Chapter 19 The Preacher of Death

Some are preachers of death, and the world is full of those who should be advised to throw life away. The world is full of superfluous people; life has been marred by superfluous people.Let people use the bait of "eternal life" to lure them away from this life! Those in yellow or those in black: so are these preachers of death called.But I will show you another color of them. The scariest of them all has the heart of a beast.There is no alternative to carnality or self-mutilation.Is their carnal desire or self-mutilation. These horrible creatures will not yet become men: let them preach their hatred of life!Let them go!

They are the consumptives of the soul: as soon as they are born, they begin to die, and they hope for the doctrine of boredom and resignation. They are willing to die, and we should support their claim!We must not resurrect the dead, or damage these living coffins. If they come across a sick man, or an old man, or even a dead body, they immediately say: "Life is overthrown!" But it was themselves who were overthrown, and their eyes which saw only one aspect of existence. They live in thick melancholy, greedy for deadly little adventures: thus they wait with gnashed teeth. Or they reach out to candy, and laugh at their own childishness: they hang their lives on a blade of grass, and laugh at themselves still hanging there.

Their wisdom says: "He who is alive is mad; yet we are just that mad! This is the greatest madness of life!" "Life is but pain!" - so others say, and this is no lie: try to stop living, then!Stop living a life of mere pain! And here is your moral lesson: "You should kill yourself! You should steal yourself—" "Pleasure is a crime." - said the first preachers of death. —— "Let's avoid it, and don't have children!" "Birth is hard work."—said the second group. —"Why give birth? People only give birth to the unfortunate!" This group is also a preacher of death.

"Mercy is necessary,"—said the third batch. "Take what belongs to me! Take me away?I will be less connected to life. " If they are thoroughly merciful, they will make their neighbors also hate life.To do evil—that would be their true good. But they want to throw life away; if their chains and gifts bind others more tightly, how can they care! —— And you, your life is anxiety and toil: are you not weary of life?Are you not mature enough to accept the preaching of death? You both love drudgery and all that is quick and new,--you have suffered enough of life, and your industry is but a self-forgotten flight and will.

If you have faith in life, you will not abandon yourself to the present moment.But your inner worth is not enough, so you cannot wait,--not even be lazy! The voice of the preacher of death rings everywhere, and the world is full of men who should be counseled to die. Or that the world is full of people who should be advised to seek "eternal life," and that's just one thing to me--if only they would hurry! Thus spake Zarathustra.