Thus Spoke Zarathustra (13 page)

Did you know this already? Shared injustice is half justice. And he who can bear it should take the injustice upon himself.

A little revenge is more human than no revenge at all. And if the punishment be not also a right and an honour for the transgressor, then I do not like your punishment.

It is more noble to declare yourself wrong than to maintain you are right, especially when you
are
right. Only you must be rich enough for it.

I do not like your cold justice; and from the eye of your judges there always gazes only the executioner and his cold steel.

Tell me, where is the justice which is love with seeing eyes to be found?

Then devise the love that bears not only all punishment but also all guilt!

Then devise the justice that acquits everyone except the judges!

Will you learn this, too? To him who wants to be just from the very heart even a lie becomes philanthropy.

But how could I be just from the very heart? How can I give everyone what is his? Let this suffice me: I give everyone what is mine.

Finally, my brothers, guard yourselves against doing wrong to any hermit! How could a hermit forget? How could he requite?

A hermit is like a deep well. It is easy to throw a stone into it; but if it sink to the bottom, tell me, who shall fetch it out again?

Guard yourselves against offending the hermit! But if you have done so, well then, kill him as well!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of Marriage and Children

I
HAVE
a question for you alone, my brother: I throw this question like a plummet into your soul, to discover how deep it is.

You are young and desire marriage and children. But I ask you: are you a man who
ought
to desire a child?

Are you the victor, the self-conqueror, the ruler of your senses, the lord of your virtues? Thus I ask you.

Or do the animal and necessity speak from your desire? Or isolation? Or disharmony with yourself?

I would have your victory and your freedom long for a child. You should build living memorials to your victory and your liberation.

You should build beyond yourself. But first you must be built yourself, square-built in body and soul.

You should propagate yourself not only forward, but upward!
¹³
May the garden of marriage help you to do it!

You should create a higher body, a first motion, a self-propelling wheel – you should create a creator.

Marriage: that I call the will of two to create the one who is more than those who created it. Reverence before one another, as before the willers of such a will – that I call marriage.

Let this be the meaning and the truth of your marriage. But that which the many-too-many, the superfluous, call marriage – ah, what shall I call it?

Ah, this poverty of soul in partnership! Ah, this filth of soul in partnership! Ah, this miserable ease in partnership!

All this they call marriage; and they say their marriages are made in Heaven.

Well, I do not like it, this Heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, these animals caught in the heavenly net!

And let the God who limps hither to bless what he has not joined stay far from me!

Do not laugh at such marriages! What child has not had reason to weep over its parents?

This man seemed to me worthy and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife the earth seemed to me a house for the nonsensical.

Yes, I wish that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate together.

This man set forth like a hero in quest of truth and at last he captured a little dressed-up lie. He calls it his marriage.

That man used to be reserved in his dealings and fastidious in his choice. But all at once he spoilt his company once and for all: he calls it his marriage.

That man sought a handmaiden with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the handmaiden of a woman, and now he needs to become an angel too.

I have found all buyers cautious, and all of them have astute eyes. But even the most astute man buys his wife while she is still wrapped.

Many brief follies – that is called love with you. And your marriage makes an end of many brief follies with one long stupidity.

Your love for woman and woman’s love for man: ah, if only it were pity for suffering and veiled gods! But generally two animals sense one another.

But even your best love too is only a passionate impersonation and a painful ardour. It is a torch which should light your way to higher paths.

One day you shall love beyond yourselves! So first
learn
to love! For that you have had to drink the bitter cup of your love.

There is bitterness in the cup of even the best love: thus it arouses longing for the Superman, thus it arouses thirst in you, the creator!

A creator’s thirst, arrow, and longing for the Superman: speak, my brother, is this your will to marriage?

I call holy such a will and such a marriage.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of Voluntary Death

M
ANY
die too late and some die too early. Still the doctrine sounds strange: ‘Die at the right time.’

Die at the right time: thus Zarathustra teaches.

To be sure, he who never lived at the right time could hardly die at the right time! Better if he were never to be born! – Thus I advise the superfluous.

But even the superfluous make a great thing of their dying; yes, even the hollowest nut wants to be cracked.

Everyone treats death as an important matter: but as yet death is not a festival. As yet, men have not learned to consecrate the fairest festivals.

I shall show you the consummating death, which shall be a spur and a promise to the living.

The man consummating his life dies his death triumphantly, surrounded by men filled with hope and making solemn vows.

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

To die thus is the best death; but the second best is: to die in battle and to squander a great soul.

But equally hateful to the fighter as to the victor is your grinning death, which comes creeping up like a thief – and yet comes as master.

I commend to you my sort of death, voluntary death that comes to me because
I
wish it.

And when shall I wish it? – He who has a goal and an heir wants death at the time most favourable to his goal and his heir.

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

Truly, I do not want to be like the rope-makers: they spin out their yarn and as a result continually go backwards themselves.

Many a one grows too old even for his truths and victories;
a toothless mouth has no longer the right to every truth.

And everyone who wants glory must take leave of honour in good time and practise the difficult art of – going at the right time.

One must stop permitting oneself to be eaten when one tastes best: this is understood by those who want to be loved long.

To be sure, there are sour apples whose fate is to wait until the last day of autumn: and they become at the same time ripe, yellow, and shrivelled.

In some the heart ages first and in others the spirit. And some are old in their youth: but those who are young late stay young long.

For many a man, life is a failure: a poison-worm eats at his heart. So let him see to it that his death is all the more a success.

Many a man never becomes sweet, he rots even in the summer. It is cowardice that keeps him fastened to his branch.

Many too many live and they hang on their branches much too long. I wish a storm would come and shake all this rottenness and worm-eatenness from the tree!

I wish preachers
of speedy
death would come! They would be the fitting storm and shakers of the trees of life! But I hear preached only slow death and patience with all ‘earthly things’.

Ah, do you preach patience with earthly things? It is these earthly things that have too much patience with you, you blasphemers!

Truly, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honour: and that he died too early has since been a fatality for many.

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

Had he only remained in the desert and far from the good and just! Perhaps he would have learned to live and learned to love the earth – and laughter as well!

Believe it, my brothers! He died too early; he himself
would have recanted his teaching had he lived to my age! He was noble enough to recant!

But he was still immature. The youth loves immaturely and immaturely too he hates man and the earth. His heart and the wings of his spirit are still bound and heavy.

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

Free for death and free in death, one who solemnly says No when there is no longer time for Yes: thus he understands life and death.

That your death may not be a blasphemy against man and the earth, my friends: that is what I beg from the honey of your soul.

In your death, your spirit and your virtue should still glow like a sunset glow around the earth: otherwise yours is a bad death.

Thus I want to die myself, that you friends may love the earth more for my sake; and I want to become earth again, that I may have peace in her who bore me.

Truly, Zarathustra had a goal, he threw his ball: now may you friends be the heirs of my goal, I throw the golden ball to you.

But best of all I like to see you, too, throwing on the golden ball, my friends! So I shall stay on earth a little longer: forgive me for it!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Bestowing Virtue

1

W
HEN
Zarathustra had taken leave of the town to which his heart was attached and which was called ‘The Pied Cow’ there followed him many who called themselves his disciples and escorted him. Thus they came to a cross-road: there Zarathustra told them that from then on he wanted to go
alone: for he was a friend of going-alone. But his disciples handed him in farewell a staff, upon the golden haft of which a serpent was coiled about a sun. Zarathustra was delighted with the staff and leaned upon it; then he spoke thus to his disciples:

Tell me: how did gold come to have the highest value? Because it is uncommon and useless and shining and mellow in lustre; it always bestows itself.

Only as an image of the highest virtue did gold come to have die highest value. Gold-like gleams the glance of the giver. Gold-lustre makes peace between moon and sun.

The highest virtue is uncommon and useless, it is shining and mellow in lustre: the highest virtue is a bestowing virtue.

Truly, I divine you well, my disciples, you aspire to the bestowing virtue, as I do. What could you have in common with cats and wolves?

You thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves; and that is why you thirst to heap up all riches in your soul.

Your soul aspires insatiably after treasures and jewels, because your virtue is insatiable in wanting to give.

You compel all things to come to you and into you, that they may flow back from your fountain as gifts of your love.

Truly, such a bestowing love must become a thief of all values; but I call this selfishness healthy and holy.

There is another selfishness, an all-too-poor, a hungry selfishness that always wants to steal, that selfishness of the sick, the sick selfishness.

It looks with the eye of a thief upon all lustrous things; with the greed of hunger it measures him who has plenty to eat; and it is always skulking about the table of the givers.

Sickness speaks from such craving, and hidden degeneration; the thieving greed of this longing speaks of a sick body.

Tell me, my brothers: what do we account bad and the worst of all? Is it not
degeneration?
– And we always suspect degeneration where the bestowing soul is lacking.

Our way is upward, from the species across to the super-species. But the degenerate mind which says ‘All for me’ is a horror to us.

Our mind flies upward: thus it is an image of our bodies, an image of an advance and elevation.

The names of the virtues are such images of advances and elevations.

Thus the body goes through history, evolving and battling. And the spirit – what is it to the body? The herald, companion, and echo of its battles and victories.

All names of good and evil are images: they do not speak out, they only hint. He is a fool who seeks knowledge from them.

Whenever your spirit wants to speak in images, pay heed; for that is when your virtue has its origin and beginning.

Then your body is elevated and risen up; it enraptures the spirit with its joy, that it may become creator and evaluator and lover and benefactor of all things.

When your heart surges broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger to those who live nearby: that is when your virtue has its origin and beginning.

When you are exalted above praise and blame, and your will wants to command all things as the will of a lover: that is when your virtue has its origin and beginning.

When you despise the soft bed and what is pleasant and cannot make your bed too far away from the soft-hearted: that is when your virtue has its origin and beginning.

When you are the willers of a single will, and you call this dispeller of need your essential and necessity: that is when your virtue has its origin and beginning.

Truly, it is a new good and evil! Truly, a new roaring in the depths and the voice of a new fountain!

It is power, this new virtue; it is a ruling idea, and around it a subtle soul: a golden sun, and around it the serpent of knowledge.