Thus Spoke Zarathustra (16 page)

Alas, how ill the word ‘virtue’ sounds in their mouths! And when they say: ‘I am just,’ it always sounds like: ‘I am revenged!’
¹⁵

They want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies with their virtue; and they raise themselves only in order to lower others.

And again, there are those who sit in their swamp and speak thus from the rushes: ‘Virtue – that means to sit quietly in the swamp.

‘We bite nobody and avoid him who wants to bite: and in everything we hold the opinion that is given us.’

And again, there are those who like posing and think: Virtue is a sort of pose.

Their knees are always worshipping and their hands are glorifications of virtue, but their heart knows nothing of it.

And again, there are those who hold it a virtue to say: ‘Virtue is necessary’; but fundamentally they believe only that the police are necessary.

And many a one who cannot see the sublime in man calls it virtue that he can see his baseness all-too-closely: thus he calls his evil eye virtue.

And some want to be edified and raised up and call it virtue; and others want to be thrown down – and call it virtue too.

And in that way almost everyone firmly believes he is participating in virtue; and at least asserts he is an expert on ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

But Zarathustra has not come to say to all these liars and fools: ‘What do
you
know of virtue? What
could
you know of virtue?’

No, he has come that you, my friends, might grow weary of the old words you have learned from the fools and liars.

That you might grow weary of the words ‘reward’, ‘retribution’, ‘punishment’, ‘righteous revenge’.

That you might grow weary of saying: ‘An action is good when it is unselfish.’

Ah, my friends I That
your
Self be in the action, as the mother is in the child: let that
be your
maxim of virtue!

Truly, I have taken a hundred maxims and your virtues’ dearest playthings away from you; and you scold me now, as children scold.

They were playing on the sea-shore – then came a wave and swept their playthings into the deep: now they cry.

But the same wave shall bring them new playthings and pour out new coloured sea-shells before them!

Thus they will be consoled; and you too, my friends, shall, like them, have your consolations – and new coloured sea-shells!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Rabble

L
IFE
is a fountain of delight; but where the rabble also drinks all wells are poisoned.

I love all that is clean; but I do not like to see the grinning mouths and the thirst of the unclean.

They cast their eyes down into the well: now their repulsive smile glitters up to me out of the well.

They have poisoned the holy water with their lascivious-ness; and when they called their dirty dreams ‘delight’ they poisoned even the words, too.

The flame is unwilling to burn when they put their damp hearts to the fire; the spirit itself bubbles and smokes when the rabble approaches the fire.

The fruit grows mawkish and over-ripe in their hands: the fruit tree becomes unstable and withered at the top under their glance.

And many a one who turned away from life, turned away only from the rabble: he did not wish to share the well and the flame and the fruit with the rabble.

And many a one who went into the desert and suffered
thirst with beasts of prey merely did not wish to sit around the cistern with dirty camel-drivers.

And many a one who came along like a destroyer and a shower of hail to all orchards wanted merely to put his foot into the jaws of the rabble and so stop its throat.

And to know that life itself has need of enmity and dying and martyrdoms, that was not the mouthful that choked me most.

But I once asked, and my question almost stifled me: What, does life have
need of
the rabble, too?

Are poisoned wells necessary, and stinking fires and dirty dreams and maggots in the bread of life?

Not my hate but my disgust hungrily devoured my life! Alas, I often grew weary of the spirit when I found the rabble, too, had been gifted with spirit!

And I turned my back upon the rulers when I saw what they now call ruling: bartering and haggling for power – with the rabble!

I dwelt with stopped ears among peoples with a strange language: that the language of their bartering and their haggling for power might remain strange to me.

And I went ill-humouredly through all yesterdays and todays holding my nose: truly, all yesterdays and todays smell badly of the scribbling rabble!

Like a cripple who has gone blind, deaf, and dumb: thus have I lived for a long time, that I might not live with the power-rabble, the scribbling-rabble, and the pleasure-rabble.

My spirit mounted steps wearily and warily; alms of delight were its refreshment; the blind man’s life crept along on a staff.

Yet what happened to me? How did I free myself from disgust? Who rejuvenated my eyes? How did I fly to the height where the rabble no longer sit at the well?

Did my disgust itself create wings and water-divining powers for me? Truly, I had to fly to the extremest height to find again the fountain of delight!

Oh, I have found it, my brothers! Here, in the extremest
height, the fountain of delight gushes up for me! And here there is a life at which no rabble drinks with me!

You gush up almost too impetuously, fountain of delight! And in wanting to fill the cup, you often empty it again!

And I still have to learn to approach you more discreetly: my heart still flows towards you all-too-impetuously.

My heart, upon which my summer burns, a short, hot, melancholy, over-joyful summer: how my summer-heart longs for your coolness!

Gone is the lingering affliction of my spring! Gone the malice of my snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely, and summer-noonday!

A summer at the extremest height with cold fountains and blissful stillness: oh come, my friends, that the stillness may become more blissful yet!

For this is
our
height and our home: we live too nobly and boldly
¹⁶
here for all unclean men and their thirsts.

Only cast your pure eyes into the well of my delight, friends! You will not dim its sparkle! It shall laugh back at you with
its
purity.

We build our nest in the tree Future; eagles shall bring food to us solitaries in their beaks!

Truly, food in which no unclean men could join us! They would think they were eating fire and burn their mouths!

Truly, we do not prepare a home here for unclean men! Their bodies and their spirits would call our happiness a cave of ice!

So let us live above them like strong winds, neighbours of the eagles, neighbours of the snow, neighbours of the sun: that is how strong winds live.

And like a wind will I one day blow among them and with my spirit take away the breath from their spirit: thus my future will have it.

Truly, Zarathustra is a strong wind to all flatlands; and he offers this advice to his enemies and to all that spews and spits: ‘Take care not to spit
against
the wind!’

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Tarantulas

S
EE,
this is the tarantula’s cave! Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Here hangs its web: touch it and make it tremble.

Here it comes docilely: Welcome, tarantula! Your triangle and symbol sit black upon your back; and I know too what sits within your soul.

Revenge sits within your soul: a black scab grows wherever you bite; with revenge your poison makes the soul giddy!

Thus do I speak to you in parables, you who make the soul giddy, you preachers
of equality
! You are tarantulas and dealers in hidden revengefulness!

But I will soon bring your hiding places to light: therefore I laugh my laughter of the heights in your faces.

I pull at your web that your rage may lure you from your cave of lies and your revenge may bound forward from behind your word ‘justice’.

For
that man may be freed from the bonds of revenge
: that is the bridge to my highest hope and a rainbow after protracted storms.

But, naturally, the tarantulas would have it differently. ‘That the world may become full of the storms of our revenge, let precisely that be called justice by us’ – thus they talk together.

‘We shall practise revenge and outrage against all who are not as we are’ – thus the tarantula-hearts promise themselves.

‘And “will to equality” – that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and we shall raise outcry against everything that has power!’

You preachers of equality, thus from you the tyrant-madness of impotence cries for ‘equality’: thus your most secret tyrant-appetite disguises itself in words of virtue.

Soured self-conceit, repressed envy, perhaps your fathers’ self-conceit and envy: they burst from you as a flame and madness of revenge.

What the father kept silent the son speaks out; and I often found the son the father’s revealed secret.

They resemble inspired men: but it is not the heart that inspires them – it is revenge. And when they become refined and cold, it is not their mind, it is their envy that makes them refined and cold.

Their jealousy leads them upon thinkers’ paths too; and this is the mark of their jealousy – they always go too far: so that their weariness has at last to lie down and sleep even on the snow.

Revenge rings in all their complaints, a malevolence is in all their praise; and to be judge seems bliss to them.

Thus, however, I advise you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is strong!

They are people of a bad breed and a bad descent; the executioner and the bloodhound peer from out their faces.

Mistrust all those who talk much about their justice! Truly, it is not only honey that their souls lack.

And when they call themselves ‘the good and just’, do not forget that nothing is lacking to make them into Pharisees except – power!

My friends, I do not want to be confused with others or taken for what I am not.

There are those who preach my doctrine of life: yet are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas.

That they speak well of life, these poison spiders, although they sit in their caves and with their backs turned on life, is because they want to do harm by speaking well of life.

They want to do harm to those who now possess power: for with those the preaching of death is still most at home.

If it were otherwise, the tarantulas would teach otherwise: and it is precisely they who were formerly the best world-slanderers and heretic-burners.

I do not want to be confused with these preachers of equality, nor taken for one of them. For justice speaks thus
to me
: ‘Men are not equal.’

And they should not become so, either! For what were my love of the Superman if I spoke otherwise?

They should press on to the future across a thousand bridges and gangways, and there should be more and more war and inequality among them: thus my great love makes me speak!

They should become devisers of emblems and phantoms in their enmity, and with their emblems and phantoms they should fight together the supreme fight!

Good and evil, and rich and poor, and noble and mean, and all the names of the virtues: they should be weapons and ringing symbols that life must overcome itself again and again!

Life wants to raise itself on high with pillars and steps; it wants to gaze into the far distance and out upon joyful splendour –
that
is why it needs height!

And because it needs height, it needs steps and conflict between steps and those who climb them! Life wants to climb and in climbing overcome itself.

And just look, my friends! Here, where the tarantula’s cave is, there rises up the ruins of an old temple – just look at it with enlightened eyes!

Truly, he who once towered up his thoughts in stone here knew as well as the wisest about the secret of all life!

That there is battle and inequality and war for power and predominance even in beauty: he teaches us that here in the dearest parable.

How divinely vault and arch here oppose one another in the struggle: how they strive against one another with light and shadow, these divinely-striving things.

Beautiful and assured as these, let us also be enemies, my friends! Let us divinely strive
against
one another!

Ha! Now the tarantula, my old enemy, has bitten me! Divinely beautiful and assured, it bit me in the finger!

‘There must be punishment and justice’ – thus it thinks: ‘here he shall not sing in vain songs in honour of enmity!’

Yes, the tarantula has revenged itself I And alas, now it will make my soul, too, giddy with revenge!

But so that I may
not
veer round, tie me tight to this pillar, my friends! I would rather be even a pillar-saint than a whirlpool of revengefulness!

Truly, Zarathustra is no veering wind nor whirlwind; and although he is a dancer, he is by no means a tarantella dancer!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Famous Philosophers

Y
OU
have served the people and the people’s superstitions, all you famous philosophers! – you have
not
served truth! And it is precisely for that reason that they paid you reverence.

And for that reason too they endured your disbelief, because it was a joke and a bypath for the people. Thus the lord indulges his slaves and even enjoys their insolence.

But he who is hated by the people as a wolf is by the dogs: he is the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-worshipper, the dweller in forests.

To hunt him from his hiding-place – the people always called that ‘having a sense of right’: they have always set their sharpest-toothed dogs upon him.