They drove their herd over their path eagerly and with shouts: as if there were but a single path to the future! Truly, these shepherds also belonged among the sheep!
These shepherds had small spirits and spacious souls: but, my brothers, what small lands have even the most spacious souls been so far!
They left marks of blood along the way they went, and their folly taught that with blood the truth is proved.
But blood is the worst witness of truth; blood poisons even the purest teaching and turns it into delusion and hatred of the heart.
And if a man goes through fire for his teaching—what does that prove! It is truly more when one’s teaching comes from one’s own burning!
A sultry heart and a cold head: where these two meet there arises the roaring wind, the “Savior.”
There have been those truly greater and higher born than those whom the people call saviors, those blowhards who carry away!
And by ones still greater than any of the saviors must you, my brothers, be saved, if you would find the way to freedom!
Never yet has there been an Übermensch. I saw both of them naked, the greatest and the smallest man:—
They are still all-too-similar to one another. Truly, even the greatest I found—all-too-human!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
ON THE VIRTUOUS
ONE MUST SPEAK TO indolent and sleepy senses with thunder and heavenly fireworks.
But beauty’s voice speaks gently: it creeps only into the most awakened souls.
My shield gently trembled and laughed today; it was beauty’s holy laughter and tremor.
About you, you virtuous, my beauty laughed today. And thus its voice came to me: “They still want—to be paid!”
You still want to be paid, you virtuous! Do you want rewards for virtue and heaven for earth and eternity for your today?
And now are you angry with me for teaching that there is no reward-giver nor paymaster? And truly, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward.
Ah, this is my sorrow: they have lied reward and punishment into the foundation of things-and now even into the basis of your souls, you virtuous!
But my words shall like the boar’s snout tear up the foundation of your souls; you will call me a ploughshare.
All the secrets of your heart shall be brought to light; and when you lie uprooted and broken in the sun, then too your lies will be separated from your truth.
For this is your truth: you are too pure for the dirt of the words: revenge, punishment, reward, retribution.
You love your virtue as the mother her child; but when did one hear of a mother wanting to be paid for her love?
It is your dearest self, your virtue. The ring’s thirst is in you: every ring strives and turns to reach itself again.
And like a dying star is every work of your virtue: its light is ever on its way and wandering—and when will it cease to be on its way?
Thus the light of your virtue is still on its way, even when its work is done. Though it be forgotten and dead: its ray of light still lives and wanders.
That your virtue is your self, and not something foreign, a skin, a cloak: that is the truth from the foundation of your souls, you virtuous ones!—
But indeed there are those to whom virtue means writhing under the lash: and you have listened too much to their shrieks!
And there are others who call it virtue when their vices grow lazy; and once their hatred and jealousy stretch themselves to rest, their “justice” becomes lively and rubs its sleepy eyes.
And there are others who are drawn downward: their devils draw them. But the more they sink, the more fervently their eye shines and the lust for their God.
Ah, their shrieks have also reached your ears, you virtuous: “What I am not, that, that to me are God and virtue!”
And there are others who come along, heavy and creaking like carts bearing stones downhill: they talk much of dignity and virtue-they call their brake virtue!
And there are others who are like everyday clocks wound up; they make their tick-tock and want one to call tick-tock—virtue.
Truly, I have fun with these: wherever I find such clocks I shall wind them up with my mockery; and therefore they shall even ring for me!
And others are proud of their handful of justice and commit wanton outrage upon all things for its sake: so that the world is drowned in their injustice.
Ah, how ill the word “virtue” sounds in their mouths! And when they say: “I am just,” it always sounds like: “I am just—revenged!”4
They want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies with their virtue; and they ennoble themselves only to debase others.
And again there are those who sit in their swamp, and speak thus from the rushes: “Virtue—that is to sit quietly in the swamp.
“We bite no one, and stay out of the way of those who want to bite; and in all matters we hold the opinion that is given us.”
And again, there are those who love posing and think: virtue is a sort of pose.
Their knees always adore, and their hands are eulogies of virtue, but their heart knows nothing about it.
And again there are those who regard it as virtue to say: “Virtue is necessary”; but fundamentally they believe only that the police are necessary.
And some who cannot see the sublime in man call it virtue to see his baseness all-too-closely: thus they calls their evil eye virtue.—
And some want to be edified and raised up and call it virtue: and others want to be cast down-and call it virtue, too.
And thus almost all believe that they participate in virtue; and at the very least every one wants to be an expert on “good” and “evil.”
But Zarathustra has not come to say to all these liars and fools: “What do you know of virtue! What could you know of virtue!”—
Rather, that you, my friends, might grow weary of the old words you have learned from the fools and liars:
That you might grow weary of the words “reward,” “retribution,” “punishment,” “just revenge.”—
That you might grow weary of saying: “An action is good when it is unselfish.”
Ah, my friends! That your self be in your action, as the mother is in the child: let that be your word on virtue!
Truly, I have taken a hundred words and your virtue’s favorite toys away from you; and now you scold me, as children scold.
They played by the sea—then a wave came and swept their toys into the deep: and now they cry.
But the same wave shall bring them new toys and pour out new colored seashells before them!
Thus they will be comforted; and like them shall you also, my friends, have your comforting—and new colored seashells!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
ON THE RABBLE
LIFE IS A WELL of delight;5 but where the rabble drinks, too, all wells are poisoned.
I like all that is clean; but I dislike seeing the grinning maws and the thirst of the unclean.
They cast their eyes down into the well: now their revolting smile shines up at me out of the well.
They have poisoned the holy water with their lustfulness; and when they called their filthy dreams delight, they poisoned the language too.
The flame is frustrated when they put their damp hearts to the fire; the spirit itself bubbles and smokes when the rabble approaches the fire.
In their hands all fruit grows syrupy and over-ripe: their glance makes the fruit tree unsteady and withered at the crown.
And many a one who turned away from life, turned away only from the rabble: he did not want to share well and flame and fruit with the rabble.
And many a one who went into the wilderness and suffered thirst with the beasts of prey merely did not want to sit around the cistern with filthy camel drivers.
And many a one who came along as a destroyer and as a hail-storm to all orchards, merely wanted to put his foot into the jaws of the rabble and so to stop its throat.
&n
bsp; And the bite on which I gagged the most was not knowing that life itself requires hostility and death and torture-crosses:—
But once I asked and almost suffocated on my question: What? Does life have need of the rabble too?
Are poisoned wells necessary, and stinking fires and soiled dreams and maggots in the bread of life?
Not my hatred but my nausea gnawed hungrily at my life! Ah, I often grew weary of spirit when I found even the rabble rich in spirit!
And I turned my back on the rulers when I saw what they now call ruling: bargaining and haggling for power-with the rabble!
I dwelt with closed ears among people with strange tongues: so that the language of their bargaining and their haggling for power might remain strange to me.
And holding my nose, I walked displeased through all of yesterday and today: truly all of yesterday and today smells foully of the writing rabble!
Like a cripple who has gone deaf and blind and dumb-thus have I long lived, that I might not live with the power- and writing-and pleasure-rabble.
Wearily my spirit climbed steps, and cautiously; alms of delight were its refreshment; and life crept along like the blind on a cane.
Yet what happened to me? How did I save myself from nausea? Who rejuvenated my eyes? How did I fly to the height where the rabble no more sits at the well?
Did my nausea itself create wings for me and water-divining powers? Truly, I had to fly to the loftiest height to find the well of delight again!
Oh, I have found it, my brothers! Here on the loftiest height the well of delight gushes up for me! And here there is a life at which no rabble drinks!
You stream almost too violently, fountain of delight! And often you empty the cup again, by wanting to fill it!
And I must yet learn to approach you more modestly: all-too-violently my heart still streams towards you:—
My heart on which my summer burns, short, hot, melancholy, overjoyful: how my summer heart longs for your coolness!
Gone is the lingering distress of my spring! Gone the malice of my snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely, and summer noon!
A summer on the loftiest height with cold wells and blissful stillness: oh come, my friends, that the stillness may become yet more blissful!
For this is our height and our home: we live here too high and steep for all the unclean and their thirst.
Only cast your pure eyes into the well of my delight, friends! How should that make it muddy! It shall laugh back at you with its purity.
We build our nest on the tree Future; in our solitude eagles shall bring us food in their beaks!
Truly, food which the unclean could not share! They would think they were eating fire and burn their mouths!
Truly, we keep no homes here for the unclean! Their bodies and their spirits would call our happiness an ice cave!
And we want to live above them as strong winds, neighbors to the eagles, neighbors to the snow, neighbors to the sun: thus live strong winds.
And like a wind I will one day blow among them and with my spirit take the breath from their spirit: thus my future wills it.
Truly, Zarathustra is a strong wind to all the low; and he offers this advice to his enemies and all that spits and spews: “Take care not to spit against the wind!”—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
ON THE TARANTULAS
SEE,THIS IS THE tarantula’s hole! 6 Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Here hangs its web: touch it, so that it trembles.
There it comes willingly: welcome, tarantula! Your triangle and symbol sit black upon your back; and I also know what sits in your soul.
Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite, a black scab grows; your poison makes the soul giddy with revenge!
Thus I speak to you in a parable, you who make the soul giddy, you preachers of equality! To me you are tarantulas and the secretly vengeful!
But soon I will bring your hiding places to light: therefore I laugh in your faces my laughter of the heights.
Therefore I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you from your hole of lies, and your revenge may leap forth from behind your word “justice.”
For that man be redeemed from revenge: for me that is the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
But of course the tarantulas would have it otherwise. “That the world may become full of the storms of our revenge, let precisely that be called justice by us”—thus they talk to one another.
“We shall wreak vengeance and insult on all who are not as we are”—thus the tarantula-hearts promise themselves.
“And ‘will to equality’—that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against everything that has power we will raise our outcry!”
You preachers of equality, the tyrant-madness of impotence cries thus in you for “equality”: thus your most secret tyrant appetite disguises itself in words of virtue!
Soured conceit, repressed envy, perhaps your fathers’ conceit and envy: they erupt from you as flame and frenzy of revenge.
What was silent in the father speaks out in the son; and I often found the son to be the father’s secret revealed.
They resemble the inspired: yet it is not the heart that inspires them-but revenge. And when they become refined and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that makes them refined and cold.
Their jealousy leads them also upon thinkers’ paths; and this is the sign of their jealousy—they always go too far: so that their weariness has at last to lie down and sleep even on the snow.
Revenge sounds out of all their complaints, a malevolence is in all their praise; and to be judge seems bliss to them.
But thus I counsel you, my friends: mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
They are people of a bad race and lineage; out of their faces peer the hangman and the bloodhound.
Mistrust all those who talk much of their justice! Truly, it is not only honey that their souls lack.
And when they call themselves “the good and just,” do not forget, that nothing is lacking to make them Pharisees except—power!
My friends, I do not want to be mixed up and confused with others.
There are those who preach my doctrine of life: and are at the same time preachers of equality and tarantulas.
That they speak well of life, though they sit in their hole, these poisonous spiders, with their backs turned on life: this is because they want to do harm.
They want to harm those who now have power: for with those the preaching of death is still most at home.
Were it otherwise, then the tarantulas would teach otherwise: and they themselves were formerly the best slanderers of the world and burners of heretics.
I do not want to be mixed up and confused with these preachers of equality. For justice speaks thus to me: “Men are not equal.”7
And neither should they become so! What would my love of the Übermensch be, if I spoke otherwise?
They should press on to the future on a thousand bridges and paths, and there should be more and more war and inequality among them: thus my great love makes me speak!
In their hostilities they shall become inventors of images and ghosts, and with those images and ghosts they shall yet fight the highest fight against one another!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of the values: they shall be weapons and ringing signs that life must overcome itself again and again!
Life wants to build itself up into the heights with columns and stairs: it wants to look into the far distance and out towards joyful beauties—therefore it needs height!
And because it needs height, it needs steps and conflict among the steps and the climbers! Life wants to climb and in climbing overcome itself.
And just look, my friends! Here, where the tarantula’s hole is, there rises up the ruins of an ancient temple-just look at it with enlightened eyes!
Truly, he who once piled up his thoughts here in stone, knew as
well as the wisest about the secret of all life!
That there is battle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and superpower: that is what he teaches us here in the plainest parable.
How divinely vault and arches break through each other here in the wrestling match: how they strive against each other with light and shade, the godlike strivers.—
Thus assured and beautiful let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely will we strive against one another!—
Alas! Now the tarantula, my old enemy, has bitten me! Divinely assured and beautiful it bit me on the finger!
“There must be punishment and justice”—thus it thinks: “and here he shall not sing songs in honor of enmity in vain!”
Yes, it has revenged itself! And ah! now it will also make my soul dizzy with revenge!
That I may not veer round, my friends, bind me fast to this pillar! I would rather be a stylite than a whirl of revenge!
Truly, Zarathustra is no cyclone or whirlwind: and if he is a dancer, he will never dance the tarantella!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
ON THE FAMOUS WISE MEN8
YOU HAVE SERVED THE people and the people’s superstition, you famous wise men!-and not the truth! And it is just for that reason they paid you respect.
And also for that reason they tolerated your unbelief, because it was a joke and a diversion for the people. Thus the master indulges his slaves and even enjoys their insolence.
But he who is hated by the people as a wolf is by the dogs: he is the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-worshipper, the dweller in the woods.
To hunt him out of his lair-that was always called “sense of right” by the people: they have always set their sharpest-toothed dogs upon him.
“For the truth is there: where the people are! Woe, woe to the seekers!” Thus has it echoed through all time.
You would justify your people in their reverence: you called that “Will to Truth,” you famous wise men!
And your heart has always said to itself: “I have come from the people: from there also came to me the voice of God.”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra Page 12
