Chapter 35 Division II Scholars

While I was asleep, a lamb ate the wreath of ivy on my forehead. —and as he ate, he said: "Zarathustra is no longer a scholar!" Then it went away proudly with disdain: this is what a child told me. I love to lie here where the children play in the thistles and red poppies by the broken wall. I am still a scholar when it comes to children and flowers.They are also naive when they do evil. I am no longer a scholar of the flock: my fate wills me to be so. —Let this fate be blessed! The truth is this: I have left the house of the scholar, and I have shut the door viciously. How long my starving soul sat at their table!My attitude towards knowledge is not like crushing walnuts, but theirs is.

I love the freedom and fresh air of the place.I'd rather sleep on cowhide than on their honor and majesty! I burn and sear with my thoughts: they often stop my breath. Then I must go into the open air, and leave all dust chambers. But they sat calmly in the cool shade: no matter where they were, they were only spectators, never where the sun shone down on stone steps. They are like those idlers who watch the street with their mouths open: so they wait, and open their mouths to watch other people's thoughts. Whoever touches them with their hands, they are like flour sacks, unconsciously raising some dust around.But who would have guessed that their dust came from the valley, from the golden happiness of the summer fields?

When they think themselves wise, the little maxims and truths make me shudder: their wisdom often smells of swamp; verily, I have heard the frogs in their wisdom. They are capable, they have delicate fingers: what has my simplicity to do with their complexity?Their fingers know how to thread, knot, and weave: so they weave spiritual socks! They are fine clocks: if others take care to tighten them properly!So they mark the time well, and sound a humble tick. They work like mills and breakers: let men throw a little grain into it! —They know how to grind the shell to make it powder. They are good at watching each other's fingers, and they don't trust each other.They invent little strategies, spy on those whose knowledge is crippled, - they wait like spiders.

I have seen them prepare poison carefully; and protect their fingers with glass gloves. They know how to play false dice, and I have seen them play with such zeal that they sweat profusely. I don't know them, and their morality is more disgusting than their hypocrisy and their false dice. When I live with them, I live above them.Therefore they hate me. They did not want to know that someone was walking over their heads; so they put mud and filth between me and them. Thus they silenced the sound of my steps: and till now the greatest learned have heard me least. Between me and them, they put all the weaknesses and mistakes of human beings

Mistake: - In their house, this is called a "false ceiling". But, anyway, I walk with my thoughts over their heads: even if I step on my own weakness, it is over them and their heads. For men are not equal: so says justice.They have no right to will what I will! Thus spake Zarathustra.