise to his exulting conscience:

Alone am I again, and like to be so, alone with the pure heaven, and the
open sea; and again is the afternoon around me.

On an afternoon did I find my friends for the first time; on an
afternoon, also, did I find them a second time:--at the hour when all
light becometh stiller.

For whatever happiness is still on its way 'twixt heaven and earth, now
seeketh for lodging a luminous soul: WITH HAPPINESS hath all light now
become stiller.

O afternoon of my life! Once did my happiness also descend to the valley
that it might seek a lodging: then did it find those open hospitable
souls.

O afternoon of my life! What did I not surrender that I might have
one thing: this living plantation of my thoughts, and this dawn of my
highest hope!

Companions did the creating one once seek, and children of HIS hope: and
lo, it turned out that he could not find them, except he himself should
first create them.

Thus am I in the midst of my work, to my children going, and from
them returning: for the sake of his children must Zarathustra perfect
himself.

For in one's heart one loveth only one's child and one's work; and where
there is great love to oneself, then is it the sign of pregnancy: so
have I found it.

Still are my children verdant in their first spring, standing nigh one
another, and shaken in common by the winds, the trees of my garden and
of my best soil.

And verily, where such trees stand beside one another, there ARE Happy
Isles!

But one day will I take them up, and put each by itself alone: that it
may learn lonesomeness and defiance and prudence.

Gnarled and crooked and with flexible hardness shall it then stand by
the sea, a living lighthouse of unconquerable life.

Yonder where the storms rush down into the sea, and the snout of the
mountain drinketh water, shall each on a time have his day and night
watches, for HIS testing and recognition.

Recognised and tested shall each be, to see if he be of my type and
lineage:--if he be master of a long will, silent even when he speaketh,
and giving in such wise that he TAKETH in giving:--

--So that he may one day become my companion, a fellow-creator and
fellow-enjoyer with Zarathustra:--such a one as writeth my will on my
tables, for the fuller perfection of all things.

And for his sake and for those like him, must I perfect MYSELF:
therefore do I now avoid my happiness, and present myself to every
misfortune--for MY final testing and recognition.

And verily, it were time that I went away; and the wanderer's shadow and
the longest tedium and the stillest hour--have all said unto me: "It is
the highest time!"

The word blew to me through the keyhole and said "Come!" The door sprang
subtlely open unto me, and said "Go!"

But I lay enchained to my love for my children: desire spread this
snare for me--the desire for love--that I should become the prey of my
children, and lose myself in them.

Desiring--that is now for me to have lost myself. I POSSESS YOU, MY
CHILDREN! In this possessing shall everything be assurance and nothing
desire.

But brooding lay the sun of my love upon me, in his own juice stewed
Zarathustra,--then did shadows and doubts fly past me.

For frost and winter I now longed: "Oh, that frost and winter would
again make me crack and crunch!" sighed I:--then arose icy mist out of
me.

My past burst its tomb, many pains buried alive woke up--: fully slept
had they merely, concealed in corpse-clothes.

So called everything unto me in signs: "It is time!" But I--heard not,
until at last mine abyss moved, and my thought bit me.

Ah, abysmal thought, which art MY thought! When shall I find strength to
hear thee burrowing, and no longer tremble?

To my very throat throbbeth my heart when I hear thee burrowing! Thy
muteness even is like to strangle me, thou abysmal mute one!

As yet have I never ventured to call thee UP; it hath been enough that
I--have carried thee about with me! As yet have I not been strong
enough for my final lion-wantonness and playfulness.

Sufficiently formidable unto me hath thy weight ever been: but one day
shall I yet find the strength and the lion's voice which will call thee
up!

When I shall have surmounted myself therein, then will I surmount myself
also in that which is greater; and a VICTORY shall be the seal of my
perfection!--

Meanwhile do I sail along on uncertain seas; chance flattereth me,
smooth-tongued chance; forward and backward do I gaze--, still see I no
end.

As yet hath the hour of my final struggle not come to me--or doth it
come to me perhaps just now? Verily, with insidious beauty do sea and
life gaze upon me round about:

O afternoon of my life! O happiness before eventide! O haven upon high
seas! O peace in uncertainty! How I distrust all of you!

Verily, distrustful am I of your insidious beauty! Like the lover am I,
who distrusteth too sleek smiling.

As he pusheth the best-beloved before him--tender even in severity, the
jealous one--, so do I push this blissful hour before me.

Away with thee, thou blissful hour! With thee hath there come to me an
involuntary bliss! Ready for my severest pain do I here stand:--at the
wrong time hast thou come!

Away with thee, thou blissful hour! Rather harbour there--with my
children! Hasten! and bless them before eventide with MY happiness!

There, already approacheth eventide: the sun sinketh. Away--my
happiness!--

Thus spake Zarathustra. And he waited for his misfortune the whole
night; but he waited in vain. The night remained clear and calm, and
happiness itself came nigher and nigher unto him. Towards morning,
however, Zarathustra laughed to his heart, and said mockingly:
"Happiness runneth after me. That is because I do not run after women.
Happiness, however, is a woman."




XLVIII. BEFORE SUNRISE.

O heaven above me, thou pure, thou deep heaven! Thou abyss of light!
Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires.

Up to thy height to toss myself--that is MY depth! In thy purity to hide
myself--that is MINE innocence!

The God veileth his beauty: thus hidest thou thy stars. Thou speakest
not: THUS proclaimest thou thy wisdom unto me.

Mute o'er the raging sea hast thou risen for me to-day; thy love and thy
modesty make a revelation unto my raging soul.

In that thou camest unto me beautiful, veiled in thy beauty, in that
thou spakest unto me mutely, obvious in thy wisdom:

Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of thy soul! BEFORE the
sun didst thou come unto me--the lonesomest one.

We have been friends from the beginning: to us are grief, gruesomeness,
and ground common; even the sun is common to us.

We do not speak to each other, because we know too much--: we keep
silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other.

Art thou not the light of my fire? Hast thou not the sister-soul of mine
insight?

Together did we learn everything; together did we learn to ascend beyond
ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloudedly:--

--Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out of miles of
distance, when under us constraint and purpose and guilt steam like
rain.

And wandered I alone, for WHAT did my soul hunger by night and in
labyrinthine paths? And climbed I mountains, WHOM did I ever seek, if
not thee, upon mountains?

And all my wandering and mountain-climbing: a necessity was it merely,
and a makeshift of the unhandy one:--to FLY only, wanteth mine entire
will, to fly into THEE!

And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth
thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee!

The passing clouds I detest--those stealthy cats of prey: they take
from thee and me what is common to us--the vast unbounded Yea- and
Amen-saying.

These mediators and mixers we detest--the passing clouds: those
half-and-half ones, that have neither learned to bless nor to curse from
the heart.

Rather will I sit in a tub under a closed heaven, rather will I sit in
the abyss without heaven, than see thee, thou luminous heaven, tainted
with passing clouds!

And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged gold-wires of
lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum upon their
kettle-bellies:--

--An angry drummer, because they rob me of thy Yea and Amen!--thou
heaven above me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of
light!--because they rob thee of MY Yea and Amen.

For rather will I have noise and thunders and tempest-blasts, than this
discreet, doubting cat-repose; and also amongst men do I hate most
of all the soft-treaders, and half-and-half ones, and the doubting,
hesitating, passing clouds.

And "he who cannot bless shall LEARN to curse!"--this clear teaching
dropt unto me from the clear heaven; this star standeth in my heaven
even in dark nights.

I, however, am a blesser and a Yea-sayer, if thou be but around me, thou
pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!--into all abysses do I
then carry my beneficent Yea-saying.

A blesser have I become and a Yea-sayer: and therefore strove I long and
was a striver, that I might one day get my hands free for blessing.

This, however, is my blessing: to stand above everything as its own
heaven, its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security: and blessed
is he who thus blesseth!

For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and
evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and
damp afflictions and passing clouds.

Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that "above
all things there standeth the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence,
the heaven of hazard, the heaven of wantonness."

"Of Hazard"--that is the oldest nobility in the world; that gave I back
to all things; I emancipated them from bondage under purpose.

This freedom and celestial serenity did I put like an azure bell above
all things, when I taught that over them and through them, no "eternal
Will"--willeth.

This wantonness and folly did I put in place of that Will, when I taught
that "In everything there is one thing impossible--rationality!"

A LITTLE reason, to be sure, a germ of wisdom scattered from star to
star--this leaven is mixed in all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom
is mixed in all things!

A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security have I
found in all things, that they prefer--to DANCE on the feet of chance.

O heaven above me! thou pure, thou lofty heaven! This is now thy purity
unto me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and reason-cobweb:--

--That thou art to me a dancing-floor for divine chances, that thou art
to me a table of the Gods, for divine dice and dice-players!--

But thou blushest? Have I spoken unspeakable things? Have I abused, when
I meant to bless thee?

Or is it the shame of being two of us that maketh thee blush!--Dost thou
bid me go and be silent, because now--DAY cometh?

The world is deep:--and deeper than e'er the day could read. Not
everything may be uttered in presence of day. But day cometh: so let us
part!

O heaven above me, thou modest one! thou glowing one! O thou, my
happiness before sunrise! The day cometh: so let us part!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




XLIX. THE BEDWARFING VIRTUE.

1.

When Zarathustra was again on the continent, he did not go straightway
to his mountains and his cave, but made many wanderings and
questionings, and ascertained this and that; so that he said of himself
jestingly: "Lo, a river that floweth back unto its source in many
windings!" For he wanted to learn what had taken place AMONG MEN during
the interval: whether they had become greater or smaller. And once, when
he saw a row of new houses, he marvelled, and said:

"What do these houses mean? Verily, no great soul put them up as its
simile!

Did perhaps a silly child take them out of its toy-box? Would that
another child put them again into the box!

And these rooms and chambers--can MEN go out and in there? They seem to
be made for silk dolls; or for dainty-eaters, who perhaps let others eat
with them."

And Zarathustra stood still and meditated. At last he said sorrowfully:
"There hath EVERYTHING become smaller!

Everywhere do I see lower doorways: he who is of MY type can still go
therethrough, but--he must stoop!

Oh, when shall I arrive again at my home, where I shall no longer have
to stoop--shall no longer have to stoop BEFORE THE SMALL ONES!"--And
Zarathustra sighed, and gazed into the distance.--

The same day, however, he gave his discourse on the bedwarfing virtue.

2.

I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open: they do not forgive
me for not envying their virtues.

They bite at me, because I say unto them that for small people, small
virtues are necessary--and because it is hard for me to understand that
small people are NECESSARY!

Here am I still like a cock in a strange farm-yard, at which even the
hens peck: but on that account I am not unfriendly to the hens.

I am courteous towards them, as towards all small annoyances; to be
prickly towards what is small, seemeth to me wisdom for hedgehogs.

They all speak of me when they sit around their fire in the
evening--they speak of me, but no one thinketh--of me!

This is the new stillness which I have experienced: their noise around
me spreadeth a mantle over my thoughts.

They shout to one another: "What is this gloomy cloud about to do to us?
Let us see that it doth not bring a plague upon us!"

And recently did a woman seize upon her child that was coming unto
me: "Take the children away," cried she, "such eyes scorch children's
souls."

They cough when I speak: they think coughing an objection to strong
winds--they divine nothing of the boisterousness of my happiness!

"We have not yet time for Zarathustra"--so they object; but what matter
about a time that "hath no time" for Zarathustra?

And if they should altogether praise me, how could I go to sleep on
THEIR praise? A girdle of spines is their praise unto me: it scratcheth
me even when I take it off.

And this also did I learn among them: the praiser doeth as if he gave
back; in truth, however, he wanteth more to be given him!

Ask my foot if their lauding and luring strains please it! Verily,
to such measure and ticktack, it liketh neither to dance nor to stand
still.

To small virtues would they fain lure and laud me; to the ticktack of
small happiness would they fain persuade my foot.

I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open; they have become
SMALLER, and ever become smaller:--THE REASON THEREOF IS THEIR DOCTRINE
OF HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE.

For they are moderate also in virtue,--because they want comfort. With
comfort, however, moderate virtue only is compatible.

To be sure, they also learn in their way to stride on and stride
forward: that, I call their HOBBLING.--Thereby they become a hindrance
to all who are in haste.

And many of them go forward, and look backwards thereby, with stiffened
necks: those do I like to run up against.

Foot and eye shall not lie, nor give the lie to each other. But there is
much lying among small people.

Some of them WILL, but most of them are WILLED. Some of them are
genuine, but most of them are bad actors.

There are actors without knowing it amongst them, and actors without
intending it--, the genuine ones are always rare, especially the genuine
actors.

Of man there is little here: therefore do their women masculinise
themselves. For only he who is man enough, will--SAVE THE WOMAN in
woman.

And this hypocrisy found I worst amongst them, that even those who
command feign the virtues of those who serve.

"I serve, thou servest, we serve"--so chanteth here even the hypocrisy
of the rulers--and alas! if the first lord be ONLY the first servant!

Ah, even upon their hypocrisy did mine eyes' curiosity alight; and well
did I divine all their fly-happiness, and their buzzing around sunny
window-panes.

So much kindness, so much weakness do I see. So much justice and pity,
so much weakness.

Round, fair, and considerate are they to one another, as grains of sand
are round, fair, and considerate to grains of sand.

Modestly to embrace a small happiness--that do they call "submission"!
and at the same time they peer modestly after a new small happiness.

In their hearts they want simply one thing most of all: that no one hurt
them. Thus do they anticipate every one's wishes and do well unto every
one.

That, however, is COWARDICE, though it be called "virtue."--

And when they chance to speak harshly, those small people, then do _I_
hear therein only their hoarseness--every draught of air maketh them
hoarse.

Shrewd indeed are they, their virtues have shrewd fingers. But they lack
fists: their fingers do not know how to creep behind fists.

Virtue for them is what maketh modest and tame: therewith have they made
the wolf a dog, and man himself man's best domestic animal.

"We set our chair in the MIDST"--so saith their smirking unto me--"and
as far from dying gladiators as from satisfied swine."

That, however, is--MEDIOCRITY, though it be called moderation.--

3.

I pass through this people and let fall many words: but they know
neither how to take nor how to retain them.

They wonder why I came not to revile venery and vice; and verily, I came
not to warn against pickpockets either!

They wonder why I am not ready to abet and whet their wisdom: as if they
had not yet enough of wiseacres, whose voices grate on mine ear like
slate-pencils!

And when I call out: "Curse all the cowardly devils in you, that
would fain whimper and fold the hands and adore"--then do they shout:
"Zarathustra is godless."

And especially do their teachers of submission shout this;--but
precisely in their ears do I love to cry: "Yea! I AM Zarathustra, the
godless!"

Those teachers of submission! Wherever there is aught puny, or sickly,
or scabby, there do they creep like lice; and only my disgust preventeth
me from cracking them.

Well! This is my sermon for THEIR ears: I am Zarathustra the godless,
who saith: "Who is more godless than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?"

I am Zarathustra the godless: where do I find mine equal? And all
those are mine equals who give unto themselves their Will, and divest
themselves of all submission.

I am Zarathustra the godless! I cook every chance in MY pot. And only
when it hath been quite cooked do I welcome it as MY food.

And verily, many a chance came imperiously unto me: but still more
imperiously did my WILL speak unto it,--then did it lie imploringly upon
its knees--

--Imploring that it might find home and heart with me, and saying
flatteringly: "See, O Zarathustra, how friend only cometh unto
friend!"--

But why talk I, when no one hath MINE ears! And so will I shout it out
unto all the winds:

Ye ever become smaller, ye small people! Ye crumble away, ye comfortable
ones! Ye will yet perish--

--By your many small virtues, by your many small omissions, and by your
many small submissions!

Too tender, too yielding: so is your soil! But for a tree to become
GREAT, it seeketh to twine hard roots around hard rocks!

Also what ye omit weaveth at the web of all the human future; even your
naught is a cobweb, and a spider that liveth on the blood of the future.

And when ye take, then is it like stealing, ye small virtuous ones;
but even among knaves HONOUR saith that "one shall only steal when one
cannot rob."

"It giveth itself"--that is also a doctrine of submission. But I say
unto you, ye comfortable ones, that IT TAKETH TO ITSELF, and will ever
take more and more from you!

Ah, that ye would renounce all HALF-willing, and would decide for
idleness as ye decide for action!

Ah, that ye understood my word: "Do ever what ye will--but first be such
as CAN WILL.

Love ever your neighbour as yourselves--but first be such as LOVE
THEMSELVES--

--Such as love with great love, such as love with great contempt!" Thus
speaketh Zarathustra the godless.--

But why talk I, when no one hath MINE ears! It is still an hour too
early for me here.

Mine own forerunner am I among this people, mine own cockcrow in dark
lanes.

But THEIR hour cometh! And there cometh also mine! Hourly do they become
smaller, poorer, unfruitfuller,--poor herbs! poor earth!

And SOON shall they stand before me like dry grass and prairie, and
verily, weary of themselves--and panting for FIRE, more than for water!

O blessed hour of the lightning! O mystery before noontide!--Running
fires will I one day make of them, and heralds with flaming tongues:--

--Herald shall they one day with flaming tongues: It cometh, it is nigh,
THE GREAT NOONTIDE!

Thus spake Zarathustra.




L. ON THE OLIVE-MOUNT.

Winter, a bad guest, sitteth with me at home; blue are my hands with his
friendly hand-shaking.

I honour him, that bad guest, but gladly leave him alone. Gladly do I
run away from him; and when one runneth WELL, then one escapeth him!

With warm feet and warm thoughts do I run where the wind is calm--to the
sunny corner of mine olive-mount.

There do I laugh at my stern guest, and am still fond of him; because he
cleareth my house of flies, and quieteth many little noises.

For he suffereth it not if a gnat wanteth to buzz, or even two of them;
also the lanes maketh he lonesome, so that the moonlight is afraid there
at night.

A hard guest is he,--but I honour him, and do not worship, like the
tenderlings, the pot-bellied fire-idol.

Better even a little teeth-chattering than idol-adoration!--so willeth
my nature. And especially have I a grudge against all ardent, steaming,
steamy fire-idols.

Him whom I love, I love better in winter than in summer; better do I
now mock at mine enemies, and more heartily, when winter sitteth in my
house.

Heartily, verily, even when I CREEP into bed--: there, still laugheth
and wantoneth my hidden happiness; even my deceptive dream laugheth.

I, a--creeper? Never in my life did I creep before the powerful; and if
ever I lied, then did I lie out of love. Therefore am I glad even in my
winter-bed.

A poor bed warmeth me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my
poverty. And in winter she is most faithful unto me.

With a wickedness do I begin every day: I mock at the winter with a cold
bath: on that account grumbleth my stern house-mate.

Also do I like to tickle him with a wax-taper, that he may finally let
the heavens emerge from ashy-grey twilight.

For especially wicked am I in the morning: at the early hour when the
pail rattleth at the well, and horses neigh warmly in grey lanes:--

Impatiently do I then wait, that the clear sky may finally dawn for me,
the snow-bearded winter-sky, the hoary one, the white-head,--

--The winter-sky, the silent winter-sky, which often stifleth even its
sun!

Did I perhaps learn from it the long clear silence? Or did it learn it
from me? Or hath each of us devised it himself?

Of all good things the origin is a thousandfold,--all good roguish
things spring into existence for joy: how could they always do so--for
once only!

A good roguish thing is also the long silence, and to look, like the
winter-sky, out of a clear, round-eyed countenance:--

--Like it to stifle one's sun, and one's inflexible solar will: verily,
this art and this winter-roguishness have I learnt WELL!

My best-loved wickedness and art is it, that my silence hath learned not
to betray itself by silence.

Clattering with diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assistants: all
those stern watchers, shall my will and purpose elude.

That no one might see down into my depth and into mine ultimate
will--for that purpose did I devise the long clear silence.

Many a shrewd one did I find: he veiled his countenance and made his
water muddy, that no one might see therethrough and thereunder.

But precisely unto him came the shrewder distrusters and nut-crackers:
precisely from him did they fish his best-concealed fish!

But the clear, the honest, the transparent--these are for me the wisest
silent ones: in them, so PROFOUND is the depth that even the clearest
water doth not--betray it.--

Thou snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, thou round-eyed whitehead above
me! Oh, thou heavenly simile of my soul and its wantonness!

And MUST I not conceal myself like one who hath swallowed gold--lest my
soul should be ripped up?

MUST I not wear stilts, that they may OVERLOOK my long legs--all those
enviers and injurers around me?

Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-natured souls--how
COULD their envy endure my happiness!

Thus do I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks--and NOT that my
mountain windeth all the solar girdles around it!

They hear only the whistling of my winter-storms: and know NOT that I
also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south-winds.

They commiserate also my accidents and chances:--but MY word saith:
"Suffer the chance to come unto me: innocent is it as a little child!"

How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it
accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and enmantling
snowflakes!

--If I did not myself commiserate their PITY, the pity of those enviers
and injurers!

--If I did not myself sigh before them, and chatter with cold, and
patiently LET myself be swathed in their pity!

This is the wise waggish-will and good-will of my soul, that it
CONCEALETH NOT its winters and glacial storms; it concealeth not its
chilblains either.

To one man, lonesomeness is the flight of the sick one; to another, it
is the flight FROM the sick ones.

Let them HEAR me chattering and sighing with winter-cold, all those poor
squinting knaves around me! With such sighing and chattering do I flee
from their heated rooms.

Let them sympathise with me and sigh with me on account of my
chilblains: "At the ice of knowledge will he yet FREEZE TO DEATH!"--so
they mourn.

Meanwhile do I run with warm feet hither and thither on mine
olive-mount: in the sunny corner of mine olive-mount do I sing, and mock
at all pity.--

Thus sang Zarathustra.




LI. ON PASSING-BY.

Thus slowly wandering through many peoples and divers cities, did
Zarathustra return by round-about roads to his mountains and his cave.
And behold, thereby came he unawares also to the gate of the GREAT CITY.
Here, however, a foaming fool, with extended hands, sprang forward to
him and stood in his way. It was the same fool whom the people called
"the ape of Zarathustra:" for he had learned from him something of the
expression and modulation of language, and perhaps liked also to borrow
from the store of his wisdom. And the fool talked thus to Zarathustra:

O Zarathustra, here is the great city: here hast thou nothing to seek
and everything to lose.

Why wouldst thou wade through this mire? Have pity upon thy foot! Spit
rather on the gate of the city, and--turn back!

Here is the hell for anchorites' thoughts: here are great thoughts
seethed alive and boiled small.

Here do all great sentiments decay: here may only rattle-boned
sensations rattle!

Smellest thou not already the shambles and cookshops of the spirit?
Steameth not this city with the fumes of slaughtered spirit?

Seest thou not the souls hanging like limp dirty rags?--And they make
newspapers also out of these rags!

Hearest thou not how spirit hath here become a verbal game? Loathsome
verbal swill doth it vomit forth!--And they make newspapers also out of
this verbal swill.

They hound one another, and know not whither! They inflame one another,
and know not why! They tinkle with their pinchbeck, they jingle with
their gold.

They are cold, and seek warmth from distilled waters: they are inflamed,
and seek coolness from frozen spirits; they are all sick and sore
through public opinion.

All lusts and vices are here at home; but here there are also the
virtuous; there is much appointable appointed virtue:--

Much appointable virtue with scribe-fingers, and hardy sitting-flesh and
waiting-flesh, blessed with small breast-stars, and padded, haunchless
daughters.

There is here also much piety, and much faithful spittle-licking and
spittle-backing, before the God of Hosts.

"From on high," drippeth the star, and the gracious spittle; for the
high, longeth every starless bosom.

The moon hath its court, and the court hath its moon-calves: unto all,
however, that cometh from the court do the mendicant people pray, and
all appointable mendicant virtues.

"I serve, thou servest, we serve"--so prayeth all appointable virtue
to the prince: that the merited star may at last stick on the slender
breast!

But the moon still revolveth around all that is earthly: so revolveth
also the prince around what is earthliest of all--that, however, is the
gold of the shopman.

The God of the Hosts of war is not the God of the golden bar; the prince
proposeth, but the shopman--disposeth!

By all that is luminous and strong and good in thee, O Zarathustra! Spit
on this city of shopmen and return back!

Here floweth all blood putridly and tepidly and frothily through all
veins: spit on the great city, which is the great slum where all the
scum frotheth together!

Spit on the city of compressed souls and slender breasts, of pointed
eyes and sticky fingers--

--On the city of the obtrusive, the brazen-faced, the pen-demagogues and
tongue-demagogues, the overheated ambitious:--

Where everything maimed, ill-famed, lustful, untrustful, over-mellow,
sickly-yellow and seditious, festereth pernicious:--

--Spit on the great city and turn back!--

Here, however, did Zarathustra interrupt the foaming fool, and shut his
mouth.--

Stop this at once! called out Zarathustra, long have thy speech and thy
species disgusted me!

Why didst thou live so long by the swamp, that thou thyself hadst to
become a frog and a toad?

Floweth there not a tainted, frothy, swamp-blood in thine own veins,
when thou hast thus learned to croak and revile?

Why wentest thou not into the forest? Or why didst thou not till the
ground? Is the sea not full of green islands?

I despise thy contempt; and when thou warnedst me--why didst thou not
warn thyself?

Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; but
not out of the swamp!--

They call thee mine ape, thou foaming fool: but I call thee my
grunting-pig,--by thy grunting, thou spoilest even my praise of folly.

What was it that first made thee grunt? Because no one sufficiently
FLATTERED thee:--therefore didst thou seat thyself beside this filth,
that thou mightest have cause for much grunting,--

--That thou mightest have cause for much VENGEANCE! For vengeance, thou
vain fool, is all thy foaming; I have divined thee well!

But thy fools'-word injureth ME, even when thou art right! And even if
Zarathustra's word WERE a hundred times justified, thou wouldst ever--DO
wrong with my word!

Thus spake Zarathustra. Then did he look on the great city and sighed,
and was long silent. At last he spake thus:

I loathe also this great city, and not only this fool. Here and there--
there is nothing to better, nothing to worsen.

Woe to this great city!--And I would that I already saw the pillar of
fire in which it will be consumed!

For such pillars of fire must precede the great noontide. But this hath
its time and its own fate.--

This precept, however, give I unto thee, in parting, thou fool: Where
one can no longer love, there should one--PASS BY!--

Thus spake Zarathustra, and passed by the fool and the great city.




LII. THE APOSTATES.

1.

Ah, lieth everything already withered and grey which but lately stood
green and many-hued on this meadow! And how much honey of hope did I
carry hence into my beehives!

Those young hearts have already all become old--and not old even! only
weary, ordinary, comfortable:--they declare it: "We have again become
pious."

Of late did I see them run forth at early morn with valorous steps: but
the feet of their knowledge became weary, and now do they malign even
their morning valour!

Verily, many of them once lifted their legs like the dancer; to them
winked the laughter of my wisdom:--then did they bethink themselves.
Just now have I seen them bent down--to creep to the cross.

Around light and liberty did they once flutter like gnats and young
poets. A little older, a little colder: and already are they mystifiers,
and mumblers and mollycoddles.

Did perhaps their hearts despond, because lonesomeness had swallowed me
like a whale? Did their ear perhaps hearken yearningly-long for me IN
VAIN, and for my trumpet-notes and herald-calls?

--Ah! Ever are there but few of those whose hearts have persistent
courage and exuberance; and in such remaineth also the spirit patient.
The rest, however, are COWARDLY.

The rest: these are always the great majority, the common-place, the
superfluous, the far-too many--those all are cowardly!--

Him who is of my type, will also the experiences of my type meet on the
way: so that his first companions must be corpses and buffoons.

His second companions, however--they will call themselves his
BELIEVERS,--will be a living host, with much love, much folly, much
unbearded veneration.

To those believers shall he who is of my type among men not bind his
heart; in those spring-times and many-hued meadows shall he not believe,
who knoweth the fickly faint-hearted human species!

COULD they do otherwise, then would they also WILL otherwise. The
half-and-half spoil every whole. That leaves become withered,--what is
there to lament about that!

Let them go and fall away, O Zarathustra, and do not lament! Better even
to blow amongst them with rustling winds,--

--Blow amongst those leaves, O Zarathustra, that everything WITHERED may
run away from thee the faster!--

2.

"We have again become pious"--so do those apostates confess; and some of
them are still too pusillanimous thus to confess.

Unto them I look into the eye,--before them I say it unto their face and
unto the blush on their cheeks: Ye are those who again PRAY!

It is however a shame to pray! Not for all, but for thee, and me, and
whoever hath his conscience in his head. For THEE it is a shame to pray!

Thou knowest it well: the faint-hearted devil in thee, which would
fain fold its arms, and place its hands in its bosom, and take it
easier:--this faint-hearted devil persuadeth thee that "there IS a God!"

THEREBY, however, dost thou belong to the light-dreading type, to whom
light never permitteth repose: now must thou daily thrust thy head
deeper into obscurity and vapour!

And verily, thou choosest the hour well: for just now do the nocturnal
birds again fly abroad. The hour hath come for all light-dreading
people, the vesper hour and leisure hour, when they do not--"take
leisure."

I hear it and smell it: it hath come--their hour for hunt and
procession, not indeed for a wild hunt, but for a tame, lame, snuffling,
soft-treaders', soft-prayers' hunt,--

--For a hunt after susceptible simpletons: all mouse-traps for the heart
have again been set! And whenever I lift a curtain, a night-moth rusheth
out of it.

Did it perhaps squat there along with another night-moth? For everywhere
do I smell small concealed communities; and wherever there are closets
there are new devotees therein, and the atmosphere of devotees.

They sit for long evenings beside one another, and say: "Let us again
become like little children and say, 'good God!'"--ruined in mouths and
stomachs by the pious confectioners.

Or they look for long evenings at a crafty, lurking cross-spider, that
preacheth prudence to the spiders themselves, and teacheth that "under
crosses it is good for cobweb-spinning!"

Or they sit all day at swamps with angle-rods, and on that account think
themselves PROFOUND; but whoever fisheth where there are no fish, I do
not even call him superficial!

Or they learn in godly-gay style to play the harp with a hymn-poet,
who would fain harp himself into the heart of young girls:--for he hath
tired of old girls and their praises.

Or they learn to shudder with a learned semi-madcap, who waiteth in
darkened rooms for spirits to come to him--and the spirit runneth away
entirely!

Or they listen to an old roving howl-and growl-piper, who hath learnt
from the sad winds the sadness of sounds; now pipeth he as the wind, and
preacheth sadness in sad strains.

And some of them have even become night-watchmen: they know now how to
blow horns, and go about at night and awaken old things which have long
fallen asleep.

Five words about old things did I hear yester-night at the garden-wall:
they came from such old, sorrowful, arid night-watchmen.

"For a father he careth not sufficiently for his children: human fathers
do this better!"--

"He is too old! He now careth no more for his children,"--answered the
other night-watchman.

"HATH he then children? No one can prove it unless he himself prove it!
I have long wished that he would for once prove it thoroughly."

"Prove? As if HE had ever proved anything! Proving is difficult to him;
he layeth great stress on one's BELIEVING him."

"Ay! Ay! Belief saveth him; belief in him. That is the way with old
people! So it is with us also!"--

--Thus spake to each other the two old night-watchmen and light-scarers,
and tooted thereupon sorrowfully on their horns: so did it happen
yester-night at the garden-wall.

To me, however, did the heart writhe with laughter, and was like to
break; it knew not where to go, and sunk into the midriff.

Verily, it will be my death yet--to choke with laughter when I see asses
drunken, and hear night-watchmen thus doubt about God.

Hath the time not LONG since passed for all such doubts? Who may
nowadays awaken such old slumbering, light-shunning things!

With the old Deities hath it long since come to an end:--and verily, a
good joyful Deity-end had they!

They did not "begloom" themselves to death--that do people fabricate! On
the contrary, they--LAUGHED themselves to death once on a time!

That took place when the unGodliest utterance came from a God
himself--the utterance: "There is but one God! Thou shalt have no other
Gods before me!"--

--An old grim-beard of a God, a jealous one, forgot himself in such
wise:--

And all the Gods then laughed, and shook upon their thrones, and
exclaimed: "Is it not just divinity that there are Gods, but no God?"

He that hath an ear let him hear.--

Thus talked Zarathustra in the city he loved, which is surnamed "The
Pied Cow." For from here he had but two days to travel to reach once
more his cave and his animals; his soul, however, rejoiced unceasingly
on account of the nighness of his return home.




LIII. THE RETURN HOME.

O lonesomeness! My HOME, lonesomeness! Too long have I lived wildly in
wild remoteness, to return to thee without tears!

Now threaten me with the finger as mothers threaten; now smile upon me
as mothers smile; now say just: "Who was it that like a whirlwind once
rushed away from me?--

--Who when departing called out: 'Too long have I sat with lonesomeness;
there have I unlearned silence!' THAT hast thou learned now--surely?

O Zarathustra, everything do I know; and that thou wert MORE FORSAKEN
amongst the many, thou unique one, than thou ever wert with me!

One thing is forsakenness, another matter is lonesomeness: THAT hast
thou now learned! And that amongst men thou wilt ever be wild and
strange:

--Wild and strange even when they love thee: for above all they want to
be TREATED INDULGENTLY!

Here, however, art thou at home and house with thyself; here canst thou
utter everything, and unbosom all motives; nothing is here ashamed of
concealed, congealed feelings.

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.

Uprightly and openly mayest thou here talk to all things: and verily,
it soundeth as praise in their ears, for one to talk to all
things--directly!

Another matter, however, is forsakenness. For, dost thou remember, O
Zarathustra? When thy bird screamed overhead, when thou stoodest in the
forest, irresolute, ignorant where to go, beside a corpse:--

--When thou spakest: 'Let mine animals lead me! More dangerous have I
found it among men than among animals:'--THAT was forsakenness!

And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thou sattest in thine isle,
a well of wine giving and granting amongst empty buckets, bestowing and
distributing amongst the thirsty:

--Until at last thou alone sattest thirsty amongst the drunken ones, and
wailedst nightly: 'Is taking not more blessed than giving? And stealing
yet more blessed than taking?'--THAT was forsakenness!

And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thy stillest hour came and
drove thee forth from thyself, when with wicked whispering it said:
'Speak and succumb!'--

--When it disgusted thee with all thy waiting and silence, and
discouraged thy humble courage: THAT was forsakenness!"--

O lonesomeness! My home, lonesomeness! How blessedly and tenderly
speaketh thy voice unto me!

We do not question each other, we do not complain to each other; we go
together openly through open doors.

For all is open with thee and clear; and even the hours run here on
lighter feet. For in the dark, time weigheth heavier upon one than in
the light.

Here fly open unto me all being's words and word-cabinets: here all
being wanteth to become words, here all becoming wanteth to learn of me
how to talk.

Down there, however--all talking is in vain! There, forgetting and
passing-by are the best wisdom: THAT have I learned now!

He who would understand everything in man must handle everything. But
for that I have too clean hands.

I do not like even to inhale their breath; alas! that I have lived so
long among their noise and bad breaths!

O blessed stillness around me! O pure odours around me! How from a deep
breast this stillness fetcheth pure breath! How it hearkeneth, this
blessed stillness!

But down there--there speaketh everything, there is everything misheard.
If one announce one's wisdom with bells, the shopmen in the market-place
will out-jingle it with pennies!

Everything among them talketh; no one knoweth any longer how to
understand. Everything falleth into the water; nothing falleth any
longer into deep wells.

Everything among them talketh, nothing succeedeth any longer and
accomplisheth itself. Everything cackleth, but who will still sit
quietly on the nest and hatch eggs?

Everything among them talketh, everything is out-talked. And that which
yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its tooth, hangeth
to-day, outchamped and outchewed, from the mouths of the men of to-day.

Everything among them talketh, everything is betrayed. And what was once
called the secret and secrecy of profound souls, belongeth to-day to the
street-trumpeters and other butterflies.

O human hubbub, thou wonderful thing! Thou noise in dark streets! Now
art thou again behind me:--my greatest danger lieth behind me!

In indulging and pitying lay ever my greatest danger; and all human
hubbub wisheth to be indulged and tolerated.

With suppressed truths, with fool's hand and befooled heart, and rich in
petty lies of pity:--thus have I ever lived among men.

Disguised did I sit amongst them, ready to misjudge MYSELF that I might
endure THEM, and willingly saying to myself: "Thou fool, thou dost not
know men!"

One unlearneth men when one liveth amongst them: there is too much
foreground in all men--what can far-seeing, far-longing eyes do THERE!

And, fool that I was, when they misjudged me, I indulged them on that
account more than myself, being habitually hard on myself, and often
even taking revenge on myself for the indulgence.

Stung all over by poisonous flies, and hollowed like the stone by
many drops of wickedness: thus did I sit among them, and still said to
myself: "Innocent is everything petty of its pettiness!"

Especially did I find those who call themselves "the good," the most
poisonous flies; they sting in all innocence, they lie in all innocence;
how COULD they--be just towards me!

He who liveth amongst the good--pity teacheth him to lie. Pity maketh
stifling air for all free souls. For the stupidity of the good is
unfathomable.

To conceal myself and my riches--THAT did I learn down there: for every
one did I still find poor in spirit. It was the lie of my pity, that I
knew in every one,

--That I saw and scented in every one, what was ENOUGH of spirit for
him, and what was TOO MUCH!

Their stiff wise men: I call them wise, not stiff--thus did I learn to
slur over words.

The grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases. Under old rubbish rest
bad vapours. One should not stir up the marsh. One should live on
mountains.

With blessed nostrils do I again breathe mountain-freedom. Freed at last
is my nose from the smell of all human hubbub!

With sharp breezes tickled, as with sparkling wine, SNEEZETH my soul--
sneezeth, and shouteth self-congratulatingly: "Health to thee!"

Thus spake Zarathustra.




LIV. THE THREE EVIL THINGS.

1.

In my dream, in my last morning-dream, I stood to-day on a promontory--
beyond the world; I held a pair of scales, and WEIGHED the world.

Alas, that the rosy dawn came too early to me: she glowed me awake, the
jealous one! Jealous is she always of the glows of my morning-dream.

Measurable by him who hath time, weighable by a good weigher, attainable
by strong pinions, divinable by divine nut-crackers: thus did my dream
find the world:--

My dream, a bold sailor, half-ship, half-hurricane, silent as the
butterfly, impatient as the falcon: how had it the patience and leisure
to-day for world-weighing!

Did my wisdom perhaps speak secretly to it, my laughing, wide-awake
day-wisdom, which mocketh at all "infinite worlds"? For it saith: "Where
force is, there becometh NUMBER the master: it hath more force."

How confidently did my dream contemplate this finite world, not
new-fangledly, not old-fangledly, not timidly, not entreatingly:--

--As if a big round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe golden
apple, with a coolly-soft, velvety skin:--thus did the world present
itself unto me:--

--As if a tree nodded unto me, a broad-branched, strong-willed tree,
curved as a recline and a foot-stool for weary travellers: thus did the
world stand on my promontory:--

--As if delicate hands carried a casket towards me--a casket open for
the delectation of modest adoring eyes: thus did the world present
itself before me to-day:--

--Not riddle enough to scare human love from it, not solution enough
to put to sleep human wisdom:--a humanly good thing was the world to me
to-day, of which such bad things are said!

How I thank my morning-dream that I thus at to-day's dawn, weighed
the world! As a humanly good thing did it come unto me, this dream and
heart-comforter!

And that I may do the like by day, and imitate and copy its best, now
will I put the three worst things on the scales, and weigh them humanly
well.--

He who taught to bless taught also to curse: what are the three best
cursed things in the world? These will I put on the scales.

VOLUPTUOUSNESS, PASSION FOR POWER, and SELFISHNESS: these three things
have hitherto been best cursed, and have been in worst and falsest
repute--these three things will I weigh humanly well.

Well! Here is my promontory, and there is the sea--IT rolleth hither
unto me, shaggily and fawningly, the old, faithful, hundred-headed
dog-monster that I love!--

Well! Here will I hold the scales over the weltering sea: and also a
witness do I choose to look on--thee, the anchorite-tree, thee, the
strong-odoured, broad-arched tree that I love!--

On what bridge goeth the now to the hereafter? By what constraint doth
the high stoop to the low? And what enjoineth even the highest still--to
grow upwards?--

Now stand the scales poised and at rest: three heavy questions have I
thrown in; three heavy answers carrieth the other scale.

2.

Voluptuousness: unto all hair-shirted despisers of the body, a sting and
stake; and, cursed as "the world," by all backworldsmen: for it mocketh
and befooleth all erring, misinferring teachers.

Voluptuousness: to the rabble, the slow fire at which it is burnt;
to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the prepared heat and stew
furnace.

Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the
garden-happiness of the earth, all the future's thanks-overflow to the
present.

Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion-willed,
however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines.

Voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness
and highest hope. For to many is marriage promised, and more than
marriage,--

--To many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman:--and
who hath fully understood HOW UNKNOWN to each other are man and woman!

Voluptuousness:--but I will have hedges around my thoughts, and
even around my words, lest swine and libertine should break into my
gardens!--

Passion for power: the glowing scourge of the hardest of the heart-hard;
the cruel torture reserved for the cruellest themselves; the gloomy
flame of living pyres.

Passion for power: the wicked gadfly which is mounted on the vainest
peoples; the scorner of all uncertain virtue; which rideth on every
horse and on every pride.

Passion for power: the earthquake which breaketh and upbreaketh all
that is rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punitive demolisher
of whited sepulchres; the flashing interrogative-sign beside premature
answers.

Passion for power: before whose glance man creepeth and croucheth and
drudgeth, and becometh lower than the serpent and the swine:--until at
last great contempt crieth out of him--,

Passion for power: the terrible teacher of great contempt, which
preacheth to their face to cities and empires: "Away with thee!"--until
a voice crieth out of themselves: "Away with ME!"

Passion for power: which, however, mounteth alluringly even to the pure
and lonesome, and up to self-satisfied elevations, glowing like a love
that painteth purple felicities alluringly on earthly heavens.

Passion for power: but who would call it PASSION, when the height
longeth to stoop for power! Verily, nothing sick or diseased is there in
such longing and descending!

That the lonesome height may not for ever remain lonesome and
self-sufficing; that the mountains may come to the valleys and the winds
of the heights to the plains:--

Oh, who could find the right prenomen and honouring name for such
longing! "Bestowing virtue"--thus did Zarathustra once name the
unnamable.

And then it happened also,--and verily, it happened for the first
time!--that his word blessed SELFISHNESS, the wholesome, healthy
selfishness, that springeth from the powerful soul:--

--From the powerful soul, to which the high body appertaineth, the
handsome, triumphing, refreshing body, around which everything becometh
a mirror:

--The pliant, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and epitome
is the self-enjoying soul. Of such bodies and souls the self-enjoyment
calleth itself "virtue."

With its words of good and bad doth such self-enjoyment shelter itself
as with sacred groves; with the names of its happiness doth it banish
from itself everything contemptible.

Away from itself doth it banish everything cowardly; it saith:
"Bad--THAT IS cowardly!" Contemptible seem to it the ever-solicitous,
the sighing, the complaining, and whoever pick up the most trifling
advantage.

It despiseth also all bitter-sweet wisdom: for verily, there is also
wisdom that bloometh in the dark, a night-shade wisdom, which ever
sigheth: "All is vain!"

Shy distrust is regarded by it as base, and every one who wanteth oaths
instead of looks and hands: also all over-distrustful wisdom,--for such
is the mode of cowardly souls.

Baser still it regardeth the obsequious, doggish one, who immediately
lieth on his back, the submissive one; and there is also wisdom that is
submissive, and doggish, and pious, and obsequious.

Hateful to it altogether, and a loathing, is he who will never defend
himself, he who swalloweth down poisonous spittle and bad looks, the
all-too-patient one, the all-endurer, the all-satisfied one: for that is
the mode of slaves.

Whether they be servile before Gods and divine spurnings, or before men
and stupid human opinions: at ALL kinds of slaves doth it spit, this
blessed selfishness!

Bad: thus doth it call all that is spirit-broken, and
sordidly-servile--constrained, blinking eyes, depressed hearts, and the
false submissive style, which kisseth with broad cowardly lips.

And spurious wisdom: so doth it call all the wit that slaves, and
hoary-headed and weary ones affect; and especially all the cunning,
spurious-witted, curious-witted foolishness of priests!

The spurious wise, however, all the priests, the world-weary, and those
whose souls are of feminine and servile nature--oh, how hath their game
all along abused selfishness!

And precisely THAT was to be virtue and was to be called virtue--to
abuse selfishness! And "selfless"--so did they wish themselves with good
reason, all those world-weary cowards and cross-spiders!

But to all those cometh now the day, the change, the sword of judgment,
THE GREAT NOONTIDE: then shall many things be revealed!

And he who proclaimeth the EGO wholesome and holy, and selfishness
blessed, verily, he, the prognosticator, speaketh also what he knoweth:
"BEHOLD, IT COMETH, IT IS NIGH, THE GREAT NOONTIDE!"

Thus spake Zarathustra.




LV. THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY.

1.

My mouthpiece--is of the people: too coarsely and cordially do I
talk for Angora rabbits. And still stranger soundeth my word unto all
ink-fish and pen-foxes.

My hand--is a fool's hand: woe unto all tables and walls, and whatever
hath room for fool's sketching, fool's scrawling!

My foot--is a horse-foot; therewith do I trample and trot over stick and
stone, in the fields up and down, and am bedevilled with delight in all
fast racing.

My stomach--is surely an eagle's stomach? For it preferreth lamb's
flesh. Certainly it is a bird's stomach.

Nourished with innocent things, and with few, ready and impatient
to fly, to fly away--that is now my nature: why should there not be
something of bird-nature therein!

And especially that I am hostile to the spirit of gravity, that is
bird-nature:--verily, deadly hostile, supremely hostile, originally
hostile! Oh, whither hath my hostility not flown and misflown!

Thereof could I sing a song--and WILL sing it: though I be alone in an
empty house, and must sing it to mine own ears.

Other singers are there, to be sure, to whom only the full house
maketh the voice soft, the hand eloquent, the eye expressive, the heart
wakeful:--those do I not resemble.--

2.

He who one day teacheth men to fly will have shifted all landmarks; to
him will all landmarks themselves fly into the air; the earth will he
christen anew--as "the light body."

The ostrich runneth faster than the fastest horse, but it also thrusteth
its head heavily into the heavy earth: thus is it with the man who
cannot yet fly.

Heavy unto him are earth and life, and so WILLETH the spirit of gravity!
But he who would become light, and be a bird, must love himself:--thus
do _I_ teach.

Not, to be sure, with the love of the sick and infected, for with them
stinketh even self-love!

One must learn to love oneself--thus do I teach--with a wholesome and
healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving
about.

Such roving about christeneth itself "brotherly love"; with these words
hath there hitherto been the best lying and dissembling, and especially
by those who have been burdensome to every one.

And verily, it is no commandment for to-day and to-morrow to LEARN to
love oneself. Rather is it of all arts the finest, subtlest, last and
patientest.

For to its possessor is all possession well concealed, and of all
treasure-pits one's own is last excavated--so causeth the spirit of
gravity.

Almost in the cradle are we apportioned with heavy words and worths:
"good" and "evil"--so calleth itself this dowry. For the sake of it we
are forgiven for living.

And therefore suffereth one little children to come unto one, to forbid
them betimes to love themselves--so causeth the spirit of gravity.

And we--we bear loyally what is apportioned unto us, on hard shoulders,
over rugged mountains! And when we sweat, then do people say to us:
"Yea, life is hard to bear!"

But man himself only is hard to bear! The reason thereof is that he
carrieth too many extraneous things on his shoulders. Like the camel
kneeleth he down, and letteth himself be well laden.

Especially the strong load-bearing man in whom reverence resideth. Too
many EXTRANEOUS heavy words and worths loadeth he upon himself--then
seemeth life to him a desert!

And verily! Many a thing also that is OUR OWN is hard to bear! And many
internal things in man are like the oyster--repulsive and slippery and
hard to grasp;--

So that an elegant shell, with elegant adornment, must plead for
them. But this art also must one learn: to HAVE a shell, and a fine
appearance, and sagacious blindness!

Again, it deceiveth about many things in man, that many a shell is poor
and pitiable, and too much of a shell. Much concealed goodness and power
is never dreamt of; the choicest dainties find no tasters!

Women know that, the choicest of them: a little fatter a little leaner--
oh, how much fate is in so little!

Man is difficult to discover, and unto himself most difficult of all;
often lieth the spirit concerning the soul. So causeth the spirit of
gravity.

He, however, hath discovered himself who saith: This is MY good and
evil: therewith hath he silenced the mole and the dwarf, who say: "Good
for all, evil for all."

Verily, neither do I like those who call everything good, and this world
the best of all. Those do I call the all-satisfied.

All-satisfiedness, which knoweth how to taste everything,--that is
not the best taste! I honour the refractory, fastidious tongues and
stomachs, which have learned to say "I" and "Yea" and "Nay."

To chew and digest everything, however--that is the genuine
swine-nature! Ever to say YE-A--that hath only the ass learnt, and those
like it!--

Deep yellow and hot red--so wanteth MY taste--it mixeth blood with all
colours. He, however, who whitewasheth his house, betrayeth unto me a
whitewashed soul.

With mummies, some fall in love; others with phantoms: both alike
hostile to all flesh and blood--oh, how repugnant are both to my taste!
For I love blood.

And there will I not reside and abide where every one spitteth and
speweth: that is now MY taste,--rather would I live amongst thieves and
perjurers. Nobody carrieth gold in his mouth.

Still more repugnant unto me, however, are all lickspittles; and the
most repugnant animal of man that I found, did I christen "parasite": it
would not love, and would yet live by love.

Unhappy do I call all those who have only one choice: either to become
evil beasts, or evil beast-tamers. Amongst such would I not build my
tabernacle.

Unhappy do I also call those who have ever to WAIT,--they are repugnant
to my taste--all the toll-gatherers and traders, and kings, and other
landkeepers and shopkeepers.

Verily, I learned waiting also, and thoroughly so,--but only waiting for
MYSELF. And above all did I learn standing and walking and running and
leaping and climbing and dancing.

This however is my teaching: he who wisheth one day to fly, must first
learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing:--one
doth not fly into flying!

With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did
I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no
small bliss;--

--To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly,
but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and ship-wrecked ones!

By divers ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder
did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness.

And unwillingly only did I ask my way--that was always counter to my
taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves.

A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling:--and verily,
one must also LEARN to answer such questioning! That, however,--is my
taste:

--Neither a good nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no
longer either shame or secrecy.

"This--is now MY way,--where is yours?" Thus did I answer those who
asked me "the way." For THE way--it doth not exist!

Thus spake Zarathustra.




LVI. OLD AND NEW TABLES.

1.

Here do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new
half-written tables. When cometh mine hour?

--The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once more will I go unto
men.

For that hour do I now wait: for first must the signs come unto me that
it is MINE hour--namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves.

Meanwhile do I talk to myself as one who hath time. No one telleth me
anything new, so I tell myself mine own story.

2.

When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation:
all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men.

An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse about virtue; and
he who wished to sleep well spake of "good" and "bad" ere retiring to
rest.

This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWETH what
is good and bad:--unless it be the creating one!

--It is he, however, who createth man's goal, and giveth to the earth
its meaning and its future: he only EFFECTETH it THAT aught is good or
bad.

And I bade them upset their old academic chairs, and wherever that old
infatuation had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists, their
saints, their poets, and their Saviours.

At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat
admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life.

On their great grave-highway did I seat myself, and even beside the
carrion and vultures--and I laughed at all their bygone and its mellow
decaying glory.

Verily, like penitential preachers and fools did I cry wrath and shame
on all their greatness and smallness. Oh, that their best is so very
small! Oh, that their worst is so very small! Thus did I laugh.

Thus did my wise longing, born in the mountains, cry and laugh in me; a
wild wisdom, verily!--my great pinion-rustling longing.

And oft did it carry me off and up and away and in the midst of
laughter; then flew I quivering like an arrow with sun-intoxicated
rapture:

--Out into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen, into warmer
souths than ever sculptor conceived,--where gods in their dancing are
ashamed of all clothes:

(That I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the poets: and
verily I am ashamed that I have still to be a poet!)

Where all becoming seemed to me dancing of Gods, and wantoning of Gods,
and the world unloosed and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:--

--As an eternal self-fleeing and re-seeking of one another of many Gods,
as the blessed self-contradicting, recommuning, and refraternising with
one another of many Gods:--

Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments, where
necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of
freedom:--

Where I also found again mine old devil and arch-enemy, the spirit
of gravity, and all that it created: constraint, law, necessity and
consequence and purpose and will and good and evil:--

For must there not be that which is danced OVER, danced beyond? Must
there not, for the sake of the nimble, the nimblest,--be moles and
clumsy dwarfs?--

3.

There was it also where I picked up from the path the word "Superman,"
and that man is something that must be surpassed.

--That man is a bridge and not a goal--rejoicing over his noontides and
evenings, as advances to new rosy dawns:

--The Zarathustra word of the great noontide, and whatever else I have
hung up over men like purple evening-afterglows.

Verily, also new stars did I make them see, along with new nights;
and over cloud and day and night, did I spread out laughter like a
gay-coloured canopy.

I taught them all MY poetisation and aspiration: to compose and collect
into unity what is fragment in man, and riddle and fearful chance;--

--As composer, riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance, did I teach them
to create the future, and all that HATH BEEN--to redeem by creating.

The past of man to redeem, and every "It was" to transform, until the
Will saith: "But so did I will it! So shall I will it--"

--This did I call redemption; this alone taught I them to call
redemption.--

Now do I await MY redemption--that I may go unto them for the last time.

For once more will I go unto men: AMONGST them will my sun set; in dying
will I give them my choicest gift!

From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one:
gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches,--

--So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with GOLDEN oars! For this
did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it.--

Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here
and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new
tables--half-written.

4.

Behold, here is a new table; but where are my brethren who will carry it
with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?--

Thus demandeth my great love to the remotest ones: BE NOT CONSIDERATE OF
THY NEIGHBOUR! Man is something that must be surpassed.

There are many divers ways and modes of surpassing: see THOU thereto!
But only a buffoon thinketh: "man can also be OVERLEAPT."

Surpass thyself even in thy neighbour: and a right which thou canst
seize upon, shalt thou not allow to be given thee!

What thou doest can no one do to thee again. Lo, there is no requital.

He who cannot command himself shall obey. And many a one CAN command
himself, but still sorely lacketh self-obedience!

5.

Thus wisheth the type of noble souls: they desire to have nothing
GRATUITOUSLY, least of all, life.

He who is of the populace wisheth to live gratuitously; we others,
however, to whom life hath given itself--we are ever considering WHAT we
can best give IN RETURN!

And verily, it is a noble dictum which saith: "What life promiseth US,
that promise will WE keep--to life!"

One should not wish to enjoy where one doth not contribute to the
enjoyment. And one should not WISH to enjoy!

For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things. Neither like
to be sought for. One should HAVE them,--but one should rather SEEK for
guilt and pain!--

6.

O my brethren, he who is a firstling is ever sacrificed. Now, however,
are we firstlings!

We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars, we all burn and broil in
honour of ancient idols.

Our best is still young: this exciteth old palates. Our flesh is tender,
our skin is only lambs' skin:--how could we not excite old idol-priests!

IN OURSELVES dwelleth he still, the old idol-priest, who broileth our
best for his banquet. Ah, my brethren, how could firstlings fail to be
sacrifices!

But so wisheth our type; and I love those who do not wish to preserve
themselves, the down-going ones do I love with mine entire love: for
they go beyond.--

7.

To be true--that CAN few be! And he who can, will not! Least of all,
however, can the good be true.

Oh, those good ones! GOOD MEN NEVER SPEAK THE TRUTH. For the spirit,
thus to be good, is a malady.

They yield, those good ones, they submit themselves; their heart
repeateth, their soul obeyeth: HE, however, who obeyeth, DOTH NOT LISTEN
TO HIMSELF!

All that is called evil by the good, must come together in order that
one truth may be born. O my brethren, are ye also evil enough for THIS
truth?

The daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel Nay, the tedium,
the cutting-into-the-quick--how seldom do THESE come together! Out of
such seed, however--is truth produced!

BESIDE the bad conscience hath hitherto grown all KNOWLEDGE! Break up,
break up, ye discerning ones, the old tables!

8.

When the water hath planks, when gangways and railings o'erspan the
stream, verily, he is not believed who then saith: "All is in flux."

But even the simpletons contradict him. "What?" say the simpletons, "all
in flux? Planks and railings are still OVER the stream!

"OVER the stream all is stable, all the values of things, the bridges
and bearings, all 'good' and 'evil': these are all STABLE!"--

Cometh, however, the hard winter, the stream-tamer, then learn even the
wittiest distrust, and verily, not only the simpletons then say: "Should
not everything--STAND STILL?"

"Fundamentally standeth everything still"--that is an appropriate winter
doctrine, good cheer for an unproductive period, a great comfort for
winter-sleepers and fireside-loungers.

"Fundamentally standeth everything still"--: but CONTRARY thereto,
preacheth the thawing wind!

The thawing wind, a bullock, which is no ploughing bullock--a furious
bullock, a destroyer, which with angry horns breaketh the ice! The ice
however--BREAKETH GANGWAYS!

O my brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX? Have not all
railings and gangways fallen into the water? Who would still HOLD ON to
"good" and "evil"?

"Woe to us! Hail to us! The thawing wind bloweth!"--Thus preach, my
brethren, through all the streets!

9.

There is an old illusion--it is called good and evil. Around soothsayers
and astrologers hath hitherto revolved the orbit of this illusion.

Once did one BELIEVE in soothsayers and astrologers; and THEREFORE did
one believe, "Everything is fate: thou shalt, for thou must!"

Then again did one distrust all soothsayers and astrologers; and
THEREFORE did one believe, "Everything is freedom: thou canst, for thou
willest!"

O my brethren, concerning the stars and the future there hath hitherto
been only illusion, and not knowledge; and THEREFORE concerning good and
evil there hath hitherto been only illusion and not knowledge!

10.

"Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not slay!"--such precepts were once
called holy; before them did one bow the knee and the head, and take off
one's shoes.

But I ask you: Where have there ever been better robbers and slayers in
the world than such holy precepts?

Is there not even in all life--robbing and slaying? And for such
precepts to be called holy, was not TRUTH itself thereby--slain?

--Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contradicted and
dissuaded from life?--O my brethren, break up, break up for me the old
tables!

11.

It is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is abandoned,--

--Abandoned to the favour, the spirit and the madness of every
generation that cometh, and reinterpreteth all that hath been as its
bridge!

A great potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with approval and
disapproval could strain and constrain all the past, until it became for
him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald, and a cock-crowing.

This however is the other danger, and mine other sympathy:--he who is
of the populace, his thoughts go back to his grandfather,--with his
grandfather, however, doth time cease.

Thus is all the past abandoned: for it might some day happen for the
populace to become master, and drown all time in shallow waters.

Therefore, O my brethren, a NEW NOBILITY is needed, which shall be the
adversary of all populace and potentate rule, and shall inscribe anew
the word "noble" on new tables.

For many noble ones are needed, and many kinds of noble ones, FOR A NEW
NOBILITY! Or, as I once said in parable: "That is just divinity, that
there are Gods, but no God!"

12.

O my brethren, I consecrate you and point you to a new nobility: ye
shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future;--

--Verily, not to a nobility which ye could purchase like traders with
traders' gold; for little worth is all that hath its price.

Let it not be your honour henceforth whence ye come, but whither ye go!
Your Will and your feet which seek to surpass you--let these be your new
honour!

Verily, not that ye have served a prince--of what account are princes
now!--nor that ye have become a bulwark to that which standeth, that it
may stand more firmly.

Not that your family have become courtly at courts, and that ye have
learned--gay-coloured, like the flamingo--to stand long hours in shallow
pools:

(For ABILITY-to-stand is a merit in courtiers; and all courtiers believe
that unto blessedness after death pertaineth--PERMISSION-to-sit!)

Nor even that a Spirit called Holy, led your forefathers into promised
lands, which I do not praise: for where the worst of all trees grew--the
cross,--in that land there is nothing to praise!--

--And verily, wherever this "Holy Spirit" led its knights, always in
such campaigns did--goats and geese, and wryheads and guyheads run
FOREMOST!--

O my brethren, not backward shall your nobility gaze, but OUTWARD!
Exiles shall ye be from all fatherlands and forefather-lands!

Your CHILDREN'S LAND shall ye love: let this love be your new
nobility,--the undiscovered in the remotest seas! For it do I bid your
sails search and search!

Unto your children shall ye MAKE AMENDS for being the children of your
fathers: all the past shall ye THUS redeem! This new table do I place
over you!

13.

"Why should one live? All is vain! To live--that is to thrash straw; to
live--that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm."--

Such ancient babbling still passeth for "wisdom"; because it is old,
however, and smelleth mustily, THEREFORE is it the more honoured. Even
mould ennobleth.--

Children might thus speak: they SHUN the fire because it hath burnt
them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.

And he who ever "thrasheth straw," why should he be allowed to rail at
thrashing! Such a fool one would have to muzzle!

Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing with them, not even
good hunger:--and then do they rail: "All is vain!"

But to eat and drink well, my brethren, is verily no vain art! Break up,
break up for me the tables of the never-joyous ones!

14.

"To the clean are all things clean"--thus say the people. I, however,
say unto you: To the swine all things become swinish!

Therefore preach the visionaries and bowed-heads (whose hearts are also
bowed down): "The world itself is a filthy monster."

For these are all unclean spirits; especially those, however, who have
no peace or rest, unless they see the world FROM THE BACKSIDE--the
backworldsmen!

TO THOSE do I say it to the face, although it sound unpleasantly: the
world resembleth man, in that it hath a backside,--SO MUCH is true!

There is in the world much filth: SO MUCH is true! But the world itself
is not therefore a filthy monster!

There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smelleth badly:
loathing itself createth wings, and fountain-divining powers!

In the best there is still something to loathe; and the best is still
something that must be surpassed!--

O my brethren, there is much wisdom in the fact that much filth is in
the world!--

15.

Such sayings did I hear pious backworldsmen speak to their consciences,
and verily without wickedness or guile,--although there is nothing more
guileful in the world, or more wicked.

"Let the world be as it is! Raise not a finger against it!"

"Let whoever will choke and stab and skin and scrape the people: raise
not a finger against it! Thereby will they learn to renounce the world."

"And thine own reason--this shalt thou thyself stifle and choke; for it
is a reason of this world,--thereby wilt thou learn thyself to renounce
the world."--

--Shatter, shatter, O my brethren, those old tables of the pious! Tatter
the maxims of the world-maligners!--

16.

"He who learneth much unlearneth all violent cravings"--that do people
now whisper to one another in all the dark lanes.

"Wisdom wearieth, nothing is worth while; thou shalt not crave!"--this
new table found I hanging even in the public markets.

Break up for me, O my brethren, break up also that NEW table! The
weary-o'-the-world put it up, and the preachers of death and the jailer:
for lo, it is also a sermon for slavery:--

Because they learned badly and not the best, and everything too early
and everything too fast; because they ATE badly: from thence hath
resulted their ruined stomach;--

--For a ruined stomach, is their spirit: IT persuadeth to death! For
verily, my brethren, the spirit IS a stomach!

Life is a well of delight, but to him in whom the ruined stomach
speaketh, the father of affliction, all fountains are poisoned.

To discern: that is DELIGHT to the lion-willed! But he who hath become
weary, is himself merely "willed"; with him play all the waves.

And such is always the nature of weak men: they lose themselves on their
way. And at last asketh their weariness: "Why did we ever go on the way?
All is indifferent!"

TO THEM soundeth it pleasant to have preached in their ears: "Nothing is
worth while! Ye shall not will!" That, however, is a sermon for slavery.

O my brethren, a fresh blustering wind cometh Zarathustra unto all
way-weary ones; many noses will he yet make sneeze!

Even through walls bloweth my free breath, and in into prisons and
imprisoned spirits!

Willing emancipateth: for willing is creating: so do I teach. And ONLY
for creating shall ye learn!

And also the learning shall ye LEARN only from me, the learning
well!--He who hath ears let him hear!

17.

There standeth the boat--thither goeth it over, perhaps into vast
nothingness--but who willeth to enter into this "Perhaps"?

None of you want to enter into the death-boat! How should ye then be
WORLD-WEARY ones!

World-weary ones! And have not even withdrawn from the earth! Eager
did I ever find you for the earth, amorous still of your own
earth-weariness!

Not in vain doth your lip hang down:--a small worldly wish still sitteth
thereon! And in your eye--floateth there not a cloudlet of unforgotten
earthly bliss?

There are on the earth many good inventions, some useful, some pleasant:
for their sake is the earth to be loved.

And many such good inventions are there, that they are like woman's
breasts: useful at the same time, and pleasant.

Ye world-weary ones, however! Ye earth-idlers! You, shall one beat with
stripes! With stripes shall one again make you sprightly limbs.

For if ye be not invalids, or decrepit creatures, of whom the earth is
weary, then are ye sly sloths, or dainty, sneaking pleasure-cats. And if
ye will not again RUN gaily, then shall ye--pass away!

To the incurable shall one not seek to be a physician: thus teacheth
Zarathustra:--so shall ye pass away!

But more COURAGE is needed to make an end than to make a new verse: that
do all physicians and poets know well.--

18.

O my brethren, there are tables which weariness framed, and tables
which slothfulness framed, corrupt slothfulness: although they speak
similarly, they want to be heard differently.--

See this languishing one! Only a span-breadth is he from his goal; but
from weariness hath he lain down obstinately in the dust, this brave
one!

From weariness yawneth he at the path, at the earth, at the goal, and at
himself: not a step further will he go,--this brave one!

Now gloweth the sun upon him, and the dogs lick at his sweat: but he
lieth there in his obstinacy and preferreth to languish:--

--A span-breadth from his goal, to languish! Verily, ye will have to
drag him into his heaven by the hair of his head--this hero!

Better still that ye let him lie where he hath lain down, that sleep may
come unto him, the comforter, with cooling patter-rain.

Let him lie, until of his own accord he awakeneth,--until of his own
accord he repudiateth all weariness, and what weariness hath taught
through him!

Only, my brethren, see that ye scare the dogs away from him, the idle
skulkers, and all the swarming vermin:--

--All the swarming vermin of the "cultured," that--feast on the sweat of
every hero!--

19.

I form circles around me and holy boundaries; ever fewer ascend with
me ever higher mountains: I build a mountain-range out of ever holier
mountains.--

But wherever ye would ascend with me, O my brethren, take care lest a
PARASITE ascend with you!

A parasite: that is a reptile, a creeping, cringing reptile, that trieth
to fatten on your infirm and sore places.

And THIS is its art: it divineth where ascending souls are weary, in
your trouble and dejection, in your sensitive modesty, doth it build its
loathsome nest.

Where the strong are weak, where the noble are all-too-gentle--there
buildeth it its loathsome nest; the parasite liveth where the great have
small sore-places.

What is the highest of all species of being, and what is the lowest?
The parasite is the lowest species; he, however, who is of the highest
species feedeth most parasites.

For the soul which hath the longest ladder, and can go deepest down: how
could there fail to be most parasites upon it?--

--The most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and rove furthest
in itself; the most necessary soul, which out of joy flingeth itself
into chance:--

--The soul in Being, which plungeth into Becoming; the possessing soul,
which SEEKETH to attain desire and longing:--

--The soul fleeing from itself, which overtaketh itself in the widest
circuit; the wisest soul, unto which folly speaketh most sweetly:--

--The soul most self-loving, in which all things have their current and
counter-current, their ebb and their flow:--oh, how could THE LOFTIEST
SOUL fail to have the worst parasites?

20.

O my brethren, am I then cruel? But I say: What falleth, that shall one
also push!

Everything of to-day--it falleth, it decayeth; who would preserve it!
But I--I wish also to push it!

Know ye the delight which rolleth stones into precipitous depths?--Those
men of to-day, see just how they roll into my depths!

A prelude am I to better players, O my brethren! An example! DO
according to mine example!

And him whom ye do not teach to fly, teach I pray you--TO FALL FASTER!--

21.

I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swordsman,--one must also
know WHEREON to use swordsmanship!

And often is it greater bravery to keep quiet and pass by, that THEREBY
one may reserve oneself for a worthier foe!

Ye shall only have foes to be hated; but not foes to be despised: ye
must be proud of your foes. Thus have I already taught.

For the worthier foe, O my brethren, shall ye reserve yourselves:
therefore must ye pass by many a one,--

--Especially many of the rabble, who din your ears with noise about
people and peoples.

Keep your eye clear of their For and Against! There is there much right,
much wrong: he who looketh on becometh wroth.

Therein viewing, therein hewing--they are the same thing: therefore
depart into the forests and lay your sword to sleep!

Go YOUR ways! and let the people and peoples go theirs!--gloomy ways,
verily, on which not a single hope glinteth any more!

Let there the trader rule, where all that still glittereth is--traders'
gold. It is the time of kings no longer: that which now calleth itself
the people is unworthy of kings.

See how these peoples themselves now do just like the traders: they pick
up the smallest advantage out of all kinds of rubbish!

They lay lures for one another, they lure things out of one
another,--that they call "good neighbourliness." O blessed remote period
when a people said to itself: "I will be--MASTER over peoples!"

For, my brethren, the best shall rule, the best also WILLETH to rule!
And where the teaching is different, there--the best is LACKING.

22.

If THEY had--bread for nothing, alas! for what would THEY cry! Their
maintainment--that is their true entertainment; and they shall have it
hard!

Beasts of prey, are they: in their "working"--there is even plundering,
in their "earning"--there is even overreaching! Therefore shall they
have it hard!

Better beasts of prey shall they thus become, subtler, cleverer, MORE
MAN-LIKE: for man is the best beast of prey.

All the animals hath man already robbed of their virtues: that is why of
all animals it hath been hardest for man.

Only the birds are still beyond him. And if man should yet learn to fly,
alas! TO WHAT HEIGHT--would his rapacity fly!

23.

Thus would I have man and woman: fit for war, the one; fit for
maternity, the other; both, however, fit for dancing with head and legs.

And lost be the day to us in which a measure hath not been danced. And
false be every truth which hath not had laughter along with it!

24.

Your marriage-arranging: see that it be not a bad ARRANGING! Ye have
arranged too hastily: so there FOLLOWETH therefrom--marriage-breaking!

And better marriage-breaking than marriage-bending,
marriage-lying!--Thus spake a woman unto me: "Indeed, I broke the
marriage, but first did the marriage break--me!

The badly paired found I ever the most revengeful: they make every one
suffer for it that they no longer run singly.

On that account want I the honest ones to say to one another: "We love
each other: let us SEE TO IT that we maintain our love! Or shall our
pledging be blundering?"

--"Give us a set term and a small marriage, that we may see if we are
fit for the great marriage! It is a great matter always to be twain."

Thus do I counsel all honest ones; and what would be my love to the
Superman, and to all that is to come, if I should counsel and speak
otherwise!

Not only to propagate yourselves onwards but UPWARDS--thereto, O my
brethren, may the garden of marriage help you!

25.

He who hath grown wise concerning old origins, lo, he will at last seek
after the fountains of the future and new origins.--

O my brethren, not long will it be until NEW PEOPLES shall arise and new
fountains shall rush down into new depths.

For the earthquake--it choketh up many wells, it causeth much
languishing: but it bringeth also to light inner powers and secrets.

The earthquake discloseth new fountains. In the earthquake of old
peoples new fountains burst forth.

And whoever calleth out: "Lo, here is a well for many thirsty ones, one
heart for many longing ones, one will for many instruments":--around him
collecteth a PEOPLE, that is to say, many attempting ones.

Who can command, who must obey--THAT IS THERE ATTEMPTED! Ah, with what
long seeking and solving and failing and learning and re-attempting!

Human society: it is an attempt--so I teach--a long seeking: it seeketh
however the ruler!--

--An attempt, my brethren! And NO "contract"! Destroy, I pray you,
destroy that word of the soft-hearted and half-and-half!

26.

O my brethren! With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human
future? Is it not with the good and just?--

--As those who say and feel in their hearts: "We already know what
is good and just, we possess it also; woe to those who still seek
thereafter!

And whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm of the good is the
harmfulest harm!

And whatever harm the world-maligners may do, the harm of the good is
the harmfulest harm!

O my brethren, into the hearts of the good and just looked some one
once on a time, who said: "They are the Pharisees." But people did not
understand him.

The good and just themselves were not free to understand him; their
spirit was imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the
good is unfathomably wise.

It is the truth, however, that the good MUST be Pharisees--they have no
choice!

The good MUST crucify him who deviseth his own virtue! That IS the
truth!

The second one, however, who discovered their country--the country,
heart and soil of the good and just,--it was he who asked: "Whom do they
hate most?"

The CREATOR, hate they most, him who breaketh the tables and old values,
the breaker,--him they call the law-breaker.

For the good--they CANNOT create; they are always the beginning of the
end:--

--They crucify him who writeth new values on new tables, they sacrifice
UNTO THEMSELVES the future--they crucify the whole human future!

The good--they have always been the beginning of the end.--

27.

O my brethren, have ye also understood this word? And what I once said
of the "last man"?--

With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not
with the good and just?

BREAK UP, BREAK UP, I PRAY YOU, THE GOOD AND JUST!--O my brethren, have
ye understood also this word?

28.

Ye flee from me? Ye are frightened? Ye tremble at this word?

O my brethren, when I enjoined you to break up the good, and the tables
of the good, then only did I embark man on his high seas.

And now only cometh unto him the great terror, the great outlook, the
great sickness, the great nausea, the great sea-sickness.

False shores and false securities did the good teach you; in the lies of
the good were ye born and bred. Everything hath been radically contorted
and distorted by the good.

But he who discovered the country of "man," discovered also the country
of "man's future." Now shall ye be sailors for me, brave, patient!

Keep yourselves up betimes, my brethren, learn to keep yourselves up!
The sea stormeth: many seek to raise themselves again by you.

The sea stormeth: all is in the sea. Well! Cheer up! Ye old
seaman-hearts!

What of fatherland! THITHER striveth our helm where our CHILDREN'S LAND
is! Thitherwards, stormier than the sea, stormeth our great longing!--

29.

"Why so hard!"--said to the diamond one day the charcoal; "are we then
not near relatives?"--

Why so soft? O my brethren; thus do _I_ ask you: are ye then not--my
brethren?

Why so soft, so submissive and yielding? Why is there so much negation
and abnegation in your hearts? Why is there so little fate in your
looks?

And if ye will not be fates and inexorable ones, how can ye one day--
conquer with me?

And if your hardness will not glance and cut and chip to pieces, how can
ye one day--create with me?

For the creators are hard. And blessedness must it seem to you to press
your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,--

--Blessedness to write upon the will of millenniums as upon
brass,--harder than brass, nobler than brass. Entirely hard is only the
noblest.

This new table, O my brethren, put I up over you: BECOME HARD!--

30.

O thou, my Will! Thou change of every need, MY needfulness! Preserve me
from all small victories!

Thou fatedness of my soul, which I call fate! Thou In-me! Over-me!
Preserve and spare me for one great fate!

And thy last greatness, my Will, spare it for thy last--that thou mayest
be inexorable IN thy victory! Ah, who hath not succumbed to his victory!

Ah, whose eye hath not bedimmed in this intoxicated twilight! Ah, whose
foot hath not faltered and forgotten in victory--how to stand!--

--That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noontide: ready and
ripe like the glowing ore, the lightning-bearing cloud, and the swelling
milk-udder:--

--Ready for myself and for my most hidden Will: a bow eager for its
arrow, an arrow eager for its star:--

--A star, ready and ripe in its noontide, glowing, pierced, blessed, by
annihilating sun-arrows:--

--A sun itself, and an inexorable sun-will, ready for annihilation in
victory!

O Will, thou change of every need, MY needfulness! Spare me for one
great victory!---

Thus spake Zarathustra.




LVII. THE CONVALESCENT.

1.

One morning, not long after his return to his cave, Zarathustra sprang
up from his couch like a madman, crying with a frightful voice, and
acting as if some one still lay on the couch who did not wish to rise.
Zarathustra's voice also resounded in such a manner that his animals
came to him frightened, and out of all the neighbouring caves and
lurking-places all the creatures slipped away--flying, fluttering,
creeping or leaping, according to their variety of foot or wing.
Zarathustra, however, spake these words:

Up, abysmal thought out of my depth! I am thy cock and morning dawn,
thou overslept reptile: Up! Up! My voice shall soon crow thee awake!

Unbind the fetters of thine ears: listen! For I wish to hear thee! Up!
Up! There is thunder enough to make the very graves listen!

And rub the sleep and all the dimness and blindness out of thine eyes!
Hear me also with thine eyes: my voice is a medicine even for those born
blind.

And once thou art awake, then shalt thou ever remain awake. It is not
MY custom to awake great-grandmothers out of their sleep that I may bid
them--sleep on!

Thou stirrest, stretchest thyself, wheezest? Up! Up! Not wheeze, shalt
thou,--but speak unto me! Zarathustra calleth thee, Zarathustra the
godless!

I, Zarathustra, the advocate of living, the advocate of suffering, the
advocate of the circuit--thee do I call, my most abysmal thought!

Joy to me! Thou comest,--I hear thee! Mine abyss SPEAKETH, my lowest
depth have I turned over into the light!

Joy to me! Come hither! Give me thy hand--ha! let be! aha!--Disgust,
disgust, disgust--alas to me!

2.

Hardly, however, had Zarathustra spoken these words, when he fell down
as one dead, and remained long as one dead. When however he again came
to himself, then was he pale and trembling, and remained lying; and for
long he would neither eat nor drink. This condition continued for seven
days; his animals, however, did not leave him day nor night, except that
the eagle flew forth to fetch food. And what it fetched and foraged,
it laid on Zarathustra's couch: so that Zarathustra at last lay among
yellow and red berries, grapes, rosy apples, sweet-smelling herbage, and
pine-cones. At his feet, however, two lambs were stretched, which the
eagle had with difficulty carried off from their shepherds.

At last, after seven days, Zarathustra raised himself upon his couch,
took a rosy apple in his hand, smelt it and found its smell pleasant.
Then did his animals think the time had come to speak unto him.

"O Zarathustra," said they, "now hast thou lain thus for seven days with
heavy eyes: wilt thou not set thyself again upon thy feet?

Step out of thy cave: the world waiteth for thee as a garden. The wind
playeth with heavy fragrance which seeketh for thee; and all brooks
would like to run after thee.

All things long for thee, since thou hast remained alone for seven
days--step forth out of thy cave! All things want to be thy physicians!

Did perhaps a new knowledge come to thee, a bitter, grievous knowledge?
Like leavened dough layest thou, thy soul arose and swelled beyond all
its bounds.--"

--O mine animals, answered Zarathustra, talk on thus and let me listen!
It refresheth me so to hear your talk: where there is talk, there is the
world as a garden unto me.

How charming it is that there are words and tones; are not words and
tones rainbows and seeming bridges 'twixt the eternally separated?

To each soul belongeth another world; to each soul is every other soul a
back-world.

Among the most alike doth semblance deceive most delightfully: for the
smallest gap is most difficult to bridge over.

For me--how could there be an outside-of-me? There is no outside! But
this we forget on hearing tones; how delightful it is that we forget!

Have not names and tones been given unto things that man may refresh
himself with them? It is a beautiful folly, speaking; therewith danceth
man over everything.

How lovely is all speech and all falsehoods of tones! With tones danceth
our love on variegated rainbows.--

--"O Zarathustra," said then his animals, "to those who think like us,
things all dance themselves: they come and hold out the hand and laugh
and flee--and return.

Everything goeth, everything returneth; eternally rolleth the wheel
of existence. Everything dieth, everything blossometh forth again;
eternally runneth on the year of existence.

Everything breaketh, everything is integrated anew; eternally buildeth
itself the same house of existence. All things separate, all things
again greet one another; eternally true to itself remaineth the ring of
existence.

Every moment beginneth existence, around every 'Here' rolleth the ball
'There.' The middle is everywhere. Crooked is the path of eternity."--

--O ye wags and barrel-organs! answered Zarathustra, and smiled once
more, how well do ye know what had to be fulfilled in seven days:--

--And how that monster crept into my throat and choked me! But I bit off
its head and spat it away from me.

And ye--ye have made a lyre-lay out of it? Now, however, do I lie here,
still exhausted with that biting and spitting-away, still sick with mine
own salvation.

AND YE LOOKED ON AT IT ALL? O mine animals, are ye also cruel? Did
ye like to look at my great pain as men do? For man is the cruellest
animal.

At tragedies, bull-fights, and crucifixions hath he hitherto been
happiest on earth; and when he invented his hell, behold, that was his
heaven on earth.

When the great man crieth--: immediately runneth the little man thither,
and his tongue hangeth out of his mouth for very lusting. He, however,
calleth it his "pity."

The little man, especially the poet--how passionately doth he accuse
life in words! Hearken to him, but do not fail to hear the delight which
is in all accusation!

Such accusers of life--them life overcometh with a glance of the eye.
"Thou lovest me?" saith the insolent one; "wait a little, as yet have I
no time for thee."

Towards himself man is the cruellest animal; and in all who call
themselves "sinners" and "bearers of the cross" and "penitents," do not
overlook the voluptuousness in their plaints and accusations!

And I myself--do I thereby want to be man's accuser? Ah, mine animals,
this only have I learned hitherto, that for man his baddest is necessary
for his best,--

--That all that is baddest is the best POWER, and the hardest stone for
the highest creator; and that man must become better AND badder:--

Not to THIS torture-stake was I tied, that I know man is bad,--but I
cried, as no one hath yet cried:

"Ah, that his baddest is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very
small!"

The great disgust at man--IT strangled me and had crept into my throat:
and what the soothsayer had presaged: "All is alike, nothing is worth
while, knowledge strangleth."

A long twilight limped on before me, a fatally weary, fatally
intoxicated sadness, which spake with yawning mouth.

"Eternally he returneth, the man of whom thou art weary, the small
man"--so yawned my sadness, and dragged its foot and could not go to
sleep.

A cavern, became the human earth to me; its breast caved in; everything
living became to me human dust and bones and mouldering past.

My sighing sat on all human graves, and could no longer arise: my
sighing and questioning croaked and choked, and gnawed and nagged day
and night:

--"Ah, man returneth eternally! The small man returneth eternally!"

Naked had I once seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest
man: all too like one another--all too human, even the greatest man!

All too small, even the greatest man!--that was my disgust at man! And
the eternal return also of the smallest man!--that was my disgust at all
existence!

Ah, Disgust! Disgust! Disgust!--Thus spake Zarathustra, and sighed and
shuddered; for he remembered his sickness. Then did his animals prevent
him from speaking further.

"Do not speak further, thou convalescent!"--so answered his animals,
"but go out where the world waiteth for thee like a garden.

Go out unto the roses, the bees, and the flocks of doves! Especially,
however, unto the singing-birds, to learn SINGING from them!

For singing is for the convalescent; the sound ones may talk. And
when the sound also want songs, then want they other songs than the
convalescent."

--"O ye wags and barrel-organs, do be silent!" answered Zarathustra, and
smiled at his animals. "How well ye know what consolation I devised for
myself in seven days!

That I have to sing once more--THAT consolation did I devise for myself,
and THIS convalescence: would ye also make another lyre-lay thereof?"

--"Do not talk further," answered his animals once more; "rather, thou
convalescent, prepare for thyself first a lyre, a new lyre!

For behold, O Zarathustra! For thy new lays there are needed new lyres.

Sing and bubble over, O Zarathustra, heal thy soul with new lays: that
thou mayest bear thy great fate, which hath not yet been any one's fate!

For thine animals know it well, O Zarathustra, who thou art and must
become: behold, THOU ART THE TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RETURN,--that is now
THY fate!

That thou must be the first to teach this teaching--how could this great
fate not be thy greatest danger and infirmity!

Behold, we know what thou teachest: that all things eternally return,
and ourselves with them, and that we have already existed times without
number, and all things with us.

Thou teachest that there is a great year of Becoming, a prodigy of a
great year; it must, like a sand-glass, ever turn up anew, that it may
anew run down and run out:--

--So that all those years are like one another in the greatest and also
in the smallest, so that we ourselves, in every great year, are like
ourselves in the greatest and also in the smallest.

And if thou wouldst now die, O Zarathustra, behold, we know also how
thou wouldst then speak to thyself:--but thine animals beseech thee not
to die yet!

Thou wouldst speak, and without trembling, buoyant rather with bliss,
for a great weight and worry would be taken from thee, thou patientest
one!--

'Now do I die and disappear,' wouldst thou say, 'and in a moment I am
nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies.

But the plexus of causes returneth in which I am intertwined,--it will
again create me! I myself pertain to the causes of the eternal return.

I come again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this
serpent--NOT to a new life, or a better life, or a similar life:

--I come again eternally to this identical and selfsame life, in its
greatest and its smallest, to teach again the eternal return of all
things,--

--To speak again the word of the great noontide of earth and man, to
announce again to man the Superman.

I have spoken my word. I break down by my word: so willeth mine eternal
fate--as announcer do I succumb!

The hour hath now come for the down-goer to bless himself. Thus--ENDETH
Zarathustra's down-going.'"--

When the animals had spoken these words they were silent and waited, so
that Zarathustra might say something to them: but Zarathustra did not
hear that they were silent. On the contrary, he lay quietly with closed
eyes like a person sleeping, although he did not sleep; for he communed
just then with his soul. The serpent, however, and the eagle, when they
found him silent in such wise, respected the great stillness around him,
and prudently retired.




LVIII. THE GREAT LONGING.

O my soul, I have taught thee to say "to-day" as "once on a time" and
"formerly," and to dance thy measure over every Here and There and
Yonder.

O my soul, I delivered thee from all by-places, I brushed down from thee
dust and spiders and twilight.

O my soul, I washed the petty shame and the by-place virtue from thee,
and persuaded thee to stand naked before the eyes of the sun.

With the storm that is called "spirit" did I blow over thy surging
sea; all clouds did I blow away from it; I strangled even the strangler
called "sin."

O my soul, I gave thee the right to say Nay like the storm, and to say
Yea as the open heaven saith Yea: calm as the light remainest thou, and
now walkest through denying storms.

O my soul, I restored to thee liberty over the created and the
uncreated; and who knoweth, as thou knowest, the voluptuousness of the
future?

O my soul, I taught thee the contempt which doth not come like
worm-eating, the great, the loving contempt, which loveth most where it
contemneth most.

O my soul, I taught thee so to persuade that thou persuadest even the
grounds themselves to thee: like the sun, which persuadeth even the sea
to its height.

O my soul, I have taken from thee all obeying and knee-bending and
homage-paying; I have myself given thee the names, "Change of need" and
"Fate."

O my soul, I have given thee new names and gay-coloured playthings,
I have called thee "Fate" and "the Circuit of circuits" and "the
Navel-string of time" and "the Azure bell."

O my soul, to thy domain gave I all wisdom to drink, all new wines, and
also all immemorially old strong wines of wisdom.

O my soul, every sun shed I upon thee, and every night and every silence
and every longing:--then grewest thou up for me as a vine.

O my soul, exuberant and heavy dost thou now stand forth, a vine with
swelling udders and full clusters of brown golden grapes:--

--Filled and weighted by thy happiness, waiting from superabundance, and
yet ashamed of thy waiting.

O my soul, there is nowhere a soul which could be more loving and more
comprehensive and more extensive! Where could future and past be closer
together than with thee?

O my soul, I have given thee everything, and all my hands have become
empty by thee:--and now! Now sayest thou to me, smiling and full of
melancholy: "Which of us oweth thanks?--

--Doth the giver not owe thanks because the receiver received? Is
bestowing not a necessity? Is receiving not--pitying?"--

O my soul, I understand the smiling of thy melancholy: thine
over-abundance itself now stretcheth out longing hands!

Thy fulness looketh forth over raging seas, and seeketh and waiteth: the
longing of over-fulness looketh forth from the smiling heaven of thine
eyes!

And verily, O my soul! Who could see thy smiling and not melt
into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears through the
over-graciousness of thy smiling.

Thy graciousness and over-graciousness, is it which will not complain
and weep: and yet, O my soul, longeth thy smiling for tears, and thy
trembling mouth for sobs.

"Is not all weeping complaining? And all complaining, accusing?" Thus
speakest thou to thyself; and therefore, O my soul, wilt thou rather
smile than pour forth thy grief--

--Than in gushing tears pour forth all thy grief concerning thy
fulness, and concerning the craving of the vine for the vintager and
vintage-knife!

But wilt thou not weep, wilt thou not weep forth thy purple melancholy,
then wilt thou have to SING, O my soul!--Behold, I smile myself, who
foretell thee this:

--Thou wilt have to sing with passionate song, until all seas turn calm
to hearken unto thy longing,--

--Until over calm longing seas the bark glideth, the golden marvel,
around the gold of which all good, bad, and marvellous things frisk:--

--Also many large and small animals, and everything that hath light
marvellous feet, so that it can run on violet-blue paths,--

--Towards the golden marvel, the spontaneous bark, and its master: he,
however, is the vintager who waiteth with the diamond vintage-knife,--

--Thy great deliverer, O my soul, the nameless one--for whom future
songs only will find names! And verily, already hath thy breath the
fragrance of future songs,--

--Already glowest thou and dreamest, already drinkest thou thirstily at
all deep echoing wells of consolation, already reposeth thy melancholy
in the bliss of future songs!--

O my soul, now have I given thee all, and even my last possession, and
all my hands have become empty by thee:--THAT I BADE THEE SING, behold,
that was my last thing to give!

That I bade thee sing,--say now, say: WHICH of us now--oweth thanks?--
Better still, however: sing unto me, sing, O my soul! And let me thank
thee!--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




LIX. THE SECOND DANCE-SONG.

1.

"Into thine eyes gazed I lately, O Life: gold saw I gleam in thy
night-eyes,--my heart stood still with delight:

--A golden bark saw I gleam on darkened waters, a sinking, drinking,
reblinking, golden swing-bark!

At my dance-frantic foot, dost thou cast a glance, a laughing,
questioning, melting, thrown glance:

Twice only movedst thou thy rattle with thy little hands--then did my
feet swing with dance-fury.--

My heels reared aloft, my toes they hearkened,--thee they would know:
hath not the dancer his ear--in his toe!

Unto thee did I spring: then fledst thou back from my bound; and towards
me waved thy fleeing, flying tresses round!

Away from thee did I spring, and from thy snaky tresses: then stoodst
thou there half-turned, and in thine eye caresses.

With crooked glances--dost thou teach me crooked courses; on crooked
courses learn my feet--crafty fancies!

I fear thee near, I love thee far; thy flight allureth me, thy seeking
secureth me:--I suffer, but for thee, what would I not gladly bear!

For thee, whose coldness inflameth, whose hatred misleadeth, whose
flight enchaineth, whose mockery--pleadeth:

--Who would not hate thee, thou great bindress, inwindress, temptress,
seekress, findress! Who would not love thee, thou innocent, impatient,
wind-swift, child-eyed sinner!

Whither pullest thou me now, thou paragon and tomboy? And now foolest
thou me fleeing; thou sweet romp dost annoy!

I dance after thee, I follow even faint traces lonely. Where art thou?
Give me thy hand! Or thy finger only!

Here are caves and thickets: we shall go astray!--Halt! Stand still!
Seest thou not owls and bats in fluttering fray?

Thou bat! Thou owl! Thou wouldst play me foul? Where are we? From the
dogs hast thou learned thus to bark and howl.

Thou gnashest on me sweetly with little white teeth; thine evil eyes
shoot out upon me, thy curly little mane from underneath!

This is a dance over stock and stone: I am the hunter,--wilt thou be my
hound, or my chamois anon?

Now beside me! And quickly, wickedly springing! Now up! And over!--Alas!
I have fallen myself overswinging!

Oh, see me lying, thou arrogant one, and imploring grace! Gladly would I
walk with thee--in some lovelier place!

--In the paths of love, through bushes variegated, quiet, trim! Or there
along the lake, where gold-fishes dance and swim!

Thou art now a-weary? There above are sheep and sun-set stripes: is it
not sweet to sleep--the shepherd pipes?

Thou art so very weary? I carry thee thither; let just thine arm sink!
And art thou thirsty--I should have something; but thy mouth would not
like it to drink!--

--Oh, that cursed, nimble, supple serpent and lurking-witch! Where art
thou gone? But in my face do I feel through thy hand, two spots and red
blotches itch!

I am verily weary of it, ever thy sheepish shepherd to be. Thou witch,
if I have hitherto sung unto thee, now shalt THOU--cry unto me!

To the rhythm of my whip shalt thou dance and cry! I forget not my
whip?--Not I!"--

2.

Then did Life answer me thus, and kept thereby her fine ears closed:

"O Zarathustra! Crack not so terribly with thy whip! Thou knowest surely
that noise killeth thought,--and just now there came to me such delicate
thoughts.

We are both of us genuine ne'er-do-wells and ne'er-do-ills. Beyond
good and evil found we our island and our green meadow--we two alone!
Therefore must we be friendly to each other!

And even should we not love each other from the bottom of our
hearts,--must we then have a grudge against each other if we do not love
each other perfectly?

And that I am friendly to thee, and often too friendly, that knowest
thou: and the reason is that I am envious of thy Wisdom. Ah, this mad
old fool, Wisdom!

If thy Wisdom should one day run away from thee, ah! then would also my
love run away from thee quickly."--

Thereupon did Life look thoughtfully behind and around, and said softly:
"O Zarathustra, thou art not faithful enough to me!

Thou lovest me not nearly so much as thou sayest; I know thou thinkest
of soon leaving me.

There is an old heavy, heavy, booming-clock: it boometh by night up to
thy cave:--

--When thou hearest this clock strike the hours at midnight, then
thinkest thou between one and twelve thereon--

--Thou thinkest thereon, O Zarathustra, I know it--of soon leaving
me!"--

"Yea," answered I, hesitatingly, "but thou knowest it also"--And I
said something into her ear, in amongst her confused, yellow, foolish
tresses.

"Thou KNOWEST that, O Zarathustra? That knoweth no one--"

And we gazed at each other, and looked at the green meadow o'er which
the cool evening was just passing, and we wept together.--Then, however,
was Life dearer unto me than all my Wisdom had ever been.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.

3.

One!

O man! Take heed!

Two!

What saith deep midnight's voice indeed?

Three!

"I slept my sleep--

Four!

"From deepest dream I've woke and plead:--

Five!

"The world is deep,

Six!

"And deeper than the day could read.

Seven!

"Deep is its woe--

Eight!

"Joy--deeper still than grief can be:

Nine!

"Woe saith: Hence! Go!

Ten!

"But joys all want eternity--

Eleven!

"Want deep profound eternity!"

Twelve!




LX. THE SEVEN SEALS.

(OR THE YEA AND AMEN LAY.)

1.

If I be a diviner and full of the divining spirit which wandereth on
high mountain-ridges, 'twixt two seas,--

Wandereth 'twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud--hostile to
sultry plains, and to all that is weary and can neither die nor live:

Ready for lightning in its dark bosom, and for the redeeming flash of
light, charged with lightnings which say Yea! which laugh Yea! ready for
divining flashes of lightning:--

--Blessed, however, is he who is thus charged! And verily, long must he
hang like a heavy tempest on the mountain, who shall one day kindle the
light of the future!--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

2.

If ever my wrath hath burst graves, shifted landmarks, or rolled old
shattered tables into precipitous depths:

If ever my scorn hath scattered mouldered words to the winds, and if I
have come like a besom to cross-spiders, and as a cleansing wind to old
charnel-houses:

If ever I have sat rejoicing where old Gods lie buried, world-blessing,
world-loving, beside the monuments of old world-maligners:--

--For even churches and Gods'-graves do I love, if only heaven looketh
through their ruined roofs with pure eyes; gladly do I sit like grass
and red poppies on ruined churches--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

3.

If ever a breath hath come to me of the creative breath, and of the
heavenly necessity which compelleth even chances to dance star-dances:

If ever I have laughed with the laughter of the creative lightning,
to which the long thunder of the deed followeth, grumblingly, but
obediently:

If ever I have played dice with the Gods at the divine table of
the earth, so that the earth quaked and ruptured, and snorted forth
fire-streams:--

--For a divine table is the earth, and trembling with new creative
dictums and dice-casts of the Gods:

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

4.

If ever I have drunk a full draught of the foaming spice- and
confection-bowl in which all things are well mixed:

If ever my hand hath mingled the furthest with the nearest, fire with
spirit, joy with sorrow, and the harshest with the kindest:

If I myself am a grain of the saving salt which maketh everything in the
confection-bowl mix well:--

--For there is a salt which uniteth good with evil; and even the evilest
is worthy, as spicing and as final over-foaming:--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

5.

If I be fond of the sea, and all that is sealike, and fondest of it when
it angrily contradicteth me:

If the exploring delight be in me, which impelleth sails to the
undiscovered, if the seafarer's delight be in my delight:

If ever my rejoicing hath called out: "The shore hath vanished,--now
hath fallen from me the last chain--

The boundless roareth around me, far away sparkle for me space and
time,--well! cheer up! old heart!"--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

6.

If my virtue be a dancer's virtue, and if I have often sprung with both
feet into golden-emerald rapture:

If my wickedness be a laughing wickedness, at home among rose-banks and
hedges of lilies:

--For in laughter is all evil present, but it is sanctified and absolved
by its own bliss:--

And if it be my Alpha and Omega that everything heavy shall become
light, every body a dancer, and every spirit a bird: and verily, that is
my Alpha and Omega!--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!

7.

If ever I have spread out a tranquil heaven above me, and have flown
into mine own heaven with mine own pinions:

If I have swum playfully in profound luminous distances, and if my
freedom's avian wisdom hath come to me:--

--Thus however speaketh avian wisdom:--"Lo, there is no above and no
below! Throw thyself about,--outward, backward, thou light one! Sing!
speak no more!

--Are not all words made for the heavy? Do not all words lie to the
light ones? Sing! speak no more!"--

Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-ring of
rings--the ring of the return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children,
unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love thee, O Eternity!

FOR I LOVE THEE, O ETERNITY!




FOURTH AND LAST PART.

Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the
pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the
follies of the pitiful?

Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their
pity!

Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: "Even God hath his hell:
it is his love for man."

And lately did I hear him say these words: "God is dead: of his pity for
man hath God died."--ZARATHUSTRA, II., "The Pitiful."




LXI. THE HONEY SACRIFICE.

--And again passed moons and years over Zarathustra's soul, and he
heeded it not; his hair, however, became white. One day when he sat on
a stone in front of his cave, and gazed calmly into the distance--one
there gazeth out on the sea, and away beyond sinuous abysses,--then went
his animals thoughtfully round about him, and at last set themselves in
front of him.

"O Zarathustra," said they, "gazest thou out perhaps for thy
happiness?"--"Of what account is my happiness!" answered he, "I have
long ceased to strive any more for happiness, I strive for my work."--"O
Zarathustra," said the animals once more, "that sayest thou as one
who hath overmuch of good things. Liest thou not in a sky-blue lake of
happiness?"--"Ye wags," answered Zarathustra, and smiled, "how well did
ye choose the simile! But ye know also that my happiness is heavy, and
not like a fluid wave of water: it presseth me and will not leave me,
and is like molten pitch."--

Then went his animals again thoughtfully around him, and placed
themselves once more in front of him. "O Zarathustra," said they, "it is
consequently FOR THAT REASON that thou thyself always becometh yellower
and darker, although thy hair looketh white and flaxen? Lo, thou sittest
in thy pitch!"--"What do ye say, mine animals?" said Zarathustra,
laughing; "verily I reviled when I spake of pitch. As it happeneth with
me, so is it with all fruits that turn ripe. It is the HONEY in my veins
that maketh my blood thicker, and also my soul stiller."--"So will it
be, O Zarathustra," answered his animals, and pressed up to him; "but
wilt thou not to-day ascend a high mountain? The air is pure, and to-day
one seeth more of the world than ever."--"Yea, mine animals," answered
he, "ye counsel admirably and according to my heart: I will to-day
ascend a high mountain! But see that honey is there ready to hand,
yellow, white, good, ice-cool, golden-comb-honey. For know that when
aloft I will make the honey-sacrifice."--

When Zarathustra, however, was aloft on the summit, he sent his animals
home that had accompanied him, and found that he was now alone:--then he
laughed from the bottom of his heart, looked around him, and spake thus:

That I spake of sacrifices and honey-sacrifices, it was merely a ruse
in talking and verily, a useful folly! Here aloft can I now speak freer
than in front of mountain-caves and anchorites' domestic animals.

What to sacrifice! I squander what is given me, a squanderer with a
thousand hands: how could I call that--sacrificing?

And when I desired honey I only desired bait, and sweet mucus and
mucilage, for which even the mouths of growling bears, and strange,
sulky, evil birds, water:

--The best bait, as huntsmen and fishermen require it. For if the world
be as a gloomy forest of animals, and a pleasure-ground for all wild
huntsmen, it seemeth to me rather--and preferably--a fathomless, rich
sea;

--A sea full of many-hued fishes and crabs, for which even the Gods
might long, and might be tempted to become fishers in it, and casters of
nets,--so rich is the world in wonderful things, great and small!

Especially the human world, the human sea:--towards IT do I now throw
out my golden angle-rod and say: Open up, thou human abyss!

Open up, and throw unto me thy fish and shining crabs! With my best bait
shall I allure to myself to-day the strangest human fish!

--My happiness itself do I throw out into all places far and wide 'twixt
orient, noontide, and occident, to see if many human fish will not learn
to hug and tug at my happiness;--

Until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they have to come up unto MY
height, the motleyest abyss-groundlings, to the wickedest of all fishers
of men.

For THIS am I from the heart and from the beginning--drawing,
hither-drawing, upward-drawing, upbringing; a drawer, a trainer, a
training-master, who not in vain counselled himself once on a time:
"Become what thou art!"

Thus may men now come UP to me; for as yet do I await the signs that it
is time for my down-going; as yet do I not myself go down, as I must do,
amongst men.

Therefore do I here wait, crafty and scornful upon high mountains,
no impatient one, no patient one; rather one who hath even unlearnt
patience,--because he no longer "suffereth."

For my fate giveth me time: it hath forgotten me perhaps? Or doth it sit
behind a big stone and catch flies?

And verily, I am well-disposed to mine eternal fate, because it doth not
hound and hurry me, but leaveth me time for merriment and mischief; so
that I have to-day ascended this high mountain to catch fish.

Did ever any one catch fish upon high mountains? And though it be a
folly what I here seek and do, it is better so than that down below I
should become solemn with waiting, and green and yellow--

--A posturing wrath-snorter with waiting, a holy howl-storm from
the mountains, an impatient one that shouteth down into the valleys:
"Hearken, else I will scourge you with the scourge of God!"

Not that I would have a grudge against such wrathful ones on that
account: they are well enough for laughter to me! Impatient must they
now be, those big alarm-drums, which find a voice now or never!

Myself, however, and my fate--we do not talk to the Present, neither
do we talk to the Never: for talking we have patience and time and more
than time. For one day must it yet come, and may not pass by.

What must one day come and may not pass by? Our great Hazar, that is
to say, our great, remote human-kingdom, the Zarathustra-kingdom of a
thousand years--

How remote may such "remoteness" be? What doth it concern me? But on
that account it is none the less sure unto me--, with both feet stand I
secure on this ground;

--On an eternal ground, on hard primary rock, on this highest, hardest,
primary mountain-ridge, unto which all winds come, as unto the
storm-parting, asking Where? and Whence? and Whither?

Here laugh, laugh, my hearty, healthy wickedness! From high mountains
cast down thy glittering scorn-laughter! Allure for me with thy
glittering the finest human fish!

And whatever belongeth unto ME in all seas, my in-and-for-me in all
things--fish THAT out for me, bring THAT up to me: for that do I wait,
the wickedest of all fish-catchers.

Out! out! my fishing-hook! In and down, thou bait of my happiness! Drip
thy sweetest dew, thou honey of my heart! Bite, my fishing-hook, into
the belly of all black affliction!

Look out, look out, mine eye! Oh, how many seas round about me, what
dawning human futures! And above me--what rosy red stillness! What
unclouded silence!




LXII. THE CRY OF DISTRESS.

The next day sat Zarathustra again on the stone in front of his cave,
whilst his animals roved about in the world outside to bring home new
food,--also new honey: for Zarathustra had spent and wasted the old
honey to the very last particle. When he thus sat, however, with a
stick in his hand, tracing the shadow of his figure on the earth, and
reflecting--verily! not upon himself and his shadow,--all at once he
startled and shrank back: for he saw another shadow beside his own.
And when he hastily looked around and stood up, behold, there stood the
soothsayer beside him, the same whom he had once given to eat and drink
at his table, the proclaimer of the great weariness, who taught: "All is
alike, nothing is worth while, the world is without meaning, knowledge
strangleth." But his face had changed since then; and when Zarathustra
looked into his eyes, his heart was startled once more: so much evil
announcement and ashy-grey lightnings passed over that countenance.

The soothsayer, who had perceived what went on in Zarathustra's soul,
wiped his face with his hand, as if he would wipe out the impression;
the same did also Zarathustra. And when both of them had thus silently
composed and strengthened themselves, they gave each other the hand, as
a token that they wanted once more to recognise each other.

"Welcome hither," said Zarathustra, "thou soothsayer of the great
weariness, not in vain shalt thou once have been my messmate and guest.
Eat and drink also with me to-day, and forgive it that a cheerful old
man sitteth with thee at table!"--"A cheerful old man?" answered the
soothsayer, shaking his head, "but whoever thou art, or wouldst be, O
Zarathustra, thou hast been here aloft the longest time,--in a little
while thy bark shall no longer rest on dry land!"--"Do I then rest
on dry land?"--asked Zarathustra, laughing.--"The waves around thy
mountain," answered the soothsayer, "rise and rise, the waves of great
distress and affliction: they will soon raise thy bark also and carry
thee away."--Thereupon was Zarathustra silent and wondered.--"Dost thou
still hear nothing?" continued the soothsayer: "doth it not rush and
roar out of the depth?"--Zarathustra was silent once more and listened:
then heard he a long, long cry, which the abysses threw to one another
and passed on; for none of them wished to retain it: so evil did it
sound.

"Thou ill announcer," said Zarathustra at last, "that is a cry of
distress, and the cry of a man; it may come perhaps out of a black sea.
But what doth human distress matter to me! My last sin which hath been
reserved for me,--knowest thou what it is called?"

--"PITY!" answered the soothsayer from an overflowing heart, and raised
both his hands aloft--"O Zarathustra, I have come that I may seduce thee
to thy last sin!"--

And hardly had those words been uttered when there sounded the cry
once more, and longer and more alarming than before--also much nearer.
"Hearest thou? Hearest thou, O Zarathustra?" called out the soothsayer,
"the cry concerneth thee, it calleth thee: Come, come, come; it is time,
it is the highest time!"--

Zarathustra was silent thereupon, confused and staggered; at last he
asked, like one who hesitateth in himself: "And who is it that there
calleth me?"

"But thou knowest it, certainly," answered the soothsayer warmly, "why
dost thou conceal thyself? It is THE HIGHER MAN that crieth for thee!"

"The higher man?" cried Zarathustra, horror-stricken: "what wanteth HE?
What wanteth HE? The higher man! What wanteth he here?"--and his skin
covered with perspiration.

The soothsayer, however, did not heed Zarathustra's alarm, but listened
and listened in the downward direction. When, however, it had been still
there for a long while, he looked behind, and saw Zarathustra standing
trembling.

"O Zarathustra," he began, with sorrowful voice, "thou dost not stand
there like one whose happiness maketh him giddy: thou wilt have to dance
lest thou tumble down!

But although thou shouldst dance before me, and leap all thy side-leaps,
no one may say unto me: 'Behold, here danceth the last joyous man!'

In vain would any one come to this height who sought HIM here: caves
would he find, indeed, and back-caves, hiding-places for hidden ones;
but not lucky mines, nor treasure-chambers, nor new gold-veins of
happiness.

Happiness--how indeed could one find happiness among such buried-alive
and solitary ones! Must I yet seek the last happiness on the Happy
Isles, and far away among forgotten seas?

But all is alike, nothing is worth while, no seeking is of service,
there are no longer any Happy Isles!"--

Thus sighed the soothsayer; with his last sigh, however, Zarathustra
again became serene and assured, like one who hath come out of a deep
chasm into the light. "Nay! Nay! Three times Nay!" exclaimed he with a
strong voice, and stroked his beard--"THAT do I know better! There are
still Happy Isles! Silence THEREON, thou sighing sorrow-sack!

Cease to splash THEREON, thou rain-cloud of the forenoon! Do I not
already stand here wet with thy misery, and drenched like a dog?

Now do I shake myself and run away from thee, that I may again become
dry: thereat mayest thou not wonder! Do I seem to thee discourteous?
Here however is MY court.

But as regards the higher man: well! I shall seek him at once in those
forests: FROM THENCE came his cry. Perhaps he is there hard beset by an
evil beast.

He is in MY domain: therein shall he receive no scath! And verily, there
are many evil beasts about me."--

With those words Zarathustra turned around to depart. Then said the
soothsayer: "O Zarathustra, thou art a rogue!

I know it well: thou wouldst fain be rid of me! Rather wouldst thou run
into the forest and lay snares for evil beasts!

But what good will it do thee? In the evening wilt thou have me again:
in thine own cave will I sit, patient and heavy like a block--and wait
for thee!"

"So be it!" shouted back Zarathustra, as he went away: "and what is mine
in my cave belongeth also unto thee, my guest!

Shouldst thou however find honey therein, well! just lick it up, thou
growling bear, and sweeten thy soul! For in the evening we want both to
be in good spirits;

--In good spirits and joyful, because this day hath come to an end! And
thou thyself shalt dance to my lays, as my dancing-bear.

Thou dost not believe this? Thou shakest thy head? Well! Cheer up, old
bear! But I also--am a soothsayer."

Thus spake Zarathustra.




LXIII. TALK WITH THE KINGS.

1.

Ere Zarathustra had been an hour on his way in the mountains and
forests, he saw all at once a strange procession. Right on the path
which he was about to descend came two kings walking, bedecked with
crowns and purple girdles, and variegated like flamingoes: they drove
before them a laden ass. "What do these kings want in my domain?" said
Zarathustra in astonishment to his heart, and hid himself hastily behind
a thicket. When however the kings approached to him, he said half-aloud,
like one speaking only to himself: "Strange! Strange! How doth this
harmonise? Two kings do I see--and only one ass!"

Thereupon the two kings made a halt; they smiled and looked towards the
spot whence the voice proceeded, and afterwards looked into each other's
faces. "Such things do we also think among ourselves," said the king on
the right, "but we do not utter them."

The king on the left, however, shrugged his shoulders and answered:
"That may perhaps be a goat-herd. Or an anchorite who hath lived too
long among rocks and trees. For no society at all spoileth also good
manners."

"Good manners?" replied angrily and bitterly the other king: "what
then do we run out of the way of? Is it not 'good manners'? Our 'good
society'?

Better, verily, to live among anchorites and goat-herds, than with
our gilded, false, over-rouged populace--though it call itself 'good
society.'

--Though it call itself 'nobility.' But there all is false and foul,
above all the blood--thanks to old evil diseases and worse curers.

The best and dearest to me at present is still a sound peasant, coarse,
artful, obstinate and enduring: that is at present the noblest type.

The peasant is at present the best; and the peasant type should be
master! But it is the kingdom of the populace--I no longer allow
anything to be imposed upon me. The populace, however--that meaneth,
hodgepodge.

Populace-hodgepodge: therein is everything mixed with everything, saint
and swindler, gentleman and Jew, and every beast out of Noah's ark.

Good manners! Everything is false and foul with us. No one knoweth any
longer how to reverence: it is THAT precisely that we run away from.
They are fulsome obtrusive dogs; they gild palm-leaves.

This loathing choketh me, that we kings ourselves have become false,
draped and disguised with the old faded pomp of our ancestors,
show-pieces for the stupidest, the craftiest, and whosoever at present
trafficketh for power.

We ARE NOT the first men--and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of
this imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted.

From the rabble have we gone out of the way, from all those bawlers and
scribe-blowflies, from the trader-stench, the ambition-fidgeting, the
bad breath--: fie, to live among the rabble;

--Fie, to stand for the first men among the rabble! Ah, loathing!
Loathing! Loathing! What doth it now matter about us kings!"--

"Thine old sickness seizeth thee," said here the king on the left, "thy
loathing seizeth thee, my poor brother. Thou knowest, however, that some
one heareth us."

Immediately thereupon, Zarathustra, who had opened ears and eyes to this
talk, rose from his hiding-place, advanced towards the kings, and thus
began:

"He who hearkeneth unto you, he who gladly hearkeneth unto you, is
called Zarathustra.

I am Zarathustra who once said: 'What doth it now matter about kings!'
Forgive me; I rejoiced when ye said to each other: 'What doth it matter
about us kings!'

Here, however, is MY domain and jurisdiction: what may ye be seeking in
my domain? Perhaps, however, ye have FOUND on your way what _I_ seek:
namely, the higher man."

When the kings heard this, they beat upon their breasts and said with
one voice: "We are recognised!

With the sword of thine utterance severest thou the thickest darkness of
our hearts. Thou hast discovered our distress; for lo! we are on our way
to find the higher man--

--The man that is higher than we, although we are kings. To him do we
convey this ass. For the highest man shall also be the highest lord on
earth.

There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the mighty
of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becometh false
and distorted and monstrous.

And when they are even the last men, and more beast than man, then
riseth and riseth the populace in honour, and at last saith even the
populace-virtue: 'Lo, I alone am virtue!'"--

What have I just heard? answered Zarathustra. What wisdom in kings! I
am enchanted, and verily, I have already promptings to make a rhyme
thereon:--

--Even if it should happen to be a rhyme not suited for every one's
ears. I unlearned long ago to have consideration for long ears. Well
then! Well now!

(Here, however, it happened that the ass also found utterance: it said
distinctly and with malevolence, Y-E-A.)

'Twas once--methinks year one of our blessed Lord,--Drunk without wine,
the Sybil thus deplored:--"How ill things go! Decline! Decline! Ne'er
sank the world so low! Rome now hath turned harlot and harlot-stew,
Rome's Caesar a beast, and God--hath turned Jew!

2.

With those rhymes of Zarathustra the kings were delighted; the king on
the right, however, said: "O Zarathustra, how well it was that we set
out to see thee!

For thine enemies showed us thy likeness in their mirror: there lookedst
thou with the grimace of a devil, and sneeringly: so that we were afraid
of thee.

But what good did it do! Always didst thou prick us anew in heart and
ear with thy sayings. Then did we say at last: What doth it matter how
he look!

We must HEAR him; him who teacheth: 'Ye shall love peace as a means to
new wars, and the short peace more than the long!'

No one ever spake such warlike words: 'What is good? To be brave is
good. It is the good war that halloweth every cause.'

O Zarathustra, our fathers' blood stirred in our veins at such words: it
was like the voice of spring to old wine-casks.

When the swords ran among one another like red-spotted serpents, then
did our fathers become fond of life; the sun of every peace seemed to
them languid and lukewarm, the long peace, however, made them ashamed.

How they sighed, our fathers, when they saw on the wall brightly
furbished, dried-up swords! Like those they thirsted for war. For a
sword thirsteth to drink blood, and sparkleth with desire."--

--When the kings thus discoursed and talked eagerly of the happiness of
their fathers, there came upon Zarathustra no little desire to mock at
their eagerness: for evidently they were very peaceable kings whom he
saw before him, kings with old and refined features. But he restrained
himself. "Well!" said he, "thither leadeth the way, there lieth the
cave of Zarathustra; and this day is to have a long evening! At present,
however, a cry of distress calleth me hastily away from you.

It will honour my cave if kings want to sit and wait in it: but, to be
sure, ye will have to wait long!

Well! What of that! Where doth one at present learn better to wait
than at courts? And the whole virtue of kings that hath remained unto
them--is it not called to-day: ABILITY to wait?"

Thus spake Zarathustra.




LXIV. THE LEECH.

And Zarathustra went thoughtfully on, further and lower down, through
forests and past moory bottoms; as it happeneth, however, to every one
who meditateth upon hard matters, he trod thereby unawares upon a man.
And lo, there spurted into his face all at once a cry of pain, and two
curses and twenty bad invectives, so that in his fright he raised his
stick and also struck the trodden one. Immediately afterwards, however,
he regained his composure, and his heart laughed at the folly he had
just committed.

"Pardon me," said he to the trodden one, who had got up enraged, and had
seated himself, "pardon me, and hear first of all a parable.

As a wanderer who dreameth of remote things on a lonesome highway,
runneth unawares against a sleeping dog, a dog which lieth in the sun:

--As both of them then start up and snap at each other, like deadly
enemies, those two beings mortally frightened--so did it happen unto us.

And yet! And yet--how little was lacking for them to caress each other,
that dog and that lonesome one! Are they not both--lonesome ones!"

--"Whoever thou art," said the trodden one, still enraged, "thou
treadest also too nigh me with thy parable, and not only with thy foot!

Lo! am I then a dog?"--And thereupon the sitting one got up, and pulled
his naked arm out of the swamp. For at first he had lain outstretched
on the ground, hidden and indiscernible, like those who lie in wait for
swamp-game.

"But whatever art thou about!" called out Zarathustra in alarm, for he
saw a deal of blood streaming over the naked arm,--"what hath hurt thee?
Hath an evil beast bit thee, thou unfortunate one?"

The bleeding one laughed, still angry, "What matter is it to thee!" said
he, and was about to go on. "Here am I at home and in my province.
Let him question me whoever will: to a dolt, however, I shall hardly
answer."

"Thou art mistaken," said Zarathustra sympathetically, and held him
fast; "thou art mistaken. Here thou art not at home, but in my domain,
and therein shall no one receive any hurt.

Call me however what thou wilt--I am who I must be. I call myself
Zarathustra.

Well! Up thither is the way to Zarathustra's cave: it is not far,--wilt
thou not attend to thy wounds at my home?

It hath gone badly with thee, thou unfortunate one, in this life: first
a beast bit thee, and then--a man trod upon thee!"--

When however the trodden one had heard the name of Zarathustra he was
transformed. "What happeneth unto me!" he exclaimed, "WHO preoccupieth
me so much in this life as this one man, namely Zarathustra, and that
one animal that liveth on blood, the leech?

For the sake of the leech did I lie here by this swamp, like a fisher,
and already had mine outstretched arm been bitten ten times, when there
biteth a still finer leech at my blood, Zarathustra himself!

O happiness! O miracle! Praised be this day which enticed me into the
swamp! Praised be the best, the livest cupping-glass, that at present
liveth; praised be the great conscience-leech Zarathustra!"--

Thus spake the trodden one, and Zarathustra rejoiced at his words and
their refined reverential style. "Who art thou?" asked he, and gave
him his hand, "there is much to clear up and elucidate between us, but
already methinketh pure clear day is dawning."

"I am THE SPIRITUALLY CONSCIENTIOUS ONE," answered he who was asked,
"and in matters of the spirit it is difficult for any one to take it
more rigorously, more restrictedly, and more severely than I, except him
from whom I learnt it, Zarathustra himself.

Better know nothing than half-know many things! Better be a fool on
one's own account, than a sage on other people's approbation! I--go to
the basis:

--What matter if it be great or small? If it be called swamp or sky?
A handbreadth of basis is enough for me, if it be actually basis and
ground!

--A handbreadth of basis: thereon can one stand. In the true
knowing-knowledge there is nothing great and nothing small."

"Then thou art perhaps an expert on the leech?" asked Zarathustra; "and
thou investigatest the leech to its ultimate basis, thou conscientious
one?"

"O Zarathustra," answered the trodden one, "that would be something
immense; how could I presume to do so!

That, however, of which I am master and knower, is the BRAIN of the
leech:--that is MY world!

And it is also a world! Forgive it, however, that my pride here findeth
expression, for here I have not mine equal. Therefore said I: 'here am I
at home.'

How long have I investigated this one thing, the brain of the leech, so
that here the slippery truth might no longer slip from me! Here is MY
domain!

--For the sake of this did I cast everything else aside, for the sake of
this did everything else become indifferent to me; and close beside my
knowledge lieth my black ignorance.

My spiritual conscience requireth from me that it should be so--that I
should know one thing, and not know all else: they are a loathing unto
me, all the semi-spiritual, all the hazy, hovering, and visionary.

Where mine honesty ceaseth, there am I blind, and want also to be blind.
Where I want to know, however, there want I also to be honest--namely,
severe, rigorous, restricted, cruel and inexorable.

Because THOU once saidest, O Zarathustra: 'Spirit is life which itself
cutteth into life';--that led and allured me to thy doctrine. And
verily, with mine own blood have I increased mine own knowledge!"

--"As the evidence indicateth," broke in Zarathustra; for still was the
blood flowing down on the naked arm of the conscientious one. For there
had ten leeches bitten into it.

"O thou strange fellow, how much doth this very evidence teach
me--namely, thou thyself! And not all, perhaps, might I pour into thy
rigorous ear!

Well then! We part here! But I would fain find thee again. Up thither is
the way to my cave: to-night shalt thou there be my welcome guest!

Fain would I also make amends to thy body for Zarathustra treading upon
thee with his feet: I think about that. Just now, however, a cry of
distress calleth me hastily away from thee."

Thus spake Zarathustra.




LXV. THE MAGICIAN.

1.

When however Zarathustra had gone round a rock, then saw he on the same
path, not far below him, a man who threw his limbs about like a maniac,
and at last tumbled to the ground on his belly. "Halt!" said then
Zarathustra to his heart, "he there must surely be the higher man, from
him came that dreadful cry of distress,--I will see if I can help him."
When, however, he ran to the spot where the man lay on the ground,
he found a trembling old man, with fixed eyes; and in spite of all
Zarathustra's efforts to lift him and set him again on his feet, it was
all in vain. The unfortunate one, also, did not seem to notice that some
one was beside him; on the contrary, he continually looked around with
moving gestures, like one forsaken and isolated from all the world.
At last, however, after much trembling, and convulsion, and
curling-himself-up, he began to lament thus:

     Who warm'th me, who lov'th me still?
     Give ardent fingers!
     Give heartening charcoal-warmers!
     Prone, outstretched, trembling,
     Like him, half dead and cold, whose feet one warm'th--
     And shaken, ah! by unfamiliar fevers,
     Shivering with sharpened, icy-cold frost-arrows,
     By thee pursued, my fancy!
     Ineffable!  Recondite!  Sore-frightening!
     Thou huntsman 'hind the cloud-banks!
     Now lightning-struck by thee,
     Thou mocking eye that me in darkness watcheth:
     --Thus do I lie,
     Bend myself, twist myself, convulsed
     With all eternal torture,
     And smitten
     By thee, cruellest huntsman,
     Thou unfamiliar--GOD...

     Smite deeper!
     Smite yet once more!
     Pierce through and rend my heart!
     What mean'th this torture
     With dull, indented arrows?
     Why look'st thou hither,
     Of human pain not weary,
     With mischief-loving, godly flash-glances?
     Not murder wilt thou,
     But torture, torture?
     For why--ME torture,
     Thou mischief-loving, unfamiliar God?--

     Ha!  Ha!
     Thou stealest nigh
     In midnight's gloomy hour?...
     What wilt thou?
     Speak!
     Thou crowdst me, pressest--
     Ha! now far too closely!
     Thou hearst me breathing,
     Thou o'erhearst my heart,
     Thou ever jealous one!
     --Of what, pray, ever jealous?
     Off!  Off!
     For why the ladder?
     Wouldst thou GET IN?
     To heart in-clamber?
     To mine own secretest
     Conceptions in-clamber?
     Shameless one!  Thou unknown one!--Thief!
     What seekst thou by thy stealing?
     What seekst thou by thy hearkening?
     What seekst thou by thy torturing?
     Thou torturer!
     Thou--hangman-God!
     Or shall I, as the mastiffs do,
     Roll me before thee?
     And cringing, enraptured, frantical,
     My tail friendly--waggle!

     In vain!
     Goad further!
     Cruellest goader!
     No dog--thy game just am I,
     Cruellest huntsman!
     Thy proudest of captives,
     Thou robber 'hind the cloud-banks...
     Speak finally!
     Thou lightning-veiled one!  Thou unknown one!  Speak!
     What wilt thou, highway-ambusher, from--ME?
     What WILT thou, unfamiliar--God?
     What?
     Ransom-gold?
     How much of ransom-gold?
     Solicit much--that bid'th my pride!
     And be concise--that bid'th mine other pride!

     Ha!  Ha!
     ME--wantst thou?  me?
     --Entire?...

     Ha!  Ha!
     And torturest me, fool that thou art,
     Dead-torturest quite my pride?
     Give LOVE to me--who warm'th me still?
     Who lov'th me still?--
     Give ardent fingers
     Give heartening charcoal-warmers,
     Give me, the lonesomest,
     The ice (ah! seven-fold frozen ice
     For very enemies,
     For foes, doth make one thirst).
     Give, yield to me,
     Cruellest foe,
     --THYSELF!--

     Away!
     There fled he surely,
     My final, only comrade,
     My greatest foe,
     Mine unfamiliar--
     My hangman-God!...

     --Nay!
     Come thou back!
     WITH all of thy great tortures!
     To me the last of lonesome ones,
     Oh, come thou back!
     All my hot tears in streamlets trickle
     Their course to thee!
     And all my final hearty fervour--
     Up-glow'th to THEE!
     Oh, come thou back,
     Mine unfamiliar God! my PAIN!
     My final bliss!

2.

--Here, however, Zarathustra could no longer restrain himself; he took
his staff and struck the wailer with all his might. "Stop this," cried
he to him with wrathful laughter, "stop this, thou stage-player! Thou
false coiner! Thou liar from the very heart! I know thee well!

I will soon make warm legs to thee, thou evil magician: I know well
how--to make it hot for such as thou!"

--"Leave off," said the old man, and sprang up from the ground, "strike
me no more, O Zarathustra! I did it only for amusement!

That kind of thing belongeth to mine art. Thee thyself, I wanted to put
to the proof when I gave this performance. And verily, thou hast well
detected me!

But thou thyself--hast given me no small proof of thyself: thou art
HARD, thou wise Zarathustra! Hard strikest thou with thy 'truths,' thy
cudgel forceth from me--THIS truth!"

--"Flatter not," answered Zarathustra, still excited and frowning,
"thou stage-player from the heart! Thou art false: why speakest thou--of
truth!

Thou peacock of peacocks, thou sea of vanity; WHAT didst thou represent
before me, thou evil magician; WHOM was I meant to believe in when thou
wailedst in such wise?"

"THE PENITENT IN SPIRIT," said the old man, "it was him--I represented;
thou thyself once devisedst this expression--

--The poet and magician who at last turneth his spirit against himself,
the transformed one who freezeth to death by his bad science and
conscience.

And just acknowledge it: it was long, O Zarathustra, before thou
discoveredst my trick and lie! Thou BELIEVEDST in my distress when thou
heldest my head with both thy hands,--

--I heard thee lament 'we have loved him too little, loved him too
little!' Because I so far deceived thee, my wickedness rejoiced in me."

"Thou mayest have deceived subtler ones than I," said Zarathustra
sternly. "I am not on my guard against deceivers; I HAVE TO BE without
precaution: so willeth my lot.

Thou, however,--MUST deceive: so far do I know thee! Thou must ever be
equivocal, trivocal, quadrivocal, and quinquivocal! Even what thou hast
now confessed, is not nearly true enough nor false enough for me!

Thou bad false coiner, how couldst thou do otherwise! Thy very malady
wouldst thou whitewash if thou showed thyself naked to thy physician.

Thus didst thou whitewash thy lie before me when thou saidst: 'I did
so ONLY for amusement!' There was also SERIOUSNESS therein, thou ART
something of a penitent-in-spirit!

I divine thee well: thou hast become the enchanter of all the world; but
for thyself thou hast no lie or artifice left,--thou art disenchanted to
thyself!

Thou hast reaped disgust as thy one truth. No word in thee is any longer
genuine, but thy mouth is so: that is to say, the disgust that cleaveth
unto thy mouth."--

--"Who art thou at all!" cried here the old magician with defiant voice,
"who dareth to speak thus unto ME, the greatest man now living?"--and a
green flash shot from his eye at Zarathustra. But immediately after he
changed, and said sadly:

"O Zarathustra, I am weary of it, I am disgusted with mine arts, I am
not GREAT, why do I dissemble! But thou knowest it well--I sought for
greatness!

A great man I wanted to appear, and persuaded many; but the lie hath
been beyond my power. On it do I collapse.

O Zarathustra, everything is a lie in me; but that I collapse--this my
collapsing is GENUINE!"--

"It honoureth thee," said Zarathustra gloomily, looking down with
sidelong glance, "it honoureth thee that thou soughtest for greatness,
but it betrayeth thee also. Thou art not great.

Thou bad old magician, THAT is the best and the honestest thing I honour
in thee, that thou hast become weary of thyself, and hast expressed it:
'I am not great.'

THEREIN do I honour thee as a penitent-in-spirit, and although only for
the twinkling of an eye, in that one moment wast thou--genuine.

But tell me, what seekest thou here in MY forests and rocks? And if thou
hast put thyself in MY way, what proof of me wouldst thou have?--

--Wherein didst thou put ME to the test?"

Thus spake Zarathustra, and his eyes sparkled. But the old magician kept
silence for a while; then said he: "Did I put thee to the test? I--seek
only.

O Zarathustra, I seek a genuine one, a right one, a simple one, an
unequivocal one, a man of perfect honesty, a vessel of wisdom, a saint
of knowledge, a great man!

Knowest thou it not, O Zarathustra? I SEEK ZARATHUSTRA."

--And here there arose a long silence between them: Zarathustra,
however, became profoundly absorbed in thought, so that he shut his
eyes. But afterwards coming back to the situation, he grasped the hand
of the magician, and said, full of politeness and policy:

"Well! Up thither leadeth the way, there is the cave of Zarathustra. In
it mayest thou seek him whom thou wouldst fain find.

And ask counsel of mine animals, mine eagle and my serpent: they shall
help thee to seek. My cave however is large.

I myself, to be sure--I have as yet seen no great man. That which is
great, the acutest eye is at present insensible to it. It is the kingdom
of the populace.

Many a one have I found who stretched and inflated himself, and the
people cried: 'Behold; a great man!' But what good do all bellows do!
The wind cometh out at last.

At last bursteth the frog which hath inflated itself too long: then
cometh out the wind. To prick a swollen one in the belly, I call good
pastime. Hear that, ye boys!

Our to-day is of the populace: who still KNOWETH what is great and what
is small! Who could there seek successfully for greatness! A fool only:
it succeedeth with fools.

Thou seekest for great men, thou strange fool? Who TAUGHT that to thee?
Is to-day the time for it? Oh, thou bad seeker, why dost thou--tempt
me?"--

Thus spake Zarathustra, comforted in his heart, and went laughing on his
way.




LXVI. OUT OF SERVICE.

Not long, however, after Zarathustra had freed himself from the
magician, he again saw a person sitting beside the path which he
followed, namely a tall, black man, with a haggard, pale countenance:
THIS MAN grieved him exceedingly. "Alas," said he to his heart, "there
sitteth disguised affliction; methinketh he is of the type of the
priests: what do THEY want in my domain?

What! Hardly have I escaped from that magician, and must another
necromancer again run across my path,--

--Some sorcerer with laying-on-of-hands, some sombre wonder-worker by
the grace of God, some anointed world-maligner, whom, may the devil
take!

But the devil is never at the place which would be his right place: he
always cometh too late, that cursed dwarf and club-foot!"--

Thus cursed Zarathustra impatiently in his heart, and considered how
with averted look he might slip past the black man. But behold, it came
about otherwise. For at the same moment had the sitting one already
perceived him; and not unlike one whom an unexpected happiness
overtaketh, he sprang to his feet, and went straight towards
Zarathustra.

"Whoever thou art, thou traveller," said he, "help a strayed one, a
seeker, an old man, who may here easily come to grief!

The world here is strange to me, and remote; wild beasts also did I hear
howling; and he who could have given me protection--he is himself no
more.

I was seeking the pious man, a saint and an anchorite, who, alone in his
forest, had not yet heard of what all the world knoweth at present."

"WHAT doth all the world know at present?" asked Zarathustra. "Perhaps
that the old God no longer liveth, in whom all the world once believed?"

"Thou sayest it," answered the old man sorrowfully. "And I served that
old God until his last hour.

Now, however, am I out of service, without master, and yet not free;
likewise am I no longer merry even for an hour, except it be in
recollections.

Therefore did I ascend into these mountains, that I might finally have
a festival for myself once more, as becometh an old pope and
church-father: for know it, that I am the last pope!--a festival of
pious recollections and divine services.

Now, however, is he himself dead, the most pious of men, the saint in
the forest, who praised his God constantly with singing and mumbling.

He himself found I no longer when I found his cot--but two wolves found
I therein, which howled on account of his death,--for all animals loved
him. Then did I haste away.

Had I thus come in vain into these forests and mountains? Then did my
heart determine that I should seek another, the most pious of all
those who believe not in God--, my heart determined that I should seek
Zarathustra!"

Thus spake the hoary man, and gazed with keen eyes at him who stood
before him. Zarathustra however seized the hand of the old pope and
regarded it a long while with admiration.

"Lo! thou venerable one," said he then, "what a fine and long hand! That
is the hand of one who hath ever dispensed blessings. Now, however, doth
it hold fast him whom thou seekest, me, Zarathustra.

It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who saith: 'Who is ungodlier than I,
that I may enjoy his teaching?'"--

Thus spake Zarathustra, and penetrated with his glances the thoughts and
arrear-thoughts of the old pope. At last the latter began:

"He who most loved and possessed him hath now also lost him most--:

--Lo, I myself am surely the most godless of us at present? But who
could rejoice at that!"--

--"Thou servedst him to the last?" asked Zarathustra thoughtfully, after
a deep silence, "thou knowest HOW he died? Is it true what they say,
that sympathy choked him;

--That he saw how MAN hung on the cross, and could not endure it;--that
his love to man became his hell, and at last his death?"--

The old pope however did not answer, but looked aside timidly, with a
painful and gloomy expression.

"Let him go," said Zarathustra, after prolonged meditation, still
looking the old man straight in the eye.

"Let him go, he is gone. And though it honoureth thee that thou speakest
only in praise of this dead one, yet thou knowest as well as I WHO he
was, and that he went curious ways."

"To speak before three eyes," said the old pope cheerfully (he was blind
of one eye), "in divine matters I am more enlightened than Zarathustra
himself--and may well be so.

My love served him long years, my will followed all his will. A good
servant, however, knoweth everything, and many a thing even which a
master hideth from himself.

He was a hidden God, full of secrecy. Verily, he did not come by his
son otherwise than by secret ways. At the door of his faith standeth
adultery.

Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of
love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one
loveth irrespective of reward and requital.

When he was young, that God out of the Orient, then was he harsh and
revengeful, and built himself a hell for the delight of his favourites.

At last, however, he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful,
more like a grandfather than a father, but most like a tottering old
grandmother.

There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney-corner, fretting on account
of his weak legs, world-weary, will-weary, and one day he suffocated of
his all-too-great pity."--

"Thou old pope," said here Zarathustra interposing, "hast thou seen THAT
with thine eyes? It could well have happened in that way: in that way,
AND also otherwise. When Gods die they always die many kinds of death.

Well! At all events, one way or other--he is gone! He was counter to the
taste of mine ears and eyes; worse than that I should not like to say
against him.

I love everything that looketh bright and speaketh honestly. But
he--thou knowest it, forsooth, thou old priest, there was something of
thy type in him, the priest-type--he was equivocal.

He was also indistinct. How he raged at us, this wrath-snorter, because
we understood him badly! But why did he not speak more clearly?

And if the fault lay in our ears, why did he give us ears that heard him
badly? If there was dirt in our ears, well! who put it in them?

Too much miscarried with him, this potter who had not learned
thoroughly! That he took revenge on his pots and creations, however,
because they turned out badly--that was a sin against GOOD TASTE.

There is also good taste in piety: THIS at last said: 'Away with SUCH
a God! Better to have no God, better to set up destiny on one's own
account, better to be a fool, better to be God oneself!'"

--"What do I hear!" said then the old pope, with intent ears; "O
Zarathustra, thou art more pious than thou believest, with such an
unbelief! Some God in thee hath converted thee to thine ungodliness.

Is it not thy piety itself which no longer letteth thee believe in a
God? And thine over-great honesty will yet lead thee even beyond good
and evil!

Behold, what hath been reserved for thee? Thou hast eyes and hands and
mouth, which have been predestined for blessing from eternity. One doth
not bless with the hand alone.

Nigh unto thee, though thou professest to be the ungodliest one, I feel
a hale and holy odour of long benedictions: I feel glad and grieved
thereby.

Let me be thy guest, O Zarathustra, for a single night! Nowhere on earth
shall I now feel better than with thee!"--

"Amen! So shall it be!" said Zarathustra, with great astonishment; "up
thither leadeth the way, there lieth the cave of Zarathustra.

Gladly, forsooth, would I conduct thee thither myself, thou venerable
one; for I love all pious men. But now a cry of distress calleth me
hastily away from thee.

In my domain shall no one come to grief; my cave is a good haven. And
best of all would I like to put every sorrowful one again on firm land
and firm legs.

Who, however, could take THY melancholy off thy shoulders? For that I am
too weak. Long, verily, should we have to wait until some one re-awoke
thy God for thee.

For that old God liveth no more: he is indeed dead."--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




LXVII. THE UGLIEST MAN.

--And again did Zarathustra's feet run through mountains and forests,
and his eyes sought and sought, but nowhere was he to be seen whom they
wanted to see--the sorely distressed sufferer and crier. On the whole
way, however, he rejoiced in his heart and was full of gratitude. "What
good things," said he, "hath this day given me, as amends for its bad
beginning! What strange interlocutors have I found!

At their words will I now chew a long while as at good corn; small
shall my teeth grind and crush them, until they flow like milk into my
soul!"--

When, however, the path again curved round a rock, all at once the
landscape changed, and Zarathustra entered into a realm of death. Here
bristled aloft black and red cliffs, without any grass, tree, or bird's
voice. For it was a valley which all animals avoided, even the beasts of
prey, except that a species of ugly, thick, green serpent came here to
die when they became old. Therefore the shepherds called this valley:
"Serpent-death."

Zarathustra, however, became absorbed in dark recollections, for it
seemed to him as if he had once before stood in this valley. And much
heaviness settled on his mind, so that he walked slowly and always more
slowly, and at last stood still. Then, however, when he opened his eyes,
he saw something sitting by the wayside shaped like a man, and hardly
like a man, something nondescript. And all at once there came over
Zarathustra a great shame, because he had gazed on such a thing.
Blushing up to the very roots of his white hair, he turned aside his
glance, and raised his foot that he might leave this ill-starred place.
Then, however, became the dead wilderness vocal: for from the ground a
noise welled up, gurgling and rattling, as water gurgleth and rattleth
at night through stopped-up water-pipes; and at last it turned into
human voice and human speech:--it sounded thus:

"Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Read my riddle! Say, say! WHAT IS THE REVENGE
ON THE WITNESS?

I entice thee back; here is smooth ice! See to it, see to it, that thy
pride doth not here break its legs!

Thou thinkest thyself wise, thou proud Zarathustra! Read then the
riddle, thou hard nut-cracker,--the riddle that I am! Say then: who am
_I_!"

--When however Zarathustra had heard these words,--what think ye then
took place in his soul? PITY OVERCAME HIM; and he sank down all at
once, like an oak that hath long withstood many tree-fellers,--heavily,
suddenly, to the terror even of those who meant to fell it. But
immediately he got up again from the ground, and his countenance became
stern.

"I know thee well," said he, with a brazen voice, "THOU ART THE MURDERER
OF GOD! Let me go.

Thou couldst not ENDURE him who beheld THEE,--who ever beheld thee
through and through, thou ugliest man. Thou tookest revenge on this
witness!"

Thus spake Zarathustra and was about to go; but the nondescript grasped
at a corner of his garment and began anew to gurgle and seek for words.
"Stay," said he at last--

--"Stay! Do not pass by! I have divined what axe it was that struck thee
to the ground: hail to thee, O Zarathustra, that thou art again upon thy
feet!

Thou hast divined, I know it well, how the man feeleth who killed
him,--the murderer of God. Stay! Sit down here beside me; it is not to
no purpose.

To whom would I go but unto thee? Stay, sit down! Do not however look at
me! Honour thus--mine ugliness!

They persecute me: now art THOU my last refuge. NOT with their hatred,
NOT with their bailiffs;--Oh, such persecution would I mock at, and be
proud and cheerful!

Hath not all success hitherto been with the well-persecuted ones? And
he who persecuteth well learneth readily to be OBSEQUENT--when once he
is--put behind! But it is their PITY--

--Their pity is it from which I flee away and flee to thee. O
Zarathustra, protect me, thou, my last refuge, thou sole one who
divinedst me:

--Thou hast divined how the man feeleth who killed HIM. Stay! And if
thou wilt go, thou impatient one, go not the way that I came. THAT way
is bad.

Art thou angry with me because I have already racked language too long?
Because I have already counselled thee? But know that it is I, the
ugliest man,

--Who have also the largest, heaviest feet. Where _I_ have gone, the way
is bad. I tread all paths to death and destruction.

But that thou passedst me by in silence, that thou blushedst--I saw it
well: thereby did I know thee as Zarathustra.

Every one else would have thrown to me his alms, his pity, in look and
speech. But for that--I am not beggar enough: that didst thou divine.

For that I am too RICH, rich in what is great, frightful, ugliest, most
unutterable! Thy shame, O Zarathustra, HONOURED me!

With difficulty did I get out of the crowd of the pitiful,--that I might
find the only one who at present teacheth that 'pity is obtrusive'--
thyself, O Zarathustra!

--Whether it be the pity of a God, or whether it be human pity, it is
offensive to modesty. And unwillingness to help may be nobler than the
virtue that rusheth to do so.

THAT however--namely, pity--is called virtue itself at present by
all petty people:--they have no reverence for great misfortune, great
ugliness, great failure.

Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looketh over the backs of thronging
flocks of sheep. They are petty, good-wooled, good-willed, grey people.

As the heron looketh contemptuously at shallow pools, with backward-bent
head, so do I look at the throng of grey little waves and wills and
souls.

Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those petty people: SO
we have at last given them power as well;--and now do they teach that
'good is only what petty people call good.'

And 'truth' is at present what the preacher spake who himself sprang
from them, that singular saint and advocate of the petty people, who
testified of himself: 'I--am the truth.'

That immodest one hath long made the petty people greatly puffed up,--he
who taught no small error when he taught: 'I--am the truth.'

Hath an immodest one ever been answered more courteously?--Thou,
however, O Zarathustra, passedst him by, and saidst: 'Nay! Nay! Three
times Nay!'

Thou warnedst against his error; thou warnedst--the first to do
so--against pity:--not every one, not none, but thyself and thy type.

Thou art ashamed of the shame of the great sufferer; and verily when
thou sayest: 'From pity there cometh a heavy cloud; take heed, ye men!'

--When thou teachest: 'All creators are hard, all great love is beyond
their pity:' O Zarathustra, how well versed dost thou seem to me in
weather-signs!

Thou thyself, however,--warn thyself also against THY pity! For many are
on their way to thee, many suffering, doubting, despairing, drowning,
freezing ones--

I warn thee also against myself. Thou hast read my best, my worst
riddle, myself, and what I have done. I know the axe that felleth thee.

But he--HAD TO die: he looked with eyes which beheld EVERYTHING,--he
beheld men's depths and dregs, all his hidden ignominy and ugliness.

His pity knew no modesty: he crept into my dirtiest corners. This most
prying, over-intrusive, over-pitiful one had to die.

He ever beheld ME: on such a witness I would have revenge--or not live
myself.

The God who beheld everything, AND ALSO MAN: that God had to die! Man
cannot ENDURE it that such a witness should live."

Thus spake the ugliest man. Zarathustra however got up, and prepared to
go on: for he felt frozen to the very bowels.

"Thou nondescript," said he, "thou warnedst me against thy path. As
thanks for it I praise mine to thee. Behold, up thither is the cave of
Zarathustra.

My cave is large and deep and hath many corners; there findeth he
that is most hidden his hiding-place. And close beside it, there are
a hundred lurking-places and by-places for creeping, fluttering, and
hopping creatures.

Thou outcast, who hast cast thyself out, thou wilt not live amongst men
and men's pity? Well then, do like me! Thus wilt thou learn also from
me; only the doer learneth.

And talk first and foremost to mine animals! The proudest animal and the
wisest animal--they might well be the right counsellors for us both!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra and went his way, more thoughtfully and slowly
even than before: for he asked himself many things, and hardly knew what
to answer.

"How poor indeed is man," thought he in his heart, "how ugly, how
wheezy, how full of hidden shame!

They tell me that man loveth himself. Ah, how great must that self-love
be! How much contempt is opposed to it!

Even this man hath loved himself, as he hath despised himself,--a great
lover methinketh he is, and a great despiser.

No one have I yet found who more thoroughly despised himself: even THAT
is elevation. Alas, was THIS perhaps the higher man whose cry I heard?

I love the great despisers. Man is something that hath to be
surpassed."--




LXVIII. THE VOLUNTARY BEGGAR.

When Zarathustra had left the ugliest man, he was chilled and felt
lonesome: for much coldness and lonesomeness came over his spirit, so
that even his limbs became colder thereby. When, however, he wandered
on and on, uphill and down, at times past green meadows, though also
sometimes over wild stony couches where formerly perhaps an impatient
brook had made its bed, then he turned all at once warmer and heartier
again.

"What hath happened unto me?" he asked himself, "something warm and
living quickeneth me; it must be in the neighbourhood.

Already am I less alone; unconscious companions and brethren rove around
me; their warm breath toucheth my soul."

When, however, he spied about and sought for the comforters of his
lonesomeness, behold, there were kine there standing together on an
eminence, whose proximity and smell had warmed his heart. The kine,
however, seemed to listen eagerly to a speaker, and took no heed of him
who approached. When, however, Zarathustra was quite nigh unto them,
then did he hear plainly that a human voice spake in the midst of the
kine, and apparently all of them had turned their heads towards the
speaker.

Then ran Zarathustra up speedily and drove the animals aside; for he
feared that some one had here met with harm, which the pity of the
kine would hardly be able to relieve. But in this he was deceived; for
behold, there sat a man on the ground who seemed to be persuading
the animals to have no fear of him, a peaceable man and
Preacher-on-the-Mount, out of whose eyes kindness itself preached. "What
dost thou seek here?" called out Zarathustra in astonishment.

"What do I here seek?" answered he: "the same that thou seekest, thou
mischief-maker; that is to say, happiness upon earth.

To that end, however, I would fain learn of these kine. For I tell thee
that I have already talked half a morning unto them, and just now were
they about to give me their answer. Why dost thou disturb them?

Except we be converted and become as kine, we shall in no wise enter
into the kingdom of heaven. For we ought to learn from them one thing:
ruminating.

And verily, although a man should gain the whole world, and yet not
learn one thing, ruminating, what would it profit him! He would not be
rid of his affliction,

--His great affliction: that, however, is at present called DISGUST. Who
hath not at present his heart, his mouth and his eyes full of disgust?
Thou also! Thou also! But behold these kine!"--

Thus spake the Preacher-on-the-Mount, and turned then his own look
towards Zarathustra--for hitherto it had rested lovingly on the kine--:
then, however, he put on a different expression. "Who is this with whom
I talk?" he exclaimed frightened, and sprang up from the ground.

"This is the man without disgust, this is Zarathustra himself, the
surmounter of the great disgust, this is the eye, this is the mouth,
this is the heart of Zarathustra himself."

And whilst he thus spake he kissed with o'erflowing eyes the hands
of him with whom he spake, and behaved altogether like one to whom a
precious gift and jewel hath fallen unawares from heaven. The kine,
however, gazed at it all and wondered.

"Speak not of me, thou strange one; thou amiable one!" said Zarathustra,
and restrained his affection, "speak to me firstly of thyself! Art thou
not the voluntary beggar who once cast away great riches,--

--Who was ashamed of his riches and of the rich, and fled to the poorest
to bestow upon them his abundance and his heart? But they received him
not."

"But they received me not," said the voluntary beggar, "thou knowest it,
forsooth. So I went at last to the animals and to those kine."

"Then learnedst thou," interrupted Zarathustra, "how much harder it is
to give properly than to take properly, and that bestowing well is an
ART--the last, subtlest master-art of kindness."

"Especially nowadays," answered the voluntary beggar: "at present, that
is to say, when everything low hath become rebellious and exclusive and
haughty in its manner--in the manner of the populace.

For the hour hath come, thou knowest it forsooth, for the great, evil,
long, slow mob-and-slave-insurrection: it extendeth and extendeth!

Now doth it provoke the lower classes, all benevolence and petty giving;
and the overrich may be on their guard!

Whoever at present drip, like bulgy bottles out of all-too-small
necks:--of such bottles at present one willingly breaketh the necks.

Wanton avidity, bilious envy, careworn revenge, populace-pride: all
these struck mine eye. It is no longer true that the poor are blessed.
The kingdom of heaven, however, is with the kine."

"And why is it not with the rich?" asked Zarathustra temptingly, while
he kept back the kine which sniffed familiarly at the peaceful one.

"Why dost thou tempt me?" answered the other. "Thou knowest it thyself
better even than I. What was it drove me to the poorest, O Zarathustra?
Was it not my disgust at the richest?

--At the culprits of riches, with cold eyes and rank thoughts, who pick
up profit out of all kinds of rubbish--at this rabble that stinketh to
heaven,

--At this gilded, falsified populace, whose fathers were pickpockets,
or carrion-crows, or rag-pickers, with wives compliant, lewd and
forgetful:--for they are all of them not far different from harlots--

Populace above, populace below! What are 'poor' and 'rich' at present!
That distinction did I unlearn,--then did I flee away further and ever
further, until I came to those kine."

Thus spake the peaceful one, and puffed himself and perspired with
his words: so that the kine wondered anew. Zarathustra, however, kept
looking into his face with a smile, all the time the man talked so
severely--and shook silently his head.

"Thou doest violence to thyself, thou Preacher-on-the-Mount, when thou
usest such severe words. For such severity neither thy mouth nor thine
eye have been given thee.

Nor, methinketh, hath thy stomach either: unto IT all such rage and
hatred and foaming-over is repugnant. Thy stomach wanteth softer things:
thou art not a butcher.

Rather seemest thou to me a plant-eater and a root-man. Perhaps thou
grindest corn. Certainly, however, thou art averse to fleshly joys, and
thou lovest honey."

"Thou hast divined me well," answered the voluntary beggar, with
lightened heart. "I love honey, I also grind corn; for I have sought out
what tasteth sweetly and maketh pure breath:

--Also what requireth a long time, a day's-work and a mouth's-work for
gentle idlers and sluggards.

Furthest, to be sure, have those kine carried it: they have devised
ruminating and lying in the sun. They also abstain from all heavy
thoughts which inflate the heart."

--"Well!" said Zarathustra, "thou shouldst also see MINE animals, mine
eagle and my serpent,--their like do not at present exist on earth.

Behold, thither leadeth the way to my cave: be to-night its guest. And
talk to mine animals of the happiness of animals,--

--Until I myself come home. For now a cry of distress calleth me hastily
away from thee. Also, shouldst thou find new honey with me, ice-cold,
golden-comb-honey, eat it!

Now, however, take leave at once of thy kine, thou strange one! thou
amiable one! though it be hard for thee. For they are thy warmest
friends and preceptors!"--

--"One excepted, whom I hold still dearer," answered the voluntary
beggar. "Thou thyself art good, O Zarathustra, and better even than a
cow!"

"Away, away with thee! thou evil flatterer!" cried Zarathustra
mischievously, "why dost thou spoil me with such praise and
flattery-honey?

"Away, away from me!" cried he once more, and heaved his stick at the
fond beggar, who, however, ran nimbly away.




LXIX. THE SHADOW.

Scarcely however was the voluntary beggar gone in haste, and Zarathustra
again alone, when he heard behind him a new voice which called out:
"Stay! Zarathustra! Do wait! It is myself, forsooth, O Zarathustra,
myself, thy shadow!" But Zarathustra did not wait; for a sudden
irritation came over him on account of the crowd and the crowding in his
mountains. "Whither hath my lonesomeness gone?" spake he.

"It is verily becoming too much for me; these mountains swarm; my
kingdom is no longer of THIS world; I require new mountains.

My shadow calleth me? What matter about my shadow! Let it run after me!
I--run away from it."

Thus spake Zarathustra to his heart and ran away. But the one behind
followed after him, so that immediately there were three runners,
one after the other--namely, foremost the voluntary beggar, then
Zarathustra, and thirdly, and hindmost, his shadow. But not long had
they run thus when Zarathustra became conscious of his folly, and shook
off with one jerk all his irritation and detestation.

"What!" said he, "have not the most ludicrous things always happened to
us old anchorites and saints?

Verily, my folly hath grown big in the mountains! Now do I hear six old
fools' legs rattling behind one another!

But doth Zarathustra need to be frightened by his shadow? Also,
methinketh that after all it hath longer legs than mine."

Thus spake Zarathustra, and, laughing with eyes and entrails, he stood
still and turned round quickly--and behold, he almost thereby threw his
shadow and follower to the ground, so closely had the latter followed at
his heels, and so weak was he. For when Zarathustra scrutinised him
with his glance he was frightened as by a sudden apparition, so slender,
swarthy, hollow and worn-out did this follower appear.

"Who art thou?" asked Zarathustra vehemently, "what doest thou here? And
why callest thou thyself my shadow? Thou art not pleasing unto me."

"Forgive me," answered the shadow, "that it is I; and if I please thee
not--well, O Zarathustra! therein do I admire thee and thy good taste.

A wanderer am I, who have walked long at thy heels; always on the way,
but without a goal, also without a home: so that verily, I lack little
of being the eternally Wandering Jew, except that I am not eternal and
not a Jew.

What? Must I ever be on the way? Whirled by every wind, unsettled,
driven about? O earth, thou hast become too round for me!

On every surface have I already sat, like tired dust have I fallen
asleep on mirrors and window-panes: everything taketh from me, nothing
giveth; I become thin--I am almost equal to a shadow.

After thee, however, O Zarathustra, did I fly and hie longest; and
though I hid myself from thee, I was nevertheless thy best shadow:
wherever thou hast sat, there sat I also.

With thee have I wandered about in the remotest, coldest worlds, like a
phantom that voluntarily haunteth winter roofs and snows.

With thee have I pushed into all the forbidden, all the worst and the
furthest: and if there be anything of virtue in me, it is that I have
had no fear of any prohibition.

With thee have I broken up whatever my heart revered; all
boundary-stones and statues have I o'erthrown; the most dangerous wishes
did I pursue,--verily, beyond every crime did I once go.

With thee did I unlearn the belief in words and worths and in great
names. When the devil casteth his skin, doth not his name also fall
away? It is also skin. The devil himself is perhaps--skin.

'Nothing is true, all is permitted': so said I to myself. Into the
coldest water did I plunge with head and heart. Ah, how oft did I stand
there naked on that account, like a red crab!

Ah, where have gone all my goodness and all my shame and all my belief
in the good! Ah, where is the lying innocence which I once possessed,
the innocence of the good and of their noble lies!

Too oft, verily, did I follow close to the heels of truth: then did it
kick me on the face. Sometimes I meant to lie, and behold! then only did
I hit--the truth.

Too much hath become clear unto me: now it doth not concern me any more.
Nothing liveth any longer that I love,--how should I still love myself?

'To live as I incline, or not to live at all': so do I wish; so wisheth
also the holiest. But alas! how have _I_ still--inclination?

Have _I_--still a goal? A haven towards which MY sail is set?

A good wind? Ah, he only who knoweth WHITHER he saileth, knoweth what
wind is good, and a fair wind for him.

What still remaineth to me? A heart weary and flippant; an unstable
will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone.

This seeking for MY home: O Zarathustra, dost thou know that this
seeking hath been MY home-sickening; it eateth me up.

'WHERE is--MY home?' For it do I ask and seek, and have sought, but
have not found it. O eternal everywhere, O eternal nowhere, O
eternal--in-vain!"

Thus spake the shadow, and Zarathustra's countenance lengthened at his
words. "Thou art my shadow!" said he at last sadly.

"Thy danger is not small, thou free spirit and wanderer! Thou hast had a
bad day: see that a still worse evening doth not overtake thee!

To such unsettled ones as thou, seemeth at last even a prisoner blessed.
Didst thou ever see how captured criminals sleep? They sleep quietly,
they enjoy their new security.

Beware lest in the end a narrow faith capture thee, a hard, rigorous
delusion! For now everything that is narrow and fixed seduceth and
tempteth thee.

Thou hast lost thy goal. Alas, how wilt thou forego and forget that
loss? Thereby--hast thou also lost thy way!

Thou poor rover and rambler, thou tired butterfly! wilt thou have a rest
and a home this evening? Then go up to my cave!

Thither leadeth the way to my cave. And now will I run quickly away from
thee again. Already lieth as it were a shadow upon me.

I will run alone, so that it may again become bright around me.
Therefore must I still be a long time merrily upon my legs. In the
evening, however, there will be--dancing with me!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra.




LXX. NOONTIDE.

--And Zarathustra ran and ran, but he found no one else, and was alone
and ever found himself again; he enjoyed and quaffed his solitude, and
thought of good things--for hours. About the hour of noontide, however,
when the sun stood exactly over Zarathustra's head, he passed an old,
bent and gnarled tree, which was encircled round by the ardent love of
a vine, and hidden from itself; from this there hung yellow grapes in
abundance, confronting the wanderer. Then he felt inclined to quench a
little thirst, and to break off for himself a cluster of grapes. When,
however, he had already his arm out-stretched for that purpose, he felt
still more inclined for something else--namely, to lie down beside the
tree at the hour of perfect noontide and sleep.

This Zarathustra did; and no sooner had he laid himself on the ground in
the stillness and secrecy of the variegated grass, than he had forgotten
his little thirst, and fell asleep. For as the proverb of Zarathustra
saith: "One thing is more necessary than the other." Only that his eyes
remained open:--for they never grew weary of viewing and admiring the
tree and the love of the vine. In falling asleep, however, Zarathustra
spake thus to his heart:

"Hush! Hush! Hath not the world now become perfect? What hath happened
unto me?

As a delicate wind danceth invisibly upon parqueted seas, light,
feather-light, so--danceth sleep upon me.

No eye doth it close to me, it leaveth my soul awake. Light is it,
verily, feather-light.

It persuadeth me, I know not how, it toucheth me inwardly with a
caressing hand, it constraineth me. Yea, it constraineth me, so that my
soul stretcheth itself out:--

--How long and weary it becometh, my strange soul! Hath a seventh-day
evening come to it precisely at noontide? Hath it already wandered too
long, blissfully, among good and ripe things?

It stretcheth itself out, long--longer! it lieth still, my strange
soul. Too many good things hath it already tasted; this golden sadness
oppresseth it, it distorteth its mouth.

--As a ship that putteth into the calmest cove:--it now draweth up to
the land, weary of long voyages and uncertain seas. Is not the land more
faithful?

As such a ship huggeth the shore, tuggeth the shore:--then it sufficeth
for a spider to spin its thread from the ship to the land. No stronger
ropes are required there.

As such a weary ship in the calmest cove, so do I also now repose, nigh
to the earth, faithful, trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest
threads.

O happiness! O happiness! Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my soul? Thou liest
in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd
playeth his pipe.

Take care! Hot noontide sleepeth on the fields. Do not sing! Hush! The
world is perfect.

Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whisper! Lo--hush!
The old noontide sleepeth, it moveth its mouth: doth it not just now
drink a drop of happiness--

--An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something whisketh
over it, its happiness laugheth. Thus--laugheth a God. Hush!--

--'For happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness!' Thus spake I
once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: THAT have I now
learned. Wise fools speak better.

The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a
lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance--LITTLE maketh up
the BEST happiness. Hush!

--What hath befallen me: Hark! Hath time flown away? Do I not fall? Have
I not fallen--hark! into the well of eternity?

--What happeneth to me? Hush! It stingeth me--alas--to the heart? To
the heart! Oh, break up, break up, my heart, after such happiness, after
such a sting!

--What? Hath not the world just now become perfect? Round and ripe? Oh,
for the golden round ring--whither doth it fly? Let me run after it!
Quick!

Hush--" (and here Zarathustra stretched himself, and felt that he was
asleep.)

"Up!" said he to himself, "thou sleeper! Thou noontide sleeper! Well
then, up, ye old legs! It is time and more than time; many a good
stretch of road is still awaiting you--

Now have ye slept your fill; for how long a time? A half-eternity! Well
then, up now, mine old heart! For how long after such a sleep mayest
thou--remain awake?"

(But then did he fall asleep anew, and his soul spake against him and
defended itself, and lay down again)--"Leave me alone! Hush! Hath not
the world just now become perfect? Oh, for the golden round ball!--

"Get up," said Zarathustra, "thou little thief, thou sluggard! What!
Still stretching thyself, yawning, sighing, falling into deep wells?

Who art thou then, O my soul!" (and here he became frightened, for a
sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.)

"O heaven above me," said he sighing, and sat upright, "thou gazest at
me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul?

When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly
things,--when wilt thou drink this strange soul--

--When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when
wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?"

Thus spake Zarathustra, and rose from his couch beside the tree, as if
awakening from a strange drunkenness: and behold! there stood the
sun still exactly above his head. One might, however, rightly infer
therefrom that Zarathustra had not then slept long.




LXXI. THE GREETING.

It was late in the afternoon only when Zarathustra, after long useless
searching and strolling about, again came home to his cave. When,
however, he stood over against it, not more than twenty paces therefrom,
the thing happened which he now least of all expected: he heard anew the
great CRY OF DISTRESS. And extraordinary! this time the cry came out
of his own cave. It was a long, manifold, peculiar cry, and Zarathustra
plainly distinguished that it was composed of many voices: although
heard at a distance it might sound like the cry out of a single mouth.

Thereupon Zarathustra rushed forward to his cave, and behold! what a
spectacle awaited him after that concert! For there did they all sit
together whom he had passed during the day: the king on the right and
the king on the left, the old magician, the pope, the voluntary
beggar, the shadow, the intellectually conscientious one, the sorrowful
soothsayer, and the ass; the ugliest man, however, had set a crown on
his head, and had put round him two purple girdles,--for he liked, like
all ugly ones, to disguise himself and play the handsome person. In the
midst, however, of that sorrowful company stood Zarathustra's eagle,
ruffled and disquieted, for it had been called upon to answer too much
for which its pride had not any answer; the wise serpent however hung
round its neck.

All this did Zarathustra behold with great astonishment; then however he
scrutinised each individual guest with courteous curiosity, read their
souls and wondered anew. In the meantime the assembled ones had risen
from their seats, and waited with reverence for Zarathustra to speak.
Zarathustra however spake thus:

"Ye despairing ones! Ye strange ones! So it was YOUR cry of distress
that I heard? And now do I know also where he is to be sought, whom I
have sought for in vain to-day: THE HIGHER MAN--:

--In mine own cave sitteth he, the higher man! But why do I wonder! Have
not I myself allured him to me by honey-offerings and artful lure-calls
of my happiness?

But it seemeth to me that ye are badly adapted for company: ye make
one another's hearts fretful, ye that cry for help, when ye sit here
together? There is one that must first come,

--One who will make you laugh once more, a good jovial buffoon, a
dancer, a wind, a wild romp, some old fool:--what think ye?

Forgive me, however, ye despairing ones, for speaking such trivial words
before you, unworthy, verily, of such guests! But ye do not divine WHAT
maketh my heart wanton:--

--Ye yourselves do it, and your aspect, forgive it me! For every one
becometh courageous who beholdeth a despairing one. To encourage a
despairing one--every one thinketh himself strong enough to do so.

To myself have ye given this power,--a good gift, mine honourable
guests! An excellent guest's-present! Well, do not then upbraid when I
also offer you something of mine.

This is mine empire and my dominion: that which is mine, however, shall
this evening and tonight be yours. Mine animals shall serve you: let my
cave be your resting-place!

At house and home with me shall no one despair: in my purlieus do I
protect every one from his wild beasts. And that is the first thing
which I offer you: security!

The second thing, however, is my little finger. And when ye have THAT,
then take the whole hand also, yea, and the heart with it! Welcome here,
welcome to you, my guests!"

Thus spake Zarathustra, and laughed with love and mischief. After this
greeting his guests bowed once more and were reverentially silent; the
king on the right, however, answered him in their name.

"O Zarathustra, by the way in which thou hast given us thy hand and thy
greeting, we recognise thee as Zarathustra. Thou hast humbled thyself
before us; almost hast thou hurt our reverence--:

--Who however could have humbled himself as thou hast done, with such
pride? THAT uplifteth us ourselves; a refreshment is it, to our eyes and
hearts.

To behold this, merely, gladly would we ascend higher mountains than
this. For as eager beholders have we come; we wanted to see what
brighteneth dim eyes.

And lo! now is it all over with our cries of distress. Now are our minds
and hearts open and enraptured. Little is lacking for our spirits to
become wanton.

There is nothing, O Zarathustra, that groweth more pleasingly on earth
than a lofty, strong will: it is the finest growth. An entire landscape
refresheth itself at one such tree.

To the pine do I compare him, O Zarathustra, which groweth up like
thee--tall, silent, hardy, solitary, of the best, supplest wood,
stately,--

--In the end, however, grasping out for ITS dominion with strong, green
branches, asking weighty questions of the wind, the storm, and whatever
is at home on high places;

--Answering more weightily, a commander, a victor! Oh! who should not
ascend high mountains to behold such growths?

At thy tree, O Zarathustra, the gloomy and ill-constituted also refresh
themselves; at thy look even the wavering become steady and heal their
hearts.

And verily, towards thy mountain and thy tree do many eyes turn to-day;
a great longing hath arisen, and many have learned to ask: 'Who is
Zarathustra?'

And those into whose ears thou hast at any time dripped thy song and thy
honey: all the hidden ones, the lone-dwellers and the twain-dwellers,
have simultaneously said to their hearts:

'Doth Zarathustra still live? It is no longer worth while to live,
everything is indifferent, everything is useless: or else--we must live
with Zarathustra!'

'Why doth he not come who hath so long announced himself?' thus do many
people ask; 'hath solitude swallowed him up? Or should we perhaps go to
him?'

Now doth it come to pass that solitude itself becometh fragile and
breaketh open, like a grave that breaketh open and can no longer hold
its dead. Everywhere one seeth resurrected ones.

Now do the waves rise and rise around thy mountain, O Zarathustra. And
however high be thy height, many of them must rise up to thee: thy boat
shall not rest much longer on dry ground.

And that we despairing ones have now come into thy cave, and already no
longer despair:--it is but a prognostic and a presage that better ones
are on the way to thee,--

--For they themselves are on the way to thee, the last remnant of
God among men--that is to say, all the men of great longing, of great
loathing, of great satiety,

--All who do not want to live unless they learn again to HOPE--unless
they learn from thee, O Zarathustra, the GREAT hope!"

Thus spake the king on the right, and seized the hand of Zarathustra in
order to kiss it; but Zarathustra checked his veneration, and stepped
back frightened, fleeing as it were, silently and suddenly into the far
distance. After a little while, however, he was again at home with his
guests, looked at them with clear scrutinising eyes, and said:

"My guests, ye higher men, I will speak plain language and plainly with
you. It is not for YOU that I have waited here in these mountains."

("'Plain language and plainly?' Good God!" said here the king on the
left to himself; "one seeth he doth not know the good Occidentals, this
sage out of the Orient!

But he meaneth 'blunt language and bluntly'--well! That is not the worst
taste in these days!")

"Ye may, verily, all of you be higher men," continued Zarathustra; "but
for me--ye are neither high enough, nor strong enough.

For me, that is to say, for the inexorable which is now silent in me,
but will not always be silent. And if ye appertain to me, still it is
not as my right arm.

For he who himself standeth, like you, on sickly and tender legs,
wisheth above all to be TREATED INDULGENTLY, whether he be conscious of
it or hide it from himself.

My arms and my legs, however, I do not treat indulgently, I DO NOT TREAT
MY WARRIORS INDULGENTLY: how then could ye be fit for MY warfare?

With you I should spoil all my victories. And many of you would tumble
over if ye but heard the loud beating of my drums.

Moreover, ye are not sufficiently beautiful and well-born for me. I
require pure, smooth mirrors for my doctrines; on your surface even mine
own likeness is distorted.

On your shoulders presseth many a burden, many a recollection; many a
mischievous dwarf squatteth in your corners. There is concealed populace
also in you.

And though ye be high and of a higher type, much in you is crooked and
misshapen. There is no smith in the world that could hammer you right
and straight for me.

Ye are only bridges: may higher ones pass over upon you! Ye signify
steps: so do not upbraid him who ascendeth beyond you into HIS height!

Out of your seed there may one day arise for me a genuine son and
perfect heir: but that time is distant. Ye yourselves are not those unto
whom my heritage and name belong.

Not for you do I wait here in these mountains; not with you may I
descend for the last time. Ye have come unto me only as a presage that
higher ones are on the way to me,--

--NOT the men of great longing, of great loathing, of great satiety, and
that which ye call the remnant of God;

--Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! For OTHERS do I wait here in these
mountains, and will not lift my foot from thence without them;

--For higher ones, stronger ones, triumphanter ones, merrier ones, for
such as are built squarely in body and soul: LAUGHING LIONS must come!

O my guests, ye strange ones--have ye yet heard nothing of my children?
And that they are on the way to me?

Do speak unto me of my gardens, of my Happy Isles, of my new beautiful
race--why do ye not speak unto me thereof?

This guests'-present do I solicit of your love, that ye speak unto me of
my children. For them am I rich, for them I became poor: what have I not
surrendered,

--What would I not surrender that I might have one thing: THESE
children, THIS living plantation, THESE life-trees of my will and of my
highest hope!"

Thus spake Zarathustra, and stopped suddenly in his discourse: for his
longing came over him, and he closed his eyes and his mouth, because
of the agitation of his heart. And all his guests also were silent, and
stood still and confounded: except only that the old soothsayer made
signs with his hands and his gestures.




LXXII. THE SUPPER.

For at this point the soothsayer interrupted the greeting of Zarathustra
and his guests: he pressed forward as one who had no time to lose,
seized Zarathustra's hand and exclaimed: "But Zarathustra!

One thing is more necessary than the other, so sayest thou thyself:
well, one thing is now more necessary UNTO ME than all others.

A word at the right time: didst thou not invite me to TABLE? And here
are many who have made long journeys. Thou dost not mean to feed us
merely with discourses?

Besides, all of you have thought too much about freezing, drowning,
suffocating, and other bodily dangers: none of you, however, have
thought of MY danger, namely, perishing of hunger-"

(Thus spake the soothsayer. When Zarathustra's animals, however, heard
these words, they ran away in terror. For they saw that all they
had brought home during the day would not be enough to fill the one
soothsayer.)

"Likewise perishing of thirst," continued the soothsayer. "And although
I hear water splashing here like words of wisdom--that is to say,
plenteously and unweariedly, I--want WINE!

Not every one is a born water-drinker like Zarathustra. Neither doth
water suit weary and withered ones: WE deserve wine--IT alone giveth
immediate vigour and improvised health!"

On this occasion, when the soothsayer was longing for wine, it happened
that the king on the left, the silent one, also found expression for
once. "WE took care," said he, "about wine, I, along with my brother the
king on the right: we have enough of wine,--a whole ass-load of it. So
there is nothing lacking but bread."

"Bread," replied Zarathustra, laughing when he spake, "it is precisely
bread that anchorites have not. But man doth not live by bread alone,
but also by the flesh of good lambs, of which I have two:

--THESE shall we slaughter quickly, and cook spicily with sage: it is
so that I like them. And there is also no lack of roots and fruits,
good enough even for the fastidious and dainty,--nor of nuts and other
riddles for cracking.

Thus will we have a good repast in a little while. But whoever wish to
eat with us must also give a hand to the work, even the kings. For with
Zarathustra even a king may be a cook."

This proposal appealed to the hearts of all of them, save that the
voluntary beggar objected to the flesh and wine and spices.

"Just hear this glutton Zarathustra!" said he jokingly: "doth one go
into caves and high mountains to make such repasts?

Now indeed do I understand what he once taught us: Blessed be moderate
poverty!' And why he wisheth to do away with beggars."

"Be of good cheer," replied Zarathustra, "as I am. Abide by thy
customs, thou excellent one: grind thy corn, drink thy water, praise thy
cooking,--if only it make thee glad!

I am a law only for mine own; I am not a law for all. He, however, who
belongeth unto me must be strong of bone and light of foot,--

--Joyous in fight and feast, no sulker, no John o' Dreams, ready for the
hardest task as for the feast, healthy and hale.

The best belongeth unto mine and me; and if it be not given us, then do
we take it:--the best food, the purest sky, the strongest thoughts, the
fairest women!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra; the king on the right however answered and said:
"Strange! Did one ever hear such sensible things out of the mouth of a
wise man?

And verily, it is the strangest thing in a wise man, if over and above,
he be still sensible, and not an ass."

Thus spake the king on the right and wondered; the ass however, with
ill-will, said YE-A to his remark. This however was the beginning of
that long repast which is called "The Supper" in the history-books. At
this there was nothing else spoken of but THE HIGHER MAN.




LXXIII. THE HIGHER MAN.

1.

When I came unto men for the first time, then did I commit the anchorite
folly, the great folly: I appeared on the market-place.

And when I spake unto all, I spake unto none. In the evening, however,
rope-dancers were my companions, and corpses; and I myself almost a
corpse.

With the new morning, however, there came unto me a new truth: then did
I learn to say: "Of what account to me are market-place and populace and
populace-noise and long populace-ears!"

Ye higher men, learn THIS from me: On the market-place no one believeth
in higher men. But if ye will speak there, very well! The populace,
however, blinketh: "We are all equal."

"Ye higher men,"--so blinketh the populace--"there are no higher men, we
are all equal; man is man, before God--we are all equal!"

Before God!--Now, however, this God hath died. Before the populace,
however, we will not be equal. Ye higher men, away from the
market-place!

2.

Before God!--Now however this God hath died! Ye higher men, this God was
your greatest danger.

Only since he lay in the grave have ye again arisen. Now only cometh the
great noontide, now only doth the higher man become--master!

Have ye understood this word, O my brethren? Ye are frightened: do your
hearts turn giddy? Doth the abyss here yawn for you? Doth the hell-hound
here yelp at you?

Well! Take heart! ye higher men! Now only travaileth the mountain of the
human future. God hath died: now do WE desire--the Superman to live.

3.

The most careful ask to-day: "How is man to be maintained?" Zarathustra
however asketh, as the first and only one: "How is man to be SURPASSED?"

The Superman, I have at heart; THAT is the first and only thing to
me--and NOT man: not the neighbour, not the poorest, not the sorriest,
not the best.--

O my brethren, what I can love in man is that he is an over-going and a
down-going. And also in you there is much that maketh me love and hope.

In that ye have despised, ye higher men, that maketh me hope. For the
great despisers are the great reverers.

In that ye have despaired, there is much to honour. For ye have not
learned to submit yourselves, ye have not learned petty policy.

For to-day have the petty people become master: they all preach
submission and humility and policy and diligence and consideration and
the long et cetera of petty virtues.

Whatever is of the effeminate type, whatever originateth from the
servile type, and especially the populace-mishmash:--THAT wisheth now to
be master of all human destiny--O disgust! Disgust! Disgust!

THAT asketh and asketh and never tireth: "How is man to maintain himself
best, longest, most pleasantly?" Thereby--are they the masters of
to-day.

These masters of to-day--surpass them, O my brethren--these petty
people: THEY are the Superman's greatest danger!

Surpass, ye higher men, the petty virtues, the petty policy, the
sand-grain considerateness, the ant-hill trumpery, the pitiable
comfortableness, the "happiness of the greatest number"--!

And rather despair than submit yourselves. And verily, I love you,
because ye know not to-day how to live, ye higher men! For thus do YE
live--best!

4.

Have ye courage, O my brethren? Are ye stout-hearted? NOT the courage
before witnesses, but anchorite and eagle courage, which not even a God
any longer beholdeth?

Cold souls, mules, the blind and the drunken, I do not call
stout-hearted. He hath heart who knoweth fear, but VANQUISHETH it; who
seeth the abyss, but with PRIDE.

He who seeth the abyss, but with eagle's eyes,--he who with eagle's
talons GRASPETH the abyss: he hath courage.--

5.

"Man is evil"--so said to me for consolation, all the wisest ones. Ah,
if only it be still true to-day! For the evil is man's best force.

"Man must become better and eviler"--so do _I_ teach. The evilest is
necessary for the Superman's best.

It may have been well for the preacher of the petty people to suffer and
be burdened by men's sin. I, however, rejoice in great sin as my great
CONSOLATION.--

Such things, however, are not said for long ears. Every word, also,
is not suited for every mouth. These are fine far-away things: at them
sheep's claws shall not grasp!

6.

Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put
wrong?

Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you sufferers?
Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones, new and easier
footpaths?

Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! Always more, always better ones of your
type shall succumb,--for ye shall always have it worse and harder. Thus
only--

--Thus only groweth man aloft to the height where the lightning striketh
and shattereth him: high enough for the lightning!

Towards the few, the long, the remote go forth my soul and my seeking:
of what account to me are your many little, short miseries!

Ye do not yet suffer enough for me! For ye suffer from yourselves, ye
have not yet suffered FROM MAN. Ye would lie if ye spake otherwise! None
of you suffereth from what _I_ have suffered.--

7.

It is not enough for me that the lightning no longer doeth harm. I do
not wish to conduct it away: it shall learn--to work for ME.--

My wisdom hath accumulated long like a cloud, it becometh stiller and
darker. So doeth all wisdom which shall one day bear LIGHTNINGS.--

Unto these men of to-day will I not be LIGHT, nor be called light.
THEM--will I blind: lightning of my wisdom! put out their eyes!

8.

Do not will anything beyond your power: there is a bad falseness in
those who will beyond their power.

Especially when they will great things! For they awaken distrust in
great things, these subtle false-coiners and stage-players:--

--Until at last they are false towards themselves, squint-eyed, whited
cankers, glossed over with strong words, parade virtues and brilliant
false deeds.

Take good care there, ye higher men! For nothing is more precious to me,
and rarer, than honesty.

Is this to-day not that of the populace? The populace however knoweth
not what is great and what is small, what is straight and what is
honest: it is innocently crooked, it ever lieth.

9.

Have a good distrust to-day ye, higher men, ye enheartened ones! Ye
open-hearted ones! And keep your reasons secret! For this to-day is that
of the populace.

What the populace once learned to believe without reasons, who could--
refute it to them by means of reasons?

And on the market-place one convinceth with gestures. But reasons make
the populace distrustful.

And when truth hath once triumphed there, then ask yourselves with good
distrust: "What strong error hath fought for it?"

Be on your guard also against the learned! They hate you, because they
are unproductive! They have cold, withered eyes before which every bird
is unplumed.

Such persons vaunt about not lying: but inability to lie is still far
from being love to truth. Be on your guard!

Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge! Refrigerated
spirits I do not believe in. He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth
is.

10.

If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get yourselves
CARRIED aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people's backs and heads!

Thou hast mounted, however, on horseback? Thou now ridest briskly up
to thy goal? Well, my friend! But thy lame foot is also with thee on
horseback!

When thou reachest thy goal, when thou alightest from thy horse:
precisely on thy HEIGHT, thou higher man,--then wilt thou stumble!

11.

Ye creating ones, ye higher men! One is only pregnant with one's own
child.

Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or put upon! Who then is YOUR
neighbour? Even if ye act "for your neighbour"--ye still do not create
for him!

Unlearn, I pray you, this "for," ye creating ones: your very virtue
wisheth you to have naught to do with "for" and "on account of" and
"because." Against these false little words shall ye stop your ears.

"For one's neighbour," is the virtue only of the petty people: there it
is said "like and like," and "hand washeth hand":--they have neither the
right nor the power for YOUR self-seeking!

In your self-seeking, ye creating ones, there is the foresight and
foreseeing of the pregnant! What no one's eye hath yet seen, namely, the
fruit--this, sheltereth and saveth and nourisheth your entire love.

Where your entire love is, namely, with your child, there is also your
entire virtue! Your work, your will is YOUR "neighbour": let no false
values impose upon you!

12.

Ye creating ones, ye higher men! Whoever hath to give birth is sick;
whoever hath given birth, however, is unclean.

Ask women: one giveth birth, not because it giveth pleasure. The pain
maketh hens and poets cackle.

Ye creating ones, in you there is much uncleanliness. That is because ye
have had to be mothers.

A new child: oh, how much new filth hath also come into the world! Go
apart! He who hath given birth shall wash his soul!

13.

Be not virtuous beyond your powers! And seek nothing from yourselves
opposed to probability!

Walk in the footsteps in which your fathers' virtue hath already walked!
How would ye rise high, if your fathers' will should not rise with you?

He, however, who would be a firstling, let him take care lest he also
become a lastling! And where the vices of your fathers are, there should
ye not set up as saints!

He whose fathers were inclined for women, and for strong wine and flesh
of wildboar swine; what would it be if he demanded chastity of himself?

A folly would it be! Much, verily, doth it seem to me for such a one, if
he should be the husband of one or of two or of three women.

And if he founded monasteries, and inscribed over their portals: "The
way to holiness,"--I should still say: What good is it! it is a new
folly!

He hath founded for himself a penance-house and refuge-house: much good
may it do! But I do not believe in it.

In solitude there groweth what any one bringeth into it--also the brute
in one's nature. Thus is solitude inadvisable unto many.

Hath there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints of
the wilderness? AROUND THEM was not only the devil loose--but also the
swine.

14.

Shy, ashamed, awkward, like the tiger whose spring hath failed--thus, ye
higher men, have I often seen you slink aside. A CAST which ye made had
failed.

But what doth it matter, ye dice-players! Ye had not learned to play and
mock, as one must play and mock! Do we not ever sit at a great table of
mocking and playing?

And if great things have been a failure with you, have ye yourselves
therefore--been a failure? And if ye yourselves have been a failure,
hath man therefore--been a failure? If man, however, hath been a
failure: well then! never mind!

15.

The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed. Ye higher
men here, have ye not all--been failures?

Be of good cheer; what doth it matter? How much is still possible! Learn
to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh!

What wonder even that ye have failed and only half-succeeded, ye
half-shattered ones! Doth not--man's FUTURE strive and struggle in you?

Man's furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious
powers--do not all these foam through one another in your vessel?

What wonder that many a vessel shattereth! Learn to laugh at yourselves,
as ye ought to laugh! Ye higher men, O, how much is still possible!

And verily, how much hath already succeeded! How rich is this earth in
small, good, perfect things, in well-constituted things!

Set around you small, good, perfect things, ye higher men. Their golden
maturity healeth the heart. The perfect teacheth one to hope.

16.

What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the
word of him who said: "Woe unto them that laugh now!"

Did he himself find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought
badly. A child even findeth cause for it.

He--did not love sufficiently: otherwise would he also have loved
us, the laughing ones! But he hated and hooted us; wailing and
teeth-gnashing did he promise us.

Must one then curse immediately, when one doth not love? That--seemeth
to me bad taste. Thus did he, however, this absolute one. He sprang from
the populace.

And he himself just did not love sufficiently; otherwise would he have
raged less because people did not love him. All great love doth not SEEK
love:--it seeketh more.

Go out of the way of all such absolute ones! They are a poor sickly
type, a populace-type: they look at this life with ill-will, they have
an evil eye for this earth.

Go out of the way of all such absolute ones! They have heavy feet and
sultry hearts:--they do not know how to dance. How could the earth be
light to such ones!

17.

Tortuously do all good things come nigh to their goal. Like cats
they curve their backs, they purr inwardly with their approaching
happiness,--all good things laugh.

His step betrayeth whether a person already walketh on HIS OWN path:
just see me walk! He, however, who cometh nigh to his goal, danceth.

And verily, a statue have I not become, not yet do I stand there stiff,
stupid and stony, like a pillar; I love fast racing.

And though there be on earth fens and dense afflictions, he who hath
light feet runneth even across the mud, and danceth, as upon well-swept
ice.

Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not forget your
legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and better still, if ye
stand upon your heads!

18.

This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown: I myself have put
on this crown, I myself have consecrated my laughter. No one else have I
found to-day potent enough for this.

Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one, who beckoneth with
his pinions, one ready for flight, beckoning unto all birds, ready and
prepared, a blissfully light-spirited one:--

Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, no impatient
one, no absolute one, one who loveth leaps and side-leaps; I myself have
put on this crown!

19.

Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not forget your
legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and better still if ye
stand upon your heads!

There are also heavy animals in a state of happiness, there are
club-footed ones from the beginning. Curiously do they exert themselves,
like an elephant which endeavoureth to stand upon its head.

Better, however, to be foolish with happiness than foolish with
misfortune, better to dance awkwardly than walk lamely. So learn, I
pray you, my wisdom, ye higher men: even the worst thing hath two good
reverse sides,--

--Even the worst thing hath good dancing-legs: so learn, I pray you, ye
higher men, to put yourselves on your proper legs!

So unlearn, I pray you, the sorrow-sighing, and all the
populace-sadness! Oh, how sad the buffoons of the populace seem to me
to-day! This to-day, however, is that of the populace.

20.

Do like unto the wind when it rusheth forth from its mountain-caves:
unto its own piping will it dance; the seas tremble and leap under its
footsteps.

That which giveth wings to asses, that which milketh the lionesses:--
praised be that good, unruly spirit, which cometh like a hurricane unto
all the present and unto all the populace,--

--Which is hostile to thistle-heads and puzzle-heads, and to all
withered leaves and weeds:--praised be this wild, good, free spirit of
the storm, which danceth upon fens and afflictions, as upon meadows!

Which hateth the consumptive populace-dogs, and all the ill-constituted,
sullen brood:--praised be this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing
storm, which bloweth dust into the eyes of all the melanopic and
melancholic!

Ye higher men, the worst thing in you is that ye have none of you
learned to dance as ye ought to dance--to dance beyond yourselves! What
doth it matter that ye have failed!

How many things are still possible! So LEARN to laugh beyond yourselves!
Lift up your hearts, ye good dancers, high! higher! And do not forget
the good laughter!

This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown: to you my brethren
do I cast this crown! Laughing have I consecrated; ye higher men, LEARN,
I pray you--to laugh!




LXXIV. THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY.

1.

When Zarathustra spake these sayings, he stood nigh to the entrance of
his cave; with the last words, however, he slipped away from his guests,
and fled for a little while into the open air.

"O pure odours around me," cried he, "O blessed stillness around me! But
where are mine animals? Hither, hither, mine eagle and my serpent!

Tell me, mine animals: these higher men, all of them--do they perhaps
not SMELL well? O pure odours around me! Now only do I know and feel how
I love you, mine animals."

--And Zarathustra said once more: "I love you, mine animals!" The eagle,
however, and the serpent pressed close to him when he spake these
words, and looked up to him. In this attitude were they all three silent
together, and sniffed and sipped the good air with one another. For the
air here outside was better than with the higher men.

2.

Hardly, however, had Zarathustra left the cave when the old magician got
up, looked cunningly about him, and said: "He is gone!

And already, ye higher men--let me tickle you with this complimentary
and flattering name, as he himself doeth--already doth mine evil spirit
of deceit and magic attack me, my melancholy devil,

--Which is an adversary to this Zarathustra from the very heart: forgive
it for this! Now doth it wish to conjure before you, it hath just ITS
hour; in vain do I struggle with this evil spirit.

Unto all of you, whatever honours ye like to assume in your names,
whether ye call yourselves 'the free spirits' or 'the conscientious,'
or 'the penitents of the spirit,' or 'the unfettered,' or 'the great
longers,'--

--Unto all of you, who like me suffer FROM THE GREAT LOATHING, to
whom the old God hath died, and as yet no new God lieth in cradles and
swaddling clothes--unto all of you is mine evil spirit and magic-devil
favourable.

I know you, ye higher men, I know him,--I know also this fiend whom I
love in spite of me, this Zarathustra: he himself often seemeth to me
like the beautiful mask of a saint,

--Like a new strange mummery in which mine evil spirit, the melancholy
devil, delighteth:--I love Zarathustra, so doth it often seem to me, for
the sake of mine evil spirit.--

But already doth IT attack me and constrain me, this spirit of
melancholy, this evening-twilight devil: and verily, ye higher men, it
hath a longing--

--Open your eyes!--it hath a longing to come NAKED, whether male or
female, I do not yet know: but it cometh, it constraineth me, alas! open
your wits!

The day dieth out, unto all things cometh now the evening, also unto
the best things; hear now, and see, ye higher men, what devil--man or
woman--this spirit of evening-melancholy is!"

Thus spake the old magician, looked cunningly about him, and then seized
his harp.

3.

     In evening's limpid air,
     What time the dew's soothings
     Unto the earth downpour,
     Invisibly and unheard--
     For tender shoe-gear wear
     The soothing dews, like all that's kind-gentle--:
     Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart,
     How once thou thirstedest
     For heaven's kindly teardrops and dew's down-droppings,
     All singed and weary thirstedest,
     What time on yellow grass-pathways
     Wicked, occidental sunny glances
     Through sombre trees about thee sported,
     Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting?

     "Of TRUTH the wooer?  Thou?"--so taunted they--
     "Nay!  Merely poet!
     A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling,
     That aye must lie,
     That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie:
     For booty lusting,
     Motley masked,
     Self-hidden, shrouded,
     Himself his booty--
     HE--of truth the wooer?
     Nay!  Mere fool!  Mere poet!
     Just motley speaking,
     From mask of fool confusedly shouting,
     Circumambling on fabricated word-bridges,
     On motley rainbow-arches,
     'Twixt the spurious heavenly,
     And spurious earthly,
     Round us roving, round us soaring,--
     MERE FOOL!  MERE POET!

     HE--of truth the wooer?
     Not still, stiff, smooth and cold,
     Become an image,
     A godlike statue,
     Set up in front of temples,
     As a God's own door-guard:
     Nay! hostile to all such truthfulness-statues,
     In every desert homelier than at temples,
     With cattish wantonness,
     Through every window leaping
     Quickly into chances,
     Every wild forest a-sniffing,
     Greedily-longingly, sniffing,
     That thou, in wild forests,
     'Mong the motley-speckled fierce creatures,
     Shouldest rove, sinful-sound and fine-coloured,
     With longing lips smacking,
     Blessedly mocking, blessedly hellish, blessedly bloodthirsty,
     Robbing, skulking, lying--roving:--

     Or unto eagles like which fixedly,
     Long adown the precipice look,
     Adown THEIR precipice:--
     Oh, how they whirl down now,
     Thereunder, therein,
     To ever deeper profoundness whirling!--
     Then,
     Sudden,
     With aim aright,
     With quivering flight,
     On LAMBKINS pouncing,
     Headlong down, sore-hungry,
     For lambkins longing,
     Fierce 'gainst all lamb-spirits,
     Furious-fierce all that look
     Sheeplike, or lambeyed, or crisp-woolly,
     --Grey, with lambsheep kindliness!

     Even thus,
     Eaglelike, pantherlike,
     Are the poet's desires,
     Are THINE OWN desires 'neath a thousand guises,
     Thou fool!  Thou poet!
     Thou who all mankind viewedst--
     So God, as sheep--:
     The God TO REND within mankind,
     As the sheep in mankind,
     And in rending LAUGHING--

     THAT, THAT is thine own blessedness!
     Of a panther and eagle--blessedness!
     Of a poet and fool--the blessedness!--

     In evening's limpid air,
     What time the moon's sickle,
     Green, 'twixt the purple-glowings,
     And jealous, steal'th forth:
     --Of day the foe,
     With every step in secret,
     The rosy garland-hammocks
     Downsickling, till they've sunken
     Down nightwards, faded, downsunken:--

     Thus had I sunken one day
     From mine own truth-insanity,
     From mine own fervid day-longings,
     Of day aweary, sick of sunshine,
     --Sunk downwards, evenwards, shadowwards:
     By one sole trueness
     All scorched and thirsty:
     --Bethinkst thou still, bethinkst thou, burning heart,
     How then thou thirstedest?--
     THAT I SHOULD BANNED BE
     FROM ALL THE TRUENESS!
     MERE FOOL!  MERE POET!




LXXV. SCIENCE.

Thus sang the magician; and all who were present went like birds
unawares into the net of his artful and melancholy voluptuousness.
Only the spiritually conscientious one had not been caught: he at once
snatched the harp from the magician and called out: "Air! Let in good
air! Let in Zarathustra! Thou makest this cave sultry and poisonous,
thou bad old magician!

Thou seducest, thou false one, thou subtle one, to unknown desires and
deserts. And alas, that such as thou should talk and make ado about the
TRUTH!

Alas, to all free spirits who are not on their guard against SUCH
magicians! It is all over with their freedom: thou teachest and temptest
back into prisons,--

--Thou old melancholy devil, out of thy lament soundeth a lurement: thou
resemblest those who with their praise of chastity secretly invite to
voluptuousness!"

Thus spake the conscientious one; the old magician, however, looked
about him, enjoying his triumph, and on that account put up with the
annoyance which the conscientious one caused him. "Be still!" said he
with modest voice, "good songs want to re-echo well; after good songs
one should be long silent.

Thus do all those present, the higher men. Thou, however, hast perhaps
understood but little of my song? In thee there is little of the magic
spirit.

"Thou praisest me," replied the conscientious one, "in that thou
separatest me from thyself; very well! But, ye others, what do I see? Ye
still sit there, all of you, with lusting eyes--:

Ye free spirits, whither hath your freedom gone! Ye almost seem to me
to resemble those who have long looked at bad girls dancing naked: your
souls themselves dance!

In you, ye higher men, there must be more of that which the magician
calleth his evil spirit of magic and deceit:--we must indeed be
different.

And verily, we spake and thought long enough together ere Zarathustra
came home to his cave, for me not to be unaware that we ARE different.

We SEEK different things even here aloft, ye and I. For I seek more
SECURITY; on that account have I come to Zarathustra. For he is still
the most steadfast tower and will--

--To-day, when everything tottereth, when all the earth quaketh. Ye,
however, when I see what eyes ye make, it almost seemeth to me that ye
seek MORE INSECURITY,

--More horror, more danger, more earthquake. Ye long (it almost seemeth
so to me--forgive my presumption, ye higher men)--

--Ye long for the worst and dangerousest life, which frighteneth ME
most,--for the life of wild beasts, for forests, caves, steep mountains
and labyrinthine gorges.

And it is not those who lead OUT OF danger that please you best, but
those who lead you away from all paths, the misleaders. But if
such longing in you be ACTUAL, it seemeth to me nevertheless to be
IMPOSSIBLE.

For fear--that is man's original and fundamental feeling; through fear
everything is explained, original sin and original virtue. Through fear
there grew also MY virtue, that is to say: Science.

For fear of wild animals--that hath been longest fostered in
man, inclusive of the animal which he concealeth and feareth in
himself:--Zarathustra calleth it 'the beast inside.'

Such prolonged ancient fear, at last become subtle, spiritual and
intellectual--at present, me thinketh, it is called SCIENCE."--

Thus spake the conscientious one; but Zarathustra, who had just come
back into his cave and had heard and divined the last discourse, threw a
handful of roses to the conscientious one, and laughed on account of
his "truths." "Why!" he exclaimed, "what did I hear just now? Verily, it
seemeth to me, thou art a fool, or else I myself am one: and quietly and
quickly will I put thy 'truth' upside down.

For FEAR--is an exception with us. Courage, however, and adventure, and
delight in the uncertain, in the unattempted--COURAGE seemeth to me the
entire primitive history of man.

The wildest and most courageous animals hath he envied and robbed of all
their virtues: thus only did he become--man.

THIS courage, at last become subtle, spiritual and intellectual, this
human courage, with eagle's pinions and serpent's wisdom: THIS, it
seemeth to me, is called at present--"

"ZARATHUSTRA!" cried all of them there assembled, as if with one voice,
and burst out at the same time into a great laughter; there arose,
however, from them as it were a heavy cloud. Even the magician laughed,
and said wisely: "Well! It is gone, mine evil spirit!

And did I not myself warn you against it when I said that it was a
deceiver, a lying and deceiving spirit?

Especially when it showeth itself naked. But what can _I_ do with regard
to its tricks! Have _I_ created it and the world?

Well! Let us be good again, and of good cheer! And although Zarathustra
looketh with evil eye--just see him! he disliketh me--:

--Ere night cometh will he again learn to love and laud me; he cannot
live long without committing such follies.

HE--loveth his enemies: this art knoweth he better than any one I have
seen. But he taketh revenge for it--on his friends!"

Thus spake the old magician, and the higher men applauded him; so that
Zarathustra went round, and mischievously and lovingly shook hands with
his friends,--like one who hath to make amends and apologise to every
one for something. When however he had thereby come to the door of his
cave, lo, then had he again a longing for the good air outside, and for
his animals,--and wished to steal out.




LXXVI. AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT.

1.

"Go not away!" said then the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra's
shadow, "abide with us--otherwise the old gloomy affliction might again
fall upon us.

Now hath that old magician given us of his worst for our good, and
lo! the good, pious pope there hath tears in his eyes, and hath quite
embarked again upon the sea of melancholy.

Those kings may well put on a good air before us still: for that have
THEY learned best of us all at present! Had they however no one to see
them, I wager that with them also the bad game would again commence,--

--The bad game of drifting clouds, of damp melancholy, of curtained
heavens, of stolen suns, of howling autumn-winds,

--The bad game of our howling and crying for help! Abide with us, O
Zarathustra! Here there is much concealed misery that wisheth to speak,
much evening, much cloud, much damp air!

Thou hast nourished us with strong food for men, and powerful proverbs:
do not let the weakly, womanly spirits attack us anew at dessert!

Thou alone makest the air around thee strong and clear! Did I ever find
anywhere on earth such good air as with thee in thy cave?

Many lands have I seen, my nose hath learned to test and estimate many
kinds of air: but with thee do my nostrils taste their greatest delight!

Unless it be,--unless it be--, do forgive an old recollection! Forgive
me an old after-dinner song, which I once composed amongst daughters of
the desert:--

For with them was there equally good, clear, Oriental air; there was I
furthest from cloudy, damp, melancholy Old-Europe!

Then did I love such Oriental maidens and other blue kingdoms of heaven,
over which hang no clouds and no thoughts.

Ye would not believe how charmingly they sat there, when they did
not dance, profound, but without thoughts, like little secrets, like
beribboned riddles, like dessert-nuts--

Many-hued and foreign, forsooth! but without clouds: riddles which
can be guessed: to please such maidens I then composed an after-dinner
psalm."

Thus spake the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra's shadow; and
before any one answered him, he had seized the harp of the old magician,
crossed his legs, and looked calmly and sagely around him:--with his
nostrils, however, he inhaled the air slowly and questioningly, like one
who in new countries tasteth new foreign air. Afterward he began to sing
with a kind of roaring.

2.

THE DESERTS GROW: WOE HIM WHO DOTH THEM HIDE!

     --Ha!
     Solemnly!
     In effect solemnly!
     A worthy beginning!
     Afric manner, solemnly!
     Of a lion worthy,
     Or perhaps of a virtuous howl-monkey--
     --But it's naught to you,
     Ye friendly damsels dearly loved,
     At whose own feet to me,
     The first occasion,
     To a European under palm-trees,
     A seat is now granted.  Selah.

     Wonderful, truly!
     Here do I sit now,
     The desert nigh, and yet I am
     So far still from the desert,
     Even in naught yet deserted:
     That is, I'm swallowed down
     By this the smallest oasis--:
     --It opened up just yawning,
     Its loveliest mouth agape,
     Most sweet-odoured of all mouthlets:
     Then fell I right in,
     Right down, right through--in 'mong you,
     Ye friendly damsels dearly loved!  Selah.

     Hail! hail! to that whale, fishlike,
     If it thus for its guest's convenience
     Made things nice!--(ye well know,
     Surely, my learned allusion?)
     Hail to its belly,
     If it had e'er
     A such loveliest oasis-belly
     As this is:  though however I doubt about it,
     --With this come I out of Old-Europe,
     That doubt'th more eagerly than doth any
     Elderly married woman.
     May the Lord improve it!
     Amen!

     Here do I sit now,
     In this the smallest oasis,
     Like a date indeed,
     Brown, quite sweet, gold-suppurating,
     For rounded mouth of maiden longing,
     But yet still more for youthful, maidlike,
     Ice-cold and snow-white and incisory
     Front teeth:  and for such assuredly,
     Pine the hearts all of ardent date-fruits.  Selah.

     To the there-named south-fruits now,
     Similar, all-too-similar,
     Do I lie here; by little
     Flying insects
     Round-sniffled and round-played,
     And also by yet littler,
     Foolisher, and peccabler
     Wishes and phantasies,--
     Environed by you,
     Ye silent, presentientest
     Maiden-kittens,
     Dudu and Suleika,
     --ROUNDSPHINXED, that into one word
     I may crowd much feeling:
     (Forgive me, O God,
     All such speech-sinning!)
     --Sit I here the best of air sniffling,
     Paradisal air, truly,
     Bright and buoyant air, golden-mottled,
     As goodly air as ever
     From lunar orb downfell--
     Be it by hazard,
     Or supervened it by arrogancy?
     As the ancient poets relate it.
     But doubter, I'm now calling it
     In question:  with this do I come indeed
     Out of Europe,
     That doubt'th more eagerly than doth any
     Elderly married woman.
     May the Lord improve it!
     Amen.

     This the finest air drinking,
     With nostrils out-swelled like goblets,
     Lacking future, lacking remembrances
     Thus do I sit here, ye
     Friendly damsels dearly loved,
     And look at the palm-tree there,
     How it, to a dance-girl, like,
     Doth bow and bend and on its haunches bob,
     --One doth it too, when one view'th it long!--
     To a dance-girl like, who as it seem'th to me,
     Too long, and dangerously persistent,
     Always, always, just on SINGLE leg hath stood?
     --Then forgot she thereby, as it seem'th to me,
     The OTHER leg?
     For vainly I, at least,
     Did search for the amissing
     Fellow-jewel
     --Namely, the other leg--
     In the sanctified precincts,
     Nigh her very dearest, very tenderest,
     Flapping and fluttering and flickering skirting.
     Yea, if ye should, ye beauteous friendly ones,
     Quite take my word:
     She hath, alas! LOST it!
     Hu!  Hu!  Hu!  Hu!  Hu!
     It is away!
     For ever away!
     The other leg!
     Oh, pity for that loveliest other leg!
     Where may it now tarry, all-forsaken weeping?
     The lonesomest leg?
     In fear perhaps before a
     Furious, yellow, blond and curled
     Leonine monster?  Or perhaps even
     Gnawed away, nibbled badly--
     Most wretched, woeful! woeful! nibbled badly!  Selah.

     Oh, weep ye not,
     Gentle spirits!
     Weep ye not, ye
     Date-fruit spirits!  Milk-bosoms!
     Ye sweetwood-heart
     Purselets!
     Weep ye no more,
     Pallid Dudu!
     Be a man, Suleika!  Bold!  Bold!
     --Or else should there perhaps
     Something strengthening, heart-strengthening,
     Here most proper be?
     Some inspiring text?
     Some solemn exhortation?--
     Ha!  Up now! honour!
     Moral honour!  European honour!
     Blow again, continue,
     Bellows-box of virtue!
     Ha!
     Once more thy roaring,
     Thy moral roaring!
     As a virtuous lion
     Nigh the daughters of deserts roaring!
     --For virtue's out-howl,
     Ye very dearest maidens,
     Is more than every
     European fervour, European hot-hunger!
     And now do I stand here,
     As European,
     I can't be different, God's help to me!
     Amen!

THE DESERTS GROW: WOE HIM WHO DOTH THEM HIDE!




LXXVII. THE AWAKENING.

1.

After the song of the wanderer and shadow, the cave became all at once
full of noise and laughter: and since the assembled guests all spake
simultaneously, and even the ass, encouraged thereby, no longer
remained silent, a little aversion and scorn for his visitors came over
Zarathustra, although he rejoiced at their gladness. For it seemed to
him a sign of convalescence. So he slipped out into the open air and
spake to his animals.

"Whither hath their distress now gone?" said he, and already did he
himself feel relieved of his petty disgust--"with me, it seemeth that
they have unlearned their cries of distress!

--Though, alas! not yet their crying." And Zarathustra stopped his
ears, for just then did the YE-A of the ass mix strangely with the noisy
jubilation of those higher men.

"They are merry," he began again, "and who knoweth? perhaps at their
host's expense; and if they have learned of me to laugh, still it is not
MY laughter they have learned.

But what matter about that! They are old people: they recover in their
own way, they laugh in their own way; mine ears have already endured
worse and have not become peevish.

This day is a victory: he already yieldeth, he fleeth, THE SPIRIT OF
GRAVITY, mine old arch-enemy! How well this day is about to end, which
began so badly and gloomily!

And it is ABOUT TO end. Already cometh the evening: over the sea
rideth it hither, the good rider! How it bobbeth, the blessed one, the
home-returning one, in its purple saddles!

The sky gazeth brightly thereon, the world lieth deep. Oh, all ye
strange ones who have come to me, it is already worth while to have
lived with me!"

Thus spake Zarathustra. And again came the cries and laughter of the
higher men out of the cave: then began he anew:

"They bite at it, my bait taketh, there departeth also from them their
enemy, the spirit of gravity. Now do they learn to laugh at themselves:
do I hear rightly?

My virile food taketh effect, my strong and savoury sayings: and verily,
I did not nourish them with flatulent vegetables! But with warrior-food,
with conqueror-food: new desires did I awaken.

New hopes are in their arms and legs, their hearts expand. They find new
words, soon will their spirits breathe wantonness.

Such food may sure enough not be proper for children, nor even for
longing girls old and young. One persuadeth their bowels otherwise; I am
not their physician and teacher.

The DISGUST departeth from these higher men; well! that is my victory.
In my domain they become assured; all stupid shame fleeth away; they
empty themselves.

They empty their hearts, good times return unto them, they keep holiday
and ruminate,--they become THANKFUL.

THAT do I take as the best sign: they become thankful. Not long will it
be ere they devise festivals, and put up memorials to their old joys.

They are CONVALESCENTS!" Thus spake Zarathustra joyfully to his heart
and gazed outward; his animals, however, pressed up to him, and honoured
his happiness and his silence.

2.

All on a sudden however, Zarathustra's ear was frightened: for the cave
which had hitherto been full of noise and laughter, became all at once
still as death;--his nose, however, smelt a sweet-scented vapour and
incense-odour, as if from burning pine-cones.

"What happeneth? What are they about?" he asked himself, and stole up
to the entrance, that he might be able unobserved to see his guests.
But wonder upon wonder! what was he then obliged to behold with his own
eyes!

"They have all of them become PIOUS again, they PRAY, they are
mad!"--said he, and was astonished beyond measure. And forsooth! all
these higher men, the two kings, the pope out of service, the evil
magician, the voluntary beggar, the wanderer and shadow, the old
soothsayer, the spiritually conscientious one, and the ugliest man--they
all lay on their knees like children and credulous old women, and
worshipped the ass. And just then began the ugliest man to gurgle and
snort, as if something unutterable in him tried to find expression;
when, however, he had actually found words, behold! it was a pious,
strange litany in praise of the adored and censed ass. And the litany
sounded thus:

Amen! And glory and honour and wisdom and thanks and praise and strength
be to our God, from everlasting to everlasting!

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

He carrieth our burdens, he hath taken upon him the form of a servant,
he is patient of heart and never saith Nay; and he who loveth his God
chastiseth him.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

He speaketh not: except that he ever saith Yea to the world which
he created: thus doth he extol his world. It is his artfulness that
speaketh not: thus is he rarely found wrong.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

Uncomely goeth he through the world. Grey is the favourite colour in
which he wrappeth his virtue. Hath he spirit, then doth he conceal it;
every one, however, believeth in his long ears.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

What hidden wisdom it is to wear long ears, and only to say Yea and
never Nay! Hath he not created the world in his own image, namely, as
stupid as possible?

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

Thou goest straight and crooked ways; it concerneth thee little what
seemeth straight or crooked unto us men. Beyond good and evil is thy
domain. It is thine innocence not to know what innocence is.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

Lo! how thou spurnest none from thee, neither beggars nor kings. Thou
sufferest little children to come unto thee, and when the bad boys decoy
thee, then sayest thou simply, YE-A.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.

Thou lovest she-asses and fresh figs, thou art no food-despiser. A
thistle tickleth thy heart when thou chancest to be hungry. There is the
wisdom of a God therein.

--The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.




LXXVIII. THE ASS-FESTIVAL.

1.

At this place in the litany, however, Zarathustra could no longer
control himself; he himself cried out YE-A, louder even than the ass,
and sprang into the midst of his maddened guests. "Whatever are you
about, ye grown-up children?" he exclaimed, pulling up the praying ones
from the ground. "Alas, if any one else, except Zarathustra, had seen
you:

Every one would think you the worst blasphemers, or the very foolishest
old women, with your new belief!

And thou thyself, thou old pope, how is it in accordance with thee, to
adore an ass in such a manner as God?"--

"O Zarathustra," answered the pope, "forgive me, but in divine matters
I am more enlightened even than thou. And it is right that it should be
so.

Better to adore God so, in this form, than in no form at all! Think over
this saying, mine exalted friend: thou wilt readily divine that in such
a saying there is wisdom.

He who said 'God is a Spirit'--made the greatest stride and slide
hitherto made on earth towards unbelief: such a dictum is not easily
amended again on earth!

Mine old heart leapeth and boundeth because there is still something
to adore on earth. Forgive it, O Zarathustra, to an old, pious
pontiff-heart!--"

--"And thou," said Zarathustra to the wanderer and shadow, "thou callest
and thinkest thyself a free spirit? And thou here practisest such
idolatry and hierolatry?

Worse verily, doest thou here than with thy bad brown girls, thou bad,
new believer!"

"It is sad enough," answered the wanderer and shadow, "thou art right:
but how can I help it! The old God liveth again, O Zarathustra, thou
mayst say what thou wilt.

The ugliest man is to blame for it all: he hath reawakened him. And
if he say that he once killed him, with Gods DEATH is always just a
prejudice."

--"And thou," said Zarathustra, "thou bad old magician, what didst thou
do! Who ought to believe any longer in thee in this free age, when THOU
believest in such divine donkeyism?

It was a stupid thing that thou didst; how couldst thou, a shrewd man,
do such a stupid thing!"

"O Zarathustra," answered the shrewd magician, "thou art right, it was a
stupid thing,--it was also repugnant to me."

--"And thou even," said Zarathustra to the spiritually conscientious
one, "consider, and put thy finger to thy nose! Doth nothing go against
thy conscience here? Is thy spirit not too cleanly for this praying and
the fumes of those devotees?"

"There is something therein," said the spiritually conscientious one,
and put his finger to his nose, "there is something in this spectacle
which even doeth good to my conscience.

Perhaps I dare not believe in God: certain it is however, that God
seemeth to me most worthy of belief in this form.

God is said to be eternal, according to the testimony of the most pious:
he who hath so much time taketh his time. As slow and as stupid as
possible: THEREBY can such a one nevertheless go very far.

And he who hath too much spirit might well become infatuated with
stupidity and folly. Think of thyself, O Zarathustra!

Thou thyself--verily! even thou couldst well become an ass through
superabundance of wisdom.

Doth not the true sage willingly walk on the crookedest paths? The
evidence teacheth it, O Zarathustra,--THINE OWN evidence!"

--"And thou thyself, finally," said Zarathustra, and turned towards the
ugliest man, who still lay on the ground stretching up his arm to the
ass (for he gave it wine to drink). "Say, thou nondescript, what hast
thou been about!

Thou seemest to me transformed, thine eyes glow, the mantle of the
sublime covereth thine ugliness: WHAT didst thou do?

Is it then true what they say, that thou hast again awakened him? And
why? Was he not for good reasons killed and made away with?

Thou thyself seemest to me awakened: what didst thou do? why didst THOU
turn round? Why didst THOU get converted? Speak, thou nondescript!"

"O Zarathustra," answered the ugliest man, "thou art a rogue!

Whether HE yet liveth, or again liveth, or is thoroughly dead--which of
us both knoweth that best? I ask thee.

One thing however do I know,--from thyself did I learn it once, O
Zarathustra: he who wanteth to kill most thoroughly, LAUGHETH.

'Not by wrath but by laughter doth one kill'--thus spakest thou once,
O Zarathustra, thou hidden one, thou destroyer without wrath, thou
dangerous saint,--thou art a rogue!"

2.

Then, however, did it come to pass that Zarathustra, astonished at such
merely roguish answers, jumped back to the door of his cave, and turning
towards all his guests, cried out with a strong voice:

"O ye wags, all of you, ye buffoons! Why do ye dissemble and disguise
yourselves before me!

How the hearts of all of you convulsed with delight and wickedness,
because ye had at last become again like little children--namely,
pious,--

--Because ye at last did again as children do--namely, prayed, folded
your hands and said 'good God'!

But now leave, I pray you, THIS nursery, mine own cave, where to-day
all childishness is carried on. Cool down, here outside, your hot
child-wantonness and heart-tumult!

To be sure: except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into
THAT kingdom of heaven." (And Zarathustra pointed aloft with his hands.)

"But we do not at all want to enter into the kingdom of heaven: we have
become men,--SO WE WANT THE KINGDOM OF EARTH."

3.

And once more began Zarathustra to speak. "O my new friends," said he,--
"ye strange ones, ye higher men, how well do ye now please me,--

--Since ye have again become joyful! Ye have, verily, all blossomed
forth: it seemeth to me that for such flowers as you, NEW FESTIVALS are
required.

--A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and ass-festival, some
old joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow your souls bright.

Forget not this night and this ass-festival, ye higher men! THAT did ye
devise when with me, that do I take as a good omen,--such things only
the convalescents devise!

And should ye celebrate it again, this ass-festival, do it from love to
yourselves, do it also from love to me! And in remembrance of me!"

Thus spake Zarathustra.




LXXIX. THE DRUNKEN SONG.

1.

Meanwhile one after another had gone out into the open air, and into the
cool, thoughtful night; Zarathustra himself, however, led the ugliest
man by the hand, that he might show him his night-world, and the great
round moon, and the silvery water-falls near his cave. There they at
last stood still beside one another; all of them old people, but with
comforted, brave hearts, and astonished in themselves that it was so
well with them on earth; the mystery of the night, however, came nigher
and nigher to their hearts. And anew Zarathustra thought to himself:
"Oh, how well do they now please me, these higher men!"--but he did not
say it aloud, for he respected their happiness and their silence.--

Then, however, there happened that which in this astonishing long day
was most astonishing: the ugliest man began once more and for the last
time to gurgle and snort, and when he had at length found expression,
behold! there sprang a question plump and plain out of his mouth, a
good, deep, clear question, which moved the hearts of all who listened
to him.

"My friends, all of you," said the ugliest man, "what think ye? For the
sake of this day--_I_ am for the first time content to have lived mine
entire life.

And that I testify so much is still not enough for me. It is worth while
living on the earth: one day, one festival with Zarathustra, hath taught
me to love the earth.

'Was THAT--life?' will I say unto death. 'Well! Once more!'

My friends, what think ye? Will ye not, like me, say unto death: 'Was
THAT--life? For the sake of Zarathustra, well! Once more!'"--

Thus spake the ugliest man; it was not, however, far from midnight.
And what took place then, think ye? As soon as the higher men heard his
question, they became all at once conscious of their transformation and
convalescence, and of him who was the cause thereof: then did they rush
up to Zarathustra, thanking, honouring, caressing him, and kissing his
hands, each in his own peculiar way; so that some laughed and some wept.
The old soothsayer, however, danced with delight; and though he was
then, as some narrators suppose, full of sweet wine, he was certainly
still fuller of sweet life, and had renounced all weariness. There are
even those who narrate that the ass then danced: for not in vain had the
ugliest man previously given it wine to drink. That may be the case, or
it may be otherwise; and if in truth the ass did not dance that evening,
there nevertheless happened then greater and rarer wonders than
the dancing of an ass would have been. In short, as the proverb of
Zarathustra saith: "What doth it matter!"

2.

When, however, this took place with the ugliest man, Zarathustra stood
there like one drunken: his glance dulled, his tongue faltered and his
feet staggered. And who could divine what thoughts then passed through
Zarathustra's soul? Apparently, however, his spirit retreated and fled
in advance and was in remote distances, and as it were "wandering on
high mountain-ridges," as it standeth written, "'twixt two seas,

--Wandering 'twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud." Gradually,
however, while the higher men held him in their arms, he came back to
himself a little, and resisted with his hands the crowd of the honouring
and caring ones; but he did not speak. All at once, however, he turned
his head quickly, for he seemed to hear something: then laid he his
finger on his mouth and said: "COME!"

And immediately it became still and mysterious round about; from
the depth however there came up slowly the sound of a clock-bell.
Zarathustra listened thereto, like the higher men; then, however, laid
he his finger on his mouth the second time, and said again: "COME! COME!
IT IS GETTING ON TO MIDNIGHT!"--and his voice had changed. But still
he had not moved from the spot. Then it became yet stiller and more
mysterious, and everything hearkened, even the ass, and Zarathustra's
noble animals, the eagle and the serpent,--likewise the cave of
Zarathustra and the big cool moon, and the night itself. Zarathustra,
however, laid his hand upon his mouth for the third time, and said:

COME! COME! COME! LET US NOW WANDER! IT IS THE HOUR: LET US WANDER INTO
THE NIGHT!

3.

Ye higher men, it is getting on to midnight: then will I say something
into your ears, as that old clock-bell saith it into mine ear,--

--As mysteriously, as frightfully, and as cordially as that midnight
clock-bell speaketh it to me, which hath experienced more than one man:

--Which hath already counted the smarting throbbings of your fathers'
hearts--ah! ah! how it sigheth! how it laugheth in its dream! the old,
deep, deep midnight!

Hush! Hush! Then is there many a thing heard which may not be heard
by day; now however, in the cool air, when even all the tumult of your
hearts hath become still,--

--Now doth it speak, now is it heard, now doth it steal into
overwakeful, nocturnal souls: ah! ah! how the midnight sigheth! how it
laugheth in its dream!

--Hearest thou not how it mysteriously, frightfully, and cordially
speaketh unto THEE, the old deep, deep midnight?

O MAN, TAKE HEED!

4.

Woe to me! Whither hath time gone? Have I not sunk into deep wells? The
world sleepeth--

Ah! Ah! The dog howleth, the moon shineth. Rather will I die, rather
will I die, than say unto you what my midnight-heart now thinketh.

Already have I died. It is all over. Spider, why spinnest thou around
me? Wilt thou have blood? Ah! Ah! The dew falleth, the hour cometh--

--The hour in which I frost and freeze, which asketh and asketh and
asketh: "Who hath sufficient courage for it?

--Who is to be master of the world? Who is going to say: THUS shall ye
flow, ye great and small streams!"

--The hour approacheth: O man, thou higher man, take heed! this talk is
for fine ears, for thine ears--WHAT SAITH DEEP MIDNIGHT'S VOICE INDEED?

5.

It carrieth me away, my soul danceth. Day's-work! Day's-work! Who is to
be master of the world?

The moon is cool, the wind is still. Ah! Ah! Have ye already flown high
enough? Ye have danced: a leg, nevertheless, is not a wing.

Ye good dancers, now is all delight over: wine hath become lees, every
cup hath become brittle, the sepulchres mutter.

Ye have not flown high enough: now do the sepulchres mutter: "Free the
dead! Why is it so long night? Doth not the moon make us drunken?"

Ye higher men, free the sepulchres, awaken the corpses! Ah, why doth the
worm still burrow? There approacheth, there approacheth, the hour,--

--There boometh the clock-bell, there thrilleth still the heart, there
burroweth still the wood-worm, the heart-worm. Ah! Ah! THE WORLD IS
DEEP!

6.

Sweet lyre! Sweet lyre! I love thy tone, thy drunken, ranunculine
tone!--how long, how far hath come unto me thy tone, from the distance,
from the ponds of love!

Thou old clock-bell, thou sweet lyre! Every pain hath torn thy heart,
father-pain, fathers'-pain, forefathers'-pain; thy speech hath become
ripe,--

--Ripe like the golden autumn and the afternoon, like mine anchorite
heart--now sayest thou: The world itself hath become ripe, the grape
turneth brown,

--Now doth it wish to die, to die of happiness. Ye higher men, do ye not
feel it? There welleth up mysteriously an odour,

--A perfume and odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, brown,
gold-wine-odour of old happiness,

--Of drunken midnight-death happiness, which singeth: the world is deep,
AND DEEPER THAN THE DAY COULD READ!

7.

Leave me alone! Leave me alone! I am too pure for thee. Touch me not!
Hath not my world just now become perfect?

My skin is too pure for thy hands. Leave me alone, thou dull, doltish,
stupid day! Is not the midnight brighter?

The purest are to be masters of the world, the least known, the
strongest, the midnight-souls, who are brighter and deeper than any day.

O day, thou gropest for me? Thou feelest for my happiness? For thee am I
rich, lonesome, a treasure-pit, a gold chamber?

O world, thou wantest ME? Am I worldly for thee? Am I spiritual for
thee? Am I divine for thee? But day and world, ye are too coarse,--

--Have cleverer hands, grasp after deeper happiness, after deeper
unhappiness, grasp after some God; grasp not after me:

--Mine unhappiness, my happiness is deep, thou strange day, but yet am I
no God, no God's-hell: DEEP IS ITS WOE.

8.

God's woe is deeper, thou strange world! Grasp at God's woe, not at me!
What am I! A drunken sweet lyre,--

--A midnight-lyre, a bell-frog, which no one understandeth, but which
MUST speak before deaf ones, ye higher men! For ye do not understand me!

Gone! Gone! O youth! O noontide! O afternoon! Now have come evening and
night and midnight,--the dog howleth, the wind:

--Is the wind not a dog? It whineth, it barketh, it howleth. Ah! Ah!
how she sigheth! how she laugheth, how she wheezeth and panteth, the
midnight!

How she just now speaketh soberly, this drunken poetess! hath she
perhaps overdrunk her drunkenness? hath she become overawake? doth she
ruminate?

--Her woe doth she ruminate over, in a dream, the old, deep
midnight--and still more her joy. For joy, although woe be deep, JOY IS
DEEPER STILL THAN GRIEF CAN BE.

9.

Thou grape-vine! Why dost thou praise me? Have I not cut thee! I am
cruel, thou bleedest--: what meaneth thy praise of my drunken cruelty?

"Whatever hath become perfect, everything mature--wanteth to die!" so
sayest thou. Blessed, blessed be the vintner's knife! But everything
immature wanteth to live: alas!

Woe saith: "Hence! Go! Away, thou woe!" But everything that suffereth
wanteth to live, that it may become mature and lively and longing,

--Longing for the further, the higher, the brighter. "I want heirs,"
so saith everything that suffereth, "I want children, I do not want
MYSELF,"--

Joy, however, doth not want heirs, it doth not want children,--joy
wanteth itself, it wanteth eternity, it wanteth recurrence, it wanteth
everything eternally-like-itself.

Woe saith: "Break, bleed, thou heart! Wander, thou leg! Thou wing, fly!
Onward! upward! thou pain!" Well! Cheer up! O mine old heart: WOE SAITH:
"HENCE! GO!"

10.

Ye higher men, what think ye? Am I a soothsayer? Or a dreamer? Or a
drunkard? Or a dream-reader? Or a midnight-bell?

Or a drop of dew? Or a fume and fragrance of eternity? Hear ye it not?
Smell ye it not? Just now hath my world become perfect, midnight is also
mid-day,--

Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun,--go
away! or ye will learn that a sage is also a fool.

Said ye ever Yea to one joy? O my friends, then said ye Yea also unto
ALL woe. All things are enlinked, enlaced and enamoured,--

--Wanted ye ever once to come twice; said ye ever: "Thou pleasest me,
happiness! Instant! Moment!" then wanted ye ALL to come back again!

--All anew, all eternal, all enlinked, enlaced and enamoured, Oh, then
did ye LOVE the world,--

--Ye eternal ones, ye love it eternally and for all time: and also unto
woe do ye say: Hence! Go! but come back! FOR JOYS ALL WANT--ETERNITY!

11.

All joy wanteth the eternity of all things, it wanteth honey, it
wanteth lees, it wanteth drunken midnight, it wanteth graves, it wanteth
grave-tears' consolation, it wanteth gilded evening-red--

--WHAT doth not joy want! it is thirstier, heartier, hungrier, more
frightful, more mysterious, than all woe: it wanteth ITSELF, it biteth
into ITSELF, the ring's will writheth in it,--

--It wanteth love, it wanteth hate, it is over-rich, it bestoweth, it
throweth away, it beggeth for some one to take from it, it thanketh the
taker, it would fain be hated,--

--So rich is joy that it thirsteth for woe, for hell, for hate, for
shame, for the lame, for the WORLD,--for this world, Oh, ye know it
indeed!

Ye higher men, for you doth it long, this joy, this irrepressible,
blessed joy--for your woe, ye failures! For failures, longeth all
eternal joy.

For joys all want themselves, therefore do they also want grief! O
happiness, O pain! Oh break, thou heart! Ye higher men, do learn it,
that joys want eternity.

--Joys want the eternity of ALL things, they WANT DEEP, PROFOUND
ETERNITY!

12.

Have ye now learned my song? Have ye divined what it would say? Well!
Cheer up! Ye higher men, sing now my roundelay!

Sing now yourselves the song, the name of which is "Once more," the
signification of which is "Unto all eternity!"--sing, ye higher men,
Zarathustra's roundelay!

     O man!  Take heed!
     What saith deep midnight's voice indeed?
     "I slept my sleep--,
     "From deepest dream I've woke, and plead:--
     "The world is deep,
     "And deeper than the day could read.
     "Deep is its woe--,
     "Joy--deeper still than grief can be:
     "Woe saith:  Hence!  Go!
     "But joys all want eternity-,
     "-Want deep, profound eternity!"




LXXX. THE SIGN.

In the morning, however, after this night, Zarathustra jumped up from
his couch, and, having girded his loins, he came out of his cave glowing
and strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains.

"Thou great star," spake he, as he had spoken once before, "thou deep
eye of happiness, what would be all thy happiness if thou hadst not
THOSE for whom thou shinest!

And if they remained in their chambers whilst thou art already awake,
and comest and bestowest and distributest, how would thy proud modesty
upbraid for it!

Well! they still sleep, these higher men, whilst _I_ am awake: THEY are
not my proper companions! Not for them do I wait here in my mountains.

At my work I want to be, at my day: but they understand not what are the
signs of my morning, my step--is not for them the awakening-call.

They still sleep in my cave; their dream still drinketh at my drunken
songs. The audient ear for ME--the OBEDIENT ear, is yet lacking in their
limbs."

--This had Zarathustra spoken to his heart when the sun arose: then
looked he inquiringly aloft, for he heard above him the sharp call of
his eagle. "Well!" called he upwards, "thus is it pleasing and proper to
me. Mine animals are awake, for I am awake.

Mine eagle is awake, and like me honoureth the sun. With eagle-talons
doth it grasp at the new light. Ye are my proper animals; I love you.

But still do I lack my proper men!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra; then, however, it happened that all on a sudden
he became aware that he was flocked around and fluttered around, as if
by innumerable birds,--the whizzing of so many wings, however, and the
crowding around his head was so great that he shut his eyes. And verily,
there came down upon him as it were a cloud, like a cloud of arrows
which poureth upon a new enemy. But behold, here it was a cloud of love,
and showered upon a new friend.

"What happeneth unto me?" thought Zarathustra in his astonished heart,
and slowly seated himself on the big stone which lay close to the exit
from his cave. But while he grasped about with his hands, around him,
above him and below him, and repelled the tender birds, behold, there
then happened to him something still stranger: for he grasped thereby
unawares into a mass of thick, warm, shaggy hair; at the same time,
however, there sounded before him a roar,--a long, soft lion-roar.

"THE SIGN COMETH," said Zarathustra, and a change came over his heart.
And in truth, when it turned clear before him, there lay a yellow,
powerful animal at his feet, resting its head on his knee,--unwilling to
leave him out of love, and doing like a dog which again findeth its old
master. The doves, however, were no less eager with their love than the
lion; and whenever a dove whisked over its nose, the lion shook its head
and wondered and laughed.

When all this went on Zarathustra spake only a word: "MY CHILDREN ARE
NIGH, MY CHILDREN"--, then he became quite mute. His heart, however,
was loosed, and from his eyes there dropped down tears and fell upon
his hands. And he took no further notice of anything, but sat there
motionless, without repelling the animals further. Then flew the doves
to and fro, and perched on his shoulder, and caressed his white hair,
and did not tire of their tenderness and joyousness. The strong lion,
however, licked always the tears that fell on Zarathustra's hands, and
roared and growled shyly. Thus did these animals do.--

All this went on for a long time, or a short time: for properly
speaking, there is NO time on earth for such things--. Meanwhile,
however, the higher men had awakened in Zarathustra's cave, and
marshalled themselves for a procession to go to meet Zarathustra, and
give him their morning greeting: for they had found when they awakened
that he no longer tarried with them. When, however, they reached the
door of the cave and the noise of their steps had preceded them, the
lion started violently; it turned away all at once from Zarathustra, and
roaring wildly, sprang towards the cave. The higher men, however, when
they heard the lion roaring, cried all aloud as with one voice, fled
back and vanished in an instant.

Zarathustra himself, however, stunned and strange, rose from his seat,
looked around him, stood there astonished, inquired of his heart,
bethought himself, and remained alone. "What did I hear?" said he at
last, slowly, "what happened unto me just now?"

But soon there came to him his recollection, and he took in at a glance
all that had taken place between yesterday and to-day. "Here is indeed
the stone," said he, and stroked his beard, "on IT sat I yester-morn;
and here came the soothsayer unto me, and here heard I first the cry
which I heard just now, the great cry of distress.

O ye higher men, YOUR distress was it that the old soothsayer foretold
to me yester-morn,--

--Unto your distress did he want to seduce and tempt me: 'O
Zarathustra,' said he to me, 'I come to seduce thee to thy last sin.'

To my last sin?" cried Zarathustra, and laughed angrily at his own
words: "WHAT hath been reserved for me as my last sin?"

--And once more Zarathustra became absorbed in himself, and sat down
again on the big stone and meditated. Suddenly he sprang up,--

"FELLOW-SUFFERING! FELLOW-SUFFERING WITH THE HIGHER MEN!" he cried out,
and his countenance changed into brass. "Well! THAT--hath had its time!

My suffering and my fellow-suffering--what matter about them! Do I then
strive after HAPPINESS? I strive after my WORK!

Well! The lion hath come, my children are nigh, Zarathustra hath grown
ripe, mine hour hath come:--

This is MY morning, MY day beginneth: ARISE NOW, ARISE, THOU GREAT
NOONTIDE!"--

Thus spake Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a
morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains.




APPENDIX.

NOTES ON "THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA" BY ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.

I have had some opportunities of studying the conditions under which
Nietzsche is read in Germany, France, and England, and I have found
that, in each of these countries, students of his philosophy, as if
actuated by precisely similar motives and desires, and misled by the
same mistaken tactics on the part of most publishers, all proceed in the
same happy-go-lucky style when "taking him up." They have had it said to
them that he wrote without any system, and they very naturally conclude
that it does not matter in the least whether they begin with his first,
third, or last book, provided they can obtain a few vague ideas as to
what his leading and most sensational principles were.

Now, it is clear that the book with the most mysterious, startling, or
suggestive title, will always stand the best chance of being purchased
by those who have no other criteria to guide them in their choice
than the aspect of a title-page; and this explains why "Thus Spake
Zarathustra" is almost always the first and often the only one of
Nietzsche's books that falls into the hands of the uninitiated.

The title suggests all kinds of mysteries; a glance at the
chapter-headings quickly confirms the suspicions already aroused,
and the sub-title: "A Book for All and None", generally succeeds in
dissipating the last doubts the prospective purchaser may entertain
concerning his fitness for the book or its fitness for him. And what
happens?

"Thus Spake Zarathustra" is taken home; the reader, who perchance may
know no more concerning Nietzsche than a magazine article has told him,
tries to read it and, understanding less than half he reads, probably
never gets further than the second or third part,--and then only to feel
convinced that Nietzsche himself was "rather hazy" as to what he was
talking about. Such chapters as "The Child with the Mirror", "In the
Happy Isles", "The Grave-Song," "Immaculate Perception," "The Stillest
Hour", "The Seven Seals", and many others, are almost utterly devoid of
meaning to all those who do not know something of Nietzsche's life, his
aims and his friendships.

As a matter of fact, "Thus Spake Zarathustra", though it is
unquestionably Nietzsche's opus magnum, is by no means the first of
Nietzsche's works that the beginner ought to undertake to read. The
author himself refers to it as the deepest work ever offered to the
German public, and elsewhere speaks of his other writings as being
necessary for the understanding of it. But when it is remembered that
in Zarathustra we not only have the history of his most intimate
experiences, friendships, feuds, disappointments, triumphs and the like,
but that the very form in which they are narrated is one which tends
rather to obscure than to throw light upon them, the difficulties which
meet the reader who starts quite unprepared will be seen to be really
formidable.

Zarathustra, then,--this shadowy, allegorical personality, speaking in
allegories and parables, and at times not even refraining from relating
his own dreams--is a figure we can understand but very imperfectly if we
have no knowledge of his creator and counterpart, Friedrich Nietzsche;
and it were therefore well, previous to our study of the more abstruse
parts of this book, if we were to turn to some authoritative book on
Nietzsche's life and works and to read all that is there said on the
subject. Those who can read German will find an excellent guide, in this
respect, in Frau Foerster-Nietzsche's exhaustive and highly interesting
biography of her brother: "Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's" (published
by Naumann); while the works of Deussen, Raoul Richter, and Baroness
Isabelle von Unger-Sternberg, will be found to throw useful and
necessary light upon many questions which it would be difficult for a
sister to touch upon.

In regard to the actual philosophical views expounded in this work,
there is an excellent way of clearing up any difficulties they may
present, and that is by an appeal to Nietzsche's other works. Again and
again, of course, he will be found to express himself so clearly that
all reference to his other writings may be dispensed with; but where
this is not the case, the advice he himself gives is after all the best
to be followed here, viz.:--to regard such works as: "Joyful Science",
"Beyond Good and Evil", "The Genealogy of Morals", "The Twilight of
the Idols", "The Antichrist", "The Will to Power", etc., etc., as the
necessary preparation for "Thus Spake Zarathustra".

These directions, though they are by no means simple to carry out, seem
at least to possess the quality of definiteness and straightforwardness.
"Follow them and all will be clear," I seem to imply. But I regret to
say that this is not really the case. For my experience tells me that
even after the above directions have been followed with the greatest
possible zeal, the student will still halt in perplexity before certain
passages in the book before us, and wonder what they mean. Now, it is
with the view of giving a little additional help to all those who find
themselves in this position that I proceed to put forth my own personal
interpretation of the more abstruse passages in this work.

In offering this little commentary to the Nietzsche student, I should
like it to be understood that I make no claim as to its infallibility or
indispensability. It represents but an attempt on my part--a very feeble
one perhaps--to give the reader what little help I can in surmounting
difficulties which a long study of Nietzsche's life and works has
enabled me, partially I hope, to overcome.

...

Perhaps it would be as well to start out with a broad and rapid sketch
of Nietzsche as a writer on Morals, Evolution, and Sociology, so that
the reader may be prepared to pick out for himself, so to speak, all
passages in this work bearing in any way upon Nietzsche's views in those
three important branches of knowledge.

(A.) Nietzsche and Morality.

In morality, Nietzsche starts out by adopting the position of the
relativist. He says there are no absolute values "good" and "evil";
these are mere means adopted by all in order to acquire power to
maintain their place in the world, or to become supreme. It is the
lion's good to devour an antelope. It is the dead-leaf butterfly's
good to tell a foe a falsehood. For when the dead-leaf butterfly is in
danger, it clings to the side of a twig, and what it says to its foe is
practically this: "I am not a butterfly, I am a dead leaf, and can be
of no use to thee." This is a lie which is good to the butterfly, for
it preserves it. In nature every species of organic being instinctively
adopts and practises those acts which most conduce to the prevalence
or supremacy of its kind. Once the most favourable order of conduct is
found, proved efficient and established, it becomes the ruling morality
of the species that adopts it and bears them along to victory. All
species must not and cannot value alike, for what is the lion's good is
the antelope's evil and vice versa.

Concepts of good and evil are therefore, in their origin, merely a means
to an end, they are expedients for acquiring power.

Applying this principle to mankind, Nietzsche attacked Christian
moral values. He declared them to be, like all other morals, merely
an expedient for protecting a certain type of man. In the case of
Christianity this type was, according to Nietzsche, a low one.

Conflicting moral codes have been no more than the conflicting weapons
of different classes of men; for in mankind there is a continual war
between the powerful, the noble, the strong, and the well-constituted
on the one side, and the impotent, the mean, the weak, and the
ill-constituted on the other. The war is a war of moral principles.
The morality of the powerful class, Nietzsche calls NOBLE- or
MASTER-MORALITY; that of the weak and subordinate class he calls
SLAVE-MORALITY. In the first morality it is the eagle which, looking
down upon a browsing lamb, contends that "eating lamb is good." In the
second, the slave-morality, it is the lamb which, looking up from the
sward, bleats dissentingly: "Eating lamb is evil."

(B.) The Master- and Slave-Morality Compared.

The first morality is active, creative, Dionysian. The second is
passive, defensive,--to it belongs the "struggle for existence."

Where attempts have not been made to reconcile the two moralities, they
may be described as follows:--All is GOOD in the noble morality which
proceeds from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness,
and awfulness; for, the motive force behind the people practising it is
"the struggle for power." The antithesis "good and bad" to this
first class means the same as "noble" and "despicable." "Bad" in the
master-morality must be applied to the coward, to all acts that spring
from weakness, to the man with "an eye to the main chance," who would
forsake everything in order to live.

With the second, the slave-morality, the case is different. There,
inasmuch as the community is an oppressed, suffering, unemancipated, and
weary one, all THAT will be held to be good which alleviates the
state of suffering. Pity, the obliging hand, the warm heart, patience,
industry, and humility--these are unquestionably the qualities we shall
here find flooded with the light of approval and admiration; because
they are the most USEFUL qualities--; they make life endurable, they are
of assistance in the "struggle for existence" which is the motive force
behind the people practising this morality. To this class, all that is
AWFUL is bad, in fact it is THE evil par excellence. Strength, health,
superabundance of animal spirits and power, are regarded with hate,
suspicion, and fear by the subordinate class.

Now Nietzsche believed that the first or the noble-morality conduced to
an ascent in the line of life; because it was creative and active. On
the other hand, he believed that the second or slave-morality, where
it became paramount, led to degeneration, because it was passive and
defensive, wanting merely to keep those who practised it alive. Hence
his earnest advocacy of noble-morality.

(C.) Nietzsche and Evolution.

Nietzsche as an evolutionist I shall have occasion to define and discuss
in the course of these notes (see Notes on Chapter LVI., par.10, and on
Chapter LVII.). For the present let it suffice for us to know that he
accepted the "Development Hypothesis" as an explanation of the origin of
species: but he did not halt where most naturalists have halted. He
by no means regarded man as the highest possible being which evolution
could arrive at; for though his physical development may have reached
its limit, this is not the case with his mental or spiritual attributes.
If the process be a fact; if things have BECOME what they are, then, he
contends, we may describe no limit to man's aspirations. If he struggled
up from barbarism, and still more remotely from the lower Primates,
his ideal should be to surpass man himself and reach Superman (see
especially the Prologue).

(D.) Nietzsche and Sociology.

Nietzsche as a sociologist aims at an aristocratic arrangement of
society. He would have us rear an ideal race. Honest and truthful in
intellectual matters, he could not even think that men are equal. "With
these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For
thus speaketh justice unto ME: 'Men are not equal.'" He sees precisely
in this inequality a purpose to be served, a condition to be exploited.
"Every elevation of the type 'man,'" he writes in "Beyond Good and
Evil", "has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society--and so
will it always be--a society believing in a long scale of gradations of
rank and differences of worth among human beings."

Those who are sufficiently interested to desire to read his own detailed
account of the society he would fain establish, will find an excellent
passage in Aphorism 57 of "The Antichrist".

...

PART I. THE PROLOGUE.

In Part I. including the Prologue, no very great difficulties will
appear. Zarathustra's habit of designating a whole class of men or a
whole school of thought by a single fitting nickname may perhaps lead to
a little confusion at first; but, as a rule, when the general drift
of his arguments is grasped, it requires but a slight effort of the
imagination to discover whom he is referring to. In the ninth paragraph
of the Prologue, for instance, it is quite obvious that "Herdsmen" in
the verse "Herdsmen, I say, etc., etc.," stands for all those to-day
who are the advocates of gregariousness--of the ant-hill. And when our
author says: "A robber shall Zarathustra be called by the herdsmen," it
is clear that these words may be taken almost literally from one whose
ideal was the rearing of a higher aristocracy. Again, "the good and
just," throughout the book, is the expression used in referring to the
self-righteous of modern times,--those who are quite sure that they
know all that is to be known concerning good and evil, and are satisfied
that the values their little world of tradition has handed down to them,
are destined to rule mankind as long as it lasts.

In the last paragraph of the Prologue, verse 7, Zarathustra gives us a
foretaste of his teaching concerning the big and the little sagacities,
expounded subsequently. He says he would he were as wise as his serpent;
this desire will be found explained in the discourse entitled "The
Despisers of the Body", which I shall have occasion to refer to later.

...

THE DISCOURSES.

Chapter I. The Three Metamorphoses.

This opening discourse is a parable in which Zarathustra discloses the
mental development of all creators of new values. It is the story of
a life which reaches its consummation in attaining to a second
ingenuousness or in returning to childhood. Nietzsche, the supposed
anarchist, here plainly disclaims all relationship whatever to anarchy,
for he shows us that only by bearing the burdens of the existing law and
submitting to it patiently, as the camel submits to being laden, does
the free spirit acquire that ascendancy over tradition which enables him
to meet and master the dragon "Thou shalt,"--the dragon with the values
of a thousand years glittering on its scales. There are two lessons in
this discourse: first, that in order to create one must be as a little
child; secondly, that it is only through existing law and order that
one attains to that height from which new law and new order may be
promulgated.

Chapter II. The Academic Chairs of Virtue.

Almost the whole of this is quite comprehensible. It is a discourse
against all those who confound virtue with tameness and smug ease, and
who regard as virtuous only that which promotes security and tends to
deepen sleep.

Chapter IV. The Despisers of the Body.

Here Zarathustra gives names to the intellect and the instincts; he
calls the one "the little sagacity" and the latter "the big sagacity."
Schopenhauer's teaching concerning the intellect is fully endorsed here.
"An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother,
which thou callest 'spirit,'" says Zarathustra. From beginning to end it
is a warning to those who would think too lightly of the instincts
and unduly exalt the intellect and its derivatives: Reason and
Understanding.

Chapter IX. The Preachers of Death.

This is an analysis of the psychology of all those who have the "evil
eye" and are pessimists by virtue of their constitutions.

Chapter XV. The Thousand and One Goals.

In this discourse Zarathustra opens his exposition of the doctrine of
relativity in morality, and declares all morality to be a mere means
to power. Needless to say that verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 refer to the
Greeks, the Persians, the Jews, and the Germans respectively. In the
penultimate verse he makes known his discovery concerning the root of
modern Nihilism and indifference,--i.e., that modern man has no goal, no
aim, no ideals (see Note A).

Chapter XVIII. Old and Young Women.

Nietzsche's views on women have either to be loved at first sight
or they become perhaps the greatest obstacle in the way of those who
otherwise would be inclined to accept his philosophy. Women especially,
of course, have been taught to dislike them, because it has been
rumoured that his views are unfriendly to themselves. Now, to my mind,
all this is pure misunderstanding and error.

German philosophers, thanks to Schopenhauer, have earned rather a bad
name for their views on women. It is almost impossible for one of them
to write a line on the subject, however kindly he may do so, without
being suspected of wishing to open a crusade against the fair sex.
Despite the fact, therefore, that all Nietzsche's views in this respect
were dictated to him by the profoundest love; despite Zarathustra's
reservation in this discourse, that "with women nothing (that can be
said) is impossible," and in the face of other overwhelming evidence
to the contrary, Nietzsche is universally reported to have mis son
pied dans le plat, where the female sex is concerned. And what is the
fundamental doctrine which has given rise to so much bitterness and
aversion?--Merely this: that the sexes are at bottom ANTAGONISTIC--that
is to say, as different as blue is from yellow, and that the best
possible means of rearing anything approaching a desirable race is to
preserve and to foster this profound hostility. What Nietzsche strives
to combat and to overthrow is the modern democratic tendency which is
slowly labouring to level all things--even the sexes. His quarrel is not
with women--what indeed could be more undignified?--it is with those who
would destroy the natural relationship between the sexes, by modifying
either the one or the other with a view to making them more alike. The
human world is just as dependent upon women's powers as upon men's. It
is women's strongest and most valuable instincts which help to determine
who are to be the fathers of the next generation. By destroying these
particular instincts, that is to say by attempting to masculinise woman,
and to feminise men, we jeopardise the future of our people. The general
democratic movement of modern times, in its frantic struggle to mitigate
all differences, is now invading even the world of sex. It is against
this movement that Nietzsche raises his voice; he would have woman
become ever more woman and man become ever more man. Only thus, and
he is undoubtedly right, can their combined instincts lead to the
excellence of humanity. Regarded in this light, all his views on woman
appear not only necessary but just (see Note on Chapter LVI., par. 21.)

It is interesting to observe that the last line of the discourse, which
has so frequently been used by women as a weapon against Nietzsche's
views concerning them, was suggested to Nietzsche by a woman (see "Das
Leben F. Nietzsche's").

Chapter XXI. Voluntary Death.

In regard to this discourse, I should only like to point out that
Nietzsche had a particular aversion to the word "suicide"--self-murder.
He disliked the evil it suggested, and in rechristening the act
Voluntary Death, i.e., the death that comes from no other hand than
one's own, he was desirous of elevating it to the position it held in
classical antiquity (see Aphorism 36 in "The Twilight of the Idols").

Chapter XXII. The Bestowing Virtue.

An important aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy is brought to light in
this discourse. His teaching, as is well known, places the Aristotelian
man of spirit, above all others in the natural divisions of man. The
man with overflowing strength, both of mind and body, who must discharge
this strength or perish, is the Nietzschean ideal. To such a man, giving
from his overflow becomes a necessity; bestowing develops into a means
of existence, and this is the only giving, the only charity, that
Nietzsche recognises. In paragraph 3 of the discourse, we read
Zarathustra's healthy exhortation to his disciples to become independent
thinkers and to find themselves before they learn any more from him (see
Notes on Chapters LVI., par. 5, and LXXIII., pars. 10, 11).

...

PART II.

Chapter XXIII. The Child with the Mirror.

Nietzsche tells us here, in a poetical form, how deeply grieved he was
by the manifold misinterpretations and misunderstandings which were
becoming rife concerning his publications. He does not recognise
himself in the mirror of public opinion, and recoils terrified from the
distorted reflection of his features. In verse 20 he gives us a
hint which it were well not to pass over too lightly; for, in the
introduction to "The Genealogy of Morals" (written in 1887) he finds it
necessary to refer to the matter again and with greater precision. The
point is this, that a creator of new values meets with his surest and
strongest obstacles in the very spirit of the language which is at his
disposal. Words, like all other manifestations of an evolving race, are
stamped with the values that have long been paramount in that race.
Now, the original thinker who finds himself compelled to use the current
speech of his country in order to impart new and hitherto untried views
to his fellows, imposes a task upon the natural means of communication
which it is totally unfitted to perform,--hence the obscurities and
prolixities which are so frequently met with in the writings of original
thinkers. In the "Dawn of Day", Nietzsche actually cautions young
writers against THE DANGER OF ALLOWING THEIR THOUGHTS TO BE MOULDED BY
THE WORDS AT THEIR DISPOSAL.

Chapter XXIV. In the Happy Isles.

While writing this, Nietzsche is supposed to have been thinking of the
island of Ischia which was ultimately destroyed by an earthquake. His
teaching here is quite clear. He was among the first thinkers of Europe
to overcome the pessimism which godlessness generally brings in its
wake. He points to creating as the surest salvation from the suffering
which is a concomitant of all higher life. "What would there be to
create," he asks, "if there were--Gods?" His ideal, the Superman, lends
him the cheerfulness necessary to the overcoming of that despair usually
attendant upon godlessness and upon the apparent aimlessness of a world
without a god.

Chapter XXIX. The Tarantulas.

The tarantulas are the Socialists and Democrats. This discourse offers
us an analysis of their mental attitude. Nietzsche refuses to be
confounded with those resentful and revengeful ones who condemn society
FROM BELOW, and whose criticism is only suppressed envy. "There are
those who preach my doctrine of life," he says of the Nietzschean
Socialists, "and are at the same time preachers of equality and
tarantulas" (see Notes on Chapter XL. and Chapter LI.).

Chapter XXX. The Famous Wise Ones.

This refers to all those philosophers hitherto, who have run in the
harness of established values and have not risked their reputation with
the people in pursuit of truth. The philosopher, however, as Nietzsche
understood him, is a man who creates new values, and thus leads mankind
in a new direction.

Chapter XXXIII. The Grave-Song.

Here Zarathustra sings about the ideals and friendships of his youth.
Verses 27 to 31 undoubtedly refer to Richard Wagner (see Note on Chapter
LXV.).

Chapter XXXIV. Self-Surpassing.

In this discourse we get the best exposition in the whole book of
Nietzsche's doctrine of the Will to Power. I go into this question
thoroughly in the Note on Chapter LVII.

Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from choice. Those who hastily class him
with the anarchists (or the Progressivists of the last century) fail
to understand the high esteem in which he always held both law and
discipline. In verse 41 of this most decisive discourse he truly
explains his position when he says: "...he who hath to be a creator in
good and evil--verily he hath first to be a destroyer, and break values
in pieces." This teaching in regard to self-control is evidence enough
of his reverence for law.

Chapter XXXV. The Sublime Ones.

These belong to a type which Nietzsche did not altogether dislike, but
which he would fain have rendered more subtle and plastic. It is the
type that takes life and itself too seriously, that never surmounts the
camel-stage mentioned in the first discourse, and that is obdurately
sublime and earnest. To be able to smile while speaking of lofty things
and NOT TO BE OPPRESSED by them, is the secret of real greatness. He
whose hand trembles when it lays hold of a beautiful thing, has the
quality of reverence, without the artist's unembarrassed friendship
with the beautiful. Hence the mistakes which have arisen in regard to
confounding Nietzsche with his extreme opposites the anarchists and
agitators. For what they dare to touch and break with the impudence
and irreverence of the unappreciative, he seems likewise to touch and
break,--but with other fingers--with the fingers of the loving and
unembarrassed artist who is on good terms with the beautiful and who
feels able to create it and to enhance it with his touch. The question
of taste plays an important part in Nietzsche's philosophy, and verses
9, 10 of this discourse exactly state Nietzsche's ultimate views on the
subject. In the "Spirit of Gravity", he actually cries:--"Neither a good
nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no longer either shame or
secrecy."

Chapter XXXVI. The Land of Culture.

This is a poetical epitome of some of the scathing criticism of
scholars which appears in the first of the "Thoughts out of Season"--the
polemical pamphlet (written in 1873) against David Strauss and his
school. He reproaches his former colleagues with being sterile and
shows them that their sterility is the result of their not believing
in anything. "He who had to create, had always his presaging dreams and
astral premonitions--and believed in believing!" (See Note on Chapter
LXXVII.) In the last two verses he reveals the nature of his altruism.
How far it differs from that of Christianity we have already read in the
discourse "Neighbour-Love", but here he tells us definitely the nature
of his love to mankind; he explains why he was compelled to assail the
Christian values of pity and excessive love of the neighbour, not only
because they are slave-values and therefore tend to promote degeneration
(see Note B.), but because he could only love his children's land, the
undiscovered land in a remote sea; because he would fain retrieve the
errors of his fathers in his children.

Chapter XXXVII. Immaculate Perception.

An important feature of Nietzsche's interpretation of Life is disclosed
in this discourse. As Buckle suggests in his "Influence of Women on the
Progress of Knowledge", the scientific spirit of the investigator is
both helped and supplemented by the latter's emotions and personality,
and the divorce of all emotionalism and individual temperament from
science is a fatal step towards sterility. Zarathustra abjures all those
who would fain turn an IMPERSONAL eye upon nature and contemplate her
phenomena with that pure objectivity to which the scientific idealists
of to-day would so much like to attain. He accuses such idealists of
hypocrisy and guile; he says they lack innocence in their desires and
therefore slander all desiring.

Chapter XXXVIII. Scholars.

This is a record of Nietzsche's final breach with his former
colleagues--the scholars of Germany. Already after the publication of
the "Birth of Tragedy", numbers of German philologists and professional
philosophers had denounced him as one who had strayed too far from
their flock, and his lectures at the University of Bale were deserted
in consequence; but it was not until 1879, when he finally severed all
connection with University work, that he may be said to have attained to
the freedom and independence which stamp this discourse.

Chapter XXXIX. Poets.

People have sometimes said that Nietzsche had no sense of humour. I
have no intention of defending him here against such foolish critics; I
should only like to point out to the reader that we have him here at
his best, poking fun at himself, and at his fellow-poets (see Note on
Chapter LXIII., pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20).

Chapter XL. Great Events.

Here we seem to have a puzzle. Zarathustra himself, while relating
his experience with the fire-dog to his disciples, fails to get them
interested in his narrative, and we also may be only too ready to turn
over these pages under the impression that they are little more than
a mere phantasy or poetical flight. Zarathustra's interview with the
fire-dog is, however, of great importance. In it we find Nietzsche
face to face with the creature he most sincerely loathes--the spirit
of revolution, and we obtain fresh hints concerning his hatred of the
anarchist and rebel. "'Freedom' ye all roar most eagerly," he says to
the fire-dog, "but I have unlearned the belief in 'Great Events' when
there is much roaring and smoke about them. Not around the inventors
of new noise, but around the inventors of new values, doth the world
revolve; INAUDIBLY it revolveth."

Chapter XLI. The Soothsayer.

This refers, of course, to Schopenhauer. Nietzsche, as is well known,
was at one time an ardent follower of Schopenhauer. He overcame
Pessimism by discovering an object in existence; he saw the possibility
of raising society to a higher level and preached the profoundest
Optimism in consequence.

Chapter XLII. Redemption.

Zarathustra here addresses cripples. He tells them of other
cripples--the GREAT MEN in this world who have one organ or faculty
inordinately developed at the cost of their other faculties. This is
doubtless a reference to a fact which is too often noticeable in the
case of so many of the world's giants in art, science, or religion. In
verse 19 we are told what Nietzsche called Redemption--that is to say,
the ability to say of all that is past: "Thus would I have it." The
in ability to say this, and the resentment which results therefrom,
he regards as the source of all our feelings of revenge, and all our
desires to punish--punishment meaning to him merely a euphemism for the
word revenge, invented in order to still our consciences. He who can be
proud of his enemies, who can be grateful to them for the obstacles they
have put in his way; he who can regard his worst calamity as but the
extra strain on the bow of his life, which is to send the arrow of
his longing even further than he could have hoped;--this man knows no
revenge, neither does he know despair, he truly has found redemption and
can turn on the worst in his life and even in himself, and call it his
best (see Notes on Chapter LVII.).

Chapter XLIII. Manly Prudence.

This discourse is very important. In "Beyond Good and Evil" we hear
often enough that the select and superior man must wear a mask, and
here we find this injunction explained. "And he who would not languish
amongst men, must learn to drink out of all glasses: and he who would
keep clean amongst men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty
water." This, I venture to suggest, requires some explanation. At a time
when individuality is supposed to be shown most tellingly by putting
boots on one's hands and gloves on one's feet, it is somewhat refreshing
to come across a true individualist who feels the chasm between himself
and others so deeply, that he must perforce adapt himself to them
outwardly, at least, in all respects, so that the inner difference
should be overlooked. Nietzsche practically tells us here that it is not
he who intentionally wears eccentric clothes or does eccentric things
who is truly the individualist. The profound man, who is by nature
differentiated from his fellows, feels this difference too keenly to
call attention to it by any outward show. He is shamefast and bashful
with those who surround him and wishes not to be discovered by them,
just as one instinctively avoids all lavish display of comfort or wealth
in the presence of a poor friend.

Chapter XLIV. The Stillest Hour.

This seems to me to give an account of the great struggle which must
have taken place in Nietzsche's soul before he finally resolved to make
known the more esoteric portions of his teaching. Our deepest feelings
crave silence. There is a certain self-respect in the serious man which
makes him hold his profoundest feelings sacred. Before they are uttered
they are full of the modesty of a virgin, and often the oldest sage will
blush like a girl when this virginity is violated by an indiscretion
which forces him to reveal his deepest thoughts.

...

PART III.

This is perhaps the most important of all the four parts. If it
contained only "The Vision and the Enigma" and "The Old and New Tables"
I should still be of this opinion; for in the former of these discourses
we meet with what Nietzsche regarded as the crowning doctrine of his
philosophy and in "The Old and New Tables" we have a valuable epitome of
practically all his leading principles.

Chapter XLVI. The Vision and the Enigma.

"The Vision and the Enigma" is perhaps an example of Nietzsche in his
most obscure vein. We must know how persistently he inveighed against
the oppressing and depressing influence of man's sense of guilt and
consciousness of sin in order fully to grasp the significance of this
discourse. Slowly but surely, he thought the values of Christianity and
Judaic traditions had done their work in the minds of men. What were
once but expedients devised for the discipline of a certain portion of
humanity, had now passed into man's blood and had become instincts. This
oppressive and paralysing sense of guilt and of sin is what Nietzsche
refers to when he speaks of "the spirit of gravity." This creature
half-dwarf, half-mole, whom he bears with him a certain distance on his
climb and finally defies, and whom he calls his devil and arch-enemy, is
nothing more than the heavy millstone "guilty conscience," together with
the concept of sin which at present hangs round the neck of men. To rise
above it--to soar--is the most difficult of all things to-day. Nietzsche
is able to think cheerfully and optimistically of the possibility of
life in this world recurring again and again, when he has once cast the
dwarf from his shoulders, and he announces his doctrine of the Eternal
Recurrence of all things great and small to his arch-enemy and in
defiance of him.

That there is much to be said for Nietzsche's hypothesis of the Eternal
Recurrence of all things great and small, nobody who has read the
literature on the subject will doubt for an instant; but it remains a
very daring conjecture notwithstanding and even in its ultimate effect,
as a dogma, on the minds of men, I venture to doubt whether Nietzsche
ever properly estimated its worth (see Note on Chapter LVII.).

What follows is clear enough. Zarathustra sees a young shepherd
struggling on the ground with a snake holding fast to the back of his
throat. The sage, assuming that the snake must have crawled into the
young man's mouth while he lay sleeping, runs to his help and pulls
at the loathsome reptile with all his might, but in vain. At last, in
despair, Zarathustra appeals to the young man's will. Knowing full well
what a ghastly operation he is recommending, he nevertheless cries,
"Bite! Bite! Its head off! Bite!" as the only possible solution of the
difficulty. The young shepherd bites, and far away he spits the
snake's head, whereupon he rises, "No longer shepherd, no longer man--a
transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on
earth laughed a man as he laughed!"

In this parable the young shepherd is obviously the man of to-day; the
snake that chokes him represents the stultifying and paralysing social
values that threaten to shatter humanity, and the advice "Bite! Bite!"
is but Nietzsche's exasperated cry to mankind to alter their values
before it is too late.

Chapter XLVII. Involuntary Bliss.

This, like "The Wanderer", is one of the many introspective passages
in the work, and is full of innuendos and hints as to the Nietzschean
outlook on life.

Chapter XLVIII. Before Sunrise.

Here we have a record of Zarathustra's avowal of optimism, as also the
important statement concerning "Chance" or "Accident" (verse 27). Those
who are familiar with Nietzsche's philosophy will not require to be told
what an important role his doctrine of chance plays in his teaching.
The Giant Chance has hitherto played with the puppet "man,"--this is
the fact he cannot contemplate with equanimity. Man shall now exploit
chance, he says again and again, and make it fall on its knees before
him! (See verse 33 in "On the Olive Mount", and verses 9-10 in "The
Bedwarfing Virtue").

Chapter XLIX. The Bedwarfing Virtue.

This requires scarcely any comment. It is a satire on modern man and
his belittling virtues. In verses 23 and 24 of the second part of the
discourse we are reminded of Nietzsche's powerful indictment of the
great of to-day, in the Antichrist (Aphorism 43):--"At present
nobody has any longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of
domination, for a feeling of reverence for himself and his equals,--FOR
PATHOS OF DISTANCE...Our politics are MORBID from this want of
courage!--The aristocracy of character has been undermined most craftily
by the lie of the equality of souls; and if the belief in the 'privilege
of the many,' makes revolutions and WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE them, it is
Christianity, let us not doubt it, it is CHRISTIAN valuations, which
translate every revolution merely into blood and crime!" (see also
"Beyond Good and Evil", pages 120, 121). Nietzsche thought it was a
bad sign of the times that even rulers have lost the courage of
their positions, and that a man of Frederick the Great's power and
distinguished gifts should have been able to say: "Ich bin der erste
Diener des Staates" (I am the first servant of the State.) To this
utterance of the great sovereign, verse 24 undoubtedly refers.
"Cowardice" and "Mediocrity," are the names with which he labels modern
notions of virtue and moderation.

In Part III., we get the sentiments of the discourse "In the Happy
Isles", but perhaps in stronger terms. Once again we find Nietzsche
thoroughly at ease, if not cheerful, as an atheist, and speaking with
vertiginous daring of making chance go on its knees to him. In verse
20, Zarathustra makes yet another attempt at defining his entirely
anti-anarchical attitude, and unless such passages have been completely
overlooked or deliberately ignored hitherto by those who will persist in
laying anarchy at his door, it is impossible to understand how he ever
became associated with that foul political party.

The last verse introduces the expression, "THE GREAT NOONTIDE!" In the
poem to be found at the end of "Beyond Good and Evil", we meet with
the expression again, and we shall find it occurring time and again in
Nietzsche's works. It will be found fully elucidated in the fifth part
of "The Twilight of the Idols"; but for those who cannot refer to
this book, it were well to point out that Nietzsche called the present
period--our period--the noon of man's history. Dawn is behind us. The
childhood of mankind is over. Now we KNOW; there is now no longer any
excuse for mistakes which will tend to botch and disfigure the type man.
"With respect to what is past," he says, "I have, like all discerning
ones, great toleration, that is to say, GENEROUS self-control...But my
feeling changes suddenly, and breaks out as soon as I enter the modern
period, OUR period. Our age KNOWS..." (See Note on Chapter LXX.).

Chapter LI. On Passing-by.

Here we find Nietzsche confronted with his extreme opposite, with
him therefore for whom he is most frequently mistaken by the unwary.
"Zarathustra's ape" he is called in the discourse. He is one of those
at whose hands Nietzsche had to suffer most during his life-time, and
at whose hands his philosophy has suffered most since his death. In this
respect it may seem a little trivial to speak of extremes meeting; but
it is wonderfully apt. Many have adopted Nietzsche's mannerisms and
word-coinages, who had nothing in common with him beyond the ideas and
"business" they plagiarised; but the superficial observer and a large
portion of the public, not knowing of these things,--not knowing perhaps
that there are iconoclasts who destroy out of love and are therefore
creators, and that there are others who destroy out of resentment and
revengefulness and who are therefore revolutionists and anarchists,--are
prone to confound the two, to the detriment of the nobler type.

If we now read what the fool says to Zarathustra, and note the tricks of
speech he has borrowed from him: if we carefully follow the attitude
he assumes, we shall understand why Zarathustra finally interrupts him.
"Stop this at once," Zarathustra cries, "long have thy speech and
thy species disgusted me...Out of love alone shall my contempt and my
warning bird take wing; BUT NOT OUT OF THE SWAMP!" It were well if
this discourse were taken to heart by all those who are too ready to
associate Nietzsche with lesser and noiser men,--with mountebanks and
mummers.

Chapter LII. The Apostates.

It is clear that this applies to all those breathless and hasty "tasters
of everything," who plunge too rashly into the sea of independent
thought and "heresy," and who, having miscalculated their strength, find
it impossible to keep their head above water. "A little older, a little
colder," says Nietzsche. They soon clamber back to the conventions of
the age they intended reforming. The French then say "le diable se fait
hermite," but these men, as a rule, have never been devils, neither
do they become angels; for, in order to be really good or evil, some
strength and deep breathing is required. Those who are more interested
in supporting orthodoxy than in being over nice concerning the kind of
support they give it, often refer to these people as evidence in favour
of the true faith.

Chapter LIII. The Return Home.

This is an example of a class of writing which may be passed over too
lightly by those whom poetasters have made distrustful of poetry. From
first to last it is extremely valuable as an autobiographical note. The
inevitable superficiality of the rabble is contrasted with the peaceful
and profound depths of the anchorite. Here we first get a direct hint
concerning Nietzsche's fundamental passion--the main force behind all
his new values and scathing criticism of existing values. In verse 30
we are told that pity was his greatest danger. The broad altruism of the
law-giver, thinking over vast eras of time, was continually being pitted
by Nietzsche, in himself, against that transient and meaner sympathy for
the neighbour which he more perhaps than any of his contemporaries had
suffered from, but which he was certain involved enormous dangers not
only for himself but also to the next and subsequent generations (see
Note B., where "pity" is mentioned among the degenerate virtues). Later
in the book we shall see how his profound compassion leads him into
temptation, and how frantically he struggles against it. In verses 31
and 32, he tells us to what extent he had to modify himself in order
to be endured by his fellows whom he loved (see also verse 12 in "Manly
Prudence"). Nietzsche's great love for his fellows, which he confesses
in the Prologue, and which is at the root of all his teaching, seems
rather to elude the discerning powers of the average philanthropist and
modern man. He cannot see the wood for the trees. A philanthropy that
sacrifices the minority of the present-day for the majority constituting
posterity, completely evades his mental grasp, and Nietzsche's
philosophy, because it declares Christian values to be a danger to the
future of our kind, is therefore shelved as brutal, cold, and hard (see
Note on Chapter XXXVI.). Nietzsche tried to be all things to all men;
he was sufficiently fond of his fellows for that: in the Return Home he
describes how he ultimately returns to loneliness in order to recover
from the effects of his experiment.

Chapter LIV. The Three Evil Things.

Nietzsche is here completely in his element. Three things hitherto
best-cursed and most calumniated on earth, are brought forward to be
weighed. Voluptuousness, thirst of power, and selfishness,--the three
forces in humanity which Christianity has done most to garble and
besmirch,--Nietzsche endeavours to reinstate in their former places of
honour. Voluptuousness, or sensual pleasure, is a dangerous thing to
discuss nowadays. If we mention it with favour we may be regarded,
however unjustly, as the advocate of savages, satyrs, and pure
sensuality. If we condemn it, we either go over to the Puritans or we
join those who are wont to come to table with no edge to their appetites
and who therefore grumble at all good fare. There can be no doubt that
the value of healthy innocent voluptuousness, like the value of health
itself, must have been greatly discounted by all those who, resenting
their inability to partake of this world's goods, cried like St Paul:
"I would that all men were even as I myself." Now Nietzsche's philosophy
might be called an attempt at giving back to healthy and normal men
innocence and a clean conscience in their desires--NOT to applaud the
vulgar sensualists who respond to every stimulus and whose passions are
out of hand; not to tell the mean, selfish individual, whose selfishness
is a pollution (see Aphorism 33, "Twilight of the Idols"), that he is
right, nor to assure the weak, the sick, and the crippled, that the
thirst of power, which they gratify by exploiting the happier and
healthier individuals, is justified;--but to save the clean healthy man
from the values of those around him, who look at everything through the
mud that is in their own bodies,--to give him, and him alone, a clean
conscience in his manhood and the desires of his manhood. "Do I counsel
you to slay your instincts? I counsel to innocence in your instincts."
In verse 7 of the second paragraph (as in verse I of paragraph 19 in
"The Old and New Tables") Nietzsche gives us a reason for his occasional
obscurity (see also verses 3 to 7 of "Poets"). As I have already pointed
out, his philosophy is quite esoteric. It can serve no purpose with the
ordinary, mediocre type of man. I, personally, can no longer have any
doubt that Nietzsche's only object, in that part of his philosophy where
he bids his friends stand "Beyond Good and Evil" with him, was to save
higher men, whose growth and scope might be limited by the too
strict observance of modern values from foundering on the rocks of a
"Compromise" between their own genius and traditional conventions. The
only possible way in which the great man can achieve greatness is
by means of exceptional freedom--the freedom which assists him in
experiencing HIMSELF. Verses 20 to 30 afford an excellent supplement to
Nietzsche's description of the attitude of the noble type towards the
slaves in Aphorism 260 of the work "Beyond Good and Evil" (see also Note
B.)

Chapter LV. The Spirit of Gravity.

(See Note on Chapter XLVI.) In Part II. of this discourse we meet with
a doctrine not touched upon hitherto, save indirectly;--I refer to the
doctrine of self-love. We should try to understand this perfectly before
proceeding; for it is precisely views of this sort which, after having
been cut out of the original context, are repeated far and wide as
internal evidence proving the general unsoundness of Nietzsche's
philosophy. Already in the last of the "Thoughts out of Season"
Nietzsche speaks as follows about modern men: "...these modern creatures
wish rather to be hunted down, wounded and torn to shreds, than to
live alone with themselves in solitary calm. Alone with oneself!--this
thought terrifies the modern soul; it is his one anxiety, his one
ghastly fear" (English Edition, page 141). In his feverish scurry to
find entertainment and diversion, whether in a novel, a newspaper, or a
play, the modern man condemns his own age utterly; for he shows that in
his heart of hearts he despises himself. One cannot change a condition
of this sort in a day; to become endurable to oneself an inner
transformation is necessary. Too long have we lost ourselves in our
friends and entertainments to be able to find ourselves so soon at
another's bidding. "And verily, it is no commandment for to-day and
to-morrow to LEARN to love oneself. Rather is it of all arts the finest,
subtlest, last, and patientest."

In the last verse Nietzsche challenges us to show that our way is
the right way. In his teaching he does not coerce us, nor does he
overpersuade; he simply says: "I am a law only for mine own, I am not a
law for all. This--is now MY way,--where is yours?"

Chapter LVI. Old and New Tables. Par. 2.

Nietzsche himself declares this to be the most decisive portion of
the whole of "Thus Spake Zarathustra". It is a sort of epitome of his
leading doctrines. In verse 12 of the second paragraph, we learn how he
himself would fain have abandoned the poetical method of expression had
he not known only too well that the only chance a new doctrine has of
surviving, nowadays, depends upon its being given to the world in some
kind of art-form. Just as prophets, centuries ago, often had to have
recourse to the mask of madness in order to mitigate the hatred of those
who did not and could not see as they did; so, to-day, the struggle for
existence among opinions and values is so great, that an art-form
is practically the only garb in which a new philosophy can dare to
introduce itself to us.

Pars. 3 and 4.

Many of the paragraphs will be found to be merely reminiscent of former
discourses. For instance, par. 3 recalls "Redemption". The last verse
of par. 4 is important. Freedom which, as I have pointed out before,
Nietzsche considered a dangerous acquisition in inexperienced or
unworthy hands, here receives its death-blow as a general desideratum.
In the first Part we read under "The Way of the Creating One", that
freedom as an end in itself does not concern Zarathustra at all. He says
there: "Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra? Clearly,
however, shall thine eye answer me: free FOR WHAT?" And in "The
Bedwarfing Virtue": "Ah that ye understood my word: 'Do ever what ye
will--but first be such as CAN WILL.'"

Par. 5.

Here we have a description of the kind of altruism Nietzsche exacted
from higher men. It is really a comment upon "The Bestowing Virtue" (see
Note on Chapter XXII.).

Par. 6.

This refers, of course, to the reception pioneers of Nietzsche's stamp
meet with at the hands of their contemporaries.

Par. 8.

Nietzsche teaches that nothing is stable,--not even values,--not
even the concepts good and evil. He likens life unto a stream. But
foot-bridges and railings span the stream, and they seem to stand
firm. Many will be reminded of good and evil when they look upon these
structures; for thus these same values stand over the stream of life,
and life flows on beneath them and leaves them standing. When, however,
winter comes and the stream gets frozen, many inquire: "Should not
everything--STAND STILL? Fundamentally everything standeth still." But
soon the spring cometh and with it the thaw-wind. It breaks the ice, and
the ice breaks down the foot-bridges and railings, whereupon everything
is swept away. This state of affairs, according to Nietzsche, has now
been reached. "Oh, my brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX?
Have not all railings and foot-bridges fallen into the water? Who would
still HOLD ON to 'good' and 'evil'?"

Par. 9.

This is complementary to the first three verses of par. 2.

Par. 10.

So far, this is perhaps the most important paragraph. It is a protest
against reading a moral order of things in life. "Life is something
essentially immoral!" Nietzsche tells us in the introduction to the
"Birth of Tragedy". Even to call life "activity," or to define it
further as "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external
relations," as Spencer has it, Nietzsche characterises as a "democratic
idiosyncracy." He says to define it in this way, "is to mistake the
true nature and function of life, which is Will to Power...Life is
ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak,
suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation and
at least, putting it mildest, exploitation." Adaptation is merely a
secondary activity, a mere re-activity (see Note on Chapter LVII.).

Pars. 11, 12.

These deal with Nietzsche's principle of the desirability of rearing a
select race. The biological and historical grounds for his insistence
upon this principle are, of course, manifold. Gobineau in his great
work, "L'Inegalite des Races Humaines", lays strong emphasis upon the
evils which arise from promiscuous and inter-social marriages. He alone
would suffice to carry Nietzsche's point against all those who are
opposed to the other conditions, to the conditions which would have
saved Rome, which have maintained the strength of the Jewish race, and
which are strictly maintained by every breeder of animals throughout the
world. Darwin in his remarks relative to the degeneration of CULTIVATED
types of animals through the action of promiscuous breeding, brings
Gobineau support from the realm of biology.

The last two verses of par. 12 were discussed in the Notes on Chapters
XXXVI. and LIII.

Par. 13.

This, like the first part of "The Soothsayer", is obviously a reference
to the Schopenhauerian Pessimism.

Pars. 14, 15, 16, 17.

These are supplementary to the discourse "Backworld's-men".

Par. 18.

We must be careful to separate this paragraph, in sense, from the
previous four paragraphs. Nietzsche is still dealing with Pessimism
here; but it is the pessimism of the hero--the man most susceptible of
all to desperate views of life, owing to the obstacles that are arrayed
against him in a world where men of his kind are very rare and are
continually being sacrificed. It was to save this man that Nietzsche
wrote. Heroism foiled, thwarted, and wrecked, hoping and fighting until
the last, is at length overtaken by despair, and renounces all struggle
for sleep. This is not the natural or constitutional pessimism which
proceeds from an unhealthy body--the dyspeptic's lack of appetite; it
is rather the desperation of the netted lion that ultimately stops all
movement, because the more it moves the more involved it becomes.

Par. 20.

"All that increases power is good, all that springs from weakness is
bad. The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our
charity. And one shall also help them thereto." Nietzsche partly divined
the kind of reception moral values of this stamp would meet with at
the hands of the effeminate manhood of Europe. Here we see that he had
anticipated the most likely form their criticism would take (see also
the last two verses of par. 17).

Par. 21.

The first ten verses, here, are reminiscent of "War and Warriors" and
of "The Flies in the Market-place." Verses 11 and 12, however, are
particularly important. There is a strong argument in favour of the
sharp differentiation of castes and of races (and even of sexes; see
Note on Chapter XVIII.) running all through Nietzsche's writings.
But sharp differentiation also implies antagonism in some form or
other--hence Nietzsche's fears for modern men. What modern men desire
above all, is peace and the cessation of pain. But neither great races
nor great castes have ever been built up in this way. "Who still wanteth
to rule?" Zarathustra asks in the "Prologue". "Who still wanteth to
obey? Both are too burdensome." This is rapidly becoming everybody's
attitude to-day. The tame moral reading of the face of nature, together
with such democratic interpretations of life as those suggested by
Herbert Spencer, are signs of a physiological condition which is the
reverse of that bounding and irresponsible healthiness in which harder
and more tragic values rule.

Par. 24.

This should be read in conjunction with "Child and Marriage". In the
fifth verse we shall recognise our old friend "Marriage on the ten-years
system," which George Meredith suggested some years ago. This, however,
must not be taken too literally. I do not think Nietzsche's profoundest
views on marriage were ever intended to be given over to the public at
all, at least not for the present. They appear in the biography by his
sister, and although their wisdom is unquestionable, the nature of the
reforms he suggests render it impossible for them to become popular just
now.

Pars. 26, 27.

See Note on "The Prologue".

Par. 28.

Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from predilection. No bitterness or
empty hate dictated his vituperations against existing values and
against the dogmas of his parents and forefathers. He knew too well what
these things meant to the millions who profess them, to approach the
task of uprooting them with levity or even with haste. He saw what
modern anarchists and revolutionists do NOT see--namely, that man is in
danger of actual destruction when his customs and values are broken.
I need hardly point out, therefore, how deeply he was conscious of
the responsibility he threw upon our shoulders when he invited us to
reconsider our position. The lines in this paragraph are evidence enough
of his earnestness.

Chapter LVII. The Convalescent.

We meet with several puzzles here. Zarathustra calls himself the
advocate of the circle (the Eternal Recurrence of all things), and he
calls this doctrine his abysmal thought. In the last verse of the
first paragraph, however, after hailing his deepest thought, he cries:
"Disgust, disgust, disgust!" We know Nietzsche's ideal man was that
"world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious creature, who has not only
learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes
to have it again, AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity insatiably calling
out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play" (see
Note on Chapter XLII.). But if one ask oneself what the conditions to
such an attitude are, one will realise immediately how utterly different
Nietzsche was from his ideal. The man who insatiably cries da capo to
himself and to the whole of his mise-en-scene, must be in a position to
desire every incident in his life to be repeated, not once, but
again and again eternally. Now, Nietzsche's life had been too full of
disappointments, illness, unsuccessful struggles, and snubs, to allow of
his thinking of the Eternal Recurrence without loathing--hence probably
the words of the last verse.

In verses 15 and 16, we have Nietzsche declaring himself an evolutionist
in the broadest sense--that is to say, that he believes in the
Development Hypothesis as the description of the process by which
species have originated. Now, to understand his position correctly
we must show his relationship to the two greatest of modern
evolutionists--Darwin and Spencer. As a philosopher, however, Nietzsche
does not stand or fall by his objections to the Darwinian or Spencerian
cosmogony. He never laid claim to a very profound knowledge of biology,
and his criticism is far more valuable as the attitude of a fresh mind
than as that of a specialist towards the question. Moreover, in his
objections many difficulties are raised which are not settled by an
appeal to either of the men above mentioned. We have given Nietzsche's
definition of life in the Note on Chapter LVI., par. 10. Still, there
remains a hope that Darwin and Nietzsche may some day become reconciled
by a new description of the processes by which varieties occur. The
appearance of varieties among animals and of "sporting plants" in
the vegetable kingdom, is still shrouded in mystery, and the question
whether this is not precisely the ground on which Darwin and Nietzsche
will meet, is an interesting one. The former says in his "Origin of
Species", concerning the causes of variability: "...there are two
factors, namely, the nature of the organism, and the nature of the
conditions. THE FORMER SEEMS TO BE MUCH THE MORE IMPORTANT (The italics
are mine.), for nearly similar variations sometimes arise under, as
far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and on the other hand,
dissimilar variations arise under conditions which appear to be
nearly uniform." Nietzsche, recognising this same truth, would ascribe
practically all the importance to the "highest functionaries in the
organism, in which the life-will appears as an active and formative
principle," and except in certain cases (where passive organisms alone
are concerned) would not give such a prominent place to the influence
of environment. Adaptation, according to him, is merely a secondary
activity, a mere re-activity, and he is therefore quite opposed to
Spencer's definition: "Life is the continuous adjustment of internal
relations to external relations." Again in the motive force behind
animal and plant life, Nietzsche disagrees with Darwin. He
transforms the "Struggle for Existence"--the passive and involuntary
condition--into the "Struggle for Power," which is active and creative,
and much more in harmony with Darwin's own view, given above, concerning
the importance of the organism itself. The change is one of such
far-reaching importance that we cannot dispose of it in a breath, as a
mere play upon words. "Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the
living one." Nietzsche says that to speak of the activity of life as a
"struggle for existence," is to state the case inadequately. He warns us
not to confound Malthus with nature. There is something more than
this struggle between the organic beings on this earth; want, which is
supposed to bring this struggle about, is not so common as is supposed;
some other force must be operative. The Will to Power is this force,
"the instinct of self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most
frequent results thereof." A certain lack of acumen in psychological
questions and the condition of affairs in England at the time Darwin
wrote, may both, according to Nietzsche, have induced the renowned
naturalist to describe the forces of nature as he did in his "Origin of
Species".

In verses 28, 29, and 30 of the second portion of this discourse we meet
with a doctrine which, at first sight, seems to be merely "le manoir
a l'envers," indeed one English critic has actually said of Nietzsche,
that "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is no more than a compendium of modern
views and maxims turned upside down. Examining these heterodox
pronouncements a little more closely, however, we may possibly perceive
their truth. Regarding good and evil as purely relative values, it
stands to reason that what may be bad or evil in a given man, relative
to a certain environment, may actually be good if not highly virtuous
in him relative to a certain other environment. If this hypothetical man
represent the ascending line of life--that is to say, if he promise all
that which is highest in a Graeco-Roman sense, then it is likely that
he will be condemned as wicked if introduced into the society of men
representing the opposite and descending line of life.

By depriving a man of his wickedness--more particularly nowadays--
therefore, one may unwittingly be doing violence to the greatest in him.
It may be an outrage against his wholeness, just as the lopping-off of a
leg would be. Fortunately, the natural so-called "wickedness" of higher
men has in a certain measure been able to resist this lopping process
which successive slave-moralities have practised; but signs are not
wanting which show that the noblest wickedness is fast vanishing from
society--the wickedness of courage and determination--and that Nietzsche
had good reasons for crying: "Ah, that (man's) baddest is so very small!
Ah, that his best is so very small. What is good? To be brave is good!
It is the good war which halloweth every cause!" (see also par. 5,
"Higher Man").

Chapter LX. The Seven Seals.

This is a final paean which Zarathustra sings to Eternity and the
marriage-ring of rings, the ring of the Eternal Recurrence.

...

PART IV.

In my opinion this part is Nietzsche's open avowal that all his
philosophy, together with all his hopes, enthusiastic outbursts,
blasphemies, prolixities, and obscurities, were merely so many gifts
laid at the feet of higher men. He had no desire to save the world. What
he wished to determine was: Who is to be master of the world? This is
a very different thing. He came to save higher men;--to give them that
freedom by which, alone, they can develop and reach their zenith (see
Note on Chapter LIV., end). It has been argued, and with considerable
force, that no such philosophy is required by higher men, that, as a
matter of fact, higher men, by virtue of their constitutions always, do
stand Beyond Good and Evil, and never allow anything to stand in the
way of their complete growth. Nietzsche, however, was evidently not so
confident about this. He would probably have argued that we only see the
successful cases. Being a great man himself, he was well aware of the
dangers threatening greatness in our age. In "Beyond Good and Evil" he
writes: "There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined,
or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and
deteriorated..." He knew "from his painfullest recollections on what
wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank have
hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become
contemptible." Now in Part IV. we shall find that his strongest
temptation to descend to the feeling of "pity" for his contemporaries,
is the "cry for help" which he hears from the lips of the higher men
exposed to the dreadful danger of their modern environment.

Chapter LXI. The Honey Sacrifice.

In the fourteenth verse of this discourse Nietzsche defines the solemn
duty he imposed upon himself: "Become what thou art." Surely the
criticism which has been directed against this maxim must all fall to
the ground when it is remembered, once and for all, that Nietzsche's
teaching was never intended to be other than an esoteric one. "I am a
law only for mine own," he says emphatically, "I am not a law for
all." It is of the greatest importance to humanity that its highest
individuals should be allowed to attain to their full development; for,
only by means of its heroes can the human race be led forward step by
step to higher and yet higher levels. "Become what thou art" applied
to all, of course, becomes a vicious maxim; it is to be hoped, however,
that we may learn in time that the same action performed by a given
number of men, loses its identity precisely that same number of
times.--"Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi."

At the last eight verses many readers may be tempted to laugh. In
England we almost always laugh when a man takes himself seriously at
anything save sport. And there is of course no reason why the reader
should not be hilarious.--A certain greatness is requisite, both in
order to be sublime and to have reverence for the sublime. Nietzsche
earnestly believed that the Zarathustra-kingdom--his dynasty of a
thousand years--would one day come; if he had not believed it so
earnestly, if every artist in fact had not believed so earnestly in
his Hazar, whether of ten, fifteen, a hundred, or a thousand years, we
should have lost all our higher men; they would have become pessimists,
suicides, or merchants. If the minor poet and philosopher has made us
shy of the prophetic seriousness which characterized an Isaiah or a
Jeremiah, it is surely our loss and the minor poet's gain.

Chapter LXII. The Cry of Distress.

We now meet with Zarathustra in extraordinary circumstances. He is
confronted with Schopenhauer and tempted by the old Soothsayer to commit
the sin of pity. "I have come that I may seduce thee to thy last sin!"
says the Soothsayer to Zarathustra. It will be remembered that in
Schopenhauer's ethics, pity is elevated to the highest place among the
virtues, and very consistently too, seeing that the Weltanschauung is
a pessimistic one. Schopenhauer appeals to Nietzsche's deepest and
strongest sentiment--his sympathy for higher men. "Why dost thou conceal
thyself?" he cries. "It is THE HIGHER MAN that calleth for thee!"
Zarathustra is almost overcome by the Soothsayer's pleading, as he
had been once already in the past, but he resists him step by step. At
length he can withstand him no longer, and, on the plea that the higher
man is on his ground and therefore under his protection, Zarathustra
departs in search of him, leaving Schopenhauer--a higher man in
Nietzsche's opinion--in the cave as a guest.

Chapter LXIII. Talk with the Kings.

On his way Zarathustra meets two more higher men of his time; two
kings cross his path. They are above the average modern type; for their
instincts tell them what real ruling is, and they despise the mockery
which they have been taught to call "Reigning." "We ARE NOT the first
men," they say, "and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of this
imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted." It is the kings
who tell Zarathustra: "There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny
than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. There
everything becometh false and distorted and monstrous." The kings are
also asked by Zarathustra to accept the shelter of his cave, whereupon
he proceeds on his way.

Chapter LXIV. The Leech.

Among the higher men whom Zarathustra wishes to save, is also the
scientific specialist--the man who honestly and scrupulously pursues his
investigations, as Darwin did, in one department of knowledge. "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."
"The spiritually conscientious one," he is called in this discourse.
Zarathustra steps on him unawares, and the slave of science, bleeding
from the violence he has done to himself by his self-imposed task,
speaks proudly of his little sphere of knowledge--his little hand's
breadth of ground on Zarathustra's territory, philosophy. "Where mine
honesty ceaseth," says the true scientific specialist, "there am I blind
and want also to be blind. Where I want to know, however, there want
I also to be honest--namely, severe, rigorous, restricted, cruel, and
inexorable." Zarathustra greatly respecting this man, invites him too to
the cave, and then vanishes in answer to another cry for help.

Chapter LXV. The Magician.

The Magician is of course an artist, and Nietzsche's intimate knowledge
of perhaps the greatest artist of his age rendered the selection of
Wagner, as the type in this discourse, almost inevitable. Most readers
will be acquainted with the facts relating to Nietzsche's and Wagner's
friendship and ultimate separation. As a boy and a youth Nietzsche had
shown such a remarkable gift for music that it had been a question at
one time whether he should not perhaps give up everything else in order
to develop this gift, but he became a scholar notwithstanding, although
he never entirely gave up composing, and playing the piano. While
still in his teens, he became acquainted with Wagner's music and
grew passionately fond of it. Long before he met Wagner he must have
idealised him in his mind to an extent which only a profoundly artistic
nature could have been capable of. Nietzsche always had high ideals for
humanity. If one were asked whether, throughout his many changes, there
was yet one aim, one direction, and one hope to which he held fast,
one would be forced to reply in the affirmative and declare that aim,
direction, and hope to have been "the elevation of the type man."
Now, when Nietzsche met Wagner he was actually casting about for an
incarnation of his dreams for the German people, and we have only to
remember his youth (he was twenty-one when he was introduced to Wagner),
his love of Wagner's music, and the undoubted power of the great
musician's personality, in order to realise how very uncritical his
attitude must have been in the first flood of his enthusiasm. Again,
when the friendship ripened, we cannot well imagine Nietzsche, the
younger man, being anything less than intoxicated by his senior's
attention and love, and we are therefore not surprised to find him
pressing Wagner forward as the great Reformer and Saviour of mankind.
"Wagner in Bayreuth" (English Edition, 1909) gives us the best proof
of Nietzsche's infatuation, and although signs are not wanting in this
essay which show how clearly and even cruelly he was sub-consciously
"taking stock" of his friend--even then, the work is a record of what
great love and admiration can do in the way of endowing the object
of one's affection with all the qualities and ideals that a fertile
imagination can conceive.

When the blow came it was therefore all the more severe. Nietzsche
at length realised that the friend of his fancy and the real Richard
Wagner--the composer of Parsifal--were not one; the fact dawned
upon him slowly; disappointment upon disappointment, revelation after
revelation, ultimately brought it home to him, and though his best
instincts were naturally opposed to it at first, the revulsion of
feeling at last became too strong to be ignored, and Nietzsche was
plunged into the blackest despair. Years after his break with Wagner,
he wrote "The Case of Wagner", and "Nietzsche contra Wagner", and these
works are with us to prove the sincerity and depth of his views on the
man who was the greatest event of his life.

The poem in this discourse is, of course, reminiscent of Wagner's own
poetical manner, and it must be remembered that the whole was written
subsequent to Nietzsche's final break with his friend. The dialogue
between Zarathustra and the Magician reveals pretty fully what it
was that Nietzsche grew to loathe so intensely in Wagner,--viz., his
pronounced histrionic tendencies, his dissembling powers, his inordinate
vanity, his equivocalness, his falseness. "It honoureth thee," says
Zarathustra, "that thou soughtest for greatness, but it betrayeth thee
also. Thou art not great." The Magician is nevertheless sent as a guest
to Zarathustra's cave; for, in his heart, Zarathustra believed until the
end that the Magician was a higher man broken by modern values.

Chapter LXVI. Out of Service.

Zarathustra now meets the last pope, and, in a poetical form, we get
Nietzsche's description of the course Judaism and Christianity pursued
before they reached their final break-up in Atheism, Agnosticism, and
the like. The God of a strong, warlike race--the God of Israel--is a
jealous, revengeful God. He is a power that can be pictured and endured
only by a hardy and courageous race, a race rich enough to sacrifice and
to lose in sacrifice. The image of this God degenerates with the people
that appropriate it, and gradually He becomes a God of love--"soft and
mellow," a lower middle-class deity, who is "pitiful." He can no longer
be a God who requires sacrifice, for we ourselves are no longer rich
enough for that. The tables are therefore turned upon Him; HE must
sacrifice to us. His pity becomes so great that he actually does
sacrifice something to us--His only begotten Son. Such a process
carried to its logical conclusions must ultimately end in His own
destruction, and thus we find the pope declaring that God was one day
suffocated by His all-too-great pity. What follows is clear enough.
Zarathustra recognises another higher man in the ex-pope and sends him
too as a guest to the cave.

Chapter LXVII. The Ugliest Man.

This discourse contains perhaps the boldest of Nietzsche's suggestions
concerning Atheism, as well as some extremely penetrating remarks upon
the sentiment of pity. Zarathustra comes across the repulsive creature
sitting on the wayside, and what does he do? He manifests the only
correct feelings that can be manifested in the presence of any great
misery--that is to say, shame, reverence, embarrassment. Nietzsche
detested the obtrusive and gushing pity that goes up to misery without
a blush either on its cheek or in its heart--the pity which is only
another form of self-glorification. "Thank God that I am not like
thee!"--only this self-glorifying sentiment can lend a well-constituted
man the impudence to SHOW his pity for the cripple and the
ill-constituted. In the presence of the ugliest man Nietzsche
blushes,--he blushes for his race; his own particular kind of
altruism--the altruism that might have prevented the existence of this
man--strikes him with all its force. He will have the world otherwise.
He will have a world where one need not blush for one's fellows--hence
his appeal to us to love only our children's land, the land undiscovered
in the remotest sea.

Zarathustra calls the ugliest man the murderer of God! Certainly, this
is one aspect of a certain kind of Atheism--the Atheism of the man who
reveres beauty to such an extent that his own ugliness, which outrages
him, must be concealed from every eye lest it should not be respected as
Zarathustra respected it. If there be a God, He too must be evaded. His
pity must be foiled. But God is ubiquitous and omniscient. Therefore,
for the really GREAT ugly man, He must not exist. "Their pity IS it from
which I flee away," he says--that is to say: "It is from their want of
reverence and lack of shame in presence of my great misery!" The ugliest
man despises himself; but Zarathustra said in his Prologue: "I love
the great despisers because they are the great adorers, and arrows of
longing for the other shore." He therefore honours the ugliest man: sees
height in his self-contempt, and invites him to join the other higher
men in the cave.

Chapter LXVIII. The Voluntary Beggar.

In this discourse, we undoubtedly have the ideal Buddhist, if not
Gautama Buddha himself. Nietzsche had the greatest respect for Buddhism,
and almost wherever he refers to it in his works, it is in terms of
praise. He recognised that though Buddhism is undoubtedly a religion for
decadents, its decadent values emanate from the higher and not, as in
Christianity, from the lower grades of society. In Aphorism 20 of "The
Antichrist", he compares it exhaustively with Christianity, and
the result of his investigation is very much in favour of the older
religion. Still, he recognised a most decided Buddhistic influence
in Christ's teaching, and the words in verses 29, 30, and 31 are very
reminiscent of his views in regard to the Christian Savior.

The figure of Christ has been introduced often enough into fiction, and
many scholars have undertaken to write His life according to their own
lights, but few perhaps have ever attempted to present Him to us bereft
of all those characteristics which a lack of the sense of harmony has
attached to His person through the ages in which His doctrines have been
taught. Now Nietzsche disagreed entirely with Renan's view, that Christ
was "le grand maitre en ironie"; in Aphorism 31 of "The Antichrist",
he says that he (Nietzsche) always purged his picture of the Humble
Nazarene of all those bitter and spiteful outbursts which, in view of
the struggle the first Christians went through, may very well have been
added to the original character by Apologists and Sectarians who, at
that time, could ill afford to consider nice psychological points,
seeing that what they needed, above all, was a wrangling and abusive
deity. These two conflicting halves in the character of the Christ of
the Gospels, which no sound psychology can ever reconcile, Nietzsche
always kept distinct in his own mind; he could not credit the same man
with sentiments sometimes so noble and at other times so vulgar, and
in presenting us with this new portrait of the Saviour, purged of all
impurities, Nietzsche rendered military honours to a foe, which far
exceed in worth all that His most ardent disciples have ever claimed for
Him. In verse 26 we are vividly reminded of Herbert Spencer's words "'Le
mariage de convenance' is legalised prostitution."

Chapter LXIX. The Shadow.

Here we have a description of that courageous and wayward spirit that
literally haunts the footsteps of every great thinker and every great
leader; sometimes with the result that it loses all aims, all hopes,
and all trust in a definite goal. It is the case of the bravest and
most broad-minded men of to-day. These literally shadow the most daring
movements in the science and art of their generation; they completely
lose their bearings and actually find themselves, in the end, without a
way, a goal, or a home. "On every surface have I already sat!...I become
thin, I am almost equal to a shadow!" At last, in despair, such men
do indeed cry out: "Nothing is true; all is permitted," and then they
become mere wreckage. "Too much hath become clear unto me: now nothing
mattereth to me any more. Nothing liveth any longer that I love,--how
should I still love myself! Have I still a goal? Where is MY home?"
Zarathustra realises the danger threatening such a man. "Thy danger is
not small, thou free spirit and wanderer," he says. "Thou hast had a bad
day. See that a still worse evening doth not overtake thee!" The danger
Zarathustra refers to is precisely this, that even a prison may seem a
blessing to such a man. At least the bars keep him in a place of rest;
a place of confinement, at its worst, is real. "Beware lest in the end
a narrow faith capture thee," says Zarathustra, "for now everything that
is narrow and fixed seduceth and tempteth thee."

Chapter LXX. Noontide.

At the noon of life Nietzsche said he entered the world; with him
man came of age. We are now held responsible for our actions; our old
guardians, the gods and demi-gods of our youth, the superstitions and
fears of our childhood, withdraw; the field lies open before us; we
lived through our morning with but one master--chance--; let us see to
it that we MAKE our afternoon our own (see Note XLIX., Part III.).

Chapter LXXI. The Greeting.

Here I think I may claim that my contention in regard to the purpose and
aim of the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy (as stated at the beginning
of my Notes on Part IV.) is completely upheld. He fought for "all who
do not want to live, unless they learn again to HOPE--unless THEY learn
(from him) the GREAT hope!" Zarathustra's address to his guests shows
clearly enough how he wished to help them: "I DO NOT TREAT MY WARRIORS
INDULGENTLY," he says: "how then could ye be fit for MY warfare?" He
rebukes and spurns them, no word of love comes from his lips. Elsewhere
he says a man should be a hard bed to his friend, thus alone can he be
of use to him. Nietzsche would be a hard bed to higher men. He would
make them harder; for, in order to be a law unto himself, man must
possess the requisite hardness. "I wait for higher ones, stronger ones,
more triumphant ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in
body and soul." He says in par. 6 of "Higher Man":--

"Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put
wrong? Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you
sufferers? Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones new and
easier footpaths?"

"Nay! Nay! Three times nay! Always more, always better ones of your type
shall succumb--for ye shall always have it worse and harder."

Chapter LXXII. The Supper.

In the first seven verses of this discourse, I cannot help seeing
a gentle allusion to Schopenhauer's habits as a bon-vivant. For a
pessimist, be it remembered, Schopenhauer led quite an extraordinary
life. He ate well, loved well, played the flute well, and I believe he
smoked the best cigars. What follows is clear enough.

Chapter LXXIII. The Higher Man. Par. 1.

Nietzsche admits, here, that at one time he had thought of appealing to
the people, to the crowd in the market-place, but that he had ultimately
to abandon the task. He bids higher men depart from the market-place.

Par. 3.

Here we are told quite plainly what class of men actually owe all their
impulses and desires to the instinct of self-preservation. The struggle
for existence is indeed the only spur in the case of such people.
To them it matters not in what shape or condition man be preserved,
provided only he survive. The transcendental maxim that "Life per se is
precious" is the ruling maxim here.

Par. 4.

In the Note on Chapter LVII. (end) I speak of Nietzsche's elevation of
the virtue, Courage, to the highest place among the virtues. Here he
tells higher men the class of courage he expects from them.

Pars. 5, 6.

These have already been referred to in the Notes on Chapters LVII. (end)
and LXXI.

Par. 7.

I suggest that the last verse in this paragraph strongly confirms the
view that Nietzsche's teaching was always meant by him to be esoteric
and for higher man alone.

Par. 9.

In the last verse, here, another shaft of light is thrown upon the
Immaculate Perception or so-called "pure objectivity" of the scientific
mind. "Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge." Where a
man's emotions cease to accompany him in his investigations, he is
not necessarily nearer the truth. Says Spencer, in the Preface to his
Autobiography:--"In the genesis of a system of thought, the emotional
nature is a large factor: perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual
nature" (see pages 134, 141 of Vol. I., "Thoughts out of Season").

Pars. 10, 11.

When we approach Nietzsche's philosophy we must be prepared to be
independent thinkers; in fact, the greatest virtue of his works is
perhaps the subtlety with which they impose the obligation upon one
of thinking alone, of scoring off one's own bat, and of shifting
intellectually for oneself.

Par. 13.

"I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me, may
grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not." These two paragraphs are an
exhortation to higher men to become independent.

Par. 15.

Here Nietzsche perhaps exaggerates the importance of heredity. As,
however, the question is by no means one on which we are all agreed,
what he says is not without value.

A very important principle in Nietzsche's philosophy is enunciated in
the first verse of this paragraph. "The higher its type, always the
seldomer doth a thing succeed" (see page 82 of "Beyond Good and Evil").
Those who, like some political economists, talk in a business-like way
about the terrific waste of human life and energy, deliberately overlook
the fact that the waste most to be deplored usually occurs among
higher individuals. Economy was never precisely one of nature's leading
principles. All this sentimental wailing over the larger proportion
of failures than successes in human life, does not seem to take into
account the fact that it is the rarest thing on earth for a highly
organised being to attain to the fullest development and activity of all
its functions, simply because it is so highly organised. The blind Will
to Power in nature therefore stands in urgent need of direction by man.

Pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

These paragraphs deal with Nietzsche's protest against the democratic
seriousness (Pobelernst) of modern times. "All good things laugh," he
says, and his final command to the higher men is, "LEARN, I pray you--to
laugh." All that is GOOD, in Nietzsche's sense, is cheerful. To be able
to crack a joke about one's deepest feelings is the greatest test of
their value. The man who does not laugh, like the man who does not make
faces, is already a buffoon at heart.

"What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the
word of him who said: 'Woe unto them that laugh now!' Did he himself
find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought badly. A child
even findeth cause for it."

Chapter LXXIV. The Song of Melancholy.

After his address to the higher men, Zarathustra goes out into the
open to recover himself. Meanwhile the magician (Wagner), seizing the
opportunity in order to draw them all into his net once more, sings the
Song of Melancholy.

Chapter LXXV. Science.

The only one to resist the "melancholy voluptuousness" of his art, is
the spiritually conscientious one--the scientific specialist of whom we
read in the discourse entitled "The Leech". He takes the harp from the
magician and cries for air, while reproving the musician in the style
of "The Case of Wagner". When the magician retaliates by saying that the
spiritually conscientious one could have understood little of his song,
the latter replies: "Thou praisest me in that thou separatest me from
thyself." The speech of the scientific man to his fellow higher men is
well worth studying. By means of it, Nietzsche pays a high tribute to
the honesty of the true specialist, while, in representing him as the
only one who can resist the demoniacal influence of the magician's
music, he elevates him at a stroke, above all those present. Zarathustra
and the spiritually conscientious one join issue at the end on the
question of the proper place of "fear" in man's history, and Nietzsche
avails himself of the opportunity in order to restate his views
concerning the relation of courage to humanity. It is precisely because
courage has played the most important part in our development that
he would not see it vanish from among our virtues to-day. "...courage
seemeth to me the entire primitive history of man."

Chapter LXXVI. Among the Daughters of the Desert.

This tells its own tale.

Chapter LXXVII. The Awakening.

In this discourse, Nietzsche wishes to give his followers a warning.
He thinks he has so far helped them that they have become convalescent,
that new desires are awakened in them and that new hopes are in their
arms and legs. But he mistakes the nature of the change. True, he has
helped them, he has given them back what they most need, i.e., belief in
believing--the confidence in having confidence in something, but how
do they use it? This belief in faith, if one can so express it without
seeming tautological, has certainly been restored to them, and in
the first flood of their enthusiasm they use it by bowing down and
worshipping an ass! When writing this passage, Nietzsche was obviously
thinking of the accusations which were levelled at the early Christians
by their pagan contemporaries. It is well known that they were supposed
not only to be eaters of human flesh but also ass-worshippers, and among
the Roman graffiti, the most famous is the one found on the Palatino,
showing a man worshipping a cross on which is suspended a figure
with the head of an ass (see Minucius Felix, "Octavius" IX.; Tacitus,
"Historiae" v. 3; Tertullian, "Apologia", etc.). Nietzsche's obvious
moral, however, is that great scientists and thinkers, once they have
reached the wall encircling scepticism and have thereby learned to
recover their confidence in the act of believing, as such, usually
manifest the change in their outlook by falling victims to the narrowest
and most superstitious of creeds. So much for the introduction of the
ass as an object of worship.

Now, with regard to the actual service and Ass-Festival, no reader who
happens to be acquainted with the religious history of the Middle Ages
will fail to see the allusion here to the asinaria festa which were by
no means uncommon in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe during the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.

Chapter LXXVIII. The Ass-Festival.

At length, in the middle of their feast, Zarathustra bursts in upon
them and rebukes them soundly. But he does not do so long; in the
Ass-Festival, it suddenly occurs to him, that he is concerned with a
ceremony that may not be without its purpose, as something foolish but
necessary--a recreation for wise men. He is therefore highly pleased
that the higher men have all blossomed forth; they therefore require
new festivals,--"A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and
ass-festival, some old joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow
their souls bright."

He tells them not to forget that night and the ass-festival, for "such
things only the convalescent devise! And should ye celebrate it again,"
he concludes, "do it from love to yourselves, do it also from love to
me! And in remembrance of ME!"

Chapter LXXIX. The Drunken Song.

It were the height of presumption to attempt to fix any particular
interpretation of my own to the words of this song. With what has gone
before, the reader, while reading it as poetry, should be able to seek
and find his own meaning in it. The doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence
appears for the last time here, in an art-form. Nietzsche lays stress
upon the fact that all happiness, all delight, longs for repetitions,
and just as a child cries "Again! Again!" to the adult who happens to
be amusing him; so the man who sees a meaning, and a joyful meaning, in
existence must also cry "Again!" and yet "Again!" to all his life.

Chapter LXXX. The Sign.

In this discourse, Nietzsche disassociates himself finally from the
higher men, and by the symbol of the lion, wishes to convey to us that
he has won over and mastered the best and the most terrible in nature.
That great power and tenderness are kin, was already his belief in
1875--eight years before he wrote this speech, and when the birds and
the lion come to him, it is because he is the embodiment of the two
qualities. All that is terrible and great in nature, the higher men are
not yet prepared for; for they retreat horror-stricken into the cave
when the lion springs at them; but Zarathustra makes not a move towards
them. He was tempted to them on the previous day, he says, but "That
hath had its time! My suffering and my fellow suffering,--what matter
about them! Do I then strive after HAPPINESS? I strive after my work!
Well! the lion hath come, my children are nigh. Zarathustra hath grown
ripe. MY day beginneth: ARISE NOW, ARISE, THOU GREAT NOONDAY!"

...

The above I know to be open to much criticism. I shall be grateful to
all those who will be kind enough to show me where and how I have gone
wrong; but I should like to point out that, as they stand, I have not
given to these Notes by any means their final form.

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.

London, February 1909.

