Thus Spoke Zarathustra

by Friedrich Nietzsche

  He who makes no secret of himself enrages: so much reason have you to fear nakedness! If you were gods you could then be ashamed of your clothes!

  You cannot adorn yourself too well for your friend: for you should be to him an arrow and a longing for the Übermensch.

  Have you ever watched your friend asleep-and discovered how he looks? What is the face of your friend anyway? It is your own face, in a rough and imperfect mirror.

  Have you ever watched your friend asleep? Were you not startled that your friend looked like that? 0 my friend, man is something that must be overcome.

  A friend should be a master at guessing and in keeping silence: you must not want to see everything. Your dream should tell you what your friend does when awake.

  Let your pity be a guessing: to know first if your friend wants pity. Perhaps what he loves in you is the unmoved eye and the glance of eternity.

  Your pity for your friend should conceal itself under a hard shell, and you should break a tooth on it. Thus it will have delicacy and sweetness.

  Are you pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to your friend? Some cannot loosen their own chains and can nevertheless redeem their friend.

  Are you a slave? Then you cannot be a friend. Are you a tyrant? Then you cannot have friends.

  All-too-long have a slave and a tyrant been concealed in woman. Therefore woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.

  In woman’s love there is injustice and blindness towards all she does not love. And even in the knowing love of a woman there is still always surprise attack and lightning and night along with the light.

  Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or at best, cows.

  Woman is not yet capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, who among you is capable of friendship?

  Oh your poverty, you men, and the meanness of your souls! As much as you give to your friend I will give even to my enemy, and will not have grown poorer in doing so.

  There is comradeship: may there be friendship!

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  ON THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS

  ZARATHUSTRA HAS SEEN MANY lands and many peoples: thus he has discovered the good and evil of many peoples. Zarathustra has found no greater power on earth than good and evil.

  No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbor values.

  Much that seemed good to one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another: thus I found. I found much that was called evil in one place was in another decked with purple honors.

  One neighbor never understood another: his soul always marveled at his neighbor’s madness and wickedness.

  A tablet of the good hangs over every people. Behold, it is the tablet of their overcomings; behold, it is the voice of their will to power.

  Whatever seems difficult to a people is praiseworthy; what is indispensable and difficult is called good; and whatever relieves the greatest need, the rarest, the most difficult of all-that they call holy.

  Whatever makes them rule and conquer and shine, to the dread and envy of their neighbors, that is to them the high, the first, the measure, the meaning of all things.

  Truly, my brother, if you only knew a people’s need and land and sky and neighbor, you could surely divine the law of its overcomings, and why it climbs up that ladder to its hope.

  “You should always be the first and outrival all others: your jealous soul should love no one, unless it be the friend”—that made the soul of a Greek quiver: thus he walked the path of his greatness.

  “To speak the truth and to handle bow and arrow well”—this seemed both dear and difficult to the people from whom I got my name-the name which is both dear and difficult to me.

  “To honor father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their will”—another people hung this tablet of overcoming over itself and became powerful and eternal thereby.

  “To practice loyalty, and for the sake of loyalty to risk honor and blood even in evil and dangerous things”—another people mastered itself with this teaching, and thus mastering itself it became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.

  Truly, men have given to themselves all their good and evil. Truly, they did not take it. they did not find it, it did not come to them as a voice from heaven.

  Only man assigned values to things in order to maintain himself—he created the meaning of things, a human meaning! Therefore, calls he himself: “Man,” that is: the evaluator.

  Evaluation is creation: hear this, you creators! Valuation itself is of all valued things the most valuable treasure.

  Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear this, you creators!

  Change of values-that is a change of creators. Whoever must be a creator always destroys.

  First, peoples were creators; and only in later times, individuals. Truly, the individual himself is still the latest creation.

  Once peoples hung a tablet of the good over themselves. Love which would rule and love which would obey have together created such tablets.

  Joy in the herd is older than joy in the “I”: and as long as the good conscience is identified with the herd, only the bad conscience says: “I”.

  Truly, the cunning “I”, the loveless one, that seeks its advantage in the advantage of many—that is not the origin of the herd, but its going under.

  Good and evil have always been created by lovers and creators. The fire of love glows in the names of all the virtues and the fire of wrath.

  Zarathustra has seen many lands and many peoples: Zarathustra has found no greater power on earth than the works of the lovers—“good” and “evil” are their names.

  Truly, this power of praising and blaming is a monster. Tell me, O brothers, who will subdue it for me? Tell me, who will throw a yoke upon the thousand necks of this beast?

  A thousand goals have there been so far, for a thousand peoples have there been. Only the yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking : the one goal is lacking. As yet humanity has no goal.

  But tell me, my brothers, if the goal of humanity is still lacking, is there not also still lacking—humanity itself?—

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  ON LOVE OF THE NEIGHBOR

  YOU CROWD AROUND YOUR neighbor and have beautiful words for it. But I tell you: your love of the neighbor is your bad love of yourselves. 10

  You flee from yourselves to your neighbor and would like to make a virtue out of that: but I see through your “selflessness.”

  The You is older than the I; the You has been consecrated, but not yet the I: so man crowds toward his neighbor.

  Do I recommend love of the neighbor to you? Sooner should I recommend even flight from the neighbor and love of the farthest!

  Higher than love of the neighbor stands love of the farthest and the future; higher still than the love of man I account the love of things and ghosts.

  The ghost that runs on before you, my brother, is fairer than you; why do you not give him your flesh and your bones? But you are afraid and you run to your neighbor.

  You cannot endure to be alone with yourselves and do not love yourselves enough: so you want to mislead your neighbor into love and gild yourselves with his error.

  I wish rather that you could not endure to be with any kind of neighbor or your neighbor’s neighbor; then you would have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves.

  You call in a witness when you want to speak well of yourselves; and when you have misled him into thinking well of you, you then think well of yourselves.

  It is not only he who speaks contrary to what he knows who lies, but even more he who speaks contrary to his ignorance. And thus you speak of yourselves in your dealings with others and deceive your neighbor with yourselves.

  Thus speaks the fool: “Association with other people spoils the character, especially
when one has none.”

  One man goes to his neighbor because he seeks himself, and another because he wants to lose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison to you.

  It is those farther away who must pay for your love of your neighbor; and when there are five of you together, a sixth must always die.

  I do not love your festivals either: I found too many actors there, and even the spectators often behaved like actors.

  I do not teach you the neighbor but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Übermensch.

  I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But you must know how to be a sponge if you want to be loved by overflowing hearts.

  I teach you the friend in whom the world stands complete, a vessel of the good,-the creating friend who has always a completed world to give away.

  And as the world unrolled itself for him, so it rolls together again for him in rings, as the becoming of the good through evil, as the becoming of purpose out of chance.

  Let the future and the farthest be the motive of your today: in your friend you shall love the Übermensch as your motive.

  My brothers, I do not recommend to you love of the neighbor: I recommend to you love of the farthest.

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  ON THE WAY OF THE CREATOR

  DO YOU WANT, MY brother, to go into solitude? Would you seek the way to yourself? Pause just a moment and listen to me.

  “He who seeks may easily get lost himself. All solitude is guilt”: thus speaks the herd. And you have long belonged to the herd.

  The voice of the herd will still echo in you. And when you say, “I no longer have a common conscience with you,” then it will be a lament and an agony.

  For see, that agony itself was born of one and the same conscience: and the last glimmer of that conscience still glows on your affliction.

  But you want to go the way of your affliction, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your right and your strength to do so!

  Are you a new strength and a new right? A first motion? A self-propelling wheel? Can you also compel stars to revolve around you?

  Ah, there is so much lusting for the heights! There is so much convulsion of the ambitious! Show me that you are not one of the lustful and the ambitious!

  Ah, there are so many great thoughts that do no more than a bellows : they puff up and make emptier.

  You call yourself free? I want to hear your ruling thought, and not that you have escaped from a yoke.

  Are you one of those entitled to escape from a yoke? There are many who cast away their final worth when they cast away their servitude.

  Free from what? What does that matter to Zarathustra! But your eye should clearly show me: free for what?

  Can you give to yourself your evil and your good and hang up your will above yourself as a law? Can you be judge for yourself and avenger of your law?

  It is terrible to be alone with the judge and avenger of one’s own law. Thus is a star thrown forth into the void and into the icy breath of solitude.

  Today you still suffer from the multitude, you individual: today you still have all your courage and your hopes.

  But one day the solitude will weary you, one day your pride will yield and your courage quail. You will one day cry: “I am alone!”

  One day you will no longer see your loftiness and will see your lowliness all-too-near; your sublimity itself will frighten you as a ghost. You will one day cry: “All is false!”

  There are feelings that want to kill the lonesome one; if they do not succeed, well, they themselves must die! But are you capable of being a murderer?

  Have you ever known, my brother, the word “contempt”? And the anguish of your justice in being just to those who despise you?

  You force many to think differently about you; they charge that heavily to your account. You came near them and yet went past: that they will never forgive you.

  You go above and beyond them: but the higher you rise, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. But the one who flies is hated most of all.

  “How could you be just to me!”—you must say—“I choose your injustice as my due portion.”

  They throw injustice and filth at the lonely one: but my brother, if you would be a star, you must shine no less for them on that account!

  And beware the good and just! They would like to crucify those who devise their own virtue-they hate the lonely one.

  Beware also of holy simplicity! All that is not simple is unholy to it; it likes to play with fire too-and the stake.

  And beware also the assaults of your love! The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to any one he meets.

  To many men you may not give your hand, but only the paw; and I want your paw to have claws too.

  But the worst enemy you can meet will always be you yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests.

  Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils!

  You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain.

  You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes!

  Lonely one, you are going the way of the creator: you would create a god for yourself out of your seven devils!

  Lonely one, you are going the way of the lover: you love yourself, and therefore you despise yourself as only lovers despise.

  The lover wants to create, because he despises! What does he knows of love who has not had to despise precisely what he loved!

  With your love go into your loneliness and with your creation, my brother; and only much later will justice limp after you.

  With my tears go into your loneliness, my brother. I love him who seeks to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.-Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  ON LITTLE OLD AND YOUNG WOMEN11

  “WHY DO YOU STEAL along so furtively in the twilight, Zarathustra ? And what do you hide so carefully under your cloak?

  “Is it a treasure you have been given? Or a child born to you? Or do you yourself now follow the ways of thieves, you friend of the evil?”—

  “Truly, my brother,” said Zarathustra, “it is a treasure that has been given me: it is a little truth that I carry.

  “But it is naughty like a young child: and if I do not hold its mouth, it screams too loudly.

  “As I went on my way alone today, at the hour when the sun goes down, there I met a little old woman who spoke thus to my soul:12

  “Much has Zarathustra spoken also to us women, but he never spoke to us concerning woman.”

  And I answered her: “About woman one should speak only to men.”

  “Speak to me also of woman,” she said: “I am old enough to forget it immediately.”

  And I obliged the old woman and spoke thus to her:

  Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: it is called pregnancy.

  For woman man is a means: the end is always the child. But what is woman for man?

  The true man wants two things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

  Man should be trained for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly.

  All-too-sweet fruit-the warrior does not like it. Therefore he likes woman; even the sweetest woman is also bitter.

  Woman understands children better than man does, but man is more childlike than woman.

  In the true man a child is hidden: it wants to play. Come, you women, and discover the child in man!

  Let woman be a plaything, pure and fine, like a precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come.

  Let the beam of a star shine through your love! Let your hope say: “May I bear the Übermensch!”

  In your love let there be courage! With your love you should go forth to him who inspire
s you with fear!

  Let there be honor in your love! Little does woman understand of honor otherwise. But let this be your honor: always to love more than you are loved, and never to be second.

  Let man fear woman when she loves: then she makes every sacrifice, and everything else she considers worthless.

  Let man fear woman when she hates: for man in his innermost soul is merely evil, but woman is bad.

  Whom does woman hate most?—Thus spoke the iron to the magnet: “I hate you most because you attract, but are not strong enough to pull me to you.”

  The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills.

  “Behold, just now the world has become perfect!”—thus thinks every woman when she obeys with all her love.

  And woman must obey, and find a depth for her surface. Woman’s nature is surface, a mobile stormy film over shallow water.

  But a man’s nature is deep, his current roars in subterranean caverns: woman senses its strength, but does not comprehend it.—

  Then the little old woman answered me: “Zarathustra has said many fine things, especially for those who are young enough for them.

  “It’s strange, Zarathustra knows little about woman, and yet he is right about them! Is this because with women nothing is impossible ?

  “And now accept as thanks a little truth! I am surely old enough for it!

  “Swaddle it up and hold its mouth: otherwise it will scream too loudly, this little truth.”

  “Give me, woman, your little truth!” I said. And thus spoke the little old woman:

  “You go to women? Do not forget the whip!”—

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  ON THE ADDER’S BITE

  ONE DAY ZARATHUSTRA HAD fallen asleep under a fig tree, for it was hot, with his arms over his face. And an adder came and bit him on the neck, so that Zarathustra cried out in pain. When he had taken his arm from his face he looked at the snake: and it recognized the eyes of Zarathustra, wriggled awkwardly and wanted to get away. “Oh no,” said Zarathustra, “you have not yet received my thanks! You awoke me in time, my way is still long.” “Your way is short,” the adder said sadly; “my poison is fatal.” Zarathustra smiled. “When did a dragon ever die from a snake’s poison?”—he said. “But take back your poison! You are not rich enough to give it to me.” Then the adder fell upon his neck again and licked his wound.