Thus Spoke Zarathustra (30 page)

20

O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: That which is falling should also be pushed!

Everything of today – it is falling, it is decaying: who would support it? But I – want to push it too!

Do you know the delight that rolls stones into precipitous depths? – These men of today: just see how they roll into my depths!

I am a prologue to better players, O my brothers! An example!
³⁴
Follow my example!

And him you do not teach to fly, teach –
to fallfaster
!

21

I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swordsman, one must also know
against
whom to be a swordsman!

And there is often more bravery in containing oneself and passing by:
in order
to spare oneself for a worthier enemy!

You should have enemies whom you hate but not enemies whom you despise: you must be proud of your enemy: thus I taught once before.

You should spare yourselves, O my friends, for a worthier enemy: therefore you must pass many things by,

especially must you pass by many of the rabble who din in your ears about people and peoples.

Keep your eye clear of their For and Against! There is much right, much wrong in it: whoever looks on grows angry.

To look in, to weigh in – that comes to the same thing in this case: therefore go off into the forests and lay your sword to sleep!

Go your
ways! And let people and peoples go theirs! – dark ways, to be sure, on which not one hope lightens any longer!

Let the shopkeeper rule where everything that still glisters is – shopkeeper’s gold! The age of kings is past: what today calls itself the people deserves no king.

Just see how these people themselves now behave like shopkeepers: they glean the smallest advantage from sweepings of every kind.

They lie in wait for one another, they wheedle things out of one another – they call that ‘good neighbourliness’. Oh blessed, distant time when a people said to itself: ‘I want to be –
master
over peoples!’

For, my brothers: the best shall rule, the best
wants
to rule! And where it is taught differently, there – the best is
lacking
.

22

If
they
– had bread for nothing, alas! – what would
they
cry for! Their maintenance – that is their proper entertainment;
³⁵
and life shall be hard for them!

They are beasts of prey: even in their ‘working’ – there is robbery, even in their’ earning’ – there is fraud! Therefore life shall be hard for them!

Thus they shall become finer beasts of prey, subtler, cleverer,
more man-like
beasts of prey: for man is the finest beast of prey.

Man has already robbed all beasts of their virtues: that is why, of all beasts, life is the hardest for man.

Only the birds are still beyond him. And if man should learn to fly, alas I
to what height
– would his rapaciousness fly!

23

This is how I would have man and woman: the one fit for war, the other fit for bearing children, but both fit for dancing with head and heels.

And let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once! And let that wisdom be false to us that brought no laughter with it!

24

Your marriage-contracting: see it is not a bad
contracting
. You have decided too quickly: from that
follows
– break up of marriage.
³⁶

And yet rather break up of marriage than bending of marriage, lying in marriage! – A woman said to me: ‘True, I broke up my marriage, but first my marriage – broke me up!’

I have always found the badly-paired to be the most revengeful: they make everybody suffer for the fact that they are no longer single.

For that reason I want honest people to say to one another: ‘We love each other: let us
see to it
that we stay in love! Or shall our promise be a mistake?
³⁷

‘Allow us a term and a little marriage, to see if we are fit for the great marriage! It is a big thing always to be with another!’

Thus I counsel all honest people; and what would be my love for the Superman and for everything to come if I should counsel and speak otherwise!

To propagate yourselves, not only forward but
upward
– may the garden of marriage assist you, O my brothers!

25

He who has grown wise concerning old origins, behold, he will at last seek new springs of the future and new origins.

O my brothers, it will not be long before
new peoples
shall arise and new springs rush down into new depths.

For the earthquake – that blocks many wells and causes much thirst – also brings to light inner powers and secret things.

The earthquake reveals new springs. In the earthquake of ancient peoples new springs break forth.

And around him who cries: ‘Behold here a well for many who are thirsty, one heart for many who long, one will for many instruments’ – around him assembles a
people
, that is to say: many experimenters.

Who can command, who can obey –
that is experimented here
! Alas, with what protracted searching and succeeding, and failing and learning and experimenting anew!

Human society: that is an experiment, so I teach – a long search:
³⁸
it seeks, however, the commander! –

an experiment, O my brothers I And
not
a ‘contract’ I Shatter, shatter that expression of the soft-hearted and half-and-half!

26

O my brothers! With whom does the greatest danger for the whole human future lie? Is it not with the good and just?–

with those who say and feel in their hearts: ‘We already know what is good and just, we possess it too; woe to those who are still searching for it!’

And whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm!

And whatever harm the world-calumniators may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm.

O my brothers, someone who once looked into the heart of the good and just said: ‘They are the Pharisees.’ But he was not understood.

The good and just themselves could not understand him: their spirit is imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably clever.

But it is the truth: the good
have
to be Pharisees – they have no choice!

The good
have
to crucify him who devises his own virtue! That
is
the truth!

But the second man to discover their country, the country, heart, and soil of the good and just, was he who asked:’ Whom do they hate the most?’

They hate the
creator
most: him who breaks the law-tables and the old values, the breaker – they call him the law-breaker.

For the good –
cannot
create: they are always the beginning of the end:–

they crucify him who writes new values on new law-tables, they sacrifice the future
to themselves
– they crucify the whole human future!

The good – have always been the beginning of the end.

27

O my brothers, have you understood this saying, too? And what I once said about the ‘Ultimate Man’?

With whom does the greatest danger to the whole human future lie? Is it not with the good and just?

Shatter, shatter the good and just!
–
O my brothers, have you understood this saying, too?

28

Do you flee from me? Are you frightened? Do you tremble at this saying?

O my brothers, when I bade you shatter the good and the law-tables of the good, only then did I embark mankind upon its high seas.

And only now does the great terror, the great prospect, the great sickness, the great disgust, the great sea-sickness come to it.

The good taught you false shores and false securities; you were born and kept in the lies of the good. Everything has been distorted and twisted down to its very bottom through the good.

But he who discovered the country of ‘Man’, also discovered the country of ‘Human Future’. Now you shall be seafarers, brave, patient seafarers!

Stand up straight in good time, O my brothers, learn to stand up straight! The sea is stormy: many want to straighten themselves again by your aid.

The sea is stormy: everything is at sea. Well then! Come on, you old seaman-hearts!

What of fatherland! Our helm wants to fare
away
, out to
where our
children’s land
is! Out, away, more stormy than the sea, storms our great longing!

29

‘Why so hard?’ the charcoal once said to the diamond; ‘for are we not close relations?’

Why so soft? O my brothers, thus
I
ask you: for are you not – my brothers?

Why so soft, so unresisting and yielding? Why is there so much denial and abnegation in your hearts? So little fate in your glances?

And if you will not be fates, if you will not be inexorable: how can you – conquer with me?

And if your hardness will not flash and cut and cut to pieces: how can you one day – create with me?

For creators are hard. And it must seem bliss to you to press your hand upon millennia as upon wax,

bliss to write upon the will of millennia as upon metal – harder than metal, nobler than metal. Only the noblest is perfectly hard.

This new law-table do I put over you, O my brothers:
Become hard
!

30

O my Will! My essential,
my
necessity, dispeller of need! Preserve me from all petty victories!

O my soul’s predestination, which I call destiny! In-me! Over-me! Preserve and spare me for a great destiny!

And your last greatness, my Will, save for your last – that you may be inexorable
in
your victory! Ah, who has not succumbed to his own victory!

Ah, whose eye has not dimmed in this intoxicated twilight! Ah, whose foot has not stumbled and in victory forgotten – how to stand!

That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noontide: ready and ripe like glowing ore, like cloud heavy with lightning and like swelling milk-udder –

ready for myself and my most secret Will: a bow eager for its arrow, an arrow eager for its star –

a star, ready and ripe in its noontide, glowing, transpierced, blissful through annihilating sun-arrows –

a sun itself and an inexorable sun-will, ready for annihilation in victory!

O Will, my essential,
my
necessity, dispeller of need! Spare me for one great victory!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

The Convalescent

1

O
NE
morning, not long after his return to the cave, Zarathustra sprang up from his bed like a madman, cried with a terrible voice, and behaved as if someone else were lying on the bed and would not rise from it; and Zarathustra’s voice rang out in such a way that his animals came to him in terror and from all the caves and hiding-places in the neighbourhood of Zarathustra’s cave all the creatures slipped away, flying, fluttering, creeping, jumping, according to the kind of foot or wing each had been given. Zarathustra, however, spoke these words:

Up, abysmal thought, up from my depths! I am your cockerel and dawn, sleepy worm: up! up! My voice shall soon crow you awake!

Loosen the fetters of your ears: listen! For I want to hear you! Up! Up! Here is thunder enough to make even the graves listen!

And wipe the sleep and all the dimness and blindness from your eyes! Hear me with your eyes, too: my voice is a medicine even for those born blind.

And once you are awake you shall stay awake for ever. It is not
my
way to awaken great-grandmothers from sleep in order to bid them – go back to sleep!
³⁹

Are you moving, stretching, rattling? Up! Up! You shall
not rattle, you shall – speak to me! Zarathustra the Godless calls you!

I, Zarathustra, the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle – I call you, my most abysmal thought!

Ah! you are coming – I hear you! My abyss
speaks
, I have turned my ultimate depth into the light!

Ah! Come here! Give me your hand – ha! don’t! Ha, ha! – Disgust, disgust, disgust – woe is me!

2

Hardly had Zarathustra spoken these words, however, when he fell down like a dead man and remained like a dead man for
a
long time. But when he again came to himself, he was pale and trembling and remained lying down and for a long time would neither eat nor drink. This condition lasted seven days; his animals, however, did not leave him by day or night, except that the eagle flew off to fetch food. And whatever he had collected and fetched he laid upon Zarathustra’s bed: so that at last Zarathustra lay among yellow and red berries, grapes, rosy apples, sweet-smelling herbs and pine-cones. At his feet, however, two lambs were spread, which the eagle had, with difficulty, carried off from their shepherd.

At last, after seven days, Zarathustra raised himself in his bed, took a rosy apple in his hand, smelt it, and found its odour pleasant. Then his animals thought the time had come to speak with him.

‘O Zarathustra,’ they said, ‘now you have lain like that seven days, with heavy eyes: will you not now get to your feet again?

‘Step out of your cave: the world awaits you like a garden. The wind is laden with heavy fragrance that longs for you; and all the brooks would like to run after you.

‘All things long for you, since you have been alone seven days – step out of your cave! All things want to be your physicians!