Thus Spoke Zarathustra (26 page)

All lusts and vices are at home here; but there are virtuous people here, too, there are many adroit, useful virtues:

Many adroit virtues with scribbling fingers and behinds hardened to sitting and waiting, blessed with little chest decorations and padded, rumpless daughters.

There is also much piety here and much devout spittle-licking and fawning before the God of Hosts.

Down ‘from on high’ drips the star and the gracious spittle; every starless breast longs to go up ‘on high’.

The moon has its court, and the court has its mooncalves: to all that comes from the court, however, do the paupers and all the adroit pauper-virtues pray.

‘I serve, you serve, we serve’ – thus does all adroit virtue pray to the prince: so that the merited star may at last be fastened to the narrow breast.

But the moon still revolves around all that is earthly: so the prince, too, still revolves around what is most earthly of all: that, however, is the shopkeepers’ gold.

The God of Hosts is not the god of the golden ingots; the prince proposes, but the shopkeeper – disposes!

By all that is luminous and strong and good in you, O Zarathustra! spit upon this city of shopkeepers and turn back!

Here all blood flows foul and tepid and frothy through all veins: spit upon the great city that is the great rubbish pile where all the scum froths together!

Spit upon the city of flattened souls and narrow breasts, of slant eyes and sticky fingers –

upon the city of die importunate, the shameless, the ranters in writing and speech, the overheated ambitious:

where everything rotten, disreputable, lustful, gloomy, overripe, ulcerous, conspiratorial festers together – spit upon the great city and turn back!

But here Zarathustra interrupted the frothing fool and stopped his mouth.

Have done! (cried Zarathustra) Your speech and your kind have long disgusted me!

Why did you live so long in the swamp that you had to become a frog and toad yourself?

Does not foul, foaming swamp-blood now flow through your own veins, so that you have learned to quack and rail like this?

Why did you not go into the forest? Or plough the earth? Is the sea not full of green islands?

I despise your contempt; and since you warned me, why did you not warn yourself?

My contempt and my bird of warning shall ascend from love alone; not from the swamp!

They call you my ape, you frothing fool: but I call you my grunting pig – by grunting you are undoing even my praise of folly.

What, then, was it that started you grunting? That nobody had
flattered
you enough: therefore you sat down beside this filth, so that you might have cause for much grunting –

so that you might have cause for much
revenge
! For all your frothing, you vain fool, is revenge; I have divined you well!

But your foolish teaching is harmful to
me
, even when you are right I And if Zarathustra’s teaching
were
a hundred times justified,
you
would still –
use
my teaching falsely!

Thus spoke Zarathustra; and he looked at the great city, sighed and was long silent. At length he spoke thus:

This great city, and not only this fool, disgusts me. In both there is nothing to make better, nothing to make worse.

Woe to this great city! And I wish I could see already the pillar of fire in which it will be consumed!

For such pillars of fire must precede the great noontide. Yet this has its time and its own destiny.

But I offer you in farewell this precept, you fool: Where one can no longer love, one should –
pass by
!

Thus spoke Zarathustra and passed by the fool and the great city.

Of the Apostates

1

A
LAS
, everything that lately stood green and motley in this meadow already lies faded and grey! And how much honey of hope have I carried from here into my beehives!

All these young hearts have already grown old – and not even old! only weary, common, comfortable: they describe it: ‘We have grown pious again.’

But lately I saw them running out in the early morning with bold feet: but the feet of their knowledge grew weary and now they slander even their morning boldness!

Truly, many of them once lifted their legs like a dancer, the laughter in my wisdom beckoned to them: then they considered. And now I have seen them bent – to creep to the Cross.

Once they fluttered around light and freedom like flies and young poets. A little older, a little colder: and already they are mystifiers and mutterers and stay-at-homes.

Did their hearts perhaps despair because solitude devoured me like a whale? Did their ears perhaps listen long and longingly
in vain
for me and for my trumpet and herald calls?

Alas! They are always few whose heart possesses a long-enduring
courage and wantonness; and in such, the spirit, too, is patient. The remainder, however, are
cowardly
.

The remainder: that is always the majority, the commonplace, the superfluity, the many-too-many – all these are cowardly!

He who is of my sort will also encounter experiences of my sort, so that his first companions must be corpses and buffoons.

His second companions, however, will call themselves his
believers
: a lively flock, full of love, full of folly, full of adolescent adoration.

He among men who is of my sort should not grapple his heart to these believers; he who knows fickle-cowardly human nature should not believe in these springs and many-coloured meadows!

If they
could
do otherwise, they would
choose
otherwise. The half-and-half spoil every whole. Why complain because leaves wither?

Let them fall, let them go, O Zarathustra, and do not complain I Rather blow among them with rustling winds –

blow among these leaves, O Zarathustra: so that all that is
withered
may run from you the faster.

2

‘We have grown pious again’ – thus these apostates confess; and many of them are still too cowardly to confess it.

I look into their eyes, then I tell them to their face and to the blushes of their cheeks: You are those who again
pray
!

But it is a disgrace to pray! Not for everyone, but for you and me and for whoever else has his conscience in his head. For joy it is a disgrace to pray!

You know it well: the cowardly devil in you who would like to clasp his hands and to fold his arms and to take it easier: – it was this cowardly devil who persuaded you: ‘There
is
a God!’

Through that
, however, have you become one of those who dread the light, whom light never lets rest; now you must stick your head deeper every day into night and fog!

And truly, you have chosen well the hour: for even now the night-birds have again flown out. The hour has arrived for all people who fear the light, the evening hour of ease when there is no – ‘ease’ for them.

I hear and smell it: the hour for their chase and procession has arrived; not indeed for a wild chase, but for a tame, lame, snuffling, soft-walker’s and soft-prayer’s chase –

for a chase after soulful hypocrites: all mousetraps of the heart have now again been set! And wherever I raise a curtain, a little night-moth comes fluttering out.

Has it perhaps been crouching there with another little night-moth? For everywhere I smell little hidden communities; and wherever there are closets, there are new devotees in them and the atmosphere of devotees.

They sit together on long evenings and say: ‘Let us again become as little children and say Dear God!’ – ruined in mouth and stomach by the pious confectioners.

Or they observe on long evenings a cunning, lurking Cross-spider, which preaches prudence to the spiders themselves and teaches: ‘There is good spinning under Crosses!’

Or they sit all day with fishing-rods beside swamps and for that reason think themselves
deep;
but he who fishes where there are no fish I do not call even superficial!

Or they learn to play the harp in pious-joyful style with a song-poet who would like to harp his way into the hearts of young women – for he has grown weary of the old women and their praises.

Or they learn to shudder with a learned half-madman who waits in darkened rooms so that the spirits may come to him – and the spirit
³⁰
has quite departed!

Or they listen to an old, roving, whistling tramp who has learned from the distressful winds the distress of tones; now he whistles like the wind and preaches distress in distressful tones.

And some of them have even become night-watchmen: now they know how to blow horns and to go around at night and awaken old things that have long been asleep.

I heard five sayings about old things last night beside the
garden wall: they came from such old, distressed, dried-up night-watchmen:

‘For a father he does not look after his children enough: human fathers do it better!’

‘He is too old! He no longer looks after his children at all’-thus the other night-watchman answered.

‘Has
he any children? No one can prove it, if he doesn’t prove it himself! I have long wished he would prove it thoroughly for once.’

‘Prove it? As if
he
has ever proved anything! He finds it hard to prove things; he thinks it very important that people should
believe
him.’

‘Yes, yes! Belief makes him happy, belief in him. Old people are like that I So shall we be, too!’

Thus the two old night-watchmen and light-scarecrows spoke together and thereupon blew their horns distressfully: so it happened last night beside the garden wall.

My heart, however, writhed with laughter and was like to break and knew not where to go and sank into the midriff.

Truly, it will yet be the death of me, to choke with laughter when I see asses intoxicated and hear night-watchmen thus doubt God.

For has not the time for all such doubts
long
since passed? Who may still awaken such old, sleeping, light-shunning things!

With the old gods, they have long since met their end – and truly, they had a fine, merry, divine ending!

They did not ‘fade away in twilight’
³¹
– that is a lie! On the contrary: they once – laughed themselves to death!

That happened when the most godless saying proceeded from a god himself, the saying: ‘There is one God! You shall have no other gods before me!’ –

an old wrath-beard of a god, a jealous god, thus forgot himself:

And all the gods laughed then and rocked in their chairs and cried: ‘Is not precisely this godliness, that there are gods but no God?’

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Thus spoke Zarathustra in the town which he loved and which is called ‘The Pied Cow’. For from here he had only two days to go before arriving again at his cave and his animals; and his soul rejoiced continually at the nearness of his home-coming.

The Home-Coming

O
SOLITUDE
! Solitude, my
home
! I have lived too long wildly in wild strange lands to come home to you without tears!

Now shake your finger at me as mothers do, now smile at me as mothers smile, now say merely: ‘And who was it that once stormed away from me like a storm-wind? –

‘who departing cried: I have sat too long with Solitude, I have unlearned how to be silent! You have surely learned
that
– now?

‘O Zarathustra, I know all: and that you were
lonelier
among the crowd, you solitary, than you ever were with me!

‘Loneliness is one thing, solitude another: you have learned
that
– now! And that among men you will always be wild and strange:

‘wild and strange even when they love you: for above all they want to be
indulged
!

‘But here you are at your own hearth and home; here you can utter everything and pour out every reason, nothing is here ashamed of hidden, hardened feelings.

‘Here all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter you: for they want to ride upon your back. Upon every image you here ride to every truth.

‘Here you may speak to all things straight and true: and truly, it sounds as praise to their ears, that someone should speak with all things – honestly!

‘But it is another thing to be lonely. For, do you remember, O Zarathustra? When once your bird cried above you as you stood in the forest undecided, ignorant where to go, beside a corpse.

‘When you said: May my animals lead me! I found it more
dangerous among men than among animals.
That
was loneliness!

‘And do you remember, O Zarathustra? When you sat upon your island, a well of wine among empty buckets, giving and distributing, bestowing and out-pouring among the thirsty:

‘until at last you sat alone thirsty among the intoxicated and lamented each night: “Is it not more blessed to receive than to give? And more blessed to steal than to receive?” –
That
was loneliness!

‘And do you remember, O Zarathustra? When your stillest hour came and tore you forth from yourself, when it said in an evil whisper: “Speak and break!” –

‘when it made you repent of all your waiting and silence and discouraged your humble courage:
That
was loneliness!’

O Solitude! Solitude, my home I How blissfully and tenderly does your voice speak to me!

We do not question one another, we do not complain to one another, we go openly together through open doors.

For with you all is open and clear; and here even the hours run on lighter feet. For time weighs down more heavily in the dark than in the light.

Here, the words and word-chests of all existence spring open to me: all existence here wants to become words, all becoming here wants to learn speech from me.