Thus Spoke Zarathustra (15 page)

All
feeling
suffers in me and is in prison: but my
willing
always comes to me as my liberator and bringer of joy.

Willing liberates: that is the true doctrine of will and freedom – thus Zarathustra teaches you.

No more to will and no more to evaluate and no more to create! ah, that this great lassitude may ever stay far from me!

In knowing and understanding, too, I feel only my will’s delight in begetting and becoming; and if there be innocence in my knowledge it is because will to begetting is in it.

This will lured me away from God and gods; for what would there be to create if gods – existed!

But again and again it drives me to mankind, my ardent, creative will; thus it drives the hammer to the stone.

Ah, you men, I see an image sleeping in the stone, the image of my visions! Ah, that it must sleep in the hardest, ugliest stone!

Now my hammer rages fiercely against its prison. Fragments fly from the stone: what is that to me?

I will complete it: for a shadow came to me – the most silent, the lightest of all things once came to me!

The beauty of the Superman came to me as a shadow. Ah, my brothers! What are the gods to me now!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Compassionate

M
Y
friends, your friend has heard a satirical saying: ‘Just look at Zarathustra! Does he not go among us as if among animals?’

But it is better said like this: ‘The enlightened man goes among men
as
among animals.’

The enlightened man calls man himself: the animal with red cheeks.

How did this happen to man? Is it not because he has had to be ashamed too often?

Oh my friends! Thus speaks the enlightened man: ‘Shame, shame, shame – that is the history of man!’

And for that reason the noble man resolves not to make others ashamed: he resolves to feel shame before all sufferers.

Truly, I do not like them, the compassionate who are happy in their compassion: they are too lacking in shame.

If I must be compassionate I still do not want to be called compassionate; and if I am compassionate then it is preferably from a distance.

And I should also prefer to cover my head and flee away before I am recogni2ed: and thus I bid you do, my friends!

May my destiny ever lead across my path only those who, like you, do not sorrow or suffer, and those with whom I can have hope and repast and honey in common!

Truly, I did this and that for the afflicted; but it always seemed to me I did better things when I learned to enjoy myself better.

As long as men have existed, man has enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin!

And if we learn better to enjoy ourselves, we best unlearn how to do harm to others and to contrive harm.

Therefore I wash my hand when it has helped a sufferer, therefore I wipe my soul clean as well.

For I saw the sufferer suffer, and because I saw it I was ashamed on account of his shame; and when I helped him, then I sorely injured his pride.

Great obligations do not make a man grateful, they make him resentful; and if a small kindness is not forgotten it becomes a gnawing worm.

‘Be reserved in accepting! Honour a man by accepting from him!’ – thus I advise those who have nothing to give.

I, however, am a giver: I give gladly as a friend to friends. But strangers and the poor may pluck the fruit from my tree for themselves: it causes less shame that way.

Beggars, however, should be entirely abolished! Truly, it is annoying to give to them and annoying not to give to them.

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

But worst of all are petty thoughts. Truly, better even to have done wickedly than to have thought pettily!

To be sure, you will say: ‘Delight in petty wickedness spares us many a great evil deed.’ But here one should not wish to be spared.

The evil deed is like a boil: it itches and irritates and breaks forth – it speaks honourably.

‘Behold, I am disease’ – thus speaks the evil deed; that is its honesty.

But the petty thought is like a canker: it creeps and hides and wants to appear nowhere – until the whole body is rotten and withered by little cankers.

But I whisper this advice in the ear of him possessed of a devil: ‘Better for you to rear your devil! There is a way to greatness even for you!’

Ah, my brothers! One knows a little too much about everybody! And many a one who has become transparent to us is still for a long time invulnerable.

It is hard to live with men, because keeping silent is so hard.

And we are the most unfair, not towards him whom we do not like, but towards him for whom we feel nothing at all.

But if you have a suffering friend, be a resting-place for his
suffering, but a resting-place like a hard bed, a camp-bed: thus you will serve him best.

And should your friend do you a wrong, then say: ‘I forgive you what you did to me; but that you did it
to yourself
– how could I forgive that?’

Thus speaks all great love: it overcomes even forgiveness and pity.

One should hold fast to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, how soon one loses one’s head, too!

Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate?

Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity!

Thus spoke the Devil to me once: ‘Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.’

And I lately heard him say these words: ‘God is dead; God has died of his pity for man.’

So be warned against pity:
thence
shall yet come a heavy cloud for man! Truly, I understand weather-signs!

But mark, too, this saying: All great love is above pity: for it wants – to create what is loved!

‘I offer myself to my love,
and my neighbour as myself
’ – that is the language of all creators.

All creators, however, are hard.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Priests

A
ND
one day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples and spoke these words to them:

Here are priests: and although they are my enemies, pass them by quietly and with sleeping swords!

There are heroes even among them; many of them have suffered too much: so they want to make others suffer.

They are bad enemies: nothing is more revengeful than their humility. And he who touches them is easily defiled.

But my blood is related to theirs; and I want to know my blood honoured even in theirs.

And when they had passed by, Zarathustra was assailed by a pain; and he had not struggled long with his pain when he began to speak thus:

I pity these priests. They go against my taste, too; but that means little to me since I am among men.

But I suffer and have suffered with them: they seem to me prisoners and marked men. He whom they call Redeemer has cast them into bondage -

Into the bondage of false values and false scriptures! Ah, that someone would redeem them from their Redeemer!

Once, as the sea tossed them about, they thought they had landed upon an island; but behold, it was a sleeping monster!

False values and false scriptures: they are the worst monsters for mortal men – fate sleeps and waits long within them.

But at last it comes and awakes and eats and devours all that have built their huts upon it.

Oh, just look at these huts that these priests have built themselves. Churches they call their sweet-smelling caves!

Oh this counterfeit light! oh this musty air I here, where the soul may not fly up to its height!

On the contrary, their faith commands: ‘Up the steps on your knees, you sinners!’

Truly, I would rather see men still shameless than with the distorted eyes of their shame and devotion!

Who created such caves and penitential steps? Was it not those who wanted to hide themselves and were ashamed before the clear sky?

And only when the clear sky again looks through broken roofs and down upon grass and red poppies on broken walls – only then will I turn my heart again towards the places of this God.

They called God that which contradicted and harmed them: and truly, there was much that was heroic in their worship!

And they knew no other way of loving their God than by nailing men to the Cross!

They thought to live as corpses, they dressed their corpses in black; even in their speech I still smell the evil aroma of burial vaults.

And he who lives in their neighbourhood lives in the neighbourhood of black pools, from out of which the toad, that prophet of evil, sings its song with sweet melancholy.

They would have to sing better songs to make me believe in their Redeemer: his disciples would have to look more redeemed!

I should like to see them naked: for beauty alone should preach penitence. But whom could this disguised affliction persuade!

Truly, their Redeemers themselves did not come from freedom and the seventh heaven of freedom! Truly, they themselves never trod upon the carpets of knowledge!

The spirit of their Redeemers consisted of holes; but into every hole they had put their illusion, their stop-gap, which they called God.

Their spirit was drowned in their pity, and when they swelled and overswelled with pity a great folly always swam to the top.

Zealously and with clamour they drove their herds over their bridge: as if there were only one bridge to the future! Truly, these shepherds, too, still belonged among the sheep!

These shepherds had small intellects and spacious souls: but, my brothers, what small countries have even the most spacious souls been, up to now!

They wrote letters of blood on the path they followed, and their folly taught that truth is proved by blood.

But blood is the worst witness of truth; blood poisons and transforms the purest teaching to delusion and hatred of the heart.

And if someone goes through fire for his teaching – what does that prove? Truly, it is more when one’s own teaching comes out of one’s own burning!

Sultry heart and cold head: where these meet there arises the blusterer, the ‘Redeemer’.

Truly, there have been greater men and higher-born ones
than those whom the people call Redeemer, those ravishing and overpowering blustering winds!

And you, my brothers, must be redeemed by greater men than any Redeemer has been, if you would find the way to freedom!

There has never yet been a Superman. I have seen them both naked, the greatest and the smallest man.

They are still all-too-similar to one another. Truly, I found even the greatest man – all-too-human!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Virtuous

O
NE
has to speak with thunder and heavenly fireworks to feeble and dormant senses.

But the voice of beauty speaks softly: it steals into only the most awakened souls.

Gently my mirror trembled and laughed to me today; it was beauty’s holy laughter and trembling.

My beauty laughed at you, you virtuous, today. And thus came its voice to me: ‘They want to be – paid as well!’

You want to be paid as well, you virtuous! Do you want reward for virtue and heaven for earth and eternity for your today?

And are you now angry with me because I teach that there is no reward-giver nor paymaster? And truly, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward.

Alas, this is my sorrow: reward and punishment have been lyingly introduced into the foundation of things – and now even into the foundation of your souls, you virtuous!

But my words, like the snout of the boar, shall tear up the foundations of your souls; you shall call me a ploughshare.

All the secrets of your heart shall be brought to light; and when you lie, grubbed up and broken, in the sunlight, then your falsehood will be separated from your truth.

For this is your truth: You are too
pure
for the dirt of the words: revenge, punishment, reward, retribution.

You love your virtue as the mother her child; but when was it heard of a mother wanting to be paid for her love?

Your virtue is your dearest self. The ring’s desire is in you: to attain itself again – every ring struggles and turns itself to that end.

And every work of your virtue is like a star extinguished: its light is for ever travelling – and when will it cease from travelling?

Thus the light of your virtue is still travelling even when its task is done. Though it be forgotten and dead, its beam of light still lives and travels.

That your virtue is your Self and not something alien, a skin, a covering: that is the truth from the bottom of your souls, you virtuous!

But there are indeed those to whom virtue is a writhing under the whip: and you have listened too much to their cries!

And with others, their vices grow lazy and they call that virtue; and once their hatred and jealousy stretch themselves to rest, their ‘justice’ becomes lively and rubs its sleepy eyes.

And there are others who are drawn downward: their devils draw them. But the more they sink, the more brightly shines their eye and the longing for their God.

Alas, their cry, too, has come to your ears, you virtuous: ‘What I am
not
, that, that to me is God and virtue!’

And there are others who go along, heavy and creaking, like carts carrying stones downhill: they speak much of dignity and virtue – their brake they call virtue!

And there are others who are like household clocks wound up; they repeat their tick-tock and want people to call tick-tock – virtue.

Truly, I have fun with these: wherever I find such clocks I shall wind them up with my mockery; let them chime as well as tick!

And others are proud of their handful of righteousness and
for its sake commit wanton outrage upon all things: so that the world is drowned in their unrighteousness.