Thus Spoke Zarathustra (8 page)

To create new values – even the lion is incapable of that: but to create itself freedom for new creation – that the might of the lion can do.

To create freedom for itself and a sacred No even to duty: the lion is needed for that, my brothers.

To seize the right to new values – that is the most terrible proceeding for a weight-bearing and reverential spirit Truly, to this spirit it is a theft and a work for an animal of prey.

Once it loved this ‘Thou shalt’ as its holiest thing: now it has to find illusion and caprice even in the holiest, that it may steal freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this theft.

But tell me, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion cannot? Why must the preying lion still become a child?

The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a sport, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes.

Yes, a sacred Yes is needed, my brothers, for the sport of creation: the spirit now wills
its own
will, the spirit sundered from the world now wins
its own
world.

I have named you three metamorphoses of the spirit: how
the spirit became a camel, and the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.

Thus spoke Zarathustra. And at that time he was living in the town called The Pied Cow.

Of the Chairs of Virtue

Z
ARATHUSTRA
heard a wise man praised who was said to discourse well on sleep and virtue: he was greatly honoured and rewarded for it, and all the young men sat before his chair. Zarathustra went to him and sat before his chair with all the young men. And thus spoke the wise man:

Honour to sleep and modesty before it! That is the first thing! And avoid all those who sleep badly and are awake at night!

Even the thief is shamed when confronted with sleep: he always steals softly through the night. But shameless is the night-watchman, shamelessly he bears his horn.

Sleeping is no mean art: you need to stay awake all day to doit.

You must overcome yourself ten times a day: that causes a fine weariness and is opium to the soul.

Ten times must you be reconciled to yourself again: for overcoming is bitterness and the unreconciled man sleeps badly.

You must discover ten truths a day: otherwise you will seek truth in the night too, with your soul still hungry.

You must laugh and be cheerful ten times a day: or your stomach, that father of affliction, will disturb you in the night.

Few know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery?

Shall I covet my neighbour’s maidservant? None of this would be consistent with good sleep.

And even when one has all the virtues, there is still one thing to remember: to send even these virtues to sleep at the proper time.

That they may not quarrel among themselves, the pretty little women! And over you, unhappy man!

Peace with God and with your neighbour: thus good sleep will have it. And peace too with your neighbour’s devil. Otherwise he will haunt you at night.

Honour and obedience to the authorities, and even to the crooked authorities! Thus good sleep will have it. How can I help it that power likes to walk on crooked legs?

I shall always call him the best herdsman who leads his sheep to the greenest meadows: that accords with good sleep.

I do not desire much honour, nor great treasure: they excite spleen. But one sleeps badly without a good name and a small treasure.

The company of a few is more welcome to me than bad company: but they must come and go at the proper time. That accords with good sleep.

The poor in spirit, too, please me greatly: they further sleep. Blessed and happy they are indeed, especially if one always agrees with their views.

Thus for the virtuous man does the day pass. And when night comes I take good care not to summon sleep! He, the lord of virtues, does not like to be summoned!

But I remember what I have done and thought during the day. Ruminating I ask myself, patient as a cow: What were your ten overcomings?

And which were the ten reconciliations and the ten truths and the ten fits of laughter with which my heart enjoyed itself?

As I ponder such things rocked by my forty thoughts, sleep, the lord of virtue, suddenly overtakes me uncalled.

Sleep knocks on my eyes: they grow heavy. Sleep touches my mouth: it stays open.

Truly, he comes to me on soft soles, the dearest of thieves, and steals my thoughts from me: I stand as silent as this chair.

But I do not stand for long: already I am lying down.

When Zarathustra heard the wise man’s words he laughed
in his heart: for through them a light had dawned upon him. And he spoke thus to his heart:

This wise man with his forty thoughts seems to me a fool: but I believe he knows well enough how to sleep.

Happy is he who lives in this wise man’s neighbourhood. Such sleep is contagious, even through a thick wall.

A spell dwells even in his chair. And the young men have not sat in vain before the preacher of virtue.

His wisdom is: stay awake in order to sleep well. And truly, if life had no sense and I had to choose nonsense, this would be the most desirable nonsense for me, too.

Now it is clear to me what people were once seeking above all when they sought the teachers of virtue. They sought good sleep and opium virtues to bring it about!

To all of these lauded wise men of the academic chairs, wisdom meant sleep without dreams: they knew no better meaning of life.

And today too there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honourable: but their time is up. And they shall not stand for much longer: already they are lying down.

Blessed are these drowsy men: for they shall soon drop off.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Afterworldsmen

O
NCE
Zarathustra too cast his deluded fancy beyond mankind, like all afterworldsmen.
⁵
Then the world seemed to me die work of a suffering and tormented God.

Then the world seemed to me the dream and fiction of a God; coloured vapour before the eyes of a discontented God.

Good and evil and joy and sorrow and I and You – I thought them coloured vapour before the creator’s eyes. The creator wanted to look away from himself, so he created the world.

It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from his
suffering and to forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting – that is what I once thought the world.

This world, the eternally imperfect, the eternal and imperfect image of a contradiction – an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator – that is what I once thought the world.

Thus I too once cast my deluded fancy beyond mankind, like all afterworldsmen. Beyond mankind in reality?

Ah, brothers, this God which I created was human work and human madness, like all gods!

He was human, and only a poor piece of man and Ego: this phantom came to me from my own fire and ashes, that is the truth! It did not come to me from the ‘beyond’!

What happened, my brothers? I, the sufferer, overcame myself, I carried my own ashes to the mountains, I made for myself a brighter flame. And behold! the phantom
fled
from me!

Now to me, the convalescent, it would be suffering and torment to believe in such phantoms: it would be suffering to me now and humiliation. Thus I speak to the afterworldsmen.

It was suffering and impotence – that created all afterworlds; and that brief madness of happiness that only the greatest sufferer experiences.

Weariness, which wants to reach the ultimate with a single leap, with a death-leap,
⁶
a poor ignorant weariness, which no longer wants even to want: that created all gods and afterworlds.

Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the body – that touched the ultimate walls with the fingers of its deluded spirit.

Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the earth – that heard the belly of being speak to it.

And then it wanted to get its head through the ultimate walls – and not its head only
⁷
– over into the ‘other world’.

But that ‘other world’, that inhuman, dehumanized world which is a heavenly Nothing, is well hidden from men; and the belly of being does not speak to man, except as man.

Truly, all being is hard to demonstrate; it is hard to make
it speak. Yet, tell me, brothers, is not the most wonderful of all things most clearly demonstrated?

Yes, this Ego, with its contradiction and confusion, speaks most honestly of its being – this creating, willing, evaluating Ego, which is the measure and value of things.

And this most honest being, the Ego – it speaks of the body, and it insists upon the body, even when it fables and fabricates and flutters with broken wings.

Ever more honestly it learns to speak, the Ego: and the more it learns, the more it finds titles and honours for the body and the earth.

My Ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to men: No longer to bury the head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head which creates meaning for the earth.

I teach mankind a new will: to desire this path that men have followed blindly, and to call it good and no more to creep aside from it, like the sick and dying!

It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven and the redeeming drops of blood: but even these sweet and dismal poisons they took from the body and the earth!

They wanted to escape from their misery and the stars were too far for them. Then they sighed: ‘Oh if only there were heavenly paths by which to creep into another existence and into happiness!’ – then they contrived for themselves their secret ways and their draughts of blood!

Now they thought themselves transported from their bodies and from this earth, these ingrates. Yet to what do they owe the convulsion and joy of their transport? To their bodies and to this earth.

Zarathustra is gentle with the sick. Truly, he is not angry at their manner of consolation and ingratitude. May they become convalescents and overcomers and make for themselves a higher body!

Neither is Zarathustra angry with the convalescent if he glances tenderly at his illusions and creeps at midnight around the grave of his God: but even his tears still speak to me of sickness and a sick body.

There have always been many sickly people among those who invent fables and long for God: they have a raging hate for the enlightened man and for that youngest of virtues which is called honesty.

They are always looking back to dark ages: then, indeed, illusion and faith were a different question; raving of the reason was likeness to God, and doubt was sin.

I know these Godlike people all too well: they want to be believed in, and doubt to be sin. I also know all too well what it is they themselves most firmly believe in.

Truly not in afterworlds and redeeming drops of blood: they believe most firmly in the body, and their own body is for them their thing-in-itself.

But it is a sickly thing to them: and they would dearly like to get out of their skins. That is why they hearken to preachers of death and themselves preach afterworlds.

Listen rather, my brothers, to the voice of the healthy body: this is a purer voice and a more honest one.

Purer and more honest of speech is the healthy body, perfect and square-built: and it speaks of the meaning of the earth.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Of the Despisers of the Body

I
WISH
to speak to the despisers of the body. Let them not learn differently nor teach differently, but only bid farewell to their own bodies – and so become dumb.

‘I am body and soul’ – so speaks the child. And why should one not speak like children?

But the awakened, the enlightened man says: I am body entirely, and nothing beside; and soul is only a word for something in the body.

The body is a great intelligence, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a herdsman.

Your little intelligence, my brother, which you call ‘spirit’,
is also an instrument of your body, a little instrument and toy of your great intelligence.

You say ‘I’ and you are proud of this word. But greater than this – although you will not believe in it – is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say ‘I’ but performs ‘I’.

What the sense feels, what the spirit perceives, is never an end in itself. But sense and spirit would like to persuade you that they are the end of all things: they are as vain as that.

Sense and spirit are instruments and toys: behind them still lies the Self. The Self seeks with the eyes of the sense, it listens too with the ears of the spirit.

The Self is always listening and seeking: it compares, subdues, conquers, destroys. It rules and is also the Ego’s ruler.

Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage – he is called Self. He lives in your body, he is your body.

There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. And who knows for what purpose your body requires precisely your best wisdom?

Your Self laughs at your Ego and its proud leapings. ‘What are these leapings and flights of thought to me?’ it says to itself. ‘A by-way to my goal. I am the Ego’s leading-string and I prompt its conceptions.’

The Self says to the Ego: ‘Feel pain!’ Thereupon it suffers and gives thought how to end its suffering – and it is
meant
to think for just that purpose.

The Self says to the Ego: ‘Feel joy!’ Thereupon it rejoices and gives thought how it may often rejoice – and it is
meant
to think for just that purpose.

I want to say a word to the despisers of the body. It is their esteem that produces this disesteem. What is it that created esteem and disesteem and value and will?