Chapter 45 Thus Spoke Zarathustra Book VI

thus spoke Zarathustra volume six 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 red cheeks--and 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 very 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 makers of grain and fruit have 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: human fathers are better than him!"

"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's proven something! He doesn't like proof; he just tries 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 statement comes from God,—he said "There is but one God! You shall 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.come back Oh loneliness!O loneliness, my home!As a stranger, I have lived in a strange place for too long to return to you without tears. Now touch me like a mother; now smile at me like a mother!Now, you just say, "Who was it that flew away from me like a whirlwind?

Who cries at parting: Too long have I lived with solitude; That's why I have forgotten silence!Now you know the silence, right? " O Zarathustra, I know everything: you lonely one, I know that you are lonelier among men than with me! Now you know this; loneliness is one thing, loneliness is another!Among people you will never be used to but unfamiliar. Even when they love you, you are unfamiliar: in short they demand pampering treatment! Here you are in your home and your house; you can speak freely, assert freely; here all hidden claustrophobic feelings are not shameful. Here all things talk lovingly to you and me and flatter you: for all things want to run over you.You also straddle all fables and gallop to all truths. Here you can speak straight and earnestly to all things: indeed, they think it is praise, when one speaks frankly to all things. Otherwise it is loneliness.O Zarathustra, do you remember?When your hawk crows in the air, and you stand in the woods by the dead body, doubtful and ignorant:— Then you say: Let my animals guide me!I see more danger among men than among animals: -- that is loneliness! Oh!Do you remember, O Zarathustra?When you sit on your island, like a fountain of wine to an empty cask, you give and distribute among the thirsty: Until at last you are alone, thirsty among the people who are full, and weeping in the night: "Isn't it happier to take than to give? Isn't it happier to steal than to take"—that is loneliness! O Zarathustra, do you remember?When your quietest hour comes and drives you on, when it whispers evilly: "Speak and die!" Then it makes you disgusted with all your expectations and silences, and ashamed of your "humble bravery, you are loneliness!"— O loneliness, my home!How sweet and tender your voice speaks to me! We believe in love and respect each other; we treat each other frankly and sincerely. With you everything is cheerful and bright; here even time runs with a more brisk pace.For time is a heavier load in darkness than in light! Here the words of all beings and the treasure house of words suddenly opened up for me: here all beings wanted to become words, here all becomings learned to speak from me. But beyond the hill—all talk is in vain!There is supreme wisdom in forgetting and leaving: then I understand now! If you want to understand everything in people's hearts, you must grasp everything.But my hands disdain to grasp all that. I don't even like to breathe their breath; alas, too long have I lived in their noise and foul smell! O blessed peace around me!O, the air of clarity around me!How this tranquility breathes fresh air from the deep mind!How the blessed silence listens! But down there—everything is said there, and everything is misunderstood.The people there proclaimed wisdom with a loud bell, and the small merchants in the market disturbed him with the jingle of copper coins. Everything speaks there; but no one knows how to understand.Everything fell into the waters; but nothing fell into the deep springs. Everything speaks there; but nothing works and accomplishes.Everything clucks, but who is quietly hatching in the nest? There everything speaks, everything speaks in pieces.The teeth of time and time were still hard yesterday, but today they have been chewing and spitting, and they are in the mouths of today's people. There everything is spoken and everything is revealed.Everything that used to be called a secret, a secret of the deep soul, now belongs to the trumpet players and other flying insects in the street. O strange man!The noise of your dark alleys!Now you are at my back again: my greatest danger lies behind my own back! My greatest danger always lurks in appeasement and tolerance; all human beings are willing to be appeasement and tolerance. With compressed truths in my arms, with foolish hands and fooled hearts, compassionate little lies - so I live among men. I once pretended to be myself and sat among them, put up with them against myself, and was willing to convince myself: "You fool, you don't understand people!" When man lives among men he does not know them: man has too many prospects,--what is the use of far-sighted eyes! I used to be a fool, they misunderstood me, I appease them more than I appease myself, and I often avenge myself for this appeasement. Stung from head to toe by poisonous flies, like a stone emptied by the raindrops of evil: thus I live among them, and still say to myself, "The insignificance of all things is innocent!" Especially those who profess to be good, I see the most poisonous flies; they sting all that is innocent, they defile all that is pure; how can they do me justice! He who lives among the good—mercy teaches him to lie.Mercy creates the suffocating air for all free souls.For the vanity of a good man is immeasurable. There I learned to hide myself and my own riches: for I saw that all are poor in spirit.All lies of my mercy: I know all men. —I see and smell all men, those with enough spirit, those with too much spirit. Their tenacious philosophers: I call them philosophers, not tenacious,—so I also learned to use ambiguous words.Their gravediggers: I call them researchers and experimenters, and so have learned to play with language. The gravedigger digs up disease for himself.There was a foul smell beneath the stale rubble. Wrong men stir up the swamp.People should live on the mountain. With happy nostrils I breathe again the mountain's free air.At last my nostrils were saved from all human stench. The mountain wind touched my nose like alcohol, and my soul sneezed.Sneezes and shouts in triumph: "Good health!" Thus spake Zarathustra. three evil things one In a dream, a dream before the most recent morning, I stood on a peninsula— Out of the world; I hold a scale and weigh the world. Alas, the purple dawn came too soon: she wakes me with her splendor, the envious one!She was always jealous of my morning glory. My dream thinks that the world is like this: it can be measured by those who have time, weighed by delicate measurers, can be flown by strong feathers, and can be guessed by divine solvers. My dream, a brave sailor, half ship, half whirlwind, silent like a butterfly, strong like a vulture eagle: how it weighs the world today with its patience and ease! My wisdom that mocks all "infinite worlds," my laughing, sober, day-wisdom, said to it in silence: "Where there is force, there is number that rules, for she has greater power. " My dream is neither new, nor old, nor fearful nor supplicant, contemplating this finite world with certainty:— Like a round apple springing itself into my hand, a ripe golden apple with soft skin: thus the world offered itself to me:— Like a tree with broad boughs and upright beckons to me, with twisted branches like chairs and footstools on which travellers rest; so the world towers over my peninsula:— Like a jewel-chest held in a slender hand—a jewel-chest that delights admiring eyes: Thus is the world presented before me today:— --It is not yet a love which is a riddle enough to frighten man, nor a solution enough to put his intelligence to sleep:--Today, what is called evil in the world seems to me a good, human thing. How thankful I am for my morning dream, for I weighed the world this morning!This dream, this comforter of the heart, came to me like a good human thing! I can do the same during the day!Having learned and imitated its merits, I am now willing to put the three worst things on the scales, and weigh them with the utmost humaneness. —— Those who teach blessings also teach curses: What are the three most cursed things in the world?I'm willing to put them on my scale.Lust, passion for power, and selfishness: these three things are the most cursed and have the worst notoriety since ancient times— I would have weighed them as well as I could. Get up, then!There's the peninsula, there's the sea - it's sticky and joyously billowing towards me, the old and faithful monster with a thousand heads I love! Arise, then, here I hold the scales on the surging sea: I have chosen a witness too - I have chosen you, you lone tree of the sea, my beloved tree of rich boughs! —— On what bridge is the transition from the present to the future?By what oppression does the higher bow down to the lower?What commanded the highest still upward? - Now the scales are balanced and stable!At one end I cast three heavy questions, and at the other end three heavy answers. two Lust: A stinger, a burnt pillar to all despisers of the flesh in horsehair shirts; cursed by all recluses as "This world!" Fools all chaos and hypocrisy for lust mocks preacher. Desires: To a rascal is a warm fire; To rotten wood and stinking rags is a hot fire. Lust: Free and innocent to the free mind, the joy of an earthly garden; the future's overflowing gratitude for the present. Desire: It is a kind of sweet poison only for the downtrodden; it is a great consolation for the lion-hearted.It is alcohol that is carefully stored. Lust: the model of the highest happiness and the happiness of the highest hope.Because it is permissible for many to marry and beyond. --For many more ignorant than men and women:--Likewise no one can fully understand that man and woman do not know each other! Desires:—but I will guard my thoughts with my fences, even my words: lest piggies and prodigal sons break my garden! Frenzy for power: This is most the scorching whip of the hard-hearted; the pain that the cruelest reserve for the cruel; this is the dark flame of the crematorium. Frenzy for power: The loathsome gadfly that swarms on the most honorable nations; scather of all wavering morals; it rides on all horses and on all pride. Frenzy for power: this earthquake that breaks and shatters all that withers and empties; this destroyer of white coffins; this luminous question against premature answers. Frenzy for power: before its bright eyes, man crawls, humiliates, and resents, and becomes lower than pigs and snakes:—until at last he cries out in his heart supreme contempt. Frenzy for power: Terrible preacher of supreme contempt, which proclaims before all cities and kings: "Go away!"—until an echo from them cries "Go away!" Frenzy for power: it soars sweetly even to purity, to solitude, to self-sufficiency, ardent as love paints purple bliss on earthly heaven. Frenzy for Power: Who calls it a frenzy when the tallest desire to submit to power?Verily, there is nothing sick or insane in such longings and humiliations! The solitary heights shall not remain alone and self-sufficient forever; the mountains may descend to the valleys, and the high winds may blow to the plains! O, who knows the proper name and title of this longing?Zarathustra once called this unnameable-"the morality of giving". Then it happened--really, it happened for the first time! —He calls selfishness a blessed, wholesome selfishness that flows from a mighty soul:— From the perfect, beautiful, victorious, created body to the mighty soul, around which everything becomes a mirror. This pliant flesh, this dancer, its specimen and symbol is the soul of its own pleasure.Such self-enjoyment of the body and such the soul calls itself "morality." Such pleasure shields itself like a sanctified jungle with words of good and evil; banishes from itself all contemptible things in the name of its own happiness. And banishes from itself all cowardice; it says: Cowardice—that is evil!In its eyes the ever-sorrowful, the lamenting, the wretched, the petty-seeker are contemptible. It also despises all wisdom that gazes in misery: indeed, there is a wisdom that blossoms in darkness, a black wisdom that forever sighs: "All is vanity!" It despises cowardly doubts, it despises those who swear and deny: it despises wisdom too much doubting, for such is the way of cowardly souls. It despises the flattering, the doggy, the submissive, the contented; and the submissive, the doggy, the pious, and the flattering, the submissive wisdom. It hates and loathes, the man who never defends himself, the man who swallows poisonous spittle and scorn, the man who is too patient, the man who suffers too long and the man who is too docile: Because that's the attitude of a slave. This blessed selfishness, which spits out all kinds of slaves: whether they bow before the gods and holy steps, or before men, before the unwise human opinion! All that is humiliating, all that bends the knee, that has unfree eyes and constricted hearts, that hypocritical, resigned species, that kisses with large and cowardly lips, it calls evil. All the wit of slaves and old and weary men; and especially of preachers all that is wicked, arrogant, greater than witty folly, and selfishness are called false wisdom! But this hypocritical sage, this preacher, this misanthrope, this effeminate and slavish people—oh, how misused their selfishness! They also regard the misuse of selfishness as morality, and call it morality!So all misanthropes and cowards and spiders on the cross, who wish "selflessness" with good reason! But for those, the time has now come, the great shift, the sword of judgment, the great noon: when many things are often revealed! Verily, he who proclaimed I am whole and holy, and blessed selfishness, the Prophet, he also proclaimed what he knew: "Behold, the time has come, it is near, the great noon !" Thus spake Zarathustra. Gravity Spirit One one My tongue—is the tongue of the people: I speak too coarsely and frankly for the rabbits of Angora: My words are still more novel to all ink fish and pen foxes. My hands—the hands of fools: alas, all tables and walls and places where fools draw and scribble! My feet are the feet of a galloping horse; therefore I tromp and gallop over wood and stone, and to and fro in the fields, I am a devil that loves to haste. My stomach—is it really a hawk's stomach?Because it likes to eat the flesh of young lambs.Really, it's a kind of eagle's stomach. I am now: eating innocence, and longing to fly, I am beyond everything; can it be said that there is no eagle essence in this essence! Especially I am an enemy of the spirit of gravity, which is the essence of the eagle: indeed, the mortal enemy, the great enemy, the natural enemy!Why, isn't my enmity omnipresent? So I can sing a song—and I will: though I am alone in an empty room, I must sing it to myself. True, there are other singers, but when the room is full, their voices are soft, their fingers expressive, their eyes twinkle, their minds bright; but I am not of their kind. two He who taught flight will one day remove all landmarks; all landmarks will ascend; and the earth will be baptized afresh from him and be named the Light-Spirited. The ostrich gallops faster than a galloping horse, but he also thrusts its head hard into the heavy ground: so does the man who cannot fly. Thus will the Spirit of Gravity: the earth and life are heavy to him.But thus I teach that he who can be as light as a bird must love himself. Truly, not with the love of the sick and infected.With them, even self-love stinks! This is how I teach people: I must learn to love myself in a hygienic and healthy way: only then will I be tempted to be patient and not be distracted. Here God does not keep the house and professes to be "love of his neighbor".Such talk is the worst lie and deception of all time, especially among those who feel that the world is heavy. Truly, learning to love yourself is not just a commandment for today and tomorrow.This ning is the finest, most skillful, newest, and most enduring of all arts. Such is the work of the Spirit of Gravity: to keep all treasures well hidden from his possessor, and of all the vaults of gold and silver his own treasures are the last to be dug. Almost still in the cradle they gave me heavy words and evaluations.They call this gift "good" and "evil".Because of it, our lives have been spared. This is the work of the spirit of gravity: to call the little children together and forbid them to love themselves. We—we have faithfully walked the rugged mountains, bearing the burden that was given us on our toiling shoulders!If we sweat, we are told: "Yes, life is too much!" Only man himself is the burden, because he carries too many irrelevant words and evaluations on his shoulders.He knelt down like a camel, letting himself carry the load. Especially the most resolute person who can carry a heavy load is full of majesty in his head.He carried too many irrelevant words and evaluations on his shoulders: now life seems to be a pile of sand to him. real!Even what is our own is unbearable!Many inner things in the human heart are like sea oysters—disgusting, slippery, and difficult to grasp— So there had to be pearlescent beautiful shells to justify those things.Even this art must be learned: to have a shell, a lovely appearance, and cunning ignorance! Furthermore, there are many deceptions in the human heart, and many shells are still small, useless, and too one shell. Many hidden benevolences and powers have never been discovered; the most selected delicacy has no taster? Only the best of women know this: A little fat and a little thin—oh, what a fate hangs on this little! Such is the work of the spirit of gravity: to make it difficult to see, and of all men to find oneself; the spirit often deceives the soul. But he who has found himself says: This is my good and my evil: thus he silences the moles and dwarfs who say "all is good and all is evil." Really, I don't like people who call everything good, and the world the best good. I call them "All Satisfiers". "Satisfaction of everything", savor everything, but not the best taste!I respect the stubborn and stubborn tongue and stomach that once learned to say "I" and "yes" and "no". Anything that chews and digests everything - that's what a pig is!Only donkeys and donkey-like creatures ever know to say "Yes!"— My taste calls for this: deep yellow and fiery red—that mixes blood and all colors.But he who cleansed his house betrayed to me a cleansed soul. Some love zombies, some love ghosts; both are enemies of blood and flesh. Well, how both are against my taste!Because I love blood! I don't want to live where everyone spits and hates; that's my taste.Rather live among robbers and perjurers.No one has gold in his mouth. But all phlegm-suckers loathe me more; the most loathsome creature among men I know is called a flatterer: he does not desire love, but wishes to be parasitized by love. We call people who have only one choice to be unhappy: either become an evil beast or become an evil domestic animal.I don't want to build my shrine with them. And I call unhappy those who must wait forever,--they are against my taste--all tax collectors, peddlers, kings, and all landowners and merchants. Indeed, I too have learned to expect, thoroughly,—but only myself.I also learned to stand, walk, run, jump, climb, and dance on top of everything. This is my teaching: He who wishes to soar one day must first learn to stand, to walk, to run, to climb and to dance:—for one cannot learn to soar by soaring! I have learned to reach many windows with rope ladders, and to climb with nimble legs to all tall masts: it seems to me no small happiness to sit on the tall masts of knowledge! —— To roar like a little flame on high-masts: a small brilliance, indeed, but a great comfort to wrecked sailors and shipwrecked! By different ways and means I have reached my truth; I have not but one stairway to the heights to which I wander. I hate to ask my way,--that's always against my taste! I would rather ask and test the way itself. All my journeys have been a quest, a trial: really I must have learned to answer such inquiries!This is my taste: ——It's not good, it's not evil, it's just my taste, and there's nothing shameful or secret about that. Here is my way--where is your way?Thus I answered those who asked me the way.Because this way does not exist! Thus spake Zarathustra.