“We set our chair in the middle”—so says their smirking to me “and as far from dying warriors as from contented swine.”
That, however, is—mediocrity: though it be called moderation.—
3
I pass through this people and let fall many words: but they know neither how to take nor how to keep them.
They are surprised that I did not come to revile their lusts and vices; and truly, I have not come to warn against pickpockets either!
They wonder why I am not ready to improve and sharpen their cleverness: as if they had not yet enough smartasses, whose voices grate on my ear like slate pencils!
And when I cry: “Curse all the cowardly devils in you, that would like to whimper and fold the hands and pray”—then they cry: “Zarathustra is godless.”
And especially their teachers of resignation cry this;—but precisely in their ears I love to shout: “Yes! I am Zarathustra the godless!”
Those teachers of resignation! Wherever there is anything small and sick and scabby, there they creep like lice; and only my disgust prevents me from squashing them.
Well! This is my sermon for their ears: I am Zarathustra the godless, who says: “Who is more godless than I, that I may delight in his instruction?”
I am Zarathustra the godless: where shall I find my equal? And all those are my equals who give themselves their own will and renounce all resignation.
I am Zarathustra the godless! I cook every chance in my pot. And only when it is cooked through do I welcome it as my food.
And truly, many a chance came imperiously to me: but my will spoke still more imperiously to it, then it went down imploringly on its knees—
—imploring that it might find home and heart with me, and saying flatteringly: “See, O Zarathustra, how friend comes only to friend!”—
But why do I speak when no one has my ears! And so I will shout it out to all the winds:
You become ever smaller, you small people! You crumble away, you comfortable ones! You will yet perish—
—by your many small virtues, by your many small omissions, and by your many small resignations!
Too tender, too yielding: so is your soil! But for a tree to become great, it seeks to twine hard roots around hard rocks!
Also what you omit weaves at the web of mankind’s future; even your nothing is a spider’s web and a spider that lives on the blood of the future.
And when you take, it is like stealing, you small virtuous ones; but even among rogues, honor says: “One should steal only when one cannot rob.”
“It is given”—that is also a doctrine of resignation. But I say to you, you comfortable ones: it is taken and will ever take more and more from you!
Ah, that you would renounce all half willing, and would decide to be idle like you decide to act!
Ah, that you understood my word: “Always do what you will—but first be such as can will!
“For all that love your neighbor as yourselves-but first be such as love themselves—
“—such as love with a great love, such as love with a great contempt!” Thus speaks Zarathustra the godless.—
But why do I speak when no one has my ears! It is still an hour too early for me here.
I am my own forerunner among this people, my own cockcrow in dark lanes.
But their hour comes! And mine comes too! Hourly they become smaller, poorer, more barren-poor herbs! poor soil!
And soon they shall stand before me like dry grass and prairie, and truly, weary of themselves and panting even more than for water—for fire!
O blessed hour of the lightning! O mystery before noon!-One day I shall turn them into running fires and heralds with flaming tongues:—
—one day they shall proclaim with flaming tongues: It is coming, it is near, the great noon!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES8
WINTER, A BAD GUEST, sits with me at home; my hands are blue from his friendly handshake.
I honor him, this bad guest, but I like to let him sit alone. I like to run away from him; and if one runs well, then one escapes him!
With warm feet and warm thoughts I run where the wind is calm, to the sunny corner of my mount of olives.
There I laugh at my stern guest and am still fond of him, for he drives the flies from my house and stills many little noises.
For he will not permit even a mosquito to buzz, far less two of them; and he makes the lanes lonely, so that the moonlight is afraid there at night.
He is a hard guest, but I honor him, and I do not pray, like the pampered, to the potbellied fire-idol.
Better even a little chattering of teeth than idol-worship!-so wills my nature. And I especially have a grudge against all fire idols in heat, steaming and musky.
Whom I love I love better in winter than in summer; now I mock my enemies better and more heartily since winter sits in my house.
Heartily, truly, even when I crawl into bed-: even there my hidden happiness laughs and plays pranks; even my deceptive dream laughs.
I, a—crawler? Never in my life have I crawled before the powerful; and if I ever lied, I lied out of love. Therefore I am glad even in my winter bed.
A simple bed warms me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my poverty. And in winter it is most faithful to me.
I begin each day with a wickedness, I mock winter with a cold bath: my stern roommate grumbles at that.
I also like to tickle him with a wax candle: so that he may finally let the sky emerge from an ashen gray twilight.
For I am especially wicked in the morning: at the early hour when the pail rattles at the well and horses neigh warmly in grey lanes:—
Then I wait impatiently for the bright sky to dawn for me at last, the snow-bearded winter sky, the old man with his white hair,—
—the winter sky, the silent one, that often even stifles its sun!
Did I perhaps learn from him the long bright silence? Or did he learn it from me? Or has each of us devised it himself?
The origin of all good things is a thousandfold-all good playful things spring for joy into existence: how should they do so-once only!
Long silence is also a good playful thing, and to gaze like the winter sky from a bright, round eyed face:—
—like it, to stifle one’s sun and one’s inflexible solar will: truly, I have learned well this art and this winter playfulness!
It is my favorite sarcasm and art that my silence has learned not to betray itself by silence.
Clattering with discourse and dice, I outwit the solemn attendants: my will and my purpose shall elude all those stern inspectors.
That no one might see down into my profundity and my ultimate will—for that I devised my long bright silence.
So many clever I have found: they veiled their faces and mud-died their waters so that no one might see through and under them.
But precisely to them came the cleverer distrusters and nutcrackers: precisely their most hidden fish were fished out!
But the bright, the forthright, the transparent—these seem to me the cleverest silent ones: in them the depth is so profound that even the clearest water does not—betray it.—
You snowbearded silent winter sky, you round eyed white haired above me! Oh you heavenly likeness of my soul and its pranks!
And must I not hide myself, like one who has swallowed gold, so that they shall not slit open my soul?
Must I not walk on stilts that they overlook my long legs—all those enviers and injurers around me?
These smoky, lukewarm, bedraggled, moldy, fretful souls—how could their envy endure my happiness!
Thus I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks-and not that my mountain still winds all the sunny belts around it!
They hear only the whistling of my winter storms: and do not know that I also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot southern winds.
They even pity my accidents and chances:-but my word says: “Let
chance come to me: it is innocent as a little child!”
How could they endure my happiness, if I did not put accidents and winter distress and polar bear caps and mantles of snow clouds around my happiness!
-if I myself did not pity their pity: the pity of those enviers and injurers!
-if I myself did not sigh before them and chatter with cold, and patiently let myself be wrapped in their pity!
This is the wise playfulness and benevolence of my soul, that it does not conceal its winters and glacial storms; it does not conceal its chilblains either.
To one person loneliness is the flight of the sick; to another it is the flight from the sick.
Let them hear me chattering and sighing with winter cold, all those poor squinting rascals around me! With such sighing and chattering I still escape their heated rooms.
Let them sympathize with me and sigh with me on account of my chilblains: “He will yet freeze to death on the ice of knowledge!” —so they complain.
Meanwhile I run with warm feet here and there on my mount of olives: I sing in the sunny corner of my mount of olives and mock all pity.—
Thus sang Zarathustra.
ON PASSING BY
THUS SLOWLY WANDERING THROUGH many peoples and diverse cities, Zarathustra returned by roundabout roads to his mountain and his cave. And behold, on his way he came unawares to the gate of the great city: but here a frothing fool with outstretched hands sprang at him and blocked his way. It was the same fool whom the people called “Zarathustra’s ape”: for he had gathered something of phrasing and cadence and perhaps also liked to borrow from his store of wisdom. But the fool spoke thus to Zarathustra:
O Zarathustra, here is the great city: here you have nothing to seek and everything to lose.
Why would you wade through this mire? Have pity on your feet! Rather spit on the gate of the city, and-turn back!
Here is the hell for hermits’ thoughts: here great thoughts are boiled alive and reduced.
Here all great sentiments decay: only the smallest rattleboned feelings rattle here!
Don’t you already smell the slaughterhouses and cookshops of the spirit? Does not this city steam with the fumes of slaughtered spirit?
Don’t you see the souls hanging like limp dirty rags?—And they also make newspapers out of these rags!
Don’t you hear how spirit has here become a play on words? It vomits out loathsome verbal swill!—And they make newspapers out of this verbal swill too.
They hound one another and don’t know where! They inflame one another and don’t know why! They rattle with their tins, they jingle with their gold.
They are cold and seek warmth from distilled waters; they are inflamed and seek coolness from frozen spirits; they are all sick and diseased with public opinion.
All lusts and vices are at home here; but the virtuous are here too, there are there is much serviceable serving virtue:—
Much serviceable virtue with scribbling fingers and behinds hardened to sitting and waiting, blessed with little chest decorations and padded, rumpless daughters.
There is also much piety here and much devout lick-spittleing and fawning before the God of Hosts.
Down “from on high” trickles the star and the gracious spittle; every starless chest longs for what comes from above.
The moon has her court, and the court has its mooncalves: to everything, however, that comes from the court, the serviceable mob and all serviceable beggar virtues pray.
“I serve, you serve, we serve”—thus all serviceable virtue prays to the prince: that the deserved star may at last be pinned on the narrow chest!
But the moon still revolves around all that is earthly: so too the prince revolves around what is earthliest of all-that, however, is the gold of the shopkeeper.
The God of the Hosts of is not the god of gold bars; the prince proposes, but the shopkeeper—disposes!
By all that is luminous and strong and good in you, O Zarathustra! Spit on this city of shopkeepers and turn back!
Here all blood flows putrid and tepid and frothy through all veins: spit on the great city that is the great trash heap where all the scum froths together!
Spit on the city of compressed souls and narrow chests, of slit eyes and sticky fingers—
—on the city of the importunate, the shameless, the scribble-and scream-throats, the overheated ambitious ones:—
—where everything infirm, infamous, lustful, gloomy, insipid, ulcerous, and conspiratorial festers together:—
—spit on the great city and turn back!—
But here Zarathustra interrupted the foaming fool and put his hand over his mouth.—
Stop at last! shouted Zarathustra, your speech and your kind have long disgusted me!
Why did you live so long by the swamp that you yourself had to become a frog and a toad?
Does not a tainted, frothy swamp-blood now flow in your own veins, when you have thus learned to croak and revile?
Why did you not go into the forest? Or till the earth? Is the sea not full of green islands?
I despise your contempt; and since you warned me—why did you not warn yourself?
Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing: but not out of the swamp!—
They call you my ape, you foaming fool: but I call you my grunting pig—by your grunting you are spoiling even my praise of folly.
What was it that first made you grunt? Because no one sufficiently flattered you:-therefore you sat yourself beside this filth, so that you might have cause for much grunting,—
—that you might have cause for much revenge! For revenge, you vain fool, is all your foaming; I have divined you well!
But your fools’ words injure me, even when you are right! And even if Zarathustra’s words were a hundred times justified: you would always—do wrong with my words!
Thus spoke Zarathustra; and he looked on the great city, sighed and was long silent. At last he spoke thus:
I am disgusted by this great city, too, and not only this fool. Here as there, there is nothing to better, nothing to worsen.
Woe to this great city!-And I wish that I already saw the pillar of fire in which it will be consumed!
For such pillars of fire must precede the great noon. But this has its time and its own fate.—
This precept, however, I give to you in parting, you fool: Where one can no longer love, there should one—pass by!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra and passed by the fool and the great city.
ON APOSTATES
1
Ah, everything that lately stood green and many-hued on this meadow already lies faded and grey! And how much honey of hope have I carried away into my beehives!
All those young hearts have already become old-and not even old! only weary, ordinary, comfortable:-they put it: “We have become pious again.”
Lately I saw them run forth in early morning with brave steps: but the feet of their knowledge grew weary and now they slander even the courage they had in the morning!
Truly, many of them once lifted their legs like the dancer, the laughter of my wisdom beckoned to them:-then they thought better of it. Just now I saw them bent—to creep to the cross.
Once they fluttered around light and freedom like gnats and young poets. A little older, a little colder: and already are they mystifiers and mumblers and homebodies.
Perhaps their hearts despaired because solitude swallowed me like a whale? Perhaps their ears longingly listened in vain for me and for my trumpet and herald calls?
—Ah, there are ever only a few whose hearts have a long courage and playfulness; and in these the spirit also stays patient. But the rest are cowards.
The rest: these are always the great majority, the commonplace, the superfluous, the many-too-many—those are all cowards!—
He who is of my type will also meet the experiences of my type on the way: so that his first companions must be corpses and jesters.
His second compa
nions, however—they will call themselves his believers: a living swarm, with much love, much folly, much adolescent veneration.
He among men who is of my type shall not bind his heart to those believers; he who knows the fickle, fainthearted nature of mankind will not believe in those springtimes and many colored meadows!
If they could do otherwise, then they would also will otherwise. The half and-half spoil every whole. That leaves will wither—what is there to wail about!
Let them fly and fall, O Zarathustra, and do not wail! Rather blow among them with rustling winds—
—blow among those leaves, O Zarathustra: so that all that is withered may run from you even faster!—
2
“We have become pious again”—so these apostates confess; and some of them are even too cowardly to confess it.
I look into their eyes,-then I tell it to their face and to the blush on their cheeks: You are such as pray again!
But it is disgrace to pray! Not for everyone, but for you and me and for whoever has his conscience in his head. For you it is a disgrace to pray!
You know it well: the cowardly devil in you who would like to clasp his hands and to fold his arms and to take it easier:-it was this cowardly devil who persuaded you: “There is a God!”
Through that, however, you have become one of those who dread the light, whom light never lets rest: now you must daily thrust your head deeper into night and fog!
And truly, you have chosen well the hour: for just now the nocturnal birds are flying again. The hour has come for all people who dread the light, the evening hour of rest, when they do not—“find rest.”
I hear it and smell it: their hour for hunt and procession has arrived, not indeed for a wild hunt, but for a tame, lame, snuffling, pussyfooting, prayer-muttering hunt,—
—for a hunt after soulful sneaks: all mousetraps for the heart have again been set! And whenever I lift a curtain a little night moth rushes out.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra Page 19