When Zarathustra once told this to his disciples, they asked: “And what, 0 Zarathustra, is the moral of your story?” Then Zarathustra answered thus:
The destroyer of morals, the good and just call me: my story is immoral.
But if you have an enemy, do not requite him good for evil: for that would shame him. But prove that he has done something good to you.
And rather be angry than make ashamed! And when you are cursed, I do not like it that you want to bless. Rather join a little in the cursing!
And should a great injustice be done to you, then quickly add five little ones. He who bears injustice alone is hideous to behold.
Did you already know this? A wrong shared is half right. And he who can bear it should take the wrong upon himself!
A little revenge is more human than no revenge at all. And if the punishment is not also a right and an honor for the transgressor, I do not like your punishing.
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to maintain one is right, especially if one is right. Only one must be rich enough for that.
I do not like your cold justice; and out of the eye of your judges there always gazes the executioner and his cold steel.
Tell me, where can one find that justice which is love with open eyes?
Then invent for me the love that bears not only all punishment but also all guilt!
Then invent for me the justice that acquits every one except the judge!
Do you still want to hear this too? To him who wants to be just through and through, even a lie becomes philanthropy.
But how could I be just through and through! How can I give each his own! Let this be enough for me: I give each my own.
Finally, my brothers, beware of doing wrong to any hermit. How could a hermit forget! How could he requite!
A hermit is like a deep well. It is easy to throw in a stone; but if it should sink to the bottom, tell me, who will bring it out again?
Beware of insulting the hermit! But if you have done so, well then, kill him too!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
ON CHILD AND MARRIAGE
I HAVE A QUESTION for you alone, my brother: like a sounding lead I cast this question into your soul, to discover how deep it is.
You are young and wish for children and marriage. But I ask you: are you a man entitled to wish for a child?
Are you the victor, the self-conqueror, the ruler of your senses, the master of your virtues? Thus I ask you.
Or is it the animal and need that speak in your wish? Or loneliness ? Or discord in you?
I would have your victory and your freedom long for a child. You shall build living monuments to your victory and your liberation.
You shall build over and beyond yourself. But first you must be built yourself, perpendicular in body and soul.
Not only forward shall you propagate yourself, but upward! May the garden of marriage help you to do it!
You shall create a higher body, a first movement, a self-propelled wheel—you will create a creator.
Marriage: thus I name the will of two to create the one that is more than those who created it. Reverence for one another, as those willing with such a will, is what I name marriage.
Let this be the meaning and the truth of your marriage. But that which the all-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones—ah, what shall I call it?
Ah, the poverty of soul in partnership! Ah, the filth of soul in partnership! Ah, the pitiable contentment in partnership!
Marriage they call this; and they say their marriages are made in heaven.
Well, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No, I do not like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly net!
And let the god who limps near to bless what he has not joined stay far from me!
Do not laugh at such marriages! What child has not had reason to weep over its parents?
This man seemed worthy to me and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a house for the senseless.
Yes, I wished that the earth would shake with convulsions when a saint and a goose mate with one another.
This one went forth in quest of truth like a hero, and at last he captured for himself a little dressed-up lie. He calls it his marriage.
That one was reserved in his dealings and chose choicely. But all at once he spoiled his company forever: he calls it his marriage.
That one sought a maid with the virtues of an angel. But suddenly he became the maid of a woman, and now he needs to become an angel too.
I have found all buyers to be cautious now, and all of them have cunning eyes. But even the most cunning among them buys his wife while she is still wrapped.
Many brief follies-that is what you call love. And your marriage puts an end to many brief follies, with a single long stupidity.
Your love of woman and woman’s love of man: ah, if only it were sympathy for suffering and veiled gods! But generally two animals sense one another.
But even your best love is only a passionate impersonation and a painful ardor. It is a torch that should light you to loftier paths.
One day you shall love beyond yourselves! So learn first to love. And for that you had to drain the bitter cup of your love.
Bitterness lies in the cup of even the best love: thus it arouses longing for the Übermensch, thus it arouses thirst in you, the creator!
A creator’s thirst, arrow and longing for the Übermensch: tell me, my brother, is this your will to marriage?
Holy I call such a will and such a marriage.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
ON VOLUNTARY DEATH
MANY DIE TOO LATE, and a few die too early. Still the teaching sounds strange: “Die at the right time!”
Die at the right time: thus teaches Zarathustra.
To be sure, how could those who never live at the right time die at the right time? Better if they had never been born!—Thus I advise the superfluous.
But even the superfluous still make a great thing of their dying, and even the hollowest nut still wants to be cracked.
Every one regards death as an important matter: but as yet death is not a festival. As yet men have not learned how to consecrate the most beautiful festivals.
I show you the consummating death, which shall be a spur and a promise to the survivors.
He that consummates his life dies his death triumphantly, surrounded by those with hope and promise.
Thus one should learn to die; and there should be no festivals where such a dying one does not consecrate the oaths of the living!
To die thus is best; but the next best is: to die in battle and to squander a great soul.
But equally hateful to the fighter as to the victor is your grinning death, which steals near like a thief-and yet comes as master.
My death, praise I to you, the voluntary death, which comes to me because I want it.
And when shall I want it?-Whoever has a goal and an heir, wants death at the right time for the goal and the heir.
And out of reverence for the goal and the heir, he will hang up no more withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life.
Truly, I do not want to resemble the rope makers: they spin out their yarn and always walk backwards.
Many a one grows too old even for his truths and triumphs; a toothless mouth no longer has the right to every truth.
And everyone who wants to have fame must take leave of honor in good time and practice the difficult art of-going at the right time.
One must stop letting oneself be eaten when one tastes best: that is known by those who want to be long loved.
To be sure, there are sour apples whose lot is to wait until the last day of autumn: and they become ripe, yellow, and shriveled all at once.
In some the heart ages first and in others the spirit. And some are old in their youth: but those who are young late stay young long.
To many men life is a failure: a poison-worm gnaws at their heart. Then let them s
ee to it that their dying is all the more a success.
Many never become sweet; they rot even in the summer. It is cowardice that holds them fast to their branches.
All-too-many live and all-too-long they hang on their branches. Would that a storm came and shook all this rottenness and wormeatenness from the tree!
Would that there came preachers of speedy death! Those would be the appropriate storms and shakers of the trees of life! But I hear only slow death preached, and patience with all that is “earthly.”
Ah, you preach patience with what is earthly? It is the earthly that has too much patience with you, you blasphemers!
Truly, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honor: and to many it has proved a calamity that he died too early.
As yet he had known only tears and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just—the Hebrew Jesus: then he was seized with the longing for death.
Had he but remained in the wilderness and far from the good and just! Perhaps he would have learned to live and to love the earth-and laughter too!
Believe it, my brothers! He died too early; he himself would have recanted his teaching had he lived to my age! He was noble enough to recant!
But he was still immature. The youth loves immaturely and immaturely too he hates man and earth. His mind and the wings of his spirit are still bound and heavy.
But there is more child in the man than in the youth, and less melancholy: he has a better understanding of life and death.
Free for death and free in death, able to say a holy No when there is no longer time for Yes: thus he understands death and life.
That your dying may not be a blasphemy against man and earth, my friends: that is what I beg from the honey of your soul.
In your dying your spirit and your virtue should still glow like a sunset around the earth: otherwise your dying has turned out badly.
Thus I want to die myself, that you friends may love the earth more for my sake; and I want to become earth again, to have rest in her that bore me.
Truly, Zarathustra had a goal, he threw his ball: now you friends are the heirs of my goal, I throw the golden ball to you.
Best of all I like to see you too, my friends, throwing the golden ball! And so I still linger a little on the earth: forgive me for it!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
ON THE GIFT-GIVING VIRTUE
1
When Zarathustra had taken leave of the town to which his heart was attached and which was called “The Motley Cow,” many who called themselves his disciples followed him and escorted him. Thus they came to a crossroad: there Zarathustra told them that now he wanted to walk alone: for he liked to walk alone. But his disciples handed him in farewell a staff, with a golden handle on which a serpent twined round the sun. Zarathustra was delighted with the staff and leaned upon it; then he spoke thus to his disciples:
Tell me: how did gold come to have the highest value? Because it is uncommon and useless and shining and soft in luster; it always gives itself.
Only as an image of the highest virtue did gold come to have the highest value. Goldlike beams the eye of the giver. Golden luster makes peace between moon and sun.
The highest virtue is uncommon and useless, it is shining and soft in luster: a gift-giving virtue is the highest virtue.
Truly, I divine you well, my disciples, you strive like me for the gift-giving virtue. What could you have in common with cats and wolves?
You thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves: and therefore you thirst to heap up all riches in your soul.
Your should strives insatiably for treasures and jewels, because your virtue is insatiable in wanting to give.
You compel all things to come to you and into you, that they may flow back again from your fountain as the gifts of your love.
Truly, such a gift-giving love must approach all values as a robber ; but I call this selfishness healthy and holy.-There is another selfishness, an all-too-poor and hungry kind that always wants to steal-the selfishness of the sick, the sick selfishness.
It looks with the eye of the thief upon all that is lustrous; with the greed of hunger it measures him who has plenty to eat; and it is always skulking around the tables of those who give.
Sickness speaks from such craving, and invisible degeneration; the thieving greed of this longing speaks of a sick body.
Tell me, my brothers: what do we consider bad and worst of all? Is it not degeneration?—And we always suspect degeneration where the gift-giving soul is lacking.
Our way goes upward from genus to super-genus. But the degenerate sense that says “Everything for me” is a horror to us.
Upward flies our sense: thus is it a parable of our body, a parable of elevation. Such parables of elevations are the names of the virtues.
Thus the body goes through history, becoming and fighting. And the spirit—what is it to the body? The herald, companion and echo of its battles and its victories.
All names of good and evil are parables;13 they do not speak out, they only hint. He who seeks knowledge of them is a fool.
Watch for every hour, my brothers, in which your spirit14 wants to speak in parables: there is the origin of your virtue.
Then your body is elevated and risen up; it enraptures the spirit with delight, so that it becomes creator and valuer and lover and benefactor of all things.
When your heart surges broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger to those living near: there is the origin of your virtue.
When you are exalted above praise and blame, and your will wants to command all things as the will of a lover: there is the origin of your virtue.
When you despise the soft bed and what is pleasant and cannot bed yourself far enough from the soft: there is the origin of your virtue.
When you will with one will, and you call this cessation of all need necessity: there is the origin of your virtue.
Truly, she is a new good and evil! Truly, a new deep murmur and the voice of a new well!
She is power, this new virtue; she is a ruling thought, and around her a subtle soul: a golden sun, and around it the serpent of knowledge.
2
Here Zarathustra fell silent for a while and regarded his disciples lovingly. Then he continued to speak thus-and his voice had changed:
Stay true to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue! Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth! Thus I beg and beseech you.
Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls! Ah, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away!
Lead, like me, the flown virtue back to the earth—yes, back to body and life: that it may give the earth its meaning, a human meaning!
A hundred times so far has spirit as well as virtue flown away and blundered. Ah, all this delusion and blundering still dwells in our bodies: it has there become body and will.
A hundred times so far has spirit as well as virtue attempted and erred. Yes, man was an experiment. Ah, much ignorance and error has become body in us!
Not only the reason of millennia—also their madness breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir.
We are still fighting step by step with the giant Chance, and over the whole of humanity there has ruled so far only nonsense, the senseless.
Let your spirit and your virtue serve the sense of the earth, my brothers: let the value of everything be determined again by you! For that shall you be fighters! For that shall you be creators!
The body purifies itself with knowledge; experimenting with knowledge it elevates itself; to the discerning all instincts become holy; in the elevated the soul becomes gay.
Physician, heal yourself: thus you will heal your patient too. Let his best cure be to see with his own eyes the man who heals himself
There are a thousand paths that have never yet been trodden, a thousand healths and hidden islands of li
fe. Man and man’s earth are still unexhausted and undiscovered.
Awake and listen, you lonely ones! From the future come winds with stealthy wing-beats; and good tidings are proclaimed to delicate ears.
You lonely ones of today, you that are drawing away, you shall one day be a people: out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall a chosen people arise-and out of them the Übermensch.
Truly, the earth shall yet become a place of healing! And even now a new fragrance surrounds it, bringing salvation-and a new hope!
3
When Zarathustra had spoken these words he paused like one who had not said his last word; he weighed the staff doubtfully in his hand for a long while. At last he spoke thus:-and his voice had changed.
Now I go alone, my disciples! You too now go away and alone! So I will it.
Truly, I advise you: go away from me and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you.
The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends.
One repays a teacher badly if one remains always only a student. And why do you not want to pluck at my wreath?
You revere me; but what if your reverence tumbles one day? Beware that a statue does not slay you!
You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what matters Zarathustra? You are my believers: but what matter all believers!
You had not yet sought yourselves: then you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all belief comes to so little.15
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