Chapter 52 The Third Apostate

Yo!In this grassland, the plants that were green and gorgeous recently have all turned yellow and withered!How much honey of hope have I brought from here to my hive! The hearts of those young people are already old—not even old, just tired.Mediocrity, cowardice:—they proclaim: "We are pious again." Lately I have seen them running forward with their galloping stride in the morning: but their intellectual feet are worn out, and now they even hate their morning pride! Verily, many a man once raised his feet like a dancer; the laugh of my wisdom gave them a wink:--then they thought of themselves.Now I even see them crawling towards the cross.

Once upon a time around light and freedom they flew with wings like gnats, like young poets.But growing old and cold: now they are mystics, whisperers, cowards. Or did their moods make them despair, for solitude swallowed me like a whale?Or have their ears longed long for me, and the sound of my trumpet, and the cry of my pioneers? well!There are only a few who are always exuberantly happy; and in the spirit of these few there is also patience.But the rest are cowards! The rest: that's always the majority, the commonplace, the superfluous, the superfluous - they're all cowards: Whoever is my kind shall also meet my kind's experience: so his first companions must be corpses and buffoons.

But the companions after him are the people who call themselves his disciples, a mass of much love, much dullness, much robustness, piousness, and vitality. My fellow human beings, no one should attach his feelings to these believers.No matter who knows the impetuous and cowardly human race, he will not believe such a spring and a meadow full of wild flowers! They could do other things, if only they would will other things.The same half destroys the whole.The leaves are withering - why mourn that! O Zarathustra, let them die and fall, and mourn not! Better blow them with a storm too! O Zarathustra, blow on those leaves--make all withered things leave thee more quickly!

We are pious again—so confessed the apostates; some of them were even afraid to confess so. I looked into their eyes,--their faces and flushed cheeks--and I said, "You are praying people again!" But praying is shameful!Not to be ashamed of everyone, but to you, to me, to people with a conscience.For you, it is shameful to pray! You know well that there is a cowardly devil in you, who gladly crosses himself at will:—he persuades you: "There is a God!" You therefore belong to the class of people who are afraid of the light, who cannot dwell in the light: Now you must plunge your head deeper into darkness and mist every day!

Really, it's good when you choose!For just now the nocturnal birds are also flying outside.The time has come for all those who are afraid of light, the time of evening and feasting has come—but there is no feast! I hear and smell: the time has come for them to hunt and go, but not of wild beasts, but of the docile, the lame, the whining, the soft-walking, and the careful praying. A hypocrite's hunt for souls:--The rat-trap of all hearts is set!Wherever I lift the veil, nocturnal moths pop out. Or is it crouching there with other moths?For everywhere I smell secret societies; places with secret chambers in which are new converts and the stench of converts.

They sat together for long nights and talked: "Let us be like children again and say, dear heavenly Father - the devout fruit maker has corrupted the mouth and stomach." Or they watch in the long night a cunning and lurking spider of the cross, who preaches prudence with the spiders, and teaches that "under the cross is the best place to stretch a web." Or they sit all day by the mire with their rods, and think themselves deep because of it; but whoever fishes where there are no fish, I would even say they are not as shallow! Or joyfully and devoutly they learn to play the harp from the hymn-writer, who loves best to play and sing to maidens himself:—for he is weary of old wives and old wives' admiration.

Or they, too, learn to tremble from the learned delusional, who waits in the dark for the ghost to come,—and the spirit runs away entirely. Or they listened to the old wanderer, and imitated the mournful wind and the mournful piper; now he whistles like the wind and speaks sorrow in mournful tune. Some of them even became Night's Watchers: they knew how to blow the horn, how to prowl the night and waken all old things that had long slept. Last night at my garden wall I heard five words about old things: even from the mouth of such an old, wretched, haggard watchman. "He is not enough to be a father to children: a human father is better than he!"

"He's too old! He can't take care of his children now."— The other night watchmen answered. "Has he had children, then? No one but himself can prove it! I've long expected him to prove it thoroughly." "Proof? As if he'd proved anything! He doesn't like proof; he's just trying to make people believe in him." "Yes! Faith is his favorite! Faith in himself. That is the old man's way! It is the same with us!" —Thus spoke the two Watchers and the Terror of the Light, and sounded their horns mournfully!This is what happened at the garden wall last night.

But in me, my heart aches from laughing, my heart feels like it's about to burst; it's out of place, sinking into the diaphragm. Verily, that would kill me;--so I stifled my laughter, when I saw the donkey drunk, and heard the watchmen so doubt God. Has not all such doubts passed away for a long time?Now who dares to wake up in daylight such an ancient dormant, photophobic thing! All the ancient gods have come to an end--verily, they have a good and happy divine end! They did not die like the lingering twilight-though the people have lied!On the contrary, they died laughing! The most ungodly speech comes from God,—he said "There is but one God! Thou shalt have no other gods before Me!"—

The old beard-twisting god, an envious one, thus forgetting himself:— Then all the gods laughed, shook on their thrones, and cried out: "Isn't that just divine? There are gods but no God?" Let all who have ears hear. —— Thus spoke Zarathustra in the beloved town of the Buffalo.From here he still had two days' journey to his cave and his animals; and his soul rejoiced continually for the nearness of his return.