The Portable Nietzsche (36 page)

“To be forsaken, however, is another matter. For—do you still remember, Zarathustra? When your bird cried high above you, when you stood in the forest, undecided where to turn, ignorant, near a corpse—when you said, ‘May my animals lead me! I found it more dangerous to be among men than among animals'— then you were forsaken! And do you still remember, Zarathustra? When you sat on your island, a well of wine among empty pails, spending and expending, bestowing and flowing among the thirsty, until finally you sat thirsty among drunks and complained by night, ‘Is it not more blessed to receive than to give, and to steal still more blessed than to receive?'—then you were forsaken! And do you still remember, Zarathustra? When your stillest hour came and drove you away from yourself, speaking in an evil whisper, ‘Speak and break!'—when it made you repent all your waiting and silence and discouraged your humble courage—then you were forsaken.”

O solitude! O my home, solitude! How happily and tenderly your voice speaks to me! We do not question each other, we do not complain to each other, we often walk together through open doors. For where you are, things are open and bright; and the hours too walk on lighter feet here. For in darkness, time weighs more heavily on us than in the light. Here the words and word-shrines of all being open up before me: here all being wishes to become word, all becoming wishes to learn from me how to speak.

Down there, however, all speech is in vain. There, forgetting and passing by are the best wisdom: that I have learned now. He who would grasp everything human would have to grapple with everything. But for that my hands are too clean. I do not even want to inhale their breath; alas, that I lived so long among their noises and vile breath!

O happy silence around me! O clean smells around me! Oh, how this silence draws deep breaths of clean air! Oh, how it listens, this happy silence!

But down there everyone talks and no one listens. You could ring in your wisdom with bells: the shopkeepers in the market place would outjingle it with pennies.

Everyone among them talks; no one knows how to understand any more. Everything falls into the water, nothing falls into deep wells any longer.

Everyone among them talks; nothing turns out well any more and is finished. Everyone cackles; but who still wants to sit quietly in the nest and hatch eggs?

Everyone among them talks; everything is talked to pieces. And what even yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its tooth, today hangs, spoiled by scraping and gnawing, out of the mouths of the men of today.

Everyone among them talks; everything is betrayed. And what was once called the secret and the secrecy of deep souls today belongs to the street trumpeters and other butterflies.

Oh, everything human is strange, a noise on dark streets! But now it lies behind me again: my greatest danger lies behind me!

Consideration and pity have ever been my greatest dangers, and everything human wants consideration and pity. With concealed truths, with a fool's hands and a fond, foolish heart and a wealth of the little lies of pity: thus I always lived among men. Disguised I sat among them, ready to mistake
myself
that I might endure
them
, and willingly urging myself, “You fool, you do not know men.”

One forgets about men when one lives among men; there is too much foreground in all men: what good are far-sighted, far-seeking eyes
there?
And whenever they mistook me, I, fool that I am, showed them more consideration than myself, being used to hardness against myself, and often I even took revenge on myself for being too considerate. Covered with the bites of poisonous flies and hollowed out like a stone by many drops of malice, thus I sat among them, and I still reminded myself, “Everything small is innocent of its smallness.”

Especially those who call themselves “the good” I found to be the most poisonous flies: they bite in all innocence, they lie in all innocence; how could they possibly be just to me? Pity teaches all who live among the good to lie. Pity surrounds all free souls with musty air. For the stupidity of the good is unfathomable.

To conceal myself and my wealth, that I learned down there; for I have found everyone poor in spirit. The lie of my pity was this, that I knew I could see and smell in everyone what was spirit enough for him and what was too much spirit for him. Their stiff sages—I called them sagacious, not stiff; thus I learned to swallow words. Their gravediggers—I called them researchers and testers; thus I learned to change words. The gravediggers dig themselves sick; under old rubbish lie noxious odors. One should not stir up the morass. One should live on mountains.

With happy nostrils I again breathe mountain freedom. At last my nose is delivered from the smell of everything human. Tickled by the sharp air as by sparkling wines, my soul sneezes—sneezes and jubilates to itself:
Gesundheit!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

In a dream, in the last dream of the morning, I stood in the foothills today—beyond the world, held scales, and weighed the world. Alas, the jealous dawn came too early and glowed me awake! She is always jealous of my glowing morning dreams.

Measurable by him who has time, weighable by a good weigher, reachable by strong wings, guessable by divine nutcrackers: thus my dream found the world—my dream, a bold sailor, half ship, half hurricane, taciturn as butterflies, impatient as falcons: how did it have the patience or the time to weigh the world? Did my wisdom secretly urge it, my laughing, wide-awake day-wisdom which mocks all “infinite worlds”? For it speaks: “Wherever there is force,
number
will become mistress: she has more force.”

How surely my dream looked upon this finite world, not inquisitively, not acquisitively, not afraid, not begging, as if a full apple offered itself to my hand, a ripe golden apple with cool, soft, velvet skin, thus the world offered itself to me; as if a tree waved to me, broadbranched, strong-willed, bent as a support, even as a footstool for one weary of his way, thus the world stood on my foothills; as if delicate hands carried a shrine toward me, a shrine open for the delight of bashful, adoring eyes, thus the world offered itself to me today; not riddle enough to frighten away human love, not solution enough to put to sleep human wisdom: a humanly good thing the world was to me today, though one speaks so much evil of it.

How shall I thank my morning dream that I thus weighed the world this morning? As a humanly good thing it came to me, this dream and heart-comforter. And to imitate it by day and to learn from it what was best in it, I shall now place the three most evil things on the scales and weigh them humanly well. He that taught to bless also taught to curse; what are the three best cursed things in the world? I shall put them on the scales.

Sex, the lust to rule, selfishness
: these three have so far been best cursed and worst reputed and lied about; these three I will weigh humanly well.

Well then, here are my foothills and there the sea:
that
rolls toward me, shaggy, flattering, the faithful old hundred-headed canine monster that I love. Well then, here I will hold the scales over the rolling sea; and a witness I choose too, to look on—you, solitary tree, fragrant and broad-vaulted, that I love.

On what bridge does the present pass to the future? By what compulsion does the higher compel itself to the lower? And what bids even the highest grow still higher?

Now the scales are balanced and still: three weighty questions I threw on it; three weighty answers balance the other scale.

Sex: to all hair-shirted despisers of the body, their thorn and stake, and cursed as “world” among all the afterworldly because it mocks and fools all teachers of error and confusion.

Sex: for the rabble, the slow fire on which they are burned; for all worm-eaten wood and all stinking rags, the ever-ready rut and oven.

Sex: for free hearts, innocent and free, the garden happiness of the earth, the future's exuberant gratitude to the present.

Sex: only for the wilted, a sweet poison; for the lion-willed, however, the great invigoration of the heart and the reverently reserved wine of wines.

Sex: the happiness that is the great parable of a higher happiness and the highest hope. For to many is marriage promised, and more than marriage—to many who are stranger to each other than man and woman. And who can wholly comprehend
how
strange man and woman are to each other?

Sex—but I want to have fences around my thoughts and even around my words, lest swine and swooners break into my garden!

 

The lust to rule: the scalding scourge of the hardest among the hardhearted; the hideous torture that is saved up for the cruelest; the dark flame of living pyres.

The lust to rule: the malicious gadfly imposed on the vainest peoples; the mocker of all uncertain virtues; the rider on every horse and every pride.

The lust to rule: the earthquake that breaks and breaks open everything worm-eaten and hollow; the rumbling, grumbling punisher that breaks open whited sepulchers; the lightning-like question mark beside premature answers.

The lust to rule: before whose glances man crawls and ducks and slaves and becomes lower than snake and swine, until finally the great contempt cries out of him.

The lust to rule: the terrible teacher of the great contempt, who preaches “away with you” to the very faces of cities and empires, until it finally cries out of them themselves, “Away with
me!
”

The lust to rule: which, however, also ascends luringly to the pure and lonely and up to self-sufficient heights, glowing like a love that luringly paints crimson fulfillments on earthly skies.

The lust to rule—but who would call it lust when what is high longs downward for power? Verily, there is nothing diseased or lustful in such longing and condescending. That the lonely heights should not remain lonely and self-sufficient eternally; that the mountain should descend to the valley and the winds of the height to the low plains—oh, who were to find the right name for such longing? “Gift-giving virtue”—thus Zarathustra once named the unnamable.

 

And at that time it also happened—and verily, it happened for the first time—that his word pronounced
selfishness
blessed, the wholesome, healthy selfishness that wells from a powerful soul—from a powerful soul to which belongs the high body, beautiful, triumphant, refreshing, around which everything becomes a mirror —the supple, persuasive body, the dancer whose parable and epitome is the self-enjoying soul. The self-enjoyment of such bodies and souls calls itself “virtue.”

With its words about good and bad, such self-enjoyment screens itself as with sacred groves; with the names of its happiness it banishes from its presence whatever is contemptible. From its presence it banishes whatever is cowardly; it says: bad—
that is
cowardly! Contemptible to its mind is anyone who always worries, sighs, is miserable, and also anyone who picks up even the smallest advantages. It also despises all wisdom that wallows in grief; for verily, there is also wisdom that blooms in the dark, a nightshade wisdom, which always sighs: all is vain.

Shy mistrust it holds in low esteem, also anyone who wants oaths instead of eyes and hands; also all wisdom that is all-too-mistrustful, for that is the manner of cowardly souls. In still lower esteem it holds the subservient, the doglike, who immediately lie on their backs, the humble; and there is wisdom too that is humble and doglike and pious and subservient. Altogether hateful and nauseating it finds those who never offer resistance, who swallow poisonous spittle and evil glances, the all-too-patient, all-suffering, always satisfied; for that is servile.

Whether one be servile before gods and gods' kicks or before men and stupid men's opinions—whatever is servile it spits on, this blessed selfishness. Bad: that is what it calls everything that is sorely stooped and sordidly servile, unfree blink-eyes, oppressed hearts, and that false yielding manner that kisses with wide cowardly lips.

And sham wisdom: that is what it calls the would-be wit of the servile and old and weary, and especially the whole wicked, nitwitted, witless foolishness of priests. The sham-wise, however—all the priests, the world-weary, and all those whose souls are womanish and servile—oh, what wicked tricks has their trickery always played on selfishness! And what was considered virtue and called virtue was playing wicked tricks on selfishness! And “selfless”—that is how all these world-weary cowards and cross-marked spiders wanted themselves, for good reasons.

But for all these the day is now at hand, the change, the sword of judgment,
the great noon
: much shall be revealed there.

And whoever proclaims the ego wholesome and holy, and selfishness blessed, verily, he will also tell what he knows, foretelling: “Verily, it is at hand, it is near, the great noon!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

My tongue is of the people: I speak too crudely and heartily for Angora rabbits. And my speech sounds even stranger to all ink-fish and pen-hacks.

My hand is a fool's hand: beware, all tables and walls and whatever else still offer room for foolish frill or scribbling skill.

My foot is a cloven foot; with it I trample and trot over sticks and stones, crisscross, and I am happy as the devil while running so fast.

My stomach—is it an eagle's stomach? For it likes lamb best of all. Certainly it is the stomach of some bird. Nourished on innocent things and on little, ready and impatient to fly, to fly off—that happens to be my way: how could there not be something of the bird's way in that? And above all, I am an enemy of the spirit of gravity, that is the bird's way—and verily, a sworn enemy, archenemy, primordial enemy. Oh, where has not my enmity flown and misflown in the past?