Thus Spoke Zarathustra (14 page)

2

Here Zarathustra fell silent a while and regarded his disciples lovingly. Then he went on speaking thus, and his voice was different:

Stay loyal to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue! May your bestowing love and your knowledge serve towards the meaning of the earth! Thus I beg and entreat you.

Do not let it fly away from the things of earth and beat with its wings against the eternal walls! Alas, there has always been much virtue that has flown away!

Lead, as I do, the flown-away virtue back to earth – yes, back to body and life: that it may give the earth its meaning, a human meaning!

A hundred times hitherto has spirit as well as virtue flown away and blundered. Alas, all this illusion and blundering still dwells in our bodies: it has there become body and will.

A hundred times has spirit as well as virtue experimented and gone astray. Yes, man was an experiment. Alas, much ignorance and error has become body in us!

Not only the reason of millennia – the madness of millennia too breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir.

We are still fighting step by step with the giant Chance, and hitherto the senseless, the meaningless, has still ruled over mankind.

May your spirit and your virtue serve the meaning of the earth, my brothers: and may the value of all things be fixed anew by you. To that end you should be fighters! To that end you should be creators!

The body purifies itself through knowledge; experimenting with knowledge it elevates itself; to the discerning man all instincts are holy; the soul of the elevated man grows joyful.

Physician, heal yourself: thus you will heal your patient too. Let his best healing-aid be to see with his own eyes him who makes himself well.

There are a thousand paths that have never yet been trodden, a thousand forms of health and hidden islands of life. Man and man’s earth are still unexhausted and undiscovered.

Watch and listen, you solitaries! From the future come winds with a stealthy flapping of wings; and good tidings go out to delicate ears.

You solitaries of today, you who have seceded from society, you shall one day be a people: from you, who have chosen out yourselves, shall a chosen people spring – and from this chosen people, the Superman.

Truly, the earth shall yet become a house of healing! And already a new odour floats about it, an odour that brings health – and a new hope!

3

When Zarathustra had said these words he paused like one who has not said his last word; long he balanced the staff doubtfully in his hand. At last he spoke thus, and his voice was different:

I now go away alone, my disciples! You too now go away and be alone! So I will have it.

Truly, I advise you: go away from me and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. And why, then, should you not pluck at my laurels?

You respect me; but how if one day your respect should tumble? Take care that a falling statue does not strike you dead!

You say you believe in Zarathustra? But of what importance is Zarathustra? You are my believers: but of what importance are all believers?

You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account.

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

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

And once more you shall have become my friends and children of one hope: and then I will be with you a thud time, that I may celebrate the great noontide with you.

And this is the great noontide: it is when man stands at the middle of his course between animal and Superman and celebrates his journey to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the journey to a new morning.

Then man, going under, will bless himself; for he will be going over to Superman; and the sun of his knowledge will stand at noontide.

‘
All gods are dead: now we want the Superman to live
’ – let this be our last will one day at the great noontide!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

PART TWO

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

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

ZARATHUSTRA:       
‘
Of the Bestowing Virtue
’

The Child with the Mirror

T
HEN
Zarathustra went back into the mountains and into the solitude of his cave and withdrew from mankind: waiting like a sower who has scattered his seed. His soul, however, became full of impatience and longing for those whom he loved: for he still had much to give them. This, indeed, is the most difficult thing: to close the open hand out of love and to preserve one’s modesty as a giver.

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

One morning, however, he awoke before dawn, deliberated long upon his bed, and at length spoke to his heart:

Why was I so frightened in my dream that I awoke? Did not a child carrying a mirror come to me?

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

But when I looked into the mirror I cried out and my heart was shaken: for I did not see myself, I saw the sneer and grimace of a devil.

Truly, I understand the dream’s omen and warning all too well: my
doctrine
is in danger, weeds want to be called wheat!

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

My friends are lost to me; the hour has come to seek my lost ones!

With these words Zarathustra sprang up – not, however, as if gasping for air, but rather like a seer and a singer whom the spirit has moved. His eagle and his serpent regarded him with amazement: for a dawning happiness lit up his face like the dawn.

What has happened to me, my animals? (said Zarathustra).

Have I not changed? Has bliss not come to me like a storm-wind?

My happiness is foolish and it will speak foolish things: it is still too young – so be patient with ill

My happiness has wounded me: all sufferers shall be physicians to me!

I can go down to my friends again and to my enemies too! Zarathustra can speak and give again, and again show love to those he loves.

My impatient love overflows in torrents down towards morning and evening. My soul streams into the valleys out of silent mountains and storms of grief.

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

I have become nothing but speech and the tumbling of a brook from high rocks: I want to hurl my words down into the valleys.

And let my stream of love plunge into impassable and pathless places! How should a stream not find its way to the sea at last!

There is surely a lake in me, a secluded, self-sufficing lake; but my stream of love draws it down with it – to the sea!

I go new ways, a new speech has come to me; like all creators, I have grown weary of the old tongues. My spirit no longer wants to walk on worn-out soles.

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

I want to sail across broad seas like a cry and a shout of joy, until I find the Blissful Islands where my friends are waiting –

And my enemies with them! How I now love anyone to whom I can simply speak! My enemies too are part of my happiness.

And when I want to mount my wildest horse, it is my spear that best helps me on to it; it is an ever-ready servant to my foot –

The spear which I throw at my enemies! How I thank my enemies that at last I can throw it!

The tension of my cloud has been too great: between laughter-peals of lightning I want to cast hail showers into the depths.

Mightily then my breast will heave, mightily it will blow its storm away over the mountains: and so it will win relief.

Truly, my happiness and my freedom come like a storm! But my enemies shall think the
Evil One
is raging over their heads.

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

Ah, if only I knew how to lure you back with shepherds’ flutes! Ah, if only my lioness Wisdom had learned to roar fondly! And we have already learned so much with one another!

My wild Wisdom became pregnant upon lonely mountains; upon rough rocks she bore her young, her youngest.

Now she runs madly through the cruel desert and seeks and seeks for the soft grassland – my old, wild Wisdom!

Upon the soft grassland of your hearts, my friends! – upon your love she would like to bed her dearest one!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

On the Blissful Islands

T
HE
figs are falling from the trees, they are fine and sweet; and as they fall their red skins split. I am a north wind to ripe figs.

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

Behold, what abundance is around us! And it is fine to gaze out upon distant seas from the midst of superfluity.

Once you said ‘God’ when you gazed upon distant seas; but now I have taught you to say ‘Superman’.

God is a supposition; but I want your supposing to teach no further than your creating will.

Could you
create
a god? – So be silent about all gods! But you could surely create the Superman.

Perhaps not you yourselves, my brothers! But you could transform yourselves into forefathers and ancestors of the Superman: and let this be your finest creating!

God is a supposition: but I want your supposing to be bounded by conceivability.

Could you
conceive
a god? – But may the will to truth mean this to you: that everything shall be transformed into the humanly-conceivable, the humanly-evident, the humanly-palpable! You should follow your own senses to the end!

And you yourselves should create what you have hitherto called the World: the World should be formed in your image by your reason, your will, and your love! And truly, it will be to your happiness, you enlightened men!

And how should you endure life without this hope, you enlightened men? Neither in the incomprehensible nor in the irrational can you be at home.

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

I, indeed, drew that conclusion; but now it draws me.

God is a supposition: but who could imbibe all the anguish of this supposition without dying? Shall the creator be robbed of his faith and the eagle of his soaring into the heights?

God is a thought that makes all that is straight crooked and all that stands giddy. What? Would time be gone and all that is transitory only a lie?

To think this is giddiness and vertigo to the human frame, and vomiting to the stomach: truly, I call it the giddy sickness to suppose such a thing.

I call it evil and misanthropic, all this teaching about the one and the perfect and the unmoved and the sufficient and the intransitory.

All that is intransitory – that is but an image!
¹⁴
And the poets lie too much.

But the best images and parables should speak of time and becoming: they should be a eulogy and a justification of all transitoriness.

Creation – that is the great redemption from suffering, and life’s easement. But that the creator may exist, that itself requires suffering and much transformation.

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

For the creator himself to be the child new-born he must also be willing to be the mother and endure the mother’s pain.

Truly, I have gone my way through a hundred souls and through a hundred cradles and birth-pangs. I have taken many departures, I know the heart-breaking last hours.

But my creative will, my destiny, wants it so. Or, to speak more honestly: my will wants precisely such a destiny.