= . I like to lie here where the children play, by the crumbling wall, beneath, Second Part = . thistles and red poppies., Second Part = . poppies. They are innocent, even in their spite., Second Part = . But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar, thus my fate wants it - blessed, Second Part = . be it!, Second Part = Thus Spoke Zarathustra For this is the truth: I have moved out of the house of the scholars, and I slammed the door on my way out. Toolongmysoulsathungryattheirtable;unlikethem,Iamnottrained to approach knowledge as if cracking nuts. Ilove freedom and the air over fresh earth; and I would rather sleep on ox hides than on their honors and reputations. I am too hot and burned up by my own thoughts; often it steals my breath away. Then I have to go out into the open and away from all dusty chambers. But they sit cool in their cool shade; in all things they want to be mere spectators and they take care not to sit where the sun burns on the steps. Just like those who stand in the street and gape at the people who pass by; thus too they wait and gape at thoughts that others have thought. When grasped they puff out clouds of dust like sacks of flour, involuntarily; but who would guess that their dust comes from grain and from the yellow bliss of summer fields? Whenthey pose as wise, I am chilled by their little proverbs and truths; often there is an odor to their wisdom, as if it came from the swamp, and truly, I have already heard the frog croaking out of it! Theyareskilled,theyhavecleverfingers;whywould my simplicity want to be near their multiplicity? Their fingers know how to do all manner of threading and knotting and weaving, and thus they knit the stockings of the spirit! Theyaregoodclockworks,onlyonehastoseetoitthattheyareproperly wound! Then they indicate the hour faithfully and make only a modest noise. Like mills and stamps they work; one need only toss them one's grain - they know how to grind down kernels and make white dust out of them!


Theyaregoodatspying on, and are not the best at trusting one another. Inventive in petty cleverness they lie in wait for those whose knowledge walks on lame feet - they lie in wait like spiders. I have always seen them prepare poison with caution, and always they donned gloves of glass for their fingers. And they also know how to play with loaded dice; and I found them so ardent in their play that they sweated. We are strangers to one another, and their virtues are even more repugnant to me than their falseness and false dice. Thus Spoke Zarathustra The disciple answered: 'I believe in Zarathustra.' But Zarathustra shook his head and smiled. 'Faith does not make me blessed,' he said. 'Especially not faith in me. But supposing that someone said in all earnestness that the poets lie too much: he is right we lie too much. We also know too little and are bad learners, thus we simply have to lie. Andwhoofuspoets has not watered down his wine? Many a poisonous hodgepodge took place in our cellars, much that is indescribable was enacted there. And because we know little, we take a hearty liking to the spiritually impoverished, especially when they are little young women! And we are even keen for those things that little old women tell each other evenings. Within ourselves we call that 'the eternal feminine.' And as if there were a special, secret portal to knowledge that becomes blocked to those who learn something, thus we believe in the people and their 'wisdom.' But this is what all poets believe: that whoever pricks up his ears while lying in the grass or on a lonely slope will divine something about the things that are situated between heaven and earth. And if tender stirrings come to them, then the poets always think that nature herself is in love with them: And she creeps up to their ears to tell them secrets and enamored flatteries, the like of which makes them boastful and bloated before all mortals! Indeed, there are so many things between heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed! And especially above the heavens, for all gods are poets' parable, poets' cock and bull! Indeed, always it lifts us up - namely to the kingdom of the clouds; atop these we set our motley bastards and then call them gods and overmen -


And they are just light enough for these chairs - all these gods and overmen! This chapter takes issue with Goethe and elevates him to the status of supreme poet, but it simultaneously decries the poetic fictions that throughout history sometimes pose as truth. 'The eternal feminine' refers to the conclusion of Faust , where the Chorus Mysticus announces that Faust is saved, he is lifted up to heaven by the eternal feminine ('Das Ewig-Weibliche/ Zieht uns hinan'), which here also includes the blessed Margarete (Gretchen). See also Part , 'The Song of Melancholy,' where truth and poetizing (fiction) are at odds. Defiantly the buffalo looks on, in his soul close to the sand, still closer to the thicket, but closest to the swamp. The references to parable, imperfection, and event are all based on the words of the Chorus Mysticus (see n. ), consisting of only eight lines, in which Goethe argues that ( ) everything not everlasting is merely a parable; ( ) what is imperfect becomes an event here (on earth); ( ) what is indescribable gets done here; and ( ) the eternal feminine lifts us up. Zarathustra expresses his impatience with the glibness of the poets; but observe that he includes the overman among these airy creations.


What does he care of beauty and sea and peacock's finery? This parable I say to the poets. Truly, their spirit itself is this peacock of peacocks and a sea of vanity! The spirit of the poet wants spectators: even if they have to be buffaloes! - But I became weary of this spirit, and I foresee that it will become weary of itself. Transformed I have already seen the poets, and turning their gaze against themselves. I saw ascetics of the spirit approaching; they grew out of the poets.' Thus spoke Zarathustra.


There is an island in the sea - not far from the blessed isles of Zarathustra -onwhich a fiery mountain smokes continually; the people say of it, and especially the little old women among the people say of it, that it was placed like a huge boulder before the gate to the underworld: but through the fiery mountain itself leads the narrow path that winds downward to this gate of the underworld. Now it was around the time that Zarathustra sojourned on the blessed isles that a ship dropped anchor at the island on which the smoking mountain stands, and its crew went ashore to shoot rabbits. Toward the hour of noon, however, as the captain and his people were together again, they suddenly saw a man approaching them through the air, and a voice clearly said: 'It is time! It is high time!' As the figure came closest to them - and it flew past quickly like a shadow in the direction of the fiery mountain - they recognized with the greatest dismay that it was Zarathustra; for all of them had seen him before, except for the captain himself, and they loved him as the people love, with equal parts of love and awe. This story Nietzsche did not make up himself, but as C. G. Jung pointed out in his dissertation of , 'On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena,' Nietzsche inadvertently remembered it from his childhood reading of Bl atter aus Prevorst , an 'antiquated collection of simple-minded Swabian ghost stories.' The recollection was triggered by Nietzsche's thought process relating to Zarathustra's trip to hell. 'Cryptoamnesia' or 'hidden memory' is to be distinguished from simple plagiarism because it is caused by the unconscious. See C. G. Jung, Psychiatric Studies in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung , vol. , ed. Sir Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and Gerhard Adler ( nd edn., Princeton University Press, ), pp. vi, - , - , .


'Just look!' said the old helmsman, 'there goes Zarathustra off to hell!' - Around the same time that these sailors landed on the fiery island the rumor was circulating that Zarathustra had disappeared; and when people asked his friends, they related how he had departed by ship at night, without saying where he would be traveling. Thus a restlessness arose, but three days later this restlessness was increased by the sailors' story - and now all the people were saying that the devil had fetched Zarathustra. His disciples laughed at this news, to be sure, and one of them even said: 'I would sooner believe that Zarathustra fetched himself the devil.' But at the bottom of their souls all of them were filled with worry and longing, and so their joy was great when on the fifth day Zarathustra appeared among them. Andthis is the story of Zarathustra's conversation with the fire hound. 'The earth,' he said, 'has a skin; and this skin has diseases. One of these diseases for example is called: 'Human being.' And another of these diseases is called 'fire hound'; about him people have told each other many lies and allowed themselves to be lied to much. To fathom this mystery I went over the sea, and I saw the naked truth, indeed, barefoot up to its throat! Now I know what the fire hound is all about, and likewise all the underhanded and overthrowing scum-devils of whom not only little old women are afraid. 'Out with you, fire hound, out of your depth!' I cried, 'and confess how deep is this depth! Where did you get what you are snorting there? You drink deeply from the sea; your salty eloquence betrays that! Really, forahound of the depths you take your nourishment too much from the surface! At best I could regard you as the ventriloquist of the earth; and always when I heard overthrowing and underhanded scum-devils speaking, I found them to be the same as you: salty, lying and superficial. You know how to bellow and to darken with ashes! You are the best big mouths, and you've learned more than enough about bringing mud to a boil.


The 'fire hound' ( Feuerhund )isNietzsche's invention, an unflattering portrait of a fire-breathing, revolutionary spirit of the kind who believes in and foments 'great events' of a political nature. The rabble apparently believe in the existence of this fire hound, and are impressed by its hellish noise. Thus Spoke Zarathustra Wherever you are, there mud always has to be close by, and much that is spongy, pitted, squeezed, and wants to break free. 'Freedom' the lot of you are best at bellowing, but I lose faith in 'great events' as soon as they are surrounded by much bellowing and smoke. Andjust believe me, friend Infernal Racket! The greatest events - these are not our loudest, but our stillest hours. Not around the inventors of new noise does the world revolve, but around the inventors of new values; inaudibly it revolves. And just confess! When your noise and smoke cleared, it was always very little that had happened. What does it matter that a town becomes a mummy and a statue lies in the mud! And these words I say to all overthrowers of statues. Surely it is the greatest folly to throw salt into the sea and statues into the mud. In the mud of your contempt lay the statue, but precisely this is its law, that out of contempt life and living beauty grow back to it! It stands up again with even more godlike features, seductive in its suffering, and truly! It will yet thank you for overthrowing it, you overthrowers! But this advice I give to kings and churches and to all that is feeble with age and feeble in virtue - just let yourselves be overthrown! So that you might come to life again, and to you - virtue!' - Thus I spoke before the fire hound, then it interrupted me sullenly and asked: 'Church? What is that?' 'Church?' I answered, 'that is a kind of state, and in fact the most lying kind. But be silent, you hypocrite hound! You already know your kind best! Like you yourself the state is a hypocrite hound; like you it likes to speak with smoke and bellowing - to make believe, like you, that it speaks from the belly of things.


For it wants absolutely to be the most important animal on earth, this state; and people believe it, too.' - When I finished saying this the fire hound behaved as though out of his mind with envy. 'What?' it shouted, 'the most important animal on earth? And they believe it too?' And then so much steam and so many horrid voices emanated from his throat that I thought he would choke to death from anger and envy. At last he grew calmer and his panting let up; but as soon as he was calm I said laughing: The Wanderer and His Shadow is the last volume of Human, All Too Human , published by Nietzsche in . The wanderer appears in TSZ Part as one of the 'higher human beings.' Thus Spoke Zarathustra We harvested well, but why did all our fruits turn foul and brown? What fell down from the evil moon last night? All work was for naught, our wine has become poison, the evil eye seared yellow our fields and hearts. All of us became dry, and if fire were to touch us, then we would turn to dust like ashes - yes, fire itself we have made weary. All our wells dried up, even the sea retreated. All firm ground wants to crack, but the depths do not want to devour! 'Oh where is there still a sea in which one could drown?' - thus rings our lament - out across the shallow swamps. Indeed, we have already become too weary to die; now we continue to wake and we live on - in burial chambers!' - Thus Zarathustra heard a soothsayer speaking; and his prophecy went straight to his heart and transformed him. Sadly he went about and weary; and he became like those of whom the soothsayer had spoken. 'Indeed,' thus he spoke to his disciples, 'it lacks but little and this long twilight will come. Alas, how shall I rescue my light to the other side! It must not suffocate in this sadness! It shall be light to more distant worlds and most distant nights!'


Grieving thus in his heart Zarathustra walked about; and for three days he took no drink and no food, had no rest and lost his speech. At last it came to pass that he fell into a deep sleep. But his disciplines sat around him on long night watches and they waited anxiously for him to wake and speak again, and recover from his melancholy. This, however, is the speech that Zarathustra spoke when he awoke; but his voice came to his disciples as if from far away. 'HearthisdreamthatIdreamed,myfriends,andhelpmetounderstand its meaning! It is still an enigma to me, this dream; its meaning is hidden in it and locked away and it does not yet fly above it on free wings. I had renounced all life, thus I dreamed. I had become a night watchman and guardian of graves, there on the lonely mountain fortress of death. Up there I guarded his coffins; the musty vaults stood full of such symbols of conquest. From glass coffins, conquered life looked out at me. I breathed the odor of eternities turned to dust; my soul lay clammy and dusty, and who could have aired his soul in such a place! The brightness of midnight was about me always, loneliness crouched beside her, and thirdly, death-rattle silence, the worst of my three lady friends. I carried keys, the rustiest of all keys; and with them I knew how to open the creakiest of all gates. Like a bitterly evil croaking the sound penetrated through the long corridors as the gate's wings swung open; hideously this bird screeched, defiant in being awakened. But even more terrible and heart-constricting was the silence that set in around me when the gate fell quiet, and I sat alone in this treacherous silence. Thus the time passed and crept by me, if time existed anymore - what do I know! But at last something happened that awakened me. Three times there were blows at the door, like thundering, and the vaults echoed and howled three times in return; then I went to the gate. 'Alpa!' I cried. 'Who bears his ashes to the mountain? Alpa! Alpa! Who bears his ashes to the mountain?' And I pressed the key and lifted on the gate and strained. But it would not open even the width of a finger:


Thenaroaring wind tore its wings apart; whistling, shrilling and whipping it threw down a black coffin before me: And amidst the roaring and whistling and shrilling the coffin burst open and spewed forth thousandfold laughter. And it laughed and mocked and roared against me from a thousand grimacesofchildren,angels,owls,foolsandbutterfliesthesizeofchildren. I was horribly frightened; it threw me to the ground. And I cried out in terror as I have never cried before. But my own cries awakened me - and I came to. -' Thus Zarathustra related his dream and then he was silent, for he did not yet know the interpretation of his dream. But the disciple whom he loved most quickly stood up, took hold of Zarathustra's hand and said: Nietzsche is here using material from a dream he had. He explained the dream to his friend Reinhart von Seydlitz in , and mention of 'Alpa' shows up in the unpublished notes of summer . See Kritische Studienausgabe : . In his dream, Nietzsche was nearing the top of a seemingly endless mountain path when he passed a cave, out of which a mysterious voice cried: 'Alpa, Alpa - who carries his ashes to the mountains?' German Alptraum , or nightmare, is based on der Alp , which according to superstition is a ghost that crouches on the chest of the dreamer and causes bad dreams by pressuring or suffocating.


'Your life itself interprets this dream for us, oh Zarathustra! Are you yourself not the wind with its shrill whistling, that tears open the gates of the fortresses of death? Are you yourself not the coffin full of colorful sarcasms and the angelic grimaces of life? Indeed,likethousandfoldchildren'slaughterZarathustracomesintoall burial chambers, laughing at these night watchmen and grave guardians, and whoever else rattles about with dingy keys. You will frighten and lay them low with your laughter; your power over them will be proven by their swooning and awakening. And even if the long twilight comes and the weariness unto death, you will not set in our sky, you advocate of life! You allowed us to see new stars and new splendors of the night; indeed, you spanned laughter itself above us like a colorful tent. Children's laughter will well up from coffins from now on; a strong wind will come triumphantly to all weariness unto death from now on: of this you yourself are our guarantor and soothsayer! Indeed, you yourself dreamed them ,your enemies: that was your hardest dream! But as you awakened from them and came to yourself, thus shall they awaken from themselves - and come to you!' - Thus spoke the disciple, and all the others now crowded around Zarathustra and took him by the hands and wanted to persuade him to abandon his bed and his sadness and to return to them. But Zarathustra sat upright on his bed and with a strange look. Like someone who returns home from long sojourns abroad, he gazed at his disciples and examined their faces; and still he did not recognize them. But as they lifted him and helpedhimtohisfeet,behold,allatoncehiseyestransformed;hecomprehended all that had happened, stroked his beard and said in a strong voice: 'Well then! This has its time; but for now see to it, my disciples, that we prepare a good meal, and quickly! Thus I plan to do penance for bad dreams! But the soothsayer shall eat and drink beside me; and truly, I will yet show him a sea in which he can drown!'


Thus spoke Zarathustra. Then, however, he gazed long into the face of the disciple who had served as the dream interpreter, and he shook his head. - Second Part


As Zarathustra crossed over the great bridge one day, the cripples and the beggars surrounded him and a hunchback spoke thus to him: 'Behold, Zarathustra! The people too learn from you and are gaining faith in your teaching; but in order to believe you completely, they need one more thing - you must first persuade us cripples! Here you have a fine selection and truly, an opportunity with more than one scruff ! You can heal the blind and make the lame walk; and for the one who has too much behind him, you could surely take a bit away - that, I believe, would be the right way to make the cripples believe in Zarathustra!' Zarathustra, however, responded to the speaker thus: 'If one takes the hump from the hunchback, then one takes his spirit too - thus teach the people. And if one gives the blind man his eyesight, then he sees too many bad things on earth, such that he curses the one who healed him. But the one who makes the lame walk causes him the greatest harm, for scarcely does he begin to walk when his vices run away with him - thus teach the people about cripples. And why should Zarathustra not learn also from the people, if the people learn from Zarathustra? But it is the least thing to me, since I have been among human beings, when I see 'This one is missing an eye and That one an ear and the Third onealeg, and there are Others who lost their tongue or their nose or their head.' I see and have seen worse, and some of it so hideous that I do not want to speak of everything, and of a few things I do not even want to remain silent; namely human beings who were missing everything except the one thing they have too much of - human beings who are nothing more than one big eye, or one big maw or one big belly or some other big thing inverse cripples I call such types.


And as I came out of my solitude and crossed over this bridge the first time, then I didn't believe my eyes and I looked and I looked again and said at last: 'That is an ear! An ear as big as a person!' And I looked more closely, and really, beneath the ear something was moving that was pitifully small and pathetic and thin. And, in truth, the gigantic ear sat upon a little slender stalk - but the stalk was a human being! If one used a magnifying glass one could even recognize a tiny, envious miniature face; even a bloated little soul dangling on the stalk. But the people told me that the big ear was not only a human being, but a great human being,


a genius. But I have never believed the people when they speak of great human beings - and I maintained my belief that it was an inverse cripple who had too little of everything and too much of one thing.' When Zarathustra had spoken thus to the hunchback and to those for whomhehad served as mouthpiece and advocate, he turned deeply upset to his disciples and said: 'Truly,myfriends,Iwalkamonghumanbeingsasamongthefragments and limbs of human beings! This is what is most frightening to my eyes, that I find mankind in ruins and scattered about as if on a battle field or a butcher field. And if my gaze flees from the now to the past; it always finds the same: fragments and limbs and grisly accidents - but no human beings! The now and the past on earth - alas, my friends - that is what is most unbearable to me . And I would not know how to live if I were not also a seer of that which must come. A seer, a willer, a creator, a future himself and a bridge to the future and alas, at the same time a cripple at this bridge: all that is Zarathustra. And you too asked yourselves often: 'Who is Zarathustra to us? How shall he be known to us?' And like me you gave yourselves questions for answers. Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? An autumn? Or a plow? A physician? Or a convalescent? Is he a poet? Or a truthful man? A liberator? Or a tamer? A good man? Or an evil man? I walk among human beings as among the fragments of the future; that future that I see. And all my creating and striving amounts to this, that I create and piece together into one, what is now fragment and riddle and grisly accident. And how could I bear to be a human being if mankind were not also creator and solver of riddles and redeemer of accident? To redeem those who are the past and to recreate all 'it was' into 'thus I willed it!' - only that would I call redemption!


Will - thus the liberator and joy bringer is called; thus I taught you, my friends! And now learn this in addition: the will itself is still a prisoner. Willing liberates, but what is that called, which claps even the liberator in chains? Second Part 'It was': thus is called the will's gnashing of teeth and loneliest misery. Impotent against that which has been - it is an angry spectator of everything past. The will cannot will backward; that it cannot break time and time's greed - that is the will's loneliest misery. Willing liberates; what does willing plan in order to rid itself of its misery and mock its dungeon? Alas, every prisoner becomes a fool! Foolishly as well the imprisoned will redeems itself. That time does not run backward, that is its wrath. 'That which was' - thus the stone is called, which it cannot roll aside. And so it rolls stones around out of wrath and annoyance, and wreaks revenge on that which does not feel wrath and annoyance as it does. Thus the will, the liberator, became a doer of harm; and on everything that is capable of suffering it avenges itself for not being able to go back. This, yes this alone is revenge itself: the will's unwillingness toward time and time's 'it was.' Indeed, a great folly lives in our will; and it became the curse of all humankind that this folly acquired spirit! The spirit of revenge : my friends, that so far has been what mankind contemplate best; and wherever there was suffering, punishment was always supposed to be there as well. For 'punishment' is what revenge calls itself; with a lying word it hypocritically asserts its good conscience. And because in willing itself there is suffering, based on its inability to will backward - thus all willing itself and all living is supposed to be punishment! Andnowclouduponcloudrolledinoverthespirit,untilatlastmadness preached: 'Everything passes away, therefore everything deserves to pass away! And this itself is justice, this law of time that it must devour its own children' - thus preached madness.


'All things are ordained ethically according to justice and punishment. Alas,whereisredemptionfromthefluxofthingsandfromthepunishment called existence?' Thus preached madness. Thus Spoke Zarathustra 'Can there be redemption, if there is eternal justice? Alas, the stone 'it was' is unmoveable; all punishments too must be eternal!' Thus preached madness. 'No deed can be annihilated; how could it be undone through punishment? This, this is what is eternal about the punishment called existence, that existence must also eternally be deed and guilt again! Unless the will were to finally redeem itself and willing became notwilling - '; but my brothers, you know this fable song of madness! Away from these fable songs I steered you when I taught you: 'The will is a creator.' All 'it was' is a fragment, a riddle, a grisly accident - until the creating will says to it: 'But I will it thus! I shall will it thus!' But has it ever spoken thus? And when will this happen? Is the will already unharnessed from its own folly? Has the will already become its own redeemer and joy bringer? Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all gnashing of teeth? And who taught it reconciliation with time, and what is higher than any reconciliation? That will which is the will to power must will something higher than any reconciliation - buthow shall this happen? Who would teach it to also will backward?' - But at this point in his speech Zarathustra suddenly broke off and looked entirely like one who is appalled in the extreme. Appalled he looked at his disciples, his eyes penetrated their thoughts and their secret thoughts as if with arrows. But after a little while he laughed again and said, more calmly: 'It's difficult to live with people because keeping silent is so hard. Especially for someone who is talkative.' - Thus spoke Zarathustra. The hunchback meanwhile had listened to the conversation with his face covered, but when he heard Zarathustra laugh he looked up inquisitively and slowly said: 'But why does Zarathustra speak otherwise to us than to his disciples?' Zarathustra answered: 'What's to wonder about in that! One is allowed to speak hunched with hunchbacks!'


'Good,' said the hunchback, 'and with pupils one may tell tales out of school. But why does Zarathustra speak otherwise to his pupils - than to himself?' -


On Human Prudence, 1 = On Human Prudence. Not the height: the precipice is what is terrible! The precipice, where one's gaze plunges downward, 1 = . and one's hand grasps upward . There the heart is dizzy from its double will., 1 = . Oh my friends, can you guess even my heart's double will?, 1 = . my, 1 = . This, this is precipice and my danger, that my gaze plunges into the, 1 = . heights and that my hand must hold to and support itself - on the depths!, 1 = . My will clings to mankind, I bind myself with chains to mankind, 1 = . because I am drawn upward to the overman; for there my other will wills, 1 = . me., 1 = . And for this I live blind among people, just as if I did not know them:, 1 = . so that my hand does not entirely lose its faith in the firm. I do not know you human beings; this darkness and solace are often, 1 = . spread around me., 1 = . I sit at the gateway for every rogue and ask: who wants to deceive me?, 1 = . in order to not be on the lookout for deceivers., 1 = . Indeed, if I were on the lookout for mankind, how could mankind be, 1 = . an anchor to my ball? Too easily I would be swept up and away! This providence lies over my destiny, that I cannot be provident. And whoever would not die of thirst among human beings must learn, 1 = . to drink from all glasses; and whoever would remain clean among human, 1 = . beings must understand how to wash himself even with dirty water., 1 = . And thus I often spoke to comfort myself: 'Well then! Cheer up, old, 1 = . heart! One misfortune failed you; enjoy this as your - fortune!', 1 = . But this is my other human prudence: I spare the vain more than the, 1 = . proud., 1 = . Is wounded vanity not the mother of all tragedies? But where pride is, 1 = . wounded, there something even better than pride grows. For life to be a proper spectacle, its play must be well-played; but for, 1 = . this good play actors are needed.


I found all vain people to be good actors; they play and want to be, 1 = . spectacular - all their spirit is focused in this willing. They perform themselves, they invent themselves; in their proximity, 1 = . I love to be a spectator of life - it heals me of my melancholy. Therefore I spare the vain, because they are physicians for my melan-, 1 = . choly and keep me riveted to people as if to a play., 1 = Thus Spoke Zarathustra And at last I answered defiantly: 'Indeed, I know it, but I do not want to speak it!' Then it spoke to me again without voice: 'You do not want to, Zarathustra? Is this even true? Do not hide in your defiance!' - And I wept and trembled like a child and spoke: 'Oh, I wanted to, yes, but how can I? Spare me this one thing! It is beyond my strength!' Then it spoke to me again without voice: 'What do you matter, Zarathustra? Speak your word and break!' - And I answered: 'Alas, is it my word? Who am I? I am waiting for one more worthy; I am not worthy even of breaking under it.' Then it spoke to me again without voice: 'What do you matter? You are not yet humble enough for me. Humility has the toughest hide.' - And I answered: 'What has the hide of my humility not borne already! I dwell at the foot of my height; how high are my peaks? No one yet has told me. But well do I know my valleys.' Then it spoke to me again without voice: 'Oh Zarathustra, whoever has mountains to move must also move valleys and hollows.' - And I answered: 'As of yet my words have moved no mountains, and what I spoke did not reach mankind. I went to human beings, to be sure, but I have not yet arrived among them.' Then it spoke to me again without voice: 'What do you know of that ! The dew lands on the grass when the night is most silent.' - And I answered: 'They mocked me when I found and walked my own way; and in truth my feet trembled at that time.


And thus they spoke to me: 'You have forgotten the way, and now you are forgetting how to walk too!'' Then it spoke to me again without voice: 'What does their mockery matter! You are one who has forgotten how to obey; now you shall command! Do you not know who is needed most by everyone? The one who commands great things. To accomplish great things is difficult; but what is even more difficult is to command great things. That is what is most unforgivable in you: you have the power, and you do not want to rule.' - And I answered: 'I lack the lion's voice for all commanding.'


You look upward when you long for elevation. And I look down because I am elevated. Who among you can laugh and be elevated at the same time? Whoever climbs the highest mountain laughs at all tragic plays and tragic realities. Zarathustra , 'On Reading and Writing,' ( , p. ).


It was around midnight that Zarathustra started his route over the ridge of the island, in order to arrive at the other coast by early morning; for there he intended to board a ship. At that location there was safe harborage where even foreign ships liked to anchor; these would take the occasional passenger who wanted to cross the sea from the blessed isles. Now as Zarathustra climbed up the mountain he thought as he traveled about his many lonely wanderings since the time of his youth, and about how many mountains and ridges and peaks he had already climbed. I am a wanderer and a mountain climber, he said to his heart. I do not like the plains and it seems I cannot sit still for long. And whatever may come to me now as destiny and experience - it will involve wandering and mountain climbing: ultimately one experiences only oneself. The time has passed in which accidents could still befall me, and what could fall to me now that is not already my own? It merely returns, it finally comes home to me - my own self and everything in it that has long been abroad and scattered among all things and accidents. AndIknowonemorething: I am standing now before my last peak and before what has been saved for me for the longest time. Indeed, I must start my hardest path! Indeed, I have begun my loneliest hike! But whoever is of my kind does not escape such an hour, the hour that speaks to him: 'Only now do you go your way of greatness! Peak and abyss - they are now merged as one! You go your way of greatness; now what was formerly your ultimate danger has become your ultimate refuge! You go your way of greatness; now it must be your best courage that there is no longer a way behind you! Yougoyour way of greatness; here no one shall sneak along after you! Your foot itself erased the path behind you, and above it stands written: impossibility. And if now all ladders should fail, then you must know how to climb on your own head - how else would you climb upward? On your own head and over and beyond your own heart! Now what is mildest in you must become hardest.


Whoever has always spared himself much gets sick in the end from so much coddling. Praised be whatever makes hard! I do not praise the land where butter and honey flow! It is necessary to look away from oneself in order to see much : this hardness is needed by every mountain climber. But whoever is importunate with his eyes as a seeker of knowledge how could he see more of things than their foregrounds? But you, Zarathustra, you wanted to see the ground and background of all things, and so you must climb over yourself - up, upward, until you have even your stars beneath you!' Yes, look down on myself and even on my stars: only that would I call my peak , that remains to me as my ultimate peak! - Thus Zarathustra spoke to himself as he climbed, comforting his heart with hard sayings, for he was sore in his heart as never before. And as he came to the top of the mountain ridge, behold, there lay the other sea stretching before him, and he stood still and silent for a long time. But at this altitude the night was cold and clear and bright with stars. I recognize my lot, he said at last, with sorrow. Well then! I am ready. Just now my ultimate solitude began. Oh this black sad sea beneath me! Oh this pregnant nocturnal moroseness! Oh destiny and sea - now I must descend to you! I stand before my highest mountains and before my longest hike: therefore I must descend deeper than I ever climbed before: - descend deeper into suffering than I ever climbed before, down into its blackest flood! My destiny wills it so: Well then! I am ready. Wheredidthehighest mountains come from? Thus I once asked. Then I learned that they come from the sea. This testimony is written into their stone and onto the walls of their peaks. From the deepest the highest must come into its height. - Thus spoke Zarathustra at the pinnacle of the mountain, where it was cold. But as he came near to the sea and stood at last alone among the cliffs, then he had grown weary from his travels and felt even greater longing than before. Everything is still sleeping, he said; even the sea sleeps. Drunk with sleep and strangely it looks at me. But it breathes warmly, that I feel. And I also feel that it is dreaming. Dreaming it tosses on hard pillows. Thus Spoke Zarathustra


To you, bold searchers, researchers, and whoever put to terrible seas with cunning sails - to you, the riddle-drunk, the twilight-happy whose souls are lured by flutes to every maelstrom: -because you do not want to probe along a thread with cowardly hands; and because where you can guess , there you hate to deduce - to you alone I tell the riddle that I saw - the vision of the loneliest one. Darkly I walked recently through cadaver-colored twilight - darkly and hard, biting my lip. Not only one sun had set for me. A path that climbed defiantly through boulders, a malicious, lonely path consoled neither by weed nor shrub - a mountain path crunched under the defiance of my foot. Striding mutely over the mocking clatter of pebbles, crushing the rock that caused it to slip; thus my foot forced its way upward. Upward - in defiance of the spirit that pulled it downward, the spirit of gravity, my devil and arch-enemy. Upward - even though he sat atop me, half dwarf, half mole, lame, paralyzing, dripping lead into my ear, lead-drop thoughts into my brain. 'Oh Zarathustra,' he murmured scornfully, syllable by syllable. 'You stone of wisdom! You hurled yourself high, but every hurled stone must fall! OhZarathustra, you stone of wisdom, you sling stone, you star crusher! You hurled yourself so high - but every hurled stone - must fall! Sentenced to yourself and to your own stoning; oh Zarathustra, far indeed you hurled the stone - but it will fall back down upon you !' Then the dwarf became silent, and that lasted a long time. But his silence oppressed me, and being at two in such a way truly makes one lonelier than being at one! I climbed, I climbed, I dreamed, I thought - but everything oppressed me. I resembled a sick person whose severe agonies make him


Euch, den k uhnen Suchern, Versuchern . . . When the prefix veris added to suchen , to seek or to search, the verb is modified to mean try, attempt, but also tempt, so that the noun Versucher means both one who attempts and one who tempts. The noun der Versuch , meanwhile, means both attempt and experiment. Nietzsche frequently alludes to his favorite deity, Dionysus, as the Versucher-Gott , i.e. as the tempter god, attempter god (experimenter). I render this wordplay as 'searcher' and 'researcher' to preserve the wordplay, but wherever this particular combination occurs in TSZ or elsewhere, one should suspect Nietzsche is exploring the relationship between searching, attempting (experimenting, researching) and tempting. Thus Spoke Zarathustra 'You spirit of gravity!' I said, angrily. 'Do not make it too easy on yourself! Or I shall leave you crouching here where you crouch, lamefoot and I bore you this high ! See this moment!' I continued. 'From this gateway Moment a long eternal lane stretches backward : behind us lies an eternity. Must not whatever can already have passed this way before? Must not whatever can happen, already have happened, been done, passed by before? And if everything has already been here before, what do you think of this moment, dwarf? Must this gateway too not already - have been here? And are not all things firmly knotted together in such a way that this moment draws after it all things to come? Therefore - itself as well? For, whatever can run, even in this long lane outward -must run itonce more! - And this slow spider that creeps in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things - must not all of us have been here before? - And return and run in that other lane, outward, before us, in this long, eerie lane - must we not return eternally? -' Thus I spoke, softer and softer, for I was afraid of my own thought and secret thoughts. Then, suddenly, I heard a dog howl nearby. Had I ever heard a dog howl like this? My thoughts raced back. Yes! When I was a child, in my most distant childhood:


- then I heard a dog howl like this. And I saw it too, bristling, its head up, trembling in the stillest midnight when even dogs believe in ghosts: -sothat I felt pity. For the full moon had passed over the house, silent as death, and it had just stopped, a round smolder - stopped on the flat roof just as if on a stranger's property - that is the why the dog was so horror-stricken, because dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And when I heard it howl like this again, I felt pity once more. Where now was the dwarf? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Was I dreaming? Was I waking? I stood all of a sudden among wild cliffs, alone, desolate, in the most desolate moonlight. But there lay a human being ! And there! The dog jumping, bristling, whining - now it saw me coming - then it howled again, it screamed : had I ever heard a dog scream like this for help?


With such riddles and bitterness in his heart Zarathustra traveled across the sea. But when he was four days removed from the blessed isles and Thus Spoke Zarathustra from his friends, he had overcome all of his pain: triumphant and with firm footing he stood once again upon his destiny. And then Zarathustra spoke thus to his jubilating conscience: Iamalone again and want to be, alone with pure sky and open sea; and again it is afternoon around me. In the afternoon I once found my friends for the first time, in the afternoon then a second time: at the hour when all light grows stiller. For whatever happiness is still underway between sky and earth, it now seeks shelter for itself in a bright soul: out of happiness now all light has become stiller. Oh afternoon of my life! Once my happiness too climbed to the valley to seek itself a shelter; there it found these open, hospitable souls. Oh afternoon of my life! What have I not given up to have this one thing: this lively plantation of my thoughts and this morning light of my highest hope! Companions the creator once sought and children of his hope, and truly, it turned out that he could not find them unless he first created them himself. AndsoIaminthemiddleofmywork,goingtomychildrenandreturning from them; for the sake of his children Zarathustra must complete himself. For at bottom one loves only one's own child and work; and where there is great love for oneself it is the hallmark of pregnancy - this is what I found. My children are still greening in their first spring, standing close to one another and shaken by a common wind, the trees of my garden and best plot of soil. Andtruly, where such trees stand next to one another, there are blessed isles! But at some point I want to dig them up and set each one apart, so that it learns solitude and defiance and caution. Gnarled and crooked and with pliant hardness it shall stand then beside the sea, a living lighthouse of invincible life. There, where the storms plunge down into the sea and the mountain's trunk drinks water, there each one shall someday have his day and night watches, for his own testing and knowledge. Thus Spoke Zarathustra


When I have once overcome that challenge, then I want to overcome one still greater; and a triumph shall be the seal of my completion! - Meanwhile I still drift on uncertain seas; accident flatters me with its smooth tongue, and though I look forward and backward, I still see no end. As yet the hour of my final struggle has not come - or does it come just now? Indeed, with treacherous beauty the surrounding sea and life gaze at me! Oh afternoon of my life! Oh happiness before evening! Oh harbor on the high sea! Oh peace in uncertainty! How I mistrust you all! Indeed, I am mistrustful of your treacherous beauty! I resemble the lover who mistrusts the all too velvety smile. As he pushes his most beloved before him, tender even in his hardness, the jealous one - so too I push this blissful hour before me. Away with you, you blissful hour! Along with you an unwilling bliss came to me. Willing to take my deepest pain I stand here: you came at the wrong time! Away with you, you blissful hour! Rather take shelter there - with my children! Hurry! And bless them before evening with my happiness! The evening is coming now, the sun is sinking. Gone - my happiness! - Thus spoke Zarathustra. And he waited for his unhappiness the whole night, but he waited in vain. The night remained bright and still, and happiness itself came closer and closer to him. Toward morning, however, Zarathustra laughed in his heart and said mockingly: 'Happiness chases after me, and that is because I do not chase after women. But happiness is a woman.'


Oh sky above me, you pure, you deep one! You abyss of light! Gazing at you I shudder with godlike desires. To hurl myself into your height - that is my depth! To hide myself in your purity - that is my innocence. The god is veiled by his beauty; thus you conceal your stars. You do not speak; thus you make your wisdom known to me. Mutely you rose for me today over the roaring sea, your love and your modesty speak revelation to my roaring soul. Thus Spoke Zarathustra And'whoever cannot bless, let him learn to curse!' - this bright teaching fell to me from the bright sky, this star stands in my sky even in black nights. Iamablesser and a Yes-sayer if only you are around me, you pure, you bright one, you abyss of light! Into all abysses then I carry my Yes-saying that blesses. I have become a blesser and a Yes-sayer, and for this I wrestled long and was a wrestler, in order to free my hands one day for blessing. But this is my blessing: to stand over each thing as its own sky, as its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security - and blessed is he who blesses so! For all things are baptized at the well of eternity and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are only shadows in between and damp glooms and drift-clouds. Truly it is a blessing and no blasphemy when I teach: 'Over all things stands the sky accident, the sky innocence, the sky chance, the sky mischief.' 'By chance' - that is the oldest nobility in the world, I gave it back to all things, I redeemed them from their servitude under purpose. This freedom and cheerfulness of the sky I placed like an azure bell over all things when I taught that over them and through them no 'eternal will' - wills. This mischief and this folly I placed in place of that will when I taught: 'With all things one thing is impossible - rationality!' A bit of reason to be sure, a seed of wisdom sprinkled from star to star this sourdough is mixed into all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed into all things! A bit of wisdom is indeed possible; but I found this blessed certainty in all things: that on the feet of accident they would rather dance .


Oh sky above me, you pure, you exalted one! This your purity is to me now, that there is no eternal spider and spider web of reason: - that you are my dance floor for divine accident, that you are my gods' table for divine dice throws and dice players! - But you blush? Did I speak the unspeakable? Did I blaspheme when I wanted to bless you? Or is it the shame of us two that made you blush? - Do you command me to go and be silent because now - the day is coming?


The world is deep - and deeper than the day has ever grasped. Not everything may be permitted to speak before day. But the day is coming, and so let us part now! Oh sky above me, you bashful, you glowing one! Oh you my happiness before sunrise! The day is coming, and so let us part now! - Thus spoke Zarathustra.


When Zarathustra was on dry land again he did not go directly to his mountains and his cave, but instead took many ways and asked many questions and found out about this and that, saying of himself jokingly: 'Look at the river that flows back to its source in many windings!' For he wanted to learn what had transpired in the meantime among human beings ; whether they had become bigger or smaller. And once he saw a row of new houses, and he was amazed then and he said: 'What do these houses mean? Truly, no great soul placed them here, as a parable of itself! Probably some feeble-minded child took them out of its toy box? If only another child would put them back into its toy box! And these parlors and chambers; can men go in and out here? To me they seem made for satin dolls, or for nibblers who probably let themselves be nibbled.' AndZarathustra stood still and reflected. At last he said sadly: ' Everything has become smaller! Everywhere I see lower gateways; whoever is like me can still pass through, but - he has to stoop! OhwhenwillIreturntomyhomelandwhereInolongerhavetostoopno longer have to stoop before the small ones !' - And Zarathustra sighed and gazed into the distance. - Onthe same day, however, he delivered his speech on virtue that makes small. I walk among these people and keep my eyes open; they do not forgive me that I am not envious of their virtues. Thus Spoke Zarathustra They bite at me because I say to them: for small people small virtues are necessary - and because I find it hard to grasp that small people are necessary ! I still resemble the rooster here in a strange barnyard, whom even the hens bite; and yet I am not bad to the hens because of that. I am courteous toward them as toward all small annoyances; to be prickly toward what is small strikes me as wisdom for porcupines. They all talk about me when they sit around the fire evenings - they talk about me, but no one thinks - about me! This is the new stillness that I learned: their noise concerning me spreads a cloak over my thoughts.


They make noise among themselves: 'What does this dark cloud want with us? Let's see to it that it does not bring us a plague!' And recently a woman snatched her child to herself, who wanted to come to me: 'Take the children away!' she shouted. 'Such eyes singe children's souls.' They cough when I speak, they think that coughing is an objection to strong wind - they guess nothing of the roaring of my happiness! 'We still have no time for Zarathustra' - thus they object; but what does any time matter which 'has no time' for Zarathustra? And even if they were to praise me, how could I fall asleep on their praise? Their praise is a belt of thorns to me; it scratches me even when I take it off. And this also I learned among them: the one who praises pretends that he is giving back, but in truth he wants to be given even more! Ask my foot whether it likes their tune of praise and palaver! Indeed, to such a beat and tick-tock it wants neither to dance nor to stand still. They want to palaver and praise me to their small virtue; they would like to persuade my foot to the tick-tock of their small happiness. I walk among these people and keep my eyes open; they have become smaller and are becoming ever smaller: but this is because of their teaching on happiness and virtue . For they are modest even in their virtue - because they want contentment. But only modest virtue goes along with contentment. Even they, of course, learn to stride and to stride forward in their way this is what I call their hobbling . This way they become an obstacle to anyone who is in a hurry. Thus Spoke Zarathustra I walk among these people and let many a word fall, but they know neither to take nor to keep. TheyareamazedthatIdidnotcometolambastlustingandmalignancy, and truly, nor did I come to warn of pick-pockets! They are amazed that I am not prepared to make their cleverness wittier and prettier, as if they did not have enough cleverlings already, whose voices scrape me like chalk on slate!


And when I shout: 'A curse on all cowardly devils in you, who like to whine and fold their hands and worship,' then they shout: 'Zarathustra is godless.' And especially their teachers of resignation shout it - but they are precisely the ones into whose ears I like to shout: 'Yes! I am Zarathustra, the godless one!' These teachers of resignation! Wherever there is pettiness and sickness and scabs, they crawl to it like lice; and only my disgust prevents me from cracking them. Well then! This is my sermon for their ears: I am Zarathustra, the godless, who says: 'Who is more godless than I, so that I can enjoy his instruction?' IamZarathustra, the godless: where do I find my equal? And all those are my equal who give themselves their own will and put aside all resignation. IamZarathustra, the godless: I still cook every chance in my pot. And only when it has been well cooked in there do I welcome it as my food. And truly, many a chance came to me imperiously, but my will spoke to it even more imperiously - and already it lay begging on its knees - - begging me for protection and affection and addressing me with flattery: 'Look, oh Zarathustra, it's only a friend coming to a friend!' - But why do I speak where no one has my ears! And so I want to shout it out to the four winds: You are becoming smaller and smaller, you small people! You are crumbling, you contented ones! You will yet perish - - of your many small virtues, of your many small abstentions, of your many small resignations! Too sparing, too yielding - that is your soil! But in order for a tree to grow tall , it needs to put down hard roots amid hard rock!


, Third Part = And even what you abstain from weaves at the web of all future. , Third Part = humanity; even your nothing is a spider web and a spider that lives off. the blood of the future., Third Part = And when you take, it's like stealing, you small-virtued ones; and even. among rogues honor, Third Part = says: 'One should only steal where one can not. rob.', Third Part = . 'It will give' - that too is a teaching of resignation. But I say to you, Third Part = . contented people: it will take, Third Part = and it will take more and more from you!. Oh if only you would put aside all half, Third Part = willing and become as resolute. in your sloth as in your deeds! Oh if only you understood my words: 'Go ahead and do whatever you, Third Part = !. will - but first be the kind of people who can will, Third Part = . Go ahead and love your neighbors as you love yourselves - but first be, Third Part =


The winter, a wicked guest, sits in my house; my hands are blue from his friendly handshake. I honor him, this wicked guest, but I gladly let him sit alone. Gladly I run away from him, and if one runs well , then one can escape him! With warm feet and warm thoughts I run to where the wind is calm to the sunny spot of my mount of olives. Thus Spoke Zarathustra There I laugh at my fierce guest and still think well of him for catching the flies in my house and silencing much small noise. For he does not tolerate it when a mosquito or two wants to sing; he also makes the lane so lonely that the moonlight is afraid in it at night. Ahardguestis he - but I honor him, and I do not pray to the pot-bellied fire idol like the weaklings. Rather a bit of teeth chattering than worshiping idols - that is how my kind wants it! And I especially grudge all horny, steamy, musty fire idols. Whomever I love, I love better in winter than in summer; better and more heartily I now mock my enemies since winter sits at home with me. Heartily indeed, even when I crawl to bed - then even my hiding happiness laughs and makes mischief; even my lying dream laughs. I, a crawler? Never in my life have I crawled before the mighty; and if I ever lied, then I lied out of love. That is why I am cheerful even in my winter bed. A meager bed warms me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my poverty, and in winter it is most faithful to me. Each day I begin with a malice; I mock winter with a cold bath - that makes my fierce house guest growl. I also like to tickle him with a little wax candle, so that finally he will release the sky from ashen grey twilight. In the morning I am especially malicious, in the early hour when the pail clatters at the well and the horses whinny warmly through grey lanes: Impatiently I wait for the bright sky to open at last, the snow-bearded winter sky, the old man and white-head - - the winter sky, the silent one who often keeps even his sun silent! Did I learn my long bright silence from him? Or did he learn it from me? Or did each of us invent it on his own?


The origin of all good things is thousandfold - all good mischievous things leap for joy into existence: so how are they supposed to do this only once? Long silence too is a good mischievous thing, and looking out of a round-eyed face like the winter sky -


, Third Part = - to be silent like the winter sky about one's sun and one's uncom-. well !, Third Part = promising solar will: indeed, this art and this winter mischief I learned. , Third Part = Myfavorite malice and art is that my silence learned not to betray itself. , Third Part = through silence.. , Third Part = Rattling with diction and dice I outwit the solemn waiting ones; my. will and purpose shall elude all these fierce watchers., Third Part = . , Third Part = To prevent anyone from looking down into my ground and ultimate. will, I invented my long bright silence., Third Part = . so that no one could see through him and down into him., Third Part = . , Third Part = But precisely to him came the more clever mistrustful ones and nut. , Third Part = crackers; precisely his most hidden fish they fished out of him!. , Third Part = of those who keep silent; those whose ground is so deep that even the. , Third Part = brightest water does not - betray it.. You snow-bearded silent winter sky, you round-eyed white-head above, Third Part = . me! Oh you heavenly parable of my soul and its mischief!, Third Part = . must, Third Part = I not conceal myself like someone who has swallowed gold -. And, Third Part = . so that they do not slit open my soul? Must overlook, Third Part = I not wear stilts so that they my long legs - all these plain. jealous and pain zealous who surround me?, Third Part = jealous and pain zealous who surround me?. These smoky, room-temperature, used up, greened-out, grief ridden, Third Part = These smoky, room-temperature, used up, greened-out, grief ridden. souls - how could their envy bear my happiness!, Third Part = souls - how could their envy bear my happiness!. And so I show them only the ice and the winter on my peaks - and, Third Part = And so I show them only the ice and the winter on my peaks - and. not, Third Part = not. that my mountain winds all the belts of the sun around itself!, Third Part = that my mountain winds all the belts of the sun around itself!. , Third Part = They hear only my winter storms whistling, and not


that I also glide. over warm seas like longing, heavy, sultry south winds. They still have mercy on my accidents and coincidences: but, Third Part = over warm seas like longing, heavy, sultry south winds. They still have mercy on my accidents and coincidences: but. say: 'Let accident come to me: it is innocent, like a little child!', Third Part = say: 'Let accident come to me: it is innocent, like a little child!'. How could they bear my happiness if I did not cover my happiness, Third Part = . , Third Part = with accidents and winter emergencies and polar bear caps and snow-sky. , Third Part = sheets?. - If I myself didn't have mercy on their pity, Third Part = : the pity of these who are. plain jealous and pain zealous!, Third Part = plain jealous and pain zealous!. - If I myself didn't sigh before them, teeth chattering, and patiently, Third Part = - If I myself didn't sigh before them, teeth chattering, and patiently. allow, Third Part = allow. myself to be wrapped in their pity!, Third Part = myself to be wrapped in their pity!


It is the wise mischief and benevolence of my soul that it does not conceal its winter and its ice storms; nor does it conceal its frostbites. One person's loneliness is the escape of the sick; another's loneliness is the escape from the sick. Let them hear mechatter and sigh from winter cold, all these wretched, leering rascals around me! With such sighing and chattering I still escape their heated rooms. Let them sympathize and sympasigh about my frostbite: 'He will freeze yet from the ice of knowledge!' - so they lament. Meanwhile I run with warm feet crisscross on my mount of olives; in the sunny spot of my mount of olives I sing and mock all pitying. - Thus sang Zarathustra.


In this manner, hiking slowly through many peoples and towns, Zarathustra returned the long way to his mountains and his cave. And then, unexpectedly, he also arrived at the gate of the big city . Here, however, a foaming fool with outstretched hands leaped toward him and blocked his path. And this was the same fool whom the people called 'Zarathustra's ape,' because he had memorized some of the phrasing and tone of Zarathustra's speaking and also liked to borrow from the treasure of his wisdom. The fool spoke thus to Zarathustra: 'Oh Zarathustra, this is the big city: here you have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Why do you want to wade through this mud? Have pity on your feet! Spit on the city gate instead and - turn around! Here is hell for hermit's thoughts; here great thoughts are boiled alive and cooked till they are small. Hereall great feelings rot; here only tiny, rattlebone feelings are allowed to rattle! Doyounotalreadysmelltheslaughterhousesandkitchensofthespirit? Does this town not steam with the reek of slaughtered spirit? 'M ogen sie mich bemitleiden und bemitseufzen ob meiner Frostbeulen' - playful coinages such as bemitseufzen ,ofwhich there are several in TSZ, can often seem alienating and outrageous to readers of German, and clearly this was Nietzsche's intention. Though very difficult to translate, and frequently accompanied by internal rhyme, alliteration, and other lyrical devices, these vivacious puns and coinages nonetheless deserve an attempt on the translator's part. Thus Spoke Zarathustra - where everything that is crumbly, corrupted, lusty, dusky, overly mushy and pussy festers together confederately: - - spit on the big city and turn around!' - At this point, however, Zarathustra interrupted the foaming fool and clapped his hand over the fool's mouth. 'Stop at last!' cried Zarathustra. 'Your speech and your ways have nauseated me for a long time already! Why have you lived so long near the swamp, that you yourself had to turn into a frog and a toad?


Doesn't tainted and frothy, decrepit swamp blood flow in your own veins now, since you have learned to croak and lambast this way? Whydidn't you go into the woods? Or plow the earth? Isn't the sea full of green islands? I despise your despising; and if you warned me - why didn't you warn yourself? Out of love alone shall my despising and my warning bird fly up: but not out of the swamp! - They call you my ape, you foaming fool; but I call you my grunting swine - by grunting you will yet spoil my praise of folly. Whatwasitafter all that made you start grunting? That no one flattered you enough - so you sat down to this garbage in order to have reason to grunt a lot - - in order to have reason for a lot of revenge ! Indeed, all your foaming is revenge, you vain fool; I guessed you well! But your fool's words injure me , even where you are right! And if Zarathustra's words were right even a hundred times: you would always do wrong with my words!' Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he looked at the big city, sighed, and kept silent for a long time. Finally he spoke thus: 'I am nauseated too by this big city and not only by this fool. Here as there nothing can be bettered, nothing can be worsened. Woe to this big city! - And I wish I already saw the pillar of fire in which it will burn! For such pillars of fire must precede the great noon. But this has its own time and its own destiny. - Meanwhile, you fool, I give you this lesson in parting: where one can no longer love, there one should pass by !' - Thus spoke Zarathustra and he passed by the fool and the big city.


Alas, does everything lie wilted and grey that only recently stood green and colorful in this meadow? And how much honey of hope I carried from here to my beehives! All these young hearts have already grown old - and not even old! Only weary, common, comfortable - as they put it: 'We have become pious again.' Just recently I saw them set out by early morning on brave feet, but their feet of knowledge grew weary, and now they slander even their braveness of the morning! Truly, many a one used to raise his legs like a dancer; the laughter in my wisdom beckoned to him - then he reconsidered. Just now I saw him crooked - and crawling to the cross. Once they fluttered around light and freedom like gnats and young poets. A bit older, a bit colder, and already they monger rumors in the dark, thronging around the stove. Did their hearts falter perhaps because solitude swallowed me like a whale? Did their ears listen perhaps longingly long in vain for me and my trumpet and herald calls? Too bad!Thosewhoseheartshavelongcourageandencouragemischief are always few; and in such the spirit too remains patient. But the rest are cowardly . Therest:thesearealwaysthemostbyfar,thedaytoday,thesuperfluous, the far-too-many - all of these are cowardly! Whoever is of my kind also encounters my kind of experiences along the way, so that his first companions have to be corpses and jesters. His second companions, however - they will call themselves his believers : a living swarm, much love, much folly, much beardless veneration. Whoever is of my kind among human beings should not tie his heart to these believers; whoever knows capricious, cowardly humankind should not believe in these spring times and colorful meadows! If they could do otherwise, then they would also will otherwise. Halfand-halfs spoil all that is whole. That leaves will wilt - what is to be lamented here! Third Part


Let them fly and fall, oh Zarathustra, and do not lament! Better yet blow among them with rustling wind - - blow among these leaves, oh Zarathustra, so that everything wilted runs away from you even faster! - 'We have become pious again' - so these apostates confess, and some of them are still too cowardly to confess in this manner. I look them in the eye - I tell them to their faces and to their blushing cheeks: You are the kind who pray again! But it is a disgrace to pray! Not for everyone, but for you and me and whoever still has a conscience in his head. For you it is a disgrace to pray! You know it well; your cowardly devil in you, who likes to fold his hands and lay his hands in his lap and wants to have it easier - this cowardly devil exhorts you: 'There is a God!' With that however you belong to the shade-loving variety who are never left in peace by light; now every day you must stick your head deeper into night and mist! And truly, you chose the hour well, for just now the night birds are flying out. The hour has come for all shade-loving folk, the evening and commemoration hour when they do not 'commemorate.' I hear and smell it: their hour came for the hunt and the procession, not for a wild hunt, to be sure, but for a tame, lame, snooping, up-buttering prayer muttering hunt - -for a hunt for soulful mousy yes-men; all the heart's mousetraps have nowbeensetagain! And wherever I lift a curtain, a little night moth comes fluttering out. Did it perhaps crouch there with another little night moth? For everywhere I smell little communities that have crept away; and where there are little rooms there are new Holy Joes in them and the reek of Holy Joes. They sit long evenings together and say: 'Let us become as little children again and say 'dear God'!' - their mouths and stomachs ruined by pious confectioners. Or they watch long evenings the cunning lurking cross spider, which preaches cleverness to the spiders themselves and thus teaches: 'There is good spinning among crosses!' Has the time not long since past even for all such doubting? Who is allowed anymore to wake up such old, sleeping, shade-loving things!


It has been over for the old gods for a long time now - and truly, they had a good cheerful gods' end! They did not 'twilight' themselves to death - that is surely a lie! Instead, they just one day up and laughed themselves to death! This happened when the most godless words were uttered by a god himself - the words: 'There is one god. Thou shalt have no other god before me!' - - an old grim-beard of a god, a jealous one forgot himself in this way: And all the gods laughed then and rocked in their chairs and cried: 'Is godliness not precisely that there are gods but no God?' He who has ears to hear, let him hear. - Thus spoke Zarathustra in the town that he loved and which is called The Motley Cow. From here he had only two more days to go to return to his cave and his animals, and his soul jubilated constantly at the nearness of his homecoming. -


Ohsolitude! Oh you my home solitude! I lived wild too long in wild foreign lands to not return to you with tears! Nowgoahead and threaten me with your finger, like mothers threaten; now smile at me, like mothers smile; now say to me: 'And who was it that once stormed out on me like a storm wind? - - who called out in leaving: 'too long have I sat with solitude, and I have forgotten how to keep silent!' That - you have learned now? Oh Zarathustra, I know everything, and that you were more forsaken among the many, you solitary one, than ever with me! Being forsaken is one thing, solitude is another: that - you have now learned! And that among human beings you will always be wild and foreign. Wild and foreign even when they love you; for what they want above all is to be spared ! But here you are in your own home and house; here you can speak everything out and pour out all the reasons, nothing here is ashamed of obscure, obstinate feelings. Here all things come caressingly to your rhetoric and they flatter you, for they want to ride on your back. Here you ride on every parable to every truth. Third Part Here you may speak uprightly and forthrightly to all things, and truly, it rings like praise in their ears that someone talks straight with all things! But being forsaken is another matter. For do you still recall, oh Zarathustra, when your bird called above you, when you stood in the woods, hesitating about which way to go, close to a corpse? - Whenyouspoke:'Maymyanimalsguideme!Ifounditmoredangerous among human beings than among animals' that was forsaken! And do you still recall, oh Zarathustra, when you sat on your island, a well of wine among empty buckets, giving and giving away, among the thirsty bestowing and flowing: - until at last you alone sat thirsty among the drunk and lamented at night: 'is receiving not more blessed than giving? And stealing even more blessed than receiving?' That was forsaken! And do you still recall, oh Zarathustra, when your stillest hour came and drove you away from yourself, when with evil whispers it said: 'Speak and break!' -


- when it made you sorry for all your waiting and silence and discouraged your cautious courage: that was forsaken!' - Oh solitude! You my home solitude! How blissfully and tenderly your voice speaks to me! We do not implore one another, we do not deplore one another, we walk openly with one another through open doors. Foratyour house it is open and bright, and even the hours run here on lighter feet. In darkness, after all, time is heavier to bear than in the light. Here all of being's words and word shrines burst open; here all being wants to become word, here all becoming wants to learn from me how to speak. But down there - there all speaking is in vain! There forgetting and passing by are the best wisdom: that - I have now learned! Whoever wanted to comprehend everything among human beings would have to apprehend everything. But for that my hands are too clean. I cannot stand even to inhale their breath; too bad that I have lived so long among their noise and bad breath! 'Wir gehen offen miteinander.' Kaufmann misread offen , openly, as oft or ofters : 'we often walk together.' Thus Spoke Zarathustra Oh blissful silence around me! Oh clean fragrances around me ! Oh how this silence takes a deep clean breath! Oh how it listens, this blissful silence! But down there - everyone talks there, everyone is ignored there. One could ring in his wisdom with bells, and the shopkeepers in the market place would jingle it out with pennies. Everyonetalksamongthem,nooneknowsanymorehowtounderstand. Everything falls in the water, nothing falls anymore into deep wells. Everyone talks among them, nothing works out anymore and comes to an end. Everyone cackles, but who wants to sit still in the nest anymore and hatch eggs? Everyonetalks among them, everything gets talked to death. And whatever was still too hard yesterday for time itself and for its tooth, today it hangs scraped up and chewed up from the snouts of today's people. Everyone talks among them, everything is betrayed. And what was once called secret and secrecy of deep souls, today it belongs to the street trumpeters and other butterflies. Ohhumannature, you strange thing! You noise in dark lanes! Now you lie behind me again - my greatest danger lies behind me!


In sparing and pitying my greatest danger always lay; and all human nature wants to be spared and pitied. Withconcealed truths, with a fool's hand and a fooled, infatuated heart, rich in pity's petty lies - this is how I lived among human beings. Disguised I sat among them, ready to misjudge myself in order to stand them , and gladly urging myself: 'You fool, you do not know human beings!' One forgets about human beings when one lives among human beings; there is too much foreground in all human beings - what use are farsighted, far-seeking eyes there ! And when they misjudged me, I, fool, spared them more than myself, since I am accustomed to hardness, and often I even took revenge on myself for being so sparing. Covered in bites by poisonous flies and hollowed out, like a stone, by manydropsofmalice,IsatamongthemandstillItoldmyself:'Everything small is innocent of its smallness!' Especially those who call themselves 'the good,' I found to be the most poisonous flies; they sting in all innocence, they lie in all innocence - how could they be just toward me! Thus Spoke Zarathustra - as if a plump apple offered itself to my hand, a ripe golden apple, with cool soft velvety peel - thus the world offered itself to me: -asifatree waved to me, a broad-limbed, strong-willed tree, bent as a support and even as a footrest for the weary traveler: thus stood the world on my foothill: - as if delicate hands carried a shrine toward me - a shrine open for the delight of bashful, venerating eyes: thus the world offered itself to me today: - not riddle enough to chase away human love, not solution enough to lull human wisdom to sleep - a humanly good thing the world was for me today, of which so much evil is spoken! HowdoIthank my morning dream for allowing me to weigh the world early this morning? As a humanly good thing it came to me, this dream and consoler of the heart! And in order to do by day what it does, and to imitate it and learn its best, I now want to place the three most evil things on the scale and weigh them humanly well.


He that taught to bless here also taught to curse: what are the three best-cursed things in the world? These I want to place on the scale. Sex, lust to rule, selfishness : these three have been cursed best and slandered and lied about most so far - these three I want to weigh humanly well. Well then! Here is my foothill and there is the sea; it rolls up to me, shaggy, flattering, the faithful old hundred-headed behemoth hound that I love. Well then! Here I want to hold the scale over rolling seas, and I also choose a witness to look on - you, you hermit tree, you strongly fragrant, broadly vaulted tree that I love! Onwhat bridge does the now get to the someday? By what compulsion does the high compel itself to the low? And what commands even the highest - to grow higher? Nowthescalestands balanced and still: three weighty questions I threw into it, three weighty answers are borne by the other pan. Sex: the thorn and stake of all hair-shirted body despisers, and cursed as 'world' among all hinterworldly, because it mocks and fools all teachers of muddle and mistakes. Thus Spoke Zarathustra And it was then that it happened - indeed happened for the first time! - that his words pronounced selfishness blessed, the sound, healthy selfishness that wells from a powerful soul - - from a powerful soul to which the high body belongs, the beautiful, triumphant, invigorating body, around which every manner of thing becomes mirror: - the supple persuading body, the dancer whose parable and epitome is the self-joyous soul. Such self-joy of body and soul calls itself: 'Virtue.' With its words of good and bad such self-joy shields itself as if with sacred groves; with the names of its happiness it banishes from itself everything contemptible. From itself it banishes all that is cowardly, saying: 'Bad that is cowardly !' It considers contemptible those who always worry, sigh, complain, and whoever picks up even the smallest advantages. It also despises all woe-wallowing wisdom, for indeed, there is also wisdom that blossoms in darkness, a night shadow wisdom that always sighs: 'All is vain!'


It holds shy mistrust in low esteem, and everyone who wants oaths instead of gazes and hands; and all wisdom that is all too mistrustful because this is the way of cowardly souls. Even lower it esteems those quick to please, the dog-like who lie on their backs right away, the humble; and there is wisdom too that is humble and dog-like and pious and quick to please. Utterly disgusting and despicable to it are those who never defend themselves, who swallow poisonous spittle and evil stares; the all too patient, all-enduring, all-complacent: for they are the servile kind. Whether a person is servile before gods and gods' kicks, or before human beings and stupid human opinions: all servile kind it spits on, this blissful selfishness! Bad: that is what it calls everything that is struck down, stingy and servile; fettered blinking eyes, oppressed hearts, and those false, yielding types who kiss with broad cowardly lips. And pseudo-wisdom: that is what it calls everything that servants and old men and weary people witticize; and especially the whole nasty nitwitted, twitwitted foolishness of priests! The pseudo-wise, however, all the priests, the world weary and whoever's souls are of the woman's and servant's kind - oh how their game Thus Spoke Zarathustra Whoever one day teaches humans to fly, will have shifted all boundary stones; for him all boundary stones themselves will fly into the air, he will christen the earth anew - as 'the light one.' The ostrich runs faster than the fastest horse, but it also sticks its head heavily into the heavy earth; so too the human being who cannot yet fly. Heavy do earth and life seem to him; and the spirit of gravity wants it so! But whoever wants to become light and a bird must love himself thus I teach. Not, to be sure, with the love of the sick and addicted, because among them even self-love stinks! One has to learn to love oneself - thus I teach - with a hale and healthy love, so that one can stand oneself and not have to roam around. Such roaming around christens itself 'love of the neighbor': these words so far have produced the best lying and hypocrisy, and especially from those whom all the world found heavy.


And truly, this is not a command for today and tomorrow, this learning to love oneself. Instead, of all arts this is the most subtle, cunning, ultimate and most patient. For one's own, you see, all one's own is well hidden; and of all buried treasures, one's own is the latest to be dug up - this is the spirit of gravity's doing. Almost from the cradle, grave words and values are imparted to us; 'good' and 'evil' this dowry calls itself. For its sake we are forgiven for being alive. And for this reason one lets the little children come to one, in order to restrain them early on from loving themselves: this is the spirit of gravity's doing. And we - we faithfully lug what is imparted to us on hard shoulders and over rough mountains! And if we sweat, then we are told: 'Yes, life is a heavy burden!' But only the human being is a heavy burden to himself! This is because he lugs too much that is foreign to him. Like a camel he kneels down and allows himself to be well burdened. Especially the strong human being who is eager to bear and inherently reverent: too many foreign words and values he loads upon himself - now life seems a desert to him! Thus Spoke Zarathustra Damned I also call those who must always wait - they offend my taste: all the publicans and grocers and kings and other shop- and countrykeepers. Indeed, I too learned to wait, and thoroughly - but only to wait for myself . And above all I learned to stand and walk and run and leap and climb and dance. But this is my teaching; whoever wants to fly someday must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance - one cannot fly one's way to flight! On rope ladders I learned to climb to many a window, with agile legs I climbed up high masts: to sit atop tall masts of knowledge struck me as no small bliss - - to flicker like small flames atop tall masts; a small light, to be sure, and yet a great comfort for stranded sailors and shipwreck survivors! By many a trail and manner I came to my truth; not on one ladder did I climb to my height, where my eye roams out into my distance.


And I never liked asking the way - that always offended my taste! I preferred to question and try the ways myself. All my coming and going was a trying and questioning - and truly, one must also learn to answer such questioning! That, however - is my taste: - not good, not bad, but my taste, of which I am no longer shameful nor secretive. 'This - it turns out - is my way - where is yours?' - That is how I answered those who asked me 'the way.' The way after all - it does not exist! Thus spoke Zarathustra.


Here I sit and wait, old broken tablets around me and also new tablets only partially written upon. When will my hour come? - the hour of my going down, going under: for I want to return to mankind once more. This is what I wait for now; signs must come to me first that it is my hour - namely the laughing lion with a swarm of doves.


Meanwhile I talk to myself as one who has time. No one tells me anything new, and so I tell myself to myself. When I came to mankind, I found them sitting on an old conceit: they all conceited to have known for a long time what is good and evil for humanity. To them all talk of virtue seemed an old worn out thing; and whoever wanted to sleep well even spoke about 'good' and 'evil' before going to bed. I disturbed this sleepiness when I taught: what is good and evil no one knows yet - except for the creator! He, however, is the one who creates a goal for mankind and gives the earth its meaning and its future: This one first creates the possibility that something can be good and evil. I told them to overthrow their old professorial chairs wherever that old conceit had sat; I told them to laugh at their great masters of virtue and their saints and poets and world redeemers. I told them to laugh at their gloomy wise men and at any who ever perched in warning, like black scarecrows, in the tree of life. Isat down alongside their great road of graves and even among carrion andvultures - and I laughed at all their yesteryear and its rotting, decaying glory. Indeed, like preachers of repentance and fools I screamed bloody murder about all their great and small - that their best is so very small! that their most evil is so very small! - I had to laugh. Thus my wild longing cried and laughed out of me, born in the mountains, a wild wisdom surely! - my great, winging, roaring longing. And often it swept me off my feet and up and away, in the midst of my laughter, where I flew quivering, an arrow, through sun-drunken delight: - off into distant futures not yet glimpsed in dreams, into hotter souths than any artist ever dreamed of; there, where dancing gods are ashamed of all clothing: - so that I must speak in parables and limp and stutter like the poets; and truly, I am ashamed that I must still be a poet! - Thus Spoke Zarathustra Where all becoming seemed to me the dance of gods and the mischief of gods, and the world seemed unloosed and frolicsome and as though it were fleeing back to itself:


-asaneternal fleeing from and seeking each other again of many gods, as the blissful contradicting, again-hearing, again-nearing each other of many gods: Where all time seemed to me a blissful mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played blissfully with the sting of freedom: Where I once again found my old devil and arch-enemy, the spirit of gravity, and everything he created: compulsion, statute, necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil: For must there not exist something over which one dances, dances away? Must not, for the sake of the light and the lightest - moles and heavy dwarves exist? - It was there too that I picked up the word 'overman' along the way, and that the human is something that must be overcome, - that human being is a bridge and not an end; counting itself blessed for its noon and evening as the way to new dawns: - the Zarathustra-words about the great noon, and whatever else I suspended above mankind like purple second sunsets. Truly, I allowed them to see new stars together with new nights; and over clouds and day and night I even spread laughter like a colorful tent. I taught them all my creating and striving: to carry together into one what is fragment in mankind and riddle and horrid accident - -aspoet, riddle guesser and redeemer of chance I taught them to work on the future, and to creatively redeem everything that was . To redeem what is past in mankind and to recreate all 'It was' until the will speaks: 'But I wanted it so! I shall want it so -' This I told them was redemption, this alone I taught them to call redemption. - Now I wait for my redemption - so that I can go to them for the last time. Thus Spoke Zarathustra Enjoyment and innocence, you see, are the most bashful things: both do not want to be sought. One should have them - but one should sooner seek guilt and suffering! - Oh my brothers, whoever is a firstborn is always sacrificed. But now we are the firstborns. We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars; we all burn and broil in honor of old idols.


Our best is still young; that tempts old gums. Our flesh is tender, our hide is mere lambskin - how could we not tempt old idol priests! Even in ourselves he still lives, the old idol priest, who roasts up our best for his banquet. Oh my brothers, how could firstborn not be sacrifices! But our kind wants it so; and I love those who do not want to preserve themselves. Those who are going under I love with my whole love: because they are going over. - To be true - this few can do! And whoever can, does not yet want to! But least of all the good can do it. Oh these good! Good people never speak the truth ;for the spirit, being good in this manner is a disease. They give way, these good, they give themselves up, their heart repeats words, their ground obeys; but whoever obeys, he does not hear himself ! Everything that the good call evil must come together, in order to give birth to one truth; oh my brothers, are you also evil enough for this truth? Audacious daring, long mistrust, the cruel no, surfeit, the cutting into what is alive - how rarely this comes together! But from such semen truth is begotten! Side by side with bad conscience all science has grown so far. Break, break me these old tablets, you seekers of knowledge! If timbers span the water, if footbridges and railings leap over the river, then surely the one who says 'Everything is in flux' has no credibility. Third Part Instead, even the dummies contradict him. 'What?' say the dummies, 'everything is supposed to be in flux? But the timbers and the railings are over the river! Over the river everything is firm, all the values of things, the bridges, concepts, all 'good' and 'evil' - all of this is firm !' - Butwhenthehardwintercomes,thebeasttamerofrivers,theneventhe wittiest learn to mistrust, and, sure enough, then not only the dummies say: 'Should everything not stand still ?' 'Basically everything stands still' - that is a real winter doctrine, a good thing for sterile times, a good comfort for hibernators and stove huggers.


'Basically everything stands still' - but against this preaches the thaw wind! Thethawwind,abull that is no plowing bull - a raging bull, a destroyer that breaks ice with its wrathful horns! But ice breaks footbridges ! Yes my brothers, is everything not now in flux ? Have all railings and footbridges not fallen into the water? Who could still hang on to 'good' and 'evil'? 'Woe to us! Hail to us! The thaw wind is blowing!' - Preach me this, oh my brothers, in all the streets! There is an old delusion called good and evil. So far the wheel of this delusion has revolved around soothsayers and astrologers. Once people believed in soothsayers and astrologers, and therefore they believed 'Everything is fate: you should, because you must!' Thenlater people mistrusted all soothsayers and astrologers, and therefore they believed 'Everything is freedom: you can, because you want to!' Yes, my brothers, so far we have merely deluded ourselves, but not knownaboutthestarsandthefuture,and therefore wehavemerelydeluded ourselves, but not known about good and evil! 'Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not kill!' - such words were once held holy; before them one bent the knee, bowed the head and removed one's shoes. Thus Spoke Zarathustra But I ask you: where in the world have there ever been better robbers and killers than such holy words? Is there not in all life itself - robbing and killing? And for such words to have been called holy, was truth itself not - killed? Or was it a sermon of death that pronounced holy what contradicted and contravened all life? - Yes my brothers, break, break me the old tablets! This is my pity for everything past, that I see it is abandoned - - abandoned to the favor, the spirit, the madness of each generation that comes along, and interprets everything that was as the bridge to itself ! Agreat despot could come along, a shrewd monster, who with his favor and disfavor could force and forge the whole past, until it became a bridge to him, and omen and herald and harbinger.


But this is the other danger and my other pity: whoever is of the rabble, their remembrance goes no further back than their grandfather - and with their grandfather time ends. Thus all the past is abandoned; because it could happen one day that the rabble would become ruler and in its shallow water all time would drown. Therefore, my brothers, we need a new nobility , which is the adversary of all rabble and all despotic rule and which writes anew the word 'noble' on new tablets. Many noble ones are needed, to be sure, and many kinds of noble ones for nobility to exist ! Or, as I once spoke in parables: 'Precisely that is godliness, that there are gods but no God!' Ohmybrothers, I consecrate and conduct you to a new nobility: you shall be my begetters and growers and sowers of the future - - to be sure, not to a nobility that you could buy like the shopkeepers and with shopkeepers' gold, for everything that has a price has little value. Third Part Not where you come from shall constitute your honor from now on, but instead where you are going! Your will and your foot, which wants to go over and beyond yourself - let that constitute your new honor! Certainly not that you served a prince - what do princes matter anymore! Or that you became a bulwark for what stands, to make it to stand more firmly! Not that your kinfolk became courtiers at court, and learned to stand long hours like a colorful flamingo in shallow ponds. - For being able to stand is a merit among courtiers; and all courtiers believe that part of blessedness after death is being allowed to sit! Northat a spirit they called holy led your forefathers to promised lands, which I donotpraise; because where the worst of all trees grew, the cross there is nothing to praise about that land! And truly, wherever this 'holy ghost' led its knights, in such crusades goats and geese and pious crisscrossing contradictors ran in front ! Oh my brothers, your nobility should not look back, but out there !You should be exiles from all father- and forefatherlands! You should love your children's land ; let this love be your new nobility the undiscovered land in the furthest sea! For that land I command your sails to seek and seek!


You should make it up in your children that you are the children of your fathers; thus you should redeem all that is past! This new tablet I place above you! 'Whylive? All is vain! Life - that is threshing straw; life - that is burning oneself and yet not getting warm.' Such archaic babble still passes for 'wisdom'; but it is honored more highly because it smells old and musty. Even mustiness ennobles. Children might speak like this: they fear fire because it burned them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom. And whoever is always 'threshing straw,' why should he be allowed to revile threshing? One really should muzzle such oxen! Such people sit down at the table and bring nothing along, not even a good appetite - and now they revile saying 'All is vain!' Thus Spoke Zarathustra But eating and drinking well, my brothers, is really no vain art! Break, break me the tablets of the never-glad! 'To the clean all is clean' - that is what folks say. But I say to you: 'to swine all becomes swine!' This is why the rapturous and the head-hangers, whose hearts also hang down, preach: 'The world itself is a filthy monster.' Because they are all unclean in spirit, especially those who have neither rest nor respite, unless they see the world from the hinter side - these hinterworldlings! To their faces I say, even if it does not sound kind: the world resembles a human being in that it has a behind that much is true! There is much filth in the world: that much is true! But the world itself is not therefore a filthy monster! There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smells foul: nausea itself creates wings and water-divining powers! Even in the best there is something that nauseates; and the best is still something that must be overcome! Yes my brothers, there is much wisdom in the fact that there is much filth in the world! - Suchsayings I heard the pious hinterworldlings speak to their conscience, and truly, without malice and falseness - even though there is nothing more false in the world, nor more malicious. 'Just let the world be the world! Do not lift so much as a finger against it!'


'If someone wants to strangle and stab and slice and dice the people, let him; do not lift so much as a finger against it! That way they will yet learn to renounce the world.' 'And your own reason - this you yourself should smother and strangle, because it is a reason of this world - that way you yourself will learn to renounce the world.' - - Break, break me these old tablets of the pious, my brothers! Gainsay me the sayings of the world slanderers! There sits the skiff - over there perhaps is the entryway to the great nothing. But who wants to board this 'perhaps'? None of you wants to board the death skiff! Then why do you want to be world-weary ! Thus Spoke Zarathustra World-weary! And you have not even become earth-alienated yet! I found you still lusting for the earth, still in love with your own earthly weariness! Not for nothing does your lip hang - a little earthly wish still sits on it! And in your eye - doesn't a little cloud of unforgotten earthly joy float there? There are many good inventions on earth, some useful, others pleasant, for whose sake the earth is lovable. And some of what is there has been invented so well that it is like a woman's breasts: useful and pleasant at the same time. But you world-weary! You earth-lazy! You should be flogged with switches! With floggings you should be made to step lively again. After all, if you are not misfits and moribund wretches of whom the earth is weary, then you are sly sloths or nibbling, creeping pleasure cats. And if you do not want to run again with gusto, then you should - pass away! Oneshould not try to be a physician for the incurable: thus Zarathustra teaches - and so you should pass away! But it takes more courage to make an end than to make a new verse: that all physicians and poets know. Ohmybrothers, there are tablets created by weariness, and tablets created by rotten laziness; even though they talk the same, still they want to be heard differently.