The Portable Nietzsche (38 page)

But when the hard winter comes, the river-animal tamer, then even the most quick-witted learn mistrust; and verily, not only the blockheads then say, “Does not everything
stand still?
”

“At bottom everything stands still”—that is truly a winter doctrine, a good thing for sterile times, a fine comfort for hibemators and hearth-squatters.

“At bottom everything stands still”—
against
this the thawing wind preaches. The thawing wind, a bull that is no plowing bull, a raging bull, a destroyer who breaks the ice with wrathful horns. Ice, however, breaks bridges!

O my brothers, is not everything in flux
now?
Have not all railings and bridges fallen into the water? Who could still cling to “good” and “evil”?

“Woe to us! Hail to us! The thawing wind blows!”—thus preach in every street, my brothers.

There is an old illusion, which is called good and evil. So far the wheel of this illusion has revolved around soothsayers and stargazers. Once man believed in soothsayers and stargazers, and therefore believed: “All is destiny: you ought to, for you must.”

Then man again mistrusted all soothsayers and stargazers, and therefore believed: “All is freedom: you can, for you will.”

O my brothers, so far there have been only illusions about stars and the future, not knowledge; and therefore there have been only illusions so far, not knowledge, about good and evil.

“Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not kill!” Such words were once called holy; one bent the knee and head and took off one's shoes before them. But I ask you: where have there ever been better robbers and killers in this world than such holy words?

Is there not in all life itself robbing and killing? And that such words were called holy—was not truth itself killed thereby? Or was it the preaching of death that was called holy, which contradicted and contravened all life? O my brothers, break, break the old tablets!

This is my pity for all that is past: I see how all of it is abandoned—abandoned to the pleasure, the spirit, the madness of every generation, which comes along and reinterprets all that has been as a bridge to itself.

A great despot might come along, a shrewd monster who, according to his pleasure and displeasure, might constrain and strain all that is past till it becomes a bridge to him, a harbinger and herald and cockcrow.

This, however, is the other danger and what prompts my further pity: whoever is of the rabble, thinks back as far as the grandfather; with the grandfather, however, time ends.

Thus all that is past is abandoned: for one day the rabble might become master and drown all time in shallow waters.

Therefore, my brothers, a new
nobility
is needed to be the adversary of all rabble and of all that is despotic and to write anew upon new tablets the word “noble.”

For many who are noble are needed, and noble men of many kinds, that there may be a nobility. Or as I once said in a parable: “Precisely this is godlike that there are gods, but no God.”

O my brothers, I dedicate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future—verily, not to a nobility that you might buy like shopkeepers and with shopkeepers' gold: for whatever has its price has little value.

Not whence you come shall henceforth constitute your honor, but whither you are going! Your will and your foot which has a will to go over and beyond yourselves—that shall constitute your new honor.

Verily, not that you have served a prince—what do princes matter now?—or that you became a bulwark for what stands that it might stand more firmly.

Not that your tribe has become courtly at court and that you have learned, like a flamingo, to stand for long hours in a colorful costume in shallow ponds—for the ability to stand is meritorious among courtiers; and all courtiers believe that blessedness after death must comprise permission to sit.

Nor that a spirit which they call holy led your ancestors into promised lands, which I do not praise—for where the worst of all trees grew, the cross, that land deserves no praise. And verily, wherever this “Holy Spirit” led his knights, on all such crusades goose aids goat in leading the way, and the contrary and crude sailed foremost.

O my brothers, your nobility should not look backward but ahead! Exiles shall you be from all father- and forefather-lands! Your
children's
land shall you love: this love shall be your new nobility—the undiscovered land in the most distant sea. For that I bid your sails search and search.

In your children you shall make up for being the children of your fathers: thus shall you redeem all that is past. This new tablet I place over you.

“Why live? All is vanity! Living—that is threshing straw; living—that is consuming oneself in flames without becoming warm.” Such antiquarian babbling is still considered “wisdom”; it is honored all the more for being old and musty. Mustiness too ennobles.

Children might speak thus: they fear the fire because it burned them. There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom. And why should those who always “thresh
straw”
be allowed to blaspheme threshing? Such oxen should be muzzled after all.

Such men sit down to the table and bring nothing along, not even a good appetite; and then they blaspheme: “All is vanity.” But eating and drinking well, O my brothers, is verily no vain art. Break, break the old tablets of the never gay!

“To the clean all is clean,” the people say. But I say unto you, “To the mean all becomes mean.”

Therefore the swooners and head-hangers, whose hearts also hang limply, preach, “The world itself is a filthy monster.” For all these have an unclean spirit—but especially those who have neither rest nor repose except when they see the world from
abaft,
the afterworldly. To these I say to their faces, even though it may not sound nice: the world is like man in having a backside abaft; that much is true. There is much filth in the world; that much is true. But that does not make the world itself a filthy monster.

There is wisdom in this, that there is much in the world that smells foul: nausea itself creates wings and water-divining powers. Even in the best there is still something that nauseates; and even the best is something that must be overcome. O my brothers, there is much wisdom in this, that there is much filth in the world.

Such maxims I heard pious afterworldly people speak to their conscience—verily, without treachery or falseness, although there is nothing falser in the whole world, nothing more treacherous:

“Let the world go its way! Do not raise one finger against it!”

“Let him who wants to, strangle and stab and fleece and flay the people. Do not raise one finger against it! Thus will they learn to renounce the world.”

“And your own reason—you yourself should stifle and strangle it; for it is a reason of this world; thus will you yourself learn to renounce the world.”

Break, break, O my brothers, these old tablets of the pious. Break the maxims of those who slander the world.

“Whoever learns much will unlearn all violent desire” —that is whispered today in all the dark lanes.

“Wisdom makes weary; worth while is—nothing; thou shalt not desire!”—this new tablet I found hanging even in the open market places.

Break, O my brothers, break this new tablet too. The world-weary hung it up, and the preachers of death, and also the jailers; for behold, it is also an exhortation to bondage. Because they learned badly, and the best things not at all, and everything too early and everything too hastily; because they ate badly, therefore they got upset stomachs; for their spirit is an upset stomach which counsels death. For verily, my brothers, the spirit is a stomach. Life is a well of joy; but for those out of whom an upset stomach speaks, which is the father of melancholy, all wells are poisoned.

To gain knowledge is a
joy
for the lion-willed! But those who have become weary are themselves merely being “willed,” and all the billows play with them. And this is always the manner of the weak: they get lost on the way. And in the end their weariness still asks, “Why did we ever pursue any way at all? It is all the same.” Their ears appreciate the preaching, “Nothing is worth while! You shall not will!” Yet this is an exhortation to bondage.

O my brothers, like a fresh roaring wind Zarathustra comes to all who are weary of the way; many noses he will yet make sneeze. Through walls too, my free breath blows, and into prisons and imprisoned spirits. To will liberates, for to will is to create: thus I teach. And you shall learn solely in order to create.

And you shall first
learn
from me how to learn—how to learn well. He that has ears to hear, let him hear!

There stands the bark; over there perhaps the great nothing lies. But who would embark on this “perhaps”? No one of you wants to embark on the bark of death. Why then do you want to be world-weary? World-weary! And you are not even removed from the earth. Lusting after the earth I have always found you, in love even with your own earth-weariness. Not for nothing is your lip hanging; a little earthly wish still sits on it. And in your eyes—does not a little cloud of unforgotten earthly joy float there?

There are many good inventions on earth, some useful, some pleasing: for their sake, the earth is to be loved. And there is such a variety of well-invented things that the earth is like the breasts of a woman: useful as well as pleasing.

But you who are world-weary, you who are earthlazy, you should be lashed with switches: with lashes one should make your legs sprightly again. For when you are not invalids and decrepit wretches of whom the earth is weary, you are shrewd sloths or sweet-toothed, sneaky pleasure-cats. And if you do not want to
run
again with pleasure, then you should pass away. To the incurable, one should not try to be a physician—thus Zarathustra teaches—so you shall pass away!

But it takes more
courage
to make an end than to make a new verse: all physicians and poets know that.

O my brothers, there are tablets created by weariness and tablets created by rotten, rotting sloth; but though they speak alike, they must be understood differently.

Behold this man languishing here! He is but one span from his goal, but out of weariness he has defiantly lain down in the dust—this courageous man! Out of weariness he yawns at the way and the earth and the goal and himself: not one step farther will he go—this courageous man! Now the sun glows on him and the dogs lick his sweat; but he lies there in his defiance and would sooner die of thirst—die of thirst one span away from his goal! Verily, you will yet have to drag him by the hair into his heaven—this hero! Better yet, let him lie where he lay down, and let sleep, the comforter, come to him with cooling, rushing rain. Let him lie till he awakes by himself, till he renounces by himself all weariness and whatever weariness taught through him. Only, my brothers, drive the dogs away from him, the lazy creepers, and all the ravenous vermin—all the raving vermin of the “educated,” who feast on every hero's sweat.

I draw circles around me and sacred boundaries; fewer and fewer men climb with me on ever higher mountains: I am building a mountain range out of ever more sacred mountains. But wherever you may climb with me, O my brothers, see to it that no
parasite
climbs with you. Parasites: creeping, cringing worms which would batten on your secret sores. And this is their art, that they find where climbing souls are weary; in your grief and discouragement, in your tender parts, they build their nauseating nests. Where the strong are weak and the noble all-too-soft—there they build their nauseating nests: the parasites live where the great have little secret sores.

What is the highest species of all being and what is the lowest? The parasite is the lowest species; but whoever is of the highest species will nourish the most parasites. For the soul that has the longest ladder and reaches down deepest—how should the most parasites not sit on that? The most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and roam farthest within itself; the most necessary soul, which out of sheer joy plunges itself into chance; the soul which, having being, dives into becoming; the soul which
has
, but
wants
to want and will; the soul which flees itself and catches up with itself in the widest circle; the wisest soul, which folly exhorts most sweetly; the soul which loves itself most, in which all things have their sweep and countersweep and ebb and Sood—oh, how should the highest soul not have the worst parasites?

O my brothers, am I cruel? But I say: what is falling, we should still push. Everything today falls and decays: who would check it? But 1—I even want to push it.

Do you know the voluptuous delight which rolls stones into steep depths? These human beings of today—look at them, how they roll into my depth!

I am a prelude of better players, O my brothers! A precedent! Follow my precedent!

And he whom you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster!

I love the valiant; but it is not enough to wield a broadsword, one must also know against whom. And often there is more valor when one refrains and passes by, in order to save oneself for the worthier enemy.

You shall have only enemies who are to be hated, but not enemies to be despised: you must be proud of your enemy; thus I taught once before. For the worthier enemy, O my friends, you shall save yourselves; therefore you must pass by much—especially much rabble who raise a din in your ears about the people and about peoples. Keep your eyes undefiled by their pro and con! There is much justice, much injustice; and whoever looks on becomes angry. Sighting and smiting here become one; therefore go away into the woods and lay your sword to sleep.