Thus Spoke Zarathustra

by Friedrich Nietzsche

  Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.

  Truly, with other eyes, my brothers, shall I then seek my lost ones; with another love shall I then love you.

  And once again you shall have become friends to me and children of one hope: then I will be with you the third time, that I may celebrate the great noon with you.

  And this is the great noon, when man stands in the middle of his road between animal and Übermensch and celebrates his way to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the way to a new morning.

  Then he who goes under will bless himself, for being one who goes over and beyond; and the sun of his knowledge will stand at noon for him.

  “Dead are all gods: now we want the Übermensch to live.”—at the great noon let this be our last will!—

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  SECOND PART

  —and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.

  Truly, with other eyes, my brothers, shall I then seek my lost ones; with another love shall I then love you.

  —Zarathustra, “On the Gift-Giving Virtue”

  [1883]

  THE CHILD WITH THE MIRROR

  AFTER THIS ZARATHUSTRA RETURNED again into the mountains to the solitude of his cave and withdrew himself from men: waiting like a sower who has scattered his seed. His soul, however, became impatient and full of longing for those whom he loved: because he still had much to give them. For this is hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love and to keep a sense of shame as a giver.

  Thus months and years passed for the solitary; but his wisdom increased and caused him pain by its abundance.

  One morning, however, he awoke before dawn, reflected long on his bed, and at last spoke to his heart:

  “Why was I so startled in my dream that I awoke? Did not a child step up to me, carrying a mirror?

  “ ‘O Zarathustra’—the child said to me—‘look at yourself in the mirror!’

  “But when I looked into the mirror, I shrieked, and my heart was shaken: for it was not myself I saw, but a devil’s grimace and sneering laughter.

  “Truly, I understand the dream’s sign and admonition all-too-well: my teaching is in danger, weeds want to be called wheat!

  “My enemies have grown powerful and have distorted the meaning of my teaching, so that my dearest ones are ashamed of the gifts I gave them.

  “I have lost my friends; the hour has come to seek my lost ones!”—

  With these words Zarathustra sprang up, but not like a frightened man seeking the air, rather like a seer and a singer whom the spirit has moved. His eagle and serpent regarded him with amazement : for a coming happiness lit up his face like the dawn.

  What has happened to me, my animals?-said Zarathustra. Have I not changed? Has not bliss come to me like a storm wind?

  My happiness is foolish and will say foolish things: it is still too young—so have patience with it!

  I am wounded by my happiness: all sufferers shall be physicians to me!

  I may go down again to my friends and also to my enemies! Zarathustra may again speak and give and show love to the beloved!

  My impatient love overflows in torrents, downward, toward sunrise and sunset. Out of silent mountains and storms of pain my soul rushes into the valleys.

  I have longed and looked into the distance too long. I have belonged to solitude too long: thus I have forgotten how to be silent.

  I have become mouth through and through, and the brawling of a brook from high rocks: I want to hurl my speech down into the valleys.

  And let the stream of my love plunge into impassable ways! How should a stream not finally find its way to the sea!

  Indeed a lake is in me, secluded and self-sufficient; but the stream of my love draws it down with it—to the sea!

  I go new ways, a new speech comes to me; I grow tired, like all creators, of the old tongues. My spirit no longer wants to walk on worn out soles.

  All speech runs too slowly for me—I leap into your chariot, storm! And I will whip even you with my malice!

  Like a cry and a yawp I want to traverse wide seas, till I find the happy islands where my friends are dwelling:—

  And my enemies among them! How I now love any one to whom I may but speak! My enemies too are part of my bliss.

  And when I want to mount my wildest horse, it is always my spear that helps me up best: it is the ever-ready servant of my foot:—

  The spear that I hurl at my enemies! How grateful I am to my enemies that at last I can hurl it!

  The tension of my cloud was too great: between laughters of lightning I want to cast hail showers into the depths.

  Violently then my chest will heave, violently it will blow its storm over the mountains: thus comes its relief

  Truly, my happiness and my freedom come like a storm! But my enemies shall think that the evil one rages over their heads.

  Yes, you too will be terrified, my friends, by my wild wisdom; and perhaps you will flee from it along with my enemies.

  Ah, that I knew how to lure you back with shepherds’ flutes! Ah, that my lioness wisdom would learn to roar tenderly! And we have already learned so much with one another!

  My wild wisdom became pregnant on lonely mountains; on the rough stones she bore her young, the youngest.

  Now she runs foolishly through the harsh desert and seeks and seeks the soft grass—my old wild wisdom!

  On the soft grass of your hearts, my friends!-upon your love she would bed her most dearly beloved!—

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  ON THE HAPPY ISLANDS1

  THE FIGS ARE FALLING from the trees, they are good and sweet; and as they fall their red skins burst. I am a north wind to ripe figs.

  Thus, like figs, do these teachings fall for you, my friends: now drink their juice and eat their sweet flesh! It is autumn all around and clear sky and afternoon.

  Behold, what fullness is around us! And from such overflow it is delightful to look out upon distant seas.

  Once one said God when one looked upon distant seas; but now I have taught you to say: Übermensch.

  God is a conjecture: but I want your conjecturing not to reach beyond your creative will.

  Could you create a god?—So be silent about all gods! But you could well create the Übermensch.

  Perhaps not you yourselves, my brothers! But you could transform yourselves into fathers and forefathers of the Ubermensch: and let that be your best creation!—

  God is a conjecture: but I should like your conjecturing to be bounded by the thinkable.

  Could you conceive a god?-But may the will to truth mean this to you: that everything be changed into what is conceivable for man, visible for man, touchable by man! You should think through your own senses to the end!

  And what you have called the world shall be created only by you: your reason, your image, your will, your love shall thus become the world! And truly, for your bliss, you knowers!

  And how would you endure life without that hope, you knowers? Neither in the inconceivable could you have been born, nor in the irrational.

  But let me reveal my heart to you entirely, my friends: if there were gods, how could I bear not to be a god! Therefore there are no gods.

  Indeed I have drawn the conclusion; however, now it draws me.—

  God is a conjecture: but who could drink all the agony of this conjecture without dying? Shall his faith be taken from the creator and from the eagle his soaring to eagle heights?

  God is a thought that makes crooked all that is straight, and makes all that stands reel. How? Should time be gone, and all that is impermanent be only a lie?

  To think this is giddiness and vertigo for human bones, and even vomiting to the stomach: truly, I call it the reeling sickness to conjecture such.

  I call it evil and misanthropic: all that teaching about the One and the Plenum and the Unmoved and the Sufficient and the Permanent!

 
All the Permanent—that is only a parable! And the poets lie too much.—

  But the best parables should speak of time and of becoming: let them be a praise and a justification of all impermanence!

  Creation-that is the great redemption from suffering, and life’s becoming light. But that the creator may be, much suffering itself is needed and much change.

  Yes, there must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators! Thus you are advocates and justifiers of all impermanence.

  For the creator himself to be the newborn child, he must also be willing to bear the child and to endure the pains of childbirth.

  Truly, through a hundred souls I went my way, and through a hundred cradles and birth pains. I have said many a farewell; I know the heartbreaking last hours.

  But so wills my creative will, my fate. Or, to speak to you more honestly: just such a fate—wills my will.

  All feeling suffers in me and is in prison: but my will always comes to me as my liberator and comforter.

  Willing liberates: that is the true teaching of will and freedom—thus Zarathustra teaches it to you.

  No longer willing and no longer valuing and no longer creating! ah, that this great weariness may always stay far from me!

  In knowledge too I feel only my will’s joy in procreating and becoming; and if there is innocence in my knowledge, it is because the will to procreation is in it.

  Away from God and gods this will has lured me; what would there be to create, if gods-existed!

  But it always drives me again toward man, my fervent creative will; just as the hammer is driven to the stone.

  Ah, you men, in the stone there sleeps an image, the image of my images! Ah, that it must sleep in the hardest, ugliest stone!

  Now my hammer rages cruelly against its prison. Fragments fall from the stone: what is that to me?

  I want to perfect it: for a shadow came to me—the stillest and lightest of all things once came to me!

  The beauty of the Übermensch came to me as a shadow. Ah, my brothers! What are the gods to me now!—

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  ON THE PITYING

  MY FRIENDS, A GIBE was told to your friend: “Just look at Zarathustra! Doesn’t he walk among us as if among animals?”

  But it is better said so: “The knower walks among men as among animals.”2

  To the knower man himself is: the animal that has red cheeks.

  How has that happened to him? Is it not because he has had to be ashamed too often?

  O my friends! Thus speaks the knower: shame, shame, shame—that is the history of mankind!

  And that is why the noble bids himself not to shame: he is ashamed himself before all sufferers.

  Truly, I do not like them, the merciful who feel blessed in their pity: they are much too lacking in shame.3

  If I must pity, at least I do not want it named so; and if I do, it is preferably from a distance.

  I should also like to shroud my head and flee before I am recognized: and thus I enjoin you to do, my friends!

  May my fate always lead those, like you, who do not suffer to cross my path, and those with whom I may share hope and meal and honey!

  Truly, I may have done this and that for sufferers: but I always seem to have done better when I learned to feel better joys.

  Since there have been men, man has enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin!

  And learning better to feel joy, we unlearn best how to hurt to others or to plan hurts for them.

  Therefore I wash my hand when it has helped the sufferer, therefore I also wipe even my soul.

  For in seeing the sufferer suffer, I was ashamed on account of his shame; and in helping him, I sorely wound his pride.

  Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a small kindness is not forgotten, it becomes a gnawing worm.

  “Be reserved in accepting! Distinguish by accepting!”—thus I advise those who have nothing to give.

  But I am a gift-giver: I like to give, as friend to friends. But strangers and the poor may pluck for themselves the fruit from my tree: that causes less shame.

  But beggars should be entirely done away with! Truly, it annoys one to give to them and it annoys one not to give to them.

  And likewise sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: the bite of conscience teaches one to bite.

  The very worst, however, are petty thoughts. Truly, better to have done evilly than to have thought pettily!

  To be sure, you say: “The delight in petty evils saves us from many a big evil deed.” But here one should not wish to save.

  An evil deed is like a boil: it itches and irritates and breaks open-it speaks honestly.

  “Look, I am disease,”—so speaks the evil deed: that is its honesty.

  But the petty thought is like an infection: it creeps and hides and wants to be nowhere-until the whole body is decayed and withered by petty infections.

  But to him who is possessed by the devil I whisper this word in his ear: “Better for you to rear up your devil! Even for you there is still a path to greatness!”—

  Ah, my brothers! One knows a little too much about every one! And some become transparent to us, but yet we can by no means pass through them.

  It is difficult to live among men, because it is so difficult to be silent.

  And we are most unfair not to him who is offensive to us, but to him who does not concern us at all.

  But if you have a suffering friend, be a resting place for his suffering, but like a hard bed, a field cot: thus you will serve him best.

  And if a friend does you wrong, then say: “I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to yourself, however—how could I forgive that!”

  Thus speaks all great love: it surpasses even forgiveness and pity.

  One should hold fast one’s heart; for when one lets it go, how soon one’s head runs away!

  Ah, where in the world has there been greater folly than among the pitying? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the folly of the pitying?

  Woe to all lovers who do not have a height that is above their pity!

  Thus spoke the devil to me once: “God too has his hell: it is his love of man.”

  And most recently I heard him speak this word: “God is dead: God died of his pity for man.”—

  So be warned against pity: from there a heavy cloud yet comes to man! Truly, I understand weather signs!

  But also mark this word: all great love is even above all its pity: for it still seeks-to create the beloved!

  “I sacrifice myself to my love, and my neighbor as myself”—so goes the language of all creators.

  But all creators are hard.—

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  THE PRIESTS

  AND ONCE ZARATHUSTRA GAVE a sign to his disciples and spoke these words to them:

  “Here are priests: and though they are my enemies, pass by them quietly and with sleeping swords!

  “Among them too there are heroes; many of them have suffered too much-: so they want to make others suffer.

  “They are evil enemies: nothing is more vengeful than their meekness. And whoever attacks them readily soils himself

  “But my blood is related to theirs; and I want to know that my blood is honored even in theirs.”—

  And when they had passed, pain gripped Zarathustra; and he had not wrestled long with the pain when he began to speak thus:

  My heart moves for those priests. They also go against my taste; but that is the smallest matter to me, since I am among men.

  But I suffer and have suffered with them: They are prisoners to me and marked ones. He whom they call Savior put them in fetters:—

  In fetters of false values and delusive words! Oh, that some one would yet save them from their Savior!

  They believed once that they had landed on an island, when the sea tossed them about; but look, it was a sleeping monster!


  False values and delusive words: these are the worst monsters for mortals—calamity sleeps and waits long in them.

  But at last it comes and wakes and eats and devours and what built huts upon it.

  Oh, just look at those huts which these priests have built! Churches they call their sweet-smelling caves!

  Oh, that falsified light, this musty air! Here, where the soul is not permitted to soar to its height!

  For thus their faith commands: “Up the stairs on your knees, you sinners!”

  Truly, I would rather see even the shameless than the contorted eyes of their shame and devotion!

  Who created for themselves such caves and stairways of repentance? Was it not those who wanted to conceal themselves and were ashamed under the pure sky?

  And only when the pure sky looks again through broken ceilings, and down upon grass and red poppies near ruined walls—will I again turn my heart to the haunts of this God.

  They called God that which opposed and afflicted them: and truly, much was heroic in their worship!

  And they did not how to love their God other than by nailing man to the cross!

  They meant to live as corpses; in black they draped their corpses; out of their speech too I still smell the foul odor of slaughterhouses.

  And whoever lives near them lives near black pools, where the toad sings his song with sweet melancholy.

  They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to believe in their Savior: and his disciples would have to look more saved!

  I would like to see them naked: for only beauty should preach repentance. But who would be persuaded by that muffled misery!

  Truly, their saviors themselves did not come from freedom and freedom’s seventh heaven! Truly, they themselves have never walked on the carpets of knowledge!

  The spirit of those saviors consisted of emptiness; but into every empty gap they put their delusion, their stopgap, which they called God.

  Their spirit was drowned in their pity; and when they were swollen and overswollen with pity, it was always a great folly that swam on top.