Thus Spake Zarathustra

Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! Always more, always better ones of your type shall succumb, – for ye shall always have it worse and harder. Thus only —

– Thus only groweth man aloft to the height where the lightning striketh and shattereth him: high enough for the lightning!

Towards the few, the long, the remote go forth my soul and my seeking: of what account to me are your many little, short miseries!

Ye do not yet suffer enough for me! For ye suffer from yourselves, ye have not yet suffered FROM MAN. Ye would lie if ye spake otherwise! None of you suffereth from what I have suffered. —

7

It is not enough for me that the lightning no longer doeth harm. I do not wish to conduct it away: it shall learn – to work for ME. —

My wisdom hath accumulated long like a cloud, it becometh stiller and darker. So doeth all wisdom which shall one day bear LIGHTNINGS. —

Unto these men of to-day will I not be LIGHT, nor be called light. THEM – will I blind: lightning of my wisdom! put out their eyes!

8

Do not will anything beyond your power: there is a bad falseness in those who will beyond their power.

Especially when they will great things! For they awaken distrust in great things, these subtle false-coiners and stage-players: —

– Until at last they are false towards themselves, squint-eyed, whited cankers, glossed over with strong words, parade virtues and brilliant false deeds.

Take good care there, ye higher men! For nothing is more precious to me, and rarer, than honesty.

Is this to-day not that of the populace? The populace however knoweth not what is great and what is small, what is straight and what is honest: it is innocently crooked, it ever lieth.

9

Have a good distrust to-day ye, higher men, ye enheartened ones! Ye open-hearted ones! And keep your reasons secret! For this to-day is that of the populace.

What the populace once learned to believe without reasons, who could – refute it to them by means of reasons?

And on the market-place one convinceth with gestures. But reasons make the populace distrustful.

And when truth hath once triumphed there, then ask yourselves with good distrust: “What strong error hath fought for it?”

Be on your guard also against the learned! They hate you, because they are unproductive! They have cold, withered eyes before which every bird is unplumed.

Such persons vaunt about not lying: but inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard!

Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge! Refrigerated spirits I do not believe in. He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.

10

If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get yourselves CARRIED aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people’s backs and heads!

Thou hast mounted, however, on horseback? Thou now ridest briskly up to thy goal? Well, my friend! But thy lame foot is also with thee on horseback!

When thou reachest thy goal, when thou alightest from thy horse: precisely on thy HEIGHT, thou higher man, – then wilt thou stumble!

11

Ye creating ones, ye higher men! One is only pregnant with one’s own child.

Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or put upon! Who then is YOUR neighbour? Even if ye act “for your neighbour” – ye still do not create for him!

Unlearn, I pray you, this “for,” ye creating ones: your very virtue wisheth you to have naught to do with “for” and “on account of” and “because.” Against these false little words shall ye stop your ears.

“For one’s neighbour,” is the virtue only of the petty people: there it is said “like and like,” and “hand washeth hand”: – they have neither the right nor the power for YOUR self-seeking!

In your self-seeking, ye creating ones, there is the foresight and foreseeing of the pregnant! What no one’s eye hath yet seen, namely, the fruit – this, sheltereth and saveth and nourisheth your entire love.

Where your entire love is, namely, with your child, there is also your entire virtue! Your work, your will is YOUR “neighbour”: let no false values impose upon you!

12

Ye creating ones, ye higher men! Whoever hath to give birth is sick; whoever hath given birth, however, is unclean.

Ask women: one giveth birth, not because it giveth pleasure. The pain maketh hens and poets cackle.

Ye creating ones, in you there is much uncleanliness. That is because ye have had to be mothers.

A new child: oh, how much new filth hath also come into the world! Go apart! He who hath given birth shall wash his soul!

13

Be not virtuous beyond your powers! And seek nothing from yourselves opposed to probability!

Walk in the footsteps in which your fathers’ virtue hath already walked! How would ye rise high, if your fathers’ will should not rise with you?

He, however, who would be a firstling, let him take care lest he also become a lastling! And where the vices of your fathers are, there should ye not set up as saints!

He whose fathers were inclined for women, and for strong wine and flesh of wildboar swine; what would it be if he demanded chastity of himself?

A folly would it be! Much, verily, doth it seem to me for such a one, if he should be the husband of one or of two or of three women.

And if he founded monasteries, and inscribed over their portals: “The way to holiness,” – I should still say: What good is it! it is a new folly!

He hath founded for himself a penance-house and refuge-house: much good may it do! But I do not believe in it.

In solitude there groweth what any one bringeth into it – also the brute in one’s nature. Thus is solitude inadvisable unto many.

Hath there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints of the wilderness? AROUND THEM was not only the devil loose – but also the swine.

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Shy, ashamed, awkward, like the tiger whose spring hath failed – thus, ye higher men, have I often seen you slink aside. A CAST which ye made had failed.

But what doth it matter, ye dice-players! Ye had not learned to play and mock, as one must play and mock! Do we not ever sit at a great table of mocking and playing?

And if great things have been a failure with you, have ye yourselves therefore – been a failure? And if ye yourselves have been a failure, hath man therefore – been a failure? If man, however, hath been a failure: well then! never mind!

15

The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed. Ye higher men here, have ye not all – been failures?

Be of good cheer; what doth it matter? How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh!

What wonder even that ye have failed and only half-succeeded, ye half-shattered ones! Doth not – man’s FUTURE strive and struggle in you?

Man’s furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious powers – do not all these foam through one another in your vessel?

What wonder that many a vessel shattereth! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! Ye higher men, O, how much is still possible!

And verily, how much hath already succeeded! How rich is this earth in small, good, perfect things, in well-constituted things!

Set around you small, good, perfect things, ye higher men. Their golden maturity healeth the heart. The perfect teacheth one to hope.

16

What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the word of him who said: “Woe unto them that laugh now!”

Did he himself find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought badly. A child even findeth cause for it.

He – did not love sufficiently: otherwise would he also have loved us, the laughing ones! But he hated and hooted us; wailing and teeth-gnashing did he promise us.

Must one then curse immediately, when one doth not love? That – seemeth to me bad taste. Thus did he, however, this absolute one. He sprang from the populace.

And he himself just did not love sufficiently; otherwise would he have raged less because people did not love him. All great love doth not SEEK love: – it seeketh more.

Go out of the way of all such absolute ones! They are a poor sickly type, a populace-type: they look at this life with ill-will, they have an evil eye for this earth.

Go out of the way of all such absolute ones! They have heavy feet and sultry hearts: – they do not know how to dance. How could the earth be light to such ones!

17

Tortuously do all good things come nigh to their goal. Like cats they curve their backs, they purr inwardly with their approaching happiness, – all good things laugh.

His step betrayeth whether a person already walketh on HIS OWN path: just see me walk! He, however, who cometh nigh to his goal, danceth.

And verily, a statue have I not become, not yet do I stand there stiff, stupid and stony, like a pillar; I love fast racing.

And though there be on earth fens and dense afflictions, he who hath light feet runneth even across the mud, and danceth, as upon well-swept ice.

Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not forget your legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and better still, if ye stand upon your heads!

18

This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown: I myself have put on this crown, I myself have consecrated my laughter. No one else have I found to-day potent enough for this.

Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one, who beckoneth with his pinions, one ready for flight, beckoning unto all birds, ready and prepared, a blissfully light-spirited one: —

Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher, no impatient one, no absolute one, one who loveth leaps and side-leaps; I myself have put on this crown!

19

Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not forget your legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and better still if ye stand upon your heads!

There are also heavy animals in a state of happiness, there are club-footed ones from the beginning. Curiously do they exert themselves, like an elephant which endeavoureth to stand upon its head.

Better, however, to be foolish with happiness than foolish with misfortune, better to dance awkwardly than walk lamely. So learn, I pray you, my wisdom, ye higher men: even the worst thing hath two good reverse sides, —

– Even the worst thing hath good dancing-legs: so learn, I pray you, ye higher men, to put yourselves on your proper legs!

So unlearn, I pray you, the sorrow-sighing, and all the populace-sadness! Oh, how sad the buffoons of the populace seem to me to-day! This to-day, however, is that of the populace.

20

Do like unto the wind when it rusheth forth from its mountain-caves: unto its own piping will it dance; the seas tremble and leap under its footsteps.

That which giveth wings to asses, that which milketh the lionesses: – praised be that good, unruly spirit, which cometh like a hurricane unto all the present and unto all the populace, —

– Which is hostile to thistle-heads and puzzle-heads, and to all withered leaves and weeds: – praised be this wild, good, free spirit of the storm, which danceth upon fens and afflictions, as upon meadows!

Which hateth the consumptive populace-dogs, and all the ill-constituted, sullen brood: – praised be this spirit of all free spirits, the laughing storm, which bloweth dust into the eyes of all the melanopic and melancholic!

Ye higher men, the worst thing in you is that ye have none of you learned to dance as ye ought to dance – to dance beyond yourselves! What doth it matter that ye have failed!

How many things are still possible! So LEARN to laugh beyond yourselves! Lift up your hearts, ye good dancers, high! higher! And do not forget the good laughter!

This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown: to you my brethren do I cast this crown! Laughing have I consecrated; ye higher men, LEARN, I pray you – to laugh!

LXXIV. THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY

1

When Zarathustra spake these sayings, he stood nigh to the entrance of his cave; with the last words, however, he slipped away from his guests, and fled for a little while into the open air.

“O pure odours around me,” cried he, “O blessed stillness around me! But where are mine animals? Hither, hither, mine eagle and my serpent!

Tell me, mine animals: these higher men, all of them – do they perhaps not SMELL well? O pure odours around me! Now only do I know and feel how I love you, mine animals.”

– And Zarathustra said once more: “I love you, mine animals!” The eagle, however, and the serpent pressed close to him when he spake these words, and looked up to him. In this attitude were they all three silent together, and sniffed and sipped the good air with one another. For the air here outside was better than with the higher men.

2

Hardly, however, had Zarathustra left the cave when the old magician got up, looked cunningly about him, and said: “He is gone!

And already, ye higher men – let me tickle you with this complimentary and flattering name, as he himself doeth – already doth mine evil spirit of deceit and magic attack me, my melancholy devil,

– Which is an adversary to this Zarathustra from the very heart: forgive it for this! Now doth it wish to conjure before you, it hath just ITS hour; in vain do I struggle with this evil spirit.

Unto all of you, whatever honours ye like to assume in your names, whether ye call yourselves ‘the free spirits’ or ‘the conscientious,’ or ‘the penitents of the spirit,’ or ‘the unfettered,’ or ‘the great longers,’ —

– Unto all of you, who like me suffer FROM THE GREAT LOATHING, to whom the old God hath died, and as yet no new God lieth in cradles and swaddling clothes – unto all of you is mine evil spirit and magic-devil favourable.

I know you, ye higher men, I know him, – I know also this fiend whom I love in spite of me, this Zarathustra: he himself often seemeth to me like the beautiful mask of a saint,

– Like a new strange mummery in which mine evil spirit, the melancholy devil, delighteth: – I love Zarathustra, so doth it often seem to me, for the sake of mine evil spirit. —

But already doth IT attack me and constrain me, this spirit of melancholy, this evening-twilight devil: and verily, ye higher men, it hath a longing —

– Open your eyes! – it hath a longing to come NAKED, whether male or female, I do not yet know: but it cometh, it constraineth me, alas! open your wits!

The day dieth out, unto all things cometh now the evening, also unto the best things; hear now, and see, ye higher men, what devil – man or woman – this spirit of evening-melancholy is!”

Thus spake the old magician, looked cunningly about him, and then seized his harp.

3

In evening’s limpid air,     What time the dew’s soothings     Unto the earth downpour,     Invisibly and unheard —     For tender shoe-gear wear     The soothing dews, like all that’s kind-gentle – :     Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart,     How once thou thirstedest     For heaven’s kindly teardrops and dew’s down-droppings,     All singed and weary thirstedest,     What time on yellow grass-pathways     Wicked, occidental sunny glances     Through sombre trees about thee sported,     Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting?     “Of TRUTH the wooer?  Thou?” – so taunted they —     “Nay!  Merely poet!     A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling,     That aye must lie,     That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie:     For booty lusting,     Motley masked,     Self-hidden, shrouded,     Himself his booty —     HE – of truth the wooer?     Nay!  Mere fool!  Mere poet!     Just motley speaking,     From mask of fool confusedly shouting,     Circumambling on fabricated word-bridges,     On motley rainbow-arches,     ‘Twixt the spurious heavenly,     And spurious earthly,     Round us roving, round us soaring, —     MERE FOOL!  MERE POET!     HE – of truth the wooer?     Not still, stiff, smooth and cold,     Become an image,     A godlike statue,     Set up in front of temples,     As a God’s own door-guard:     Nay! hostile to all such truthfulness-statues,     In every desert homelier than at temples,     With cattish wantonness,     Through every window leaping     Quickly into chances,     Every wild forest a-sniffing,     Greedily-longingly, sniffing,     That thou, in wild forests,     ‘Mong the motley-speckled fierce creatures,     Shouldest rove, sinful-sound and fine-coloured,     With longing lips smacking,     Blessedly mocking, blessedly hellish, blessedly bloodthirsty,     Robbing, skulking, lying – roving: —     Or unto eagles like which fixedly,     Long adown the precipice look,     Adown THEIR precipice: —     Oh, how they whirl down now,     Thereunder, therein,     To ever deeper profoundness whirling! —     Then,     Sudden,     With aim aright,     With quivering flight,     On LAMBKINS pouncing,     Headlong down, sore-hungry,     For lambkins longing,     Fierce ‘gainst all lamb-spirits,     Furious-fierce all that look     Sheeplike, or lambeyed, or crisp-woolly,     – Grey, with lambsheep kindliness!     Even thus,     Eaglelike, pantherlike,     Are the poet’s desires,     Are THINE OWN desires ‘neath a thousand guises,     Thou fool!  Thou poet!     Thou who all mankind viewedst —     So God, as sheep – :     The God TO REND within mankind,     As the sheep in mankind,     And in rending LAUGHING —     THAT, THAT is thine own blessedness!     Of a panther and eagle – blessedness!     Of a poet and fool – the blessedness! —     In evening’s limpid air,     What time the moon’s sickle,     Green, ‘twixt the purple-glowings,     And jealous, steal’th forth:     – Of day the foe,     With every step in secret,     The rosy garland-hammocks     Downsickling, till they’ve sunken     Down nightwards, faded, downsunken: —     Thus had I sunken one day     From mine own truth-insanity,     From mine own fervid day-longings,     Of day aweary, sick of sunshine,     – Sunk downwards, evenwards, shadowwards:     By one sole trueness     All scorched and thirsty:     – Bethinkst thou still, bethinkst thou, burning heart,     How then thou thirstedest? —     THAT I SHOULD BANNED BE     FROM ALL THE TRUENESS!     MERE FOOL!  MERE POET!

LXXV. SCIENCE

Thus sang the magician; and all who were present went like birds unawares into the net of his artful and melancholy voluptuousness. Only the spiritually conscientious one had not been caught: he at once snatched the harp from the magician and called out: “Air! Let in good air! Let in Zarathustra! Thou makest this cave sultry and poisonous, thou bad old magician!

Thou seducest, thou false one, thou subtle one, to unknown desires and deserts. And alas, that such as thou should talk and make ado about the TRUTH!

Alas, to all free spirits who are not on their guard against SUCH magicians! It is all over with their freedom: thou teachest and temptest back into prisons, —

– Thou old melancholy devil, out of thy lament soundeth a lurement: thou resemblest those who with their praise of chastity secretly invite to voluptuousness!”

Thus spake the conscientious one; the old magician, however, looked about him, enjoying his triumph, and on that account put up with the annoyance which the conscientious one caused him. “Be still!” said he with modest voice, “good songs want to re-echo well; after good songs one should be long silent.

Thus do all those present, the higher men. Thou, however, hast perhaps understood but little of my song? In thee there is little of the magic spirit.

“Thou praisest me,” replied the conscientious one, “in that thou separatest me from thyself; very well! But, ye others, what do I see? Ye still sit there, all of you, with lusting eyes – :

Ye free spirits, whither hath your freedom gone! Ye almost seem to me to resemble those who have long looked at bad girls dancing naked: your souls themselves dance!

In you, ye higher men, there must be more of that which the magician calleth his evil spirit of magic and deceit: – we must indeed be different.

And verily, we spake and thought long enough together ere Zarathustra came home to his cave, for me not to be unaware that we ARE different.

We SEEK different things even here aloft, ye and I. For I seek more SECURITY; on that account have I come to Zarathustra. For he is still the most steadfast tower and will —

– To-day, when everything tottereth, when all the earth quaketh. Ye, however, when I see what eyes ye make, it almost seemeth to me that ye seek MORE INSECURITY,

– More horror, more danger, more earthquake. Ye long (it almost seemeth so to me – forgive my presumption, ye higher men) —

– Ye long for the worst and dangerousest life, which frighteneth ME most, – for the life of wild beasts, for forests, caves, steep mountains and labyrinthine gorges.

And it is not those who lead OUT OF danger that please you best, but those who lead you away from all paths, the misleaders. But if such longing in you be ACTUAL, it seemeth to me nevertheless to be IMPOSSIBLE.

For fear – that is man’s original and fundamental feeling; through fear everything is explained, original sin and original virtue. Through fear there grew also MY virtue, that is to say: Science.

For fear of wild animals – that hath been longest fostered in man, inclusive of the animal which he concealeth and feareth in himself: – Zarathustra calleth it ‘the beast inside.’

Such prolonged ancient fear, at last become subtle, spiritual and intellectual – at present, me thinketh, it is called SCIENCE.” —

Thus spake the conscientious one; but Zarathustra, who had just come back into his cave and had heard and divined the last discourse, threw a handful of roses to the conscientious one, and laughed on account of his “truths.” “Why!” he exclaimed, “what did I hear just now? Verily, it seemeth to me, thou art a fool, or else I myself am one: and quietly and quickly will I put thy ‘truth’ upside down.

For FEAR – is an exception with us. Courage, however, and adventure, and delight in the uncertain, in the unattempted – COURAGE seemeth to me the entire primitive history of man.

The wildest and most courageous animals hath he envied and robbed of all their virtues: thus only did he become – man.

THIS courage, at last become subtle, spiritual and intellectual, this human courage, with eagle’s pinions and serpent’s wisdom: THIS, it seemeth to me, is called at present – ”

“ZARATHUSTRA!” cried all of them there assembled, as if with one voice, and burst out at the same time into a great laughter; there arose, however, from them as it were a heavy cloud. Even the magician laughed, and said wisely: “Well! It is gone, mine evil spirit!

And did I not myself warn you against it when I said that it was a deceiver, a lying and deceiving spirit?

Especially when it showeth itself naked. But what can I do with regard to its tricks! Have I created it and the world?

Well! Let us be good again, and of good cheer! And although Zarathustra looketh with evil eye – just see him! he disliketh me – :

– Ere night cometh will he again learn to love and laud me; he cannot live long without committing such follies.

HE – loveth his enemies: this art knoweth he better than any one I have seen. But he taketh revenge for it – on his friends!”

Thus spake the old magician, and the higher men applauded him; so that Zarathustra went round, and mischievously and lovingly shook hands with his friends, – like one who hath to make amends and apologise to every one for something. When however he had thereby come to the door of his cave, lo, then had he again a longing for the good air outside, and for his animals, – and wished to steal out.

LXXVI. AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT

1

“Go not away!” said then the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra’s shadow, “abide with us – otherwise the old gloomy affliction might again fall upon us.