1
My tongue—is of the people: I speak too crudely and heartily for silky rabbits. And my words sound still stranger to all ink-fish and pen-foxes.
My hand-is a fool’s hand: woe to all tablets and walls and whatever has room for fool’s scribbling, fool’s scrawling!
My foot—is a horse’s-foot; with it I trample and trot over stick and stone, in the fields up and down, and I am as happy as the devil in racing so fast.
My stomach—is surely an eagle’s stomach? For it likes lamb’s flesh best of all. But it is certainly a bird’s stomach.
Nourished by a few innocent things, ready and impatient to fly, to fly away—that is my nature now: how could there not be something of the bird’s nature in that!
And especially that I am enemy to the spirit of gravity, that is bird-nature: and truly, mortal enemy, archenemy, born enemy! Oh, where has my enmity not flown and strayed already!
I could sing a song about that—and will sing it: though I am alone in an empty house and must sing it to my own ears.
There are other singers, to be sure, whose voices are made soft, whose hands are made eloquent, whose eyes are made expressive, whose hearts are awakened, only by a full house—I am not like them.—
2
He who will one day teach men to fly will have shifted all boundary stones; the boundary stones themselves will fly into the air to him, and he will rebaptize the earth-as “the light.”
The ostrich runs faster than the fastest horse, but even he buries his head heavily into the heavy earth: thus it is with the man who cannot yet fly.
He calls earth and life heavy, and so the spirit of gravity wants it! But he who would become light and a bird must love himself—thus I teach.
Not, to be sure, with the love of the sick and infected: with them even self-love stinks!
One must learn to love oneself-thus I teach—with a wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself and not to roam.
Such roaming calls itself “love of the neighbor”: these words there have been so far the best for lying and dissembling, and especially by those who have been burdensome to every one.
And truly, to learn to love oneself is no commandment for today and tomorrow. Rather it is of all arts the finest, subtlest, last and most patient.
For all his possessions are well concealed from the possessor; and of all treasures, it is our own we dig up last—the spirit of gravity commands that.
Close upon the cradle are we presented with heavy words and values: this dowry calls itself “good” and “evil”. For the sake of it we are forgiven for living.
And we suffer little children to come unto us, to forbid them in good time from loving themselves: thus the spirit of gravity commands it.
And we—we bear loyally what we have been given on hard shoulders over rugged mountains! And when we sweat we are told: “Yes, life is hard to bear!”
But only man is hard to bear! That is because he carries too much that is foreign on his shoulders. Like the camel he kneels down and lets himself be well laden.
Especially the strong, reverent spirit who would bear much: he loads too many foreign weighty words and values upon himself-now life seems like a desert to him!
And truly! Many a thing too that is our own is hard to bear! And much that is inside man is like the oyster, that is, repulsive and slippery and hard to grasp—
—so that a noble shell with noble adornment must plead for it. But one must learn this art too: to have a shell and a fair appearance and a shrewd blindness!
Again, it is deceiving about much in man that many a shell is poor and pitiable and too much of a shell. Much concealed goodness and power is never dreamt of; the most exquisite delicacies find no tasters!
Women know that, the most exquisite of them: a little fatter, a little thinner—oh, how much fate is in so little!
Man is difficult to discover, and most of all to himself; the spirit often lies about the soul. Thus the spirit of gravity commands it.
But he has discovered himself who says: That is my good and evil: with that he has silenced the mole and the dwarf who say: “Good for all, evil for all.”
Truly, I do not like those who call everything good and this world the best. Those I call the all-satisfied.
All-satisfiedness, which knows how to taste everything,—that is not the best taste! I honor the refractory, fastidious tongues and stomachs, which have learned to say “I” and “Yes” and “No.”
To chew and digest everything, however—that is to have a really swinish nature! Always to bray Yea-Yuh—that only the ass has learned, and those like it!—
Deep yellow and hot red: thus my taste wants it—it mixes blood with all colors. But he who whitewashes his house betrays to me a whitewashed soul.
Some fall in love with mummies, others with phantoms: both alike are enemies to all flesh and blood—oh, how repugnant are both to my taste! For I love blood.
And I do not want to stay and dwell where every one spits and spews: that is not my taste,—I would rather live among thieves and perjurers. Nobody has gold in his mouth.
Still more repugnant to me, however, are all lickspittles; and the most repugnant beast of a man that I found, I baptized parasite: it would not love, and yet wanted to live by love.
Wretched I call all who have only one choice: either to become evil beasts or evil tamers of beasts: among such men I would build no homes.
I also call wretched those who always have to wait,-they are repugnant to my taste: all tax collectors and shopkeepers and kings and other keepers of lands and shops.
Truly, I too learned to wait and profoundly so,-but only to wait for myself. And above all I learned to stand and to walk and to run and to leap and to climb and to dance.
But this is my teaching: he who wishes one day to fly, must first learn to stand and to walk and to run and to climb and to dance—one does not fly into flying!
With rope-ladders I learned to reach many a window, with nimble legs I climbed high masts: to sit on high masts of knowledge seemed to me no small happiness;—
—to flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, but yet a great comfort to castaway sailors and the shipwrecked!
By diverse ways and windings I arrived at my truth: not by a single ladder did I mount to the height where my eye roves into my remoteness.
And it was only reluctantly that I ever asked the way—that has always offended my taste! Rather I questioned and tried the ways themselves.
A trying and a questioning has been all my traveling-and truly, one must also learn how to answer such questioning! But that—is my taste:
-not good, not bad, but my taste, of which I am no longer ashamed and which I have no more wish to hide.
“This—is now my way—where is yours?” thus I answered those who asked me “the way.” For the way—that does not exist!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
ON OLD AND NEW TABLETS
1
Here I sit and wait, old broken tablets around me and also new half-written tablets. When will my hour come?
-the hour of my descent, of my going under: for I want to go among men once more.
For that I am waiting now: for first the signs must come to me that my hour has arrived-namely the laughing lion with the flock of doves.
Meanwhile I talk to myself as one who has time. No one tells me anything new: so I tell myself to myself
2
When I came to men, I found them resting on an old conceit: all of them thought they had long known what was good and evil for man.
All talk of virtue seemed an old and wearisome business to them; and he who wished to sleep well spoke of “good” and “evil” before retiring to rest.
I disturbed this sleepiness when I taught that no one yet knows what is good and evil—unless it be he who creates!
—But it is he who creates man’s goal and gives the earth its meaning and its future: that anything at
all is good and evil, that is his creation.
And I bade them overturn their old academic chairs and wherever that old conceit had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists and saints and poets and world-redeemers.
I bade them laugh at their gloomy sages and at whoever had at any time sat forebodingly on the tree of life like a black scare-crow.
I sat down by their great road of tombs among cadavers and vultures—and I laughed at all their past and its rotting, decaying glory.
Truly, like preachers of repentance and fools, I raised a hue and cry of wrath on all their greatness and smallness—that their best is so very small! That their worst is so very small!-thus I laughed.
My wise longing, born in the mountains, cried and laughed in me; a wild wisdom, truly!-my great broad-winged longing.
And often it carried me off and up and away and in the midst of laughter: then I flew quivering like an arrow with sun-drunken rapture:
—out into distant futures, which no dream has yet seen, into warmer Souths than artists ever dreamed: there where gods in their dancing are ashamed of all clothes:—
—that I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the poets: and truly I am ashamed that I still have to be a poet!
Where all becoming seemed to me the dancing of gods and the playfulness of gods, and the world unloosed and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:—
—like many gods eternally fleeing and seeking one another, like many gods blessedly contradicting, communing, and belonging together again:—
Where all time seemed to me a happy mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of freedom:—
Where I also found again my old devil and archenemy, the spirit of gravity, and all that he created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil:—
For must there not be that which is danced over, danced beyond? Must there not, for the sake of the nimble, the nimblest,—be moles and clumsy dwarfs?—
3
There it was too that I picked up the word “Übermensch” by the way, and that man is something that must be overcome,
—that man is a bridge and not a goal: rejoicing over his noon-tides and evenings, as advances to new dawns:
—Zarathustra’s declaration of the great noon, and whatever else I have hung up over men like a purple afterglow of evening.
Truly, I also let them see new stars along with new nights; and over cloud and day and night I spread out laughter like a colored canopy. I taught them all my poetry and aspiration: to compose and collect into one what is fragment in man and riddle and dreadful chance—
To redeem what is past in man and to transform every “It was” until the will says: “But so I willed it! So shall I will it—”
—this I called redemption, this alone I taught them to call redemption. —
Now I await my redemption-that I may go to them for the last time.
For I want to go to men once more: I want to go under among them, in dying I will give them my richest gift!
I learned this from the sun when it goes down, the overrich: it then pours gold into the sea from inexhaustible riches,—
—so that even the poorest fisherman still rows with golden oars! For I saw this once, and did not tire of weeping to see it.-Like the sun, Zarathustra too wants to go under: now he sits here and waits, old broken tablets around him and also new tablets—half-written.
4
Behold, here is a new tablet: but where are my brothers who will carry it with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?—
Thus my great love of the farthest demands it: do not spare your neighbor! Man is something that must be overcome.
There are many diverse paths and ways of overcoming: see to that yourself! But only a jester thinks: “man can also be jumped over.”
Overcome yourself even in your neighbor: and a right that you can rob you should not accept as a gift!
What you do, no one can do to you in turn. Behold, there is no retribution.
He who cannot command himself should obey. And many a one can command himself, but much is still lacking before he obeys!
5
This is the nature of noble souls: they do not want something for nothing, least of all, life.
He who is of the mob wants to live for nothing; but we others, to whom life has given itself—we are always considering what we can best give in return!
And truly, it is a noble speech that says: “What life has promised us, we shall keep that promise—to life!”
One should not wish to enjoy where one has not given joy. And-one should not wish to enjoy!
For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things: neither likes to be sought. One should have them-but one should rather seek for guilt and pain!—
6
O my brothers, the first-born is always sacrificed. But now we are first-born!
We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars, we all burn and roast in honor of ancient idols.
Our best is still young: this excites old palates. Our flesh is tender, our skin is only lambs’ skin:-how could we not excite old idol-priests!
In us ourselves he lives on still, the old idol-priest, who roasts our best for his feast. Ah, my brothers, how should the first-born not be sacrifices!
But so our kind wants it; and I love those who do not wish to preserve themselves. I love with my whole love those who go under and perish: for they cross over.—
7
To be truthful-few can do it! And those who can, will not! But the good can do this least of all.
Oh, these good men! Good men never speak the truth; to be good in this way is a disease of the spirit.
They yield, those good ones, they submit themselves, their heart repeats, their ground obeys: but he who obeys does not listen to himself!
All that the good call evil must come together that one truth may be born: O my brothers, are you evil enough for this truth?
The daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel No, the tedium, the cutting to the quick-how seldom do these come together! But from such seed is-truth produced!
All knowledge thus far has grown up beside the bad conscience! Break, break, you knowers, the old tablets!
8
When the water is spanned by planks, when bridges and railings reach over the river: truly, then he is not believed who says: “Everything is in flux.”11
Even the simpletons contradict him. “What?” say the simpletons, “everything in flux? But there are planks and railings over the stream!
“Over the stream all is stable, all the values of things, the bridges and bearings, all ‘good’ and ‘evil’: these are all stable!”—
But when the hard winter comes, the river animal-tamer: then even the cleverest learn mistrust; and then truly not only the simpletons say: “Should not everything—stand still?”
“Fundamentally everything stands still”—that is a fit winter teaching, a good cheer for unfruitful seasons, a great comfort for hibernators and fireside-squatters.
“Fundamentally everything stands still”—: but the thawing wind preaches to the contrary!
The thawing wind, an ox that is no plough-ox—a raging ox, a destroyer who breaks the ice with angry horns! But ice-breaks bridges!
O my brothers, is everything not now in flux? Have not all railings and bridges fallen into the water? Who could still cling to “good” and “evil”?
“Woe to us! Hail to us! The thawing wind blows!”—Preach thus, O my brothers, through every street!
9
There is an old illusion, which is called good and evil. Up to now the orbit of this illusion has revolved around soothsayers and astrologers.
Once man believed in soothsayers and astrologers: and therefore man believed: “Everything is fate: you shall, for you must!”
Then again man mistrusted all soothsayers and astrologers: and therefore man believed: “Everything is freedom: you can
, for you will!”
O my brothers, concerning the stars and the future there has so far been only illusion, and not knowledge: and therefore concerning good and evil there has so far been only illusion and not knowledge!
10
“Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not kill!”—such words were once called holy; before them one bowed the knee and the head and took off one’s shoes.
But I ask you: Where have there ever been better robbers and killers in the world than such holy words?
Is there not in all life itself—robbing and killing? And when such words were called holy was not truth itself-slain?
-Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contradicted and opposed all life?—0 my brothers, break, break the old tablets!
11
This is my pity for all the past that I see: it is abandoned,—
—abandoned to the favor, the spirit, the madness of every generation that comes and transforms all that has been into its own bridge!
A great despot could come, a cunning devil, who according to his pleasure and displeasure, might strain and constrain all the past: until it became his bridge and harbinger and herald and cockcrow.
This however is the other danger and my other pity—he who is of the mob remembers back to his grandfather—but with his grandfather time stops.
Thus all the past is abandoned: for one day the herd might become master and drown all time in shallow waters.
Therefore, O my brothers, a new nobility is needed to be the adversary of all mob rule and despotism and to write again the word “noble” on new tablets.
For many noble are needed, and noble of many kinds, that there may be nobility! Or, as I once said in a parable: “Precisely this is godlike, that there are gods, but no God!”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra Page 21
