Thus Spoke Zarathustra

by Friedrich Nietzsche

  Out! out! my fishing rod! In, down, bait of my happiness! Drip your sweetest dew, honey of my heart! Bite, my fishing rod, into the belly of all black misery!

  Look out, look out, my eye! Oh, how many seas ring round about me, what dawning human futures! And above me—what rose-red stillness! What unclouded silence!

  THE CRY OF DISTRESS

  THE NEXT DAY ZARATHUSTRA was again sitting on the stone in front of his cave, while his animals roved about in the world outside to bring home new food-new honey too: for Zarathustra had spent and squandered the old honey to the very last drop. But as he was sitting there with a stick in his hand, tracing the shadow of his figure in the ground, reflecting, and truly! not about himself and his shadow,-suddenly he startled and shrank back: for he saw another shadow beside his own. And when he hastily looked around and stood up, behold, there stood the soothsayer beside him, the same who had once eaten and drunk at his table, the proclaimer of the great weariness, who taught: “All is the same, nothing is worthwhile, the world is without meaning, knowledge chokes.” But his face had changed since then; and when Zarathustra looked into his eyes, his heart was startled once more: so many evil prophecies and ashen lightning bolts ran over that face.

  The soothsayer, who had perceived what went on in Zarathustra’s soul, wiped his face with his hand as if he wanted to wipe it away; Zarathustra did the same. And when both of them had thus silently composed and strengthened themselves, they shook hands as a sign that they wanted to recognize each other.

  “Welcome,” said Zarathustra, “you soothsayer of the great weariness, not in vain shall you once have been guest at my table. Eat and drink with me again today, and forgive a cheerful old man for sitting at the table with you!”—“A cheerful old man?” replied the soothsayer, shaking his head, “but whoever you are, or would be, 0 Zarathustra, you shall not be up here much longer—in a little while your boat shall no longer be stuck on dry land!”—“Am I stuck on dry land?“—asked Zarathustra laughing.—”The waves around your mountain,” answered the soothsayer, ”rise and rise, the waves of great distress and misery: they will soon raise your boat too, and carry you away.“—At that Zarathustra was silent and wondered. ”Do you still hear nothing?” continued the soothsayer: ”does it not rush and roar out of the depth?“—Zarathustra was silent once more and listened: then heard he a long, long cry, which the abysses threw to one another and passed on; for none wished to keep it: so evil did it sound.

  “You proclaimer of bad tidings,” Zarathustra said at last, “that is a cry of distress and the cry of a man; it may well come out of a black sea. But what does human distress matter to me! My last sin, which has been reserved for me, do you know what it is called?”

  —“Pity!” answered the soothsayer from an overflowing heart, and raised both his hands—“O Zarathustra, I have come to seduce you to your last sin!”1—

  And hardly had those words been uttered when the cry sounded once more, and longer and more anxious than before, also much nearer. “Do you hear? Do you hear, 0 Zarathustra?” cried the soothsayer, “the cry is for you, it calls you: come, come, come, it is time, it is high time!”—

  Zarathustra was silent at that, confused and shaken; at last he asked like one who is hesitant in his own mind: “And who is it that calls me?”

  “But you know it, certainly,” answered the soothsayer vehemently, “why do you conceal yourself? It is the higher man that cries for you!”

  “The higher man?” cried Zarathustra, horror- stricken: “what does he want? What does he want? The higher man! What does he want here?”—and his skin was bathed in sweat.

  The soothsayer, however, did not hear Zarathustra’s alarm, but listened and listened toward the depth. But when it had been still there for a long while, he looked back and saw Zarathustra standing there trembling.

  “O Zarathustra,” he began in a sorrowful voice, “you do not stand there like one whose happiness makes him giddy: you better dance or else you will fall!

  “But even if you dance for me, leaping all your side-leaps, no one may say to me: ‘Behold, here dances the last cheerful man!’

  “In vain would anyone come to this height who sought him here: he would find caves, indeed, and caves behind caves, hiding places for the hidden, but not mines of happiness nor treasure chambers nor new gold veins of happiness.

  “Happiness—how indeed could one find happiness among the buried and the hermits! Must I yet seek the last happiness on the happy islands and far away among forgotten seas?

  “But all is the same, nothing is worthwhile, seeking is pointless, there are no happy islands any more!”

  Thus sighed the soothsayer; with his last sigh, however, Zarathustra again became serene and assured, like one who has come out of a deep chasm into the light. “No! No! Three times no!” he exclaimed with a strong voice, and stroked his beard—“I know better than that! There are still happy islands! Silence about that, you sighing bag of sorrows!

  “Stop splashing on that, you rain cloud of morning! Do I not stand here already wet with your misery and drenched like a dog?

  “Now I shall shake myself and run away from you, so that I may become dry again: don’t be surprised at that! Do I seem discourteous to you? But this is my court.

  “But as regards the higher man: well! I shall seek him at once in those forests: his cry came from there. Perhaps he is being attacked by an evil beast.

  “He is in my domain: here he shall not come to harm! And truly, there are many evil beasts about me.”—

  With those words Zarathustra turned to go. Then the soothsayer said: “O Zarathustra, you are a rogue!

  “I know it well: you would like to be rid of me! You would rather run into the forest and lay snares for evil beasts!

  “But what good will it do you? In the evening you will have me back again; I will sit in your own cave, patient and heavy as a block-and wait for you!”

  “So be it!” shouted back Zarathustra as he went away: “and whatever is mine in my cave is yours too, my guest!

  “But if you find honey in there, well! just lick it up, you growling bear, and sweeten your soul! For in the evening we must both be cheerful;

  —“cheerful and gay, because this day has come to an end! And you yourself will dance to my songs, as my dancing bear.

  “Don’t you believe it? You shake your head? Well! Cheer up, old bear! But I too—am a soothsayer.”

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  CONVERSATION WITH KINGS

  1

  Before Zarathustra had been an hour on his way in the mountains and forests he suddenly observed a strange procession. Right on the path which he was about to descend two kings came walking, adorned with crowns and purple belts and as colorful as flamingos: they drove before them a laden ass. “What do these kings want in my domain?” said Zarathustra in astonishment to his heart, and he quickly hid behind a bush. But when the kings drew near he said half aloud, like someone talking to himself: “Strange! Strange! How does this fit together? I see two kings-and only one ass!”

  At that the two kings halted, smiled, looked towards the spot from which the voice came, and then looked at one another. “We might think such things too,” said the king on the right, “but we do not say them.”

  The king on the left, however, shrugged his shoulders and answered: “Perhaps that is a goatherd. Or a hermit who has lived too long among rocks and trees. For no society at all also spoils good manners.”

  “Good manners?” the other king replied angrily and bitterly: “what is it we are trying to get away from? Is it not ‘good manners’? Our ‘good society’?

  “Better, truly, to live among hermits and goatherds than with our gilded, false, painted mob—though it call itself‘good society.’

  —“though it call itself ‘nobility.’ But everything there is false and foul, above all the blood, thanks to evil old diseases and worse quacks.

  “The best and dearest to me today is a healthy peasant, coa
rse, shrewd, obstinate and enduring: that is the noblest type today.

  “The peasant is the best today; and the peasant type should be master! But ours is the kingdom of the mob—I no longer let myself be deceived. Mob, however, means hodgepodge.

  “Mob hodgepodge: in that everything is mixed with everything, saint and swindler and gentleman and Jew and every beast out of Noah’s ark.

  “Good manners! Everything is false and foul with us. No one knows any longer how to revere: it is precisely that we are running away from. They are insipid, obtrusive curs; they gild palm leaves.

  “This disgust chokes me, that we kings ourselves have become false, draped and disguised with the old yellowed pomp of our grandfathers, showpieces for the stupidest and the craftiest and whoever traffics for power today!

  “We are not the first—and yet must represent them: we have at last become weary and disgusted with this deception.

  “We have gone away from the rabble, from all those ranters and scribbling bluebottles, from the stench of shopkeepers, the ambitious wriggling, the bad breath-: phew, to live among the rabble;

  —phew, for representing the first men among the rabble! Ah, disgust! disgust! disgust! What do we kings matter now!“—

  “Your old sickness is upon you,” said the king on the left, “your disgust seizes you, my poor brother. But you know that someone is listening to us.”

  Just then Zarathustra, who had opened his ears and eyes wide at this talk, rose from his hiding place, advanced towards the kings and began:

  “He who listens to you, he who likes to listen to you, 0 kings, is called Zarathustra.

  “I am Zarathustra, who once said: ‘What do kings matter now!’ Forgive me, it delighted me when you said to each other: ‘What do we kings matter now!’

  “But here is my realm and my dominion: what might you be seeking in my domain? But perhaps on your way you have found what I seek: namely, the higher man.”

  When the kings heard this, they beat their breasts and said with one voice: “We have been recognized!

  “With the sword of these words you sever the thickest darkness of our hearts. You have discovered our distress, for behold! we are on our way to find the higher man—

  “—the man who is higher than we: although we are kings. To him we convey this ass. For the highest man shall also be the highest lord on earth.

  “There is no worse misfortune in all human destiny than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becomes false and distorted and monstrous.

  “And when they are even the last men, and more beast than man, then the price of the mob rises and rises, and at last mob virtue even says: ‘Behold, I alone am virtue!’”—

  “What have I just heard?” replied Zarathustra; “what wisdom from kings! I am enchanted, and truly, I already feel the urge to make a rhyme about it:—

  “—even if it should be a rhyme not fit for every one’s ears. I unlearned long ago to have consideration for long ears. Well then! Come on!”

  (But here it happened that the ass too found speech:2 it said distinctly and maliciously, Yea-Yuh.)

  Once upon a time—I believe, in the year of our grace

  number one—

  the Sybil spoke, drunk without wine:

  “Woe, now all goes to pieces!

  ”Decay! Decay! The world never sank so deep!

  “Rome sank to a whore and to a whorehouse,

  ”Rome’s Caesar sank to a beast, God himself—to Jew!”

  2

  These rhymes of Zarathustra delighted the kings; but the king on the right said: “0 Zarathustra, how well we did to set out to see you!

  “For your enemies showed us your image in their mirror: there you looked out with the sneering grimace of a devil: so that we were afraid of you.

  “But what good did it do! You always stung us again in our hearts and ears with your sayings. Then we said at last: What does it matter how he looks!

  “We must hear him, him who teaches: ‘You shall love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the long!’

  “No one ever spoke such warlike words: ‘What is good? To be brave is good. It is the good war that hallows every cause.’

  “O Zarathustra, our fathers’ blood stirred in our veins at such words: it was like the voice of spring to old wine-casks.

  “When the swords ran wild like red spotted snakes, then our fathers grew fond of life; the sun of every peace seemed to them languid and lukewarm, but the long peace made them ashamed.

  “How they sighed, our fathers, when they saw brightly polished, dried-up swords on the wall! Like them they thirsted for war. For a sword thirsts to drink blood and sparkles with desire.”—

  —When the kings spoke thus and talked eagerly of the happiness of their fathers, Zarathustra was overcome with no small temptation to mock their eagerness: for obviously they were very peaceful kings whom he saw before him, kings with old and refined features. But he restrained himself. “Well!” he said, “there leads the way, there lies the cave of Zarathustra; and this day shall yet have a long evening ! But at present a cry of distress calls me urgently away from you.

  “It will honor my cave if kings want to sit and wait in it: but, to be sure, you will have to wait long!

  “Well! What of that! Where today does one learn better to wait than at court? And all the virtue left to kings-is it not today called: being able to wait?”

  Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  THE LEECH

  AND ZARATHUSTRA WENT THOUGHTFULLY On, further and deeper, through forests and past swampy valleys; but as happens with those who meditate on hard matters he accidentally stepped on a man. And behold, suddenly a cry of pain and two curses and twenty little invectives splashed into his face so that in his fright he raised his stick and also struck the man he had stepped on. Immediately afterwards, however, he regained his composure; and his heart laughed at the folly he had just committed.

  “Forgive me,” he said to the man he had stepped on, who had got up enraged and sat down again, “forgive me, and hear first of all a parable.

  “As a wanderer who dreams of remote things on a lonesome highway runs unawares against a sleeping dog, a dog which lies in the sun:

  “—as both of them then stare up and snap at each other, like deadly enemies, these two mortally frightened beings-so did it happen to us.

  “And yet! And yet—how little was lacking for them to caress each other, that dog and that solitary! Are they not both—solitaries!”

  —“Whoever you are,” said the trodden one, still enraged, “you come too near me with your parable, and not only with your foot!

  “Behold, am I then a dog?”—And at that the sitting one got up, and pulled his naked arm out of the swamp. For at first he had lain outstretched on the ground, hidden and indiscernible, like those who lie in wait for a swamp animal.

  “But what are you doing!” cried Zarathustra in alarm, for he saw blood streaming over the naked arm,—“what has hurt you? Has an evil beast bit you, you unfortunate one?”

  The bleeding one laughed, still angry, “What do you care!” he said, and was about to go on. “Here am I at home and in my province. Whoever will question me, let him: but I will not reply to a moron.”

  “You are mistaken,” said Zarathustra sympathetically, and held him fast; “you are mistaken. Here you are not at home, but in my domain, and here no one shall receive any harm.

  “But call me what you will—I am who I must be. I call myself Zarathustra.

  “Well! Up there is the way to Zarathustra’s cave: it is not far,won’ t you tend to your wounds at my home?

  “It has gone badly with you, you unfortunate one, in this life: first a beast bit you, and then—a man trod upon you!”—

  But when the trodden one had heard the name of Zarathustra, he changed. “What has happened to me!” he exclaimed, “who concerns me so much in this life as this one man, Zarathustra, and that one animal that lives on
blood, the leech?

  “For the sake of the leech I have lain here by this swamp, like a fisher, and already my outstretched arm had been bitten ten times, when now a finer leech bites at my blood, Zarathustra himself!

  “O happiness! 0 miracle! Praised be the day that enticed me into the swamp! Praised be the best, the liveliest cupper living today, praised be the great leech of conscience, Zarathustra!”—

  Thus spoke the man Zarathustra had stepped on, and Zarathustra rejoiced at his words and their refined, respectful style. “Who are you?” he asked and gave him his hand, “there is much to clear up and elucidate between us: but already, it seems to me, the day dawns pure and bright.”

  “I am the conscientious in spirit,” answered he who was asked, “and in matters of the spirit it is difficult for any one to take it more rigorously, more strictly, and more severely than I, except him from whom I learned it, Zarathustra himself.

  “Better to know nothing than to half-know many things! Better to be a fool on one’s own account, than a sage in other people’s estimation! I—get to the bottom:

  —“what does it matter if it is great or small? If it is called swamp or sky? A hand’s breadth of ground is enough for me, if it really is ground and bottom!

  -A hand’s breadth of ground: one can stand on that. In the conscience of knowledge there is nothing great and nothing small.”

  “So perhaps you are an expert on leeches?” asked Zarathustra; “and you investigate the leech to its ultimate grounds, you conscientious one?”

  “0 Zarathustra,” answered the trodden man, “that would be an immensity, how could I presume to do so!

  “But what I am master of and expert on is the brain of the leech:-that is my world!

  “And it is also a world! But forgive me that my pride speaks out here, for here I do not have my equal. Therefore I said: here I am at home.’