Thus Spoke Zarathustra (27 page)

Down there, however – all speech is in vain! There, the best wisdom is to forget and pass by: I have learned
that
– now!

He who wants to understand all things among men has to touch all things. But my hands are too clean for that.

I even dislike to breathe in their breath; alas, that I lived so long among their noise and bad breath!

O blissful stillness around me! O pure odours around me! Oh, how this stillness draws pure breath from a deep breast! Oh, how it listens, this blissful stillness!

But down there – everything speaks, everything is unheard. One may ring in one’s wisdom with bells – the shopkeeper in the market-place will out-ring it with pennies!

Everything among them speaks, no one knows any longer
how to understand. Everything falls away into failure, nothing falls any longer into deep wells.

Everything among them speaks, nothing prospers and comes to an end any longer. Everything cackles, but who still wants to sit quietly upon the nest and hatch eggs?

Everything among them speaks, everything is talked down. And what yesterday was still too hard for time itself and its teeth, today hangs chewed and picked from the mouth of the men of today.

Everything among them speaks, everything is betrayed. And what was once called a secret and a secrecy of profound souls, today belongs to the street-trumpeters and other butterflies.

O humankind, you strange thing! You noise in dark streets!

Now again you lie behind me – my greatest danger lies behind me!

My greatest danger always lay in indulgence and sufferance; and all humankind wants to be indulged and suffered.

With truths held back, with foolish hand and foolish-fond heart and rich in pity’s little lies – that is how I used to live among men.

I sat among them disguised, ready to misunderstand
myself

so that I might endure
them
, and glad to tell myself: ‘You fool, you do not know men!’

One forgets what one has learned about men when one lives among men: there is too much foreground in all men – what can far-seeing, far-seeking eyes do
there
!

And when they misunderstood me, I, like a fool, indulged them more than I did myself: for I was accustomed to being hard with myself and often even taking revenge on myself for this indulgence.

Stung by poisonous dies and hollowed out like a stone by many drops of wickedness: that is how I sat among them and still told myself: ‘Everything small is innocent of its smallness!’

Especially those who call themselves ‘the good’ did I discover to be the most poisonous flies: they sting in all innocence; how
could
they be – just towards me!

Pity teaches him to lie who lives among the good. Pity
makes the air stifling for all free souls. For the stupidity of the good is unfathomable.

To conceal myself and my riches –
that
did I learn down there: for I found everybody still poor in spirit. It was my pity’s lie that I knew with everybody, that I saw and scented in everybody what was
sufficient
spirit for him and what was
too much
spirit for him!

Their pedantic wise men: I called them wise, not pedantic – thus I learned to slur words. Their gravediggers: I called them investigators and scholars – thus I learned to confound words.

Gravediggers dig diseases for themselves. Evil vapours repose beneath old rubble. One should not stir up the bog. One should live upon mountains.

With happy nostrils I breathe again mountain-freedom! At last my nose is delivered from the odour of all humankind!

My soul, tickled by sharp breezes as with sparkling wine,
sneezes
– sneezes and cries to itself: Bless you!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Three Evil Things

1

I
N
a dream, in my last morning dream, I stood today upon a headland – beyond the world, I held a pair of scales and
weighed
the world.

Oh, that the dawn came to me too soon! It glowed me into wakefulness, the jealous dawn! It is always jealous of the glow of my morning dreams.

Measurable to him who has time, weighable to a good weigher, accessible to strong pinions, divinable to divine nutcrackers: thus did my dream find the world.

My dream, a bold sailor, half ship half hurricane, silent as a butterfly, impatient as a falcon: how did it have time and patience today for weighing of worlds?

Did my wisdom perhaps speak secretly to it, my laughing, wakeful day-wisdom that mocks all ‘infinite worlds’? For
my wisdom says: ‘Where power is, there
number
becomes master: it has more power.’

How confidently did my dream gaze upon this finite world, eager neither for new things nor for old; neither in awe nor in supplication –

as if a round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe, golden apple with a soft, cool, velvety skin – thus the world presented itself to me –

as if a tree nodded to me, a wide-branching, strong-willed tree, bent for reclining and as a footstool for the way-weary: thus the world stood upon my headland –

as if tender hands brought me a casket – a casket open for the delight of modest, adoring eyes: thus the world presented himself before me today –

not so enigmatic as to frighten away human love, not so explicit as to put to sleep human wisdom – a good, human thing was the world to me today, this world of which so many evil things are said!

How grateful I am to my morning dream, that today in the early morning I thus weighed the world! It came to me as a good, human thing, this dream and comforter of the heart!

And that I may do the same as it by day and learn and imitate its best aspects, I will now place the three most evil things upon the scales and weigh them well and humanly.

He who taught how to bless also taught how to curse: which are the three most-cursed things in the world? I will place these upon the scales.

Sensual pleasure, lust for power, selfishness
: these three have hitherto been cursed the most and held in the worst and most unjust repute – these three will I weigh well and humanly.

Well then! Here is my headland and there is the sea:
it
rolls towards me, shaggy, fawning, the faithful old hundred-headed canine monster that I love.

Well then! Here I will hold the scales over the rolling sea: and I choose a witness, too, to look on – you, hermit tree, you heavy-odoured, broad-arched tree that I love!

Upon what bridge does the present go over to the hereafter? What compulsion compels the high to bend to the
low? And what bids even the highest – to grow higher still?

Now the scales stand level and still: I have thrown in three weighty questions, the other scale bears three weighty answers.

2

Sensual pleasure: goad and stake to all hair-shirted despisers of the body and anathematized as ‘the world’ by all afterworldsmen: for it mocks and makes fools of all teachers of confusion and error.

Sensual pleasure: to the rabble the slow fire over which they are roasted; to all worm-eaten wood, to all stinking tatters, the ever-ready stewing-oven of lust.

Sensual pleasure: innocent and free to free hearts, the earth’s garden-joy, an overflowing of thanks to the present from all the future.

Sensual pleasure: a sweet poison only to the withered, but to the lion-willed the great restorative and reverently-preserved wine of wines.

Sensual pleasure: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope. For marriage is promised to many, and more than marriage –

to many that are stranger to one another than man and woman: and who has fully conceived
how strange
man and woman are to one another!

Sensual pleasure – but I will fence my thoughts round, and my words too: so that swine and hot fanatics shall not break into my garden!

Lust for power: the scourge of fire of the hardest-hearted; the cruel torment reserved by the cruellest for himself; the dark flame of living bonfires.

Lust for power: the wicked fly seated upon the vainest peoples; the mocker of all uncertain virtue; which rides upon every horse and every pride.

Lust for power: the earthquake that breaks and bursts open all that is decayed and hollow; the rolling, growling, punitive destroyer of whitewashed sepulches; the flashing question-mark beside premature answers.

Lust for power: before its glance man crawls and bends and toils and becomes lower than the swine or the snake – until at last the cry of the great contempt bursts from him –

Lust for power: the fearsome teacher of the great contempt, who preaches in the face of cities and empires ‘Away with you!’ – until at last they themselves cry out ‘Away with
me
!’

Lust for power: which, however, rises enticingly even to the pure and the solitary and up to self-sufficient heights, glowing like a love that paints purple delights enticingly on earthly heavens.

Lust for power: but who shall call it
lust
, when the height longs to stoop down after power I Truly, there is no sickness and lust in such a longing and descent!

That the lonely height may not always be solitary and sufficient to itself; that the mountain may descend to the valley and the wind of the heights to the lowlands –

Oh who shall find the rightful baptismal and virtuous name for such a longing! ‘Bestowing virtue’ – that is the name Zarathustra once gave the unnameable.

And then it also happened – and truly, it happened for the first time! – that his teaching glorified
selfishness
, the sound, healthy selfishness that issues from a mighty soul –

from a mighty soul, to which pertains the exalted body, the beautiful, victorious, refreshing body, around which everything becomes a mirror;

the supple, persuasive body, the dancer whose image and epitome is the self-rejoicing soul. The self-rejoicing of such bodies and souls calls itself: ‘Virtue’.

Such self-rejoicing protects itself with its doctrines of good and bad as with sacred groves; with the names it gives its happiness it banishes from itself all that is contemptible.

It banishes from itself all that is cowardly; it says: Bad – that is to say, cowardly! He who is always worrying, sighing, complaining, and who gleans even the smallest advantage, seems contemptible to it.

It also despises all woeful wisdom: for truly, there is also a wisdom that blossoms in darkness, a night-shade wisdom, which is always sighing: ‘All is vain!’

Timid mistrustfulness seems base to it, as do all who desire oaths instead of looks and hands; and all-too-mistrustful wisdom, for such is the nature of cowardly souls.

It regards as baser yet him who is quick to please, who, dog-like, lies upon his back, the humble man; and there is also a wisdom that is humble and dog-like and pious and quick to please.

Entirely hateful and loathsome to it is he who will never defend himself, who swallows down poisonous spittle and evil looks, the too-patient man who puts up with everything, is content with everything: for that is the nature of slaves.

Whether one be servile before gods and divine kicks, or before men and the silly opinions of men: it spits at skyes of
all
kinds, this glorious selfishness!

Bad: that is what it calls all that is broken-down and niggardly-servile, unclear, blinking eyes, oppressed hearts, and that false, yielding type of man who kisses with broad, cowardly lips.

And sham-wisdom: that is what it calls all wit that slaves and old men and weary men affect; and especially the whole bad, raving, over-clever priest-foolishness!

And to ill-use selfishness – precisely
that
has been virtue and called virtue. And ‘selfless’ – that is what, with good reason, all these world-weary cowards and Cross-spiders wished to be!

But now the day, the transformation, the sword of judgement,
the great noontide
comes to them all: then many things shall be revealed!

And he who declares the Ego healthy and holy and selfishness glorious – truly, he, a prophet, declares too what he knows:
‘Behold, it comes, it is near, the great noontide
!’

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Spirit of Gravity

1

M
Y
glib tongue – is of the people; I speak too coarsely and warmly for silky rabbits. And my words sound even stranger to all inky fish and scribbling foxes.

My hand – is a fool’s hand: woe to all tables and walls and whatever has room left for fool’s scribbling, fool’s doodling!

My foot – is a horse’s foot: with it I trot and trample up hill, down dale, hither and thither over the fields, and am the Devil’s own for joy when I am out at a gallop.

My stomach – is it perhaps an eagle’s stomach? For it likes lamb’s flesh best of all. But it is certainly a bird’s stomach.

Nourished with innocent and few things, ready and impatient to fly, to fly away – that is my nature now: how should there not be something of the bird’s nature in it!

And especially bird-like is that I am enemy to the Spirit of Gravity: and truly, mortal enemy, arch-enemy, born enemy! Oh where has my enmity not flown and strayed already!

I could sing a song about that – and I
will
sing one, although I am alone in an empty house and have to sing it to my own ears.

There are other singers, to be sure, whose voices are softened, whose hands are eloquent, whose eyes are expressive, whose hearts are awakened, only when the house is full: I am not one of them.

2

He who will one day teach men to fly will have moved all boundary-stones; all boundary-stones will themselves fly into the air to him, he will baptize the earth anew – as ‘the weightless’.

The ostrich runs faster than any horse, but even he sticks his head heavily into heavy earth: that is what the man who cannot yet fly is like.

He calls earth and life heavy: and so
will
the Spirit of Gravity have it! But he who wants to become light and a bird must love himself – thus do I teach.