Thus Spoke Zarathustra (37 page)

‘You unutterable creature,’ he said, ‘you warned me against your road. As thanks for that, I recommend you mine. Behold, up yonder lies Zarathustra’s cave.

‘My cave is big and deep and possesses many corners; there the best hidden man can find his hiding place. And close by it are a hundred secret and slippery ways for creeping, fluttering, and jumping beasts.

‘You outcast who cast yourself out, do you not wish to live among men and the pity of men? Very well, do as I do. Thus you will also learn from me; only the doer learns.

‘And first of all and above all speak with my animals! The proudest animal and the wisest animal – they may well be the proper counsellors for both of us!’

Thus spoke Zarathustra and went his way, even more thoughtfully and slowly than before: for he asked himself many things and did not easily know what to answer.

How poor is man! (he thought in his heart) how ugly, how croaking, how full of secret shame!

They tell me that man loves himself: ah, how great must this self-love be! How much contempt is opposed to it!

Even this man has loved himself as he has despised himself – he seems to me a great lover and a great despiser.

I have yet found no one who has despised himself more deeply: even
that
is height. Alas, was
he
perhaps the Higher Man whose cry I heard?

I love the great despisers. Man, however, is something that must be overcome.

The Voluntary Beggar

W
HEN
Zarathustra had left the ugliest man he felt chilled and alone: for he had absorbed much coldness and loneliness, to such an extent that even his limbs had grown colder. But he
climbed on, up hill, down dale, past green pastures but also over wild, stony courses where no doubt an impatient brook had formerly made its bed: then all at once he grew warmer and more cheerful.

‘What has happened to me?’ he asked himself. ‘Something warm and living refreshes me, it must be nearby.

‘Already I am less alone; unknown companions and brothers circle about me, their warm breath touches my soul.’

But when he peered about him and sought the comforters of his loneliness, behold, they were cows standing together on a hillock; it was their nearness and odour that had warmed his heart.

These cows, however, seemed to be listening eagerly to a speaker, and paid no heed to him who approached. And when Zarathustra was quite near them he clearly heard a human voice speaking from out the midst of the cows; and apparently they had all turned their heads towards the speaker.

Then Zarathustra eagerly sprang up the hillock and pulled the animals away, for he feared that here someone had had an accident, which the sympathy of cows could hardly remedy. But in this he was deceived; for behold, there on the ground sat a man who appeared to be persuading the animals to have no fear of him, a peaceable man and mountain sermonizer out of whose eyes goodness itself preached. ‘What do you seek here?’ cried Zarathustra in surprise.

‘What do I seek here?’ he answered: ‘the same as you seek, you peace-breaker! That is, happiness on earth.

‘To that end, however, I may learn from these cows. For, let me tell you, I have already been talking to them half a morning and they were just about to reply to me. Why do you disturb them?

‘If we do not alter and become as cows, we shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. For there is one thing we should learn from them: rumination.

‘And truly, if a man should gain the whole world and not learn this one thing, rumination: what would it profit him! He would not be free from his affliction,

‘his great affliction: that, however, is today called
disgust
.

Who today has not his heart, mouth, and eyes filled with disgust? You too! You too! But regard these cows!’

Thus spoke the mountain sermonizer and then turned his glance upon Zarathustra, for up to then it had rested lovingly upon the cows: at that, however, he changed. ‘Who is that I am speaking with?’ he cried, startled, and jumped up from the ground.

‘This is the man without disgust, this is Zarathustra himself, the overcomer of the great disgust, this is the eye, this is the mouth, this is the heart of Zarathustra himself.’

And as he spoke thus he kissed the hands of him to whom he spoke with overflowing eyes, and behaved like someone to whom a valuable gift and jewel has unexpectedly fallen from heaven. The cows, however, looked on and were amazed.

‘Do not speak of me, you strange, friendly man!’ said Zarathustra, restraining his affection, ‘first speak to me of yourself! Are you not the voluntary beggar who once threw away great riches,

‘ – who was ashamed of his riches and of the rich, and fled to the poor that he might give them his abundance and his heart? But they received him not.’

‘But they received me not,’ said the voluntary beggar, ‘you know that. So at last I went to the animals and to these cows.’

‘Then you learned’, Zarathustra interrupted the speaker, ‘how it is harder to give well than to take well, and that to give well is an
art
and the ultimate, subtlest master-art of kindness.’

‘These days especially,’ answered the voluntary beggar: ‘for today everything base has become rebellious and reserved and in its own way haughty: that is, in the mob’s way.

‘For the hour has come, you know it, for the great, evil, protracted, slow rebellion of the mob and the slaves: it grows and grows!

‘Now all benevolence and petty giving provokes the base; and let the over-rich be on their guard!

‘Whoever today lets drops fall like a big-bellied bottle out of a too-narrow neck – people like to break the necks of such bottles today.

‘Lustful greed, bitter envy, sour vindictiveness, mob pride:

all this threw itself in my face. It is no longer true that the poor are blessed. The kingdom of heaven, however, is with the cows.’

‘And why is it not with the rich?’ asked Zarathustra, tempting him, as he restrained the cows which were sniffing familiarly at the man of peace.

‘Why do you tempt me?’ answered the latter. ‘You yourself know better even than I. For what drove me to the poorest, O Zarathustra? Was it not disgust with our richest?

‘ – disgust with those punished by riches, who glean advantage from all kinds of sweepings, with cold eyes, rank thoughts, disgust with this rabble that stinks to heaven,

‘disgust with this gilded, debased mob whose fathers were pick-pockets or carrion-birds or ragmen with compliant, lustful, forgetful wives – for they are all of them not far from whores –

‘mob above, mob below! What are “poor” and “rich” today! I unlearned this distinction – then I fled away, far away and ever farther, until I came to these cows.’

Thus spoke the man of peace and himself snorted and perspired as he spoke: so that the cows were again amazed. Zarathustra, however, looked him in the face with a smile all the while he was speaking so sternly, and then silently shook his head.

‘You do violence to yourself, mountain sermonizer, when you use such stern words. Neither your mouth nor your eyes were made for such sternness.

‘Nor your stomach either, as I think:
that
opposes all such raging and hating and over-frothing. Your stomach wants gentler things: you are no butcher.

‘On the contrary, you seem to me a man of plants and roots. Perhaps you grind corn. But you are certainly disinclined to fleshy pleasures and love honey.’

‘You have divined me well,’ answered the voluntary beggar with lightened heart. ‘I love honey, I also grind corn, for I have sought what tastes well and produces sweet breath:

‘also what takes a long time, a day’s work and a day’s chewing for gentle idlers and sluggards.

‘To be sure, these cows have attained the greatest proficiency in it: they have devised rumination and lying in the sun. And they abstain from all heavy thoughts that innate the heart.’

‘Very well!’ said Zarathustra: ‘you shall see
my
animals, too, my eagle and my serpent – there is not their like on earth today.

‘Behold, yonder leads the way to my cave: be its guest tonight. And speak with my animals of the happiness of animals,

‘until I return home myself. For now a cry of distress calls me hurriedly away from you. You will find new honey, too, at my cave, golden honey in the comb, cold as ice: eat it!

‘But now straightway take leave of your cows, you strange, friendly man! although it may be hard for you. For they are your warmest friends and teachers!’

‘Except one, whom I love more,’ answered the voluntary beggar. ‘You yourself are good, and even better than a cow, O Zarathustra!’

‘Away, away with you! you arrant flatterer!’ cried Zarathustra mischievously, ‘why do you spoil me with such praise and honey of flattery?’

‘Away, away from me!’ he cried again and swung his stick at the affectionate beggar; he, however, ran nimbly away.

The Shadow

B
UT
hardly had the voluntary beggar run off and was Zarathustra alone again than he heard a new voice behind him calling: ‘Stop! Zarathustra! Wait! It is I, O Zarathustra, I, your shadow!’ But Zarathustra did not wait, for a sudden ill-humour overcame him on account of all the crowding and thronging on his mountains. ‘Where has my solitude fled?’ he said.

‘Truly, it is becoming too much for me; these mountains are swarming, my kingdom is no longer of
this
world, I need new mountains.

‘Does my shadow call me? Of what account is my shadow I Let it run after me! I – shall run away from it.’

Thus spoke Zarathustra to his heart and ran off. But he who was behind him followed after: so that forthwith there were three runners one behind the other, that is, foremost the voluntary beggar, then Zarathustra, and thirdly and hindmost his shadow. They had not been running thus for long when Zarathustra became conscious of his folly and at once shook off his ill-humour and disgust.

‘What!’ he said, ‘have not the most laughable things always happened with us old hermits and saints?

‘Truly, my folly has grown high in the mountains! Now I hear six foolish old legs clattering one behind the other!

‘But can Zarathustra really be afraid of a shadow? And anyway, I think it has longer legs than I.’

Thus spoke Zarathustra, laughing with his eyes and his entrails, then stopped and turned quickly around – and behold, in doing so he almost threw his follower and shadow to the ground, the latter followed so closely upon his heels and was so weak. For when Zarathustra inspected him with his eyes, he was as terrified as if he had suddenly seen a ghost, so slight, dark, hollow, and spent did this follower appear.

‘Who are you?’ Zarathustra asked furiously, ‘what are you doing here? And why do you call yourself my shadow? I do not like you.’

‘Forgive me,’ answered the shadow, ‘that it is I; and if you do not like me, very good, O Zarathustra! I praise you and your good taste in that.

‘I am a wanderer, who has already walked far at your heels: always going but without a goal and without a home: so that, truly, I am almost the eternal Wandering Jew, except that I am neither eternal nor a Jew.

‘What? Must I always be going? Whirled by every wind, restless, driven onward? O Earth, you have grown too round for me!

‘I have sat on every surface, like weary dust I have fallen asleep upon mirrors and window-panes: everything takes from
me, nothing gives, I have become thin – I am almost like a shadow.

‘But I have fled to you and followed you longest, O Zarathustra, and although I have hidden myself from you, yet I was your best shadow: where you have sat there I sat too.

‘1 have travelled with you in the remotest, coldest worlds, like a ghost that voluntarily walks over snow and winter roofs.

‘I have striven with you into all that was forbidden, worst, most remote: and if anything in me be a virtue, it is that I have feared no prohibition.

‘I have broken up with you whatever my heart revered. I have overthrown boundary stones and statues, I have pursued the most dangerous desires – truly, I once went beyond every crime.

‘I have unlearned with you belief in words and values and great names. When the Devil casts his skin does his name not also fall away? For that too is a skin. The Devil himself is perhaps – a skin.

‘“Nothing is true, everything is permitted”: thus I told myself. I plunged into the coldest water, with head and heart. Alas, how often I stood naked, like a red crab, on that account!

‘Alas, where have all my goodness and shame and belief in the good fled! Alas, where is that mendacious innocence that I once possessed, the innocence of the good and their noble lies!

‘Truly, too often did I follow close by the feet of truth: then it kicked me in the face. Sometimes I intended to lie, and behold! only then did I hit – the truth.

‘Too much has become clear to me: now I am no longer concerned with it. No longer is there anything living that I love – how should I still love myself?

‘“To live as I desire to live or not to live at all”: that is what I want, that is what the most saintly man wants. But alas! how can
I
still have – a desire?

‘Have
I
– still a goal? A haven to which
my
sail races?

‘A good wind? Alas, only he who knows
where
he is going knows which wind is a good and fair wind for him.

‘What is left to me? A heart weary and insolent; a restless will; infirm wings; a broken backbone.

‘This seeking for
my
home: O Zarathustra, do you know this seeking was
my
affliction,
⁴⁶
it is consuming me.

‘Where is –
my
home? I ask and seek and have sought for it, I have not found it. Oh eternal Everywhere, oh eternal Nowhere, oh eternal – Vanity!’

Thus spoke the shadow, and Zarathustra’s face lengthened at his words. ‘You are my shadow!’ he said at length, sorrowfully.

‘Your danger is no small one, you free spirit and wanderer! You have had a bad day: see you do not have a worse evening!