{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_Thus_Spake_Zarathustra_Part_One/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_Thus_Spake_Zarathustra_Part_One","id":"wikisource_Thus_Spake_Zarathustra_Part_One","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Thus_Spake_Zarathustra/Part_One","summary":null,"tags":["Subpages"],"text":"THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA\n\n\u00a0\n\nFIRST PART\n\n\u00a0\n\n1. The Three Metamorphoses\n\nThree metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.\n\nMany heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength.\n\nWhat is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden.\n\nWhat is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.\n\nIs it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one\u2019s pride? To exhibit one\u2019s folly in order to mock at one\u2019s wisdom?\n\nOr is it this: To desert our cause when it celebrateth its triumph? To ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter?\n\nOr is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul?\n\nOr is it this: To be sick and dismiss comforters, and make friends of the deaf, who never hear thy requests?\n\nOr is it this: To go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads?\n\nOr is it this: To love those who despise us, and give one\u2019s hand to the phantom when it is going to frighten us?\n\nAll these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself: and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness.\n\nBut in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its own wilderness.\n\nIts last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to its last God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon.\n\nWhat is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call Lord and God? \u201cThou-shalt,\u201d is the great dragon called. But the spirit of the lion saith, \u201cI will.\u201d\n\n\u201cThou-shalt,\u201d lieth in its path, sparkling with gold\u2014a scale-covered beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, \u201cThou shalt!\u201d\n\nThe values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: \u201cAll the values of things\u2014glitter on me.\n\nAll values have already been created, and all created values\u2014do I represent. Verily, there shall be no \u2018I will\u2019 any more.\u201d Thus speaketh the dragon.\n\nMy brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent?\n\nTo create new values\u2014that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create itself freedom for new creating\u2014that can the might of the lion do.\n\nTo create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion.\n\nTo assume the ride to new values\u2014that is the most formidable assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Verily, unto such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.\n\nAs its holiest, it once loved \u201cThou-shalt\u201d: now is it forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture.\n\nBut tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?\n\nInnocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.\n\nAye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: its own will, willeth now the spirit; his own world winneth the world\u2019s outcast.\n\nThree metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is called The Pied Cow.\n\n\u00a0\n\n2. The Academic Chairs of Virtue\n\nPeople commended unto Zarathustra a wise man, as one who could discourse well about sleep and virtue: greatly was he honoured and rewarded for it, and all the youths sat before his chair. To him went Zarathustra, and sat among the youths before his chair. And thus spake the wise man:\n\nRespect and modesty in presence of sleep! That is the first thing! And to go out of the way of all who sleep badly and keep awake at night!\n\nModest is even the thief in presence of sleep: he always stealeth softly through the night. Immodest, however, is the night-watchman; immodestly he carrieth his horn.\n\nNo small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.\n\nTen times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul.\n\nTen times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.\n\nTen truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry.\n\nTen times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.\n\nFew people know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery?\n\nShall I covet my neighbour\u2019s maidservant? All that would ill accord with good sleep.\n\nAnd even if one have all the virtues, there is still one thing needful: to send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time.\n\nThat they may not quarrel with one another, the good females! And about thee, thou unhappy one!\n\nPeace with God and thy neighbour: so desireth good sleep. And peace also with thy neighbour\u2019s devil! Otherwise it will haunt thee in the night.\n\nHonour to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked government! So desireth good sleep. How can I help it, if power liketh to walk on crooked legs?\n\nHe who leadeth his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for me the best shepherd: so doth it accord with good sleep.\n\nMany honours I want not, nor great treasures: they excite the spleen. But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little treasure.\n\nA small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come and go at the right time. So doth it accord with good sleep.\n\nWell, also, do the poor in spirit please me: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always give in to them.\n\nThus passeth the day unto the virtuous. When night cometh, then take I good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned\u2014sleep, the lord of the virtues!\n\nBut I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy ten overcomings?\n\nAnd what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself?\n\nThus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me all at once\u2014sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues.\n\nSleep tappeth on mine eye, and it turneth heavy. Sleep toucheth my mouth, and it remaineth open.\n\nVerily, on soft soles doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, like this academic chair.\n\nBut not much longer do I then stand: I already lie.\u2014\n\nWhen Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his heart: for thereby had a light dawned upon him. And thus spake he to his heart:\n\nA fool seemeth this wise man with his forty thoughts: but I believe he knoweth well how to sleep.\n\nHappy even is he who liveth near this wise man! Such sleep is contagious\u2014even through a thick wall it is contagious.\n\nA magic resideth even in his academic chair. And not in vain did the youths sit before the preacher of virtue.\n\nHis wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well. And verily, if life had no sense, and had I to choose nonsense, this would be the desirablest nonsense for me also.\n\nNow know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it!\n\nTo all those belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life.\n\nEven at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honourable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie.\n\nBlessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n3. Backworldsmen\n\nOnce on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world then seem to me.\n\nThe dream\u2014and diction\u2014of a God, did the world then seem to me; coloured vapours before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one.\n\nGood and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou\u2014coloured vapours did they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away from himself,\u2014thereupon he created the world.\n\nIntoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world once seem to me.\n\nThis world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction\u2019s image and imperfect image\u2014an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:\u2014thus did the world once seem to me.\n\nThus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth?\n\nAh, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the gods!\n\nA man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego. Out of mine own ashes and glow it came unto me, that phantom. And verily, it came not unto me from the beyond!\n\nWhat happened, my brethren? I surpassed myself, the suffering one; I carried mine own ashes to the mountain; a brighter flame I contrived for myself. And lo! Thereupon the phantom withdrew from me!\n\nTo me the convalescent would it now be suffering and torment to believe in such phantoms: suffering would it now be to me, and humiliation. Thus speak I to backworldsmen.\n\nSuffering was it, and impotence\u2014that created all backworlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experienceth.\n\nWeariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all gods and backworlds.\n\nBelieve me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the body\u2014it groped with the fingers or the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls.\n\nBelieve me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the earth\u2014it heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it.\n\nAnd then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head\u2014and not with its head only\u2014into \u201cthe other world.\u201d\n\nBut that \u201cother world\u201d is well concealed from man, that dehumanised, inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man.\n\nVerily, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak. Tell me, ye brethren, is not the strangest of all things best proved?\n\nYea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most uprightly of its being\u2014this creating, willing, evaluing ego, which is the measure and value of things.\n\nAnd this most upright existence, the ego\u2014it speaketh of the body, and still implieth the body, even when it museth and raveth and fluttereth with broken wings.\n\nAlways more uprightly learneth it to speak, the ego; and the more it learneth, the more doth it find titles, and honours for the body and the earth.\n\nA new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto men: no longer to thrust one\u2019s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth!\n\nA new will teach I unto men: to choose that path which man hath followed blindly, and to approve of it\u2014and no longer to slink aside from it, like the sick and perishing!\n\nThe sick and perishing\u2014it was they who despised the body and the earth, and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming blood-drops; but even those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth!\n\nFrom their misery they sought escape, and the stars were too remote for them. Then they sighed: \u201cO that there were heavenly paths by which to steal into another existence and into happiness!\u201d Then they contrived for themselves their by-paths and bloody draughts!\n\nBeyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied themselves transported, these ungrateful ones. But to what did they owe the convulsion and rapture of their transport? To their body and this earth.\n\nGentle is Zarathustra to the sickly. Verily, he is not indignant at their modes of consolation and ingratitude. May they become convalescents and overcomers, and create higher bodies for themselves!\n\nNeither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looketh tenderly on his delusions, and at midnight stealeth round the grave of his God; but sickness and a sick frame remain even in his tears.\n\nMany sickly ones have there always been among those who muse, and languish for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the latest of virtues, which is uprightness.\n\nBackward they always gaze toward dark ages: then, indeed, were delusion and faith something different. Raving of the reason was likeness to God, and doubt was sin.\n\nToo well do I know those godlike ones: they insist on being believed in, and that doubt is sin. Too well, also, do I know what they themselves most believe in.\n\nVerily, not in backworlds and redeeming blood-drops: but in the body do they also believe most; and their own body is for them the thing-in-itself.\n\nBut it is a sickly thing to them, and gladly would they get out of their skin. Therefore hearken they to the preachers of death, and themselves preach backworlds.\n\nHearken rather, my brethren, to the voice of the healthy body; it is a more upright and pure voice.\n\nMore uprightly and purely speaketh the healthy body, perfect and square-built; and it speaketh of the meaning of the earth.\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n4. The Despisers of the Body\n\nTo the despisers of the body will I speak my word. I wish them neither to learn afresh, nor teach anew, but only to bid farewell to their own bodies,\u2014and thus be dumb.\n\n\u201cBody am I, and soul\u201d\u2014so saith the child. And why should one not speak like children?\n\nBut the awakened one, the knowing one, saith: \u201cBody am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body.\u201d\n\nThe body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd.\n\nAn instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which thou callest \u201cspirit\u201d\u2014a little instrument and plaything of thy big sagacity.\n\n\u201cEgo,\u201d sayest thou, and art proud of that word. But the greater thing\u2014in which thou art unwilling to believe\u2014is thy body with its big sagacity; it saith not \u201cego,\u201d but doeth it.\n\nWhat the sense feeleth, what the spirit discerneth, hath never its end in itself. But sense and spirit would fain persuade thee that they are the end of all things: so vain are they.\n\nInstruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there is still the Self. The Self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit.\n\nEver hearkeneth the Self, and seeketh; it compareth, mastereth, conquereth, and destroyeth. It ruleth, and is also the ego\u2019s ruler.\n\nBehind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage\u2014it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body.\n\nThere is more sagacity in thy body than in thy best wisdom. And who then knoweth why thy body requireth just thy best wisdom?\n\nThy Self laugheth at thine ego, and its proud prancings. \u201cWhat are these prancings and flights of thought unto me?\u201d it saith to itself. \u201cA by-way to my purpose. I am the leading-string of the ego, and the prompter of its notions.\u201d\n\nThe Self saith unto the ego: \u201cFeel pain!\u201d And thereupon it suffereth, and thinketh how it may put an end thereto\u2014and for that very purpose it is meant to think.\n\nThe Self saith unto the ego: \u201cFeel pleasure!\u201d Thereupon it rejoiceth, and thinketh how it may ofttimes rejoice\u2014and for that very purpose it is meant to think.\n\nTo the despisers of the body will I speak a word. That they despise is caused by their esteem. What is it that created esteeming and despising and worth and will?\n\nThe creating Self created for itself esteeming and despising, it created for itself joy and woe. The creating body created for itself spirit, as a hand to its will.\n\nEven in your folly and despising ye each serve your Self, ye despisers of the body. I tell you, your very Self wanteth to die, and turneth away from life.\n\nNo longer can your Self do that which it desireth most:\u2014create beyond itself. That is what it desireth most; that is all its fervour.\n\nBut it is now too late to do so:\u2014so your Self wisheth to succumb, ye despisers of the body.\n\nTo succumb\u2014so wisheth your Self; and therefore have ye become despisers of the body. For ye can no longer create beyond yourselves.\n\nAnd therefore are ye now angry with life and with the earth. And unconscious envy is in the sidelong look of your contempt.\n\nI go not your way, ye despisers of the body! Ye are no bridges for me to the Superman!\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n5. Joys and Passions\n\nMy brother, when thou hast a virtue, and it is thine own virtue, thou hast it in common with no one.\n\nTo be sure, thou wouldst call it by name and caress it; thou wouldst pull its ears and amuse thyself with it.\n\nAnd lo! Then hast thou its name in common with the people, and hast become one of the people and the herd with thy virtue!\n\nBetter for thee to say: \u201cIneffable is it, and nameless, that which is pain and sweetness to my soul, and also the hunger of my bowels.\u201d\n\nLet thy virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if thou must speak of it, be not ashamed to stammer about it.\n\nThus speak and stammer: \u201cThat is my good, that do I love, thus doth it please me entirely, thus only do I desire the good.\n\nNot as the law of a God do I desire it, not as a human law or a human need do I desire it; it is not to be a guide-post for me to superearths and paradises.\n\nAn earthly virtue is it which I love: little prudence is therein, and the least everyday wisdom.\n\nBut that bird built its nest beside me: therefore, I love and cherish it\u2014now sitteth it beside me on its golden eggs.\u201d\n\nThus shouldst thou stammer, and praise thy virtue.\n\nOnce hadst thou passions and calledst them evil. But now hast thou only thy virtues: they grew out of thy passions.\n\nThou implantedst thy highest aim into the heart of those passions: then became they thy virtues and joys.\n\nAnd though thou wert of the race of the hot-tempered, or of the voluptuous, or of the fanatical, or the vindictive;\n\nAll thy passions in the end became virtues, and all thy devils angels.\n\nOnce hadst thou wild dogs in thy cellar: but they changed at last into birds and charming songstresses.\n\nOut of thy poisons brewedst thou balsam for thyself; thy cow, affliction, milkedst thou\u2014now drinketh thou the sweet milk of her udder.\n\nAnd nothing evil groweth in thee any longer, unless it be the evil that groweth out of the conflict of thy virtues.\n\nMy brother, if thou be fortunate, then wilt thou have one virtue and no more: thus goest thou easier over the bridge.\n\nIllustrious is it to have many virtues, but a hard lot; and many a one hath gone into the wilderness and killed himself, because he was weary of being the battle and battlefield of virtues.\n\nMy brother, are war and battle evil? Necessary, however, is the evil; necessary are the envy and the distrust and the back-biting among the virtues.\n\nLo! how each of thy virtues is covetous of the highest place; it wanteth thy whole spirit to be its herald, it wanteth thy whole power, in wrath, hatred, and love.\n\nJealous is every virtue of the others, and a dreadful thing is jealousy. Even virtues may succumb by jealousy.\n\nHe whom the flame of jealousy encompasseth, turneth at last, like the scorpion, the poisoned sting against himself.\n\nAh! my brother, hast thou never seen a virtue backbite and stab itself?\n\nMan is something that hath to be surpassed: and therefore shalt thou love thy virtues,\u2014for thou wilt succumb by them.\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n6. The Pale Criminal\n\nYe do not mean to slay, ye judges and sacrificers, until the animal hath bowed its head? Lo! the pale criminal hath bowed his head: out of his eye speaketh the great contempt.\n\n\u201cMine ego is something which is to be surpassed: mine ego is to me the great contempt of man\u201d: so speaketh it out of that eye.\n\nWhen he judged himself\u2014that was his supreme moment; let not the exalted one relapse again into his low estate!\n\nThere is no salvation for him who thus suffereth from himself, unless it be speedy death.\n\nYour slaying, ye judges, shall be pity, and not revenge; and in that ye slay, see to it that ye yourselves justify life!\n\nIt is not enough that ye should reconcile with him whom ye slay. Let your sorrow be love to the Superman: thus will ye justify your own survival!\n\n\u201cEnemy\u201d shall ye say but not \u201cvillain,\u201d \u201cinvalid\u201d shall ye say but not \u201cwretch,\u201d \u201cfool\u201d shall ye say but not \u201csinner.\u201d\n\nAnd thou, red judge, if thou would say audibly all thou hast done in thought, then would every one cry: \u201cAway with the nastiness and the virulent reptile!\u201d\n\nBut one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them.\n\nAn idea made this pale man pale. Adequate was he for his deed when he did it, but the idea of it, he could not endure when it was done.\n\nEvermore did he now see himself as the doer of one deed. Madness, I call this: the exception reversed itself to the rule in him.\n\nThe streak of chalk bewitcheth the hen; the stroke he struck bewitched his weak reason. Madness after the deed, I call this.\n\nHearken, ye judges! There is another madness besides, and it is before the deed. Ah! ye have not gone deep enough into this soul!\n\nThus speaketh the red judge: \u201cWhy did this criminal commit murder? He meant to rob.\u201d I tell you, however, that his soul wanted blood, not booty: he thirsted for the happiness of the knife!\n\nBut his weak reason understood not this madness, and it persuaded him. \u201cWhat matter about blood!\u201d it said; \u201cwishest thou not, at least, to make booty thereby? Or take revenge?\u201d\n\nAnd he hearkened unto his weak reason: like lead lay its words upon him\u2014thereupon he robbed when he murdered. He did not mean to be ashamed of his madness.\n\nAnd now once more lieth the lead of his guilt upon him, and once more is his weak reason so benumbed, so paralysed, and so dull.\n\nCould he only shake his head, then would his burden roll off; but who shaketh that head?\n\nWhat is this man? A mass of diseases that reach out into the world through the spirit; there they want to get their prey.\n\nWhat is this man? A coil of wild serpents that are seldom at peace among themselves\u2014so they go forth apart and seek prey in the world.\n\nLook at that poor body! What it suffered and craved, the poor soul interpreted to itself\u2014it interpreted it as murderous desire, and eagerness for the happiness of the knife.\n\nHim who now turneth sick, the evil overtaketh which is now the evil: he seeketh to cause pain with that which causeth him pain. But there have been other ages, and another evil and good.\n\nOnce was doubt evil, and the will to Self. Then the invalid became a heretic or sorcerer; as heretic or sorcerer he suffered, and sought to cause suffering.\n\nBut this will not enter your ears; it hurteth your good people, ye tell me. But what doth it matter to me about your good people!\n\nMany things in your good people cause me disgust, and verily, not their evil. I would that they had a madness by which they succumbed, like this pale criminal!\n\nVerily, I would that their madness were called truth, or fidelity, or justice: but they have their virtue in order to live long, and in wretched self-complacency.\n\nI am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me may grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not.\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n7. Reading and Writing\n\nOf all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.\n\nIt is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers.\n\nHe who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers\u2014and spirit itself will stink.\n\nEvery one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.\n\nOnce spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becometh populace.\n\nHe that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart.\n\nIn the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall.\n\nThe atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a joyful wickedness: thus are things well matched.\n\nI want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous. The courage which scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins\u2014it wanteth to laugh.\n\nI no longer feel in common with you; the very cloud which I see beneath me, the blackness and heaviness at which I laugh\u2014that is your thunder-cloud.\n\nYe look aloft when ye long for exaltation; and I look downward because I am exalted.\n\nWho among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted?\n\nHe who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities.\n\nCourageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive\u2014so wisdom wisheth us; she is a woman, and ever loveth only a warrior.\n\nYe tell me, \u201cLife is hard to bear.\u201d But for what purpose should ye have your pride in the morning and your resignation in the evening?\n\nLife is hard to bear: but do not affect to be so delicate! We are all of us fine sumpter asses and she-asses.\n\nWhat have we in common with the rose-bud, which trembleth because a drop of dew hath formed upon it?\n\nIt is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love.\n\nThere is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method in madness.\n\nAnd to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness.\n\nTo see these light, foolish, pretty, lively little sprites flit about\u2014that moveth Zarathustra to tears and songs.\n\nI should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.\n\nAnd when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity\u2014through him all things fall.\n\nNot by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!\n\nI learned to walk; since then have I let myself run. I learned to fly; since then I do not need pushing in order to move from a spot.\n\nNow am I light, now do I fly; now do I see myself under myself. Now there danceth a God in me.\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n8. The Tree on the Hill\n\nZarathustra's eye had perceived that a certain youth avoided him. And as he walked alone one evening over the hills surrounding the town called \u201cThe Pied Cow,\u201d behold, there found he the youth sitting leaning against a tree, and gazing with wearied look into the valley. Zarathustra thereupon laid hold of the tree beside which the youth sat, and spake thus:\n\n\u201cIf I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to do so.\n\nBut the wind, which we see not, troubleth and bendeth it and it listeth. We are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands.\u201d\n\nThereupon the youth arose disconcerted, and said: \u201cI hear Zarathustra, and just now was I thinking of him!\u201d Zarathustra answered:\n\n\u201cWhy art thou frightened on that account?\u2014But it is the same with man as with the tree.\n\nThe more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep\u2014into the evil.\u201d\n\n\u201cYea, into the evil!\u201d cried the youth. \u201cHow is it possible that thou hast discovered my soul?\u201d\n\nZarathustra smiled, and said: \u201cMany a soul one will never discover, unless one first invent it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYea, into the evil!\u201d cried the youth once more.\n\n\u201cThou saidst the truth, Zarathustra. I trust myself no longer since I sought to rise into the height, and nobody trusteth me any longer; how doth that happen?\n\nI change too quickly: my to-day refuteth my yesterday. I often overleap the steps when I clamber; for so doing, none of the steps pardons me.\n\nWhen aloft, I find myself always alone. No one speaketh unto me; the frost of solitude maketh me tremble. What do I seek on the height?\n\nMy contempt and my longing increase together; the higher I clamber, the more do I despise him who clambereth. What doth he seek on the height?\n\nHow ashamed I am of my clambering and stumbling! How I mock at my violent panting! How I hate him who flieth! How tired I am on the height!\u201d\n\nHere the youth was silent. And Zarathustra contemplated the tree beside which they stood, and spake thus:\n\n\u201cThis tree standeth lonely here on the hills; it hath grown up high above man and beast.\n\nAnd if it wanted to speak, it would have none who could understand it: so high hath it grown.\n\nNow it waiteth and waiteth,\u2014for what doth it wait? It dwelleth too close to the seat of the clouds; it waiteth perhaps for the first lightning?\u201d\n\nWhen Zarathustra had said this, the youth called out with violent gestures: \u201cYea, Zarathustra, thou speakest the truth. My destruction I longed for, when I desired to be on the height, and thou art the lightning for which I waited! Lo! what have I been since thou hast appeared amongst us? It is mine envy of thee that hath destroyed me!\u201d\u2014Thus spake the youth, and wept bitterly. Zarathustra, however, put his arm about him, and led the youth away with him.\n\nAnd when they had walked a while together, Zarathustra began to speak thus:\n\nIt rendeth my heart. Better than thy words express it, thine eyes tell me all thy danger.\n\nAs yet thou art not free; thou still seekest freedom. Too unslept hath thy seeking made thee, and too wakeful.\n\nOn the open height wouldst thou be; for the stars thirsteth thy soul. But thy bad impulses also thirst for freedom.\n\nThy wild dogs want liberty; they bark for joy in their cellar when thy spirit endeavoureth to open all prison doors.\n\nStill art thou a prisoner\u2014it seemeth to me\u2014who deviseth liberty for himself: ah! sharp becometh the soul of such prisoners, but also deceitful and wicked.\n\nTo purify himself, is still necessary for the freedman of the spirit. Much of the prison and the mould still remaineth in him: pure hath his eye still to become.\n\nYea, I know thy danger. But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not thy love and hope away!\n\nNoble thou feelest thyself still, and noble others also feel thee still, though they bear thee a grudge and cast evil looks. Know this, that to everybody a noble one standeth in the way.\n\nAlso to the good, a noble one standeth in the way: and even when they call him a good man, they want thereby to put him aside.\n\nThe new, would the noble man create, and a new virtue. The old, wanteth the good man, and that the old should be conserved.\n\nBut it is not the danger of the noble man to turn a good man, but lest he should become a blusterer, a scoffer, or a destroyer.\n\nAh! I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope. And then they disparaged all high hopes.\n\nThen lived they shamelessly in temporary pleasures, and beyond the day had hardly an aim.\n\n\u201cSpirit is also voluptuousness,\u201d\u2014said they. Then broke the wings of their spirit; and now it creepeth about, and defileth where it gnaweth.\n\nOnce they thought of becoming heroes; but sensualists are they now. A trouble and a terror is the hero to them.\n\nBut by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not away the hero in thy soul! Maintain holy thy highest hope!\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n9. The Preachers of Death\n\nThere are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom desistance from life must be preached.\n\nFull is the earth of the superfluous; marred is life by the many-too-many. May they be decoyed out of this life by the \u201clife eternal\u201d!\n\n\u2014\u201cThe yellow ones\u201d: so are called the preachers of death, or \u201cthe black ones.\u201d But I will show them unto you in other colours besides.\n\nThere are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration.\n\nThey have not yet become men, those terrible ones: may they preach desistance from life, and pass away themselves!\n\nThere are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassitude and renunciation.\n\nThey would fain be dead, and we should approve of their wish! Let us beware of awakening those dead ones, and of damaging those living coffins!\n\nThey meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse\u2014and immediately they say: \u201cLife is refuted!\u201d\n\nBut they only are refuted, and their eye, which seeth only one aspect of existence.\n\nShrouded in thick melancholy, and eager for the little casualties that bring death: thus do they wait, and clench their teeth.\n\nOr else, they grasp at sweetmeats, and mock at their childishness thereby: they cling to their straw of life, and mock at their still clinging to it.\n\nTheir wisdom speaketh thus: \u201cA fool, he who remaineth alive; but so far are we fools! And that is the foolishest thing in life!\u201d\n\n\u201cLife is only suffering\u201d: so say others, and lie not. Then see to it that ye cease! See to it that the life ceaseth which is only suffering!\n\nAnd let this be the teaching of your virtue: \u201cThou shalt slay thyself! Thou shalt steal away from thyself!\"\u2014\n\n\u201cLust is sin,\u201d\u2014so say some who preach death\u2014\u201clet us go apart and beget no children!\u201d\n\n\u201cGiving birth is troublesome,\u201d\u2014say others\u2014\u201cwhy still give birth? One beareth only the unfortunate!\u201d And they also are preachers of death.\n\n\u201cPity is necessary,\u201d\u2014so saith a third party. \u201cTake what I have! Take what I am! So much less doth life bind me!\u201d\n\nWere they consistently pitiful, then would they make their neighbours sick of life. To be wicked\u2014that would be their true goodness.\n\nBut they want to be rid of life; what care they if they bind others still faster with their chains and gifts!\u2014\n\nAnd ye also, to whom life is rough labour and disquiet, are ye not very tired of life? Are ye not very ripe for the sermon of death?\n\nAll ye to whom rough labour is dear, and the rapid, new, and strange\u2014ye put up with yourselves badly; your diligence is flight, and the will to self-forgetfulness.\n\nIf ye believed more in life, then would ye devote yourselves less to the momentary. But for waiting, ye have not enough of capacity in you\u2014nor even for idling!\n\nEverywhere resoundeth the voices of those who preach death; and the earth is full of those to whom death hath to be preached.\n\nOr \u201clife eternal\u201d; it is all the same to me\u2014if only they pass away quickly!\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n10. War and Warriors\n\nBy our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth!\n\nMy brethren in war! I love you from the very heart. I am, and was ever, your counterpart. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth!\n\nI know the hatred and envy of your hearts. Ye are not great enough not to know of hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them!\n\nAnd if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship.\n\nI see many soldiers; could I but see many warriors! \u201cUniform\u201d one calleth what they wear; may it not be uniform what they therewith hide!\n\nYe shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy\u2014for your enemy. And with some of you there is hatred at first sight.\n\nYour enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb your uprightness shall still shout triumph thereby!\n\nYe shall love peace as a means to new wars\u2014and the short peace more than the long.\n\nYou I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory!\n\nOne can only be silent and sit peacefully when one hath arrow and bow; otherwise one prateth and quarrelleth. Let your peace be a victory!\n\nYe say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause.\n\nWar and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved the victims.\n\n\u201cWhat is good?\u201d ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: \u201cTo be good is what is pretty, and at the same time touching.\u201d\n\nThey call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love the bashfulness of your goodwill. Ye are ashamed of your flow, and others are ashamed of their ebb.\n\nYe are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime about you, the mantle of the ugly!\n\nAnd when your soul becometh great, then doth it become haughty, and in your sublimity there is wickedness. I know you.\n\nIn wickedness the haughty man and the weakling meet. But they misunderstand one another. I know you.\n\nYe shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised. Ye must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies are also your successes.\n\nResistance\u2014that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying!\n\nTo the good warrior soundeth \u201cthou shalt\u201d pleasanter than \u201cI will.\u201d And all that is dear unto you, ye shall first have it commanded unto you.\n\nLet your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life!\n\nYour highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded unto you by me\u2014and it is this: man is something that is to be surpassed.\n\nSo live your life of obedience and of war! What matter about long life! What warrior wisheth to be spared!\n\nI spare you not, I love you from my very heart, my brethren in war!\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n11. The New Idol\n\nSomewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states.\n\nA state? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I say unto you my word concerning the death of peoples.\n\nA state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: \u201cI, the state, am the people.\u201d\n\nIt is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.\n\nDestroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.\n\nWhere there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.\n\nThis sign I give unto you: every people speaketh its language of good and evil: this its neighbour understandeth not. Its language hath it devised for itself in laws and customs.\n\nBut the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen.\n\nFalse is everything in it; with stolen teeth it biteth, the biting one. False are even its bowels.\n\nConfusion of language of good and evil; this sign I give unto you as the sign of the state. Verily, the will to death, indicateth this sign! Verily, it beckoneth unto the preachers of death!\n\nMany too many are born: for the superfluous ones was the state devised!\n\nSee just how it enticeth them to it, the many-too-many! How it swalloweth and cheweth and recheweth them!\n\n\u201cOn earth there is nothing greater than I: it is I who am the regulating finger of God\u201d\u2014thus roareth the monster. And not only the long-eared and short-sighted fall upon their knees!\n\nAh! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its gloomy lies! Ah! it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves!\n\nYea, it findeth you out too, ye conquerors of the old God! Weary ye became of the conflict, and now your weariness serveth the new idol!\n\nHeroes and honourable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good consciences,\u2014the cold monster!\n\nEverything will it give you, if ye worship it, the new idol: thus it purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes.\n\nIt seeketh to allure by means of you, the many-too-many! Yea, a hellish artifice hath here been devised, a death-horse jingling with the trappings of divine honours!\n\nYea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death!\n\nThe state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all\u2014is called \u201clife.\u201d\n\nJust see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft\u2014and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them!\n\nJust see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves.\n\nJust see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money\u2014these impotent ones!\n\nSee them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss.\n\nTowards the throne they all strive: it is their madness\u2014as if happiness sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne,\u2014and ofttimes also the throne on filth.\n\nMadmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me, these idolaters.\n\nMy brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites! Better break the windows and jump into the open air!\n\nDo go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the idolatry of the superfluous!\n\nDo go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the steam of these human sacrifices!\n\nOpen still remaineth the earth for great souls. Empty are still many sites for lone ones and twain ones, around which floateth the odour of tranquil seas.\n\nOpen still remaineth a free life for great souls. Verily, he who possesseth little is so much the less possessed: blessed be moderate poverty!\n\nThere, where the state ceaseth\u2014there only commenceth the man who is not superfluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody.\n\nThere, where the state ceaseth\u2014pray look thither, my brethren! Do ye not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the Superman?\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n12. The Flies in the Market-Place\n\nFlee, my friend, into thy solitude! I see thee deafened with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones.\n\nAdmirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with thee. Resemble again the tree which thou lovest, the broad-branched one\u2014silently and attentively it o\u2019erhangeth the sea.\n\nWhere solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.\n\nIn the world even the best things are worthless without those who represent them: those representers, the people call great men.\n\nLittle do the people understand what is great\u2014that is to say, the creating agency. But they have a taste for all representers and actors of great things.\n\nAround the devisers of new values revolveth the world:\u2014invisibly it revolveth. But around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such is the course of things.\n\nSpirit, hath the actor, but little conscience of the spirit. He believeth always in that wherewith he maketh believe most strongly\u2014in himself!\n\nTomorrow he hath a new belief, and the day after, one still newer. Sharp perceptions hath he, like the people, and changeable humours.\n\nTo upset\u2014that meaneth with him to prove. To drive mad\u2014that meaneth with him to convince. And blood is counted by him as the best of all arguments.\n\nA truth which only glideth into fine ears, he calleth falsehood and trumpery. Verily, he believeth only in gods that make a great noise in the world!\n\nFull of clattering buffoons is the market-place,\u2014and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour.\n\nBut the hour presseth them; so they press thee. And also from thee they want Yea or Nay. Alas! thou wouldst set thy chair betwixt For and Against?\n\nOn account of those absolute and impatient ones, be not jealous, thou lover of truth! Never yet did truth cling to the arm of an absolute one.\n\nOn account of those abrupt ones, return into thy security: only in the market-place is one assailed by Yea? or Nay?\n\nSlow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait until they know what hath fallen into their depths.\n\nAway from the market-place and from fame taketh place all that is great: away from the market-place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values.\n\nFlee, my friend, into thy solitude: I see thee stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee thither, where a rough, strong breeze bloweth!\n\nFlee into thy solitude! Thou hast lived too closely to the small and the pitiable. Flee from their invisible vengeance! Towards thee they have nothing but vengeance.\n\nRaise no longer an arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.\n\nInnumerable are the small and pitiable ones; and of many a proud structure, rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin.\n\nThou art not stone; but already hast thou become hollow by the numerous drops. Thou wilt yet break and burst by the numerous drops.\n\nExhausted I see thee, by poisonous flies; bleeding I see thee, and torn at a hundred spots; and thy pride will not even upbraid.\n\nBlood they would have from thee in all innocence; blood their bloodless souls crave for\u2014and they sting, therefore, in all innocence.\n\nBut thou, profound one, thou sufferest too profoundly even from small wounds; and ere thou hadst recovered, the same poison-worm crawled over thy hand.\n\nToo proud art thou to kill these sweet-tooths. But take care lest it be thy fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice!\n\nThey buzz around thee also with their praise: obtrusiveness is their praise. They want to be close to thy skin and thy blood.\n\nThey flatter thee, as one flattereth a God or devil; they whimper before thee, as before a God or devil. What doth it come to! Flatterers are they, and whimperers, and nothing more.\n\nOften, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable ones.\n\nBut that hath ever been the prudence of the cowardly. Yea! the cowardly are wise!\n\nThey think much about thee with their circumscribed souls\u2014thou art always suspected by them! Whatever is much thought about is at last thought suspicious.\n\nThey punish thee for all thy virtues. They pardon thee in their inmost hearts only\u2014for thine errors.\n\nBecause thou art gentle and of upright character, thou sayest: \u201cBlameless are they for their small existence.\u201d But their circumscribed souls think: \u201cBlamable is all great existence.\u201d\n\nEven when thou art gentle towards them, they still feel themselves despised by thee; and they repay thy beneficence with secret maleficence.\n\nThy silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice if once thou be humble enough to be frivolous.\n\nWhat we recognise in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on your guard against the small ones!\n\nIn thy presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleameth and gloweth against thee in invisible vengeance.\n\nSawest thou not how often they became dumb when thou approachedst them, and how their energy left them like the smoke of an extinguishing fire?\n\nYea, my friend, the bad conscience art thou of thy neighbours; for they are unworthy of thee. Therefore they hate thee, and would fain suck thy blood.\n\nThy neighbours will always be poisonous flies; what is great in thee\u2014that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like.\n\nFlee, my friend, into thy solitude\u2014and thither, where a rough strong breeze bloweth. It is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n13. Chastity\n\nI love the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there, there are too many of the lustful.\n\nIs it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?\n\nAnd just look at these men: their eye saith it\u2014they know nothing better on earth than to lie with a woman.\n\nFilth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! if their filth hath still spirit in it!\n\nWould that ye were perfect\u2014at least as animals! But to animals belongeth innocence.\n\nDo I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel you to innocence in your instincts.\n\nDo I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue with some, but with many almost a vice.\n\nThese are continent, to be sure: but doggish lust looketh enviously out of all that they do.\n\nEven into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit doth this creature follow them, with its discord.\n\nAnd how nicely can doggish lust beg for a piece of spirit, when a piece of flesh is denied it!\n\nYe love tragedies and all that breaketh the heart? But I am distrustful of your doggish lust.\n\nYe have too cruel eyes, and ye look wantonly towards the sufferers. Hath not your lust just disguised itself and taken the name of fellow-suffering?\n\nAnd also this parable give I unto you: Not a few who meant to cast out their devil, went thereby into the swine themselves To whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded: lest it become the road to hell\u2014to filth and lust of soul.\n\nDo I speak of filthy things? That is not the worst thing for me to do.\n\nNot when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, doth the discerning one go unwillingly into its waters.\n\nVerily, there are chaste ones from their very nature; they are gentler of heart, and laugh better and oftener than you.\n\nThey laugh also at chastity, and ask: \u201cWhat is chastity?\n\nIs chastity not folly? But the folly came unto us, and not we unto it.\n\nWe offered that guest harbour and heart: now it dwelleth with us\u2014let it stay as long as it will!\u201d\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n14. The Friend\n\n\"One is always too many about me\u201d\u2014thinketh the anchorite, \u201cAlways once one\u2014that maketh two in the long run!\u201d\n\nI and me are always too earnestly in conversation: how could it be endured, if there were not a friend?\n\nThe friend of the anchorite is always the third one: the third one is the cork which preventeth the conversation of the two sinking into the depth.\n\nAh! there are too many depths for all anchorites. Therefore, do they long so much for a friend and for his elevation.\n\nOur faith in others betrayeth wherein we would fain have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.\n\nAnd often with our love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.\n\n\u201cBe at least mine enemy!\u201d\u2014thus speaketh the true reverence, which doth not venture to solicit friendship.\n\nIf one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be capable of being an enemy.\n\nOne ought still to honour the enemy in one\u2019s friend. Canst thou go nigh unto thy friend, and not go over to him?\n\nIn one\u2019s friend one shall have one\u2019s best enemy. Thou shalt be closest unto him with thy heart when thou withstandest him.\n\nThou wouldst wear no raiment before thy friend? It is in honour of thy friend that thou showest thyself to him as thou art? But he wisheth thee to the devil on that account!\n\nHe who maketh no secret of himself shocketh: so much reason have ye to fear nakedness! Aye, if ye were gods, ye could then be ashamed of clothing!\n\nThou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend; for thou shalt be unto him an arrow and a longing for the Superman.\n\nSawest thou ever thy friend asleep\u2014to know how he looketh? What is usually the countenance of thy friend? It is thine own countenance, in a coarse and imperfect mirror.\n\nSawest thou ever thy friend asleep? Wert thou not dismayed at thy friend looking so? O my friend, man is something that hath to be surpassed.\n\nIn divining and keeping silence shall the friend be a master: not everything must thou wish to see. Thy dream shall disclose unto thee what thy friend doeth when awake.\n\nLet thy pity be a divining: to know first if thy friend wanteth pity. Perhaps he loveth in thee the unmoved eye, and the look of eternity.\n\nLet thy pity for thy friend be hid under a hard shell; thou shalt bite out a tooth upon it. Thus will it have delicacy and sweetness.\n\nArt thou pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to thy friend? Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is nevertheless his friend\u2019s emancipator.\n\nArt thou a slave? Then thou canst not be a friend. Art thou a tyrant? Then thou canst not have friends.\n\nFar too long hath there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman. On that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knoweth only love.\n\nIn woman\u2019s love there is injustice and blindness to all she doth not love. And even in woman\u2019s conscious love, there is still always surprise and lightning and night, along with the light.\n\nAs yet woman is not capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or at the best, cows.\n\nAs yet woman is not capable of friendship. But tell me, ye men, who of you is capable of friendship?\n\nOh! your poverty, ye men, and your sordidness of soul! As much as ye give to your friend, will I give even to my foe, and will not have become poorer thereby.\n\nThere is comradeship: may there be friendship!\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n15. The Thousand and One Goals\n\nMany lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and bad of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and bad.\n\nNo people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour valueth.\n\nMuch that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another: thus I found it. Much found I here called bad, which was there decked with purple honours.\n\nNever did the one neighbour understand the other: ever did his soul marvel at his neighbour\u2019s delusion and wickedness.\n\nA table of excellencies hangeth over every people. Lo! it is the table of their triumphs; lo! it is the voice of their Will to Power.\n\nIt is laudable, what they think hard; what is indispensable and hard they call good; and what relieveth in the direst distress, the unique and hardest of all,\u2014they extol as holy.\n\nWhatever maketh them rule and conquer and shine, to the dismay and envy of their neighbours, they regard as the high and foremost thing, the test and the meaning of all else.\n\nVerily, my brother, if thou knewest but a people\u2019s need, its land, its sky, and its neighbour, then wouldst thou divine the law of its surmountings, and why it climbeth up that ladder to its hope.\n\n\u201cAlways shalt thou be the foremost and prominent above others: no one shall thy jealous soul love, except a friend\u201dTemplate:Upe\u2014 that made the soul of a Greek thrill: thereby went he his way to greatness.\n\n\u201cTo speak truth, and be skilful with bow and arrow\u201d\u2014so seemed it alike pleasing and hard to the people from whom cometh my name\u2014the name which is alike pleasing and hard to me.\n\n\u201cTo honour father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their will\u201d\u2014this table of surmounting hung another people over them, and became powerful and permanent thereby.\n\n\u201cTo have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honour and blood, even in evil and dangerous courses\u201d\u2014teaching itself so, another people mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.\n\nVerily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven.\n\nValues did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself\u2014he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself \u201cman,\u201d that is, the valuator.\n\nValuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of the valued things.\n\nThrough valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, ye creating ones!\n\nChange of values\u2014that is, change of the creating ones. Always doth he destroy who hath to be a creator.\n\nCreating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest creation.\n\nPeoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule and love which would obey, created for themselves such tables.\n\nOlder is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the ego: and as long as the good conscience is for the herd, the bad conscience only saith: ego.\n\nVerily, the crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeketh its advantage in the advantage of many\u2014it is not the origin of the herd, but its ruin.\n\nLoving ones, was it always, and creating ones, that created good and bad. Fire of love gloweth in the names of all the virtues, and fire of wrath.\n\nMany lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones\u2014\u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d are they called.\n\nVerily, a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me, ye brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put a fetter upon the thousand necks of this animal?\n\nA thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples have there been. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity hath not a goal.\n\nBut pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, is there not also still lacking\u2014humanity itself?\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n16. Neighbour-Love\n\nYe crowd around your neighbour, and have fine words for it. But I say unto you: your neighbour-love is your bad love of yourselves.\n\nYe flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a virtue thereof: but I fathom your \u201cunselfishness.\u201d\n\nThe Thou is older than the I; the Thou hath been consecrated, but not yet the I: so man presseth nigh unto his neighbour.\n\nDo I advise you to neighbour-love? Rather do I advise you to neighbour-flight and to furthest love!\n\nHigher than love to your neighbour is love to the furthest and future ones; higher stili than love to men, is love to things and phantoms.\n\nThe phantom that runneth on before thee, my brother, is fairer than thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou fearest, and runnest unto thy neighbour.\n\nYe cannot endure it with yourselves, and do not love yourselves sufficiently: so ye seek to mislead your neighbour into love, and would fain gild yourselves with his error.\n\nWould that ye could not endure it with any kind of near ones, or their neighbours; then would ye have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves.\n\nYe call in a witness when ye want to speak well of yourselves; and when ye have misled him to think well of you, ye also think well of yourselves.\n\nNot only doth he lie, who speaketh contrary to his knowledge, but more so, he who speaketh contrary to his ignorance.\n\nAnd thus speak ye of yourselves in your intercourse, and belie your neighbour with yourselves.\n\nThus saith the fool: \u201cAssociation with men spoileth the character, especially when one hath none.\u201d\n\nThe one goeth to his neighbour because he seeketh himself, and the other because he would fain lose himself. Your bad love to yourselves maketh solitude a prison to you.\n\nThe furthest ones are they who pay for your love to the near ones; and when there are but five of you together, a sixth must always die.\n\nI love not your festivals either: too many actors found I there, and even the spectators often behaved like actors.\n\nNot the neighbour do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman.\n\nI teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how to be a sponge, if one would be loved by over-flowing hearts.\n\nI teach you the friend in whom the world standeth complete, a capsule of the good,\u2014the creating friend, who hath always a complete world to bestow.\n\nAnd as the world unrolled itself for him, so rolleth it together again for him in rings, as the growth of good through evil, as the growth of purpose out of chance.\n\nLet the future and the furthest be the motive of thy today; in thy friend shalt thou love the Superman as thy motive.\n\nMy brethren, I advise you not to neighbour-love\u2014I advise you to furthest love!\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n17. The Way of the Creating One\n\nWouldst thou go into isolation, my brother? Wouldst thou seek the way unto thyself? Tarry yet a little and hearken unto me.\n\n\u201cHe who seeketh may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong\u201d: so say the herd. And long didst thou belong to the herd.\n\nThe voice of the herd will still echo in thee. And when thou sayest, \u201cI have no longer a conscience in common with you,\u201d then will it be a plaint and a pain.\n\nLo, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and the last gleam of that conscience still gloweth on thine affliction.\n\nBut thou wouldst go the way of thine affliction, which is the way unto thyself? Then show me thine authority and thy strength to do so!\n\nArt thou a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Canst thou also compel stars to revolve around thee?\n\nAlas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that thou art not a lusting and ambitious one!\n\nAlas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more than the bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than ever.\n\nFree, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.\n\nArt thou one entitled to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.\n\nFree from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free for what?\n\nCanst thou give unto thyself thy bad and thy good, and set up thy will as a law over thee? Canst thou be judge for thyself, and avenger of thy law?\n\nTerrible is aloneness with the judge and avenger of one\u2019s own law. Thus is a star projected into desert space, and into the icy breath of aloneness.\n\nTo-day sufferest thou still from the multitude, thou individual; to-day hast thou still thy courage unabated, and thy hopes.\n\nBut one day will the solitude weary thee; one day will thy pride yield, and thy courage quail. Thou wilt one day cry: \u201cI am alone!\u201d\n\nOne day wilt thou see no longer thy loftiness, and see too closely thy lowliness; thy sublimity itself will frighten thee as a phantom. Thou wilt one day cry: \u201cAll is false!\u201d\n\nThere are feelings which seek to slay the lonesome one; if they do not succeed, then must they themselves die! But art thou capable of it\u2014to be a murderer?\n\nHast thou ever known, my brother, the word \u201cdisdain\u201d? And the anguish of thy justice in being just to those that disdain thee?\n\nThou forcest many to think differently about thee; that, charge they heavily to thine account. Thou camest nigh unto them, and yet wentest past: for that they never forgive thee.\n\nThou goest beyond them: but the higher thou risest, the smaller doth the eye of envy see thee. Most of all, however, is the flying one hated.\n\n\u201cHow could ye be just unto me!\u201d\u2014must thou say\u2014\u201cI choose your injustice as my allotted portion.\u201d\n\nInjustice and filth cast they at the lonesome one: but, my brother, if thou wouldst be a star, thou must shine for them none the less on that account!\n\nAnd be on thy guard against the good and just! They would fain crucify those who devise their own virtue\u2014they hate the lonesome ones.\n\nBe on thy guard, also, against holy simplicity! All is unholy to it that is not simple; fain, likewise, would it play with the fire\u2014of the fagot and stake.\n\nAnd be on thy guard, also, against the assaults of thy love! Too readily doth the recluse reach his hand to any one who meeteth him.\n\nTo many a one mayest thou not give thy hand, but only thy paw; and I wish thy paw also to have claws.\n\nBut the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be; thou waylayest thyself in caverns and forests.\n\nThou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And past thyself and thy seven devils leadeth thy way!\n\nA heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a soothsayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain.\n\nReady must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes!\n\nThou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the creating one: a God wilt thou create for thyself out of thy seven devils!\n\nThou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the loving one: thou lovest thyself, and on that account despisest thou thyself, as only the loving ones despise.\n\nTo create, desireth the loving one, because he despiseth! What knoweth he of love who hath not been obliged to despise just what he loved!\n\nWith thy love, go into thine isolation, my brother, and with thy creating; and late only will justice limp after thee.\n\nWith my tears, go into thine isolation, my brother. I love him who seeketh to create beyond himself, and thus succumbeth.\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spoke Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n18. Old and Young Women\n\nWhy stealest thou along so furtively in the twilight, Zarathustra? And what hidest thou so carefully under thy mantle?\n\nIs it a treasure that hath been given thee? Or a child that hath been born thee? Or goest thou thyself on a thief\u2019s errand, thou friend of the evil?\u2014\n\nVerily, my brother, said Zarathustra, it is a treasure that hath been given me: it is a little truth which I carry.\n\nBut it is naughty, like a young child; and if I hold not its mouth, it screameth too loudly.\n\nAs I went on my way alone today, at the hour when the sun declineth, there met me an old woman, and she spake thus unto my soul:\n\n\u201cMuch hath Zarathustra spoken also to us women, but never spake he unto us concerning woman.\u201d\n\nAnd I answered her: \u201cConcerning woman, one should only talk unto men.\u201d\n\n\u201cTalk also unto me of woman,\u201d said she; \u201cI am old enough to forget it presently.\u201d\n\nAnd I obliged the old woman and spake thus unto her:\n\nEverything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one solution\u2014it is called pregnancy.\n\nMan is for woman. a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man?\n\nTwo different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion. Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything.\n\nMan shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly.\n\nToo sweet fruits\u2014these the warrior liketh not. Therefore liketh he woman;\u2014bitter is even the sweetest woman.\n\nBetter than man doth woman understand children, but man is more childish than woman.\n\nIn the true man there is a child hidden: it wanteth to play. Up then, ye women, and discover the child in man!\n\nA plaything let woman be, pure and fine like the precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come.\n\nLet the beam of a star shine in your love! Let your hope say: \u201cMay I bear the Superman!\u201d\n\nIn your love let there be valour! With your love shall ye assail him who inspireth you with fear!\n\nIn your love be your honour! Little doth woman understand otherwise about honour. But let this be your honour: always to love more than ye are loved, and never be the second.\n\nLet man fear woman when she loveth: then maketh she every sacrifice, and everything else she regardeth as worthless.\n\nLet man fear woman when she hateth: for man in his innermost soul is merely evil; woman, however, is mean.\n\nWhom hateth woman most?\u2014Thus spake the iron to the loadstone: \u201cI hate thee most, because thou attractest, but art too weak to draw unto thee.\u201d\n\nThe happiness of man is, \u201cI will.\u201d The happiness of woman is, \u201cHe will.\u201d\n\n\u201cLo! now hath the world become perfect!\u201d\u2014thus thinketh every woman when she obeyeth with all her love.\n\nObey, must the woman, and find a depth for her surface. Surface is woman\u2019s soul, a mobile, stormy film on shallow water.\n\nMan\u2019s soul, however, is deep, its current gusheth in subterranean caverns: woman surmiseth its force, but comprehendeth it not.\u2014\n\nThen answered me the old woman: \u201cMany fine things hath Zarathustra said, especially for those who are young enough for them.\n\nStrange! Zarathustra knoweth little about woman, and yet he is right about them! Doth this happen, because with women nothing is impossible?\n\nAnd now accept a little truth by way of thanks! I am old enough for it!\n\nSwaddle it up and hold its mouth: otherwise it will scream too loudly, the little truth.\u201d\n\n\u201cGive me, woman, thy little truth!\u201d said I. And thus spake the old woman:\n\n\u201cThou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!\u201d\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spoke Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n19. The Bite of the Adder\n\nOne day had Zarathustra fallen asleep under a fig-tree, owing to the heat, with his arm over his face. And there came an adder and bit him in the neck, so that Zarathustra screamed with pain. When he had taken his arm from his face he looked at the serpent; and then did it recognise the eyes of Zarathustra, wriggled awkwardly, and tried to get away. \u201cNot at all,\u201d said Zarathustra, \u201cas yet hast thou not received my thanks! Thou hast awakened me in time; my journey is yet long.\u201d \u201cThy journey is short,\u201d said the adder sadly; \u201cmy poison is fatal.\u201d Zarathustra smiled. \u201cWhen did ever a dragon die of a serpent\u2019s poison?\u201d\u2014said he. \u201cBut take thy poison back! Thou art not rich enough to present it to me.\u201d Then fell the adder again on his neck, and licked his wound.\n\nWhen Zarathustra once told this to his disciples they asked him: \u201cAnd what, O Zarathustra, is the moral of thy story?\u201d And Zarathustra answered them thus:\n\nThe destroyer of morality, the good and just call me: my story is immoral.\n\nWhen, however, ye have an enemy, then return him not good for evil: for that would abash him. But prove that he hath done something good to you.\n\nAnd rather be angry than abash any one! And when ye are cursed, it pleaseth me not that ye should then desire to bless. Rather curse a little also!\n\nAnd should a great injustice befall you, then do quickly five small ones besides. Hideous to behold is he on whom injustice presseth alone.\n\nDid ye ever know this? Shared injustice is half justice. And he who can bear it, shall take the injustice upon himself!\n\nA small revenge is humaner than no revenge at all. And if the punishment be not also a right and an honour to the transgressor, I do not like your punishing.\n\nNobler is it to own oneself in the wrong than to establish one\u2019s right, especially if one be in the right. Only, one must be rich enough to do so.\n\nI do not like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there always glanceth the executioner and his cold steel.\n\nTell me: where find we justice, which is love with seeing eyes?\n\nDevise me, then, the love which not only beareth all punishment, but also all guilt!\n\nDevise me, then, the justice which acquitteth every one except the judge!\n\nAnd would ye hear this likewise? To him who seeketh to be just from the heart, even the lie becometh philanthropy.\n\nBut how could I be just from the heart! How can I give every one his own! Let this be enough for me: I give unto every one mine own.\n\nFinally, my brethren, guard against doing wrong to any anchorite. How could an anchorite forget! How could he requite!\n\nLike a deep well is an anchorite. Easy is it to throw in a stone: if it should sink to the bottom, however, tell me, who will bring it out again?\n\nGuard against injuring the anchorite! If ye have done so however, well then, kill him also!\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spoke Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n20. Child and Marriage\n\nI have a question for thee alone, my brother: like a sounding-lead, cast I this question into thy soul, that I may know its depth.\n\nThou art young, and desirest child and marriage. But I ask thee: Art thou a man entitled to desire a child?\n\nArt thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy passions, the master of thy virtues? Thus do I ask thee.\n\nOr doth the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? Or isolation? Or discord in thee?\n\nI would have thy victory and freedom long for a child. Living monuments shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation.\n\nBeyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must thou be built thyself, rectangular in body and soul.\n\nNot only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward! For that purpose may the garden of marriage help thee!\n\nA higher body shalt thou create, a first movement, a spontaneously rolling wheel\u2014a creating one shalt thou create.\n\nMarriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it. The reverence for one another, as those exercising such a will, call I marriage.\n\nLet this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones\u2014ah, what shall I call it?\n\nAh, the poverty of soul in the twain! Ah, the filth of soul in the twain! Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain!\n\nMarriage they call it all; and they say their marriages are made in heaven.\n\nWell, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly toils!\n\nFar from me also be the God who limpeth thither to bless what he hath not matched!\n\nLaugh not at such marriages! What child hath not had reason to weep over its parents?\n\nWorthy did this man seem, and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a home for madcaps.\n\nYea, I would that the earth shook with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with one another.\n\nThis one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for himself a small decked-up lie: his marriage he calleth it.\n\nThat one was reserved in intercourse and chose choicely. But one time he spoilt his company for all time: his marriage he calleth it.\n\nAnother sought a handmaid with the virtues of an angel. But all at once he became the handmaid of a woman, and now would he need also to become an angel.\n\nCareful, have I found all buyers, and all of them have astute eyes. But even the astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack.\n\nMany short follies\u2014that is called love by you. And your marriage putteth an end to many short follies, with one long stupidity.\n\nYour love to woman, and woman\u2019s love to man\u2014ah, would that it were sympathy for suffering and veiled deities! But generally two animals alight on one another.\n\nBut even your best love is only an enraptured simile and a painful ardour. It is a torch to light you to loftier paths.\n\nBeyond yourselves shall ye love some day! Then learn first of all to love. And on that account ye had to drink the bitter cup of your love.\n\nBitterness is in the cup even of the best love; thus doth it cause longing for the Superman; thus doth it cause thirst in thee, the creating one!\n\nThirst in the creating one, arrow and longing for the Superman: tell me, my brother, is this thy will to marriage?\n\nHoly call I such a will, and such a marriage.\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n21. Voluntary Death\n\nMany die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the precept: \u201cDie at the right time!\u201d\n\nDie at the right time: so teacheth Zarathustra.\n\nTo be sure, he who never liveth at the right time, how could he ever die at the right time? Would that he might never be born!\u2014Thus do I advise the superfluous ones.\n\nBut even the superfluous ones make much ado about their death, and even the hollowest nut wanteth to be cracked.\n\nEvery one regardeth dying as a great matter: but as yet death is not a festival. Not yet have people learned to inaugurate the finest festivals.\n\nThe consummating death I show unto you, which becometh a stimulus and promise to the living.\n\nHis death, dieth the consummating one triumphantly, surrounded by hoping and promising ones.\n\nThus should one learn to die; and there should be no festival at which such a dying one doth not consecrate the oaths of the living!\n\nThus to die is best; the next best, however, is to die in battle, and sacrifice a great soul.\n\nBut to the fighter equally hateful as to the victor, is your grinning death which stealeth nigh like a thief,\u2014and yet cometh as master.\n\nMy death, praise I unto you, the voluntary death, which cometh unto me because I want it.\n\nAnd when shall I want it?\u2014He that hath a goal and an heir, wanteth death at the right time for the goal and the heir.\n\nAnd out of reverence for the goal and the heir, he will hang up no more withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life.\n\nVerily, not the rope-makers will I resemble: they lengthen out their cord, and thereby go ever backward.\n\nMany a one, also, waxeth too old for his truths and triumphs; a toothless mouth hath no longer the right to every truth.\n\nAnd whoever wanteth to have fame, must take leave of honour betimes, and practise the difficult art of\u2014going at the right time.\n\nOne must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth best: that is known by those who want to be long loved.\n\nSour apples are there, no doubt, whose lot is to wait until the last day of autumn: and at the same time they become ripe, yellow, and shrivelled.\n\nIn some ageth the heart first, and in others the spirit. And some are hoary in youth, but the late young keep long young.\n\nTo many men life is a failure; a poison-worm gnaweth at their heart. Then let them see to it that their dying is all the more a success.\n\nMany never become sweet; they rot even in the summer. It is cowardice that holdeth them fast to their branches.\n\nFar too many live, and far too long hang they on their branches. Would that a storm came and shook all this rottenness and worm-eatenness from the tree!\n\nWould that there came preachers of speedy death! Those would be the appropriate storms and agitators of the trees of life! But I hear only slow death preached, and patience with all that is \u201cearthly.\u201d\n\nAh! ye preach patience with what is earthly? This earthly is it that hath too much patience with you, ye blasphemers!\n\nVerily, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honour: and to many hath it proved a calamity that he died too early.\n\nAs yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just\u2014the Hebrew Jesus: then was he seized with the longing for death.\n\nHad he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the good and just! Then, perhaps, would he have learned to live, and love the earth\u2014and laughter also!\n\nBelieve it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble enough was he to disavow!\n\nBut he was still immature. Immaturely loveth the youth, and immaturely also hateth he man and earth. Confined and awkward are still his soul and the wings of his spirit.\n\nBut in man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less of melancholy: better understandeth he about life and death.\n\nFree for death, and free in death; a holy Naysayer, when there is no longer time for Yea: thus understandeth he about death and life.\n\nThat your dying may not be a reproach to man and the earth, my friends: that do I solicit from the honey of your soul.\n\nIn your dying shall your spirit and your virtue still shine like an evening after-glow around the earth: otherwise your dying hath been unsatisfactory.\n\nThus will I die myself, that ye friends may love the earth more for my sake; and earth will I again become, to have rest in her that bore me.\n\nVerily, a goal had Zarathustra; he threw his ball. Now be ye friends the heirs of my goal; to you throw I the golden ball.\n\nBest of all, do I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball! And so tarry I still a little while on the earth\u2014pardon me for it!\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spoke Zarathustra.\n\n\u00a0\n\n22. The Bestowing Virtue\n\n\u00a0\n\n1\n\nWhen Zarathustra had taken leave of the town to which his heart was attached, the name of which is \u201cThe Pied Cow,\u201d there followed him many people who called themselves his disciples, and kept him company. Thus came they to a crossroads. Then Zarathustra told them that he now wanted to go alone; for he was fond of going alone. His disciples, however, presented him at his departure with a staff, on the golden handle of which a serpent twined round the sun. Zarathustra rejoiced on account of the staff, and supported himself thereon; then spake he thus to his disciples:\n\nTell me, pray: how came gold to the highest value? Because it is uncommon, and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in lustre; it always bestoweth itself.\n\nOnly as image of the highest virtue came gold to the highest value. Goldlike, beameth the glance of the bestower. Gold-lustre maketh peace between moon and sun.\n\nUncommon is the highest virtue, and unprofiting, beaming is it, and soft of lustre: a bestowing virtue is the highest virtue.\n\nVerily, I divine you well, my disciples: ye strive like me for the bestowing virtue. What should ye have in common with cats and wolves?\n\nIt is your thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves: and therefore have ye the thirst to accumulate all riches in your soul.\n\nInsatiably striveth your soul for treasures and jewels, because your virtue is insatiable in desiring to bestow.\n\nYe constrain all things to flow towards you and into you, so that they shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of your love.\n\nVerily, an appropriator of all values must such bestowing love become; but healthy and holy, call I this selfishness.\u2014\n\nAnother selfishness is there, an all-too-poor and hungry kind, which would always steal\u2014the selfishness of the sick, the sickly selfishness.\n\nWith the eye of the thief it looketh upon all that is lustrous; with the craving of hunger it measureth him who hath abundance; and ever doth it prowl round the tables of bestowers.\n\nSickness speaketh in such craving, and invisible degeneration; of a sickly body, speaketh the larcenous craving of this selfishness.\n\nTell me, my brother, what do we think bad, and worst of all? Is it not degeneration?\u2014And we always suspect degeneration when the bestowing soul is lacking.\n\nUpward goeth our course from genera on to super-genera. But a horror to us is the degenerating sense, which saith: \u201cAll for myself.\u201d\n\nUpward soareth our sense: thus is it a simile of our body, a simile of an elevation. Such similes of elevations are the names of the virtues.\n\nThus goeth the body through history, a becomer and fighter. And the spirit\u2014what is it to the body? Its fights\u2019 and victories\u2019 herald, its companion and echo.\n\nSimiles, are all names of good and evil; they do not speak out, they only hint. A fool who seeketh knowledge from them!\n\nGive heed, my brethren, to every hour when your spirit would speak in similes: there is the origin of your virtue.\n\nElevated is then your body, and raised up; with its delight, enraptureth it the spirit; so that it becometh creator, and valuer, and lover, and everything\u2019s benefactor.\n\nWhen your heart overfloweth broad and full like the river, a blessing and a danger to the lowlanders: there is the origin of your virtue.\n\nWhen ye are exalted above praise and blame, and your will would command all things, as a loving one\u2019s will: there is the origin of your virtue.\n\nWhen ye despise pleasant things, and the effeminate couch, and cannot couch far enough from the effeminate: there is the origin of your virtue.\n\nWhen ye are willers of one will, and when that change of every need is needful to you: there is the origin of your virtue.\n\nVerily, a new good and evil is it! Verily, a new deep murmuring, and the voice of a new fountain!\n\nPower is it, this new virtue; a ruling thought is it, and around it a subtle soul: a golden sun, with the serpent of knowledge around it.\n\n\u00a0\n\n2\n\nHere paused Zarathustra awhile, and looked lovingly on his disciples. Then he continued to speak thus\u2014and his voice had changed:\n\nRemain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue! Let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning of the earth! Thus do I pray and conjure you.\n\nLet it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal walls with its wings! Ah, there hath always been so much flown-away virtue!\n\nLead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth\u2014yea, back to body and life: that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human meaning!\n\nA hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue flown away and blundered. Alas! in our body dwelleth still all this delusion and blundering: body and will hath it there become.\n\nA hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue attempted and erred. Yea, an attempt hath man been. Alas, much ignorance and error hath become embodied in us!\n\nNot only the rationality of millennia\u2014also their madness, breaketh out in us. Dangerous is it to be an heir.\n\nStill fight we step by step with the giant Chance, and over all mankind hath hitherto ruled nonsense, the lack-of-sense.\n\nLet your spirit and your virtue be devoted to the sense of the earth, my brethren: let the value of everything be determined anew by you! Therefore shall ye be fighters! Therefore shall ye be creators!\n\nIntelligently doth the body purify itself; attempting with intelligence it exalteth itself; to the discerners all impulses sanctify themselves; to the exalted the soul becometh joyful.\n\nPhysician, heal thyself: then wilt thou also heal thy patient. Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole.\n\nA thousand paths are there which have never yet been trodden: a thousand salubrities and hidden islands of life Unexhausted and undiscovered is still man and man\u2019s world.\n\nAwake and hearken, ye lonesome ones! From the future come winds with stealthy pinions, and to fine ears good tidings are proclaimed.\n\nYe lonesome ones of today, ye seceding ones, ye shall one day be a people: out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall a chosen people arise:\u2014and out of it the Superman.\n\nVerily, a place of healing shall the earth become! And already is a new odour diffused around it, a salvation-bringing odour\u2014and a new hope!\n\n\u00a0\n\n3\n\nWhen Zarathustra had spoken these words, he paused, like one who had not said his last word; and long did he balance the staff doubtfully in his hand. At last he spake thus\u2014and his voice had changed:\n\nI now go alone, my disciples! Ye also now go away, and alone! So will I have it.\n\nVerily, I advise you: depart from me, and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he hath deceived you.\n\nThe man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.\n\nOne requiteth a teacher badly if one remain merely a scholar. And why will ye not pluck at my wreath?\n\nYe venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day collapse? Take heed lest a statue crush you!\n\nYe say, ye believe in Zarathustra? But of what account is Zarathustra! Ye are my believers: but of what account are all believers!\n\nYe had not yet sought yourselves: then did ye find me. So do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account.\n\nNow do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you.\n\nVerily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my lost ones; with another love shall I then love you.\n\nAnd once again shall ye have become friends unto me, and children of one hope: then will I be with you for the third time to celebrate the great noontide with you.\n\nAnd it is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of his course between animal and Superman, and celebrateth his advance to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the advance to a new morning.\n\nAt such time will the down-goer bless himself, that he should be an over-goer; and the sun of his knowledge will be at noontide.\n\n\u201cDead are all the Gods: now do we desire the Superman to live.\u201d\u2014Let this be our final will at the great noontide!\u2014\n\n\u00a0\n\nThus spake Zarathustra.","title":"Thus Spake Zarathustra/Part One","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":15903}