The Portable Nietzsche (52 page)

In the morning after this night, Zarathustra jumped up from his resting place, girded his loins, and came out of his cave glowing and strong as a morning sun that comes out of dark mountains.

“You great star,” he said as he had said once before, “you deep eye of happiness, what would your happiness be had you not those for whom you shine? And if they stayed in their chambers even after you had awakened and come and given and distributed, how angry would your proud shame be!

“Well then, they still sleep, these higher men, while
I
am awake:
these
are not my proper companions. It is not for them that I wait here in my mountains. I want to go to my work, to my day: but they do not understand the signs of my morning; my stride is for them no summons to awaken. They still sleep in my cave, their dream still drinks of my drunken songs. The ear that listens for
me
, the
heedful
ear is lacking in their limbs.”

Thus had Zarathustra spoken to his heart when the sun rose; then he looked questioning into the height, for he heard the sharp cry of his eagle above him. “Well then!” he cried back; “thus it pleases and suits me. My animals are awake, for I am awake. My eagle is awake and honors the sun as I do. With eagle talons he grasps for the new light. You are the right animals for me; I love you. But I still lack the right men.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra. But then it happened that he suddenly heard himself surrounded as by innumerable swarming and fluttering birds: but the whirring of so many wings and the thronging about his head were so great that he closed his eyes. And verily, like a cloud it came over him, like a cloud of arrows that empties itself over a new enemy. But behold, here it was a cloud of love, and over a new friend.

“What is happening to me?” thought Zarathustra in his surprised heart, and slowly he sat down on the big stone that lay near the exit of his cave. But as he reached out with his hands around and over and under himself, warding off the affectionate birds, behold, something stranger yet happened to him: for unwittingly he reached into a thick warm mane; and at the same time he heard a roar in front of him—a soft, long lion roar.

“The sign is at hand,”
said Zarathustra, and a change came over his heart. And indeed, as it became light before him, a mighty yellow animal lay at his feet and pressed its head against his knees and out of love did not want to let go of him, and acted like a dog that finds its old master again. But the doves were no less eager in their love than the lion; and whenever a dove slipped over the lion's nose, the lion shook its head and was amazed and laughed.

About all this Zarathustra spoke but a single sentence:
“My children are near, my children.”
Then he became entirely silent. But his heart was loosed, and tears dropped from his eyes and fell on his hands. And he no longer heeded anything and sat there motionless, without warding off the animals any more. Then the doves flew about and sat on his shoulders and caressed his white hair and did not weary of tenderness and jubilation. But the strong lion kept licking up the tears that fell on Zarathustra's hands and roared and growled bashfully. Thus acted these animals.

All this lasted a long time, or a short time: for properly speaking, there is
no
time on earth for such things. But meanwhile the higher men in Zarathustra's cave had awakened and arranged themselves in a procession to meet Zarathustra and bid him good morning; for they had found when they awakened that he was no longer among them. But when they reached the door of the cave and the sound of their steps ran ahead of them, the lion started violently, turned away from Zarathustra suddenly, and jumped toward the cave, roaring savagely. But when the higher men heard it roar, they all cried out as with a single mouth, and they fled back and disappeared in a flash.

Zarathustra himself, however, dazed and strange, rose from his seat, looked around, stood there amazed, questioned his heart, reflected, and was alone. “What did I hear?” he finally said slowly; “what happened to me just now?” And presently memory came to him and with a single glance he grasped everything that had happened between yesterday and today. “Here is the stone,” he said, stroking his beard, “where I sat yesterday morning; and here the soothsayer came to me, and here I first heard the cry which I heard just now, the great cry of distress.

“O you higher men, it was
your
distress that this old soothsayer prophesied to me yesterday morning; to your distress he wanted to seduce and tempt me. O Zarathustra, he said to me, I come to seduce you to your final sin.

“To my final sin?” shouted Zarathustra, and he laughed angrily at his own words;
“what
was it that was saved up for me as my final sin?”

And once more Zarathustra became absorbed in himself, and he sat down again on the big stone and reflected. Suddenly he jumped up. “Pity! Pity for the higher man!” he cried out, and his face changed to bronze. “Well then,
that
has had its time! My suffering and my pity for suffering—what does it matter? Am I concerned with
happiness?
I am concerned with my
work
.

“Well then! The lion came, my children are near, Zarathustra has ripened, my hour has come: this is
my
morning,
my
day is breaking:
rise now, rise, thou great noon!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he left his cave, glowing and strong as a morning sun that comes out of dark mountains.

. . . The degeneration of rulers and of the ruling classes has made for the greatest mischief in history. Without the Roman Caesars and Roman society, the insanity of Christianity would never have come to rule.

When the lesser men begin to doubt whether there are higher men, then the danger is great. . . . When Nero and Caracalla sat up there, the paradox originated that “the lowest man is worth more than that man up there.” And an image of God was spread which was as far removed as possible from the image of the most powerful—the god on the cross. . . .

Sils Maria, September 14, 1884

. . . This is the mistake which I seem to make eternally, that I imagine the sufferings of others as far greater than they really are. Ever since my childhood, the proposition “my greatest dangers lie in pity” has been confirmed again and again. . . .

Nizza, December 22, 1884

. . . I am having translated into German for me (in writing) a longish essay by Emerson, which gives some clarity about his development. If you want it, it is at your disposal and your wife's. I do not know how much I would give if only I could bring it about,
ex post facto,
that such a glorious, great nature, rich in soul and spirit, might have gone through some
strict
discipline, a really
scientific education.
As it is, in Emerson we have
lost a philosopher
. . . .

Nizza, March 1885

. . . It seems to me that a human being with the very best of intentions can do immeasurable harm, if he is immodest enough to wish to profit those whose spirit and will are concealed from him. . . .

Sils Maria, July 2, 1885

. . . I hold up before myself the images of Dante and Spinoza, who were better at accepting the lot of solitude. Of course, their way of thinking, compared to mine, was one which made solitude bearable; and in the end, for all those who somehow still had a “God” for company, what I experience as “solitude” really did not yet exist. My life now consists in the wish that it might be otherwise with all things than I comprehend, and that somebody might make
my
“truths” appear incredible to me. . . .

Rule? Press my type on others? Dreadful. Is not my happiness precisely the sight of many who are
different?
Problem. (xiv, 126)

The will to a
system
: in a philosopher, morally speaking, a subtle corruption, a disease of the character; amorally speaking, his will to pose as more stupid than he is—more stupid, that means: stronger, simpler, more commanding, less educated, more masterful, more tyrannical.

(XlV, 313)

Being nationalistic in the sense in which it is now demanded by public opinion would, it seems to me, be for us who are more spiritual not mere insipidity but dishonesty, a deliberate deadening of our better will and conscience.

(XIV, 332)

Fall of 1885

A book for
thinking,
nothing else: it belongs to those to whom thinking is a delight, nothing else. That it is written in German is untimely, to say the least: I wish I had written it in French so that it might not appear to be a confirmation of the aspirations of the German
Reich
. The Germans of today are not thinkers any more: something else delights and impresses them. The will to power as a principle might be intelligible to them. Among Germans today the least thinking is done. But who knows? In two generations one will no longer require the sacrifice involved in any nationalistic squandering of power, and in hebetation. (Formerly, I wished I had not written my
Zarathustra
in German. )

EDITOR'S NOTE

 

First published in 1886, aphoristic in appearance, this book is more continuous than it seems at first glance.

 

[52]

In the Jewish “Old Testament,” the book of divine justice, there are men, things, and speeches in so grand a style that Greek and Indian literature have nothing to compare with it. One stands in awe and reverence before these tremendous remnants of what man once was, and sad thoughts come to one about ancient Asia and its jutting peninsula, Europe, which wants so definitely to signify, as against Asia, the “progress of man.” Of course, those who are merely wretched tame domestic animals and know only the wants of domestic animals (like our cultivated people of today, including the Christians of “cultivated” Christianity) need neither be amazed nor even sorry when faced with these ruins: the taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone of “greatness” and “smallness.” Perhaps they will even find the New Testament, the book of grace, more to their taste (it is full of the odor of the real, effeminate, stupid canter and petty soul). To have glued this New Testament, a kind of rococo of taste in every respect, to the Old Testament to form one book—the “Bible,”
the
book—that is perhaps the greatest audacity and “sin against the spirit” which literary Europe has on its conscience.

 

[75]

The degree and kind of a person's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.

 

[126]

A people is nature's detour to arrive at six or seven great men—and then to get around them.

 

[153]

What is done out of love always occurs beyond good and evil.

 

[164]

Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was for servants; love God as I love him, as his son. What are morals to us sons of God?”

 

[212]

It seems to me more and more that the philosopher, as a
necessary
man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and always had to find himself, in opposition to his today: the ideal of the day was always his enemy. Hitherto all these extraordinary promoters of man, who are called philosophers, and who rarely have felt themselves to be friends of wisdom, but rather disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but finally also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time. By applying the knife vivisectionally to the very
virtues
,
of the time
they betrayed their own secret: to know of a new greatness of man, of a new untrodden way to his enhancement. Each time they have uncovered how much hypocrisy, comfortableness, letting oneself go and letting oneself drop, how many lies, were concealed under the most honored type of their contemporary morality, how much virtue was
outlived
. Each time they said: “We must proceed there, that way, where today you are least at home.”