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DSMANU UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
Author
KisW*>k should ^JnMttjsS^ m bcfoi^tffe date last marked below.
A Modern Library Giant
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
(1844-1900)
This 1120-page volume contains the
complete and unabridged texts of
Nietzsche's five most famous works:
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good
and Evil, Genealogy of Morals 9 Ecce
Homo and The Birth of Tragedy. The
material included has never before
been available in a single volume. It is
interesting to note that Ecce Homo and
The Birth of Tragedy were translated
by Clifton P. Fadiman in 1926, when
he was a graduate student at Colum-
bia; this was the first professional
literary labor of the now nationally
known critic. The introduction is by
Willard Huntington Wright who, in
moments of relaxation, wrote detec-
tive stories under the pen-name of
S. S. Van Dine.
THE MODERN LIBRARY
of the World's Best Books
THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE
The publishers will be pleased to send, upon
request, an illustrated folder setting forth
the purpose and scope of THE MODERN
LIBRARY, and listing each volume in the
series. Every reader of books will find
titles he has been looking for, handsomely
printed, in unabridged editions, and
at an unusually low price.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
NIETZSCHE
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
ECCE HOMO
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY
THE MODERN LIBRARY NEW YORK
THE MODERN LIBRARY
IS PUBLISHED BY
RANDOM HOUSE, INC.
BENNETT A. CERF DONALD S. KLOPFER ROBERT R. HAAS
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 9
Printed by Parkway Printing Company. Bound by H. Wolff, New York.
GENERAL CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
BY WILLARD HUNTINGTON WRIGHT vii
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA 21
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 3^9
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS 617
ECCE HOMO 809
THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY 947
INTRODUCTION
No PHILOSOPHER since Kant has left so undeniable an imprint
on modern thought as has Friedrich Nietzsche. Even Schopen-
hauer, whose influence colored the greater part of Europe,
made no such widespread impression. Not only in ethics and
literature do we find the molding hand of Nietzsche at work,
invigorating and solidifying; but in pedagogics and in art, in
politics and religion, the influence of his doctrines is to he
encountered.
The facts relating to Nietzsche's life are few and simple.
He was born at Rocken, a little village in the Prussian province
of Saxony, on October 15, 1844; and it is an interesting para-
dox that this most terrible and devastating critic of Christianity
and its ideals was the culmination of two long collateral lines
of theologians. There were two other children in the Nietzsche
household a girl born in 1846, and a son born in 1850. The
girl was named Therese Elizabeth Alexandra, and afterward
she became the philosopher's closest companion and guardian
and his most voluminous biographer. The boy, Joseph, did not
survive his first year. When Nietzsche's father died the family
moved to Naumburg; and Friedrich, then only six years old,
was sent to a local Municipal Boys* School. Later he was with-
drawn anc^entered in a private institution which prepared the
younger students for the Cathedral Grammar School. After a
few years here Nietzsche successfully passed his examinations
for the well-known Landes-Schule at Pforta, where he re-
mained until 1864, enrolling the following term at the Uni-
versity of Bonn.
It was at Bonn that a decided change came over his religious
(*
INTRODUCTION
views; and it was here also that his great friendship for Fried-
rich Wilhelm Ritschl, the philologist, developed. When
Ritschl was transferred to the University of Leipzig, Nietzsche
followed him. Leipzig was the turning point of his life. Here
he met Wagner; became acquainted with Erwin Rohde; and
discovered Schopenhauer. An interest in politics also developed
in him; and the war between Prussia and Austria fanned his
youthful ardor to an almost extravagant degree. Twice he
offered his services to the military, but both times was rejected
on account of his shortsightedness. In the autumn of 1867,
however, a new army regulation resulted in his being called to
the colors, and he joined the artillery at Naumburg. But he
was thrown from his horse in training and received a severe
injury to his chest, which necessitated his permanent with-
drawal from service.
In October, 1868, Nietzsche returned to his work at Leipzig,
and shortly after, although but twenty-four, he was offered the
post of Classical Philology at Bale. Two years later came the
Franco-Prussian War, and he secured service as an ambulance
attendant in the Hospital Corps. But his health was poor, and
the work proved too much for him. He contracted diphtheria
and severe dysentery, and it was necessary for him to discon-
tinue his duties entirely. His sister tells us that this illness
greatly undermined his health, and was the first cause of his
subsequent condition. He did not wait until he was well before
resuming his duties at the University; and this nejv strain im-
posed on his already depleted condition had much to do with
bringing on his final breakdown.
In 1872, Nietzsche's first important work appeared "The
Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music"; and in 1873 he
began a series of famous pamphlets which later were put into
book form under the title of "Thoughts Out of Season." His
[ -i
vin ]
INTRODUCTION
health was steadily declining, and during the holidays he
alternated between Switzerland and Italy in an endeavor to
recuperate. In the former place he was with Wagner, but in
1876 his friendship for the composer began to cool. He had
gone to Bayreuth, and there, after hearing "Der Ring des
Nlbelungen" he became bitter and disgusted at what he be-
lieved to be Wagner's compromise with Christianity. But so
strong was his affection for Wagner the man that it was not
until ten years had passed that he could bring himself to write
the now famous attack which he had long had in mind.
The year after the appearance of "Human All-Too-Human"
("Menschliches Allzu Menschlicbes"), Nietzsche's illness
compelled him to resign his professorship at Bale; and two
more years saw the appearance of "The Dawn of Day" ( "Mor-
genroten"), his first book of constructive thinking. The re-
mainder of his life was spent in a fruitless endeavor to regain
his health. For eight years, during all of which time he was
busily engaged in writing, he sought a climate that would
revive him visiting in turn Sils-Maria in Switzerland, Genoa,
Monaco, Messina, Grunewald, Tautenburg, Rome, Naumburg,
Nice, Venice, Mentone, and the Riviera. But to no avail. He
was constantly ill and for the most part alone, and this per-
turbed and restless period of his lif 6 resolved itself into a con-
tinuous struggle against melancholy and physical suffering.
During these eight years Nietzsche had written "Thus Spake
Zarathustra" ("Also Spracb ZarathustrJ') , "The Joyful Wis-
dom" ("La Gaya ScienzJ') , "Beyond Good and Evil" ("Jen-
seits Gute und Bose"), "The Genealogy of Morals" ("Zur
Genealogie der Moral"), "The Case of Wagner," "The Twi-
light of the Idols" ("Gotzendammerung"), "The Antichrist"
("Der Antichrist'), "Ecce Homo," "Nietzsche contra Wag-
[to]
INTRODUCTION
ner," and an enormous number of notes which were to con-
stitute his final and culminating work, 'The Will to Power"
("Die Wille zur Macht"). The events during this period of
Nietzsche's career were few. Perhaps the most important was
his meeting with Lou Salome. But even this episode had small
bearing on his life, and has been greatly emphasised by biog-
raphers because of its isolation in an existence outwardly drab
and uneventful.
In January, 1889, an apoplectic fit marked the beginning of
the end. Nietzsche's manner suddenly became alarming. He
exhibited numerous eccentricities, so grave as to mean but one
thing: his mind was seriously affected. There has long been
a theory that his insanity was of gradual growth, that, in fact,
he was unbalanced from birth. But there is no evidence to sub-
stantiate this theory. The statement that his books were those
of a madman is entirely without foundation. His works were
thought out in the most clarified manner; in his intercourse
with his friends he was restrained and normal; and his volumi-
nous correspondence showed no change toward the end either
in sentiment or tone. His insanity was sudden; it came without
warning; and it is puerile to point to his state of mind during
the last years of his life as a criticism of his philosophy. His
books must stand or fall on internal evidence. Judged from
that standpoint they are scrupulously sane.
The cause of Nietzsche's breakdown was due to a number of
influences his excessive use of chloral which he took for
insomnia, the tremendous strain to which he put his intellect,
his constant disappointments and privations, his mental soli-
tude, his prolonged physical suffering. We know little of his
last days before he went insane. Overbeck, in answer to a mad
note, found him in Turin, broken. Nietzsche was put in a
INTRODUCTION
private sanitarium at Jena. Recovering somewhat he returned
to Naumburg. Later his sister, Frau Forster-Nietzsche, re-
moved him to a villa at Weimar; and three years after, on the
twenty-fifth of August, 1900, he died. He was buried at
Rocken, his native village.
WILLARD HUNTINGTON WRIGHT
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Translated by THOMAS COMMON
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION BY MRS. FORSTER-NIETZSCHE xix
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
FIRST PART
ZARATHUSTRA'S PROLOGUE 3
ZARATHUSTRA'S DISCOURSES 21
CHAPTER
1. The Three Metamorphoses 23
2. The Academic Chairs of Virtue 25
3. Backworldsmen 28
4. ThDespisersof the Body 32
5. Joys and Passions 34
6. The Pale Criminal 36
7. Reading and Writing 39
8. The Tree orf the Hill 41
9. The Preachers of Death 44
10. War and Warriors 47
11. The New Idol 49
12. The Flies in the Market-Place 52
13. Chastity 56
14. The Friend 57
15. The Thousand and One Goals 60
1 6. Neighbour-Love 63
17. The Way of the Creating One 65
1 8. Old and Young Women 68
19. The Bite of the Adder 70
20. Child and Marriage 72
21. Voluntary Death 75
22. The Bestowing Virtue 78
CONTENTS
SECOND PART
CHAPTER PACK
23. The Child with the Mirror 87
24. In the Happy Isles 90
25. The Pitiful 93
26. The Priests 96
27. The Virtuous 99
28. The Rabble 103
29. The Tarantulas 106
30. The Famous Wise Ones no
3 1 . The Night Song 113
32. The Dance Song 116
33. The Grave Song 119
34. Self -Surpassing 122
35. The Sublime Ones 126
36. The Land of Culture 129
37. Immaculate Perception 132
38. Scholars 135
39. Poets 138
40. Great Events 142
41. The Soothsayer 146
42. Redemption 150
43. Manly Prudence 156
44. The Stillest Hour 159
THIRD PART
45. The Wanderer 167
46. The Vision and the Enigma 171
47. Involuntary Bliss 177
48. Before Sunrise 181
49. The Bed warfing Virtue 184
50. On the Olive-Mount 191
[ am ]
CONTENTS
5 1 . On Passing-by 1 94
52. The Apostates 198
53. The Return Home 203
54. The Three Evil Things 207
5 5 . The Spirit of Gravity 213
56. Old and New Tables 218
57. The Convalescent 241
58. The Great Longing 248
59. The Second Dance Song 252
60. The Seven Seals 256
FOURTH AND LAST PART
61. The Honey Sacrifice 263
62. The Cry of Distress 267
63. Talk with the Kings 271
64. The Leech 276
65. The Magician 280
66. Out of Service 288
67. The Ugliest Man 293
68. The Voluntary Beggar 298
69. The Shadow 303
70. Noontide 307
71. The Greeting 311
72. The Supper 317
73. The Higher Man 319
74. The Song of Melancholy 332
75. Science 338
76. Among Daughters of the Desert 341
77. The Awakening 348
78. The Ass-Festival 352
79. The Drunken Song 356
80. The Sign 365
[ ami ]
INTRODUCTION
BY MRS. FoRSTER-NlETZSCHE
HOW ZARATHUSTRA CAME INTO BEING
"ZARATHUSTRA" is my brother's most personal work; it is the
history of his most individual experiences, of his friendships,
ideals, raptures, bitterest disappointments and sorrows. Above
it all, however, there soars, transfiguring it, the image of his
greatest hopes and remotest aims. My brother had the figure of
Zarathustra in his mind from his very earliest youth: he once
told me that even as a child he had dreamt of him. At different
periods in his life, he would call this haunter of his dreams by
different names; "but in the end," he declares in a note on the
subject, "I had to do a Persian the honor of identifying him
with this creature of my fancy. Persians were the first to take
a broad and comprehensive view of history. Every series of
evolutions, according to them, was presided over by a prophet;
and every prophet had his 'Hazar' his dynasty of a thou-
sand years."
All Zarathustra's views, as also his personality, were early
conceptions of my brother's mind. Whoever reads his post-
humously published writings for the years 1869-82 with care,
will constantly meet with passages suggestive of Zarathustra's
thoughts and doctrines. For instance, the ideal of the Super-
man is put forth quite clearly in all his writings during the
years 1873-75; an ^ in "We Philologists," the following re-
markable observations occur:
"How can one praise and glorify a nation as a whole?
[ xix ]
INTRODUCTION
Even among the Greeks, it was the individuals that counted,
"The Greeks are interesting and extremely important be-
cause they reared such a vast number of great individuals. How
was this possible? The question is one which ought to be
studied.
"I am interested' only in the relations of a people to the
rearing of the individual man, and among the Greeks the
conditions were unusually favorable for the development of
the individual; not by any means owing to the goodness of the
people, but because of the struggles of their evil instincts.
"With the help of favorable measures great individuals
might be reared who would be both different from and higher
than those ivho heretofore have owed their existence to mere
chance. Here we may still be hopeful: in the rearing of excep-
tional men. 1 '
The notion of rearing the Superman is only a new form of
an ideal Nietzsche already had in his youth, that "the object
of mankind should lie in its highest individuals" (or, as he
writes in "Schopenhauer as Educator": "Mankind ought con-
stantly to be striving to produce great men this and nothing
else is its duty." ) . But the ideals he most revered in those days
are no longer held to be the highest types of men. No, around
this future ideal of a coming humanity the Superman the
poet spread the veil of becoming. Who can tell to what glorious
heights man can still ascend? That is why, after having tested
the worth of our noblest ideal that of the Saviour, in the
light of the new valuations, the poet cries with passionate
emphasis in "Zarathustra" :
"Never yet hath there been a Superman. Naked have I seen
both of them, the greatest and the smallest man:
"All-too-similar are they still to each other. Verily even the
greatest found I all-too-human!"
[ ocx ]
INTRODUCTION
The phrase "the rearing of the Superman," has very often
been misunderstood. By the word "rearing," in this case, is
meant the act of modifying by means of new and higher values
values which, as laws and guides of conduct and opinion, are
now to rule over mankind. In general the doctrine of the
Superman can only be understood correctly in conjunction with
other ideas of the author's, such as: the Order of Rank, the
Will to Power, and the Transvaluation of All Values. He
assumes that Christianity, as a product of the resentment of
the botched and the weak, has put in ban all that is beautiful,
strong, proud, and powerful, in fact all the qualities resulting
from strength, and that, in consequence, all forces which tend
to promote or elevate life have been seriously undermined.
Now, however, a new table of valuations must be placed over
mankind namely, that of the strong, mighty, and magnifi-
cent man, overflowing with life and elevated to his zenith the
Superman, who is now put before us with overpowering pas-
sion as the aim of our life, hope, and will. And just as the old
system of valuing, which only extolled the qualities favorable
to the weak, the suffering, and the oppressed, has succeeded in
producing a weak, suffering, and "modern" race, so this new
and reversed system of valuing ought to rear a healthy, strong,
lively, and courageous type, which would be a glory to life
itself. Stated briefly, the leading principle of this new system
of valuing would be: "All that proceeds from power is good,
all that springs from weakness is bad."
TJiis type must not be regarded as a fanciful figure: it is not
a nebulous hope which is to be realized at some indefinitely
remote period, thousands of years hence; nor is it a new species
(in the Darwinian sense) of which we can know nothing, and
which it would therefore be somewhat absurd to strive after.
But it is meant to be a possibility which men of the present
[ oc cd ]
INTRODUCTION
could realize with all their spiritual and physical energies, pro-
vided they adopted the new values.
The author of "Zarathustra" never lost sight of that egre-
gious example of a transvaluation of all values through Chris-
tianity, whereby the whole of the deified mode of life and
thought of the Greeks, as well as strong Romedom, was almost
annihilated or transvalued in a comparatively short time.
Could not a rejuvenated Grasco-Roman system of valuing
(once it had been refined and made more profound by the
schooling which two thousand years of Christianity had pro-
vided ) effect another such revolution within a calculable period
of time, until that glorious type of manhood shall finally ap-
pear which is to be our new faith and hope, and in the creation
of which Zarathustra exhcfrts us to participate?
In his private notes on the subject the author uses the ex-
pression "Superman" (always in the singular, by-the-bye), as
signifying "the most thoroughly well-constituted type," as
opposed to "modern man"; above all, however, he designates
Zarathustra himself as an example of the Superman. In "Ecce
Homo" he is careful to enlighten us concerning the precursors
and prerequisites to the advent of this highest type, in referring
to a certain passage in "The Joyful Wisdom":
"In order to understand this type, we must first be quite clear
in regard to the leading physiological condition on which it
depends: this condition is what I call great healthiness. I know
not how to express my meaning more plainly or more per-
sonally than I have done already in one of the last chapters
(Aphorism 382) of the fifth book of "The Joyful Wisdom* ':
"We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand" it says there
"we firstlings of a yet untried future we require for a new end also a
new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder
and merrier than all healthiness hitherto. He whose soul longeth to
[ XOCll ]
INTROD UCTION
experience the whole range of hitherto recognized values and desirabilities,
and to circumnavigate all the coasts of this ideal 'Mediterranean Sea,'
who, from the adventures of his most personal experience, wants to know
how it feels to be a conqueror, and discoverer of the ideal as likewise
how it is with the artist, the saint, the legislator, the sage, the scholar, the
devotee, the prophet, and the godly non-conformist of the old style
requires one thing above all for that purpose, great healthiness such
healthiness as one not only possesses, but also constantly acquires and must
acquire, because one unceasingly sacrifices it again, and must sacrifice it!
And now, after having been long on the way in this fashion, we Argo-
nauts of the ideal, more courageous perhaps than prudent, and often
enough shipwrecked and brought to grief, nevertheless dangerously
healthy, always healthy again it would seem as if, in recompense for
it all, that we have a still undiscovered country before us, the boundaries
of which no one has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of
the ideal known hitherto, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the
strange, the questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity
as well as our thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand alas!
that nothing will now any longer satisfy us!
"How could we still be content with the man of the present day after
such outlooks, and with such a craving in our conscience and conscious-
ness? Sad enough; but it is unavoidable that we should look on the
worthiest aims and hopes of the man of the present day with ill-concealed
amusement, and perhaps should no longer look at them. Another ideal
runs on before us, a strange, tempting ideal full of danger, to which we
should not like to persuade any one, because we do not so readily acknowl-
edge any one's right thereto: the ideal of a spirit who plays naively (that
is to say involuntarily and from overflowing abundance and power) with
everything that has hitherto been called holy, good, intangible, or divine;
to whom the loftiest conception which the people have reasonably made
their measure of value, would already practically imply danger, ruin,
abasement, or at least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetful-
ness; the ideal of a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which
will often enough appear inhuman, for example, when put alongside of
all past seriousness on earth, and alongside of all past solemnities in bear-
ing, word, tone, look, morality, and pursuit, as their truest involuntary
y parody and with which, nevertheless, perhaps the great seriousness only
[ XXlil ]
INTRODUCTION
commences, when the proper interrogative mark is set up, the fate of the
soul changes, the hour-hand moves, and tragedy begins. . . ."
Although the figure of Zarathustra and a large number of
the leading thoughts in this work had appeared much earlier
in the dreams and writings of the author, 'Thus Spake Zara-
thustra" did not actually come into being until the month of
August, 1 88 1, in Sils-Maria; and it was the idea of the Eternal
Recurrence of all things which finally induced my brother to
set forth his new views in poetic language. In regard to his first
conception of this idea, his autobiographical sketch, "Ecce,
Homo," written in the autumn of 1888, contains the following
passage:
"The fundamental idea of my work namely, the Eternal
Recurrence of all things this highest of all possible formulae
of a Yea-saying philosophy, first occurred to me in August,
1 88 1. I made a note of the thought on a sheet of paper, with
the postscript: 6,000 feet beyond men and time! That day I
happened to be wandering through the woods alongside of
the lake of Silvaplana, and I halted beside a huge, pyramidal
and towering rock not far from Surlei. It was then that the
thought struck me. Looking back now, I find that exactly two
months previous to this inspiration, I had had an omen of its
coming in the form of a sudden and decisive alteration in my
tastes more particularly in music. It would even be possible
to consider all 'Zarathustra' as a musical composition. At all
events, a very necessary condition in its production was a
renaissance in myself of the art of hearing. In a small mountain
resort (Recoaro) near Vicenza, where I spent the spring of
1 88 1, 1 and my friend and Maestro, Peter Gast also one who
had been born again discovered that the phoenix music that
hovered over us, wore lighter and brighter plumes than it had
done theretofore."
[ ccocw ]
INTRODUCTION
During the month of August, 1881, my brother resolved to
reveal the teaching of the Eternal Recurrence, in dithyrambic
and psalmodic form, through the mouth of Zarathustra.
Among the notes of this period, we found a page on which is
written the first definite plan of "Thus Spake Zarathustra":
"MIDDAY AND ETERNITY."
"GUIDE-POSTS TO A NEW WAY OF LIVING."
Beneath this is written:
"Zarathustra born on lake Urmi; left his home in his thirtieth year;
went into the province of Aria, and, during ten years of solitude in the
mountains, composed the Zend-Avesta."
"The sun of knowledge stands once more at midday; and the serpent
of eternity lies coiled in its light : It is your time, ye midday brethren."
In that summer of 1 88 1, my brother, after many years of
steadily declining health, began at last to rally, and it is to this
first gush of the recovery of his once splendid bodily condition
that we owe not only "The Joyful Wisdom/' which in its mood
may be regarded as a prelude to "Zarathustra," but also "Zara-
thustra" itself. Just as he was beginning to recuperate his
health, however, an unkind destiny brought him a number of
most painful personal experiences. His friends caused him
many disappointments, which were the more bitter to him, in-
asmuch as he regarded friendship as such a sacred institution;
and for the first time in his life he realized the whole horror
of that loneliness to which, perhaps, all greatness is con-
demned. But to be forsaken is something very different from
deliberately choosing blessed loneliness. How he longed, in
those days, for the ideal friend who would thoroughly under-
stand him, to whom he would be able to say all, and whom he
imagined he had found at various periods in his life from his
[ xaro ]
INTRODUCTION
earliest youth onwards. Now, however, that the way he had
chosen grew ever more perilous and steep, he found nobody
who could follow him: he therefore created a perfect friend
for himself in the ideal form of a majestic philosopher, and
made this creation the preacher of his gospel to the world.
Whether my brother would ever have written "Thus Spake
Zarathustra" according to the first plan sketched in the sum-
mer of 1 88 1, if he had not had the disappointments already
referred to, is now an idle question; but perhaps where "Zara-
thustra" is concerned, we may also say with Master Eckhardt:
"The fleetest beast to bear you to perfection is suffering."
My brother writes as follows about the origin of the first
part of "Zarathustra": "In the winter of 1882-83, I was
living on the charming little Gulf of Rapallo, not far from
Genoa, and between Chiavari and Cape Porto Fino. My health
ivas not very good; the winter was cold and exceptionally rainy;
and the small inn in which I lived was so close to the water
that at night my sleep would be disturbed if the sea were high.
These circumstances were surely the very reverse of favorable;
and yet in spite of it all, and as if in demonstration of my belief
that everything decisive comes to life in spite of every obstacle,
it was precisely during this winter and in the midst of these un-
favorable circumstances that my 'Zarathustra' originated. In
the morning I used to start out in a southerly direction up the
glorious road to Zoagli, which rises aloft through a forest of
pines and gives one a view far out into the sea. In the after-
noon, as often as my health permitted, I walked round the
whole bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Porto Fino. This
spot was all the more interesting to me, inasmuch as it was so
dearly loved by the Emperor Frederick III. In the autumn of
1886 I chanced to be there again when he was revisiting this
small, forgotten world of happiness for the last time. It was on
[ xxvi ]
INTRODUCTION
these two roads that all 'Zarathustra' came to me, above all
Zarathustra himself as a type; I ought rather to say that it was
on these walks that these ideas waylaid me."
The first part of "Zarathustra" was written in about ten
days that is to say, from the beginning to about the middle
of February, 1883. "The last lines were written precisely in the
hallowed hour when Richard Wagner gave up the ghost in
Venice."
With the exception of the ten days occupied in composing
the first part of this book, my brother often referred to this
winter as the hardest and sickliest he had ever experienced. He
did not, however, mean thereby that his former disorders were
troubling him, but that he was suffering from a severe attack
of influenza which he had caught in Santa Margherita, and
which tormented him for several weeks after his arrival in
Genoa. As a matter of fact, however, what he complained of
most was his spiritual condition that indescribable forsaken-
ness to which he gives such heartrending expression in
"Zarathustra." Even the reception which the first part met
with at the hands of friends and acquaintances was extremely
disheartening: for almost all those to whom he presented
copies of the work misunderstood it. "I found no one ripe for
many of my thoughts; the case of 'Zarathustra* proves that one
can speak with the utmost clearness, and yet not be heard by
any one." My brother was very much discouraged by the feeble-
ness of the response he was given, and as he was striving just
then to give up the practice of taking hydrate of chloral a
drug he had begun to take while ill with influenza the fol-
lowing spring, spent in Rome, was a somewhat gloomy one
for him. He writes about it as follows : "I spent a melancholy
spring in Rome, where I only just managed to live and this
was no easy matter. This city, which is absolutely unsuited to
[ ocacvii ]
INTRODUCTION
the poet-author of 'Zarathustra,' and for the choice of which I
was not responsible, made me inordinately miserable. I tried to
leave it. I wanted to go to Aquila the opposite of Rome in
every respect, and actually founded in a spirit of enmity to-
wards that city (just as I also shall found a city some day ) , as
a memento of an atheist and genuine enemy of the Church a
person very closely related to me the great Hohenstaufen,
the Emperor Frederick II. But Fate lay behind it all: I had to
return again to Rome. In the end I was obliged to be satisfied
with the Piazza Barberini, after I had exerted myself in vain to
find an anti-Christian quarter. I fear that on one occasion, to
avoid bad smells as much as possible, I actually inquired at the
Palazzo del Quirinalc whether they could not provide a quiet
room for a philosopher. In a chamber high above the Piazza
just mentioned, from which one obtained a general view of
Rome and could hear the fountains plashing far below, the
loneliest of all songs was composed The Night-Song.' About
this time I was obsessed by an unspeakably sad melody, the
refrain of which I recognised in the words, Mead through im-
mortality/ "
We remained somewhat too long in Rome that spring, and
what with the effect of the increasing heat and the discour-
aging circumstances already described, my brother resolved not
to write any more, or in any case, not to proceed with "Zara-
thustra," although I offered to relieve him of all trouble in
connection with the proofs and the publisher. When, how-
ever, we returned to Switzerland towards the end of June, and
he found himself once more in the familiar and exhilarating
air of the mountains, all his joyous creative powers revived, and
in a note to me announcing the dispatch of some manuscript,
he wrote as follows: "I have engaged a place here for three
months : forsooth, I am the greatest fool to allow my courage to
INTRODUCTION
be sapped from me by the climate of Italy. Now and again I
am troubled by the thought: what next? My 'future* is the
darkest thing in the world to me, but as there still remains a
great deal for me to do, I suppose I ought rather to think of
doing this than of my future, and leave the rest to thee and
the gods/'
The second part of "Zarathustra" was written between the
26th of June and the 6th July. "This summer, finding myself
once more in the sacred place where the first thought of
'Zarathustra' flashed across my mind, I conceived the second
part. Ten days sufficed. Neither for the second, the first, nor
the third part, have I required a day longer."
He often used to speak of the ecstatic mood in which he
wrote "Zarathustra"; how in his walks over hill and dale the
ideas would crowd into his mind, and how he would note
them down hastily in a notebook from which he would tran-
scribe them on his return, sometimes working till midnight. He
says in a letter to me: "You can have no idea of the vehemence
of such composition," and in "Ecce Homo" (autumn 1888) he
describes as follows with passionate enthusiasm the incom-
parable mood in which he created Zarathustra:
" Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any
distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by
the word inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had the
smallest vestige of superstition in one, it would hardly be
possible to set aside completely the idea that one is the mere
incarnation, mouthpiece or medium of an almighty power. The
idea of revelation in the sense that something becomes sud-
denly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and
accuracy, which profoundly convulses and upsets one de-
scribes simply the matter of fact. One hears one does not
seek; one takes one does not ask who gives: a thought sud-
[ XOCIX ]
INTRODUCTION
denly flashes up like lightning, it comes with necessity, un-
hesitatingly I have never had any choice in the matter. There
is an ecstasy such that the immense strain of it is sometimes
relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one's steps either
rush or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that
one is completely out of hand, with the very distinct conscious-
ness of an endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the
very toes; there is a depth of happiness in which the pain-
fullest and gloomiest do not operate as antitheses, but as con-
ditioned, as demanded in the sense of necessary shades of
colour in such an overflow of light. There is an instinct for
rhythmic relations which embraces wide areas of forms
(length, the need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the
measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart
to its pressure and tension) . Everything happens quite involun-
tarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absolute-
ness, of power and divinity. The involuntariness of the figures
and similes is the most remarkable thing; one loses all percep-
tion of what constitutes the figure and what constitutes the
simile; everything seems to present itself as the readiest, the
correctest and the simplest means of expression. It actually
seems, to use one of Zarathustra's own phrases, as if all things
came unto one, and would fain be similes: 'Here do all things
come caressingly to thy talk and flatter thee, for they want to
ride upon thy back. On every simile dost thou here ride to
every truth. Here fly open unto thee all being's words and
word-cabinets; here all being wanteth to become words, here
all becoming wanteth to learn of thee how to talk/ This is my
experience of inspiration. I do not doubt but that one would
have to go back thousands of years in order to find some one
who could say to me: It is mine also! "
In the autumn of 1883 my brother left the Engadine for
[ XXX ]
INTRODUCTION
Germany and stayed there a few weeks. In the following
winter, after wandering somewhat erratically through Stresa,
Genoa, and Spezia, he landed in Nice, where the climate so
happily promoted his creative powers that he wrote the third
part of "Zarathustra." "In the winter, beneath the halcyon
sky of Nice, which then looked down upon me for the first
time in my life, I found the third 'Zarathustra' and came to
the end of my task; the whole having occupied me scarcely a
year. Many hidden corners and heights in the landscapes round
about Nice are hallowed to me by unforgettable moments. That
decisive chapter entitled 'Old and New Tables' was composed
in the very difficult ascent from the station to Eza that won-
derful Moorish village in the rocks. My most creative moments
were always accompanied by unusual muscular activity. The
body is inspired: let us waive the question of the 'soul/ I
might often have been seen dancing in those days. Without a
suggestion of fatigue I could then walk for seven or eight
hours on end among the hills. I slept well and laughed well
I was perfectly robust and patient."
As we have seen, each of the three parts of "Zarathustra"
was written, after a more or less short period of preparation
in about ten days. The composition of the fourth part alone
was broken by occasional interruptions. The first notes relating
to this part were written while he and I were staying together
in Zurich in September 1884. In the following November,
while staying at Mentone, he began to elaborate these notes,
and after a long pause, finished the manuscript at Nice be-
tween the end of January and the middle of February 1885. My
brother then called this part the fourth and last; but even be-
fore, and shortly after it had been privately printed, he wrote
to me saying that he still intended writing a fifth and sixth part,
and notes relating to these parts are now in my possession. This
[ ocococi ]
INTRODUCTION
fourth part (the original MS. of which contains this note:
"Only for my friends, not for the public") is written in a
particularly personal spirit, and those few to whom he pre-
sented a copy of it, he pledged to the strictest secrecy concern-
ing its contents. He often thought of making this fourth part
public also, but doubted whether he would ever be able to do
so without considerably altering certain portions of it. At all
events he resolved to distribute this manuscript production, of
which only forty copies were printed, only among those who
had proved themselves worthy of it, and it speaks eloquently
of his utter loneliness and need of sympathy in those days, that
he had occasion to present only seven copies of his book accord-
ing to this resolution.
Already at the beginning of this history I hinted at the rea-
sons which led my brother to select a Persian as the incarnation
of his ideal of the majestic philosopher. His reasons, however,
for choosing Zarathustra of all others to be his mouthpiece, he
gives us in the following words: "People have never asked
me, as they should have done, what the name Zarathustra
precisely means in my mouth, in the mouth of the first Im-
moralist; for what distinguishes that philosopher from all
others in the past is the very fact that he was exactly the reverse
of an immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle
between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of
things. The translation of morality into the metaphysical, as
force, cause, end in itself, was his work. But the very question
suggests its own answer. Zarathustra created the most porten-
tous error, morality, consequently he should also be the first to
perceive that error, not only because he has had longer and
greater experience of the subject than any other thinker all
history is the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-
called moral order of things: the more important point is
[ ococ mi ]
INTRODUCTION
that Zarathustra was more truthful than any other thinker. In
his teaching alone do we meet with truthfulness upheld as the
highest virtue i.e.: the reverse of the cowardice of the 'ideal-
ist* who flees from reality. Zarathustra had more courage in his
body than any other thinker before or after him. To tell the
truth and to aim straight: that is the first Persian virtue. Am I
understood? . . . The overcoming of morality through itself
through truthfulness, the overcoming of the moralist
through his opposite through me : that is what the name
Zarathustra means in my mouth.''
ELIZABETH FORSTER-NIETZSCHE
NIETZSCHE ARCHIVES,
WEIMAR, December 1905.
%arathustra's Prologue
WHEN Zarathustra was thirty years old, he'left his home and
the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. There he
enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not
weary of it. But at last his heart changed, and rising one
morning with the rosy dawn, he went before the sun, and
spake thus unto it:
Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst
not those for whom thou shinest!
For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave: thou
wouldst have wearied of thy light and of the journey, had it not
been for me, mine eagle, and my serpent.
But we awaited thee every morning, took from thee thine
overflow, and blessed thee for it.
Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gath-
ered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.
I would fain bestow and distribute, until the wise have once
more become joyous in their folly, and the poor happy in their
riches.
Therefore must I descend into the deep: as thou doest in
the evening, when thou goest behind the sea, and givest light
also to the nether-world, thou exuberant star!
Like thee must I go down, as men say, to whom I shall
descend.
[3]
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
Bless me, then, thou tranquil eye, that canst behold even the
greatest happiness without envy!
Bless the cup that is about to overflow, Hiat the water may
flow golden out of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of
thy bliss!
Lo! This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra
is again going to be a man.
Thus began Zarathustra' s down -going.
Zarathustra went down the mountain alone, no one'meeting
him. When he entered the forest, however, there suddenly
stood before him an old man, who had left his holy cot to seek
roots. And thus spake the old man to Zarathustra:
"No stranger to me is this wanderer: many years ago passed
he by. Zarathustra he was called; but he hath altered.
Then thou carriedst thine ashes into the mountains: wilt
thou now carry thy fire into the valleys? Fearest thou not the
''ncendiary's doom?
Yea, I recognize Zarathustra. Pure is his eye, and no loath-
ing lurketh about his mouth. Goeth he not along like a
dancer?
Altered is Zarathustra; a child hath Zarathustra become; an
awakened one is Zarathustra: what wilt thou do in the land of
the sleepers?
As in the sea hast thou lived in solitude, and it hath borne
thee up. Alas, wilt thou now go ashore? Alas, wilt thou again
drag thy body thyself?"
Zarathustra answered: "I love mankind."
[-*]
ZARATHUSTRAS PROLOGUE
"Why," said the saint, "did I go into the forest and th
desert? Was it not because I loved men far too well?
Now I love God : men, I do not love. Man is a thing to<
imperfect for me. Love to man would be fatal to me."
Zarathustra answered: "What spake I of love! I am bring
ing gifts unto men."
"Give them nothing," said the saint. "Take rather part o
their load, and carry it along with them that will be mos
agreeable unto them: if only it be agreeable unto thee!
If, however, tliou wilt give unto them, give them no mon
than an alms, and let them also beg for it!"
"No," replied Zarathustra, "I give no alms. I am riot poo
enough for that."
The saint laughed at Zarathustra, and spake thu::: "Thei
see to it that they accept thy treasures! They are distrustful o
anchorites, and do not believe that we come with gifts.
The fall of our footsteps ringeth too hollow through thei
streets. And just as at night, when they are in bed and hear ;
man abroad long before sunrise, so they ask themselves con
cerning us: Where goeth the thief?
Go not to men, but stay in the forest! Go rather to the ani
mals! Why not be like me a bear amongst bears, a bir<
amongst birds?"
"And what doeth the saint in the forest?" asked Zarathustra
The saint answered: "I make hymns and sing them; and ii
making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I prais
God.
With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I prais
the God who is my God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift? 1
When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to th
saint and said : "What should I have to give thee! Let me rathe
hurry hence lest I take aught away from thee!" And thu
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
they parted from one another, the old man and Zarathustra,
laughing like schoolboys.
When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart:
"Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet
heard of it, that God is dead!"
3
When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which ad-
joineth the forest, he found many people assembled in the
market-place; for it had been announced that a rope-dancer
would give a performance. And Zarathustra spake thus unto
the people:
/ teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be
surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man?
All beings hitherto have created something beyond them-
selves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would
rather go back to the beast than surpass man?
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame.
And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-
stock, a thing of shame.
Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much
within you is still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man
is more of an ape than any of the apes.
Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid
of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or
plants?
Lo, I teach you the Superman!
The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will
say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!
I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the earth, and be-
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
lieve not those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes!
Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.
Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones
themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy;
but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blas-
pheme the earth is now the dreadf ulest sin, and to rate the heart
of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!
Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then
that contempt was the supreme thing: the soul wished the
body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape
from the body and the earth.
Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and
cruelty was the delight of that soul!
But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say
about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and
wretched self-complacency?
Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to re-
ceive a polluted stream without becoming impure.
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your
great contempt be submerged.
What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour
of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness be-
cometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue.
The hour when ye say: "What good is my happiness! It is
poverty and pollution and wretched self -complacency \ But my
happiness should justify existence itself!"
The hour when ye say: "What good is my reason! Doth it
long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and
pollution and wretched self-complacency!"
The hour when ye say: "What good is my virtue! As yet it
hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good
m
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-
complacency!"
The hour when ye say: "What good is my justice! I do not
see that I am fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour
and fuel!"
The hour when we say: "What good is my pity! Is not pity
the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity
is not a crucifixion."
Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah!
would that I had heard you crying thus!
It is not your sin it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto
heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!
Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where
is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that
frenzy!
When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of the people called
out: "We have now heard enough of the rope-dancer; it is
time now for us to see him!" And all the people laughed at
Zarathustra. But the rope-dancer, who thought the words ap-
plied to him, began his performance.
Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered.
Then he spake thus :
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Super-
man a rope over an abyss.
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous
looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal:
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
what is lovable in man is that he is an over- going and a down-
going.
I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers,
for they are the over-goers.
I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers,
and arrows of longing for the other shore.
I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars
for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to
the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.
I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know
in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he
his own down-going.
I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build
the house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal,
and plant: for thus seeketh he his own down-going.
I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to
down-going, and an arrow of longing.
I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but
wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he
as spirit over the bridge.
I love him who maketh his virtue his inclination and destiny:
thus, for the sake of his virtue, he is willing to live on, or live
no more.
I love him who desireth not too many virtues. One virtue is*
more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's
destiny to cling to.
I love him whose soul is lavish, who wanteth no thanks and
doth not give back: for he always bestoweth, and desireth not
to keep for himself.
I love him who is ashamed when the dice fall in his favour,
and who then asketh: "Am I a dishonest player? for he is
willing to succumb.
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his
deeds, and always doeth more than he promiseth: for he
secketh his own down-going.
I love him who justifieth the future ones, and redeemeth
the past ones: for he is willing to succumb through the present
ones.
I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his
God: for he must succumb through the wrath of his God.
I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and
may succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly
over the bridge.
I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth him-
self, and all things are in him : thus all things become his down-
going.
I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his
head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth
his down-going.
I love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of
the dark cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming
of the lightning, and succumb as heralds.
Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of
the cloud: the lightning, however, is the Superman.
When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he again looked
at the people, and was silent. "There they stand, " said he to his
heart; " there they laugh: they understand me not; I am not the
mouth for these ears.
Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear
with their eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and peni-
[10]
ZARATHUSTRAS PROLOGUE
tential preachers? Or do they only believe the stammerer?
They have something whereof they are proud. What do they
call it, that which maketh them proud? Culture, they call it; it
distinguisheth them from the goatherds.
They dislike, therefore, to hear of 'contempt* of themselves.
So I will appeal to their pride.
I will speak unto them of the most contemptible thing:
that, however, is the last man!"
And thus spake Zarathustra unto the people:
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant
the germ of his highest hope.
Still is his soil rich enough for it. But that soil will one day
be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be
able to grow thereon.
Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch
the arrow of his longing beyond man and the string of his
bow will have unlearned to whizz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to
a dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.
Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give
birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most
despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you the last man.
"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is
a star?" so asketh the last man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth
the last man who maketh everything small. His species is in-
eradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth
longest.
"We have discovered happiness" say the last men, and
blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
need warmth. One still loveth one's neighbour and rubbeth
against him; for one needeth warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they
walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or
men!
A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams.
And much poison at last for a pleasant death.
One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful
lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burden-
some. Who still wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey?
Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wanteth the same;
everyone is equal : he who hath other sentiments goeth volun-
tarily into the madhouse.
"Formerly all the world was insane/' say the subtlest of
them, and blink thereby.
They are clever and know all that hath happened: so there
is no end to their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon
reconciled otherwise it spoileth their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little
pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.
"We have discovered happiness," say the last men, and
blink thereby.
And here ended the first discourse of Zarathustra, which is
also called "The Prologue", for at this point the shouting and
mirth of the multitude interrupted him. "Give us this last man,
O Zarathustra," they called out "make us into these last
men! Then will we make thee a present of the Superman!,"
And all the people exulted and smacked their lips. Zarathustra,
fiowever, turned sad, and said to his heart:
"They understand me not : I am not the mouth for these ears.
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
Too long, perhaps, have I lived in the mountains; too much
have I hearkened unto the brooks and trees: now do I speak
unto them as unto the goatherds.
Calm is my soul, and clear, like the mountains in the morn-
ing. But they think me cold, and a mocker with terrible jests.
And now do they look at me and laugh: and while they
laugh they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter."
6
Then, however, something happened which made every
mouth mute and every eye fixed. In the meantime, of course,
the rope-dancer had commenced his performance: he had come
out at a little door, and was going along the rope which was
stretched between two towers, so that it hung above the market-
place and the people. When he was just midway across, the
little door opened once more, and a gaudily-dressed fellow like
a buffoon sprang out, and went rapidly after the first one. "Go
on, halt-foot," cried his frightful voice, "go on, lazy-bones,
interloper, sallow-face! lest I tickle thee with my heel! What
dost thou here between the towers? In the tower is the place
for thee, thou shouldst be locked up; to one better than thyself
thou blockest the way!" And with every word he came nearer
and nearer the first one. When, however, he was but a step
behind, there happened the frightful thing which made every
mouth mute and every eye fixed he uttered a yell like a devil,
and jumped over the other who was in his way. The latter,
however, when he thus saw his rival triumph, lost at the same
time his head and his footing on the rope; he threw his pole
away, and shot downward faster than it, like an eddy of arms
and legs, into the depth. The market-place and the people were
113]
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
like the sea when the storm cometh on: they all flew apart and
in disorder, especially where the body was about to fall.
Zarathustra, however, remained standing, and just beside
him fell the body, badly injured and disfigured, but not yet
dead. After a while consciousness returned to the shattered
man, and he saw Zarathustra kneeling beside him. "What art
thou doing there?" said he at last, "I knew long ago that the
devil would trip me up. Now he draggeth me to hell: wilt thou
prevent him?"
"On mine honour, my friend," answered Zarathustra,
"there is nothing of all that whereof thou speakest: there is no
devil and no hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy
body; fear, therefore, nothing any more!"
The man looked up distrustfully. "If thou speakest the
truth," said he, "I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not
much more than an animal which hath been taught to dance by
blows and scanty fare."
"Not at all," said Zarathustra, "thou hast made danger thy
calling; therein there is nothing contemptible. Now thou
perishest by thy calling: therefore will I bury thee with mine
own hands."
When Zarathustra had said this the dying one did not reply
further; but he moved his hand as if he sought the hand of
Zarathustra in gratitude.
Meanwhile the evening came on, and the market-place
veiled itself in gloom. Then the people dispersed, for even
curiosity and terror become fatigued. Zarathustra, however,
still sat beside the dead man on the ground, absorbed in
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
thought: so he forgot the time. But at last it became night, and
a cold wind blew upon the lonely one. Then arose Zarathustra
and said to his heart:
Verily, a fine catch of fish hath Zarathustra made to-day! It is
not a man he hath caught, but a corpse.
Sombre is human life, and as yet without meaning: a buffoon
may be fateful to it.
I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the
Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man.
But still am I far from them, and my sense speaketh not unto
their sense. To men I am still something between a fool and
a corpse.
Gloomy is the night, gloomy are the ways of Zarathustra.
Come, thou cold and stiff companion! I carry thee to the place
where I shall bury thce with mine own hands.
8
When Zarathustra had said this to his heart, he put the
corpse upon his shoulders and set out on his way. Yet had he
not gone a hundred steps, when there stole a man up to him
and whispered in his ear and lo! he that spake was the buf-
foon from the tower. "Leave this town, O Zarathustra/' said
he, "there are too many here who hate thee. The good and just
hate thee, and call thee their enemy and despiser; the believers
in the orthodox belief hate thee, and call thee a danger to the
multitude. It was thy good fortune to be laughed at: and verily
thou spakest like a buffoon. It was thy good fortune to associate
with the dead dog; by so humiliating thyself thou hast saved
thy life today. Depart, however, from this town, or tomor-
row I shall jump over thee, a living man over a dead one." And
[15]
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
when he had said this, the buffoon vanished; Zarathustra, how-
ever, went on through the dark streets.
At the gate of the town the grave-diggers met him: they
shone their torch on his face, and, recognising Zarathustra,
they sorely derided him. "Zarathustra is carrying away the dead
dog: a fine thing that Zarathustra hath turned a grave-digger!
For our hands are too cleanly for that roast. Will Zarathustra
steal the bite from the devil? Well then, good luck to the re-
past! If only the devil is not a better thief than Zarathustra!
he will steal them both, he will eat them both!" And they
laughed among themselves, and put their heads together.
Zarathustra made no answer thereto, but went on his way.
When he had gone on for two hours, past forests and swamps,
he had heard too much of the hungry howling of the wolves,
and he himself became hungry. So he halted at a lonely house
in which a light was burning.
"Hunger attacketh me," said Zarathustra, "like a robber.
Among forests and swamps my hunger attacketh me, and late
in the night.
"Strange humours hath my hunger. Often it cometh to me
only after a repast, and all day it hath failed to come: where
hath it been?"
And thereupon Zarathustra knocked at the door of the
house. An old man appeared, who carried a light, and asked:
"Who cometh unto me and my bad sleep?"
"A living man and a dead one," said Zarathustra. "Give me
something to eat and drink, I forgot it during the day. He that
feedeth the hungry refresheth his own soul, saith wisdom."
The old man withdrew, but came back immediately and
offered Zarathustra bread and wine. "A bad country for the
hungry," said he; "that is why I live here. Animal and man
come unto me, the anchorite. But bid thy companion eat and
[in
ZARATHUSTRA'S PROLOGUE
drink also, he is wearier than thou." Zarathustra answered:
"My companion is dead; I shall hardly be able to persuade him
to eat." 'That doth not concern me/' said the old man sullenly;
"he that knocketh at my door must take what I offer him. Eat,
and fare ye well!"
Thereafter Zarathustra again went on for two hours, trust-
ing to the path and the light of the stars: for he was an experi-
enced night-walker, and liked to look into the face of all that
slept. When the morning dawned, however, Zarathustra found
himself in a thick forest, and no path was any longer visible.
He then put the dead man in a hollow tree at his head for he
wanted to protect him from the wolves and laid himself
down on the ground and moss. And immediately he fell asleep,
tired in body, but with a tranquil soul.
9
Long slept Zarathustra; and not only the rosy dawn passed
over his head, but also the morning. At last, however, his eyes
opened, and amazedly he gazed into the forest and the stillness,
amazedly he gazed into himself. Then he arose quickly, like a
seafarer who all at once seeth the land; and he shouted for joy:
for he saw a new truth. And he spake thus to his heart:
A light hath dawned upon me: I need companions living
ones; not dead companions and corpses, which I carry with me
where I will.
But I need living companions, who will follow me because
they want to follow themselves and to the place where I will.
A light hath dawned upon me. Not to the people is Zarathustra
to speak, but to companions! Zarathustra shall not be the herd's
herdsman and hound!
[17]
ZARATHUSTRA'S PROLOGUE
To allure many from the herd for that purpose have I
come. The people and the herd must be angry with me: a rob-
ber shall Zarathustra be called by the herdsmen.
Herdsmen, I say, but they call themselves the good and just.
Herdsmen, I say, but they call themselves the believers in the
orthodox belief.
Behold the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him
who breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker, the law-
breaker: he, however, is the creator.
Behold the believers of all beliefs! Whom do they hate
most? Him who breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker,
the law-breaker he, however, is the creator.
Companions, the creator seeketh, not corpses and not
herds or believers either. Fellow-creators the creator seeketh
those who grave new values on new tables.
Companions, the creator seeketh, and fellow-reapers: for
everything is ripe for the harvest with him. But he lackath the
hundred sickles: so he plucketh the ears of corn and is vexed.
Companions, the creator seeketh, and such as know how to
whet their sickles. Destroyers, will they be called, and despisers
of good and evil. But they are the reapers and rejoicers.
Fellow-creators, Zarathustra seeketh; fellow-reapers and
fellow-rejoicers, Zarathustra seeketh: what hath he to do with
herds and herdsmen and corpses!
And thou, my first companion, rest in peace! Well have I
buried thee in thy hollow tree; well have I hid thee from the
wolves.
But I part from thee; the time hath arrived. Twixt rosy
dawn and rosy dawn there came unto me a new truth.
I am not to be a herdsman, I am not to be a grave-digger.
Not any more will I discourse unto the people; for the last time
have I spoken unto the dead.
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
With the creators, the reapers, and the rejoicers will I asso-
ciate: the rainbow will I show them, and all the stairs to the
Superman.
To the lone-dwellers will I sing my song, and to the twain-
dwellers; and unto him who hath still ears for the unheard,
will I make the heart heavy with my happiness.
I make for my goal, I follow my course; over the loitering
and tardy will I leap. Thus let my on-going be their down-
going!
10
This had Zarathustra said to his heart when the sun stood at
noon-tide. Then he looked inquiringly aloft, for he heard
above him the sharp call of a bird. And behold! An eagle swept
through the air in wide circles, and on it hung a serpent, not
like a prey, but like a friend: for it kept itself coiled round the
eagle's neck.
"They are mine animals/' said Zarathustra, and rejoiced in
his heart.
"The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal
under the sun, they have come out to reconnoitre.
They want to know whether Zarathustra still liveth. Verily,
do I still live?
More dangerous have I found it among men than among
animals; in dangerous paths goeth Zarathustra. Let mine ani-
mals lead me!"
When Zarathustra had said this, he remembered the words
of the saint in the forest. Then he sighed and spake thus to
his heart:
"Would that I were wiser! Would that I were wise from the
very heart, like my serpent!
[19]
ZARATHUSTRA S PROLOGUE
But I am asking the impossible. Therefore do I ask my pride
to go always with my wisdom!
And if my wisdom should some day forsake me: alas! it
loveth to fly away! may my pride then fly with my folly!"
Thus began Zarathustra's down-going.
[20}
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
FIRST PART
/. The Three Metamorphoses
THREE metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how
the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and tiv lion at
last a child.
Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the string load-
bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and
the heaviest longeth its strength.
What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then
kneeleth it down like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden.
What is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bear-
ing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.
Is it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one's
pride? To exhibit one's folly in order to mock at one's wisdom?
Or is it this: To desert our cause when it celebrateth its
triumph? To ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter?
Or is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge,
and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul?
Or is it this: To be sick and dismiss comforters, and make
friends of the deaf, who never hear thy requests?
Or is it this: To go into foul water when it is the water of
truth, and not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: To love those who despise us, and give one's
hand to the phantom when it is going to frighten us?
All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon
itself: and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into
.the wilderness, so hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second meta-
morphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it
capture, and lordship in its own wilderness.
Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to
its last God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon.
What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer in-
clined to call Lord and God? "Thou-shalt," is the great dragon
called. But the spirit of the lion saith, "I will."
"Thou-shalt," lieth in its path, sparkling with gold a scale-
covered beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, 'Thou
shalt!"
The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and
thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: ''All the values of
things glitter on me.
All values have already been created, and all created values
-do I represent. Verily, there shall be no 'I will' any more."
Thus speaketh the dragon.
My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the
spirit? Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which re-
nounceth and is reverent?
To create new values that, even the lion cannot yet accom-
plish: but to create itself freedom for new creating that can
the might of the lion do.
To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto
duty: for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion.
To assume the ride to new values that is the most formi-
dable assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Verily,
unto such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.
As its holiest, it once loved "Thou-shalt": now is it forced
to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that
it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for
this capture.
THE ACADEMIC CHAIRS OF VIRTUE
But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even
the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to be-
come a child?
Innocence is the child, and f orgetfulness, a new beginning,
a game, a self -rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.
Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed
a holy Yea unto life: its mvn will, willeth now the spirit; his
own world winneth the world's outcast.
Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you:
how the 'spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion
at last a child.
Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the
town which is called The Pied Cow.
2. The Academic Chairs of Virtue
PEOPLE commended unto Zarathustra a wise man, as one who
could discourse well about sleep and virtue: greatly was he
honoured and rewarded for it, and all the youths sat before
his chair. To him went Zarathustra, and sat among the youths
before his chair. And thus spake the wise man:
Respect and modesty in presence of sleep! That is the first
thing! And to go out of the way of all who sleep badly and
keep awake at night!
Modest is even the thief in presence of sleep: he always
stealeth softly through the night. Immodest, however, is the
night-watchman; immodestly he carrieth his horn.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose
to keep awake all day.
Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth
wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul.
Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for over-
coming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.
Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt
thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been
hungry.
Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful;
otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb
thee in the night.
Few people know it, but one must have all the virtues in
order to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit
adultery?
Shall I covet my neighbour's maidservant? All that would ill
fttcord with good sleep.
And even if one have all the virtues, there is still one thing
needful: to send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right
time.
That they may not quarrel with one another, the good
females! And about thee, thou unhappy one!
Peace with God and thy neighbour: so desireth good sleep.
And peace also with thy neighbour's devil! Otherwise it will
haunt thee in the night.
Honour to the government, and obedience, and also to the
crooked government! So desireth good sleep. How can I help
it, if power liketh to walk on crooked legs?
He who leadeth his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall
always be for me the best shepherd: so doth it accord with
good sleep.
[**]
THE ACADEMIC CHAIRS OF VIRTUE
Many honours I want not, nor great treasures: they excite
the spleen. But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a
little treasure.
A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but
they must come and go at the right time. So doth it accord
with good sleep.
Well, also, do the poor in spirit please me: they promote
sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always give in to them.
Thus passeth the day unto the virtuous. When night cometh,
then take I good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be
summoned sleep, the lord of the virtues!
But I think of what I have done and thought during the day.
Thus ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy
ten overcomings?
And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths,
and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself?
Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it over-
taketh me all at once sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the
virtues.
Sleep tappeth on mine eye, and it turneth heavy. Sleep
toucheth my mouth, and it remaineth open.
Verily, on soft soles doth it come to me, the dearest of
thieves, and stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then
stand, like this academic chair.
But not much longer do I then stand : I already lie.
When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he
laughed in his heart: for thereby had a light dawned upon him.
And thus spake he to his heart:
A fool seemeth this wise man with his forty thoughts: but
I believe he knoweth well how to sleep.
Happy even is he who liveth near this wise man! Such sleep
is contagious even through a thick wall it is contagious.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
A magic resideth even in his academic chair. And not in vain
did the youths sit before the preacher of virtue.
His wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well. And
verily, if life had no sense, and had I to choose nonsense, this
would be the desirablest nonsense for me also.
Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else
when they sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought
for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it!
To all those belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom
was sleep without dreams: they knew no higher significance
of life.
Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher
of virtue, and not always so honourable: but their time is past.
And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie.
Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to
sleep.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
. Backworldsmen
ONCE on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man,
like all backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured
God, did the world then seem to me.
The dream and diction of a God, did the world then
seem to me; coloured vapours before the eyes of a divinely
dissatisfied one.
Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou coloured
[**]
BACKWORLDSMEN
vapours did they seem to me before creative eyes. The creatqr
wished to look away from himself, thereupon he created the
world.
Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his
suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self -forget-
ting, did the world once seem to me.
This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradic-
tion's image and imperfect image an intoxicating joy to its
imperfect creator: thus did the world once seem to me.
Thus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man,
like all backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth?
Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work
and human madness, like all the gods!
A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego.
Out of mine own ashes and glow it came unto me, that phan-
tom. And verily, it came not unto me from the beyond!
What happened, my brethren? I surpassed myself, the suf-
fering one; I carried mine own ashes to the mountain; a
brighter flame I contrived for myself. And lo! Thereupon the
phantom withdrew from me!
To me the convalescent would it now be suffering and
torment to believe in such phantoms: suffering would it now be
to me, and humiliation. Thus speak I to backworldsmen.
Suffering was it, and impotence that created all back-
worlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the
greatest sufferer experienceth.
Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one
leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling
even to will any longer: that created all gods and backworlds.
Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired
of the body it groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit
at the ultimate walls.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of
the earth it heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it.
And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its
head and not with its head only into "the other world/'
But that "other world" is well concealed from man, that
dehumanised, inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and
the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man.
Verily, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it
speak. Tell me, ye brethren, is not the strangest of all things
best proved?
Yea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh
most uprightly of its being this creating, willing, evaluing
ego, which is the measure and value of things.
And this most upright existence, the ego it speaketh of the
body, and still implieth the body, even when it museth and
raveth and fluttereth with broken wings.
Always more uprightly learneth it to speak, the ego; and
the more it learneth, the more doth it find titles, and honours
for the body and the earth.
A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto
men: no longer to thrust one's head into the sand of celestial
things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth
meaning to the earth!
A new will teach I unto men: to choose that path which
man hath followed blindly, and to approve of it and no
longer to slink aside from it, like the sick and perishing!
The sick and perishing it was they who despised the body
and the earth, and invented the heavenly world, and the re-
deeming blood-drops; but even those sweet and sad poisons
they borrowed from the body and the earth!
From their misery they sought escape, and the stars were
BACKWORLDSMEN
too remote for them. Then, they sighed: "O that there were
heavenly paths by which to steal into another existence and
into happiness!" Then they contrived for themselves their by-
paths and bloody draughts!
Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now
fancied themselves transported, these ungrateful ones. But to
what did they owe the convulsion and rapture of their trans-
port? To their body and this earth.
Gentle is Zarathustra to the sickly. Verily, he is not indig-
nant at their modes of consolation and ingratitude. May they
become convalescents and overcomers, and create higher bodies
for themselves!
Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who
looketh tenderly on his delusions, and at midnight stealeth
round the grave of his God; but sickness and a sick frame re-
main even in his tears.
Many sickly ones have there always been among those who
muse, and languish for God; violently they hate the discern-
ing ones, and the latest of virtues, which is uprightness.
Backward they always gaze toward dark ages: then, indeed,
were delusion and faith something different. Raving of the
reason was likeness to God, and doubt was sin.
Too well do I know those godlike ones: they insist on being
believed in/ and that doubt is sin. Too well, also, do I know
what they themselves most believe in.
Verily, not in backworlds and redeeming blood-drops: but
in the body do they also believe most; and their own body is
for them the thing-in-itself .
But it is a sickly thing to them, and gladly would they get
out of their skin. Therefore hearken they to the preachers of
death, and themselves preach backworlds.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Hearken rather, my brethren, to the voice of the healthy
body; it is a more upright and pure voice.
More uprightly and purely speaketh the healthy body, per-
fect and square-built; and it speaketh of the meaning of the
earth.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
. The Despisers of the Body
To THE despisers of the body will I speak my word. I wish
them neither to learn afresh, nor teach anew, but only to bid
farewell to their own bodies, and thus be dumb.
"Body am I, and soul" so saith the child. And why should
one not speak like children?
But the awakened one, the knowing one, saith: "Body am I
entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of some-
thing in the body."
The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war
and a peace, a flock and a shepherd.
An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my
brother, which thou callest "spirit" a little instrument and
plaything of thy big sagacity.
"Ego," sayest thou, and art proud of that word. But the
greater thing in which thou art unwilling to believe is thy
body with its big sagacity; it saith not "ego," but doeth it.
What the sense feeleth, what the spirit discerneth, hath
never its end in itself. But sense and spirit would fain persuade
thee that they are the end of all things : so vain are they.
THE DESPISERS OF THE BODY
Instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind
them there is still the Self. The Self seeketh with the eyes of
the senses, it hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit.
Ever hearkeneth the Self, and seeketh; it compareth, mas-
tereth, conquereth, and destroyeth. It ruleth, and is also the
ego's ruler.
Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a
mighty lord, an unknown sage it is called Self; it dwelleth in
thy body, it is thy body.
There is more sagacity in thy body than in thy best wis-
dom. And who then knoweth why thy body requireth just thy
best wisdom?
Thy Self laugheth at thine ego, and its proud prancings.
"What are these prancings and flights of thought unto me?"
it saith to itself. "A by-way to my purpose. I am the leading-
string of the ego, and the prompter of its notions/'
The Self saith unto the ego: "Feel pain!" And thereupon it
suff ereth, and thinketh how it may put an end thereto and for
that very purpose it is meant to think.
The Self saith unto the ego: "Feel pleasure!" Thereupon it
rejoiceth, and thinketh how it may ofttimes rejoice and foi
that very purpose it is meant to think.
To the despisers of the body will I speak a word. That they
despise is caused by their esteem. What is it that created
esteeming and despising and worth and will?
The creating Self created for itself esteeming and despising,
it created for itself joy and woe. The creating body created for
itself spirit, as a hand to its will.
Even in your folly and despising ye each serve your Self,
ye despisers of the body. I tell you, your very Self wanteth
to die, and turneth away from life.
No longer can your Self do that which it desireth most:
[88]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
create beyond itself. That is what it desireth most; that is all
its fervour.
But it is now too late to do so: so your Self wisheth to
succumb, ye despisers of the body.
To succumb so wisheth your Self; and therefore have ye
become despisers of the body. For ye can no longer create be-
yond yourselves.
And therefore are ye now angry with life and with the earth.
And unconscious envy is in the sidelong look of your contempt.
I go not your way, ye despisers of the body! Ye are no
bridges for me to the Superman!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
5- Joys and Passions
MY BROTHER, when thou hast a virtue, and it is thine own
virtue, thou hast it in common with no one.
To be sure, thou wouldst call it by name and caress it; thou
wouldst pull its ears and amuse thyself with it.
And lo! Then hast thou its name in common with the
people, and hast become one of the people and the herd with
thy virtue!
Better for thec to say: "Ineffable is it, and nameless, that
which is pain and sweetness to my soul, and also the hunger of
my bowels."
Let thy virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and
if thou must speak of it, be not ashamed to stammer about it.
JOYS AND PASSIONS
Thus speak and stammer: "That is my good, that do I love,
thus doth it please me entirely, thus only do / desire the good.
Not as the law of a God do I desire it, not as a human law
or a human need do I desire it; it is not to be a guide-post for
me to superearths and paradises.
An earthly virtue is it which I love: little prudence is
therein, and the least everyday wisdom.
But that bird built its nest beside me: therefore, I love and
cherish it now sitteth it beside me on its golden eggs."
Thus shouldst thou stammer, and praise thy virtue.
Once hadst thou passions and calledst them evil. But now
hast thou only thy virtues: they grew out of thy passions.
Thou implantedst thy highest aim into the heart of those
passions: then became they thy virtues and joys.
And though thou wert of the race of the hot-tempered, or
of the voluptuous, or of the fanatical, or the vindictive;
All thy passions in the end became virtues, and all thy devils
angels.
Once hadst thou wild dogs in thy cellar: but they changed
at last into birds and charming songstresses.
^ Out of thy poisons brewedst thou balsam for thyself; thy
cow, affliction, milkedst thou now drinketh thou the sweet
milk of her udder.
And nothing evil groweth in thee any longer, unless it be
the evil that groweth out of the conflict of thy virtues.
My brother, if thou be fortunate, then wilt thou have one
virtue and no more: thus goest thou easier over the bridge.
Illustrious is it to have many virtues, but a hard lot; and
many a one hath gone into the wilderness and killed himself,
because he was weary of being the battle and battlefield of
virtues.
[35]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
My brother, are war and battle evil? Necessary, however, is
the evil; necessary are the envy and the distrust and the back-
biting among the virtues.
Lo! how each of thy virtues is covetous of the highest place;
it wanteth thy whole spirit to be its herald, it wanteth thy whole
power, in wrath, hatred, and love.
Jealous is every virtue of the others, and a dreadful thing is
jealousy. Even virtues may succumb by jealousy.
He whom the flame of jealousy encompasseth, turneth at
last, like the scorpion, the poisoned sting against himself.
Ah! my brother, hast thou never seen a virtue backbite and
stab itself?
Man is something that hath to be surpassed: and therefore
shalt thou love thy virtues, for thou wilt succumb by them.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
6. The Pale Criminal
YE DO not mean to slay, ye judges and sacrifices, until the
animal hath bowed its head? Lo! the pale criminal hath bowed
his head: out of his eye speaketh the great contempt.
"Mine ego is something which is to be surpassed: mine ego
is to me the great contempt of #ian": so speaketh it out of
that eye.
When he judged himself that was his supreme moment;
let not the exalted one relapse again into his low estate!
There is no salvation for him who thus suff ereth from him-
self, unless it be speedy death.
[36]
THE PALE CRIMINAL
Your slaying, ye judges, shall be pity, and not revenge;
and in that ye slay, see to it that ye yourselves justify life!
It is not enough that ye should reconcile with him whom
ye slay. Let your sorrow be love to the Superman: thus will ye
justify your own survival!
"Enemy'* shall ye say but not "villain," "invalid" shall ye
say but not "wretch," "fool" shall ye say but not "sinner."
And thou, red judge, if thou would say audibly all thou hast
done in thought, then would every one cry: "Away with the
nastiness and the virulent reptile!"
But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and
another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality
doth not roll between them.
An idea made this pale man pale. Adequate was he for his
deed when he did it, but the idea of it, he could not endure
when it was done.
Evermore did he now see himself as the doer of one deed.
Madness, I call this: the exception reversed itself to the rule in
him.
The streak of chalk bewitcheth the hen; the stroke he struck
bewitched his weak reason. Madness after the deed, I call this.
Hearken, ye judges! There is another madness besides, and
it is before the deed. Ah! ye have not gone deep enough into
this soul!
Thus speaketh the red judge: "Why did this criminal com-
mit murder? He meant to rob." I tell you, however, that his
soul wanted blood, not booty: he thirsted for the happiness of
the knife!
But his weak reason understood not this madness, and it
persuaded him. "What matter about blood!" it said; "wishest
thou not, at least, to make booty thereby? Or take revenge?"
[37]
THUS SPAKE 2ARATHUSTRA
And he hearkened unto his weak reason: like lead lay its
words upon him thereupon he robbed when he murdered.
He did not mean to be ashamed of his madness.
And now once more licth the lead of his guilt upon him,
and once more is his weak reason so benumbed, so paralysed,
and so dull.
Could he only shake his head, then would his burden roll off;
but who shaketh that head?
What is this man? A mass of diseases that reach out into
the world through the spirit; there they want to get their
prey.
What is this man? A coil of wild serpents that are seldom
at peace among themselves so they go forth apart and seek
prey in the world.
Look at that poor body! What it suffered and craved, the
poor soul interpreted to itself it interpreted it as murderous
desire, and eagerness for the happiness of the knife.
Him who now turneth sick, the evil overtaketh which is
now the evil: he seeketh to cause pain with that which causeth
him pain. But there have been other ages, and another evil and
good.
Once was doubt evil, and the will to Self. Then the invalid
became a heretic or sorcerer; as heretic or sorcerer he suffered,
and sought to cause suffering.
But this will not enter your ears; it hurteth your good
people, ye tell me. But what doth it matter to me about your
good people!
Many things in your good people cause me disgust, and
verily, not their evil. I would that they had a madness by which
they succumbed, like this pale criminal!
Verily, I would that their madness were called truth, or
[88}
READING AND WRITING
fidelity, or justice: but they have their virtue in order to live
long, and in wretched self-complacency.
I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp
me may grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
7. Reading and Writing
OF ALL that is written, I love only what a person hath written
with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood
is spirit.
It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the
reading idlers.
He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the
reader. Another century of readers and spirit itself will stink.
Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long
run not only writing but also thinking.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even
becometh populace.
He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be
read, but learnt by heart.
In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but
for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be
peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall.
The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit
full of a joyful wickedness: thus are things well matched.
I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous. The
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
courage which scarcth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins
it wanteth to laugh.
I no longer feel in common with you; the very cloud which I
see beneath me, the blackness and heaviness at which I laugh
that is your thunder-cloud.
Ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation; and I look down-
ward because I am exalted.
Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted?
He who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all
tragic plays and tragic realities.
Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive so wisdom
wisheth us; she is a woman, and ever loveth only a warrior.
Ye tell me, "Life is hard to bear." But for what purpose
should ye have your pride in the morning and your resigna-
tion in the evening?
Life is hard to bear: but do not affect to be so delicate! We
are all of us fine sumpter asses and she-asses.
What have we in common with the rose-bud, which
trcmbleth because a drop of dew hath formed upon it?
It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but
because we are wont to love.
There is always some madness in love, But there is always,
also, some method in madness.
And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and
soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most
to enjoy happiness.
To see these light, foolish, pretty, lively little sprites flit
about that moveth Zarathustra to tears and songs.
I should only believe in a God that would know how to
dance.
And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough,
140]
THE TREE ON THE HILL
profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity through hir
all things fall.
Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us sla
the spirit of gravity!
! learned to walk; since then have I let myself run. I learne<
to fly; since then I do not need pushing in order to move from
spot.
Now am I light, now do I fly; now do I see myself unde
myself. Now there danceth a God in me.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
8. The Tree on the Hill
ZARATHUSTRA'S eye had perceived that a certain youth avoidc<
him. And as he walked alone one evening over the hills sui
rounding the town called "The Pied Cow/' behold, ther
found he the youth sitting leaning against a tree, and gazin:
with wearied look into the valley. Zarathustra thereupon lai<
hold of the tree beside which the youth sat, and spake thus:
"If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should no
be able to do so.
But the wind, which we see not, troubleth and bendeth it a
it list^th. We are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands. 1
Thereupon the youth arose disconcerted, and said: "I hea
Zarathustra, and just now was I thinking of him!" Zarathustr;
answered:
"Why art thou frightened on that account? But it is th<
same with man as with the tree.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the
more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward,
into the dark and deep into the evil."
"Yea, into the evil!" cried the youth. "How is it possible
that thou hast discovered my soul?"
Zarathustra smiled, and said: "Many a soul one will never
discover, unless one first invent it.".
"Yea, into the evil!" cried the youth once more.
"Thou saidst the truth, Zarathustra. I trust myself no longer
since I sought to rise into the height, and nobody trusteth me
any longer; how doth that happen?
I change too quickly: my to-day refuteth my yesterday. I
often overleap the steps when I clamber; for so doing, none of
the steps pardons me.
When aloft, I find myself always alone. No one speaketh
unto me; the frost of solitude maketh me tremble. What do I
seek on the height?
My contempt and my longing increase together; the higher
I clamber, the more do I despise him who clambereth. What
doth he seek on the height?
How ashamed I am of my clambering and stumbling! How
I mock at my violent panting! How I hate him who flieth! How
tired I am on the height!"
Here the youth was silent. And Zarathustra contemplated
the tree beside which they stood, and spake thus:
"This tree standeth lonely here on the hills; it hath grown
up high above man and beast.
And if it wanted to speak, it would have none who could
understand it: so high hath it grown.
Now it waiteth and waiteth, for what doth it wait? It
dwelleth too close to the seat of the clouds; it waiteth perhaps
for the first lightning?"
THE TREE ON THE HILL
When Zarathustra had said this, the youth called out with
violent gestures: "Yea, Zarathustra, thou speakest the truth.
My destruction I longed for, when I desired to be on the
height, and thou art the lightning for which I waited! Lo!
what have I been since thou hast appeared amongst us? It is
mine envy of thee that hath destroyed me!" Thus spake the
youth, and wept bitterly. Zarathustra, however, put his arm
about him, and led the youth away with him.
And when they had walked a while together, Zarathustra
began to speak thus :
It rendeth my heart. Better than thy words express it, thine
eyes tell me all thy danger.
As yet thou art not free; thou still seekest freedom. Too un-
slept hath thy seeking made thee, and too wakeful.
On the open height wouldst thou be; for the stars thirsteth
thy soul. But thy bad impulses also thirst for freedom.
Thy wild dogs want liberty; they bark for joy in their cellar
when thy spirit endeavoureth to open all prison doors.
Still art thou a prisoner it seemeth to me who deviseth
liberty for himself: ah! sharp becometh the soul of such
prisoners, but also deceitful and wicked.
To purify himself, is still necessary for the freedman of
the spirit. Much of the prison and the mould still remaineth
in him: pure hath his eye still to become.
Yea, I know thy danger. But by my love and hope I con-
jure thee: cast not thy love and hope away!
Noble thou feelest thyself still, and noble others also feel
thee still, though they bear thee a grudge and cast evil looks.
Know this, that to everybody a noble one standeth in the way.
Also to the good, a noble one standeth in the way: and even
when they call him a good man, they want thereby to put him
aside.
143]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
The new, would the noble man create, and a new virtue.
The old, wanteth the good man, and that the old should be
conserved.
But it is not the danger of the noble man to turn a good
man, but lest he should become a blusterer, a scoffer, or a de-
stroyer.
Ah! I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope.
And then they disparaged all high hopes.
Then lived they shamelessly in temporary pleasures, and
beyond the day had hardly an aim.
"Spirit is also voluptuousness," said they. Then broke the
wings of their spirit; and now it creepeth about, and defileth
where it gnaweth.
Once they thought of becoming heroes; but sensualists are
they now. A trouble and a terror is the hero to them.
But by my love and hope I conjure thce: cast not away the
hero in thy soul! Maintain holy thy highest hope!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
The Preachers of Death
THERE are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to
whom desistance from life must be preached.
Full is the earth of the superfluous; marred is life by the
many-too-many. May they be decoyed out of this life by the
"life eternal"!
"The yellow ones": so are called the preachers of death, or
[44}
THE PREACHERS OF DEATH
"the black ones." But I will show them unto you in other
colours besides.
There are the terrible ones who carry about in themselves
the beast of prey, and have no choice except lusts or self-
laceration. And even their lusts are self-laceration.
They have not yet become men, those terrible ones: may
they preach desistance from life, and pass away themselves!
There are the spiritually consumptive ones: hardly are they
born when they begin to die, and long for doctrines of lassi-
tude and renunciation.
They would fain be dead, and we should approve of their
wish! Let us beware of awakening those dead ones, and of
damaging those living coffins!
They meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse and im-
mediately they say: "Life is refuted!"
But they only are refuted, and their eye, which seeth only
one aspect of existence.
Shrouded in thick melancholy, and eager for the little
casualties that bring death: thus do they wait, and clench their
teeth.
Or else, they grasp at sweetmeats, and mock at their childish-
ness thereby: they cling to their straw of life, and mock at their
still clinging to it.
Their wisdom speaketh thus: "A fool, he who remaineth
alive; but so far are we fools! And that is the foolishest thing
in life!"
"Life is only suffering": so say others, and lie not. Then see
to it that ye cease! See to it that the life ceaseth which is only
suffering!
And let this be the teaching of your virtue: "Thou shalt
slay thyself! Thou shalt steal away from thyself!"
[45}
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
"Lust is sin," so say some who preach death "let us go
apart and beget no children!"
"Giving birth is troublesome," say others "why still give
birth? One bcareth only the unfortunate!" And they also are
preachers of death.
"Pity is necessary," so saith a third party. "Take what I
have! Take what I am! So much less doth life bind me!"
Were they consistently pitiful, then would they make their
neighbours sick of life. To be wicked that would be their true
goodness.
But they want to be rid of life; what care they if they bind
others still faster with their chains and gifts!
And yc also, to whom life is rough labour and disquiet, are
ye not very tired of life? Are ye not very ripe for the sermon
of death?
All ye to whom rough labour is dear, and the rapid, new,
and strange ye put up with yourselves badly; your diligence is
flight, and the will to self-forgetfulness.
If ye believed more in life, then would ye devote yourselves
less to the momentary. But for waiting, ye have not enough of
capacity in you nor even for idling!
Everywhere resoundetji the voices of those who preach
death; and the earth is full of those to whom death hath to be
preached.
Or "life eternal"; it is all the same to me if only they pass
away quickly!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
WAR AND WARRIORS
10. War and Warriors
BY OUR best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by
those either whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell
you the truth!
My brethren in war! I love you from the very heart. I am,
and was ever, your counterpart. And I am also your best enemy.
So let me tell you the truth!
I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. Ye are not great
enough not to know of hatred and envy. Then be great enough
not to be ashamed of them!
And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you,
be at least its warriors. They are the companions and fore-
runners of such saintship.
I see many soldiers; could I but see many warriors! "Uni-
form" one calleth what they wear; may it not be uniform what
they therewith hide!
Ye shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy for
your enemy. And with some of you there is hatred at first sight.
Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for
the sake of your thoughts! And if your thoughts succumb,
your uprightness shall still shout triumph thereby!
Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars and the short
peace more than the long.
You I advise not to work, but to fight. You I advise not to
peace, but to victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace
be a victory!
One can only be silent and sit peacefully when one hath
arrow and bow; otherwise one prateth and quarrelleth. Let
your peace be a victory!
[47}
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say
unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause.
War and courage have done more great things than charity.
Not your sympathy, but your bravery hath hitherto saved the
victims.
"What is good?" ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little
girls say; "To be good is what is pretty, and at the same time
touching."
They call you heartless: but your heart is true, and I love
the bashfulness of your goodwill. Ye are ashamed of your flow,
and others are ashamed of their ebb.
Ye are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime about
you, the mantle of the ugly!
And when your soul becometh great, then doth it become
haughty, and in your sublimity there is wickedness. I know you.
In wickedness the haughty man and the weakling meet.
But they misunderstand one another. I know you.
Ye shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to
be despised. Ye must be proud of your enemies; then, the suc-
cesses of your enemies are also your successes.
Resistance that is the distinction of the slave. Let your
distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obey-
ing!
To the good warrior soundeth "thou shalt" pleasanter than
"I will." And all that is dear unto you, ye shall first have it
commanded unto you.
Let your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let
your highest hope be the highest thought of life!
Your highest thought, however, ye shall have it commanded
unto you by me and it is this: man is something that is to be
surpassed.
THE NEW IDOL
So live your life of obedience and of war! What matter about
long life! What warrior wisheth to be spared!
I spare you not, I love you from my very heart, my brethren
in war!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
II. The New Idol
SOMEWHERE there are still peoples and herds, but not with us,
my brethren : here there are states.
A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me,
for now will I say unto you my word concerning the death of
peoples.
A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth
it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: "I, the state, am
the people."
It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung
a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.
Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the
state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them.
Where there is still a people, there the state is not under-
stood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and
customs.
This sign I give unto you: every people speaketh its lan-
guage of good and evil: this its neighbour understandeth not.
Its language hath it devised for itself in laws and customs.
But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and
whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen.
[49]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
False is everything in it; with stolen teeth it biteth, the
biting one. False are even its bowels.
Confusion of language of good and evil; this sign I give
unto you as the sign of the state. Verily, the will to death, in-
dicateth this sign! Verily, it beckoneth unto the preachers of
death!
Many too many are born: for the superfluous ones was the
state devised!
See just how it enticcth them to it, the many-too-many! How
it swalloweth and cheweth and rcchcweth them!
"On earth there is nothing greater than I: it is I who am the
regulating finger of God" thus roareth the monster. And not
only the long-eared and short-sighted fall upon their knees!
Ah! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its
gloomy lies! Ah! it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly
lavish themselves!
Yea, it findeth you out too, ye conquerors of the old God!
Weary ye became of the conflict, and now your weariness
serveth the new idol!
Heroes and honourable ones, it would fain set up around it,
the new idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good con-
sciences, the cold monster!
Everything will it give you, if ye worship it, the new idol:
thus it purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of
your proud eyes.
It seeketh to allure by means of you, the many-too-many!
Yea, a hellish artifice hath here been devised, a death-horse
jingling with the trappings of divine honours!
Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which
glorifieth itself as life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers
of death!
The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good
[60]
THE N E W IDOL
and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and
the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all is called
"life."
Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the
inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their
theft and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto
them!
Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they
vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one an-
other, and cannot even digest themselves.
Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and
become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the
lever of power, much money these impotent ones!
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one
another, and thus scuffle into the mud and the abyss.
Towards the throne they all strive: it is their madness as if
happiness sat on the throne! Of ttimes sitteth filth on the throne.
and ofttimes also the throne on filth.
Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too
eager. Badlytsmelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly
they all smell to me, these idolaters.
My brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws
and appetites! Better break the windows and jump into the
open air!
Do go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the
idolatry of the superfluous!
Do go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from
the steam of these human sacrifices)
Open still remaineth the earth for great souls. Empty are
still many sites for lone ones and twain ones, around which
floateth the odour of tranquil seas.
Open still remaineth a free life for great souls. Verily, he
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
who possesseth little is so much the less possessed: blessed be
moderate poverty!
There, where the state ceaseth there only commenceth the
man who is not superfluous: there commenceth the song of the
necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody.
There, where the state ceaseth pray look thither, my
brethren! Do ye not see it, the rainbow and the bridges of the
Superman?
Thus spake Zarathustra.
12. The Flies in the Market-Place
FLEE, my friend, into thy solitude! I see thee deafened with
the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings
of the little ones.
Admirably do forest and rock know how to be silent with
thec. Resemble again the tree which thou lovest, the broad-
branched one silently and attentively it o'erhangeth the sea.
Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place;
and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also
the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.
In the world even the best things are worthless without those
who represent them: those representers, the people call great
men.
Little do the people understand what is great that is to
say, the creating agency. But they have a taste for all repre-
senters and actors of great things.
THE FLIES IN THE MARKET-PLACE
Around the devisers of new values revolveth the world:
invisibly it revolveth. But around the actors revolve the people
and the glory: such is the course of things.
Spirit, hath the actor, but little conscience of the spirit. He
believeth always in that wherewith he makcth believe most
strongly in himself!
Tomorrow he hath a new belief, and the day after, one still
newer. Sharp perceptions hath he, like the people, and change-
able humours.
To upset that meaneth with him to prove. To drive mad
that meaneth with him to convince. And blood is counted by
him as the best of all arguments.
A truth which only glideth into fine ears, he calleth false-
hood and trumpery. Verily, he believeth only in gods that
make a great noise in the world!
Full of clattering buffoons is the rnarket-placc, and the
people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters
of the hour.
But the hour presseth them; so they press thee. And also
from thee they want Yea or Nay. Alas! thou wouldst set thy
chair betwixt For and Against?
On account of those absolute and impatient ones, be not
jealous, thou lover of truth! Never yet did truth cling to the
arm of an absolute one.
On account of those abrupt ones, return into thy security:
only in the market-place is one assailed by Yea? or Nay?
Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they
to wait until they know what hath fallen into their depths.
Away from the market-place and from fame taketh place all
that is great: away from the market-place and from fame have
ever dwelt the devisers of new values.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude: I see thee stung all over
by the poisonous flies. Flee thither, where a rough, strong
breeze bloweth!
Flee into thy solitude! Thou hast lived too closely to the
small and the pitiable. Flee from their invisible vengeance!
Towards thee they have nothing but vengeance.
Raise no longer an arm against them! Innumerable are they,
and it is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.
Innumerable are the small and pitiable ones; and of many a
proud structure, rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin.
Thou art not stone; but already hast thou become hollow
by the numerous drops. Thou wilt yet break and burst by the
numerous drops.
Exhausted I see thee, by poisonous flies; bleeding I see
thee, and torn at a hundred spots; and thy pride will not even
upbraid.
Blood they would have from thee in all innocence; blood
their bloodless souls crave for and they sting, therefore, in
all innocence.
But thou, profound one, thou suff erest too profoundly even
from small wounds; and ere thou hadst recovered, the same
poison- worm crawled over thy hand.
Too proud art thou to kill these sweet-tooths. But take care
lest it be thy fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice!
They buzz around thee also with their praise: obtrusiveness
is their praise. They want to be close to thy skin and thy blood.
They flatter thee, as one flattereth a God or devil; they
whimper before thee, as before a God or devil. What doth it
come to! Flatterers are they, and whimperers, and nothing
more.
Often, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable ones.
THE FLIES IN THE MARKET-PLACE
But that hath ever been the prudence of the cowardly. Yea!
the cowardly are wise!
They think much about thee with their circumscribed souls
thou art always suspected by them! Whatever is much
thought about is at last thought suspicious.
They punish thee for all thy virtues. They pardon thee in
their inmost hearts only for thine errors.
Because thou art gentle and of upright character, thou
sayest: "Blameless are they for their small existence." But their
circumscribed souls think: "Blamable is all great existence."
Even when thou art gentle towards them, they still feel
themselves despised by thee; and they repay thy beneficence
with secret maleficence.
Thy silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice
if once thou be humble enough to be frivolous.
What we recognise in a man, we also irritate in him. There-
fore be on your guard against the small ones!
In thy presence they feel themselves small, and their base-
ness gleameth and gloweth against thee in invisible vengeance.
Sawest thou not how often they became dumb when thou
approachedst them, and how their energy left them like the
smoke of an extinguishing fire?
Yea, my friend, the bad conscience art thou of thy neigh-
bours; for they are unworthy of thee. Therefore they hate thee,
and would fain suck thy blood.
Thy neighbours will always be poisonous flies; what is great
in thee that itself must make them more poisonous, and
always more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into thy solitude and thither, where a
rough strong breeze bloweth. It is not thy lot to be a fly-flap.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
[55]
THUS SPAKE 2ARATHUSTRA
/j. Chastity
I LOVE the forest. It is bad to live in cities: there, there are too
many of the lustful.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than
into the dreams of a lustful woman?
And just look at these men: their eye saith it they know
nothing better on earth thajj to lie with a woman.
Filth is at the bottom of their souls; and alas! if their filth
hath still spirit in it!
Would that ye were perfect at least as animals! But to
animals belongeth innocence.
Do I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel you to
innocence in your instincts.
Do I counsel you to chastity? Chastity is a virtue with some,
but with many almost a vice.
These are continent, to be sure: but doggish lust looketh
enviously out of all that they do.
Even into the heights of their virtue and into their cold spirit
doth this creature follow them, with its discord.
And how nicely can doggish lust beg for a piece of spirit,
when a piece of flesh is denied it!
Ye love tragedies and all that breaketh the heart? But I am
distrustful of your doggish lust.
Ye have too cruel eyes, and ye look wantonly towards the
sufferers. Hath not your lust just disguised itself and taken the
name of fellow-suffering?
And also this parable give I unto you: Not a few who meant
to cast out their devil, went thereby into the swine themselves.
[56}
THE FRIE ND
To whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded: lest it be-
come the road to hell to filth and lust of soul.
Do I speak of filthy things? That is not the worst thing for
me to do.
Not when the truth is filthy, but when it is shallow, doth the
discerning one go unwillingly into its waters.
Verily, there are chaste ones from their very nature; they
are gentler of heart, and laugh better and of tener than you.
They laugh also at chastity, and ask: "What is chastity?
Is chastity not folly? But the folly came unto us, and not we
unto it.
We offered that guest harbour and heart: now it dwelleth
with us let it stay as long as it will!"
Thus spake Zarathustra.
14. The Friend
"ONE is always too many about me*' thinketh the anchorite.
"Always once one that maketh two in the long run!"
I and me are always too earnestly in conversation: how
could it be endured, if there were not a friend?
The friend of the anchorite is always the third one: the
third one is the cork which preventeth the conversation of the
two sinking into the depth.
Ah! there are too many depths for all anchorites. Therefore,
do they long so much for a friend and for his elevation.
Our faith in others betrayeth wherein we would fain have
faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
[57]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy.
And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal
that we are vulnerable.
"Be at least mine enemy!" thus speaketh the true rever-
ence, which doth not venture to solicit friendship.
If one would have a friend, then must one also be willing
to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be
capable of being an enemy.
One ought still to honour the enemy in one's friend. Canst
thou go nigh unto thy friend, and not go over to him?
In one's friend one shall have one's best enemy. Thou shalt
be closest unto him with thy heart when thou withstandest him.
Thou wouldst wear no raiment before thy friend? It is in
honour of thy friend that thou showest thyself to him as thou
art? But he wisheth thee to the devil on that account!
He who maketh no secret of himself shocketh: so much
reason have ye to fear nakedness! Aye, if ye were gods, ye
could then be ashamed of clothing!
Thou canst not adorn thyself fine enough for thy friend;
for thou shalt be unto him an arrow and a longing for the
Superman.
Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep to know how he
looketh? What is usually the countenance of thy friend? It is
thine own countenance, in a coarse and imperfect mirror.
Sawest thou ever thy friend asleep? Wert thou not dis-
mayed at thy friend looking so? O my friend, man is some-
thing that hath to be surpassed.
In divining and keeping silence shall the friend be a master:
not everything must thou wish to see. Thy dream shall dis-
close unto thee what thy friend doeth when awake.
Let thy pity be a divining: to know first if thy friend
THE FRIE ND
wanteth pity. Perhaps he loveth in thec the unmoved eye, and
the look of eternity.
Let thy pity for thy friend be hid under a hard shell; thou
shalt bite out a tooth upon it. Thus will it have delicacy and
sweetness.
Art thou pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to
thy friend? Many a one cannot loosen his own fetters, but is
nevertheless his friend's emancipator.
Art thou a slave? Then thou canst not be a friend. Art thou
a tyrant? Then thou canst not have friends.
Far too long hath there been a slave and a tyrant concealed
in woman. On that account woman is not yet capable of friend-
ship: she knoweth only love.
In woman's love there is injustice and blindness to all she
doth not love. And even in woman's conscious love, there is
still always surprise and lightning and night, along with the
light.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship: women are still
cats and birds. Or at the best, cows.
As yet woman is not capable of friendship. But tell me, ye
men, who of you is capable of friendship?
Oh! your poverty, ye men, and your sordidness of soul! As
much as ye give to your friend, will I give even to my foe, and
will not have become poorer thereby.
There is comradeship: may there be friendship!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
75. The Thousand and One Goals
MANY lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: thus he dis-
covered the good and bad of many peoples. No greater power
did Zarathustra find on earth than good and bad.
No people could live without first valuing; if a people will
maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour
valueth.
Much that passed for good with one people was regarded
with scorn and contempt by another: thus I found it. Much
found I here called bad, which was there decked with purple
honours.
Never did the one neighbour understand the other: ever
did his soul marvel at his neighbour's delusion and wickedness.
A table of excellencies hangeth over every people. Lo! it is
the table of their triumphs; lo! it is the voice of their Will to
Power.
It is laudable, what they think hard; what is indispensable
and hard they call good; and what relieveth in the direst dis-
tress, the unique and hardest of all, they extol as holy.
Whatever maketh them rule and conquer and shine, to the
dismay and envy of their neighbours, they regard as the high
and foremost thing, the test and the meaning of all else.
Verily, my brother, if thou knewest but a people's need, its
land, its sky, and its neighbour, then wouldst thou divine the
law of its surmountings, and why it climbeth up that ladder to
its hope.
"Always shalt thou be the foremost and prominent above
others: no one shall thy jealous soul love, except a friend"
[60}
THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS
that made the soul of a Greek thrill: thereby went he his way
to greatness.
"To speak truth, and be skilful with bow and arrow" so
seemed it alike pleasing and hard to the people from whom
cometh my name the name which is alike pleasing and hard
to me.
"To honour father and mother, and from the root of the soul
to do their will" this table of surmounting hung another
people over them, and became powerful and permanent there-
by-
"To have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honour
and blood, even in evil and dangerous courses" teaching it-
self so, another people mastered itself, and thus mastering
itself, became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.
Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and
bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto
them as a voice from heaven.
Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain
himself he created only the significance of things, a human
significance! Therefore, calleth he himself "man," that is, the
valuator.
Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! Valuation
itself is the treasure and jewel of the valued things.
Through valuation only is there value; and without valua-
tion the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, ye creating
ones!
Change of values that is, change of the creating ones.
Always doth he destroy who hath to be a creator.
Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late
times individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the
latest creation.
Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
would rule and love which would obey, created for themselves
such tables.
Older is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the
ego: and as long as the good conscience is for the herd, the bad
conscience only saith: ego.
Verily, the crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeketh its
advantage in the advantage of many it is not the origin of the
herd, but its ruin.
Loving ones, was it always, and creating ones, that created
good and bad. Fire of love gloweth in the names of all the
virtues, and fire of wrath.
Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater
power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the
loving ones "good" and "bad" are they called.
Verily, a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming.
Tell me, ye brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put
a fetter upon the thousand necks of this animal?
A thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand
peoples have there been. Only the fetter for the thousand
necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. As yet
humanity hath not a goal.
But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still
lacking, is there not also still lacking humanity itself?
Thus spake Zarathustra.
NEIGHBOUR- LOVE
16. Neighbour-Love
YE CROWD around your neighbour, and have fine words for it.
But I say unto you: your neighbour-love is your bad love of
yourselves.
Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would
fain make a virtue thereof: but I fathom your "unselfishness.' 1
The Thou is older than the /; the Thou hath been conse-
crated, but not yet the /: so man presseth nigh unto his neigh-
bour.
Do I advise you to neighbour-love? Rather do I advise you
to neighbour-flight and to furthest love!
Higher than love to your neighbour is love to the furthest
and 'future ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things
and phantoms.
The phantom that runneth on before thee, my brother, is
fairer than thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and
thy bones? But thou fearest, and runnest unto thy neighbour.
Ye cannot endure it with yourselves, and do not love your-
selves sufficiently: so ye seek to mislead your neighbour into
love, and would fain gild yourselves with his error.
Would that ye could not endure it with any kind of near
ones, or their neighbours; then would ye have to create your
friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves.
Ye call in a witness when ye want to speak well of your-
selves; and when ye have misled him to think well of you, ye
also think well of yourselves.
Not only doth he lie, who speaketh contrary to his knowl-
edge, but more so, he who speaketh contrary to his ignorance.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And thus speak ye of yourselves in your intercourse, and belie
your neighbour with yourselves.
Thus saith the fool: " Association with men spoileth the
character, especially when one hath none/'
The one goeth to his neighbour because he seeketh him-
self, and the other because he would fain lose himself. Your
bad love to yourselves maketh solitude a prison to you.
The furthest ones are they who pay for your love to the
near ones; and when there are but five of you together, a sixth
must always die.
I love not your festivals either: too many actors found I
there, and even the spectators often behaved like actors.
Not the neighbour do I teach you, but the friend. Let the
friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of
the Superman.
I teach you the friend f and his overflowing heart. But one
must know how to be a sponge, if one would be loved by over-
flowing hearts.
I teach you the friend in whom the world standeth complete,
a capsule of the good, the creating friend, who hath always a
complete world to bestow.
And as the world unrolled itself for him, so rolleth it to-
gether again for him in rings, as the growth of good through
evil, as the growth of purpose out of chance.
Let the future and the furthest be the motive of thy today;
in thy friend shalt thou love the Superman as thy motive.
My brethren, I advise you not to neighbour-love I advise
you to furthest love!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
[64]
THE WAY OF THE CREATING ONE
//. The Way of the Creating One
WOULDST thou go into isolation, my brother? Wouldst thou
seek the way unto thyself? Tarry yet a little and hearken unto
me.
"He who seeketh may easily get lost himself. All isolation
is wrong 1 ' : so say the herd. And long didst thou belong to the
herd.
The voice of the herd will still echo in thee. And when thou
sayest, "I have no longer a conscience in common with you/'
then will it be a plaint and a pain.
Lo, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and
the last gleam of that conscience still gloweth on thine afflic-
tion.
But thou wouldst go the way of thine affliction, which is the
way unto thyself? Then show me thine authority and thy
strength to do so!
Art thou a new strength and a new authority? A first
motion? A self -rolling wheel? Canst thou also compel stars
to revolve around thee?
Alas! there is so much lusting for loftfness! There are so
many convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that thou art not
a lusting and ambitious one!
Alas! there are so many great thoughts that do nothing more
than the bellows: they inflate, and make emptier than ever.
Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I
hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.
Art thou one entitled to escape from a yoke? Many a one
hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his
servitude.
[65]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra!
Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free for what?
Canst thou give unto thyself thy bad and thy good, and set
up thy will as a law over thee? Canst thou be judge for thyself,
and avenger of thy law?
Terrible is aloneness with the judge and avenger of one's
own law. Thus is a star projected into desert space, and into the
icy breath of aloneness.
To-day suff erest thou still from the multitude, thou individ-
ual; to-day hast thou still thy courage unabated, and thy hopes.
But one day will the solitude weary thee; one day will thy
pride yield, and thy courage quail. Thou wilt one day cry: "I
am alone!"
One day wilt thou see no longer thy loftiness, and see too
closely thy lowliness; thy sublimity itself will frighten thee as
a phantom. Thou wilt one day cry: "All is false!"
There are feelings which seek to slay the lonesome one; if
they do not succeed, then must they themselves die! But art
thou capable of it to be a murderer?
Hast thou ever known, my brother, the word "disdain"?
And the anguish of thy justice in being just to those that dis-
dain thee?
Thou forcest many to think differently about thee; that,
charge they heavily to thine account. Thou earnest nigh unto
them, and yet wentest past: for that they never forgive thee.
Thou goest beyond them: but the higher thou risest, the
smaller doth the eye of envy see thee. Most of all, however, is
die flying one hated.
"How could ye be just unto me!" must thou say "I
choose your injustice as my allotted portion."
Injustice and filth cast they at the lonesome one: but, my
[66}
THE WAY OF THE CREATING ONE
Brother, if thou wouldst be a star, thou must shine fot them
lone the less on that account!
And be on thy guard against the good and just! They would
: ain crucify those who devise their own virtue they hate the
onesome ones.
Be on thy guard, also, against holy simplicity! All is unholy
o it that is not simple; fain, likewise, would it play with the
ire of the fagot and stake.
And be on thy guard, also, against the assaults of thy love!
Too readily doth the recluse reach his hand to any one who
neeteth him.
To many a one mayest thou not give thy hand, but only thy
>aw; and I wish thy paw also to have claws.
But the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself
Iways be; thou waylayest thyself in caverns and forests.
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And
>ast thyself and thy seven devils leadeth thy way!
A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a sooth-
ayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain.
Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how
ouldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes!
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the creating one:
God wilt thou create for thyself out of thy seven devils!
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the loving one:
lou lovest thyself, and on that account despisest thou thyself,
5 only the loving ones despise.
To create, desireth the loving one, because he despiseth!
7hat knoweth he of love who hath not been obliged to despise
ist what he loved!
With thy love, go into thine isolation, my brother, and with
ly creating; and late only will justice limp after thee.
[07]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
With my tears, go into thine isolation, my brother. I love
him who seeketh to create beyond himself, and thus suc-
cumbcth.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
18. Old and Young Women
WHY stealest thou along so furtively in the twilight, Zara-
ihustra? And what hidest thou so carefully under thy mantle?
Is it a treasure that hath been given thec? Or a child that
hath been born thee? Or goest thou thyself on a thief's errand,
thou friend of the evil?
Verily, my brother, said Zarathustra, it is a treasure that
hath been given me: it is a little truth which I carry.
But it is naughty, like a young child; and if I hold not its
mouth, it screameth too loudly.
As I went on my way alone today, at the hour when the
sun declincth, there met me an old woman, and she spake thus
unto my soul:
"Much hath Zarathustra spoken also to us women, but
never spake he unto us concerning woman."
And I answered her: "Concerning woman, one should only
talk unto men."
"Talk also unto me of woman," said she; "I am old enough
to forget it presently."
And I obliged the old woman and spake thus unto her:
Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman
hath one solution it is called pregnancy.
OLD AND YOUNG WOMEN
Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child.
But what is woman for man?
Two different things wanteth the true man: danger and
diversion. Therefore wanteth he woman, as the most danger-
ous plaything.
Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation
of the warrior: all else is folly.
Too sweet fruits these the warrior liketh not. Therefore
liketh he woman; bitter is even the sweetest woman.
Better than man doth woman understand children, but man
is more childish than woman.
In the true man there is a child hidden: it wanteth to play.
Up then, ye women, and discover the child in man!
A plaything let woman be, pure and fine like the precious
stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come.
Let the beam of a star shine in your love! Let your hope say:
"May I bear the Superman!"
In your love let there be valour! With, your love shall ye
assail him who inspireth you with fear!
In your love be your honour! Little doth woman understand
otherwise about honour. But let this be your honour: always
to love more than ye are loved, and never be the second.
Let man fear woman when she loveth: then maketh she
every sacrifice, and everything else she regardeth as worthless.
Let man fear woman when she hateth: for man in his inner-
most soul is merely evil; woman, however, is mean.
Whom hateth woman most? Thus spake the iron to the
loadstone: "I hate thee most, because thou attractest, but art
too weak to draw unto thee."
The happiness of man is, "I will." The happiness of woman
is, "He will."
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
"Lo! now hath the world become perfect!" thus thinketh
^very woman when she obeycth with all her love.
Obey, must the woman, and find a depth for her surface.
Surface is woman's soul, a mobile, stormy film on shallow
water.
Man's soul, however, is deep, its current gusheth in subter-
ranean caverns : woman surmiscth its force, but comprehendeth
it not.
Then answered me the old woman: "Many fine things hath
Zarathustra said, especially for those who are young enough
for them.
Strange! Zarathustra knoweth little about woman, and yet
he is right about them! Doth this happen, because with women
nothing is impossible?
And now accept a little truth by way of thanks! I am old
enough for it!
Swaddle it up and hold its mouth: otherwise it will scream
too loudly, the little truth."
"Give me, woman, thy little truth!" said I. And thus spake
the old woman :
"Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!"
Thus spake Zarathustra.
79. The Bite of the Adder
ONE day had Zarathustra fallen asleep under a fig-tree, owing
to the heat, with his arm over his face. And there came an
adder and bit him in the neck, so that Zarathustra screamed
with pain. When he had taken his arm from his face he looked
[70}
THE BITE OF THE ADDER
at the serpent; and then did it recognise the eyes of Zarathustra,
wriggled awkwardly, and tried to get away. "Not at all," said
Zarathustra, "as yet hast thou not received my thanks! Thou
hast awakened me in time; my journey is yet long." "Thy
journey is short," said the adder sadly; "my poison is fatal."
Zarathustra smiled. "When did ever a dragon die of a serpent's
poison?" said he. "But take thy poison back! Thou art not
rich enough to present it to me." Then fell the adder again on
his neck, and licked his wound.
When Zarathustra once told this to his disciples they asked
him: "And what, O Zarathustra, is the moral of thy story?"
And Zarathustra answered them thus :
The destroyer of morality, the good and just call me: my
story is immoral.
When, however, ye have an enemy, then return him not
good for evil: for that would abash him. But prove that he
hath done something good to you.
And rather be angry than abash any one! And when ye are
cursed, it pleaseth me not that ye should then desire to bless.
Rather curse a little also!
And should a great injustice befall you, then do quickly five
small ones besides. Hideous to behold is he on whom injustice
presseth alone. '
Did ye ever know this? Shared injustice is half justice. And
he who can bear it, shall take the injustice upon himself!
A small revenge is humaner than no revenge at all. And if
the punishment be not also a right and an honour to the trans-
gressor, I do not like your punishing.
Nobler is it to own oneself in the wrong than to establish
one's right, especially if one be in the right. Only, one must be
rich enough to do so.
I do not like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges
[77]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
there always glanceth the executioner and his cold steel.
Tell me: where find we justice, which is love with seeing
eyes?
Devise me, then, the love which not only beareth all punish-
ment, but also all guilt!
Devise me, then, the justice which acquitteth every one
except the judge!
And would ye hear this likewise? To him who seeketh to be
just from the heart, even the lie becometh philanthropy.
But how could I be just from the heart! How can I give every
one his own! Let this be enough for me: I give unto every one
mine own.
Finally, my brethren, guard against doing wrong to any
anchorite. How could an anchorite forget! How could he
requite!
Like a deep well is an anchorite. Easy is it to throw in a
stone: if it should sink to the bottom, however, tell me, who
will bring it out again?
Guard against injuring the anchorite! If ye have done so,
however, well then, kill him also!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
20. Child and Marriage
I HAVE a question for thee alone, my brother: like a sounding-
lead, cast I this question into thy soul, that I may know its
depth.
Thou art young, and desirest child and marriage. But I ask
thee: Art thou a man entitled to desire a child?
CHILD AND MARRIAGE
Art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler c
thy passions, the master of thy virtues? Thus do I ask thee.
Or doth the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? Or isi
lation? Or discord in thee?
I would have thy victory and freedom long for a chil<
Living monuments shalt thou build to thy victory and emanc
pation.
Beyond thyself shalt thou build. But first of all must the
be built thyself, rectangular in body and soul.
Not only onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upwan
For that purpose may the garden of marriage help thee!
A higher body shalt thou create, a first movement, a spoi
taneously rolling wheel a creating one shalt thou create.
Marriage:, so call I the will of the twain to create the one th;
is more than those who created it. The reverence for one ai
other, as those exercising such a will, call I marriage.
Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriag
But that which the many-too-many call marriage, those supe
fluous ones ah, what shall I call it?
Ah, the poverty of soul in the twain! Ah, the filth of soul i
the twain! Ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain!
Marriage they call it all; and they say their marriages aj
made in heaven.
Well, I do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous! No,
do not like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly toil
Far from me also be the God who limpeth thither to ble
what he hath not matched!
Laugh not at such marriages! What child hath not had reaso
to weep over its parents?
Worthy did this man seem, and ripe for the meaning of tb
earth : but when I saw his wife, the earth seemed to me a hone
for madcaps.
[75]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Yea, I would that the earth shook with convulsions when a
saint and a goose mate with one another.
This one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last
got for himself a small deckcd-up lie: his marriage he calleth it.
That one was reserved in intercourse and chose choicely. But
one time he spoilt his company for all time: his marriage he
calleth it.
Another sought a handmaid with the virtues of an angel.
But all at once he became the handmaid of a woman, and now
would he need also to become an angel.
Careful, have I found all buyers, and all of them have astute
eyes. But even the astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack.
Many short follies that is called love by you. And your
marriage putteth an end to many short follies, with one long
stupidity.
Your love to woman, and woman's love to man ah, would
that it were sympathy for suffering and veiled deities! But
generally two animals alight on one another.
But even your best love is only an enraptured simile and a
painful ardour. It is a torch to light you to loftier paths.
Beyond yourselves shall ye love some day! Then learn first
of all to love. And on that account ye had to drink the bitter
cup of your love.
Bitterness is in the cup even of the best love; thus doth it
cause longing for the Superman; thus doth it cause thirst in
thee, the creating one!
Thirst in the creating one, arrow and longing for the Super-
man: tell me, my brother, is this thy will to marriage?
Holy call I such a will, and such a marriage.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
VOLUNTARY DEATH
Si. Voluntary Death
MANY die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange
soundeth the precept: "Die at the right time!"
Die at the right time: so teacheth Zarathustra.
To be sure, he who never liveth at the right time, how could
he ever die at the right time? Would that he might never be
born! Thus do I advise the superfluous ones.
But even the superfluous ones make much ado about their
death, and even the hollowest nut wanteth to be cracked.
Every one regardeth dying as a great matter: but as yet death
is not a festival. Not yet have people learned to inaugurate the
finest festivals.
The consummating death I show unto you, which becometh
a stimulus and promise to the living.
His death, dieth the consummating one triumphantly, sur-
rounded by hoping and promising ones.
Thus should one learn to die; and there should be no festival
at which such a dying one doth not consecrate the oaths of the
living!
Thus to die is best; the next best, however, is to die in battle,
and sacrifice a great soul.
But to the fighter equally hateful as to the victor, is your
grinning death which stealeth nigh like a thief, and yet
cometh as master.
My death, praise I unto you, the voluntary death, which
cometh unto me because / want it.
And when shall I want it? He that hath a goal and an heir,
.wanteth death at the right time for the goal and the heir.
[75]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And out of reverence for the goal and the heir, he will hang
up no more withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life.
Verily, not the rope-makers will I resemble: they lengthen
out their cord, and thereby go ever backward.
Many a one, also, waxcth too old for his truths and
triumphs; a toothless mouth hath no longer the right to every
truth.
And whoever wanteth to have fame, must take leave of
honour betimes, and practise the difficult art of going at the
right time.
One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth
best: that is known by those who want to be long loved.
Sour apples are there, no doubt, whose lot is to wait until
the last day of autumn : and at the same time they become ripe,
yellow, and shrivelled.
In some ageth the heart first, and in others the spirit. And
some are hoary in youth, but the late young keep long young.
To many men life is a failure; a poison-worm gnaweth at
their heart. Then let them see to it that their dying is all the
more a success.
Many never become sweet; they rot even in the summer. It is
cowardice that holdeth them fast to their branches.
Far too many live, and far too long hang they on their
branches. Would that a storm came and shook all this rotten-
ness and worm-eatenness from the tree!
Would that there came preachers of speedy death! Those
would be the appropriate storms and agitators of the trees of
life! But I hear only slow death preached, and patience with all
that is "earthly."
Ah! ye preach patience with what is earthly? This earthly is
it that hath too much patience with you, ye blasphemers!
VOLUNTARY DEATH
Verily, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of
slow death honour: and to many hath it proved a calamity that
he died too early.
As yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the
Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just
the Hebrew Jesus: then was he seized with the longing for
death.
Had he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the
good and just! Then, perhaps, would he have learned to live,
and love the earth and laughter also!
Believe it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would
have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble
enough was he to disavow!
But he was still immature. Immaturely loveth the youth, and
immaturely also hateth he man and earth. Confined and awk-
ward are still his soul and the wings of his spirit.
But in man there is more of the child than in the youth, and
less of melancholy: better understandeth he about life and
death.
Free for death, and free in death; a holy Naysayer, when
there is no longer time for Yea: thus understandeth he about
death and life.
That your dying may not be a reproach to man and the
earth, my friends: that do I solicit from the honey of your
soul.
In your dying shall your spirit and your virtue still shine like
an evening after-glow around the earth: otherwise your dying
hath been unsatisfactory.
Thus will I die myself, that ye friends rfiay love the earth
more for my sake; and earth will I again become, to have rest
in her that bore me.
[77]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Verily, a goal had Zarathustra; he threw his ball. Now be ye
fticnds the heirs of my goal; to you throw I the golden ball.
Best of all, do I see you, my friends, throw the golden ball!
And so tarry I still a little while on the eartfr pardon me for it!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
22. The Bestowing Virtue
WHEN Zarathustra had taken leave of the town to which his
heart was attached, the name of which is "The Pied Cow/'
there followed him many people who called themselves his
disciples, and kept him company. Thus came they to a cross-
roads. Then Zarathustra told them that he now wanted to go
alone; for he was fond of going alone. His disciples, however,
presented him at his departure with a staff, on the golden
handle of which a serpent twined round the sun. Zarathustra
rejoiced on account of the staff, and supported himself thereon;
then spake he thus to his disciples:
Tell me, pray: how came gold to the highest value? Because
it is uncommon, and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in
lustre; it always bestoweth itself.
Only as image of the highest virtue came gold to the highest
value. Goldlike, beameth the glance of the bestowcr. Gold-
lustre maketh peace between moon and sun.
Uncommon is the highest virtue, and unprofiting, beaming
is it, and soft of lustre: a bestowing virtue is the highest virtue.
THE BESTOWING VIRTUE -
Verily, I divine you well, my disciples: ye strive like me for
the bestowing virtue. What should ye have in common with
cats and wolves?
It is your thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves : and
therefore have ye the thirst to accumulate all riches in your soul.
Insatiably striveth your soul for treasures and jewels, be-
cause your virtue is insatiable in desiring to bestow.
Ye constrain all things to flow towards you and into you,
so that they shall flow back again out of your fountain as th?
gifts of your love.
Verily, an appropriator of all values must such bestowing
love become; but healthy and holy, call I this selfishness.
Another selfishness is there, an all-too-poor and hungry
kind, which would always steal the selfishness of the sick,
the sickly selfishness.
With the eye of the thief it looketh upon all that is lustrous;
with the craving of hunger it measureth him who hath abun-
dance; and ever doth it prowl round the tables of bestowers.
Sickness speaketh in such craving, and invisible degenera-
tion; of a sickly body, speaketh the larcenous craving of this
selfishness.
Tell me, my brother, what do we think bad, and worst of
all? Is it not degeneration? And we always suspect degenera-
tion when the bestowing soul is lacking.
Upward goeth our course from genera on to super-genera.
But a horror to us is the degenerating sense, which saith: "All
for myself/'
Upward soareth our sense: thus is it a simile of our body, a
simile of an elevation. Such similes of elevations are the names
of the virtues.
Thus goeth the body through history, a becomer and fighter.
'THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And the spirit what is it to the body? Its fights' and victories'
herald, its companion and echo.
Similes, are all names of good and evil; they do not speak
out, they only hint. A fool who seeketh knowledge from them!
Give heed, my brethren, to every hour when your spirit
would speak in similes: there is the origin of your virtue.
Elevated is then your body, and raised up; with its delight,
enraptureth it the spirit; so that it becometh creator, and
valuer, and lover, and everything's benefactor.
When your heart overfloweth broad and full like the river,
a blessing and a danger to the lowlanders: there is the origin
of your virtue.
When ye are exalted above praise and blame, and your will
would command all things, as a loving one's will: there is the
origin of your virtue.
When ye despise pleasant things, and the effeminate couch,
and cannot couch far enough from the effeminate: there is the
origin of your virtue.
When ye are willers of one will, and when that change of
every need is needful to you: there is the origin of your virtue.
Verily, a new good and evil is it! Verily, a new deep mur-
muring, and the voice of a new fountain!
Power is it, this new virtue; a ruling thought is it, and
around it a subtle soul: a golden sun, with the serpent of
knowledge around it.
Here paused Zarathustra awhile, and looked lovingly on
his disciples. Then he continued to speak thus and his voice
had changed:
THE BESTOWING VIRTUE
Remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of
your virtue! Let your bestowing love and your knowledge be
devoted to be the meaning of the earth! Thus do I pray and
conjure you.
Let it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal
walls with its wings! Ah, there hath always been so much
flown-away virtue!
Lead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth yea,
back to body and life: that it may give to the earth its mean-
ing, a human meaning!
A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue flown
away and blundered. Alas! in our body dwelleth still all this
delusion and blundering: body and will hath it there become.
A hundred times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue at-
tempted and erred. Yea, an attempt hath man been. Alas,
much ignorance and error hath become embodied in us!
Not only the rationality of millennia also their mad-
ness, breaketh out in us. Dangerous is it to be an heir.
Still fight we step by step with the giant Chance, and over
all mankind hath hitherto ruled nonsense, the lack-of -sense.
Let your spirit and your virtue be devoted to the sense of the
earth, my brethren: let the value of everything be determined
anew by you! Therefore shall ye be fighters! Therefore shall
ye be creators!
Intelligently doth the body purify itself; attempting with
intelligence it exalteth itself; to the discerners all impulses
sanctify themselves; to the exalted the soul becometh joyful.
Physician, heal thyself: then wilt thou also heal thy patient.
Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh
himself whole.
A thousand paths are there which have never yet been
trodden; a thousand salubrities and hidden islands of life.
[W]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Unexhausted and undiscovered is still man and man's world.
Awake and hearken, ye lonesome ones! From the future
come winds with stealthy pinions, and to fine ears good tidings
are proclaimed.
Ye lonesome ones of today, ye seceding ones, ye shall one
day be a people: out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall
a diosen people arise: and out of it the Superman.
Verily, a place of healing shall the earth become! And
already is a new odour diffused around it, a salvation-bringing
odour and a new hope!
When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he paused, like
one who had not said his last word; and long did he balance
the staff doubtfully in his hand. At last he spake thus and his
voice had changed:
I now go alone, my disciples! Ye also now go away, and
alone! So will I have it.
Verily, I advise you: depart from me, and guard yourselves
against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Per-
haps he hath deceived you.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his
enemies, but also to hate his friends.
One requiteth a teacher badly if one remain merely a
scholar. And why will ye not pluck at my wreath?
Ye venerate me; but what if your veneratioa should some
day collapse? Take heed lest a statue crush you!
Ye say, ye believe in Zarathustra? But of what account is
Zarathustra! Ye are my believers: but of what account are all
believers!
[**]
THE BESTOWING VIRTUE
Ye had not yet sought yourselves: then did ye find me. So do
all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account.
^Now do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only
when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you.
Verily, with other eyes, my brethren, shall I then seek my
lost ones; with another love shall I then love you.
And once again shall ye have become friends unto me, and
children of one hope: then will I be with you for the third time,
to celebrate the great noontide with you.
And it is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of
his course between animal and Superman, and celebrateth his
advance to the evening as his highest hope: for it is the ad-
vance to a new morning.
At such time will the down-goer bless himself, that he
should be an over-goer; and the sun of his knowledge will be
at noontide.
"Dead (ire M the Gods: now do we desire the Superman
to live."- Let this be our final will at the great noontide!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
SECOND PART
" and only when ye have all denied
me, will I return unto you.
Verily, with other eyes, my brethren,
shall I then seek my lost ones; with
another love shall I then love you."
ZARATHUSTRA, I., "The Bestowing
Virtue" (p. 92).
. The Child with the Mirror
AFTER this Zarathustra returned again into the mountains te
the solitude of his cave, and withdrew himself from men,
Awaiting like a sower who hath scattered his seed. His soul,
however, became impatient and full of longing for those
whom he loved: because he had still much to give them. For
this is hardest of all : to close the open hand out of love, and
keep modest as a giver.
Thus passed with the lonesome one months and years; his
wisdom meanwhile increased, and caused him pain by its
abundance.
One morning, however, he awoke ere the rosy dawn, and
having meditated long on his couch, at last spake thus to his
heart:
Why did I startle in my dream, so that I awoke? Did not a
child come to me, carrying a mirror?
"O Zarathustra" said the child unto me "look at thyself
in the mirror!"
But when I looked into the mirror, I shrieked, and my heart
throbbed: for not myself did I see therein, but a devil's
grimace and derision.
Verily, all too well do I understand the dream's portent and
monition: my doctrine is in danger; tares want to be called ,
wheat!
Mine enemies have grown powerful and have disfigured the
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
likeness of my doctrine, so that my dearest ones have to blush
for the gifts that I gave them.
Lost arc my friends; the hour hath come for me to seek my
lost oneb!
\Vith these words Zarathustra started up, not however like
a person in anguish seeking relief, but rather like a seer and a
singer whom the spirit inspireth. With amazement did his
eagle and serpent gaze upon him: for a coming bliss over-
spread his countenance like the rosy dawn.
What hath happened unto me, mine animals? said Zara-
thustra. Am I not transformed? Hath not bliss come unto me
like a whirlwind?
Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it
is still too young so have patience with it!
Wounded am I by my happiness: all sufferers shall be
physicians unto me!
To my friends can I again go down, and also to mine
enemies! Zarathustra can again speak and bestow, and show
his best love to his loved ones!
My impatient love overfloweth in streams, down towards
sunrise and sunset. Out of silent mountains and storms of
affliction, rusheth my soul into the valleys.
Too long have I longed and looked into the distance. Too
long hath solitude possessed me: thus have I unlearned to keep
silence.
Utterance have I become altogether and the brawling of a
brook from high rocks: downward into the valleys will I hurl
my speech.
And let the stream of my love sweep into unfrequented
channels! How should a stream not finally find its way to the
sea!
[88]
THE CHILD WITH THE MIRROR
Forsooth, there is a lake in me, sequestered and self-sufficing;
but the stream of my love beareth this along with it, down to
the sea!
New paths do I tread, a new speech cometh unto me; tired
have I become like all creators of the old tongues. No
longer will my spirit walk on worn-out soles.
Too slowly runneth all speaking for me: into thy chariot,
O storm, do I leap! And even thee will I whip with my spite!
Like a cry and an huzza will I traverse wide seas, till I find
the Happy Isles where my friends sojourn;
And mine enemies amongst them! How I now love every
one unto whom I may but speak! Even mine enemies pertain
to my bliss.
And when I want to mount my wildest horse, then doth my
spear always help me up best: it is my foot's ever ready
servant:
The spear which I hurl at mine enemies! How grateful am 1
to mine enemies that I may at last hurl it!
Too great hath been the tension of my cloud: 'twixt laugh-
ters of lightnings will I cast hail-showers into the depths.
Violently will my breast then heave; violently will it blow
its storm over the mountains: thus cometh its assuagement.
Verily, like a storm cometh my happiness, and my freedom!
But mine enemies shall think that the evil one roareth over
their heads.
Yea, ye also, my friends, will be alarmed by my wild wis-
dom; and perhaps ye will flee therefrom, along with mine
enemies.
Ah, that I knew how to lure you back with shepherds'
flutes! Ah, that my lioness wisdom would learn to roar softly!
And much have we already learned with one another!
My wild wisdom became pregnant on the lonesome moun
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
tains; on the rough stones did she bear the youngest of her
young.
Now runneth she foolishly in the arid wilderness, and
sceketh and seeketh the soft sward mine old, wild wisdom!
On the soft sward of your hearts, my friends! on your
love, would she fain couch her dearest one!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
24. In the Happy Isles
THE figs fall from the trees, they are good and sweet; and in
falling the red skins of them break. A north wind am I to ripe
figs.
Thus, like figs, do these doctrines fall for you, my friends:
imbibe now their juice and their sweet substance! It is autumn
all around, and clear sky, and afternoon.
Lo, what fullness is around us! And out of the midst of
superabundance, it is delightful to look out upon distant seas.
Once did people say God, when they looked out upon dis-
tant seas; now, however, have I taught you to say, Superman.
God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to
reach beyond your creating will.
Could ye create a God? Then, I pray you, be silent about
all gods! But ye could well create the Superman.
Not perhaps ye yourselves, my brethren! But into fathers
and forefathers of the Superman could ye transform your-
selves: and let that be your best creating!
[90]
IN THE HAPPY ISLES
God is a conjecture: but I should like your conjecturing re-
stricted to the conceivable.
Could ye cone eh e a God? But let this mean Will to Truth
unto you, that everything be transformed into the humanly
conceivable, the humanly visible, the humanly sensible! Your
own discernment shall ye follow out to the end!
And what ye have called the world shall but be created by
you: your reason, your likeness, your will, your love, shall it
itself become! And verily, for your bliss, ye discerning ones!
And how would ye endure life without that hope, ye dis-
cerning ones? Neither in the inconceivable could ye have been
born, nor in the irrational.
But that I may reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends:
// there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God! There-
fore there are no gods.
Yea, I have drawn the conclusion; now, however, doth it
draw me.
God is a conjecture: but who could drink all the bitterness
of this conjecture without dying? Shall his faith be taken from
the creating one, and from the eagle his flights into eagle-
heights?
God is a thought it maketh all the straight crooked, and all
that standeth reel. What? Time would be gone, and all the
perishable would be but a lie?
To think this is giddiness and vertigo to human limbs, and
even vomiting to the stomach: verily, the reeling sickness do
I call it, to conjecture such a thing.
Evil do I call it and misanthropic: all that teaching about
the one, and the plenum, and the unmoved, and the sufficient,
and the imperishable!
All the imperishable that's but a simile, and the poets lie
too much.
[W]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
But of time and of becoming shall the best similes speak: a
praise shall they be, and a justification of all perishableness!
Creating that is the great salvation from suffering, and
life's alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself
is needed, and much transformation.
Yea, much bitter dying must there be in your life, ye
creators! Thus are ye advocates and justifiers of all perishable-
ness.
For the creator himself to be the new-born child, he must
also be willing to be the child-bearer, and endure the pangs of
the child-bearer.
Verily, through a hundred souls went I my way, and
through a hundred cradles and birth-throes. Many a farewell
have I taken; I know the heart-breaking last hours.
But so willeth it my creating Will, my fate. Or, to tell you
it more candidly: just such a fate willeth my Will.
All Reeling suffereth in me, and is in prison: but my willing
ever cometh to me as mine emancipator and comforter.
Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and
emancipation so teacheth you Zarathustra.
No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer
creating! Ah, that that great debility may ever be far from me!
And also in discerning do I feel only my will's procreating
and evolving delight; and if there be innocence in my knowl-
edge, it is because there is will to procreation in it.
Away from God and gods did this will allure me; what
would there be to create if there were gods!
But to man doth it ever impel me anew, my fervent creative
will; thus impelleth it the hammer to the stone.
Ah, ye men, within the stone slumbereth an image for me,
the image of my visions! Ah, that it should slumber in the
hardest, ugliest stone!
[*]
THE PITIFUL
Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prison. From
the stone fly the fragments: what's that to me?
I will complete it: for a shadow came unto me the stillest
and lightest of all things once came unto me!
The beauty of the superman came unto me as a shadow. Ah,
my brethren! Of what account now are the gods to me!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
. The Pitiful
MY FRIENDS, there hath arisen a satire on your friend: "Be-
hold Zarathustra! Walketh he not amongst us as if amongst
animals?"
But it is better said in this wise: "The discerning one walketh
amongst men as amongst animals."
Man himself is to the discerning one: the animal with red
cheeks.
How hath that happened unto him? Is it not because he hath
had to be ashamed too oft?
O my friends! Thus speaketh the discerning one: shame,
shame, shame that is the history of man!
And on that account doth the noble one enjoin on him-
self not to abash: bashfulness doth he enjoin himself in
presence of all sufferers.
Verily, I like them not, the merciful ones, whose bliss is
in their pity: too destitute are they of bashfulness.
If I must be pitiful, I dislike to be called so; and if I be so,
it is preferably at a distance.
[S3]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Preferably also do I shroud my head, and flee, before being
recognised: and thus do I bid you do, my friends!
May my destiny ever lead unafflicted ones like you across my
path, and those with whom I may have hope and repast and
honey in common!
Verily, I have done this and that for the afflicted: but some-
thing better did I always seem to do when I had learned to
enjoy myself better.
Since humanity came into being, man hath enjoyed himself
too little: that alone, my brethren, is our original sin!
And when we learn better to enjoy ourselves, then do we
unlearn best to give pain unto others, and to contrive pain.
Therefore do I wash the hand that hath helped the sufferer;
therefore do I wipe also my soul.
For in seeing the sufferer suffering thereof was I ashamed
on account of his shame; and in helping him, sorely did I
wound his pride.
Great obligations do not make grateful, but revengeful; and
when a small kindness is not forgotten, it becometh a gnawing
worm.
"Be shy in accepting! Distinguish by accepting!" thus do
I advise those who have naught to bestow.
I, however, am a bestower: willingly do I bestow as friend
to friends. Strangers, however, and the poor, may pluck for
themselves the fruit from my tree: thus doth it cause less
shame.
Beggars, however, one should entirely do away with! Verily,
it annoyeth one to give unto them, and it annoyeth one not to
give unto them.
And likewise sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my
friends: the sting of conscionce teacheth one to sting.
194}
THE PITIFUL
The worst things, however, are the petty thoughts. Verily,
better to have done evilly than to have thought pettily!
To be sure, ye say: 'The delight in petty evils spareth one
many a great evil deed." But here one should not wish to be
sparing.
Like a boil is the evil deed: it itcheth and irritateth and
breaketh forth it speaketh honourably.
"Behold, I am disease," saith the evil deed: that is its
honourableness.
But like infection is the petty thought: it creepeth and
hideth, and wanteth to be nowhere until the whole body is
decayed and withered by the petty infection.
To him however, who is possessed of a devil, I would
whisper this word in the ear: "Better for thee to rear up thy
devil! Even for thee there is still a path to greatness!"
Ah, my brethren! One knoweth a little too much about every
one! And many a one becometh transparent to us, but still we
can by no means penetrate him.
It is difficult to live among men because silence is so difficult.
And not to him who is offensive to us are we most unfair,
but to him who doth not concern us at all.
If, however, thou hast a suffering friend, then be a resting-
place for his suffering; like a hard bed, however, a camp-bed:
thus wilt thou serve him best.
And if a friend doeth thee wrong, then say: "I forgive thee
what thou hast done unto me; that thou hast done it unto
thyself, however how could I forgive that!"
Thus speaketh all great love: it surpasseth even forgiveness
and pity.
One should hold fast one's heart; for when one letteth it go,
how quickly doth one's head run away!
Ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than
[95]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
with the pitiful? And what in the world hath caused more
suffering than the follies of the pitiful?
Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which
is above their pity!
Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: "Even God
hath his hell: it is his love for man."
And lately, did I hear him say these words: "God is dead:
of his pity for man hath God died."
So be ye warned against pity: from thence there yet cometh
unto men a heavy cloud! Verily, I understand weather-signs!
But attend also to this word: All great love is above all its
pity: for it seeketh to create what is loved!
"Myself do I offer unto my love, and my neighbour as my-
self such is the language of all creators.
All creators, however, are hard.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
26. The Priests
AND one day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples and spake
these words unto them:
"Here are priests: but although they are mine enemies, pass
them quietly and with sleeping swords!
Even among them there are heroes; many of them have
suffered too much: so they want to make others suffer.
Bad enemies are they: nothing is more revengeful than their
meekness. And readily doth he soil himself who toucheth
them.
THE PRIESTS
But my blood is related to theirs; and I want withal to see
my blood honoured in theirs."
And when they had passed, a pain attacked Zarathustra;
but not long had he struggled with the pain, when he began
to speak thus:
It moveth my heart for those priests. They also go against
my taste; but that is the smallest matter unto me, since I am
among men.
But I suffer and have suffered with them: prisoners are they
unto me, and stigmatised ones. He whom they call Saviour put
them in fetters:
In fetters of false values and fatuous words! Oh, that some
one would save them from their Saviour!
On an isle they once thought they had landed, when the sea
tossed them about; but behold, it was a slumbering monster!
False values and fatuous words: these are the worst mon-
sters for mortals long slumbereth and waiteth the fate that is
in them.
But at last it cometh and awaketh and devoureth and en-
gulf eth whatever hath built tabernacles upon it.
Oh, just look at those tabernacles which those priests have
built themselves! Churches, they call their sweet-smelling
caves!
Oh, that falsified light, that mustified air! Where the soul-
may not fly aloft to its height!
But so enjoineth their belief: "On your knees, up the stair,
ye sinners!"
Verily, rather would I see a shameless one than the dis-
torted eyes of their shame and devotion!
Who created for themselves such caves and penitence-
stairs? Was it not those who sought to conceal themselves, and
were ashamed under the clear sky?
197]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And only when the clear sky looketh again through ruined
roofs, and down upon grass and red poppies on ruined walls
will I again turn my heart to the seats of this God.
They called God that which opposed and afflicted them: and
verily, there was much hero-spirit in their worship!
And they knew not how to love their God otherwise than
by nailing men to the cross!
As corpses they thought to live; in black draped they their
corpses; even in their talk do I still feel the evil flavour of
charnel-houses.
And he who liveth nigh unto them liveth nigh unto black
pools, wherein the toad singeth his song with sweet gravity.
Better songs would they have to sing, for me to believe in
their Saviour: more like saved ones would his disciples have
to appear unto me!
Naked, would I like to see them: for beauty alone should
preach penitence. But whom would that disguised affliction
convince!
Verily, their saviours themselves came not from freedom
and freedom's seventh heaven! Verily, they themselves never
trod the carpets of knowledge!
Of defects did the spirit of those saviours consist; but into
every defect had they put their illusion, their stop-gap, which
they called God.
In their pity was their spirit drowned; and when they
swelled and o'erswelled with pity, there always floated to the
surface a great folly.
Eagerly and with shouts drove they their flock over their
foot-bridge; as if there were but one foot-bridge to the future!
Verily, those shepherds also were still of the flock!
Small spirits and spacious souls had those shepherds: but,
[98]
THE VIRTUOUS
my brethren, what small domains have even the most spacious
souls hitherto been!
Characters of blood did they write on the way they went, and
their folly taught that truth is proved by blood.
But blood is the very worst witness to truth; blood tainteth
the purest teaching, and turncth it into delusion and hatred
of heart.
And when a person goeth through fire for his teaching
what doth that prove! It is more, verily, when out of one's own
burning cometh one's own teaching!
Sultry heart and cold head; where these meet, there ariseth
the blusterer, the "Saviour."
Greater ones, verily, have there been, and higher-born ones,
than those whom the people call saviours, those rapturous
blusterers!
And by still greater ones than any of the saviours must ye
be saved, my brethren, if ye would find the way to freedom!
-Never yet hath there been a Superman. Naked have I seen
both of them, the greatest man and the smallest man:
All-too-similar are they still to each other. Verily, even the
greatest found I all-too-human!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
2J. The Virtuous
WITH thunder and heavenly fireworks must one speak to in-
dolent and somnolent senses.
But beauty's voice speaketh gently: it appealeth only to the
most awakened souls.
[99]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Gently vibrated and laughed unto me to-day my buckler; it
was beauty's holy laughing and thrilling.
At you, ye virtuous ones, laughed my beauty to-day. And
thus came its voice unto me: "They want to be paid besides!*'
Ye want to be paid besides, ye virtuous ones! Ye want re-
ward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your to-
day?
And now ye upbraid me for teaching that there is no reward-
giver, nor paymaster? And verily, I do not even teach that
virtue is its own reward.
Ah! this is my sorrow: into the basis of things have reward
and punishment been insinuated and now even into the
basis of your souls, ye virtuous ones!
But like the snout of the boar shall my word grub up the
basis of your souls; a ploughshare will I be called by you.
All the secrets of your heart shall be brought to light; and
when ye lie in the sun, grubbed up and broken, then will also
your falsehood be separated from your truth.
For this is your truth: ye are too pure for the filth of the
words: vengeance, punishment, recompense, retribution.
Ye love your virtue as a mother loveth her child; but when
did one hear of a mother wanting to be paid for her love?
It is your dearest Self, your virtue. The ring's thirst is in
you: to reach itself again struggled! every ring, and turneth
itself.
And like the star that goeth out, so is every work of your
virtue: ever is its light on its way and travelling and when
will it cease to be on its way?
Thus is the light of your virtue still on its way, even when
its work is done. Be it forgotten and dead, still its ray of light
liveth and travelleth.
That your virtue is your Self, and not an outward thing, a
1100]
THE VIRTUOUS
skin, or a cloak: that is the truth from the basis of your souls,
ye virtuous ones!
But sure enough there are those to whom virtue meaneth
writhing under the lash: and ye have hearkened too much unto
their crying!
And others are there who call virtue the slothfulness of
their vices; and when once their hatred and jealousy relax the
limbs, their "justice" becometh lively and rubbeth its sleepy
eyes.
And others are there who are drawn downwards: their
devils draw them. But the more they sink, the more ardently
gloweth their eye, and the longing for their God.
Ah! their crying also hath reached your ears, ye virtuous
ones: "What I am not, that, that is God to me, and virtue!"
And others are there who go along heavily and creakingly,
like carts taking stones downhill: they talk much of dignity
and virtue their drag they call virtue!
And others are there who are like eight-day clocks when
wound up; they tick, and want people to call ticking virtue.
Verily, in those have I mine amusement: wherever I find
such clocks I shall wind them up with my mockery, and they
shall even whirr thereby!
And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness,
and for the sake of it do violence to all things : so that the world
is drowned in their unrighteousness.
Ah! how ineptly cometh the word "virtue" out of their
mouth! And when they say: "I am just/' it always soundeth
like: "I am just revenged!"
With their virtues they want to scratch out the eyes of their
enemies; and they elevate themselves only that they may lower
others.
And again there are those who sit in their swamp, and speak
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
thus from among the bulrushes: " Virtue that is to sit quietly
in the swamp.
We bite no one, and go out of the way of him who would
bite; and in all matters we have the opinion that is given us."
And again there are those who love attitudes, and think that
virtue is a sort of attitude.
Their knees continually adore, and their hands are eulogies
of virtue, but their heart knoweth naught thereof.
And again there arc those who regard it as virtue to say:
"Virtue is necessary"; but after all they believe only that police-
men are necessary.
And many a one who cannot see men's loftiness, calleth it
virtue to see their baseness far too well: thus calleth he his
evil eye virtue.
And some want to be edified and raised up, and call it
virtue: and others want to be cast down, and likewise call
it virtue.
And thus do almost all think that they participate in virtue;
and at least every one claimeth to be an authority on "good"
and "evil."
But Zarathustra came not to say unto all those liars and
fools: "What do ye know of virtue! What could ye know of
virtue!"
But that ye, my friends, might become weary of the old
words which ye have learned from the fools and liars:
That ye might become weary of the words "reward," "retri-
bution," "punishment," "righteous vengeance."
That ye might become weary of saying: "That an action is
good is because it is unselfish."
Ah! my friends! That your very Self be in your action, as
the mother is in the child: let that be your formula of virtue!
[ 102 ]
THE RABBLE
Verily, I have taken from you a hundred formulae and your
virtue's favourite playthings; and now ye upbraid me, as
children upbraid.
They played by the sea then came there a wave and swept
their playthings into the deep: and now do they cry.
But the same wave shall bring them new playthings, and
spread before them new speckled shells!
Thus will they be comforted; and like them shall ye also, my
friends, have your comforting and new speckled shells!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
28. The Rabble
LIFE is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink,
there all fountains are poisoned.
To everything cleanly am I well disposed; but I hate to see
the grinning mouths and the thirst of the unclean.
They cast their eye down into the fountain: and now
glanceth up to me their odious smile out of the fountain.
The holy water have they poisoned with their lustfulness;
and when they called their filthy dreams delight, then poisoned
they also the words.
Indignant becometh the flame when they put their damp
hearts to the fire; the spirit itself bubbleth and smoketh when
the rabble approach the fire.
Mawkish and over-mellow becometh the fruit in their
hands: unsteady, and withered at the top, doth their look make
the fruit-tree.
[1031
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And many a one who hath turned away from life, hath or
turned away from the rabble: he hated to share with the
fountain, flame, and fruit.
And many a one who hath gone into the wilderness ai
suffered thirst with beasts of prey, disliked only to sit at tl
cistern with filthy camel-drivers.
And many a one who hath come along as a destroyer, ai
as a hailstorm to all cornfields, wanted merely to put his fo
into the jaws of the rabble, and thus stop their throat.
And it is not the mouthful which hath most choked me,
know that life itself requireth enmity and death and tortui
crosses:
But I asked once, and suffocated almost with my questio
What? Is the rabble also necessary for life?
Are poisoned fountains necessary, and stinking fires, ai
filthy dreams, and maggots in the bread of life?
Not my hatred, but my loathing, gnawed hungrily at my lif
Ah, of ttimes became I weary of spirit, when I found even ti
rabble spiritual!
And on the rulers turned I my back, when I saw what th
now call ruling: to traffic and bargain for power with tl
rabble!
Amongst peoples of a strange language did I dwell, wi
stopped ears: so that the language of their trafficking mig
remain strange unto me, and their bargaining for power.
And holding my nose, I went morosely through all yestc
days and todays: verily, badly smell all yesterdays and toda
of the scribbling rabble!
Like a cripple become deaf, and blind, and dumb th
have I lived long; that I might not live with the power-rabbi
the scribe-rabble, and the pleasure-rabble.
Toilsomely did my spirit mount stairs, and cautiously; air
1104]
THE RABBLE
of delight* were its refreshment; on the staff did life creep
along with the blind one.
What hath happened unto me? How have I freed myself
from loathing? Who hath rejuvenated mine eye? How have I
flown to the height where no rabble any longer sit at the
wells?
Did my loathing itself create for me wings and fountain-
divining powers? Verily, to the loftiest height had I to fly, to
find again the well of delight!
Oh, I have found it, my brethren! Here on the loftiest height
bubbleth up for me the well of delight! And there is a life at
whose waters none of the rabble drink with me!
Almost too violently dost thou flow for me, thou fountain
of delight! And often emptiest thou the goblet again, in want-
ing to fill it!
And yet must I learn to approach thee more modestly: far
too violently doth my heart still flow towards thee:
My heart on which my summer burneth, my short, hot,
melancholy, over-happy summer: how my summer heart
longeth for thy coolness!
Past, the lingering distress of my spring! Past, the wicked-
ness of my snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely,
and summer-noontide!
A summer on the loftiest height, with cold fountains and
blissful stillness: oh, come, my friends, that the stillness may
become more blissful!
For this is our height and our home: too high and steep do
we here dwell for all uncleanly ones and their thirst.
Cast but your pure eyes into the well of my delight, my
friends! How could it become turbid thereby! It shall laugh
back to you with its purity.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
On the tree of the future build we our nest; eagles shal
bring us lone ones food in their beaks!
Verily, no food of which the impure could be fellow-par
takers! Fire, would they think they devoured, and burn thei
mouths!
Verily, no abodes do we here keep ready for the impure! At
ice-cave to their bodies would our happiness be, and to thei
spirits!
And as strong winds will we live above them, neighbours t(
the eagles, neighbours to the snow, neighbours to the sun: thu,
live the strong winds.
And like a wind will I one day blow amongst them, and wit!
my spirit, take the breath from their spirit: thus willeth m]
future.
Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low places; anc
this counsel counselleth he to his enemies, and to whatevei
spittcth and speweth: "Take care not to spit against the
wind!"
Thus spake Zarathustra.
29. The Tarantulas
Lo, THIS is the tarantula's den! Would'st thou see the taran-
tula itself? Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it maj
tremble.
There cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula
Black on thy back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also
what is in thy soul.
[106]
THE TARANTULAS
Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth
black scab; with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy!
Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul
giddy, ye preachers of equality! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and
secretly revengeful ones!
But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: there-
fore do I laugh in your face my laughter of the height.
Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you
out of your den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth
from behind your word "justice."
Because, for man to be redeemed jrom revenge that is for
me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long
storms.
Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. "Let it
be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of
our vengeance" thus do they talk to one another.
"Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not
like us" thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.
"And 'Will to Equality' that itself shall henceforth be the
name of virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise
an outcry!"
Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence
crieth thus in you for "equality": your most secret tyrant-
longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words!
Fretted conceit and suppressed envy perhaps your fathers'
conceit and envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy
of vengeance.
What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft
have I found in the son the father's revealed secret.
Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that in-
spireth them but vengeance. And when they become subtle
and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that maketh them so.
[107]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers' paths; and
this is the sign of their jealousy they always go too far: so
that their fatigue hath at last to go to sleep on the snow.
In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their
eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom
the impulse to punish is powerful!
They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their coun-
tenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound.
Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in
their souls not only honey is lacking.
And when they call themselves "the good and just," forget
not, that for them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but
power!
My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with
others.
There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at
the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas.
That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their
den, these poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life is be-
cause they would thereby do injury.
To those would they thereby do injury who have power at
present: for with those the preaching of death is still most at
home.
Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach other-
wise: and they themselves were formerly the best world-
maligners and heretic-burners.
With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and
confounded. For thus speaketh justice unto me: "Men are not
equal."
And neither shall they become so! What would be my love
to the Superman, if I spake otherwise?
1*08]
THE TARANTULAS
On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the
future, and always shall there be more war and inequality
among them: thus doth my great love make me speak!
Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their
hostilities; and with those figures and phantoms shall they yet
fight with each other the supreme fight!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and
all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs,
that life must again and again surpass itself!
Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs life itself:
into remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful
beauties therefore doth it require elevation!
And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it re-
quire steps, and variance of steps and climbers! To rise striveth
life, and in rising to surpass itself.
And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula's den
is, riseth aloft an ancient temple's ruin.s just behold it with
enlightened eyes!
Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone,
knew as well as the wisest ones about the secret of life!
That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and
war for power and supremacy: that doth he here teach us in
the plainest parable.
How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle:
how with light and shade they strive against each other, the
divinely striving ones.
Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my
friends! Divinely will we strive against one another!
Alas! There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old
enemy! Divinely steadfast and beautiful, it hath bit me on
the finger!
"Punishment must there be, and justice" so thinketh it-
[109]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
"not gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honour of
enmity!"
Yea, it hath revenged itself! And alas! now will it make
my soul also dizzy with revenge!
That I may not turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my
friends, to this pillar! Rather will I be a pillar-saint than a
whirl of vengeance!
Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he
be a dancer, he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
30. The Famous Wise Ones
THE people have ye served and the people's superstition not
the truth! all ye famous wise ones! And just on that account
did they pay you reverence.
And on that account also did they tolerate your unbelief,
because it was a pleasantry and a by-path for the people. Thus
doth the master give free scope to his slaves, and even en-
joyeth their presumptuousness.
But he who is hated by the people, as the wolf by the dogs
is the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-adorer, the
dweller in the woods.
To hunt him out of his lair that was always called "sense
of right" by the people: on him do they still hound their
sharpest-toothed dogs.
"For there the truth is, where the people are! Woe, woe to
the seeking ones!" thus hath it echoed through all time.
THE FAMOUS WISE ONES
Your people would ye justify in their reverence: that called
ye "Will to Truth," ye famous wise ones!
And your heart hath always said to itself: "From the people
have I come: from thence came to me also the voice of God."
Stiff-necked and artful, like the ass, have ye always been, as
the advocates of the people.
And many a powerful one who wanted to run well with the
people, hath harnessed in front of his horses a donkey, a.
famous wise man.
And now, ye famous wise ones, I would have you fin.Jlv
throw off entirely the skin of the lion!
The skin of the beast of prey, the speckled skin, ::nJ it*.-
dishevelled locks of the investigator, the searcher, and the UM
queror!
Ah! for me to learn to believe in your "conscientiousness,"
ye would first have to break your venerating will.
Conscientious so call I him who goeth into God-forsaken
wildernesses, and hath broken his venerating heart.
In the yellow sands and burnt by the sun, he doubtless
peereth thirstily at the isles rich in fountains, where life re-
poseth under shady trees.
But his thirst doth not persuade him to become like those
comfortable ones: for where there are oases, there are also
idols.
Hungry, fierce, lonesome, God-forsaken: so doth the lion-
will wish itself.
Free from the happiness of slaves, redeemed from deities
and adorations, fearless and fear-inspiring, grand and lone-
some: so is the will of the conscientious.
In the wilderness have ever dwelt the conscientious, the
free spirits, as lords of the wilderness; but in the cities dwell
the well-foddered, famous wise ones the draught-beasts.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
For, always do they draw, as asses the people's carts!
Not that I on that account upbraid them: but serving ones
do they remain, and harnessed ones, even though they glitter
in golden harness.
And often have they been good servants and worthy of their
hire. For thus saith virtue: "If thou must be a servant, seek
him unto whom thy service is most useful!
The spirit and virtue of thy master shall advance by thou
being his servant: thus wilt thou thyself advance with his
spirit and virtue!"
And verily, ye famous wise ones, ye servants of the people!
Ye yourselves have advanced with the people's spirit and vir-
tue and the people by you! To your honour do I say it!
But the people ye remain for me, even with your virtues,
the people with purblind eyes the people who know not what
spirit is!
Spirit is life which itself cutteth into life: by its own torture
doth it increase its own knowledge, did ye know that before?
And the spirit's happiness is this: to be anointed and conse-
crated with tears as a sacrificial victim, did ye know that be-
fore?
And the blindness of the blind one, and his seeking and
groping, shall yet testify to the power of the sun into which
he hath gazed, did ye know that before?
And with mountains shall the discerning one learn to build!
It is a small thing for the spirit to remove mountains, did ye
know that before?
Ye know only the sparks of the spirit: but ye do not see the
anvil whidi it is, and the cruelty of its hammer!
Verily, ye know not the spirit's pride! But still less could
ye endure the spirit's humility, should it ever want to speak!
And never yet could ye cast your spirit into a pit of snow:
\_112]
THE NIGHT-SONG
ye are not hot enough for that! Thus are ye unaware, also, of
the delight of its coldness.
In all respects, however, ye make too familiar with the spirit;
and out of wisdom have yc often made an alms-house and a
hospital for bad poets'.
Ye arc not eagles : thus have ye never experienced the happi-
ness of the alarm of the spirit. And he who is not a bird should
not camp above abysses.
Yc seem to me lukewarm ones: but coldly floweth all deep
knowledge. Ice-cold are the innermost wells of the spirit: a
refreshment to hot hands and handlers.
Respectable do ye there stand, and stiff, and with straight
backs, ye famous wise ones! no strong wind or will im-
pelleth you.
Have ye ne'er seen a sail crossing the sea, rounded and in-
flated, and trembling with the violence of the wind?
Like the sail trembling with the violence of the spirit, doth
my wisdom cross the sea my wild wisdom!
But ye servants of the people, ye famous wise ones how
could ye go with me!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
31. The Night-Song
Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And
my soul also is a gushing fountain.
'Tis night: now only do all songs of the loving ones awake.
And my soul also is the song of a loving one.
Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me; it
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
longeth to find expression. A craving for love is within me,
which speaketh itself the language of love.
Light am I: ah, that I were night! But it is my lonesomeness
to be begirt with light!
Ah, that I were dark and nightly! How would I suck at the
breasts of light!
And you yourselves would I bless, ye twinkling starlets and
glow-worms aloft! and would rejoice in the gifts of your
light.
But I live in mine own light, I drink again into myself the
flames that break forth from me.
I know not the happiness of the receiver; and oft have I
dreamt that stealing must be more blessed than receiving.
It is my poverty that my hand never ceaseth bestowing; it is
mine envy that I see waiting eyes and the brightened nights of
longing.
Oh, the misery of all bestowers! Oh, the darkening of my
sun! Oh, the craving to crave! Oh, the violent hunger in satiety!
They take from me: but do I yet touch their soul? There is a
gap 'twixt giving and receiving; and the smallest gap hath
finally to be bridged over.
A hunger ariseth out of my beauty: I should like to injure
those I illumine; I should like to rob those I have gifted:
thus do I hunger for wickedness.
Withdrawing my hand when another hand already
stretcheth out to it; hesitating like the cascade, which hesi-
tateth even in its leap: thus do I hunger for wickedness!
Such revenge doth mine abundance think of: such mischief
welleth out of my lonesomeness.
My happiness in bestowing died in bestowing; my virtue
became weary of itself by its abundance!
He who ever bestoweth is in danger of losing his shame; to
THE NIGHT-SONG
him who ever dispenseth, the hand and heart become callous
by very dispensing.
Mine eye no longer overflowed! for the shame of suppliants;
my hand hath become too hard for the trembling of filled
hands.
Whence have gone the tears of mine eye, and the down of
my heart? Oh, the lonesomeness of all bestowers! Oh, the
silence of all shining ones!
Many suns circle in desert space: to all that is dark do they
speak with their light but to me they are silent.
Oh, this is the hostility of light to the shining one: un-
pityingly doth it pursue its course.
Unfair to the shining one in its innermost heart, cold to the
suns: thus travelleth every sun.
Like a storm do the suns pursue their courses: that is their
travelling. Their inexorable will do they follow: that is their
coldness.
Oh, ye only is it, ye dark, nightly ones, that extract warmth
from the shining ones! Oh, ye only drink milk and refreshment
from the light's udders!
Ah, there is ice around me; my hand burneth with the
iciness! Ah, there is thirst in me; it panteth after your Jthirst!
Tis night: alas, that I have to be light! And thirst for the
nightly! And lonesomeness!
'Tis night: now doth my longing break forth in me as a
fountain, for speech do I long.
'Tis night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder. And
my soul also is a gushing fountain.
'Tis night: now do all songs of loving ones awake. And
my soul also is the song of a loving one.
Thus sang Zarathustra.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
32. The Dance-Song
ONE evening went Zarathustra and his disciples through the
forest; and when he sought for a well, lo, he lighted upon a
green meadow peacefully surrounded by trees and bushes,
where maidens were dancing together. As soon as the maidens
recognised Zarathustra, they ceased dancing; Zarathustra, how-
ever, approached them with friendly mien and spake these
words:
Cease not your dancing, ye lovely maidens! No game-spoiler
hath come to you with evil eye, no enemy of maidens.
God's advocate am I with the devil: he, however, is the
spirit of gravity. How could I, ye light-footed ones, be hostile
to divine dances? Or to maidens' feet with fine ankles?
To be sure, I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he
who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses
under my cypresses.
And even the little God may he find, who is dearest to
maidens: beside the well lieth he quietly, with closed eyes.
Verily, in broad daylight did he fall asleep, the sluggard!
Had he perhaps chased butterflies too much?
Upbraid me not, ye beautiful dancers, when I chasten the
little God somewhat! He will cry, certainly, and weep but
he is laughable even when weeping!
And with tears in his eyes shall he ask you for a dance; and
I myself will sing a song to his dance:
A dance-song and satire on the spirit of gravity my su-
premest, powerfulest devil, who is said to be "lord of the
world."
[116]
THE DANCE-SONG
And this is the song that Zarathustra sang when Cupid and
the maidens danced together:
Of late did I gaze into thine eye, O Life! And into the un-
fathomable did I there seem to sink.
But thou pulledst me out with a golden angle; derisively
didst thou laugh when I called thee unfathomable.
"Such is the language of all fish," saidst thou; "what they
do not fathom is unfathomable.
But changeable am I only, and wild, and altogether a
woman, and no virtuous one:
Though I be called by you men the 'profound one/ or the
'faithful one,' 'the eternal one,' 'the mysterious one/
But ye men endow us always with your own virtues alas,
ye virtuous ones!"
Thus did she laugh, the unbelievable one; but never do I be-
lieve her and her laughter, when she speaketh evil of herself.
And when I talked face to face with my wild Wisdom, she
said to me angrily: "Thou wiliest, thou cravest, thou lovest;
on that account alone dost thou praise Life!"
Then had I almost answered indignantly and told the truth
to the angry one; and one cannot answer more indignantly
than when one "telleth the truth" to one's Wisdom.
For thus do things stand with us three. In my heart do I love
only Life and verily, most when I hate her!
But that I am fond of Wisdom, and often too fond, is be-
cause she remindeth me very strongly of Life!
She hath her eye, her laugh, and even her golden angle-rod:
am I responsible for it that both are so alike?
And when once Life asked me: "Who is she then, this Wis-
dom?' 1 then said I eagerly: "Ah, yes! Wisdom!
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
One thirstcth for her and is not satisfied, one looked
through veils, one graspeth through nets.
Is she beautiful? What do I know! But the oldest carps ar<
still lured by her.
Changeable is she, and wayward; often have I seen her bit<
her lip, and pass the comb against the grain of her hair.
Perhaps she is wicked and false, and altogether a woman
but when she speaketh ill of herself, just then doth she seduo
most.''
When I had said this unto Life, then laughed she mali
ciously, and shut her eyes. "Of whom dost thou speak?" sale
she. "Perhaps of me?
And if thou wert right is it proper to say that in such wise
to my face! But now, pray, speak also of thy Wisdom!" .
Ah, and now hast thou again opened thine eyes, O belovec
Life! And into the unfathomable have I again seemed tc
sink.
Thus sang Zarathustra. But when the dance was over and
the maidens had departed, he became sad.
"The sun hath been long set," said he at last, "the meadow
is damp, and from the forest cometh coolness.
An unknown presence is about me, and gazcth thoughtfully.
What! Thou livest still, Zarathustra?
Why? Wherefore? Whereby? Whither? Where? How? Is
it not folly still to live?
Ah, my friends; the evening is it which thus interrogated! in
me. Forgive me my sadness!
Evening hath come on: forgive me that evening hath come
on!"
Thus sang Zarathustra.
THE GRAVE-SONG
The Grave-Song
"YONDER is the grave-island, the silent isle; yonder also are
the graves of my youth. Thither will I carry an evergreen
wreath of life/'
Resolving thus in my heart, did I sail o'er the sea.
Oh, ye sights and scenes of my youth! Oh, all ye gleams of
love, ye divine fleeting gleams! How could ye perish so soon
for me! I think of you to-day as my dead ones.
From you, my dearest dead ones, cometh unto me a sweet
savour, heart-opening and melting. Verily, it convulseth and
openeth the heart of the lone seafarer.
Still am I the richest and most to be envied I, the lone-
somest one! For I have possessed you, and ye possess me still.
Tell me: to whom hath there ever fallen such rosy apples from
the tree as have fallen unto me?
Still am I your love's heir and heritage, blooming to your
memory with many-hued, wild-growing virtues, O ye dearest
ones!
Ah, we 'were made to remain nigh unto each other, ye
kindly strange marvels; and not like timid birds did ye come
to me and my longing nay, but as trusting ones to a trusting
one!
Yea, made for faithfulness, like me, and for fond eternities,
must I now name you by your faithlessness, ye divine glances
and fleeting gleams: no other name have I yet learnt.
Verily, too early did ye die for me, ye fugitives. Yet did ye
not flee from me, nor did I flee from you: innocent are we to
each other in our faithlessness.
To kill me, did they strangle you, ye singing birds of my
1119]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
hopes! Yea, at you, ye dearest ones, did malice ever shoot its
arrows to hit my heart!
And they hit it! Because ye were always my dearest, my
possession and my possessedness: on that account had ye to die
young, and far too early!
At my most vulnerable point did they shoot the arrow
namely, at you, whose skin is like down or more like the
smile that dieth at a glance!
But this word will I say unto mine enemies: What is all man-
slaughter in comparison with what ye have done unto me!
Worse evil did ye do unto me than all manslaughter; the
irretrievable did ye take from me: thus do I speak unto you,
mine enemies!
Slew ye not my youth's visions and dearest marvels! My
playmates took ye from me, the blessed spirits! To their
memory do I deposit this wreath and this curse.
This curse upon you, mine enemies! Have ye not made mine
eternal short, as a tone dieth away in a cold night! Scarcely, as
the twinkle of divine eyes, did it come to me as a fleeting
gleam!
Thus spake once in a happy hour my purity: "Divine shall
everything be unto me."
Then did ye haunt me with foul phantoms; ah, whither
hath that happy hour now fled!
"All days shall be holy unto me" so spake once the wis-
dom of my youth: verily, the language of a joyous wisdom!
But then did ye enemies steal my nights, and sold them to
sleepless torture: ah, whither hath that joyous wisdom now
fled?
Once did I long for happy auspices: then did ye lead an owl-
monster across my path, an adverse sign. Ah, whither did my
tender longing then flee?
[ 120 ]
THE GRAVE-SONG
All loathing did I once vow to renounce: then did ye change
my nigh ones and nearest ones into ulcerations. Ah, whither
did my noblest vow then flee?
As a blind one did I once walk in blessed ways: then did ye
cast filth on the blind one's course: and now is he disgusted
with the old footpath.
And when I performed my hardest task, and celebrated the
triumph of my victories, then did ye make those who loved me
call out that I then grieved them most.
Verily, it was always your doing: ye embittered to me my
best honey, and the diligence of my i>est bees.
To my charity have ye ever sent the most impudent beggars;
around my sympathy have yc ever crowded the incurably
shameless. Thus have ye wounded the faith of my virtue.
And when I offered my holiest as a sacrifice, immediately
did your "piety" put its fatter gifts beside it: so that my holiest
suffocated in the fumes of your fat.
And once did I want to dance as I had never yet danced: be-
yond all heavens did I want to dance. Then did ye seduce my
favourite minstrel.
And now hath he struck up an awful, melancholy air; alas,
he tooted as a mournful horn to mine ear!
Murderous minstrel, instrument of evil, most innocent in-
strument! Already did I stand prepared for the best dance: then
didst thou slay my rapture with thy tones!
Only in the dance do I know how to speak the parable of
the highest things: and now hath my grandest parable re-
mained unspoken in my limbs!
Unspoken and unrealised hath my highest hope remained!
And there have perished for me all the visions and consolations
of my youth!
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
How did I ever bear it? How did I survive and surmount
such wounds? How did my soul rise again out of those sepul-
chres?
Yea, something invulnerable, unburiable is with me, some-
thing that would rend rocks asunder: it is called my Will.
Silently doth it proceed, and unchanged throughout the years.
Its course will it go upon my feet, mine old Will; hard of
heart is its nature and invulnerable.
Invulnerable am I only in my heel. Ever livest thou there,
and art like thyself, thou most patient one! Ever hast thou
burst all shackles of the tomb!
In thee still liveth also the unrealisedness of my youth; and
as life and youth sittest thou here hopeful on the yellow ruins
of graves.
Yea, thou art still for me the demolisher of all graves: Hail
to thee, my Will! And only where there are graves are there
resurrections.
Thus sang Zarathustra.
34. Self-Surpassing
"WiLL to Truth" do ye call it, ye wisest ones, that which im-
pelleth you and maketh you ardent?
Will for the thinkableness of all being: thus do / call your
will!
All being would ye make thinkable: for ye doubt with good
reason whether it be already thinkable.
But it shall accommodate and bend itself to you! So willeth
SELF-SURPASSING
your will. Smooth shall it become and subject to the spirit, as
its mirror and reflection.
That is your entire will, ye wisest ones, as a Will to Power;
and even when ye speak of good and evil, and of estimates of
value.
Ye would still create a world before which ye can bow the
knee: such is your ultimate hope and ecstasy.
The ignorant, to be sure, the people they are like a river
on which a boat floatcth along: and in the boat sit the estimates
of value, solemn and disguised.
Your will and your valuations have ye put on the river of
becoming; it betrayeth unto me an old Will to Power, what is
believed by the people as good and evil.
It was ye, ye wisest ones, who put such guests in this boat,
and gave them pomp and proud names ye and your ruling
Will!
Onward the river now carrieth your boat: it must carry it. A
small matter if the rough wave foameth and angrily resisteth
its keel!
It is not the river that is your danger and the end of your
good and evil, yc wisest ones: but that Will itself, the Will to
Power the unexhausted, procreating life-will.
But that ye may understand my gospel of good and evil, for
that purpose will I tell you my gospel of life, and of the nature
of all living things.
The living thing did I follow; I walked in the broadest and
narrowest paths to learn its nature.
With a hundred-faced mirror did I catch its glance when its
mouth was shut, so that its eye might speak unto me. And its
eye spake unto me.
But wherever I found living things, there heard I also the
language of obedience. All living things are obeying things.
[ 123 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And this heard I secondly: Whatever cannot obey itself, is
commanded. Such is the nature of living things.
This, however, is the third thing which I heard namely,
that commanding is more difficult than obeying. And not only
because the commander beareth the burden of all obeyers, and
because this burden readily crusheth him:
An attempt and a risk seemed all commanding unto me; and
whenever it commandeth, the living thing risketh itself there-
by.
Yea, even when it commandeth itself, then also must it
atone for its commanding. Of its own law must it become the
judge and avenger and victim.
How doth this happen! So did I ask myself. What persuadeth
the living thing to obey, and command, and even be obedient in
commanding?
Hearken now unto my word, ye wisest ones! Test it seri-
ously, whether I have crept into the heart of life itself, and into
the roots of its heart!
Wherever I found a living thing, there found I Will to
Power; and even in the will of the servant found I the will to
be master.
That to the stronger the weaker shall serve thereto per-
suadeth he his will who would be master over a still weaker
one. That delight alone he is unwilling to forego.
And as the lesser surrendered! himself to the greater that
he may have delight and power over the least of all, so doth
even the greatest surrender himself, and staketh life, for the
sake of power.
It is the surrender of the greatest to run risk and danger,
and play dice for death.
And where there is sacrifice and service and love-glances,
there also is the will to be master. By by-ways doth the weaker
SEL F-SU RP ASSING
then slink into the fortress, and into the heart of the mightier
one and there stealeth power.
And this secret spake Life herself unto me. "Behold," said
she, "I am that which must ever surpass itself.
To be sure, ye call it will to procreation, or impulse towards
a goal, towards the higher, remoter, more manifold: but all
that is one and the same secret.
Rather would I succumb than disown this one thing; and
verily, where there is succumbing and leaf -falling, lo, there
doth Life sacrifice itself for power!
That I have to be struggle, and becoming, and purpose, and
cross-purpose ah, he who divineth my will, divineth well also
on what crooked paths it hath to tread!
Whatever I create, and however much I love it, soon must
I be adverse to it, and to my love: so willeth my will.
And even thou, discerning one, art only a path and foot-
step of my will: verily, my Will to Power walketh even on the
feet of thy Will to Truth!
He certainly did not hit the truth who shot at it the
formula: "Will to existence": that will doth not exist!
For what is not, cannot will; that, however, which is in
existence how could it still strive for existence!
Only where there is life, is there also will: not, however,
Will to Life, but so teach I thec Will to Power!
Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the living one;
but out of the very reckoning speaketh the Will to
Power!"
Thus did Life once teach me: and thereby, ye wisest ones,
do I solve you the riddle of your hearts.
Verily, I say unto you: good and evil which would be ever-
lasting it doth not exist! Of its own accord must it evei
surpass itself anew.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
With your values and formulae of good and evil, ye exercise
power, ye valuing ones: and that is your secret love, and the
sparkling, trembling, and overflowing of your souls.
But a stronger power groweth out of your values, and a new
surpassing: by it breaketh egg and egg-shell.
And he who hath to be a creator in good and evil verily,
he hath first to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces.
Thus doth the greatest evil pertain to the greatest good:
that, however, is the creating good.
Let us speak thereof, ye wisest ones, even though it be bad.
To be silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous.
And let everything break up which can break up by our
truths! Many a house is still to be built!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
. The Sublime Ones
CALM is the bottom of my sea: who would guess that it hideth
droll monsters!
Unmoved is my depth: but it sparklcth with swimming
enigmas and laughters.
A sublime one saw I today, a solemn one, a penitent of the
spirit: Oh, how my soul laughed at his ugliness!
With upraised breast, and like those who draw in their
breath: thus did he stand, the sublime one, and in silence:
O'erhung with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting, and
rich in torn raiment; many thorns also hung on him but I
saw no rose.
[ 126 ]
THE SUBLIME ONES
Not yet had he learned laughing and beauty. Gloomy did
this hunter return from the forest of knowledge.
From the fight with wild beasts returned he home: but even
yet a wild beast gazeth out of his seriousness an unconquered
wild beast!
As a tiger doth he ever stand, on the point of springing; but
I do not like those strained souls; ungracious is my taste to-
wards all those self -engrossed ones.
And ye tell me, friends, that there is to be no dispute about
taste and tasting? But all life is a dispute about taste and
tasting!
Taste: that is weight at the same time, and scales and
weigher; and alas for every living thing that would live with-
out dispute about weight and scales and weigher!
Should he become weary of his sublimeness, this sublime
one, then only will his beauty begin and then only will I taste
him and find him savoury.
And only when he turneth away from himself will he
o'erleap his own shadow and verily! into his sun.
Far too long did he sit in the shade; the cheeks of the peni-
tent of the spirit became pale; he almost starved on his expec-
tations.
Contempt is still in his eye, and loathing hideth in his
mouth. To be sure, he now resteth, but he hath not yet taken
rest in the sunshine.
As the ox ought he to do; and his happiness should smell of
the earth, and not of contempt for the earth.
As a white ox would I like to see him, which, snorting and
lowing, walketh before the plough-share: and his lowing
should ajso laud all that is earthly!
Dark is still his countenance; the shadow of his hand danceth
upon it. Overshadowed is still the sense of his eye.
[ 127 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
His deed itself is still the shadow upon him: his doing
obscureth the doer. Not yet hath he overcome his deed.
To be sure, 1 love in him the shoulders of the ox: but now
do I want to see also the eye of the angel.
Also his hero-will hath he still to unlearn: an exalted one
shall he be, and not only a sublime one: the ether itself
should raise him, the will-less one!
He hath subdued monsters, he hath solved enigmas. But
he should also redeem his monsters and enigmas; into heavenly
children should he transform them.
As yet hath his knowledge not learned to smile, and to be
without jealousy; as yet hath his gushing passion not become
calm in beauty.
Verily, not in satiety shall his longing cease and disappear,
but in beauty! Gracefulness belongeth to the munificence of
the magnanimous.
His arm across his head: thus should the hero repose; thus
should he also surmount his repose.
But precisely to the hero is beauty the hardest thing of all.
Unattainable is beauty by all ardent wills.
A little more, a little less: precisely this is much here, it is
the most here.
To stand with relaxed muscles and with unharnessed will:
that is the hardest for all of you, ye sublime ones!
When powe| becometh gracious and descendeth into the
visible I call such condescension, beauty.
And from no one do I want beauty so much as from thee,
thou powerful one: let thy goodness be thy last self -conquest.
All evil do I accredit to thee: therefore do I desire of thee the
good.
Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings, who think
themselves good because they have crippled paws!
[ 128 ]
THE LAND OF CULTURE
The virtue of the pillar shalt thou strive after: more beauti-
ful doth it ever become, and more graceful but internally
harder and more sustaining the higher it riseth.
Yea, thou sublime one, one day shalt thou also be beautiful,
and hold up the mirror to thine own beauty.
Then will thy soul thrill with divine desires; and there will
be adoration even in thy vanity!
For this is the secret of the soul: when the hero hath aban-
doned it, then only approacheth it in dreams the super-
hero.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
36. The Land of Culture
Too far did I fly into the future: a horror seized upon me.
And when I looked around me, lo! there time was my sole
contemporary.
Then did I fly backwards, homewards and^always faster.
Thus did I come unto you: ye present-day men, and into the
land of culture.
For the first time brought I an eye to see you, and good de-
sire: verily, with longing in my heart did I come.
But how did it turn out with me? Although so alarmed I
had yet to laugh! Never did mine eye see anything so motley-
coloured!
I laughed and laughed, while my foot still trembled, and
my heart as well. "Here forsooth, is the home of all the paint-
pots," said I.
[ 129 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
With fifty patches painted on faces and limbs so sat ye
there to mine astonishment, ye present-day men!
And with fifty mirrors around you, which flattered your play
of colours, and repeated it!
Verily, ye could wear no better masks, ye present-day men,
than your own faces! Who could recognise you!
Written all over with the characters of the past, and these
characters also pencilled over with new characters thus have
ye concealed yourselves well from all decipherers!
And though one be a trier of the reins, who still believeth
that ye have reins! Out of colours ye seem to be baked, and out
of gl'ied scraps.
All times and peoples gaze divers-coloured out of your veils;
all customs and beliefs speak divers-coloured out of your ges-
tures.
He who would strip you of veils and wrappers, and paints
and gestures, would just have enough left to scare the crows.
Verily, I myself am the scared crow that once saw you naked,
and without paint; and I flew away when the skeleton ogled at
me.
Rather would I be a day-labourer in the nether-world, and
among the shades of the by-gone! Fatter and fuller than ye,
are forsooth the nether- worldlings!
This, yea this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither
endure you naked nor clothed, ye present-day men!
All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever maketh
strayed birds shiver, is verily more homelike and familiar than
your "reality."
For thus speak ye: "Real are we wholly, and without faith
and superstition": thus do ye plume yourselves alas! even
without plumes!
Indeed, how would ye be able to believe, ye divers-coloured
[ 130 ]
THE LAND OF CULTURE
ones! ye who are pictures of all that hath ever been believed!
Perambulating refutations are ye, of belief itself, and a dis-
location of all thought. Untrustworthy ones: thus do / call you,
ye real ones!
All periods prate against one another in your spirits; and
the dreams and pratings of all periods were even realer than
your awakeness!
Unfruitful are yc: therefore do ye lack belief. But he who
had to create, had always his presaging dreams and astral
premonitions and believed in believing!
Half-open doors are ye, at which grave-diggers wait. And
this is your reality: "Everything deserveth to perish/'
Alas, how ye stand there before me, ye unfruitful ones; how
lean your ribs! And many of you surely have had knowledge
thereof.
Many a one hath said: "There hath surely a God filched
something from me secretly whilst I slept? Verily, enough to
make a girl for himself therefrom!
"Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!" thus hath spoken many
a present-day man.
Yea, ye are laughable unto me, ye present-day men! And
especially when ye marvel at yourselves!
And woe unto me if I could not laugh at your marvelling,
and had to swallow all that is repugnant in your platters!
As it is, however, I will make lighter of you, since I have to
carry what is heavy; and what matter if beetles and May-bugs
also alight on my load!
Verily, it shall not on that account become heavier to me!
And not from you, ye present-day men, shall my great weari-
ness arise. *
Ah, whither shall I now ascend with my longing! From all
mountains do I look out for fatherlands and motherlands.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
But a home have I found nowhere: unsettled am I in all
dties, and decamping at all gates.
Alien to me, and a mockery, are the present-day men, to
whom of late my heart impelled me; and exiled am I from
fatherlands and motherlands.
Thus do I love only my children's land, the undiscovered in
the remotest sea: for it do I bid my sails search and search.
Unto my children will I make amends for being the child of
my fathers: and unto all the future for this present-day!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
. Immaculate Perception
WHEN yester-eve the moon arose, then did I fancy it about to
bear a sun: so broad and teeming did it lie on the horizon.
But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and sooner will I believe
in the man in the moon than in the woman.
To be sure, little of a man is he also, that timid night-
reveller. Verily, with a bad conscience doth he stalk over the
roofs.
For he is covetous and jealous, the monk in the moon;
covetous of the earth, and all the joys of lovers.
Nay, I like him not, that tom-cat on the roofs! Hateful unto
me are all that slink around half -closed windows!
Piously and silently doth he stalk along on the star-carpets:
but I like no light-treading human feet," on which not even
a spur jingleth.
Every honest one's step speaketh; the cat however, stealeth
[ 132 ]
IMMACULATE PERCEPTION
along over the ground. Lo! cat-like doth the moon come along,
and dishonestly.
This parable speak I unto you sentimental dissemblers, unto
you, the "pure discerners!" You do / call covetous ones!
Also ye love the earth, and the earthly: I have divined you
well! but shame is in your love, and a bad conscience ye are
like the moon!
To despise the earthly hath your spirit been persuaded, but
not your bowels: these, however, are the strongest in you!
And now is your spirit ashamed to be at the service of your
bowels, and goeth in by-ways and lying ways to escape its own
shame.
"That would be the highest thing for me" so saith your
lying spirit unto itself "to gaze upon life without desire, and
not like the dog, with hanging-out tongue:
To be happy in gazing: with dead will, free from the grip
and greed of selfishness cold and ashy-grey all over, but with
intoxicated moon-eyes!
That would be the dearest thing to me" thus doth the se-
duced one seduce himself, "to love the earth as the moon
loveth it, and with the eye only to feel its beauty.
And this do I call immaculate perception of all things: to
want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before
them as a mirror with a hundred facets."
Oh, ye sentimental dissemblers, ye covetous ones! Ye lack
innocence in your desire: and now do ye defame desiring on
that account!
Verily, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do ye
love the earth!
Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation.
And he who seeketh to create beyond himself, hath for me the
purest will.
[ 133 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Where is beauty? Where I must will with my whole Will;
where I will love and perish, that an image may not remain
merely an image.
Loving and perishing: these have rhymed from eternity.
Will to love: that is to be ready also for death. Thus do I speak
unto you cowards!
But now doth your emasculated ogling profess to be "con-
templation!" And that which can be examined with cowardly
eyes is to be christened "beautiful!" Oh, ye violators of noble
names!
But it shall be your curse, ye immaculate ones, ye pure dis-
cerners, that ye shall never bring forth, even though ye lie
broad and teeming on the horizon!
Verily, ye fill your mouth with noble words: and we are to
believe that your heart overfloweth, ye cozeners?
But my words are poor, contemptible, stammering words:
gladly do I pick up what f alleth from the table at your repasts.
Yet still can I say therewith the truth to dissemblers! Yea,
my fish-bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall tickle the noses
of dissemblers!
Bad air is always about you and your repasts: your lascivious
thoughts, your lies, and secrets are indeed in the air!
Dare only to believe in yourselves in yourselves and in
your inward parts! He who doth not believe in himself always
lieth.
A God's mask have ye hung in front of you, ye "pure ones" :
into a God's mask hath your execrable coiling snake crawled.
Verily ye deceive, ye "contemplative ones!" Even Zarathus-
tra was once the dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not
divine the serpent's coil with which it was stuffed.
A God's soul, I once thought I saw playing in your games,
1134]
SCHOLARS
ye pure discerners! No better arts did I once dream of than your
arts!
Serpents' filth and evil odour, the distance concealed from
me: and that a lizard's craft prowled thereabouts lasciviously.
But I came nig h unto you: then came to me the day, and
now cometh it to you, at an end is the moon's love affair!
See there! Surprised and pale doth it stand before the
rosy dawn!
For already she cometh, the glowing one, her love to the
earth cometh! Innocence, and creative desire, is all solar love!
See there, how she cometh impatiently over the sea! Do ye
not feel the thirst and the hot breath of her love?
At the sea would she suck, and drink its depths to her height:
now riseth the desire of the sea with its thousand breasts.
Kissed and sucked would it be by the thirst of the sun;
vapour would it become, and height, and path of light, and
light itself!
Verily, like the sun do I love life, and all deep seas.
And this meaneth to me knowledge: all that is deep shall
ascend to my height!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
38. Scholars
WHEN I lay asleep, then did a sheep eat at the ivy-wreath on
my head, it ate, and said thereby: "Zarathustra is no longer a
scholar."
It said this, and went away clumsily and proudly. A child
told it to me.
[135]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined
wall, among thistles and red poppies.
A scholar am I still to the children, and also to the thistles
and red poppies. Innocent are they, even in their wickedness.
But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar: so willeth my lot
blessings upon it!
For this is the truth: I have departed from the house of
the scholars, and the door have I also slammed behind me.
Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table: not like them
have I got the knack of investigating, as the knack of nut-
cracking.
Freedom do I love, and the air over fresh soil; rather would
I sleep on ox-skins than on their honours and dignities.
I am too hot and scorched with mine own thought: often is
it ready to take away my breath. Then have I to go into the
open air, and away from all dusty rooms.
But they sit cool in the cool shade: they want in everything
to be merely spectators, and they avoid sitting where the sun
burneth on the steps.
Like those who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by:
thus do they also wait, and gape at the thoughts which others
have thought.
Should one lay hold of them, then do they raise a dust like
flour-sacks, and involuntarily: but who would divine that their
dust came from corn, and from the yellow delight of the sum-
mer fields?
When they give themselves out as wise, then do their petty
sayings and truths chill me: in their wisdom there is often an
odour as if it came from the swamp; and verily, I have even
heard the frog croak in it!
Clever are they they have dexterous fingers: what doth my
I 136}
SCHOLARS
simplicity pretend to beside their multiplicity! All threading
and knitting and weaving do their fingers understand: thus do
they make the hose of the spirit!
Good clockworks are they: only be careful to wind them up
properly! Then do they indicate the hour without mistake, and
make a modest noise thereby.
Like millstones do they work, and like pestles: throw only
seed-corn unto them! they know well how to grind corn
small, and make white dust out of it.
They keep a sharp eye on one another, and do not trust each
other the best. Ingenious in little artifices, they wait for those
whose knowledge walketh on lame feet, like spiders do they
wait.
I saw them always prepare their poison with precaution;
and always did they put glass gloves on thdr fingers in doing
so.
They also know how to play with false dice; and so eagerly
did I find them playing, that they perspired thereby.
We are alien to each other, and their virtues are even more
repugnant to my taste than their falsehoods and false dice.
And when I lived with them, then did I live above them.
Therefore did they take a dislike to me.
They want to hear nothing of any one walking above their
heads; and so they put wood and earth and rubbish betwixt me
and their heads.
Thus did they deafen the sound of my tread; and least have
I hitherto been heard by the most learned.
All mankind's faults and weaknesses did they put betwixt
themselves and me: they call it "false ceiling" in their
houses.
But nevertheless I walk with my thoughts above their heads;
[ 137 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
and even should I walk on mine own errors, still would I be
above them and their heads.
For men are not equal: so spcaketh justice. And what I will,
they may not will!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
39. Poets
"SINCE I have known the body better" said Zarathustra to
one of his disciples "the spirit hath only been to me sym-
bolically spirit; and all the 'imperishable' that is also but a
simile."
"So have I heard thce say once before," answered the dis-
ciple, "and then thou addedst: 'But the poets lie too much/
Why didst thou say that the poets lie too much?"
"Why?" said Zarathustra. "Thou askest why? I do not
belong to those who may be asked after their Why.
Is my experience but of yesterday? It is long ago that I ex-
perienced the reasons for mine opinions.
Should I not have to be a cask of memory, if I also wanted to
have my reasons with me?
It is already too much for me even to retain mine opinions;
and many a bird flieth away.
And sometimes, also, do I find a fugitive creature in my
dovecote, which is alien to me, and trembleth when I lay my
hand upon it.
But what did Zarathustra once say unto thee? That the poets
lie too much? But Zarathustra also is a poet.
[ 138 ]
POETS
Believcst thou that he there spake the truth? Why dost thou
believe it?"
The disciple answered: "I believe in Zarathustra." But
Zarathustra shook his head and smiled.
Belief doth not sanctify me, said he, least of all the belief
in myself.
But granting that some one did say in all seriousness that the
poets lie too much : he was right ive do lie too much.
We also know too little, and are bad learners: so we are
obliged to lie.
And which of us poets hath not adulterated his wine? Many
a poisonous hotchpotch hath evolved in our cellars: many an
indescribable thing hath there been done.
And because we know little, therefore are we pleased from
the heart with the poor in spirit, especially when they are
young women!
And even of those things are we desirous, which old women
tell one another in the evening. This do we call the eternally
feminine in us.
And as if there were a special secret access to knowledge,
which choketh up for those who learn anything, so 4 we
believe in the people and in their "wisdom."
This, however, do all poets believe: that whoever pricketh
up his ears when lying in the grass or on lonely slopes, learneth
something of the things that are betwixt heaven and earth.
And if there come unto them tender emotions, then do the
poets always think that nature herself is in love with them:
And that she stealeth to their ear to whisper secrets into it,
and amorous flatteries: of this do they plume and pride them-
selves, before all mortals!
Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of
which only the poets have dreamed!
F 139 1
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And especially above the heavens: for all gods are poet-
symbolisations, poet-sophistications!
Verily, ever are we drawn aloft that is, to the realm of the
clouds: on these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then call
them gods ajid Supermen:
Are not they light enough for those chairs! all these gods
and Supermen?
Ah, how I am weary of all the inadequate that is insisted on
as actual! Ah, how I am weary of the poets!
When Zarathustra so spake, his disciple resented it, but
was silent. And Zarathustra also was silent; and his eye
directed itself inwardly, as if it gazed into the far distance. At
last he sighed and drew breath.
I am of today and heretofore, said he thereupon; but some-
thing is in me that is of the morrow, and the day following,
and the hereafter.
I became weary of the poets, of the old and of the new:
superficial are they all unto me, and shallow seas.
They did not think sufficiently into the depth; therefore their
feeling did not reach to the bottom.
Some sensation of voluptuousness and some sensation of
tedium: these have as yet been their best contemplation.
Ghost-breathing and ghost-whisking, seemcth to me all the
jingle- jangling of their harps; what have they known hitherto
of the fervour of tones !
They are also not pure enough for me: they all muddle their
water that it may seem deep.
And fain would they thereby prove themselves reconcilers:
but mediaries and mixers are they unto me, and half-and-half,
and impure!
Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch
[140]
POETS
good fish; but always did I draw up the head of some ancient
God.
Thus did the sea give a stone to the hungry one. And they
themselves may well originate from the sea,
Certainly, one findeth pearls in them: thereby they are the
more like hard molluscs. And instead of a soul, I have often
found in them salt slime.
They have learned from the sea also its vanity: is not the
sea the peacock of peacocks?
Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes doth it spread out
its tail; never doth it tire of its lace-fan of silver and silk.
Disdainfully doth the buffalo glance thereat, nigh to the
sand with its soul, nigher still to the thicket, nighest, however,
to the swamp.
What is beauty and sea and peacock-splendour to it! This
parable I speak unto the poets.
Verily, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks, and a
sea of vanity!
Spectators seeketh the spirit of the poet should they even
be buffaloes!
But of this spirit became I weary; and I see the time coming
when it will become weary of itself.
Yea, changed have I seen the poets, and their glance turned
towards themselves.
Penitents of the spirit have I seen appearing; they grew out
of the poets.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
40. Great Events
THERE is an isle in the sea not far from the Happy Isles of
Zarathustra on which a volcano ever smoketh; of which isle
the people, and especially the old women amongst them, say
that it is placed as a rock before the gate of the nether-world;
but that through the volcano itself the narrow way leadeth
downwards which conducteth to this gate.
Now about the time that Zarathustra sojourned on the
Happy Isles, it happened that a ship anchored at the isle on
which standeth the smoking mountain, and the crew went
ashore to shoot rabbits. About the noontide hour, however,
when the captain and his men were together again, they saw
suddenly a man coming towards them through the air, and a
voice said distinctly: "It is time! It is the highest time!" But
when the figure was nearest to them ( it flew past quickly, how-
ever, like a shadow, in the direction of the volcano) , then did
they recognise with the greatest surprise that it was Zarathus-
tra; for they had all seen him before except the captain himself,
and they loved him as the people love: in such wise that love
and awe were combined in equal degree.
"Behold!" said the old helmsman, "there goeth Zarathustra
to hell!"
About the same time that these sailors landed on the fire-
isle, there was a rumour that Zarathustra had disappeared; and
when his friends were asked about it, they said that he had
gone on board a ship by night, without saying whither he was
going.
Thus there arose some uneasiness. After three days, how-
ever, there came the story of the ship's crew in addition to this
GREAT EVENTS
uneasiness and then did all the people say that the devil had
taken Zarathustra. His disciples laughed, sure enough, at this
talk; and one of them said even: "Sooner would I believe that
Zarathustra hath taken the devil." But at the bottom of their
hearts they were all full of anxiety and longing: so their joy
was great when on the fifth day Zarathustra appeared amongst
them.
And this is the account of Zarathustra's interview with the
fire-dog:
The earth, said he, hath a skin; and this skin hath diseases.
One of these diseases, for example, is called "man."
And another of these diseases is called "the fire-dog": con-
cerning him men have greatly deceived themselves, and let
themselves be deceived.
To fathom this mystery did I go o'er the sea; and I have
seen the truth naked, verily! barefooted up to the neck.
Now do I know how it is concerning the fire-dog; and
likewise concerning all the spouting and subversive devils, of
which not only old women are afraid.
"Up with thee, fire-dog, out of thy depth!" cried I, "and
confess how deep that depth is! Whence cometh that which
thou snortest up?
Thou drinkest copiously at the sea: that doth thine embit*
tered eloquence betray! In sooth, for a dog of the depth, thou
takest thy nourishment too much from the surface!
At the most, I regard thee as the ventriloquist of the earth:
and ever, when I have heard subversive and spouting devils
speak, I have found them like thee: embittered, mendacious,
and shallow.
Ye understand how to roar and obscure with ashes! Ye are
the best braggarts, and have sufficiently learned the art of
making dregs boil.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTAA
Where ye are, there must always be dregs at hand, and much
that is spongy, hollow, and compressed: it wanteth to have
freedom.
'Freedom' ye all roar most eagerly: but I have unlearned the
belief in 'great events,' when there is much roaring and smoke
about them.
And believe me, friend Hullabaloo! The greatest events
are not our noisiest, but our stillest hours.
Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the in-
ventors of new values, doth the world revolve; maud My it
revolveth.
And just own to it! Little had ever taken place when thy
noise and smoke passed away. What, if a city did become a
mummy, and a statue lay in the mud!
And this do I say also to the o'erthrowers of statues: It is
certainly the greatest folly to throw salt into the sea, and statues
into the mud.
In the mud of your contempt lay the statue: but it is just its
law, that out of contempt, its life and living beauty grow again!
With diviner features doth it now arise, seducing by its
Buffering; and verily! it will yet thank you for o'erthrowing it,
ye subverters!
This counsel, however, do I counsel to kings and churches,
and to all that is weak with age or virtue let yourselves be
o'erthrown! That yc may again come to life, and that virtue
may come to you! "
Thus spake I before the fire-dog: then did he interrupt me
sullenly, and asked: "Church? What is that?"
"Church?" answered I, "that is a kind of state, and indeed
the most mendacious. But remain quiet, thou dissembling dog!
Thou surely knowest thine own species best!
Like thyself the state is a dissembling dog; like thee doth
GREAT EVENTS
it like to speak with smoke and roaring to make believe, like
thee, that it speaketh out of the heart of things.
For it seeketh by all means to be the most important crea-
ture on earth, the state; and people think it so/'
When I had said this, the fire-dog acted as if mad with envy.
"What!" cried he, "the most important creature on earth? And
people think it so?" And so much vapour and terrible voices
came out of his throat, that I thought he would choke with
vexation and envy.
At last he became calmer and his panting subsided; as soon,
however, as he was quiet, I said laughingly:
"Thou art angry, fire-dog: so I am in the right about thee!
And that I may also maintain the right, hear the story of
another fire-dog; he speaketh actually out of the heart of the
earth.
Gold doth his breath exhale, and golden rain: so doth his
heart desire. What are ashes and smoke and hot dregs to him!
Laughter flitteth from him like a variegated cloud; adverse is
he to thy gargling and spewing and grips in the bowels!
The gold, however, and the laughter these doth he take
out of the heart of the earth: for, that thou mayst know it,
the heart of the earth is of gold"
When the fire-dog heard this, he could no longer endure to
listen to me. Abashed did he draw in his tail, said "bow-wow!"
in a cowed voice, and crept down into his cave.
Thus told Zarathustra. His disciples, however, hardly
listened to him: so great was their eagerness to tell him about
the sailors, the rabbits, and the flying man.
"What am I to think of it!" said Zarathustra. "Am I indeed
a ghost?
But it may have been my shadow. Ye have surely heard some-
thing of the Wanderer and his Shadow?
[145]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
One thing, however, is certain: I must keep a tighter hold
of it; otherwise it will spoil my reputation."
And once more Zarathustra shook his head and wondered.
"What am I to think of it!" said he once more.
"Why did the ghost cry: 'It is time! It is the highest time!'
For what is it then the highest time?"
Thus spake Zarathustra.
41. The Soothsayer
" AND I saw a great sadness come over mankind. The best
turned weary of their works.
A doctrine appeared, a faith ran beside it: 'All is empty, all
is alike, all hath been!'
And from all hills there re-echoed: 'All is empty, all is
alike, all hath been!'
To be sure we have harvested: but why have all our fruits
become rotten and brown? What was it fell last night from
the evil moon?
In vain was all our labour, poison hath our wine become, the
evil eye hath singed yellow our fields and hearts.
Arid have we all become; and fire falling upon us, then do
we turn dust like ashes: yea, the fire itself have we made
aweary.
All our fountains have dried up, even the sea hath receded.
All the ground trieth to gape, but the depth will not swallow!
'Alas! where is there still a sea in which one could be
drowned?' so soundeth our plaint across shallow swamps.
[146]
THE SOOTHS A YE R
Verily, even for dying have we become too weary; now do
we keep awake and live on in sepulchres."
Thus did Zarathustra hear a soothsayer speak; and the fore-
boding touched his heart and transformed him. Sorrowfully
did he go about and wearily; and he became like unto those of
whom the soothsayer had spoken.
Verily, said he unto his disciples, a little while, and there
cometh the long twilight. Alas, how shall I preserve my light
through it!
That it may not smother in this sorrowfulness! To remoter
worlds shall it be a light, and also to remotest nights!
Thus did Zarathustra go about grieved in his heart, and for
three days he did not take any meat or drink: he had no rest,
and lost his speech. At last it came to pass that he fell into a
deep sleep. His disciples, however, sat around him in long
night-watches, and waited anxiously to see if he would awake,
and speak again, and recover from his affliction.
And this is the discourse that Zarathustra spake when he
av/oke; his voice, however, came unto his disciples as from
afar:
Hear, I pray you, the dream that I dreamed, my friends, and
help me to divine its meaning!
A riddle is it still unto me, this dream; the meaning is hidden
in it and encaged, and doth not yet fly above it on free pinions.
All life had I renounced, so I dreamed. Night-watchman
and grave-guardian had I become, aloft, in the lone mountain-
fortress of Death.
There did I guard his coffins: full stood the musty vaults of
those trophies of victory. Out of glass coffins did vanquished
life gaze upon me.
The odour of dust-covered eternities did I breathe: sultry
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
and dust-covered lay my soul. And who could have aired his
soul there!
Brightness of midnight was ever around me; lonesomeness
cowered beside her; and as a third, death-rattle stillness, the
worst of my female friends.
Keys did I carry, the rustiest of all keys; and I knew how to
open with them the most creaking of all gates.
Like a bitterly angry croaking* ran the sound through the
long corridors when the leaves of the gate opened: ungra-
ciously did this bird cry, unwillingly was it awakened.
But more frightful even, and more heart-strangling was it,
when it again became silent and still all around, and I alone
sat in that malignant silence.
Thus did time pass with me, and slip by, if time there still
was: what do I know thereof! But at last there happened that
which awoke me.
Thrice did there peal peals at the gate like thunders, thrice
did the vaults resound and howl again: then did I go to the
gate.
Alpa! cried I, who carrieth his ashes unto the mountain?
Alpa! Alpa! who carrieth his ashes unto the mountain?
And I pressed the key, and pulled at the gate, and exerted
myself. But not a finger's-breadth was it yet open:
Then did a roaring wind tear the folds apart: whistling,
whizzing, and piercing, it threw unto me a black coffin.
And in the roaring and whistling and whizzing, the coffin
burst open, and spouted out a thousand peals of laughter.
And a thousand caricatures of children, angels, owls, fools,
and child-sized butterflies laughed and mocked, and roared at
me.
Fearfully was I terrified thereby: it prostrated me. And I
cried with horror as I ne'er cried before.
[148]
THE SOOTHSAYER
But mine own crying awoke me: and I came to myself.
Thus did Zarathustra relate his dream, and then was silent:
for as yet he knew not the interpretation thereof. But the dis-
ciple whom he loved most arose quickly, seized Zarathustra's
hand, and said:
"Thy life itself interpreted! unto us this dream, O Zara-
thustra!
' Art thou not thyself the wind with shrill whistling, which
bursteth open the gates of the fortress of Death?
Art thou not thyself the coffin full of many-hued malices and
angel-caricatures of life?
Verily, like a thousand peals of children's laughter cometh
Zarathustra into all sepulchres, laughing at those night-watch-
men and grave-guardians, and whoever else rattleth with sinis-
ter keys.
With thy laughter wilt thou frighten and prostrate them:
fainting and recovering wilt thou demonstrate thy power over
them.
And when the long twilight cometh and the mortal weari-
ness, even then wilt thou nbt disappear from our firmament,
thou advocate of life!
New stars hast thou made us see, and new nocturnal glories:
verily, laughter itself hast thou spread out over us like a many
hued canopy.
Now will children's laughter ever from coffins flow; no\r
will a strong wind ever come victoriously unto all mortal weari*
ness: of this thou art thyself the pledge and the prophet!
Verily, they themselves didst thou dream, thine enemies:
that was thy sorest dream.
But as thou awokest from them and earnest to thyself, so
shall they awaken from themselves and come unto thee!"
Thus spake the disciple; and all the others then thronged
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
around Zarathustra, grasped him by the hands, and tried to
persuade him to leave his bed and his sadness, and return unto
them. Zarathustra, however, sat upright on his couch, with an
absent look. Like one returning from long foreign sojourn did
he look on his disciples, and examined their features; but still
he knew them not. When, however, they raised him, and set
him upon his feet, behold, all on a sudden his eye changed; he
understood everything that had happened, stroked his beard,,
and said with a strong voice:
"Well! this hath just its time; but see to it, my disciples,
that we have a good repast, and without delay! Thus do I mean
to make amends for bad dreams!
The soothsayer, however, shall eat and drink at my side:
and verily, I will yet show him a sea in which he can drown
himself!"
Thus spake Zarathustra. Then did he gaze long into the
face of the disciple who had been the dream-interpreter, and
shook his head.
42. Redemption
WHEN Zarathustra went one day over the great bridge, then
did the cripples and beggars surround him, and a hunchback
spake thus unto him:
"Behold, Zarathustra! Even the people learn from thee, and
acquire faith in thy teaching: but for them to believe fully in
thee, one thing is still needful thou must first of all convince
us cripples! Here hast thou now a fine selection, and verily, an
REDEMPTION
opportunity with more than one forelock! The blind canst thou
heal, and make the lame run; and from him who hath too
much behind, couldst thou well, also, take away a little;
that, I think, would be the right method to make the cripples
believe in Zarathustra!"
Zarathustra, however, answered thus unto him who so
spake: When one taketh his hump from the hunchback, then
doth one take from him his spirit so do the people teach.
And when one giveth the blind man eyes, then doth he see too
many bad things on the earth: so tliat he curseth him who
healed him. He, however, who maketh the lame man run, in-
flicteth upon him the greatest injury; for hardly can he run,
when his vices run away with him so do the people teach
concerning cripples. And why should not Zarathustra also
learn from the people, when the people learn from Zara-
tlyistra?
It is, however, the smallest thing unto me since I have been
amongst men, to see one person lacking an eye, another an
ear, and a third a leg, and that others have lost the tongue, or
the nose, or the head.
I see and have seen worse things, and divers things so
hideous, that I should neither like to speak of all matters, nor
even keep silent about some of them: namely, men who lack
everything, except that they have too much of one thing men
who are nothing more than a big eye, or a big mouth, or a big
belly, or something else big, reversed cripples, I call such
men.
And when I came out of my solitude, and for the first time
passed over this bridge, then I could not trust mine eyes, but
looked again and again, and said at last: ''That is an ear! An
ear as big as a man!" I looked still more attentively and ac-
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
tually there did move under the ear something that was pitiably
small and poor and slim. And in truth this immense ear was
perched on a small thin stalk the stalk, however, was a man!
A person putting a glass to his eyes, could even recognise fur-
ther a small envious countenance, and also that a bloated
soullet dangled at the stalk. The people told me, however, that
the big ear was not only a man, but a great man, a genius. But
I never believed in the people when they spake of great men
and I hold to my belief that it was a reversed cripple, who
had too little of everything, and too much of one thing.
When Zarathustra had spoken thus unto the hunchback, and
unto those of whom the hunchback was the mouthpiece and
advocate, then did he turn to his disciples in profound dejec-
tion, and said:
Verily, my friends, I walk amongst men as amongst the
fragments and limbs of human beings!
This is the terrible thing to mine eye, that I find man
broken up, and scattered about, as on a battle- and butcher-
ground.
And when mine eye fleeth from the present to the bygone, it
findcth ever the same: fragments and limbs and fearful chances
but no men!
The present and the bygone upon earth ah! my friends
that is my most unbearable trouble; and I should not know how
to live, if I were not a seer of what is to come.
A seer, a purposer, a creator, a future itself, and a bridge to
the future and alas! also as it were a cripple on this bridge:
all that is Zarathustra.
And ye also asked yourselves often: "Who is Zarathustra
to us? What shall he be called by us?" And like me, did ye
give yourselves questions for answers.
Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an in-
REDEMPTION
heritor? A harvest? Or a ploughshare? A physician? Or a
healed one?
Is he a poet? Or a genuine one? An emancipator? Or a sub-
jugator? A good one? Or an evil one?
I walk amongst men as the fragments of the future: that
future which I contemplate.
And it is all my poetisation and aspiration to compose and
collect into unity what is fragment and riddle and fearful
chance.
And how could I endure to be a man, if man were not also
the composer, and riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance!
To redeem what is past, and to transform every "It was"
into "Thus would I have it!" that only do I call redemption!
Will so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus
have I taught you, my friends! But now learn this likewise:
the Will itself is still a prisoner.
Willing emancipateth: but what is that called which still
putteth the emancipator in chains?
"It was": thus is the Will's teeth-gnashing and lonesomest
tribulation called. Impotent towards what hath been done it
is a malicious spectator of all that is past.
Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time
and time's desire that is the Will's lonesomest tribulation.
Willing emancipateth: what doth Willing itself devise in
order to get free from its tribulation and mock at its prison?
Ah, a fool becometh every prisoner! Foolishly delivereth
itself also the imprisoned Will.
That time doth not run backward that is its animosity:
"That which was": so is the stone which it cannot roll called.
And thus doth it roll stones out of animosity and ill-humour,
and taketh revenge on whatever doth not, like it, feel rage and
ill-humour.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Thus did the Will, the emancipator, become a torturer; and
on all that is capable of suffering it taketh revenge, because it
cannot go backward.
This, yea, this alone is revenge itself: the Will's antipathy to
time, and its "It was/'
Verily, a great folly dwelleth in our Will; and it became a
curse unto all humanity, that this folly acquired spirit!
The spirit of revenge: my friends, that hath hitherto been
man's best contemplation; and where there was suffering, it
was claimed there was always penalty.
"Penalty," so calleth itself revenge. With a lying word it
f eigneth a good conscience.
And because in the wilier himself there is suffering, because
he cannot will backwards thus was Willing itself, and all
life, claimed to be penalty!
And then did cloud after cloud roll over the spirit, until at
last madness preached: "Everything perisheth, therefore every-
thing deserveth to perish!"
"And this itself is justice, the law of time that he must
devour his children:" thus did madness preach.
"Morally are things ordered according to justice and
penalty. Oh, where is there deliverance from the flux of things
and from the 'existence' of penalty?" Thus did madness preach.
"Can there -be deliverance when there is eternal justice?
Alas, unreliable is the stone, 'It was' : eternal must also be all
penalties!" Thus did madness preach.
"No deed can be annihilated: how could it be undone by
the penalty! This, this is what is eternal in the 'existence* of
penalty, that existence also must be eternally recurring deed
and guilt!
Unless the Will should at last deliver itself, and Willing
REDE M PTION
become non- Willing :" but ye know, my brethren, this fabu-
lous song of madness!
Away from those fabulous songs did I lead you when I
taught you: "The Will is a creator."
All "It was" is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance until
the creating Will saith thereto: "But thus would I have it."
Until the creating Will saith thereto: "But thus do I will it!
Thus shall I will it!"
But did it ever speak thus? And when doth this take place?
Hath the Will been unharnessed from its own folly?
Hath the Will become its own deliverer and joy-bringer?
Hath it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing?
And who hath taught it reconciliation with time, and some-
thing higher than all reconciliation?
Something higher than all reconciliation must the Will will
which is the Will to Power : but how doth that take place?
Who hath taught it also to will backwards?
But at this point in his discourse it chanced that Zara-
thustra suddenly paused, and looked like a person in the great-
est alarm. With terror in his eyes did he gaze on his disciples;
his glances pierced as with arrows their thoughts and arrear-
thoughts. But after a brief space he again laughed, and said
soothedly:
"It is difficult to live amongst men, because silence is so
difficult especially for a babbler."
Thus spake Zarathustra. The hunchback, however, had
listened to the conversation and had covered his face during
the time; but when he heard Zarathustra laugh, he looked up
with curiosity, and said slowly:
"But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto us than
unto his disciples?"
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Zarathustra answered: "What is there to be wondered at!
With hunchbacks one may well speak in a hunchbacked way!"
"Very good," said the hunchback; "and with pupils one may
well tell tales out of school.
But why doth Zarathustra speak otherwise unto his pupils
than unto himself?"
43. Manly Prudence
NOT the height, it is the declivity that is terrible!
The declivity, where the gaze shooteth downwards, and the
hand graspeth upwards. There doth the heart become giddy
through its double will.
Ah, friends, do ye divine also my heart's double will?
This, this is my declivity and my danger, that my gaze
shooteth towards the summit, and my hand would fain clutch
and lean on the depth!
To man clingeth my will; with chains do I bind myself to
man, because I am pulled upwards to the Superman: for
thither doth mine other will tend.
And therefore do I live blindly among men, as if I knew
them not: that my hand may not entirely lose belief in
firmness.
I know not you men: this gloom and consolation is often
spread around me.
I sit at the gateway for every rogue, and ask: Who wisheth
to deceive me?
This is my first manly prudence, that I allow myself to be
deceived > so as not to be on my guard against deceivers.
MANLY PRUDENCE
Ah, if I were on my guard against man, how could man be
anchor to my ball! Too easily would I be pulled upwards and
fay!
This providence is over my fate, that I have to be without
resight
And he who would not languish amongst men, must learn
drink out of all glasses; and he who would keep clean
longst men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty
iter.
And thus spake I often to myself for consolation: ' 'Courage!
ieer up! old heart! An unhappiness hath failed to befall thee:
joy that as thy happiness!"
This, however, is mine other manly prudence: I am more
rbearing to the v ain than to the proud.
Is not wounded vanity the mother of all tragedies? Where,
wever, pride is wounded, there there groweth up something
tter than pride.
That life may be fair to behold, its game must be well
tyed; for that purpose, however, it needeth good actors.
Good actors have I found all the vain ones: they play, and
sh people to be fond of beholding them all their spirit is in
s wish.
They represent themselves, they invent themselves; in their
ighbourhood I like to look upon life it cureth of mel-
choly.
Therefore am I forbearing to the vain, because they are the
ysicians of my melancholy, and keep me attached to man
to a drama.
And further, who conceiveth the full depth of the modesty
the vain man! I am favourable to him, and sympathetic on
:ount of his modesty.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
From you would he learn his belief in himself; he feedeth
upon your glances, he eateth praise out of your hands.
Your lies doth he even believe when you lie favourably
about him: for in its depths sigheth his heart: "What am /?"
And if that be the true virtue which is unconscious of itself
well, the vain man is unconscious of his modesty!
This is, however, my third manly prudence: I am not put
out of conceit with the wicked by your timorousness.
I am happy to see the marvels the warm sun hatcheth: tigers
and palms and rattlesnakes.
Also amongst men there is a beautiful brood of the warm
sun, and much that is marvellous in the wicked.
In truth, as your wisest did not seem to me so very wise, so
found I also human wickedness below the fame of it.
And oft did I ask with a shake of the head: Why still rattle,
ye rattlesnakes?
Verily, there is still a future even for evil! And the warmest
south is still undiscovered by man.
How many things are now called the worst wickedness,
which are only twelve feet broad and three months long! Some
day, however, will greater dragons come into the world.
For that the Superman may not lack his dragon, the super-
dragon that is worthy of him, there must still much warm sun
glow on moist virgin forests!
Out of your wild cats must tigers have evolved, and out of
your poison-toads, crocodiles: for the good hunter shall have a
good hunt!
And verily, ye good and just! In you there is much to be
laughed at, and especially your fear of what hath hitherto been
called "the devil!"
So alien are ye in your souls to what is great, that to you the
Supermari would be frightful in his goodness!
THE STILLEST HOUR
And ye wise and knowing ones, ye would flee from the solar-
;low of the wisdom in which the Superman joyfully batheth his
lakedness!
Ye highest men who have come within my ken! this is my
loubt of you, and my secret laughter: I suspect ye would call
ny Superman a devil!
Ah, I became tired of those highest and best ones: from
heir "height" did I long to be up, out, and away to the Super-
nan!
A horror came over me when I saw those best ones naked:
hen there grew for me the pinions to soar away into distant
utures.
Into more distant futures, into more southern souths than
ver artist dreamed of: thither, where gods are ashamed of all
lothes!
But disguised do I want to see you, ye neighbours and
ellowmen, and well-attired and vain and estimable, as "the
;ood and just;"
And disguised will I myself sit amongst you that I may
mistake you and myself: for that is my last manly prudence.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
44. The Stillest Hour
hath happened unto me, my friends? Ye see me
roubled, driven forth, unwillingly obedient, ready to go
las, to go away from you!
Yea, once more must Zarathustra retire to his solitude: but
injoyously this time doth the bear go back to his cave!
1159]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
What hath happened unto me? Who ordereth this? Ah,
mine angry mistress wisheth it so; she spake unto me. Have I
ever named her name to you?
Yesterday towards evening there spake unto me my stillest
hour: that is the name of my terrible mistress.
And thus did it happen for everything must I tell you,
that your heart may not harden against the suddenly departing
one!
Do ye know the terror of him who falleth asleep?
To the very toes he is terrified, because the ground giveth
way under him, and the dream beginncth.
This do I speak unto you in parable. Yesterday at the stillest
hour did the ground give way under me: the dream began.
The hour-hand moved on, the timepiece of my life drew
breath never did I hear such stillness around me, so that my
heart was terrified.
Then was there spoken unto me without voice: "Thou
knowest it, Zarathustra?"
And I cried in terror at this whispering, and the blood left
my face: but I was silent.
Then was there once more spoken unto me without voice:
"Thou knowest it, Zarathustra, but thou dost not speak it!"
And at last I answered, like one defiant: "Yea, I know it,
but I will not speak it!"
Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "Thou
wilt not, Zarathustra? Is this true? Conceal thyself not behind
thy defiance!"
And I wept and trembled like a child, and said: "Ah, I
would indeed, but how can I do it! Exempt me only from this!
It is beyond my power!"
Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What
[160]
THE STILLEST HOUR
,tter about thyself, Zarathustra! Speak thy word, and suc-
nb!"
And I answered: "Ah, is it my word? Who am 1? I await the
>rthier one; I am not worthy even to succumb by it."
Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What
ttter about thyself? Thou art not yet humble enough for me.
imility hath the hardest skin." *
And I answered: "What hath not the skin of my humility
dured! At the foot of my height do I dwell: how high are
r summits, no one hath yet told me. But well do I know my
lleys."
Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "O
rathustra, he who hath to remove mountains removeth also
[leys and plains."
And I answered: "As yet hath my word not removed moun-
ns, and what I have spoken hath not reached man. I went,
deed, unto men, but not yet have I attained unto them."
Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What
owest thou thereof! The dew falleth on the grass when the
^ht is most silent."
And I answered: "They mocked me when I found and
Jked in mine own path; and certainly did my feet then
mble.
And thus did they speak unto me: Thou forgottest the path
fore, now dost thou also forget how to walk!"
Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "What
itter about their mockery! Thou art one who hast unlearned
obey: now shalt thou command!
Knowest thou not who is most needed by all? He who com-
mdeth great things.
To execute great things is difficult: but the more difficult
>k is to command great things.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
This is thy most unpardonable obstinacy: thou hast the
power, and thou wilt not rule."
And I answered: "I lack the lion's voice for all command-
ing."
Then was there again spoken unto me as a whispering: "It
is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come
with doves' footsteps guide the world.
O Zarathustra, thou shalt go as a shadow of that which is to
come: thus wilt thou command, and in commanding go fore-
most."
And I answered: "I am ashamed."
Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: "Thou
must yet become a child, and be without shame.
The pride of youth is still upon thee; late hast thou become
young: but he who would become a child must surmount even
his youth."
And I considered a long while, and trembled. At last, how-
ever, did I say what I had said at first. "I will not."
Then did a laughing take place all around me. Alas, how
that laughing lacerated my bowels and cut into my heart!
And there was spoken unto me for the last time: "O Zara-
thustra, thy fruits are ripe, but thou art not ripe for thy fruits!
So must thou go again into solitude: for thou shalt yet be-
come mellow."
And again was there a laughing, and it fled: then did it be-
come still around me, as with a double stillness. I lay, however,
on the ground, and the sweat flowed from my limbs.
Now have ye heard all, and why I have to return into my
solitude. Nothing have I kept hidden from you, my friends.
But even this have ye heard from me, who is still the most
reserved of men and will be so!
Ah, my friends! I should have something more to say unto
[ 162 ]
THE STILLEST HOUR
you! I should have something more to give unto you! Why do
I not give it? Am I then a niggard?
When, however, Zarathustra had spoken these words, the
violence of his pain, and a sense of the nearness of his de-
parture from his friends came over him, so that he wept aloud;
and no one knew how to console him. In the night, however,
ke went away alone and left his friends.
[163]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
THIRD PART
"Ye look aloft when ye long for
exaltation, and I look downward be-
cause I am exalted.
"Who among you can at the same
time laugh and be exalted?
"He who climbeth on the highest
mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays
and tragic realities." ZARATHUSTRA,
I., "Reading and Writing" (p. 56).
- The Wanderer
THEN, when it was about midnight, Zarathustra went his way
over the ridge of the isle, that he might arrive early in the
morning at the other coast; because there he meant to embark.
For there was a good roadstead there, in which foreign ships
also liked to anchor: those ships took many people with them,
who wished to cross over from the Happy Isles. So when Zara-
thustra thus ascended the mountain, he thought on the way of
his many solitary wanderings from youth onwards, and how
many mountains and ridges and summits he had already
climbed.
I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart.
I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.
And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience
a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in
the end one experienceth only oneself.
The time is now past when accidents could befall me; and
what could now fall to my lot which would not already be
mine own!
It returneth only, it cometh home to me at last mine own
Self, and such of it as hath been long abroad, and scattered
among things and accidents.
And one thing more do I know: I stand now before my last
summit, and before that which hath been longest reserved for
me. Ah, my hardest path must I ascend! Ah, I have begun my
lonesomest wandering!
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
He, however, who is of my nature doth not avoid such an
hour: the hour that saith unto him: Now only dost thou go
the way to thy greatness! Summit and abyss these are now
comprised together!
Thou goest the way to thy greatness: now hath it become thy
last refuge, what was hitherto thy last danger!
Thou goest the way to thy greatness: it must now be thy best
courage that there is no longer any path behind thee!
Thou goest the way to thy greatness: here shall no one steal
after thee! Thy foot itself hath effaced the path behind thee,
and over it standeth written: Impossibility.
And if all ladders henceforth fail thee, then must thou learn
to mount upon thine own head: how couldst thou mount up-
ward otherwise?
Upon thine own head, and beyond thine own heart! Now
must the gentlest in thee become the hardest.
He who hath always much-indulged himself, sickeneth at
last by his much-indulgence. Praises on what makcth hardy! I
do not praise the land where butter and honey flow!
To learn to look aivay from oneself, is necessary in order to
see many things: this hardiness is needed by every mountain-
climber.
He, however, who is obtrusive with his eyes as a discerner,
how can he ever see more of anything than its foreground!
But thou, O Zarathustra, wouldst view the ground of every-
thing, and its background: thus must thou mount even above
thyself up, upwards, until thou hast even thy stars under
thee!
Yea! To look down upon myself, and even upon my stars:
that only would I call my summit, that hath remained for me
as my last summit!
[168]
THE WANDERER
Thus spake Zarathustra to himself while ascending, com-
forting his heart with harsh maxims : for he was sore at heart as
he had never been before. And when he had reached the top
of the mountain-ridge, behold, there lay the other sea spread
out before him; and he stood still and was long silent. The
night, however, was cold at this height, and clear and starry.
I recognise my destiny, said he at last, sadly. Well! I am
ready. Now hath my last lonesomeness begun.
Ah, this sombre, sad sea, below me! Ah, this sombre noc-
turnal vexation! Ah, fate and sea! To you must I now go doivn!
Before my highest mountain do I stand, and 'before my
longest wandering: therefore must I first go deeper down than
I ever ascended :
Deeper down into pain than I ever ascended, even into its
darkest flood! So willeth my fate. Well! I am ready.
Whence come the highest mountains? so did I once ask.
Then did I learn that they come out of the sea.
That testimony is inscribed on their stones, and on the walls
of their summits. Out of the deepest must the highest come
to its height.
Thus spake Zarathustra on the ridge of the mountain where
it was cold: when, however, he came into the vicinity of the
sea, and at last stood alone amongst the cliffs, then had he be-
come weary on his way, and eagerer than ever before.
Everything as yet sleepeth, said he; even the sea sleepeth.
Drowsily and strangely doth its eye gaze upon me.
But it breatheth warmly I feel it. And I feel also that it
dreameth. It tosseth about dreamily on hard pillows.
Hark! Hark! How it groaneth with evil recollections! Or
evil expectations?
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Ah, I am sad along with thee, thou dusky monster, and
angry with myself even for thy sake.
Ah, that my hand hath not strength enough! Gladly, indeed,
would I free thee from evil dreams!
And while Zarathustra thus spake, he laughed at himself
with melancholy and bitterness. What! Zarathustra, said he,
wilt thou even sing consolation to the sea?
Ah, thou amiable fool, Zarathustra, thou too-blindly con-
fiding one! But thus hast thou ever been: ever hast thou ap-
proached confidently all that is terrible.
Every monster wouldst thou caress. A whiff of warm breath,
a little soft tuft on its paw: and immediately wert thou ready
to love and lure it.
Love is the danger of the lonesomest one, love to anything,
// // only live! Laughable, verily, is my folly and my modesty in
love!
Thus spake Zarathustra, and laughed thereby a second time.
Then, however, he thought of his abandoned friends and as
if he had done them a wrong with his thoughts, he upbraided
himself because of his thoughts. And forthwith it came to pass
that the laugher wept with anger and longing wept Zara-
thustra bitterly.
THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA
46. The Vision and the Enigma
WHEN it got abroad among the sailors that Zarathustra was
on board the ship for a man who came from the Happy Isles
had gone on board along with him, there was great curiosity
and expectation. But Zarathustra kept silent for two days, and
was cold and deaf with sadness; so that he neither answered
looks nor questions. On the evening of the second day, how-
ever, he again opened his ears, though he still kept silent: for
there were many curious and dangerous things to be heard on
board the ship, which came from afar, and was to go still fur-
ther. Zarathustra, however, was fond of all those who make
distant voyages, and dislike to live without danger. And be-
hold! when listening, his own tongue was at last ^sened, and
the ice of his heart broke. Then did he begin to speak thus:
To you, the daring venturers and adventurers, and whoever
hath embarked with cunning sails upon frightful seas,
To you the enigma-intoxicated, the twilight-enjoyers, whose
souls are allured by flutes to every treacherous gulf:
For ye dislike to grope at a thread with cowardly hand;
and where ye can divine, there do ye hate to calculate
To you only do I tell the enigma that I saiv the vision of
the lonesomest one.
Gloomily walked I lately in corpse-coloured twilight
gloomily and sternly, with compressed lips. Not only one sun
had set for me.
A path which ascended daringly among boulders, an evil,
lonesome path, which neither herb nor shrub any longer
[171]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
cheered, a mountain-path, crunched under the daring of my
foot.
Mutely marching over the scornful clinking of pebbles,
trampling the stone that let it slip: thus did my foot force its
way upwards.
Upwards: in spite of the spirit that drew it downwards,
towards the abyss, the spirit of gravity, my devil and arch-
enemy.
Upwards: although it sat upon me, half-dwarf, half -mole;
paralysed, paralysing; dripping lead in mine ear, and thoughts
like drops of lead into my brain.
"O Zarathustra," it whispered scornfully, syllable by
syllabic, "thou stone of wisdom! Thou threwest thyself high,
but every thrown stone must fall!
Zarathustra, thou stone of wisdom, thou sling-stone, thou
star-destroyer! Thyself threwest thou so high, but every
thrown stone must fall!
Condemned of thyself, and to thine own stoning: O Zara-
thustra, far indeed threwest thou thy stone but upon thyself
will it recoil!"
Then was the dwarf silent; and it lasted long. The silence,
however, oppressed me; and to be thus in pairs, one is verily
lonesomer than when alone!
1 ascended, I ascended, I dreamt, I thought, but everything
oppressed me. A sick one did I resemble, whom bad torture
wearieth, and a worse dream reawakeneth out of his first
sleep.
But there is something in me which I call courage: it hath
hitherto slain for me every dejection. This courage at last
bade me stand still and say: "Dwarf ! Thou! Or I!"
For courage is the best slayer, courage which attacketh:
for in every attack there is sound of triumph.
[ 172 ]
THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA
Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby hath
he overcome every animal. With sound of triumph hath he
overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain.
Courage slayeth also giddiness at abysses: and where doth
man not stand at abysses! Is not seeing itself seeing abysses?
Courage is the best slayer: courage slayeth also fellow-suffer-
ing. Fellow-suffering, however, is the deepest abyss : as deeply
as man looketh into life, so deeply also doth he look into suf-
fering.
Courage, however, is the best slayer, courage which at-
tacketh: it slayeth even death itself; for it saith: "Was that
life? Well! Once more!"
In such speech, however, there is much sound of triumph.
He who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
"Halt, dwarf!" said I. "Either I or thou! I, however, am
the stronger of the two: thou knowest not mine abysmal
thought! // couldst thou not endure!"
Then happened that which made me lighter: for the dwarf
sprang from my shoulder, the prying sprite! And it squatted
on a stone in front of me. There was however a gateway just
where we halted.
"Look at this gateway! Dwarf!" I continued, "it hath two
faces. Two roads come together here: these hath no one yet
gone to the end of.
This long lane backwards : it continueth for an eternity. And
that long lane forward that is another eternity.
They are antithetical to one 'another, these roads; they
directly abut on one another: and it is here, at this gateway,
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
that they come together. The name of the gateway is inscribed
above: This Moment/
But should one follow them further and ever further and
further on, thinkest thou, dwarf, that these roads would be
eternally antithetical?"
"Everything straight lieth," murmured the dwarf, con-
temptuously. "All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle/'
"Thou spirit of gravity!" said I wrathfully, "do not take it
too lightly! Or I shall let thee squat where thou squattest,
Haltfoot, and I carried thee h/ghl"
"Observe," continued I, "This Moment! From the gate-
way, This Moment, there runneth a long eternal lane back-
wards: behind us licth an eternity.
Must not whatever can run its course of all things, have
already run along that lane? Must not whatever can happen of
all things have already happened, resulted, and gone by?
And if everything has already existed, what thinkest thou,
dwarf, of This Moment? Must not this gateway also have
already existed?
And are not all things closely bound together in such wise
that This Moment draweth all coming things after it? Conse-
quently itself also?
For whatever can run its course of all things, also in this
long lane outward must it once more run!
And this slow spider which creepeth in the moonlight, and
this moonlight itself, and thou and I in this gateway whisper-
ing together, whispering of eternal things must we not all
have already existed?
And must we not return and run in that other lane out
before us, that long weird lane must we not eternally re-
turn?"
Thus did I speak, and always more softly: for I was afraid
THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA
' mine own thoughts, and arrear-thoughts. Then, suddenly
d I hear a dog howl near me.
Had I ever heard a dog howl thus? My thoughts ran back,
es! When I was a child, in my most distant childhood :
Then did I hear a dog howl thus. And saw it also, with
lir bristling, its head upwards, trembling in the stillest mid-
ght, when even dogs believe in ghosts:
So that it excited my commiseration. For just then went
e full moon, silent as death, over the house; just then did it
ind still, a glowing globe at rest on the fiat roof, as if on
me one's property:
Thereby had the dog been terrified: for dogs believe in
ieves and ghosts. And when I again heard such howling, then
d it excite my commiseration once more.
Where was now the dwarf? And the gateway? And the
>ider? And all the whispering? Had I dreamt? Had I
wakened? 'Twixt rugged rocks did I suddenly stand alone,
eary in the dreariest moonlight.
But there lay a man! And there! The dog leaping, bristling,
hining now did it see me coming then did it howl again,
en did it cry: had I ever heard a dog cry so for help?
And verily, what I saw, the like had I never seen. A young
tepherd did I see, Writhing, choking, quivering, with dis-
>rted countenance, and with a heavy black serpent hanging
it of his mouth.
Had I ever seen so much loathing and pale horror on one
>untenance? He had perhaps gone to sleep? Then had the
rpent crawled into his throat there had it bitten itself fast.
My hand pulled at the serpent, and pulled: in vain! I
iled to pull the serpent out of his throat. Then there cried out
: me: "Bite! Bite!
Its head off! Bite!" so cried it out of me; my horror, my
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
hatred, my loathing, my pity, all my good and my bad cried
with one voice out of me.
Ye daring ones around me! Ye venturers and adventurers,
and whoever of you have embarked with cunning sails on unex-
plored seas! Ye enigma-en joyers!
Solve unto me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret unto
me the vision of the lonesomest one!
For it was a vision and a foresight: what did I then behold
in parable? And who is it that must come some day?
Who is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus
crawled? Who is the man into whose throat all the heaviest
and blackest will thus crawl?
The shepherd however bit as my cry had admonished
him; he bit with a strong bite! Far away did he spit the head of
the serpent: and sprang up.
No longer shepherd, no longer man a transfigured being, a
light-surrounded being, that laughed! Never on earth laughed
a man as he laughed!
O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human
laughter, and now gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that
is never allayed.
My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me: oh, how can I
still endure to live! And how could I endure to die at present!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
INVOLUNTARY BLISS
47. Involuntary Bliss
WITH such enigmas and bitterness in his heart did Zarathustra
sail o'er the sea. When, however, he was four day-journeys
from the Happy Isles and from his friends, then had he sur-
mounted all his pain: triumphantly and with firm foot did
lie again accept his fate. And then talked Zarathustra in this
wise to his exulting conscience:
Alone am I again, and like to be so, alone with the pure
leaven, and the open sea; and again is the afternoon around
ne.
On an afternoon did I find my friends for the first time; on
m afternoon, also, did I find them a second time: at the hour
when all light becometh stiller.
'For whatever happiness is still on its way 'twixt heaven and
*arth, now seeketh for lodging a luminous soul: with happi-
ness hath all light now become stiller.
O afternoon of my life! Once did my happiness also descend
:o the valley that it might seek a lodging: then did it find
;hose open hospitable souls.
O afternoon of my life! What did I not surrender that I
night have one thing: this living plantation of my thoughts,
md this dawn of my highest hope!
Companions did the creating one once seek, and children of
bis hope: and lo, it turned out that he could not find them,
except he himself should first create them.
Thus am I in the midst of my work, to my children going,
md from them returning: for the sake of his children must
Zarathustra perfect himself.
[177]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
For in one's heart one loveth only one's child and one's
work; and where there is great love to oneself, then is it the
sign of pregnancy: so have I found it.
Still are my children verdant in their first spring, standing
nigh one another, and shaken in common by the winds, the
trees of my garden and of my best soil.
And verily, where such trees stand beside one another, there
are Happy Isles!
But one day will I take them up, and put each by itself alone:
that it may learn loncsomeness and defiance and prudence.
Gnarled and crooked and with flexible hardness shall it
then stand by the sea, a living lighthouse of unconquerable life.
Yonder where the storms rush down into the sea, and the
snout of the mountain drinketh water, shall each on a time
have his day and night watches, for his testing and recognition.
Recognised and tested shall each be, to see if he be of my
type and lineage: if he be master of a long will, silent even
when he speaketh, and giving in such wise that he taketh in
giving:
So that he may one day become my companion, a fellow-
creator and fellow-enjoyer with Zarathustra: such a one as
writeth my will on my tables, for the fuller perfection of all
things.
And for his sake and for those like him, must I perfect
myself: therefore do I now avoid my happiness, and present
myself to every misfortune for my final testing and recogni-
tion.
And verily, it were time that I went away; and the wan-
derer's shadow and the longest tedium and the stillest hour
have all said unto me: "It is the highest time!"
The word blew to me through the keyhole and said "Come!"
The door sprang subtly open unto me, and said "Go!"
INVOLUNTARY BLISS
But I lay enchained to my love for my children: desire
spread this snare for me the desire for love that I should
become the prey of my children, and lose myself in them.
Desiring that is now for me to have lost myself. / possess
you, my children! In this possessing shall everything be assur-
ance and nothing desire.
But brooding lay the sun of my love upon me, in his own
juice stewed Zarathustra, then did shadows and doubts fly
past me.
For frost and winter I now longed: "Oh, that frost and
winter would again make me crack and crunch!" sighed I:
then arose icy mist out of me.
My past burst its tomb, many pains buried alike woke up:
fully slept had they merely, concealed in corpse-clothes.
So called everything unto me in signs: "It is time!" But I
heard not, until at last mine abyss moved, and my thought bit
me.
Ah, abysmal thought, which art my thought! When shall I
find strength to hear thee burrowing, and no longer tremble?
To my very throat throbbeth my heart when I hear them
burrowing! Thy muteness even is like to strangle me, thou
abysmal mute one!
As yet have I never ventured to call thee up; it hath been
enough that I have carried thee about with me! As yet have I
not been strong enough for my final lion-wantonness and
playfulness.
Sufficiently formidable unto me hath thy weight ever been:
but one day shall I yet find the strength and the lion's voice
which will call thee up!
When I shall have surmounted myself therein, then will I
surmount myself also in that which is greater; and a
shall be the seal of my perfection!
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Meanwhile do I sail along on uncertain seas; chance flat-
tercth me, smooth-tongued chance; forward and backward do
I gaze , still see I no end.
As yet hath the hour of my final struggle not come to me
or doth it come to me perhaps just now? Verily, with insidious
beauty do sea and life gaze upon me round about:
O afternoon of my life! O happiness before eventide! O
haven upon high seas! O peace in uncertainty! How I distrust
all of you!
Verily, distrustful am I of your insidious beauty! Like the
lover am I, who distrusteth too sleek smiling.
As he pushcth the best-beloved before him tender even in
severity, the jealous one , so do I push this blissful hour be-
fore me.
Away with thee, thou blissful hour! With thee hath there
come to me an involuntary bliss! Ready for my severest pain
do I here stand: at the wrong time hast thou come!
Away with thee, thou blissful hour! Rather harbour there
with my children! Hasten! and bless them before eventide with
;;/r happiness!
There, already approacheth eventide: the sun sinketh.
Away my happiness!
Thus spake Zarathustra. And he waited for his misfortune
the whole night; but he waited in vain. The night remained
clear and calm, and happiness itself came nigher and nigher
unto him. Towards morning, however, Zarathustra laughed to
his heart, and said mockingly: "Happiness runneth after me.
That is because I do not run after women. Happiness, however,
is a woman."
BEFORE SUNRISE
48. Before Sunrise
O HEAVEN above me, thou pure, thou deep heaven! Thou
abyss of light! Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires.
Up to thy height to toss myself that is my depth! In thy
purity to hide myself that is mine innocence!
The God veileth his beauty: thus hidest thou thy stars. Thou
speakest not: thus proclaimest thou thy wisdom unto me.
Mute o'er the raging sea hast thou risen for me to-day; thy
love and thy modesty make a revelation unto my raging soul.
In that thou earnest unto me beautiful, veiled in thy beauty,
in that thou spakest unto me mutely, obvious in thy wisdom:
Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of thy soul!
Before the sun didst thou come unto me the lonesomest one.
We have been friends from the beginning: to us are grief,
gruesomeness, and ground common; even the sun is common
to us.
We do not speak to each other, because we know too
much : we keep silent to each other, we smile our knowl-
edge to each other.
Art thou not the light of my fire? Hast thou not the sister-
soul of mine insight?
Together did we learn everything; together did we learn to
ascend beyond ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloud-
edly:
Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out
of miles of distance, when under us constraint and purpose
and guilt stream like rain.
And wandered I alone, for ivhat did my soul hunger by
night and in labyrinthine paths? And climbed I mountains,
whom did I ever seek, if not thee, upon mountains?
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And all my wandering and mountain-climbing: a necessity
was it merely, and a makeshift of the unhandy one: to fly
only, wanteth mine entire will, to fly into theel
And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and what-
ever tainteth thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated,
because it tainted thee!
The passing clouds I detest those stealthy cats of prey:
they take from thee and me what is common to us the vase
unbounded Yea- and Amen-saying.
These mediators and mixers we detest the passing clouds:
those half-and-half ones, that have neither learned to bless
nor to curse from the heart.
Rather will I sit in a tub under a closed heaven, rather will
I sit in the abyss without heaven, than see thee, thou luminous
heaven, tainted with passing clouds!
And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged
gold-wires of lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the
drum upon their kettle-bellies:
An angry drummer, because they rob me of thy Yea and
Amen! thou heaven above me, thou pure, thou luminous
heaven! Thou abyss of light! because they rob thee of my
Yea and Amen.
For rather will I have noise and thunders and tempest-blasts,
than this discreet, doubting cat-repose; and also amongst men
do I hate most of all the soft-treaders, and half-and-half ones,
and the doubting, hesitating, passing clouds.
And "he who cannot bless shall learn to curse! " this dear
teaching dropt unto me from the clear heaven; this star
standeth in my heaven even in dark nights.
I, however, am a blesser and a Yea-sayer, if thou be but
around me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of
[ 189]
BEFORE SUNRISE
light! into all abysses do I then carry my beneficent Yea-saying.
A blesser have I become and a Yea-sayer: and theref ore-
strove I long and was a striver, that I might one day get my
hands free for blessing.
This, however, is my blessing: to stand above everything
as its own heaven, its round roof, its azure bell and eternal
security: and blessed is he who thus blesseth!
For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and be-
yond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are
but fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds.
Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach
that "above all things there standeth the heaven of chance, the
heaven of innocence, the heaven of hazard, the heaven of wan-
tonness."
"Of Hazard" that is the oldest nobility in the world; that
gave I bade to all things; I emancipated them from bondage
under purpose.
This freedom and celestial serenity did I put like an azure
bell above all things, when I taught that over them and through
them, no "eternal Will" willeth.
This wantonness and folly did I put in place of that Will,
when I taught that "In everything there is one thing impossible
rationality!"
A little reason, to be sure, a germ of wisdom scattered from
star to star this leaven is mixed in all things: for the sake of
folly, wisdom is mixed in all things!
A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security
have I found in all things, that they prefer to dance on the
feet of chance.
O heaven above me! thou pure, thou lofty heaven! This is
now thy purity unto me, that there is no eternal reason-spider
and reason-cobweb:
[ 183 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
That thou art to me a dancing-floor for divine chances,
that thou art to me a table of the Gods, for divine dice and dice-
players!
But thou blushest? Have I spoken unspeakable things? Have
I abused, when I meant to bless thee?
Or is it the shame of being two of us that makcth thee blush!
- Dost thou bid me go and be silent, because now day
cometh?
The world is deep: and deeper than e'er the day could
read. Not everything may be uttered in presence of day. But
day cometh : so let us part!
O heaven above me, thou modest one! thou glowing one! O
thou, my happiness before sunrise! The day cometh: so let us
part!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
49. The Bedwarfing Virtue
WHEN Zarathustra was again on the continent, he did not go
straightway to his mountains and his cave, but made many
wanderings and questionings, and ascertained this and that;
so that he said of himself jestingly: "Lo, a river that floweth
b.ick unto its source in many windings!" For he wanted to learn
what had taken place among men during the interval: whether
they had become greater or smaller. And once, when he saw a
row of new houses, he marvelled, and said:
THE BEDWARFING VIRTUE
"What do these houses mean? Verily, no great soul put them
up as its simile!
Did perhaps a silly child take them out of its toy-box?
Would that another child put them again into the box!
And these rooms and chambers can men go out and in
there? They seem to be made for silk dolls; or for dainty-eaters,
who perhaps let others eat with them."
And Zarathustra stood still and meditated. At last he said
sorrowfully: "There hath everything become smaller!
Everywhere do I see lower doorways: he who is of my type
can still go therethrough, but he must stoop!
Oh, when shall I arrive again at my home, where I shall no
longer have to stoop shall no longer have to stoop before the
small ones!" And Zarathustra sighed, and gazed into the
distance.
The same day, however, he gave his discourse on the be-
dwarfing virtue.
I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open: they
do not forgive me for not envying their virtues.
They bite at me, because I say unto them that for small
people, small virtues are necessary and because it is hard for
me to understand that small people are necessary!
Here am I still like a cock in a strange farm-yard, at which
even the hens peck: but on that account I am not unfriendly
to the hens.
I am courteous towards them, as towards all small annoy-
ances; to be prickly towards what is small, seemeth to me
wisdom for hedgehogs.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
They all speak of me when they sit around their fire in the
evening they speak of me, but no one thinketh of me!
This is the new stillness which I have experienced: their
noise around me spreadeth a mantle over my thoughts.
They shout to one another: "What is this gloomy cloud
about to do to us? Let us see that it doth not bring a plague
upon us!"
And recently did a woman seize upon her child that was
coming unto me: "Take the children away," cried she, "such
eyes scorch children's souls."
They cough when I speak: they think coughing an objec-
tion to strong winds they divine nothing of the boisterous-
ness of my happiness!
"We have not yet time for Zarathustra" so they object; but
what matter about a time that "hath no time" for Zarathustra?
And if they should altogether praise me, how could I go to
sleep on their praise? A girdle of spines is their praise unto
me: it scratcheth me even when I take it off.
And this also did I learn among them: the praiser doeth as
if he gave back; in truth, however, he wanteth more to be given
him!
Ask my foot if their lauding and luring strains please it!
Verily, to such measure and ticktack, it liketh neither to dance
nor to stand still.
To small virtues would they fain lure and laud me; to the
ticktack of small happiness would they fain persuade my foot.
I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open; they
have become smaller, and ever become smaller: the reason
thereof is their doctrine of happiness and virtue.
For they are moderate also in virtue, because they want
comfort. With comfort, however, moderate virtue only is com-
patible.
THE BEDWARFING VIRTUE
To be sure, they also learn in their way to stride on and stride
forward: that, I call their hobbling. Thereby they become a
hindrance to all who are in haste.
And many of them go forward, and look backwards thereby,
with stiffened necks : those do I like to run up against.
Foot and eye shall not lie, nor give the lie to each other. But
there is much lying among small people.
Some of them will, but most of them are willed. Some of
them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors.
There are actors without knowing it amongst them, and
actors without intending it , the genuine ones are always
rare, especially the genuine actors.
Of man there is little here: therefore do their women mascu-
linise themselves. For only he who is man enough, will save
the woman in woman.
And this hypocrisy found I worst amongst them, that even
those who command feign the virtues of those who serve.
"I serve, thou servest, we serve" so chanteth here even the
hypocrisy of the rulers and alas! if the first lord be only the
first servant!
Ah, even upon their hypocrisy did mine eyes' curiosity
alight; and well did I divine all their fly-happiness, and their
buzzing around sunny window-panes.
So much kindness, so much weakness do I see. So much jus-
tice and pity, so much weakness.
Round, fair, and considerate are they to one another, as
grains of sand are round, fair, and considerate to grains of
sand.
Modestly to embrace a small happiness that do they call
"submission"! and at the same time they peer modestly after
a new small happiness.
In their hearts they want simply one thing most of all: that
[JW7]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
no one hurt them. Thus do they anticipate every one's wishes
and do well unto every one.
That, however, is cowardice, though it be called "virtue."
And when they chance to speak harshly, those small people,
then do / hear therein only their hoarseness every draught of
air maketh them hoarse.
Shrewd indeed are they, their virtues have shrewd fingers.
But they lack fists: their fingers do not know how to creep
behind fists.
Virtue for them is what maketh modest and tame: there-
with have they made the wolf a dog, and man himself man's
best domestic animal.
"We set our chair in the midst" so saith their smirking
unto me "and as far from dying gladiators as from satisfied
swine."
That, however, is mediocrity, though it be called modera-
tion.
3
I pass through this people and let fall many words: but
they know neither how to take nor how to retain them.
They wonder why I came not to revile venery and vice;
and verily, I came not to warn against pickpockets either!
They wonder why I am not ready to abet and whet their
wisdom: as if they had not yet enough of wiseacres, whose
voices grate on mine ear like slate-pencils!
And when I call out: "Curse all the cowardly devils in you,
that would fain whimper and fold the hands and adore"
then do they shout: "Zarathustra is godless."
[188]
THE BEDWARFING VIRTUE
And especially do their teachers of submission shout this;
but precisely in their ears do I love to cry: "Yea! I am Zara-
thustra, the godless!"
Those teachers of submission! Wherever there is aught
puny, or sickly, or scabby, there do they creep like lice; and
only my disgust preventeth me from cracking them.
Well! This is my sermon for their ears: I am Zarathustra
the godless, who saith: "Who is more godless than I, that I
may enjoy his teaching?"
I am Zarathustra the godless: where do I find mine equal?
And all those are mine equals who give unto themselves their
Will, and divest themselves of all submission.
I am Zarathustra the godless! I cook every chance in my pot.
And only when it hath been quite cooked do I welcome it ^s
my food.
And verily, many a chance came imperiously unto me: but
still more imperiously did my Will speak unto it, then did it
lie imploringly upon its knees
Imploring that it might find home and heart with me,
and saying flatteringly: "See, O Zarathustra, how friend only
cometh unto friend!"
But why talk I, when no one hath mine ears! And so will I
shout it out unto all the winds:
Ye ever become smaller, ye small people! Ye crumble away,
ye comfortable ones! Ye will yet perish
By your many small virtues, by your many small omis-
sions, and by your many small submissions!
Too tender, too yielding: so is your soil! But for a tree to
become g reat, it seeketh to twine hard roots around hard rocks!
Also what ye omit weaveth at the web of all the human
future; even your naught is a cobweb, and a spider that liveth
on the blood of the future.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And when ye take, then is it like stealing, ye small virtuou
ones; but even among knaves honour saith that "one shall onl
steal when one cannot rob."
"It giveth itself" that is also a doctrine of submission
But I say unto you, ye comfortable ones, that // taketh to itselj
and will ever take more and more from you!
Ah, that ye would renounce all /^//-willing, and would de
cide for idleness as ye decide for action!
Ah, that ye understood my word: "Do ever what ye will-
but first be such as can will.
Love ever your neighbour as yourselves but first be sucl
as love themselves
Such as love with great love, such as love with great con
tempt!" Thus speaketh Zarathustra the godless.
But why talk I, when no one hath mine ears! It is still ai
hour too early for me here.
Mine own forerunner am I among this people, mine owi
cockcrow in dark lanes.
But their hour cometh! And there cometh also mine! Hourl]
do they become smaller, poorer, unf ruitfuller, poor herbs
poor earth!
And soon shall they stand before me like dry grass anc
prairie, and verily, weary of themselves and panting for fire
more than for water! *
O blessed hour of the lightning! O mystery before noontide
Running fires will I one day make of them, and heralds witl
flaming tongues:
Herald shall they one day with flaming tongues: I
cometh, it is nigh, the great noontide!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
[ 100 ]
ON THE OLIVE-MOUNT
50. On the Olive-Mount
WINTER, a bad guest, sitteth with me at home; blue are my
hands with his friendly hand-shaking.
I honour him, that bad guest, but gladly leave him alone.
Gladly do I run away from him; and when one runneth well,
then one escapeth him!
With warm feet and warm thoughts do I run where the
wind is calm to the sunny corner of mine olive-mount.
There do I laugh at my stern guest, and am still fond of
him; because he cleareth my house of flies, and quieteth many
little noises.
For he suffereth it not if a gnat wanteth to buzz, or even
two of them; also the lanes maketh he lonesome, so that the
moonlight is afraid there at night.
A hard guest is he, but I honour him, and do not wor-
ship, like the tenderlings, the pot-bellied fire-idol.
Better even a little teeth-chattering than idol-adoration!
so willeth my nature. And especially have I a grudge against all
ardent, steaming, steamy fire-idols.
Him whom I love, I love better in winter than in summer;
better do I now mock at mine enemies, and more heartily,,
when winter sitteth in my house.
Heartily, verily, even when I creep into bed : there, still
laugheth and wantoneth my hidden happiness; even my decep-
tive dream laugheth.
I, a creeper? Never in my life did I creep before the power-
ful; and if ever I lied, then did I lie out of love. Therefore am
I glad even in my winter-bed.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
A poor bed warmeth me more than a rich one, for I am jeal-
ous of my poverty. And in winter she is most faithful unto me.
With a wickedness do I begin every day: I mock at the
winter with a cold bath: on that account grumbleth my stern
house-mate.
Also do I like to tickle him with a wax-taper, that he may
finally let the heavens emerge from ashy-grey twilight.
For especially wicked am I in the morning: at the early
hour when the pail rattleth at the well, and horses neigh
warmly in grey lanes:
Impatiently do I then wait, that the clear sky may finally
dawn for me, the snow-bearded winter-sky, the hoary one, the
white-head,
The winter-sky, the silent winter-sky, which often stifleth
even its sun!
Did I perhaps learn from it the long clear silence? Or did
it learn it from me? Or hath each of us devised it himself?
Of all good things the origin is a thousandfold, all good
roguish things spring into existence for joy: how could they
always do so for once only!
A good roguish thing is also the long silence, and to look,
like the winter-sky, out of a clear, round-eyed countenance:
Like it to stifle one's sun, and one's inflexible solar will:
verily, this art and this winter-roguishness have I learned well!
My best-loved wickedness and art is it, that my silence hath
learned not to betray itself by silence.
Clattering with diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assist-
ants: all those stern watdiers, shall my will and purpose elude.
That no one might see down into my depth and into mine
ultimate will for that purpose did I devise the long clear
silence.
[ 192}
ON THK OLIVE -MOUNT
Many a shrewd one did I find : he veiled his countenance and
made his water muddy, that no one might see therethrough
and thereunder.
But precisely unto him came the shrewder distrusters and
nut-crackers: precisely from him did they fish his best-con-
cealed fish!
But the clear, the honest, the transparent these are for me
the wisest silent ones: in them, so profound is the depth that
even the clearest water doth not betray it.
Thou snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, thou round-eyed
whitehead above me! Oh, thou heavenly simile of my soul and
its wantonness!
And must I not conceal myself like one who hath swallowed
gold lest my soul should be ripped up?
Must I not wear stilts, that they may overlook my long legs
all those enviers and injurers around me?
Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-
natured souls how could their envy endure my happiness!
Thus do I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks
and not that my mountain windeth all the solar girdles around
it!
They hear only the whistling of my winter-storms: and
know not that I also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy,
hot south-winds.
They commiserate also my accidents and chances: but my
word saith: "Suffer the chance to come unto me: innocent is
it as a little child!"
How could they endure my happiness, if I did not put
around it accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps,
and enmantling snowflakes!
If I did not myself commiserate their pity, the pity of
those enviers and injurers!
[ 193 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
-If I did not myself sigh before them, and chatter with
cold, and patiently let myself be swathed in their pity!
This is the wise waggish-will and good-will of my soul, that
it concealeth not its winters and glacial storms; it concealeth
not its chilblains either.
To one man, lonesomcncss is the flight of the sick one; to
another, it is the flight from the sick ones.
Let them hear me chattering and sighing with winter-cold,
all those poor squinting knaves around me! With such sighing
and chattering do I flee from their heated rooms.
Let them sympathise with me and sigh with me on account
of my chilblains: "At the ice of knowledge will he yet freeze
to death!" so they mourn.
Meanwhile do I run with warm feet hither and thither on
mine olive-mount: in the sunny corner of mine olive-mount
do I sing, and mock at all pity.
Thus sang Zarathustra.
. On Passing- By
THUS slowly wandering through many peoples and divers
cities, did Zarathustra return by round-about roads to his
mountains and his cave. And behold, thereby came he un-
awares also to the gate of the great city. Here, however, a
foaming fool, with extended hands, sprang forward to him and
stood in his way. It was the same fool whom the people called
"the ape of Zarathustra:" for he had learned from him some-
thing of the expression and modulation of language, and per-
[194]
ON PASSING- BY
haps liked also to borrow from the store of his wisdom. And
the fool talked thus to Zarathustra:
O Zarathustra, here is the great city: here hast thou nothing
to seek and everything to lose.
Why wouldst thou wade through this mire? Have pity upon
thy foot! Spit rather on the gate of the city, and turn back!
Here is the hell for anchorites' thoughts: here are great
thoughts seethed alive and boiled small.
Here do all great sentiments decay: here may only rattle-
boned sensations rattle!
Smellest thou not already the shambles and cookshops of
the spirit? Steamcth not this city with the fumes of slaughtered
spirit?
Secst thou not the souls hanging like limp dirty rags? And
they make newspapers also out of these rags!
Hearest thou not how spirit hath here become a verbal
game? Loathsome verbal swill doth it vomit forth! And they
make newspapers also out of this verbal swill.
They hound one another, and know not whither! They in-
flame one another, and know not why! They tinkle with their
pinchbeck, they jingle with their gold.
They are cold, and seek warmth from distilled waters: they
are inflamed, and seek coolness from frozen spirits; they are
all sick and sore through public opinion.
All lusts and vices are here at home; but here there are also
the virtuous; there is much appointable appointed virtue:
Much appointable virtue with scribe-fingers, and hardy
sitting-flesh and waiting-flesh, blessed with small breast-stars,
and padded, haunchless daughters.
There is here also much piety, and much faithful spittle-
licking and spittle-hacking, before the God of Hosts.
[195]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
"From on high," drippeth the star, and the gracious spittle;
for the higfy longeth every starless bosom.
The moon hath its court, and the court hath its moon-
calves: unto all, however, that cometh from the court do the
mendicant people pray, and all appointable mendicant virtues.
"I serve, thou servest, we serve" so prayeth all appoint-
able virtue to the prince: that the merited star may at last stick
on the slender breast!
But the moon still revolveth around all that is earthly: so
revolveth also the prince around what is earthliest of all
that, however, is the gold of the shopman.
The God of the Hosts of war is not the God of the golden
bar; the prince proposcth, but the shopman disposeth!
By all that is luminous and strong and good in thee, O Zara-
thustra! Spit on this city of shopmen and return back!
Here flowcth all blood putridly and tepidly and frothily
through all veins: spit on the great city, which is the great
slum where all the scum f rotheth together!
Spit on the city of compressed souls and slender breasts, <A
pointed eyes and sticky fingers
On the city of the obtrusive, the brazen-faced, the pen-
demagogues and tongue-demagogues, the overheated ambi-
tious:
Where everything maimed, ill-famed, lustful, untrustful,
over-mellow, sickly-yellow and seditious, festereth perni-
ciously:
Spit on the great city and turn back!
Here, however, did Zarathustra interrupt the foaming fool,
and shut his mouth.
Stop this at once! called out Zarathustra, long have thy
speech and thy species disgusted me!
[196]
ON PASSING- BY
Why didst thou live so long by the swamp, that thou thy-
self hadst to become a frog and a toad?
Floweth there not a tainted, frothy, swamp-blood in thine
own veins, when thou hast thus learned to croak and revile?
Why wentest thou not into the forest? Or why didst thou
not till the ground? Is the sea not full of green islands?
I despise thy contempt; and when thou warnedst me why
didst thou not warn thyself?
Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird
take wing; but not out of the swamp!
They call thee mine ape, thou foaming fool: but I call thee
my grunting-pig, by thy grunting, thou spoilcst even my
praise of folly.
What was it that first made thee grunt? Because no one
sufficiently flattered thee: therefore didst thou seat thyself
beside this filth, that thou mightest have cause for much grunt-
ing,
That thou mightest have cause for much vengeance! For
vengeance, thou vain fool, is all thy foaming; I have divined
thee well!
But thy fools'-word injureth me, even when thou art right!
And even if Zarathustra's word were a hundred times justified,
thou wouldst ever do wrong with my word!
Thus spake Zarathustra. Then did he look on the great city
and sighed, and was long silent. At last he spake thus:
I loathe also this great city, and not only this fool. Here and
there there is nothing to better, nothing to worsen.
Woe to this great city! And I would that I already saw the
pillar of fire in which it will be consumed!
For such pillars of fire must precede the great noontide. But
this hath its'time and its own fate.
[
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
This precept, however, give I unto thee, in parting, thou
fool: Where one can no longer love, there should one pass
by!
Thus spake Zarathustra, and passed by the fool and the
great city.
52. The Apostates
AH, LIETH everything already withered and grey which but
lately stood green and many-hued on this meadow! And how
much honey of hope did I carry hence into my beehives!
Those young hearts have already all become old and not
old even! only weary, ordinary, comfortable: they declare it:
"We have again become pious."
Of late did I sec them run forth at early morn with valorous
steps: but the feet of their knowledge became weary, and now
do they malign even their morning valour!
Verily, many of them once lifted their legs like the dancer;
to them winked the laughter of my wisdom: then did they
bethink themselves. Just now have I seen them bent down to
creep to the cross.
Around light and liberty did they once flutter like gnats and
young poets. A little older, a little colder: and already are they
mystifiers, and mumblcrs and mollycoddles.
Did perhaps their hearts despond, because lonesomeness
had swallowed me like a whale? Did their ear perhaps hearken
[198]
TH E APOSTATES
yearningly-long for me in vain, and for my trumpet-notes and
herald-calls?
Ah! Ever are there but few of those whose hearts have
persistent courage and exuberance; and in such remaineth also
the spirit patient. The rest, however, are coieardly.
The rest: these are always the great majority, the common-
place, the superfluous, the far-too many those all are
cowardly!
Him who is of my type, will also the experiences of my type
meet on the way: so that his first companions must be corpses
and buffoons.
His second companions, however they will call themselves
his believers, will be a living host, with much love, much
folly, much unbearded veneration.
To those believers shall he who is of my type among men
not bind his heart; in those spring-times and many-hued
meadows shall he not believe, who knoweth the fickly faint-
hearted human species!
Could they do otherwise, then would they also will other-
wise. The half-and-half spoil every whole. That leaves become
withered, what is there to lament about that!
Let them go and fall away, O Zarathustra, and do not
lament! Better even to blow amongst them with rustling
winds,
Blow amongst those leaves, O Zarathustra, that every-
thing withered may run away from thee the faster!
"We have again become pious" so do those apostates con-
fess; and some of them are still too pusillanimous thus to
confess.
[199]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Unto them I look into the eye, before them I say it unto
their face and unto the blush on their cheeks: Ye are those who
again pray!
It is however a shame to pray! Not for all, but for thee, and
me, and whoever hath his conscience in his head. For thee
it is a shame to pray!
Thou knowest it well: the faint-hearted devil in thee, which
would fain fold its arms, and place its hands in its bosom, and
take it easier: this faint-hearted devil persuadeth thee that
" there is a God!"
Thereby, however, dost thou belong to the light-dreading
type, to whom light never permitteth repose: now must thou
daily thrust thy head deeper into obscurity and vapour!
And verily, thou choosest the hour well : for just now do the
nocturnal birds again fly abroad. The hour hath come for all
light-dreading people, the vesper hour and leisure hour, when
they do not "take leisure."
I hear it and smell it: it hath come their hour for hunt and
procession, not indeed for a wild hunt, but for a tame, lame,
snuffling, soft-treaders', soft-prayers' hunt,
For a hunt after susceptible simpletons: all mouse-traps
for the heart have again been set! And whenever I lift a cur-
tain, a night-moth rusheth out of it.
Did it perhaps squat there along with another night-moth?
For everywhere do I smell small concealed communities; and
wherever there are closets there are new devotees therein, and
the atmosphere of devotees.
They sit for long evenings beside one another, and say: "Let
us again become like little children and say, 'good God!' "
ruined in mouths and stomachs by the pious confectioners.
Or they look for long evenings at a crafty, lurking cross-
[ 200 ]
THE APOSTATES
spider, that prcacheth prudence to the spiders themselves, and
teacheth that "under crosses it is good for cobweb-spinning!"
Or they sit all day at swamps with angle-rods, and on that
account think themselves profound; but whoever fisheth where
there are no fish, I do not even call him superficial!
Or they learn in godly-gay style to play the harp with a
hymn-poet, who would fain harp himself into the heart of
young girls: for he hath tired of old girls and their praises.
Or they learn to shudder with a learned semi-madcap, who
waiteth in darkened rooms for spirits to come to him and
the spirit runneth away entirely!
Or they listen to an old roving howl- and growl-piper, who
hath learned from the sad winds the sadness of sounds; now
pipeth he as the wind, and preacheth sadness in sad strains.
And some of them have even become night-watchmen: they
know now how to blow horns, and go about at night and
awaken old things which have long fallen asleep.
Five words about old things did I hear yesternight at the
garden- wall: they came from such old, sorrowful, arid night-
watchmen.
"For a father he careth not sufficiently for his children:
human fathers do this better!"
"He is too old! He now careth no more for his children,"
answered the other night-watchman.
"Hath he then children? No one can prove it unless he him-
self prove it! I have long wished that he would for once prove
it thoroughly."
"Prove? As if he had ever proved anything! Proving is diffi-
cult to him; he layeth great stress on one's believing him."
"Ay! Ay! Belief savcth him; belief in him. That is the way
with old people! So it is with us also!"
[ 201 ]
i'HUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Thus spake to each other the two old night-watchmen and
light-scarers, and tooted thereupon sorrowfully on their
horns: so did it happen yesternight at the garden-wall.
To me, however, did the heart writhe with laughter, and
was like to break; it knew not where to go, and sunk into the
midriff.
Verily, it will be my death yet to choke with laughter when
I see asses drunken, and hear night-watchmen thus doubt
about God.
Hath the time not long since passed for all such doubts?
Who may nowadays awaken such old slumbering, light shun-
ning things!
With the old Deities hath it long since come to an end:
and verily, a good joyful Deity-end had they!
They did not "begloom" themselves to death that do
people fabricate! On the contrary, they laughed themselves
to death once on a time!
That took place when the ungodliest utterance came from a
God himself the utterance: "There is but one God! Thou
shalt have no other gods before me!"
An old grim-beard of a God, a jealous one, forgot him-
self in such wise:
And all the gods then laughed, and shook upon their
thrones, and exclaimed: "Is it not just divinity that there are
gods, but no God?'*
I le that hath an ear let him hear.
Thus talked Zarathustra in the city he loved, which is sur-
named "The Pied Cow." For from here he had but two days
to travel to reach once more his cave and his animals; his soul,
however, rejoiced unceasingly on account of the nighness of
his return home.
[ 202 ]
THE RETURN HOME
. The Return Home
O LONESOMENESS! my home, loncsomcncss! Too long have I
lived wildly in wild remoteness, to return to thee without tears!
Now threaten me with the finger as mothers threaten; now
smile upon me as mothers smile; now say just: "Who was it
that lil^e a whirlwind once rushed away from me?
Who when departing called out: Too long have I sat
with lonesomeness; there have I unlearned silence!' That hast
thou learned now surely?
O Zarathustra, everything do I know; and that thou wert
more -forsaken aihongst the many, thou unique one, than thou
ever wcrt with me!
One thing is forsakenness, another matter is lonesomeness:
that hast thou now learned! And that amongst men thou wilt
ever be wild and strange:
Wild and strange even when they love thee: for above all
they want to be treated indulgently!
Here, however, art thou at home and house with thyself;
here canst thou utter everything, and unbosom all motives;
nothing is here ashamed of concealed, congealed feelings.
Here do all things come caressingly to thy talk and flatter
thee: for they want to ride upon thy back. On every simile dost
thou here ride to every truth.
Uprightly and openly mayest thou here talk to all things;
and verily, it soundeth as praise in their ears, for one to talk
to all things directly!
Another matter, however, is forsakenness. For, dost thou re-
member, O Zarathustra? When thy bird screamed overhead,
[ 203 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
when thou stoodest in the forest, irresolute, ignorant where to
go, beside a corpse:
When thou spakest: 'Let mine animals lead me! More
dangerous have I found it among men than among animals:'
' That was forsakenness!
And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thou sattest
in thine isle, a well of wine giving and granting amongst empty
buckets, bestowing and distributing amongst the thirsty:
Until at last thou alone sattest thirsty amongst the
drunken ones, and wailedst nightly: 'Is taking not more
blessed than giving? And stealing yet more blessed than
taking?' That was forsakenness!
And dost thou remember, O Zarathustra? When thy stillest
hour came and drove thee forth from thyself, when with
wicked whispering it said: 'Speak and succumb!'
When it disgusted thee with all thy waiting and silence,
and discouraged thy humble courage: That was forsaken-
ness!"
O lonesomencss! My home, lonesomeness! How blessedly
and tenderly speaketh thy voice unto me!
We do not question each other, we do not complain to each
other; we go together openly through open doors.
For all is open with thee and clear; and even the hours run
here on lighter feet. For in the dark, time weigheth heavier
upon one than in the light.
Here fly open unto me all beings' words and word-cabinets:
here all being wanteth to become words, here all becoming
wanteth to learn of me how to talk.
Down there, however all talking is in vain! There, for-
getting and passing-by are the best wisdom: that have I learned
now!
[204]
THE RETURN HOME
He who would understand everything in man must handle
everything. But for that I have too clean hands.
I do not like even to inhale their breath; alas! that I have
lived so long among their noise and bad breaths!
O blessed stillness around me! O pure odours around me!
How from a deep breast this stillness fetchcth pure breath!
How it hearkcneth, this blessed stillness!
But down there there speaketh everything, there is every-
thing misheard. If one announce one's wisdom with bells, the
shopmen in the market-place will out- jingle it with pennies!
Everything among them talketh; no one knoweth any longer
how to understand. Everything falleth into the water; nothing
falleth any longer into deep wells.
Everything among them talketh, nothing succeedeth any
longer and accomplished itself. Everything cackleth, but who
will still sit quietly on the nest and hatch eggs?
Everything among them talketh, everything is out-talked.
And that which yesterday was still too hard for time itself and
its tooth, hangeth today, outchamped and outchewed, from
the mouths of the men of today.
Everything among them talketh, everything is betrayed. And
what was once called the secret and secrecy of profound souls,
belongeth to-day to the street-trumpeters and other butterflies,
O human hubbub, thou wonderful thing! Thou noise in
dark streets! Now art thou again behind me: my greatest
danger lieth behind me!
In indulging and pitying lay ever my greatest danger; and
all human hubbub wisheth to be indulged and tolerated.
With suppressed truths, with fool's hand and befooled
heart, and rich in petty lies of pity: thus have I ever lived
among men.
[ 205 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Disguised did I sit amongst them, ready to misjudge myself
that I might endure them, and willingly saying to myself:
"Thou fool, thou dost not know men!"
One unlcarncth men when one liveth amongst them: there
is too much foreground in all men what can far-seeing, far-
longing eyes do there!
And, fool that I was, when they misjudged me, I indulged
them on that account more than myself, being habitually hard
on myself, and often even taking revenge on myself for the
indulgence.
Stung all over by poisonous flics, and hollowed like the
stone by many drops of wickedness: thus did I sit among them,
and still said to myself: "Innocent is everything petty of its
pettiness!"
Especially did I find those who call themselves "the good,"
the most poisonous flies; they sting in all innocence, they lie
in all innocence; how could they be just towards me!
He who liveth amongst the good pity teacheth him to lie.
Pity makcth stifling air for all free souls. For the stupidity of
the good is unfathomable.
To conceal myself and my ridies that did I learn down
there: for every one did I still find poor in spirit. It was the lie
of my pity, that I knew in every one.
That I saw and scented in every one, what was enough of
spirit for him, and what was too much!
Their stiff wise men: I call them wise, not stiff thus did I
learn to slur over words.
The grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases. Under old
rubbish rest bad vapours. One should not stir up the marsh.
One should live on mountains.
With blessed nostrils do I again breathe mountain-freedom.
[ 206 ]
THE THREE EVIL THINGS
Freed at last is my nose from the smell of all human hubbub!
With sharp breezes tickled, as with sparkling wine, sneezeth
my soul sneezeth, and shouteth self-congratulatinglyj
"Health to thee!"
Thus spake Zarathustra.
The Three Evil Things
i
IN MY dream, in my last morning-dream, I stood today on a
promontory beyond the world; I held a pair of scales, and
weighed the world.
Alas, that he rosy dawn came too early to me: she glowed
me awake, the jealous one! Jealous is she always of the glows of
my morning-dream.
Measurable by him who hath time, weighable by a good
weigher, attainable by strong pinions, divinable by divine nut-
crackers: thus did my dream find the world :
My dream, a bold sailor, half -ship, half-hurricane, silent as
the butterfly, impatient as the falcon: how had it the patience
and leisure to-day for world-weighing!
Did my wisdom perhaps speak secretly to it, my laughing,
wide-awake day- wisdom, which mocketh at all ' 'infinite
worlds' ' ? For it saith : ' 'Where force is, there becometh number
the master: it hath more force."
How confidently did my dream contemplate this finite
[ 207 1
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
world, not ncw-fangledly, not old-fangledly, not timidly, not
entreatingly:
As if a big round apple presented itself to my hand, a
ripe golden apple, with a coolly-soft, velvety skin: thus did
the world present itself unto me:
As if a tree nodded unto me, a broad-branched, strong-
willed tree, curved as a recline and a foot-stool for weary
travellers: thus did the world stand on my promontory:
As if delicate hands carried a casket towards me a casket
open for the delectation of modest adoring eyes: thus did the
world present itself before me today:
Not riddle enough to scare human love from it, not solu-
tion enough to put to sleep human wisdom: a humanly good
thing was the world to me to-day, of which such bad things are
said!
How I thank my morning-dream that I thus at today's
dawn, weighed the world! As a humanly good thing did it
come unto me, this dream and heart-comforter!
And that I may do the like by day, and imitate and copy its
best, now will I put the three worst things on the scales, and
weigh them humanly well.
He who taught to bless taught also to curse: what are the
three best cursed things in the world? These will I put on the
scales.
Voluptuousness, passion for power, and selfishness: these
three things have hitherto been best cursed, and have been in
worst and falsest repute these three things will I weigh
humanly well.
Well! here is my promontory, and there is the sea it
rolleth hither unto me, shaggily and f awningly, the old, faith-
ful, hundred-headed dog-monster that I love!
Well! Here will I hold the scales over the weltering sea: and
[208}
THE THREE EVIL THINGS
also a witness do I choose to look on thee, the anchorite-tree,
thee, the strong-odoured, broad-arched tree that I love!
On what bridge goeth the now to the hereafter? By what
constraint doth the high stoop to the low? And what enjoineth
even the highest still to grow upwards?
Now stand the scales poised and at rest: three heavy ques-
tions have I thrown in; three heavy answers carrieth the other
scale.
Voluptuousness: unto all hair-shirted despisers of the body,
a sting and stake; and, cursed as "the world," by all back-
worldsmen: for it mocketh and befooleth all erring, misin-
ferring teachers.
Voluptuousness: to the rabble, the slow fire at which it is
burnt; to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the prepared
heat and stew furnace.
Voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free,
the garden-happiness of the earth, all the future's thanks-over-
flow to the present.
Voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison; to
the lion-willed, however, the great cordial, and the reverently
saved wine of wines.
Voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher
happiness and highest hope. For to many is marriage promised,
and more than marriage,
To many that are more unknown to each other than man
and woman: and who hath fully understood how unknown
to each other are man and woman!
Voluptuousness: but I will have hedges around my
[ 209 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
thoughts, and even around my words, lest swine and liber-
tine should break into my gardens!
Passion for power: the glowing scourge of the hardest of
the heart-hard; the cruel torture reserved for the cruellest
themselves; the gloomy flame of living pyres.
Passion for power: the wicked gadfly which is mounted on
the vainest peoples; the scorncr of all uncertain virtue; which
rideth on every horse and on every pride.
Passion for power: the earthquake which breaketh and up-
breaketh all that is rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling,
punitive demolisher of whited sepulchres; the flashing inter-
rogative-sign beside premature answers.
Passion for power: before whose glance man crecpeth and
croucheth and drudgeth, and becometh lower than the serpent
and the swine: until at last great contempt crieth out of
him ,
Passion for power: the terrible teacher of great contempt,
which preachcth to their face to cities and empires: "Away
with thce!" until a voice crieth out of themselves: "Away
with me!"
Passion for power: which, however, mounteth alluringly
even to the pure and lonesome, and up to self-satisfied eleva-
tions, glowing like a love that painteth puqile felicities allur-
ingly on earthly heavens.
Passion for power: but who would call it passion, when the
height longeth to stoop for power! Verily, nothing sick or dis-
eased is there in such longing and descending!
That the lonesome height may not forever remain lone-
some and self-sufficing; that the mountains may come to the
valleys and the winds of the heights to the plains:
Oh, who could find the right prenomen and honouring name
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THE THREE EVIL THINGS
for such longing! "Bestowing virtue" thus did Zarathustra
once name the unnamable.
And then it happened also, and verily, it happened for the
first time! that his word blessed selfishness, the wholesome,
healthy selfishness, that springeth from the powerful soul:
From the powerful soul, to which the high body apper-
taineth, the handsome, triumphing, .refreshing body, around
which everything becometh a mirror:
The pliant, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol
and epitome is the self-enjoying soul. Of such bodies and souls
the self -enjoyment calleth itself "virtue."
With its words of good and bad doth such self -enjoyment
shelter itself as with sacred groves; with the names of its hap-
piness doth it banish from itself everything contemptible.
Away from itself doth it banish everything cowardly; it
saith: "Bad that is cowardly!" Contemptible seem to it the
ever-solicitous, the sighing, the complaining, and whoever
pick up the most trifling advantage.
It dcspiseth also all bitter-sweet wisdom: for verily, there is
also wisdom that bloometh in the dark, a night-shade wisdom,
which ever sigheth: "All is vain!"
Shy distrust is regarded by it as base, and every one who
wanteth oaths instead of looks and hands: also all over-dis-
trustful wisdom, for such is the mode of cowardly souls.
Baser still it regardcth the obsequious, doggish one, who
immediately lieth on his back, the submissive one; and there is
also wisdom that is submissive, and doggish, and pious, and
obsequious.
Hateful to it altogether, and a loathing, is he who will nevei
defend himself, he who swalloweth down poisonous spittle
and bad looks, the all-too-patient one, the all-endurer, the all-
satisfied one: for that is the mode of slaves.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Whether they be servile before gods and divine spurnings,
or before men and stupid human opinions : at all kinds of slaves
doth it spit, this blessed selfishness!
Bad: thus doth it call all that is spirit-broken, and sordidly-
servile constrained, blinking eyes, depressed hearts, and the
false submissive style, which kisseth with broad cowardly lips.
And spurious wisdom: so doth it call all the wit that slaves,
and hoary-headed and weary ones affect; and especially all the
cunning, spurious-witted, curious-witted foolishness of priests!
The spurious wise, however, all the priests, the world-weary,
and those whose souls are of feminine and servile nature oh,
how hath their game all along abused selfishness!
And precisely that was to be virtue and was to be called
virtue to abuse selfishness! And "selfless" so did they wish
themselves with good reason, all those world-weary cowards
and cross-spiders!
But to all those cometh now the day, the change, the sword
of judgment, the great noontide: then shall many things be
revealed!
And he who proclaimed! the ego wholesome and holy, and
selfishness blessed, verily, he, the prognosticator, speaketh also
what he knoweth: "Behold, it cometh, it is night, the great
noontide!"
Thus spake Zarathustra.
THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY
55. The Spirit of Gravity
MY MOUTHPIECE is of the people: too coarsely and cordially
do I talk for Angora rabbits. And still stranger soundeth my
word unto all ink-fish and pen-foxes.
My hand is a fool's hand: woe unto all tables and walls,
and whatever hath room for fool's sketching, fool's scrawling!
My foot is a horse-foot; therewith do I trample and trot
over stick and stone, in the fields up and down, and am be-
devilled with delight in all fast racing.
My stomach is surely an eagle's stomach? For it preferrcth
lamb's flesh. Certainly it is a bird's stomach.
Nourished with innocent things, and with few, ready and
impatient to fly, to fly away that is now my nature: why
should there not be something of bird-nature therein!
And especially that I am hostile to the spirit of gravity,
that is bird-nature: verily, deadly hostile, supremely hostile,
originally hostile! Oh, whither hath my hostility not flown
and misflown!
Thereof could I sing a song and will sing it: though I
be alone in an empty house, and must sing it to mine own ears.
Other singers are there, to be sure, to whom only the full
house maketh the voice soft, the hand eloquent, the eye ex-
pressive, the heart wakeful: those do I not resemble.
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
He who one day tcachclh men to fly will have shifted all
landmarks; to him will all landmarks themselves fly into the
air; the earth will he christen anew as "the light body."
The ostrich runneth faster than the fastest horse, but it also
thrusteth its head heavily into the heavy earth: thus is it with
the man who cannot yet fly.
Heavy unto him are earth and life, and so willeth the spirit
of gravity! But he who would become light, and be a bird,
must love himself: thus do / teach.
Not, to be sure, with the love of the sick and infected, for
with them stinketh even self-love!
One must learn to love oneself thus do I teach with a
wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with
oneself, and not go roving about.
Such roving about christeneth itself "brotherly love"; with
these words hath there hitherto been the best lying and dis-
sembling, and especially by those who have been burdensome
to every one.
And verily, it is no commandment for today and tomorrow
to learn to love oneself. Rather is it of all arts the finest,
subtlest, last and patientest
For to its possessor is all possession well concealed, and of all
treasure-pits one's own is last excavated so causeth the spirit
of gravity.
Almost in the cradle are we apportioned with heavy words
and worths: "good" and "evil" so calleth itself this dowry.
For the sake of it we are forgiven for living.
And therefore suffereth one little children to come unto one,
THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY
to forbid them betimes to love themselves so causeth the
spirit of gravity.
And we we bear loyally what is apportioned unto us, on
hard shoulders, over rugged mountains! And when we sweat,
then do people say to us: "Yea, life is hard to bear!'*
But man himself only is hard to bear! The reason thereof
is that he carrieth too many extraneous things on his shoul-
ders. Like the camel kneeleth he down, and letteth himself be
well laden.
Especially the strong load-bearing man in whom reverence
resideth. Too many extraneous heavy words and worths
loadeth he upon himself then scemeth life to him a desert!
And verily! Many a thing also that is our own is hard to
bear! And many internal things in man arc like the oyster-
repulsive and slippery and hard to grasp;
So that an elegant shell, with elegant adornment, must plead
for them. But this art also must one learn: to have a shell, and
a fine appearance, and sagacious blindness!
Again, it deceiveth about many things in man, that many a
shell is poor and pitiable, and too much of a shell. Much con-
cealed goodness and power is never dreamt of; the choices*
dainties find no tasters!
Women know that, the choicest of them: a little fatter a
little leaner oh, how much fate is in so little!
Man is difficult to discover, and unto himself most difficult
of all; often lieth the spirit concerning the soul. So causeth the
spirit of gravity.
He, however, hath discovered himself who saith: This is my
good and evil: therewith hath he silenced the mole and the
dwarf, who say: "Good for all, evil for all."
Verily, neither do I like those who call everything good, and
this world the best of all. Those do I call the all-satisfied.
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA ,
All-satisfiedncss, which knoweth how to taste everything,
that is not the best taste! I honour the refractory, fastidious
tongues and stomachs, which have learned to say "I" and
"Yea" and "Nay."
To chew and digest everything, however that is the genu-
ine swine-nature! Ever to say YE-A that hath only the ass
learned, and those like it!
Deep yellow and hot red so wanteth my taste it mixeth
blood with all colours. He, however, who whitewasheth his
house, betrayeth unto me a whitewashed soul.
With mummies, some fall in love; others with phantoms:
both alike hostile to all flesh and blood oh, how repugnant
are both to my taste! For I love blood.
And there will I not reside and abide where every one
spitteth and speweth: that is now my taste, rather would I
live amongst thieves and perjurers. Nobody carrieth gold in
his mouth.
Still more repugnant unto me, however, are all lick-spittles;
and the most repugnant animal of man that I found, did I
christen "parasite": it would not love, and would yet live by
love.
Unhappy do I call all those who have only one choice:
either to become evil beasts, or evil beast-tamers. Amongst such
would I not build 1 my tabernacle.
Unhappy do I also call those who have ever to wait, they
are repugnant to my taste all the toll-gatherers and traders,
and kings, and other landkeepers and shopkeepers.
Verily, I learned waiting also, and thoroughly so, but only
waiting for myself. And above all did I learn standing and
walking and running and leaping and climbing and dancing.
This however is my teaching: he who wisheth one day to fly,
[ 216 ]
THE SPIRIT OF GRAVITY
must first learn standing and walking and running and climb-
ing and dancing: one doth not fly into flying!
With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with
nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of
perception seemed to me no small bliss;
To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light,
certainly, but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and ship-
wrecked ones!
By divers ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not
by one ladder did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth
into my remoteness.
And unwillingly only did I ask my way that was always
counter to my taste! Rather did I question and test the ways
themselves.
A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling:
and verily, one must also learn to answer such questioning!
That, however, is my taste:
Neither a good nor a bad taste, but my taste, of which I
have no longer either shame or secrecy.
"This is now my way, where is yours? 1 ' Thus did I
answer those who asked me "the way." For the way it doth
not exist!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
56. Old and New Tables
HERE do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and
also new half-written tables. When cometh mine hour?
The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once
more will I go unto men.
For that hour do I now wait: for first must the signs come
unto me that it is mine hour namely, the laughing lion with
the flock of doves.
Meanwhile do I talk to myself as one who hath time. No one
telleth me anything new, so I tell myself mine own story.
When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an
old infatuation: all of them thought they had long known
what was good and bad for men.
An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse
about virtue; and he who wished to sleep well spake of "good"
and "bad" ere retiring to rest.
This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that no one
yet-knoweth what is good and bad: unless it be the creating
one!
It is he, however, who createth man's goal, and giveth to
the earth its meaning and its future: he only effecteth it that
aught is good or bad.
And I bade them upset their old academic chairs, and
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wherever that old infatuation had sat; I bade them laugh at
their great moralists, their saints, their poets, and their
saviours.
At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever
had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life.
On their great grave-highway did I seat myself, and even
beside the carrion and vultures and I laughed at all their
bygone and its mellow decaying glory.
Verily, like penitential preachers and fools did I cry wrath
and shame on all their greatness and smallness. Oh, that their
best is so very small! Oh, that their worst is so very small!
Thus did I laugh.
Thus did my wise longing, born in the mountains, cry and
laugh in me; a wild wisdom, verily! my great pinion-
rustling longing.
And oft did it carry me off and up and away and in the midst
of laughter; then flew I quivering like an arrow with sun-
intoxicated rapture:
Out into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen,
into warmer souths than ever sculptor conceived, where god?
in their dancing arc ashamed of all clothes:
(That I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the
poets: and verily I am ashamed that I have still to be a poet! )
Where all becoming seemed to me dancing of gods, and
wantoning of gods, and the world unloosed and unbridled and
fleeing back to itself:
As an eternal self-fleeing and re-seeking of one another
of many gods, as the blessed self-contradicting, recommun-
ing, and refraternising with one another of many gods:
Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments,
where necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with
the goad of freedom:
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Where I also found again mine old devil and arch-enemy,
the spirit of gravity, and all that it created: constraint, law,
necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and
evil :
For must there not be that which is danced over, danced be-
yond? Must there not, for the sake of the nimble, the nimblest,
be moles and clumsy dwarfs?
There was it also where I picked up from the path the word
"Superman," and that man is something that must be sur-
passed.
That man is a bridge and not a goal rejoicing over his
noontides and evenings, as advances to new rosy dawns:
The Zarathustra word of the great noontide, and what-
ever else I have hung up over men like purple evening-after-
glows.
Verily, also new stars did I make them see, along with new
nights; and over cloud and day and night, did I spread out
laughter like a gay-coloured canopy.
I taught them all my poetisation and aspiration: to com-
pose and collect into unity what is fragment in man, and riddle
and fearful chance;
As composer, riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance, did
I teach them to create the future, and all that hath been to re-
deem by creating.
The past of man to redeem, and every "It was" to transform,
until the Will saith: "But so did I will it! So shall I will it"
This did I call redemption; this alone taught I them to
call redemption.
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, - ,
Now do I await my redemption that I may go unto them
for the last time.
For once more will I go unto men: amongst them will my
sun set; in dying will I give them my choicest gift!
From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the
exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of in-
exhaustible riches,
So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with golden
oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in
beholding it.
Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he
here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new
tables half-written.
4
Behold, here is a new table; but where are my brethren who
will carry it with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?
Thus demandeth my great love to the remotest ones: be not
considerate of thy neighbour! Man is something that must be
surpassed.
There are many divers ways and modes of surpassing: see
thou thereto! But only a buffoon thinketh: "man can also be
overleapt."
Surpass thyself even in thy neighbour: and a right which
thou canst seize upon, shalt thou not allow to be given thee!
What thou doest can no one do to thee again. Lo, there is no
requital.
He who cannot command himself shall obey. And many a
one can command himself, but still sorely lacketh self-obedi-
ence!
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Thus wisheth the type of noble souls: they desire to have
nothing gratuitously, least of all, life.
He who is of the populace wisheth to live gratuitously; we
others, however, to whom life hath given itself we are ever
considering what we can best give in return!
And verily, it is a noble dictum which saith: "What life
promiseth us, that promise will ice keep to life!"
One should not wish to enjoy where one doth not contribute
to the enjoyment. And one should not with to enjoy!
For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things.
Neither like to be sought for. One should have them, but one
should rather seek for guilt and pain!
O my brethren, he who is a firstling is ever sacrificed. Now,
however, are we firstlings!
We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars, we all burn and
broil in honour of ancient idols.
Our best is still young: this exciteth old palates. Our flesh
is tender, our skin is only lambs' skin: how could we not
excite old idol-priests!
In ourselves dwelleth he still, the old idol-priest, who
broileth our best for his banquet. Ah, my brethren, how could
firstlings fail to be sacrifices!
But so wisheth our type; and I love those who do not wish
to preserve themselves, the down-going ones do I love with
mine entire love: for they go beyond.
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To be true that can few be! And he who can, will not!
Least of all, however, can the good be true.
Oh, those good ones! Good men never speak the truth. For
the spirit, thus to be good, is a malady.
They yield, those good ones, they submit themselves; their
heart repeateth, their soul obeyeth: he, however, who obeyeth,
doth not listen to himself!
All that is called evil by the good, must come together in
order that one truth may be born. O my brethren, are ye also
evil enough for this truth?
The daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel Nay,
the tedium, the cutting-into-the-quick how seldom do these
come together! Out of such seed, however is truth produced!
Beside the bad conscience hath hitherto grown all knowl-
edge! Break up, break up, ye discerning ones, the old tables!
8
When the water hath planks, when gangways and railings
o'erspan the stream, verily, he is not believed who then saith:
"All is in flux."
But even the simpletons contradict him. "What?" say the
simpletons, "all in flux? Planks and railings are still over the
stream!
"Over the stream all is stable, all the values of things, the
bridges and bearings, all 'good' and 'evil': these are all
stable!"
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Cometh, however, the hard winter, the stream-tamer, then
learn even the wittiest distrust, and verily, not only the simple-
tons then say: "Should not everything stand still?"
"Fundamentally standeth everything still" that is an ap-
propriate winter doctrine, good cheer for an unproductive
period, a great comfort for winter-sleepers and fireside-
loungers.
"Fundamentally standeth everything still" : but contrary
thereto, preachcth the thawing wind!
The thawing wind, a bullock, which is no ploughing bullock
a furious bullock, a destroyer, which with angry horns
brcaketh the ice! The ice however breaketb gangways!
O my brethren, is not everything at present in flux? Have
not all railings and gangways fallen into the water? Who
would still bold on to "good" and "evil"?
"Woe to us! Hail to us! The thawing wind bloweth!"
Thus preach, my brethren, through all the streets!
There is an old illusion it is called good and evil. Around
soothsayers and astrologers hath hitherto revolved the orbit of
this illusion.
Once did one believe in soothsayers and astrologers; and
therefore did one believe, "Everything is fate: thou shalt, for
thoumust!"
Then again did one distrust all soothsayers and astrologers;
and therefore did one believe, "Everything is freedom: thou
canst, for thou wiliest!"
O my brethren, concerning the stars and the future there
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OLD AND NEW TABLES
hath hitherto been only illusion, and not knowledge; and
therefore concerning good and evil there hath hitherto been
only illusion and not knowledge!
10
"Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not slay!" such precepts
were once called holy; before them did one bow the knee and
the head, and take off one's shoes.
But I ask you: Where have there ever been better robbers
and slayers in the world than such holy precepts?
Is there not even in all life robbing and slaying? And for
such precepts to be called holy, was not truth itself thereby
slain?
Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contra-
dicted and dissuaded from life? O my brethren, break up,
break up for me the old tables!
11
It is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is aban-
doned,
Abandoned to the favour, the spirit and the madness of
every generation that cometh, and reinterpreted all that hath
been as its bridge!
A great potentate might arise, an artful prodigy, who with
approval and disapproval could strain and constrain all the
past, until it became for him a bridge, a harbinger, a herald,
and a cock-crowing.
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
This however is the other danger, and mine other sympathy:
he who is of the populace, his thoughts go back to his grand-
father, with his grandfather, however, doth time cease.
Thus is all the past abandoned: for it might some day hap-
pen for the populace to become master, and drown all time in
shallow waters.
Therefore, O my brethren, a new nobility is needed, which
shall be the adversary of all populace and potentate rule, and
shall inscribe anew the word "noble" on new tables.
For many noble ones are needed, and many kinds of noble
ones, JOY a new nobility! Or, as I once said in parable: "That is
just divinity, that there are gods, but no God!"
12
O my brethren, I consecrate you and point you to a new
nobility: ye shall become procreators and cultivators and
sowers of the future;
Verily, not to a nobility which ye could purchase like
traders with traders' gold; for little worth is all that hath its
price.
Let it not be your honour henceforth whence ye come, but
whither ye go! Your Will and your feet which seek to surpass
you let these be your new honour!
Verily, not that ye have served a prince of what account
are princes now! nor that ye have become a bulwark to that
which standeth, that it may stand more firmly.
Not that your family have become courtly at courts, and that
ye have learned gay-coloured, like the flamingo to stand
long hours in shallow pools:
(For ability-to-stand is a merit in courtiers; and all cour-
]
OLD AND NEW TABLES
tiers believe that unto blessedness after death pertaineth per-
mission-to-sitl)
Nor even that a Spirit called Holy, led your forefathers into
promised lands, which I do not praise: for where the worst of
all trees grew the cross, in that land there is nothing to
praise!
And verily, wherever this "Holy Spirit" led its knights,
always in such campaigns did goats and geese, and wry-
heads and guy-heads run -foremost!
O my brethren, not backward shall your nobility gaze, but
outward! Exiles shall ye be from all fatherlands and forefather-
lands!
Your children's land shall ye love: let this love be your new
nobility, the undiscovered in the remotest seas! For it do I bid
your sails search and search!
Unto your children shall ye make amends for being the chil-
dren of your fathers: all the past shall ye thus redeem! This
new table do I place over you!
13
"Why should one live? All is vain! To live that is to
thresh straw; to live that is to burn oneself and yet not get
warm."
Such ancient babbling still passeth for "wisdom"; because
it is old, however, and smelleth mustily, therefore is it the more
honoured. Even mould ennobleth.
Children might thus speak: they shun the fire because it hath
burnt them! There is much childishness in the old books of
wisdom.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And he who ever "thresheth straw," why should he be
allowed to rail at threshing! Such a fool one would have to
muzzle!
Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing with
them, not even good hunger: and then do they rail: "All is
vain!"
But to eat and drink well, my brethren, is verily no vain art!
Break up, break up for me the tables of the never- joyous ones!
14
"To the clean are all things clean" thus say the people. I,
however, say unto you: To the swine all things become swinish!
Therefore preach the visionaries and bowed-heads (whose
hearts are also bowed down) : "The world itself is a filthy
monster."
For these are all unclean spirits; especially those, however,
who have no peace or rest, unless they see the world from the
backs hie the back worldsmen!
To those do I say it to the face, although it sound unpleas-
antly: the world resembleth man, in that it hath a backside,
so much is true!
There is in the world much filth: so much is true! But the
world itself is not therefore a filthy monster!
There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smelleth
badly: loathing itself createth wings, and fountain-divining
powers!
In the best there is still something to loathe; and the best is
still something that must be surpassed!
O my brethren, there is much wisdom in the fact that much
filth is in the world!
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IB
Such sayings did I hear pious backworldsmcn speak to their
consciences, and verily without wickedness or guile,
although there is nothing more guileful in the world, or more
wicked.
"Let the world be as it is! Raise not a fingenagainst it!"
"Let whoever will choke and stab and skin and scrape the
people: raise not a finger against it! Thereby will they learn
to renounce the world."
"And thine own reason this shalt thou thyself stifle and
choke; for it is a reason of this world, thereby wilt thou learn
thyself to renounce the world."
Shatter, shatter, O my brethren, those old tables of the
pious! Tatter the maxims of the world-maligners!
16
"He who learneth much unlcarneth all violent cravings"
that do people now whisper to one another in all the dark
lanes,
"Wisdom wearieth, nothing is worth while; thou shalt not
crave!" this new table found I hanging even in the public
markets.
Break up for me, O my brethren, break up also that new
table! The weary-o' -the- world put it up, and the preachers of
death and the jailer: for lo, it is also a sermon for slavery:
Because they learned badly and not the best, and everything
too early and everything too fast; because they ate badly: from
thence hath resulted their ruined stomach;
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
For a ruined stomach, is their spirit: // persuadeth to
death! For verily, my brethren, the spirit is a stomach!
Life is a well of delight, but to him in whom the ruined
stomach speaketh, the father of affliction, all fountains are
poisoned.
To discern: that is delight to the lion-willed! But he who
hath become weary, is himself merely "willed"; with him play
all the waves.
And such is always the nature of weak men: they lose them-
selves on their way. And at last asketh their weariness: "Why
did we ever go on the way? All is indifferent!"
To them soundeth it pleasant to have preached in their ears:
"Nothing is worth while! Ye shall not will!" That, however,
is a sermon for slavery.
O my brethren, a fresh blustering wind corqpth Zarathustra
unto all way- weary ones; many noses will he yet make sneeze!
Even through walls bloweth my free breath, and into
prisons and imprisoned spirits!
Willing emancipateth: for willing is creating: so do I teach.
And only for creating shall ye learn!
And also the learning shall ye learn only from me, the
learning well! He who hath ears let him hear!
17
There standeth the boat thither goeth it over, perhaps into
vast nothingness but who willeth to enter into this "Per-
haps"?
None of you want to enter into the death-boat! How should
ye then be world-weary ones!
World-weary ones! And have not even withdrawn from the
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OLD AND NEW TABLES
earth! Eager did I ^ver find you for the earth, amorous still of
your own earth- weariness!
Not in vain doth your lip hang down: a small worldly
wish still sitteth thereon! And in your eye floateth there not
a cloudlet of unforgotten earthly bliss?
There are on the earth many good inventions, some useful,
some pleasant: for their sake is the earth to be loved.
And many such good inventions arc there, that they are like
woman's breasts: useful at the same time, and pleasant.
Ye world-weary ones, however! Ye earth-idlers! You, shall
one beat with stripes! With stripes shall one again make you
sprightly limbs.
For if ye be not invalids, or decrepit creatures, of whom the
earth is weary, then are ye sly sloths, or dainty, sneaking
pleasure-cats. And if ye will not again run gaily, then shall ye
pass away!
To the incurable shall one not seek to be a physician: thus
teacheth Zarathustra: so shall ye pass away!
But more courage is needed to make an end than to make a
new verse: that do all physicians and poets know well.
18
O my brethren, there are tables which weariness framed,
and tables which slothfulness framed, corrupt slothfulness:
although they speak similarly, they want to be heard dif-
ferently.
See this languishing one! Only a span-breadth is he from
his goal; but from weariness hath he lain down obstinately in
the dust, this brave one!
From weariness yawneth he at the path, at the earth, at the
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
goal, and at himself: not a step further will he go, this
brave one!
Now gloweth the sun upon him, and the dogs lick at his
sweat: but he lieth there in his obstinacy and preferreth to
languish:
A span-breadth from his goal, to languish! Verily, ye will
have to drag him into his heaven by the hair of his head
this hero!
Better still that ye let him lie where he hath lain down, that
sleep may come unto him, the comforter, with cooling patter-
rain.
Let him lie, until of his own accord he awakeneth, until of
his own accord he repudiateth all weariness, and what weari-
ness hath taught through him!
Only, my brethren, see that ye scare the dogs away from
him, the idle skulkers, and all the swarming vermin:
All the swarming vermin of the "cultured, that feast
on the sweat of every hero!
19
I form circles around me and holy boundaries; ever fewer
ascend with me ever higher mountains: I build a mountain-
range out of ever holier mountains.
But wherever ye would ascend with me, O my brethren, take
care lest a parasite ascend with you!
A parasite: that is a reptile, a creeping, cringing reptile,
that trieth to fatten on your infirm and sore places.
And this is its art: it divineth where ascending souls are
weary, in your trouble and dejection, in your sensitive modesty,
doth it build its loathsome nest.
OLD AND NEW TABLES
Where the strong are weak, where the noble are all-too-
gentle there buildeth it its loathsome nest; the parasite liveth
where the great have small sore-places.
What is the highest of all species of being, and what is the
lowest? The parasite is the lowest species; he, however, who is
of the highest species feedcth most parasites.
For the soul which hath the longest ladder, and can go
deepest down: how could there fail to be most parasites upon
it?
The most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray
and rove furthest in itself; the most necessary soul, which out
of joy flingeth itself into chance:
The soul in Being, which plungeth into Becoming; the
possessing soul, which seeketh to attain desire and longing:
The soul fleeing from itself, which overtaketh itself in
the widest circuit; the wisest soul, unto which folly speaketh
most sweetly:
The soul most self-loving, in which all things have their
current and counter-current, their ebb and their flow: oh,
how could the loftiest soul fail to have the worst parasites?
O my brethren, am I then cruel? But I say: What falleth,
that shall one also push!
Everything of today it falleth, it decayeth; who would
preserve it! But I I wish also to push it!
Know ye the delight which rolleth stones into precipitous
depths? Those men of today, see just how they roll into my
depths!
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
A prelude am I to better players, O my brethren! An
example! Do according to mine example!
And him whom ye do not teach to fly, teach I pray you to
fall j aster!
21
I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swordsman,
one must also know whereon to use swordsmanship!
And often is it greater bravery to keep quiet and pass by,
that thereby one may reserve oneself for a worthier foe!
Yc shall only have foes to be hated; but not foes to be
despised: yc must be proud of your foes. Thus have I already
taught.
For the worthier foe, O my brethren, shall ye reserve your-
selves : therefore must ye pass by many a one,
Especially many of the rabble, who din your ears with
noise about people and peoples.
Keep your eye clear of their For and Against! There is there
much right, much wrong: he who looketh on becometh wroth.
Therein viewing, therein hewing they are the same thing:
therefore depart into the forests and lay your sword to sleep!
Go your ways! and let the people and peoples go theirs!
gloomy ways, verily, on which not a single hope glinteth any
more!
Let there the trader rule, where all that still glittereth is
traders' gold. It is the time of kings no longer: that which
now calleth itself the people is unworthy of kings.
See how these peoples themselves now do just like the
traders: they pick up the smallest advantage out of all kinds of
rubbish!
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OLD AND NEW TABLES
They lay lures for one another, they lure things out of one
another, that they call "good ncighbourliness." O blessed
remote period when a people said to itself: "I will be
master over peoples!"
For, my brethren, the best shall rule, the best also willeth
to rule! And where the teaching is different, there the best is
lacking.
If they had bread for nothing, alas! for what would they
cry! Their maintainment that is their true entertainment; and
they shall have it hard!
Beasts of prey, arc they: in their "working" there is even
plundering, in their "earning" there is even over-reaching!
Therefore shall they have it hard!
Better beasts of prey shall they thus become, subtler,
cleverer, more man-like: for man is the best beast of prey.
All the animals hath man already robbed of their virtues:
that is why of all animals it hath been hardest for man.
Only the birds are still beyond him. And if man should yet
learn to fly, alas! to what height would his rapacity fly!
Thus would I have man and woman: fit for war, the one;
fit for maternity, the other; both, however, fit for dancing with
head and legs.
And lost be the day to us in which a measure hath not been
danced. And false be every truth which hath not had laughter
along with it!
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
24
Your marriage-arranging: sec that it be not a bad arranging!
Ye have arranged too hastily: so there jolloweth therefrom
marriage-breaking!
And better marriage-breaking than marriage-bending, mar-
riage-lying! Thus spake a woman unto me: "Indeed, I broke
the marriage, but first did the marriage break me!"
The badly paired found I ever the most revengeful: they
make every one suffer for it that they no longer run singly.
On that account want I the honest ones to say to one an-
other: "We love each other: let us see to it that we maintain
our love! Or shall our pledging be blundering?"
"Give us a set term and a small marriage, that we may
see if we are fit for the great marriage! It is a great matter
always to be twain."
Thus do I counsel all honest ones; and what would be my
love to the Superman, and to all that is to come, if I should
counsel and speak otherwise!
Not only to propagate yourselves onwards but upwards
thereto, O my brethren, may the garden of marriage help you!
He who hath grown wise concerning old origins, lo, he will
at last seek after the fountains of the future and new origins.
O my brethren, not long will it be until neiv peoples shall
arise and new fountains shall rush down into new depths.
For the earthquake it choketh up many wells, it causeth
much languishing: but it bringeth also to light inner powers
and secrets.
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The earthquake discloseth new fountains. In the earthquake
of old peoples new fountains burst forth. *
And whoever calleth out: "Lo, here is a well for many
thirsty ones, one heart for many longing ones, one will for
many instruments": around him collecteth a people, that is
to say, many attempting ones.
Who can command, who must obey that is there at-
tempted! Ah, with what long seeking and solving and failing
and learning and re-attempting!
Human society: it is an attempt so I teach a long seek-
ing: it seeketh however the ruler!
An attempt, my brethren! And no "contract"! Destroy, I
pray you, destroy that word of the soft-hearted and half-and-
half!
SO
O my brethren! With whom licth the greatest danger to the
whole human future? Is it not with the good and just?
As those who say and feel in their hearts: "We already
know what is good and just, we possess it also; woe to those
who still seek thereafter!"
And whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm of the
good is the harmfulcst harm!
And whatever harm the world -maligners may do, the harm
of the good is the harmfulest harm!
O my brethren, into the hearts of the good and just looked
some one once on a time, who said: "They are the Pharisees."
But people did not understand him.
The good and just themselves were not free to understand
him; their spirit was imprisoned in their good conscience. The
stupidity of the good is unfathomably wise.
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
It is the truth, however, that the good must be Pharisees
they have no choice!
The good must crucify him who deviseth his own virtue!
That is the truth!
The second one, however, who discovered their country
the country, heart and soil of the good and just, it was he
who asked: "Whom do they hate most?"
The creator, hate they most, him who breaketh the tables
and old values, the breaker, him they call the law-breaker.
For the good they cannot create; they are always the be-
ginning of the end:
They crucify him who writeth new values on new tables,
they sacrifice unto themselves the future they crucify the
whole human future!
The good they have always been the beginning of the
end.
27
O my brethren, have ye also understood this word? And
what I once said of the "last man"?
With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human
future? Is it not with the good and just?
Break up, break up, I pray you, the good and just! O my
brethren, have ye understood also this word?
88
Ye flee from me? Ye are frightened? Ye tremble at this
word?
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O my brethren, when I enjoined you to break up the
good, and the tables of the good, then only did I embark man
on his high seas.
And now only cometh unto him the great terror, the great
outlook, the great sickness, the great nausea, the great sea-
sickness.
False shores and false securities did the good teach you; in
the lies of the good were ye born and bred. Everything hath
been radically contorted and distorted by the good.
But he who discovered the country of "man," discovered
also the country of "man's future." Now shall ye be sailors
for me, brave, patient!
Keep yourselves up betimes, my brethren, learn to keep
yourselves up! The sea stormeth : many seek to raise themselves
again by you.
The sea stormeth: all is in the sea. Well! Cheer up! Ye old
seaman-hearts!
What of fatherland! Thither striveth our helm where our
children's land is! Thitherwards, stormier than the sea,
stormeth our great longing!
"Why so hard!" said to the diamond one day the char-
coal; "are we then not near relatives?"
Why so soft? O my brethren; thus do / ask you: are ye then
not my brethren?
Why so soft, so submissive and yielding? Why is there so
much negation and abnegation in your hearts? Why is there
so little fate in your looks?
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THUS, SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And if yc will not be fates and inexorable ones, how can
ye one day conquer with me?
And if your hardness will not glance and cut and chip to
pieces, how can ye one day create with me?
For the creators are hard. And blessedness must it seem to
you to press your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,
Blessedness to write upon the will of millenniums as
upon brass, harder than brass, nobler than brass. Entirely
hard is only the noblest.
This new table, O my brethren, put I up over you: Become
hard!
O thou, my Will! Thou change of every need, my needful-
ness! Preserve me from all small victories!
Thou fatedness of my soul, which I call fate! Thou In-meJ
Over-me! Preserve and spare me for one great fate!
And thy last greatness, my Will, spare it for thy last that
thou mayest be inexorable in thy victory! Ah, who hath not
succumbed to his victory!
Ah, whose eye hath not bedimmed in this intoxicated twi-
light! Ah, whose foot hath not faltered and forgotten in vic-
tory how to stand!
That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noon-
tide: ready and ripe like the glowing ore, the lightning-bearing
cloud, and the swelling milk-udder:
Ready for myself and for my most hidden Will: a bow
eager for its arrow, an arrow eager for its star:
A star, ready and ripe in its noontide, glowing, pierced,,
blessed, by annihilating sun-arrows:
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THE CONVALESCENT
A sun itself, and an inexorable. sun-will, ready for anni-
hilation in victory!
O Will, thou change of every need, my needfulness! Spare
me for one great victory!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
. The Convalescent
ONE morning, not long after his return to his cave, Zara-
thustra sprang up from his couch like a madman, crying with a
frightful voice, and acting as if some one still lay on the couch
who did not wish to rise. Zarathustra' s voice also resounded
in such a manner that his animals came to him frightened, and
out of all the neighbouring caves and lurking-places all the
creatures slipped away flying, fluttering, creeping or leaping,
according to their variety of foot or wing. Zarathustra, how-
ever, spake these words:
Up, abysmal thought out of my depth! I am thy cock and
morning dawn, thou overslept reptile: Up! Up! My voice shall
soon crow thee awake!
Unbind the fetters of thine ears: listen! For I wish to hear
thee! Up! Up! There is thunder enough to make the very graves
listen!
And rub the sleep and all the dimness and blindness out of
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
thine eyes! Hear me also with thine eyes: my voice is a medi-
cine even for those born blind.
And once thou art awake, then shalt thou ever remain awake.
It is not my custom to awake great-grandmothers out of their
sleep that I may bid them sleep on!
Thou stirrest, stretchest thyself, wheezest? Up! Up! Not
wheeze, shalt thou, but speak unto me! Zarathustra calleth
thee, Zarathustra the godless!
I, Zarathustra, the advocate of living, the advocate of suffer-
ing, the advocate of the circuit thee do I call, my most
abysmal thought!
Joy to me! Thou comest, I hear thee! Mine abyss speaketh,
my lowest depth have I turned over into the light!
Joy to me! Come hither! Give me thy hand ha! let be!
aha! Disgust, disgust, disgust alas to me!
Hardly, however, had Zarathustra spoken these words,
when he fell down as one dead, and remained long as one
dead. When however he again came to himself, then was he
pale and trembling, and remained lying; and for long he
would neither eat nor drink. This condition -continued for
seven days; his animals, however, did not leave him day nor
night, except that the eagle flew forth to fetch food. And what
it fetched and foraged, it laid on Zarathustra's couch: so that
Zarathustra at last lay among yellow and red berries, grapes,
rosy apples, sweet-smelling herbage, and pine-cones. At his
feet, however, two lambs were stretched, which the eagle had
with difficulty carried off from their shepherds.
At last, after seven days, Zarathustra raised himself upon his
[848]
THE CONVALESCENT
couch, took a rosy apple in his hand, smelt it and found its
smell pleasant. Then did his animals think the time had come
to speak unto him.
"O Zarathustra," said they, "now hast thou lain thus for
seven days with heavy eyes: wilt thou not set thyself again
upon thy feet?
Step out of thy cave: the world waiteth for thee as a garden.
The wind playeth with heavy fragrance which seeketh for
thee; and all brooks would like to run after thee.
All things long for thee, since thou hast remained alone for
seven days step forth out of thy cave! All things want to be
thy physicians!
Did perhaps a new knowledge come to thee, a bitter,
grievous knowledge? Like leavened dough layest thou, thy soul
arose and swelled beyond all its bounds. "
O mine animals, answered Zarathustra, talk on thus and
let me listen! It refresheth me so to hear your talk: where there
is talk, there is the world as a garden unto me.
How charming it is that there are words and tones; are not
words and tones rainbows and seeming bridges 'twixt the
eternally separated?
To each soul belongeth another world; to each soul is*every
other soul a back-world.
Among the most alike doth semblance deceive most de-
lightfully: for the smallest gap is most difficult to bridge over.
For me how could there be an outside-of -me? There is no
outside! But this we forget on hearing tones; how delightful
it is that we forget!
Have not names and tones been given unto things that man
may refresh himself with them? It is a beautiful folly, speak-
ing; therewith danceth man over everything.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
How lovely is all speech and all falsehoods of tones! With
tones danccth our love on variegated rainbows.
"O Zarathustra," said then his animals, "to those who
think like us, things all dance themselves: they come and hold
out the hand and laugh and flee and return.
Everything goeth, everything returneth; eternally rolleth the
wheel of existence. Everything dieth, everything blossometh
forth again; eternally runneth on the year of existence.
Everything breaketh, everything is integrated anew; eter-
nally buildeth itself the same house of existence. All things
separate, all things again greet one another; eternally true to
itself remaineth the ring of existence.
Every moment beginneth existence, around every 'Here'
rolleth the ball 'There.' The middle is everywhere. Crooked
is the path of eternity."
O yc wags and barrel-organs! answered Zarathustra, and
smiled once more, how well do ye know what had to be ful-
filled in seven days:
And how that monster crept into my throat and choked
me! But I bit off its head and spat it away from me.
And ye ye have made a lyre-lay out of it? Now, however,
do I lie here, still exhausted with that biting and spitting-
away, still sick with mine own salvation.
And ye looked on at it all? O mine animals, are ye also cruel?
Did ye like to look at my great pain as men do? For man is the
cruellest animal.
At tragedies, bull-fights, and crucifixions hath he hitherto
been happiest on earth; and when he invented his hell, behold,
that was his heaven on earth.
When the great man crieth : immediately runneth the
little man thither, and his tongue hangeth out of his mouth
for very lusting. He, however, calleth it his "pity."
THE CONVALESCENT
The little man, especially the poet how passionately doth
he accuse life in words! Hearken to him, but do not fail to hear
the delight which is in all accusation!
Such accusers of life them life overcometh with a glance of
the eye. "Thou lovest me?" saith the insolent one; "wait a
little, as yet have I no time for thee."
Towards himself man is the cruellest animal; and in all who
call themselves "sinners" and "bearers of the cross" and
"penitents," do not overlook the voluptuousness in their
plaints and accusations!
And I myself do, I thereby want to be man's accuser? Ah,
mine animals, this only have I learned hitherto, that for man
his baddest is necessary for his best,
That all that is baddest is the best power, and the hardest
stone for the highest creator; and that man must become
better and badder:
Not to this torture-stake was I tied, that I know man is bad,
but I cried, as no one hath yet cried:
"Ah, that his baddest is so very small! Ah, that his best is so
very small!"
The great disgust at man // strangled me and had crept
into my throat: and what the soothsayer had presaged: "All is
alike, nothing is worth while, knowledge strangleth."
A long twilight limped on before me, a fatally weary,
fatally intoxicated sadness, which spake with yawning mouth.
"Eternally he returneth, the man of whom thou art weary,
the small man" so yawned my sadness, and dragged its foot
and could not go to sleep.
A cavern, became the human earth to me; its breast caved in;
everything living became to me human dust and bones and
mouldering past.
My sighing sat on all human graves, and could no longer
[W]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
arise: my sighing and questioning croaked and choked, and
gnawed and nagged day and night:
"Ah, man returneth eternally! The small man returneth
eternally!"
Naked had I once seen both of them, the greatest man and
the smallest man: all too like one another all too human,
even the greatest man!
All too small, even the greatest man! that was my disgust
at man! And the eternal return also of the smallest man! that
was my disgust at all existence!
Ah, Disgust! Disgust! Disgust! Thus spake Zarathus-
tra, and sighed and shuddered; for he remembered his sick-
ness. Then did his animals prevent him from speaking further.
"Do not speak further, thou convalescent!" so answered
his animals, "but go out where the world waiteth for thee like
a garden.
Go out unto the roses, the bees, and the flocks of doves!
Especially, however, unto the singing-birds, to learn singing
from them!
For singing is for the convalescent; the sound ones may talk.
And when the sound also want songs, then want they other
songs than the convalescent/'
"O ye wags and barrel-organs, do be silent!" answered
Zarathustra, and smiled at his animals. "How well ye know
what consolation I devised for myself in seven days!
That I have to sing once more that consolation did I de-
vise for myself, and this convalescence: would ye also make
another lyre-lay thereof?"
"Do not talk further," answered his animals once more;
"rather, thou convalescent, prepare for thyself first a lyre, a
new lyre!
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THE CONVALESCENT
For behold, O Zarathustra! For thy new lays there are
needed new lyres.
Sing and bubble over, O Zarathustra, heal thy soul with new
lays: that thou mayest bear thy great fate, which hath not yet
been any one's fate!
For thine animals know it well, O Zarathustra, who thou
art and must become: behold, thou art the teacher of the
eternal return, that is now thy fate!
That thou must be the first to teach this teaching how
could this great fate not be thy greatest danger and infirmity!
Behold, we know what thou teachest: that all things eter-
nally return, and ourselves with them, and that we have already
existed times without number, and all things with us.
Thou teachest that there is a great year of Becoming, a
prodigy of a great year; it must, like a sand-glass, ever turn up
anew, that it may anew run down and run out:
So that all those years are like one another in the greatest
and also in the smallest, so that we ourselves, in every great
year, are like ourselves in the greatest and also in the smallest.
And if thou wouldst now die, O Zarathustra, behold, we
know also how thou wouldst then speak to thyself: but thine
animals beseech thee not to die yet!
Thou wouldst speak, and without trembling, buoyant rather
with bliss, for a great weight and worry would be taken from
thee, thou patientest one!
'Now do I die and disappear,' wouldst thou say, 'and in a
moment I am nothing. Souls are aajnortal as bodies.
But the plexus of causes returneth in which I am inter-
twined, it will again create me! I myselfirpertain to the causes
of the eternal return.
I come again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle,
[18471
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
with this serpent not to a new life, or a better life, or a similar
life:
I come again eternally to this identical and selfsame life,
in its greatest and its smallest, to teach again the eternal return
of all things,
To speak again the word of the great noontide of earth
and man, to announce again to man the Superman.
I have spoken my word. I break down by my word: so
willeth mine eternal fate as announcer do I succumb!
The hour hath now come for the down-goer to bless himself.
Thus endeth Zarathustra's down-going/ "
When the animals had spoken these words they were silent
and waited, so that Zarathustra might say something to them;
but Zarathustra did not hear that they were silent. On the con-
trary, he lay quietly with closed eyes like a person sleeping,
although he did not sleep; for he communed just then with his
soul. The serpent, however, and the eagle, when they found
him silent in such wise, respected the great stillness around
him, and prudently retired.
. The Great Longing
O MY soul, I have taught thee to say * 'today" as "once on a
time" and "formerly," and to dance thy measure over every
Here and There and Yonder.
O my soul, I delivered thee from all by-places, I brushed
down from thee dust and spiders and twilight.
O my soul, I washed the petty shame and the by-place virtue
THE GREAT LONGING
f torn thee, and persuaded thee to stand naked before the eyes
of the sun.
With the storm that is called "spirit" did I blow over thy
surging sea; all clouds did I blow away from it; I strangled even
the strangler called "sin."
O my soul, I gave thee the right to say Nay like the storm,
and to say Yea as the open heaven saith Yea: calm as the light
remainest thou, and now walkest through denying storms.
O my soul, I restored to thee liberty over the created and the
uncreated; and who knoweth, as thou knowest, the voluptuous-
ness of the future?
O my soul, I taught thee the contempt which doth not come
like worm-eating, the great, the loving contempt, which loveth
most where it contemneth most.
O my soul, I taught thee so to persuade that thou persuadest
even the grounds themselves to thee: like the sun, which per-
suadeth even the sea to its height.
O my soul, I have taken from thee all obeying and knee-
bending and homage-paying; I have myself given thee the
names, "Change of need" and "Fate."
O my soul, I have given thee new names and gay-coloured
playthings, I have called thee "Fate" and "the Circuit of cir-
cuits" and "the Navel-string of time" and "the Azure bell."
O my soul, to thy domain gave I all wisdom to drink all new
wines, and also all immemorially old strong wines of wisdom.
O my soul, every sun shed I upon thee, and every night and
every silence and every longing: then grewest thou up for
me as a vine.
O my soul, exuberant and heavy dost thou now stand forth,
a vine with swelling udders and full clusters of brown golden
grapes:
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Filled and weighted by thy happiness, waiting from
superabundance, and yet ashamed of thy waiting.
O my soul, there is nowhere a soul which could be more
loving and more comprehensive and more extensive! Where
could future and past be closer together than with thee?
O my soul, I have given thee everything, and all my hands
have become empty by thee: and now! Now sayest thou to
me, smiling and full of melancholy: "Which of us oweth
thanks?
Doth the giver not owe thanks because the receiver re-
ceived? Is bestowing not a necessity? Is receiving not pity-
O my soul, I understand the smiling of thy melancholy:
thine over-abundance itself now stretcheth out longing hands!
Thy fulness looketh forth over raging seas, and seeketh and
waiteth: the longing of over- fulness looketh forth from the
smiling heaven of thine eyes!
And verily, O my soul! Who could see thy smiling and not
melt into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears through
the over-graciousness of thy smiling.
Thy graciousness and over-graciousness, is it which will not
complain and weep: and yet, O my soul, longeth thy smiling
for tears, and thy trembling mouth for sobs.
"Is not all weeping complaining? And all complaining, ac-
cusing?" Thus speakest thou to thyself; and therefore, O my
soul, wilt thou rather smile than pour forth thy grief
Than in gushing tears pour forth all thy grief concerning
thy fulness, and concerning the craving of the vine for the
vintager and vintage-knife!
But wilt thou not weep, wilt thou not weep forth thy purple
melancholy, then wilt thou have to sing, O my soul! Behold,
I smile myself, who foretell thee this:
[ 250 ]
THE GREAT LONGING
Thou wilt have to sing with passionate song, until all seas
turn calm to hearken unto thy longing,
Until over calm longing seas the bark glideth, the golden
marvel, around the gold of which all good, bad, and marvel-
lous things frisk:
Also many large and small animals, and everything that
hath light marvellous feet, so that it can run on violet-blue
paths,
Towards the golden marvel, the spontaneous bark, and its
master: he, however, is the vintager who waiteth with the
diamond vintage-knife,
Thy great deliverer, O my soul, the nameless one
for whom future songs only will find names! And verily,
already hath thy breath the fragrance of future songs,
Already glowest thou and dreamest, already drinkest thou
thirstily at all deep echoing wells of consolation, already re-
poseth thy melancholy in the bliss of future songs!
O my soul, now have I given thee all, and even my last
possession, and all my hands have become empty by thee:
that I bade thee sing, behold, that was my last thing to give!
That I bade thee sing, say now, say: which of us now
oweth thanks? Better still, however: sing unto me, sing, O
my soul! And let me thank thee!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
The Second Dance Song
"INTO thine eyes gazed I lately, O Life: gold saw I gleam in
thy night-eyes, my heart stood still with delight:
A golden bark saw I gleam on darkened waters, a sinking,
drinking, reblinking, golden swing-bark!
At my dance- frantic foot, dost thou cast a glance, a laughing,
questioning, melting, thrown glance:
Twice only movedst thou thy rattle with thy little hands
then did my feet swing with dance-fury.
My heels reared aloft, my toes they hearkened, thee they
would know: hath not the dancer his ear in his toe!
Unto thee did I spring: then fledst thou back from my
bound; and towards me waved thy fleeing, flying tresses round!
Away from thcc did I spring, and from thy snaky tresses:
then stoodst thou there half-turned, and in thine eye caresses.
With crooked glances dost thou teach me crooked courses;
on crooked courses learn my feet crafty fancies!
I fear thee near, I love thee far; thy flight allureth me, thy
seeking secureth me: I suffer, but for thee, what would I not
gladly bear!
For thee, whose coldness inflameth, whose hatred mislead-
eth, whose flight enchaineth, whose mockery pleadeth:
Who would not hate thee, thou great bindress, in-
windress, temptress, seekress, findress! Who would not love
thee, thou innocent, impatient, wind-swift, child-eyed sinner!
Whither pullest thou me now, thou paragon and tomboy?
And now f oolest thou me fleeing; thou sweet romp dost annoy!
[ 252 ]
THE SECOND DANCE SONG
I dance after thee, I follow even faint traces lonely. Whej
art thou? Give me thy hand! Or thy finger only!
Here are caves and thickets: we shall go astray! Halt!
Stand still! Seest thou not owls and bats in fluttering fray?
Thou bat! Thou owl! Thou wouldst play me foul? Whet i
are we? From the dogs hast thou learned thus to bark and howl.
Thou gnashest on me sweetly with little white teeth; thin, 1 ,
evil eyes shoot out upon me, thy curly little mane from under -
neath!
This is a dance over stock and stone: I am the hunter, wil
thou be my hound, or my chamois anon?
Now beside me! And quickly, wickedly springing! Now u$
And over! Alas! I have fallen myself overswinging!
Oh, see me lying, thou arrogant one, and imploring grace!
Gladly would I walk with thee in some lovelier place!
In the paths of love, through bushes variegated, quiet,
trim! Or there along the lake, where gold-fishes dance and
swim!
Thou art now a-weary? There above are sheep and sun-set
stripes: is it not sweet to sleep the shepherd pipes?
Thou art so very weary? I carry thee thither; let just thine
arm sink! And art thou thirsty I should have something; but
thy mouth would not like it to drink!
Oh, that cursed, nimble, supple serpent and lurking-
witch! Where art thou gone? But in my face do I feel through
thy hand, two spots and red blotches itch!
I am verily weary of it, ever thy sheepish shepherd to be.
Thou witch, if I have hitherto sung unto thee, now shalt thou
cry unto me!
To the rhythm of my whip shalt thou dance and cry! I for-
get not my whip? Not I!"
[253 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Then did Life answer me thus, and kept thereby her fine ears
closed :
"O Zarathustra! Crack not so terribly with thy whip! Thou
knowcst surely that noise killeth thought, and just now
there came to me such delicate thoughts.
We are both of us genuine ne'er-do-wells and nc'cr-do-ills.
Beyond good and evil found we our island and our green
meadow we two alone! Therefore must we be friendly to
each other!
And even should we not love each other from the bottom of
our hearts, must we then have a grudge against each other if
we do not love each other perfectly?
And that I am friendly to thee, and often too friendly, that
knowcst thou: and the reason is that I am envious of thy Wis-
dom. Ah, this mad old fool, Wisdom!
If thy Wisdom should one day run away from thee, all! then
would also my love run away from thee quickly."
Thereupon did Life look thoughtfully behind and around,
and said softly: "O Zarathustra, thou art not faithful enough
to me!
Thou lovest me not nearly so much as thou sayest; I know
thou thinkest of soon leaving me.
There is an old heavy, heavy, booming-clock: it boometh by
night up to thy cave:
When thou hearest this clock strike the hours at midnight,
then thinkest thou between one and twelve thereon
Thou thinkest thereon, O Zarathustra, I know it of soon
leaving me!"
THE SECOND DANCE SONG
"Yea," answered I, hesitatingly, "but thou knowest it also"
And I said something into her ear, in amongst her confused,
yellow, foolish tresses.
"Thou knowest that, O Zarathustra? That knoweth no
one "
And we gazed at each other, and looked at the green
meadow o'er which the cool evening was just passing, and we
wept together. Then, however, was Life dearer unto me than
all my Wisdom had ever been.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
One!
O man! Take heed!
Two!
What saith deep midnight's voice indeed?
Three!
"I slept my sleep
Tour!
"From deepest dream I've woke and plead:
Five!
"The world is deep,
Six!
"And deeper than the day could read.
[ 255]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Seven!
"Deep is its woe
Eight!
"Joy deeper still than grief can be:
Nine!
"Woesaith: Hence! Go!
Ten!
"But joys all want eternity
Eleven!
"Want deep profound eternity!"
Twelve!
60. The Seven Seals
(OR THE YEA AND AMEN LAY.)
IF I be a diviner and full of the divining spirit which wan-
dereth on high mountain-ridges, 'twixt two seas,
Wandereth 'twixt the past and the future as a heavy cloud
hostile to sultry plains, and to all that is weary and can neither
die nor live:
Ready for lightning in its dark bosom, and for the redeem-
[256]
THE SEVEN SEALS
ing flash of light, charged with lightnings which say Yea!
which laugh Yea! ready for divining flashes of lightning:
Blessed, however, is he who is thus charged! And verily,
long must he hang like a heavy tempest on the mountain, who
shall one day kindle the light of the future!
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity and for the mar-
riage-ring of rings the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like
to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for 1
love thee, O Eternity!
For I love thee, O Eternity!
If ever my wrath hath burst graves, shifted landmarks, or
rolled old shattered tables into precipitous depths:
If ever my scorn hath scattered mouldered words to the
winds, and if I have come like a besom to cross-spiders, and as
a cleansing wind to old charnel-houses:
If ever I have sat rejoicing where old gods lie buried,
world-blessing, world-loving, beside the monuments of old
world-maligncrs :
For even churches and gods'-graves do I love, if only
heaven looketh through their ruined roofs with pure eyes;
gladly do I sit like grass and red poppies on ruined churches
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, ancj for the
marriage-ring of rings the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to
have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I
love thee, O Eternity!
For I love thee, O Eternity!
[ 257 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
If ever a breath hath come to me of the creative breath, and
of the heavenly necessity which compelleth even chances to
dance star-dances:
If ever I have laughed with the laughter of the creative
lightning, to which the long thunder of the deed followeth,
grumblingly, but obediently:
If ever I have played dice with the gods at the divine table
of the earth, so that the earth quaked and ruptured, and
snorted forth fire-streams:
For a divine table is the earth, and trembling with new
creative dictums and dice-casts of the gods:
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the
marriage-ring of rings the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to
have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I love
thee, O Eternity!
For I love thee, O Eternity!
4
If ever I have drunk a full draught of the foaming spice-
and confection-bowl in which all things are well mixed:
If ever my hand hath mingled the furthest with the nearest,
fire with spirit, joy with sorrow, and the harshest with the
kindest:
Jf I myself am a grain of the saving salt which maketh every-
thing in the confection-bowl mix well:
[ 258 ]
THE SEVEN SEALS
For there is a salt which uniteth good with evil; and even
the evilest is worthy, as spicing and as final over- foaming:
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the
marriage-ring of rings the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like
to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I
love thee, O Eternity!
For I love thee, O Eternity!
If I be fond of the sea, and all that is sealike, and fondest
of it when it angrily contradicteth me:
If the exploring delight be in me, which impelleth sails to
the undiscovered, if the seafarer's delight be in my delight:
If ever my rejoicing hath called out: "The shore hath
vanished, now hath fallen from me the last chain
The boundless roareth around me, far away sparkle for nte
space and time, well! cheer up! old heart!'*
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the
marriage-ring of rings the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like
to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I
love thee, O Eternity!
For I love thee, O Eternity!
6
If my virtue be a dancer's virtue, and if I have often sprung
with both feet into golden-emerald rapture:
[259}
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
If my wickedness be a laughing wickedness, at home among
rose-banks and hedges of lilies:
or in laughter is all evil present, but it is sanctified and
absolved by its own bliss:
And if it be my Alpha and Omega that everything heavy
shall become light, everybody a dancer, and every spirit a bird:
and verily, that is my Alpha and Omega!
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the mar-
riage-ring of rings the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like
to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I
love thee, O Eternity!
For I love thee, O Eternity!
If ever I have spread out a tranquil heaven above me, and
have flown into mine own heaven with mine own pinions:
If I have swum playfully in profound luminous distances,
and if my freedom's avian wisdom hath come to me:
Thus however speaketh avian wisdom: "Lo, there is no
above and no below! Throw thyself about, outward, back-
ward, thou light one! Sing! speak no more!
Are not all words made for the heavy? Do not all words
lie to the light ones? Sing! speak no more!"
Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the
marriage-ring of rings the ring of the return?
Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like
to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: for I
love thee, O Eternity!
For I love thee, O Eternity!
[ 260]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
FOURTH AND LAST PART
Ah, where in the world have there
been greater follies than with the piti-
ful? And what in the world hath
caused more suffering than the follies
of the pitiful ?
Woe unto all loving ones who have
not an elevation which is above their
pity!
Thus spake the devil unto me, once
on a time: "Ever God hath his hell:
it is his love for man."
And lately did I hear him say these
words: "God is dead: of his pity for
man hath God died." ZARATHUSTRA,
II., "The Pitiful" (p. 102).
61. The Honey Sacrifice
AND again passed moons and years over Zarathustra' s soul,
and he heeded it not; his hair, however, became white. One
day when he sat on a stone in front of his cave, and gazed
calmly into the distance one there gazeth out on the sea, and
away beyond sinuous abysses, then went his animals thought-
fully round about him, and at last set themselves in front of
him.
' 'O Zarathustra," said they, "gazest thou out perhaps for thy
happiness?" "Of what account is my happiness!" answered
he, "I have long ceased to strive any more for happiness, I
strive for my work." "O Zarathustra," said the animals once
more, "that sayest thou as one who hath overmuch of good
things. Liest thou not in a sky-blue lake of happiness?" "Ye
wags," answered Zarathustra, and smiled, "how well did ye
choose the simile! But yc know also that my happiness is heavy,
and not like a fluid wave of water: it presseth me and will not
leave me, and is like molten pitch."
Then went his animals again thoughtfully around him, and
placed themselves once more in front of him. "O Zarathustra,"
said they, "it is consequently for that reason that thou thy-
self always becometh yellower and darker, although thy hair
looketh white and flaxen? Lo, thou sittest in thy pitch!"
"What do ye say, mine animals?" said Zarathustra, laughing;
"verily I reviled when I spake of pitch. As it happeneth with
[263]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
me, so is it with all fruits that turn ripe. It is the honey in my
veins that maketh my blood thicker, and also my soul stiller."
"So will it be, O Zarathustra," answered his animals, and
pressed up to him; "but wilt thou not today ascend a high
mountain? The air is pure, and today one seeth more of the
world than ever/' "Yea, mine animals," answered he, M ye
counsel admirably and according to my heart: I will today
ascend a high mountain! But sec that honey is there ready to
hand, yellow, white, good, ice-cool, golden-comb-honey. For
know that when aloft I will make the honey-sacrifice."
When Zarathustra, however, was aloft on the summit, he
sent his animals home that had accompanied him, and found
that he was now alone: then he laughed from the bottom of
his heart, looked around him, and spake thus:
That I spake of sacrifices and honey-sacrifices, it was merely
a ruse in talking and verily, a useful folly! Here aloft can I
now speak freer than in front of mountain-caves and ancho-
rites' domestic animals.
What to sacrifice! I squander what is given me, a squan-
derer with a thousand hands: how could I call that sacri-
ficing?
And when I desired honey I only desired bait, and sweet
mucus and mucilage, for which even the mouths of growling
bears, and strange, sulky, evil birds, water:
The best bait, as huntsmen and fishermen require it. For
if the world be as a gloomy forest of animals, and a pleasure-
ground for all wild huntsmen, it seemeth to me rather and
preferably a fathomless, rich sea;
A sea full of many-hued fishes and crabs, for which even
the gods might long, and might be tempted to become fishers
\
THE HONEY SACRIFICE
in it, and casters of nets, so rich is the world in wonderful
things, great and small!
Especially the human world, the human sea: towards ;/
do I now throw out my golden angle- rod and say: Open up,
thou human abyss!
Open up, and throw unto me thy fish and shining crabs!
With my best bait shall I allure to myself today the strangest
human fish!
My happiness itself do I throw out into all places far
and wide 'twixt orient, noontide, and Occident, to see if many
human fish will not learn to hug and tug at my happiness;
Until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they have to come
up unto my height, the motleycst abyss-groundlings, to the
wickedest of all fishers of men.
For this am I from the heart and from the beginning
drawing, hither-drawing, upward-drawing, upbringing; a
drawer, a trainer, a training-master, who not in vain coun-
selled himself once on a time: "Become what thou art!"
Thus may men now come up to me; for as yet do I await
the signs that it is time for my down-going; as yet do I not
myself go down, as I must do, amongst men.
Therefore do I here wait, crafty and scornful upon high
mountains, no impatient one, no patient one; rather one
who hath even unlearnt patience, because he no longer
"suffereth."
For my fate giveth me time: it hath forgotten me perhaps?
Or doth it sit behind a big stone and catch flies?
And verily, I am well-disposed to mine eternal fate, be-
cause it doth not hound and hurry me, but leaveth me time
for merriment and mischief; so that I have to-day ascended this
high mountain to catch fish.
[ 265}
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Did ever any one catch fish upon high mountains? And
though it be a folly what I here seek and do, it is better so than
that down below I should become solemn with waiting, and
green and yellow
A posturing wrath-snorter with waiting, a holy howl-
storm from the mountains, an impatient one that shouteth
down into the valleys: "Hearken, else I will scourge you with
the scourge of God!"
Not that I would have a grudge against such wrathful ones
on that account: they are well enough for laughter to me!
Impatient must they now be, those big alarm-drums, which
find a voice now or never!
Myself, however, and my fate we do not talk to the
Present, neither do we talk to the Never: for talking we have
patience and time and more than time. For one day must it yet
come, and may not pass by.
What must one day come and may not pass by? Our great
Hazar, that is to say, our great, remote human-kingdom, the
Zarathustra-kingdom of a thousand years
How remote may such "remoteness'* be? What doth it
concern me? But on that account it is none the less sure unto
me , with both feet stand I secure on this ground;
On an eternal ground, on hard primary rock, on this
highest, hardest, primary mountain-ridge, unto which all
winds come, as unto the storm-parting, asking Where? and
Whence? and Whither?
Here laugh, laugh, my hearty, healthy wickedness! From
high mountains cast down thy glittering scorn-laughter!
Allure for me with thy glittering the finest human fish!
And whatever bclongeth unto me in all seas, my in-and-
f or-me in all things fish that out for me, bring that up to me:
for that do I wait, the wickedest of all fish-catchers.
[ 266 ]
THE CRY OF DISTRESS
Out! out! my fishing-hook! In and down, thou bait of my
happiness! Drip thy sweetest dew, thou honey of my heart!
Bite, my fishing-hook, into the belly of all black affliction!
Look out, look out, mine eye! Oh, how many seas round
about me, what dawning human futures! And above me
what rosy red stillness! What unclouded silence!
62. The Cry of Distress
THE next day * sat Zarathustra again on the stone in front of
his cave, whilst his animals roved about in the world outside
to bring home new food, also new honey: for Zarathustra
had spent and wasted the old honey to the very last particle.
When he thus sat, however, with a stick in his hand, tracing
the shadow of his figure on the earth, and reflecting verily!
not upon himself and his shadow, all at once he startled and
shrank back: for he saw another shadow beside his own. And
when he hastily looked around and stood up, behold, there
stood the soothsayer beside him, the same whom he had once
given to eat and drink at his table, the proclaimer of the great
weariness, who taught: "All is alike, nothing is worth while,
the world is without meaning, knowledge strangleth." But
his face had changed since then; and when Zarathustra looked
into his eyes, his heart was startled once more: so much evil
announcement and ashy-grey lightnings passed over that coun-
tenance.
The soothsayer, who had perceived what went on in Zara-
thustra' s soul, wiped his face with his hand, as if he would
wipe out the impression; the same did also Zarathustra. And
[ 867 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
when both of them had thus silently composed and strength-
ened themselves, they gave each other the hand, as a token
that they wanted once more to recognise each other.
"Welcome hither," said Zarathustra, "thou soothsayer of
the great weariness, not in vain shalt thou once have been my
messmate and guest. Eat and drink also with me to-day, and
forgive it that a cheerful old man sitteth with thee at table!"
"A cheerful old man?" answered the soothsayer, shaking his
head, "but whoever thou art, or wouldst be, O Zarathustra,
thou hast been here aloft the longest time, in a little while
thy bark shall no longer rest on dry land!" "Do I then rest
on dry land?" asked Zarathustra, laughing. "The waves
around thy mountain," answered the soothsayer, "rise and
rise, the waves of great distress and affliction: they will soon
raise thy bark also and carry thee away." Thereupon was
Zarathustra silent and wondered. "Dost thou still hear
nothing?" continued the soothsayer: "doth it not rush and
roar out of the depth?" Zarathustra was silent once more and
listened: then heard he a long, long cry, which the abysses
threw to one another and passed on; for none of them wished
to retain it: so evil did it sound.
"Thou ill announcer," said Zarathustra at last, "that is a cry
of distress, and the cry of a man; it may come perhaps out of
a black sea. But what doth human distress matter to me! My last
sin which hath been reserved for me, knowest thou what it is
called?"
"Pity}" answered the soothsayer from an overflowing
heart, and raised both his hands aloft "O Zarathustra, I have
come that I may seduce thee to thy last sin!"
And hardly had those words been uttered when there
sounded the cry once more, and longer and more alarming
[ 268 ]
THE CRY OF DISTRESS
than before also much nearer. "Hearcst thou? Hearest thou,
O Zarathustra?" called out the soothsayer, "the cry concerncth
thee, it calleth thee: Come, come, come; it is time, it is the
highest time!"
Zarathustra was silent thereupon, confused and staggered;,
at last he asked, like one who hesitateth in himself: "And who
is it that there calleth me?"
"But thou knowcst it, certainly," answered the soothsayer
warmly, "why dost thou conceal thyself? It is the higher man
that cricth for thee!"
"The higher man?" cried Zarathustra, horror-stricken:
"what wantcth he? What wanteth he? The higher man! What
wanteth he here?" and his skin covered with perspiration.
The soothsayer, however, did not heed Zarathustra's alarm,
but listened and listened in the downward direction. When,
however, it had been still there for a long while, he looked
behind, and saw Zarathustra standing trembling.
"O Zarathustra," he began, with sorrowful voice, "thou dost
not stand there like one whose happiness maketh him giddy:
thou wilt have to dance lest thou tumble down!
But although thou shouldst dance before me, and leap all thy
side-leaps, no one may say unto me: 'Behold, here danceth the
last joyous man!'
In vain would any one come to this height who sought him
here: caves would he find, indeed, and back-caves, hiding-
places for hidden ones; but not lucky mines, nor treasure-
chambers, nor new gold-veins of happiness.
Happiness how indeed could one find happiness among
such buried-alive and solitary ones! Must I yet seek the last
happiness on the Happy Isles, and far away among forgotten
seas?
[ 269 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
But all is alike, nothing is worth while, no seeking is of
service, there are no longer any Happy Isles!"
Thus sighed the soothsayer; with his last sigh, however,
Zarathustra again became serene and assured, like one who
hath come out of a deep chasm into the light. "Nay! Nay!
Three times Nay!" exclaimed he with a strong voice, and
stroked his beard "that do I know better! There are still
Happy Isles! Silence thereon, thou sighing sorrow-sack!
Cease to splash thereon, thou rain-cloud of the forenoon!
Do I not already stand here wet with thy misery, and drenched
like a dog?
Now do I shake myself and run away from thee, that I may
again become dry : thereat maycst thou not wonder! Do I seem
to thee discourteous? Here however is my court.
But as regards the higher man: well! I shall seek him at
once in those forests: from thence came his cry. Perhaps he is
there hard beset by an evil beast.
He is in my domain: therein shall he receive no scath! And
verily, there are many evil beasts about me."
With those words Zarathustra turned around to depart.
Then said the soothsayer: "O Zarathustra, thou art a roguej
I know it well: thou wouldst fain be rid of me! Rather
wouldst thou run into the forest and lay snares for evil beasts!
But what good will it do thee? In the evening wilt thou have
me again: in thine own cave will I sit, patient and heavy like a
block and wait for thee!"
"So be it!" shouted back Zarathustra, as he went away: "and
what is mine in my cave belongeth also unto thee, my guest!
Shouldst thou however find honey therein, well! just lick it
up, thou growling bear, and sweeten thy soul! For in the eve-
ning we want both to be in good spirits;
[270}
TALK WITH THE KINGS
In good spirits and joyful, because this day hath come to
an end! And thou thyself shalt dance to my lays, as my dancing-
bear.
Thou dost not believe this? Thou shakest thy head? Well!
Cheer up, old bear! But I also am a soothsayer."
Thus spake Zarathustra.
Talk with the Kings
ERE Zarathustra had been an hour on his way in the moun-
tains and forests, he saw all at once a strange procession. Right
on the path which he was about to descend came two kings
walking, bedecked with crowns and purple girdles, and varie-
gated like flamingoes: they drove before them a laden ass.
"What do these kings want in my domain?" said Zarathustra
in astonishment to his heart, and hid himself hastily behind a
thicket. When however the kings approached to him, he said
half-aloud, like one speaking only to himself: "Strange!
Strange! How doth this harmonise? Two kings do I see and
only one ass!"
Thereupon the two kings made a halt; they smiled and
looked towards the spot whence the voice proceeded, and
afterwards looked into each other's faces. "Such things do we
also think among ourselves," said the king on the right, "but
we do not utter them."
The king on the left, however, shrugged his shoulders and
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
answered: "That may perhaps be a goat-herd. Or an anchorite
who hath lived too long among rocks and trees. For no society
at all spoileth also good manners."
"Good manners?" replied angrily and bitterly the other
king: "what then do we run out of the way of? Is it not 'good
manners'? Our 'good society'?
Better, verily, to live among anchorites and goat-herds, than
with our gilded, false, over-rouged populace though it call
itself 'good society.'
Though it call itself 'nobility.' But there all is false and
foul, above all the blood thanks to old evil diseases and
worse curers.
The best and dearest to me at present is still a sound pcas.int
coarse, artful, obstinate and enduring: that is at present the
noblest type.
The peasant is at present the best; and the peasant type
should be master! But it is the kingdom of the populace I no
longer allow anything to be imposed upon me. The populace,
however that mcaneth, hodgepodge.
Populace-hodgepodge: therein is everything mixed with
everything, saint and swindler, gentleman and Jew, and every
beast out of Noah's ark.
Good manners! Everything is false and foul with us. No
one knoweth any longer how to reverence: it is that precisely
that we run away from. They are fulsome obtrusive dogs; they
gild palm-leaves.
This loathing choketh me, that we kings ourselves have be-
come false, draped and disguised with the old faded pomp of
our ancestors, show-pieces for the stupidest, the craftiest, and
whosoever at present trafficketh for power.
We are not the first men and have nevertheless to stand for
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TALK WITH THE KINGS
them: of this imposture have we at last become weary and
disgusted.
From the rabble have we gone out of the way, from all those
bawlers and scribe-blowflies, from the trader-stench, the ambi-
tion-fidgeting, the bad breath : fie, to live among the rabble;
Fie, to stand for the first men among the rabble! Ah,
loathing! Loathing! Loathing! What doth it now matter about
us kings!"
"Thine old sickness seizeth thee," said here the king on the
left, "thy loathing seizeth thee, my poor brother. Thou
knowest, however, that some one heareth us."
Immediately thereupon, Zarathustra, who had opened ears
and eyes to this talk, rose from his hiding-place, advanced
towards the kings, and thus began:
"He who hearkeneth unto you, he who gladly hearkeneth
unto you, is called Zarathustra.
I am Zarathustra who once said: 'What doth it now matter
about kings!' Forgive me; I rejoiced when ye said to each
other: 'What doth it matter about us kings!'
Here, however, is my domain and jurisdiction: what may ye
be seeking in my domain? Perhaps, however, ye have found on
your way what / seek: namely, the higher man."
When the kings heard this, they beat upon their breasts and
said with one voice: "We are recognised!
With the sword of thine utterance severest thou the thickest
darkness of our hearts. Thou hast discovered our distress; for
lo! we are on our way to find the higher man
The man that is higher than we, although we are kings,
To him do we convey this ass. For the highest man shall also
be the highest lord on earth.
There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than
when the mighty of the earth arc not also the first men. Then
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
everything becometh false and distorted and monstrous.
And when they are even the last men, and more beast than
man, then riseth and riseth the populace in honour, and at last
saith even the populace-virtue: 'Lo, I alone am virtue!' "
What have I just heard? answered Zarathustra. What wis-
dom in kings! I am enchanted, and verily, I have already
promptings to make a rhyme thereon:
Even if it should happen to be a rhyme not suited for
every one's ears. I unlearned long ago to have consideration
for long ears. Well then! Well now!
( Here, however, it happened that the ass also found utter-
ance: it said distinctly and with malevolence, Y-E-A.)
'Twas once methinks year one of our blessed Lord,
Drunk without wine, the Sybil thus deplored:
"How ill things go!
Decline! Decline! Ne'er sank the world so low!
Rome now hath turned harlot and harlot-stew,
Rome's Caesar a beast, and God hath turned Jew!"
With those rhymes of Zarathustra the kings were delighted;
the king on the right, however, said: "O Zarathustra, how
well it was that we set out to see thee!
For thine enemies showed us thy likeness in their mirror:
there lookcdst thou with the grimace of a devil, and sneer-
ingly: so that we were afraid of thee.
But what good did it do! Always didst thou prick us anew
in heart and ear with thy sayings. Then did we say at last:
What doth it matter how he look!
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TALK WITH THE KINGS
We must bear him; him who tcachcth: 'Ye shall love peace
as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the
long. r
No one ever spake such warlike words: 'What is good? To
be brave is good. It is the good war that halloweth every
cause/
O Zarathustra, our fathers' blood stirred in our veins at
such words: it was like the voice of spring to old wine-casks.
When the swords ran among one another like red-spotted
serpents, then did our fathers become fond of life; the sun of
every peace seemed to them languid and lukewarm, the long
peace, however, made them ashamed.
How they sighed, our fathers, when they saw on the wall
brightly furbished, dried-up swords! Like those they thirsted
for war. For a sword thirsteth to drink blood, and sparkleth
with desire."
When the kings thus discoursed and talked eagerly of the
happiness of their fathers, there came upon Zarathustra no
little desire to mock at their eagerness: for evidently they were
very peaceable kings whom he saw before him, kings with
old and refined features. But he restrained himself. "Well!"
said he, "thither leadeth the way, there lieth the cave of Zara-
thustra; and this day is to have a long evening! At present,
however, a cry of distress calleth me hastily away from you.
It will honour my cave if kings want to sit and wait in it:
but, to be sure, ye will have to wait long!
Well! What of that! Where doth one at present learn
better to wait than at courts? And the whole virtue of kings
that hath remained unto them is it not called to-day: Ability
to wait?"
Thus spake Zarathustra.
[275]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
64. The Leech
AND Zarathustra went thoughtfully on, further and lower
down, through forests and past moory bottoms; as it hap-
peneth, however, to every one who meditateth upon hard
matters, he trod thereby unawares upon a man. And lo, there
spurted into his face all at once a cry of pain, and two curses
and twenty bad invectives, so that in his fright he raised his
stick and also struck the trodden one. Immediately afterwards,
however, he regained his composure, and his heart laughed at
the folly he had just committed.
"Pardon me," said he to the trodden one, who had got up
enraged, and had seated himself, "pardon me, and hear first
of all a parable.
As a wanderer who dreameth of remote things on a lone-
some highway, runneth unawares against a sleeping dog, a dog
which lieth in the sun:
As both of them then start up and snap at each other, like
deadly enemies, those two beings mortally frightened so
did it happen unto us.
And yet! And yet how little was lacking for them to
caress each other, that dog and that lonesome one! Are they
not both lonesome ones!"
"Whoever thou art," said the trodden one, still enraged,
"thou treadest also too nigh me with thy parable, and not only
with thy foot!
Lo! am I then a dog?" And thereupon the sitting one got
up, and pulled his naked arm out of the swamp. For at first
he had lain outstretched on the ground, hidden and indis-
crnible, like those who lie in wait for swamp-game.
[276 ]
THE LEECH
"But whatever art thou about!" called out Zarathastra in
alarm, for he saw a deal of blood streaming over the naked
arm, "what hath hurt thee? Hath an evil beast bit thee,
tfiou unfortunate one?"
The bleeding one laughed, still angry, "What matter is it
to thee!" said he, and was about to go on. "Here am I at home
and in my province. Let him question me whoever will: to a
dolt, however, I shall hardly answer."
"Thou art mistaken," said Zarathustra sympathetically, and
held him fast; "thou art mistaken. Here thou art not at home,
but in my domain, and therein shall no one receive any hurt.
Call me however what thou wilt I am who I must be. I
call myself Zarathustra.
Well! Up thither is the way to Zarathustra' s cave: it is not
far, wilt thou not attend to thy wounds at my home?
It hath gone badly with thee, thou unfortunate one, in this
life: first a beast bit thee, and then a man trod upon
thee!"
When however the trodden one had heard the name of
Zarathustra he was transformed. "What happeneth unto me!"
he exclaimed, rt ivh& prcoccupieth me so much in this life as
this one man, namely Zarathustra, and that one animal that
liveth on blood, the leech?
For the sake of the leech did I lie here by this swamp, like
a fisher, and already had mine outstretched arm been bitten
ten times, when there biteth a still finer leech at my blood,
Zarathustra himself!
O happiness! O miracle! Praised be this day which enticed
me into the swamp! Praised be the best, the livest cupping-
glass, that at present liveth; praised be the great conscience-
leech Zarathustra!"
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Thus spake the trodden one, and Zarathustra rejoiced at his
words and their refined reverential style. "Who art thou?"
asked he, and gave him his hand, "there is much to clear up
and elucidate between us, but already methinketh pure clear
day is dawning."
"I am the spiritually conscientious one," answered he who
was asked, "and in matters of the spirit it is difficult for any one
to take it more rigorously, more restrictedly, and more severely
than I, except him from whom I learnt it, Zarathustra himself.
Better know nothing than half -know many things! Better
be a fool on one's own account, than a sage on other people's
approbation! I go to the basis:
What matter if it be great or small? If it be called swamp
or sky? A handbreadth of basis is enough for me, if it be
actually basis and ground!
A handbreadth of basis: thereon can one stand. In the true
knowing-knowledge there is nothing great and nothing
small."
"Then thou art perhaps an expert on the leech?" asked
Zarathustra; "and thou investigatest the leech to its ultimate
basis, thou conscientious one?"
"O Zarathustra," answered the trodden one, "that would be
something immense; how could I presume to do so!
That, however, of which I am master and knower, is the
brain of the leech: that is my world!
And it is also a world! Forgive it, however, that my pride
here findeth expression, for here I have not mine equal. There-
fore said I : 'here am I at home/
How long have I investigated this one thing, the brain of
the leech, so that here the slippery truth might no longer slip
from me! Here is my domain!
For die sake of this did I cast everything else aside, for
F 278 ]
THE LEE CH
the sake of this did everything else become indifferent to me;
and close beside my knowledge lieth my black ignorance.
My spiritual conscience requireth from me that it should
be so that I should know one thing, and not know all else:
they are a loathing unto me, all the semi-spiritual, all the hazy,
hovering, and visionary.
Where mine honesty ceaseth, there am I blind, and want
also to be blind. Where I want to know, however, there want
I also to be honest namely, severe, rigorous, restricted, cruel
and inexorable.
Because thou once saidest, O Zarathustra: 'Spirit is life
which itself cutteth into life'; that led and allured me to
thy doctrine. And verily, with mine own blood have I in-
creased mine own knowledge!"
"As the evidence indicateth," broke in Zarathustra; for
still was the blood flowing down on the naked arm of the
conscientious one. For there had ten leeches bitten into it.
"O thou strange fellow, how much doth this very evidence
teach me namely, thou thyself! And not all, perhaps, might
I pour into thy rigorous ear!
Well then! We part here^But I would fain find thee again.
Up thither is the way to my cave: to-night shalt thou there
by my welcome guest!
Fain would I also make amends to thy body for Zarathustra
treading upon thee with his feet: I think about that. Just now,
however, a cry of distress calleth me hastily away from thee."
Thus spake Zarathustra.
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
65. The Magician
WHEN however Zarathuslra had gone round a rock, then saw
he on the same path, not far below him, a man who threw his
limbs about like a maniac, and at last tumbled to the ground
on his belly. "Halt!" said then Zarathustra to his heart, "he
there must surely be the higher man, from him came that
dreadful cry of distress, I will see if I can help him/' When,
however, he ran to the spot where the man lay on the ground,
he found a trembling old man with fixed eyes; and in spite of
all Zarathustra's efforts to lift him and set him again on his
feet, it was all in vain. The unfortunate one, also, did not seem
to notice that some one was beside him; on the contrary, he
continually looked around with moving gestures, like one for-
saken and isolated from all the world. At last, however, after
much trembling, and convulsion, and curling-himself-up, he
began to lament thus:
Who warm'th me, who lov'th me still?
Give ardent fingers!
Give heartening charcoal-warmers!
Prone, outstretched, trembling,
Like him, half dead and cold, whose feet one warm'th
And shaken, ah! by unfamiliar fevers,
Shivering with sharpened, icy-cold frost-arrows,
By thee pursued, my fancy!
Ineffable! Recondite! Sore-frightening!
Thou huntsman 'hind the cloud-banks!
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THE MAGICIAN
Now lightning-struck by thee,
Thou mocking eye that me in darkness watcheth:
Thus do I lie,
Bend myself, twist myself, convulsed
With all eternal torture,
And smitten
By thee, cruellest huntsman,
Thou unfamiliar God . . .
Smite deeper!
Smite yet once more!
Pierce through and rend my heart!
What mean'th this torture
With dull, indented arrows?
Why look'st thou hither,
Of human pain not weary,
With mischief -loving, godly flash-glances?
Not murder wilt thou,
But torture, torture?
For why me torture,
Thou mischief -loving, unfamiliar God?
Ha! Ha!
Thou stealest nigh
In midnight's gloomy hour? . . .
What wilt thou?
Speak!
Thou crowdst me, pressest
Ha! now far too closely!
Thou hearst me breathing,
Thou o'erhearst my heart,
Thou ever jealous one!
[ 281 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Of what, pray, ever jealous?
Off! Off!
For why the ladder?
Wouldst thou get in?
To heart in-clamber?
To mine own secretest
Conceptions in-clamber?
Shameless one! Thou unknown one! Thief !
What seekst thou by thy stealing?
What seekst thou by thy hearkening?
What seekst thou by thy torturing?
Thou torturer!
Thou hangman-God !
Or shall I, as the mastiffs do,
Roll me before thee?
And cringing, enraptured, f rantical,
My tail friendly waggle!
In vain!
Goad further!
Cruellest goader!
No dog thy game just am I,
Cruellest huntsman!
Thy proudest of captives,
Thou robber 'hind the cloud-banks . . .
Speak finally!
Thou lightning-veiled one! Thou unknown one! Speak!
What wilt thou, highway-ambusher, from me?
What wilt thou, unfamiliar God?
What?
Ransom-gold?
How much of ransom-gold?
[ 282 ]
THE MAGICIAN
Solicit much that bid'th my pride!
And be concise that bid'th mine other pride!
Ha! Ha!
Me wantst thou? me?
Entire? . . .
Ha! Ha!
And torturest me, fool that thou art,
Dead- tortures t quite my pride?
Give love to me who warm'th me still?
Who lov'th me still?
Give ardent fingers
Give heartening charcoal-warmers,
Give me, the lonesomest,
The ice (ah! seven-fold frozen ice
For very enemies,
For foes, doth make one thirst) .
Give, yield to me,
Cruellest foe,
Thyself!
Away!
There fled he surely,
My final, only comrade,
My greatest foe,
Mine unfamiliar
My hangman-God! . . .
Nay!
Come thou back!
With all of thy great tortures!
[283 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
To me the last of lonesome ones,
Oh, come thou back!
All my hot tears in streamlets trickle
Their course to thee!
And all my final hearty fervour
Up-glow'th to thee! .
Oh, come thou back,
Mine unfamiliar God! my pain!
My final bliss!
Here, however, Zarathustra could no longer restrain hir
self; he took his staff and struck the wailer with all his migb
"Stop this," cried he to him with wrathful laughter, ft stop thi
thou stage-player! Thou false coiner! Thou liar from the ve
heart! I know thee well!
I will soon make warm legs to thee, thou evil magician:
know well how to make it hot for such as thou!"
"Leave off," said the old man, and sprang up from tl
ground, "strike me no more, O Zarathustra! I did it only f<
amusement!
That kind of tiling belongeth to mine art. Thee thyself,
wanted to put to the proof when I gave this performance. Ar
verily, thou hast well detected me!
But thou thyself hast given me no small proof of thysel
thou art hard, thou wise Zarathustra! Hard strikest thou wi:
thy 'truths,' thy cudgel forceth from me this truth!"
"Flatter not," answered Zarathustra, still excited ar
frowning, "thou stage-player from the heart! Thou art fals
why speakest thou of truth!
[ 284 ]
THE MAGICIAN
Thou peacock of peacocks, thou sea of vanity; what didst
thou represent before me, thou evil magician; whom was I
meant to believe in when thou wailedst in such wise?"
"The penitent in spirit" said the old man, "it was him I
represented; thou thyself once devisedst this expression
The poet and magician who at last turncth his spirit
against himself, the transformed one who freezeth to death
by his bad science and conscience.
And just acknowledge it: it was long, O Zarathustra, be-
fore thou discoveredst my trick and lie! Thou believedst in my
distress when thou heldest my head with both thy hands,
I heard thee lament 'we have loved him too little, loved
him too little!' Because I so far deceived thee, my wickedness
rejoiced in me."
"Thou mayest have deceived subtler ones than I," said Zara-
thustra sternly. "I am not on my guard against deceivers; I
have to be without precaution: so willeth my lot.
Thou, however, must deceive: so far do I know thee! Thou
must ever be equivocal, trivocal, quadrivocal, and quinqui-
vocal! Even what thou hast now confessed, is not nearly true
enough nor false enough for me!
Thou bad false coiner, how couldst thou do otherwise! Thy
very malady wouldst thou whitewash if thou showed thyself
naked to thy physician.
Thus didst thou whitewash thy lie before me when thou
saidst: 'I did so only for amusement!' There was also serious-
ness therein, thou art something of a penitent-in-spirit!
I divine thee well: thou hast become the enchanter of all
the world; but for thyself thou hast no lie or artifice left,
thou art disenchanted to thyself!
Thou hast reaped disgust as thy one truth. No word in thee
[285]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
is any longer genuine, but thy mouth is so: that is to say, the
disgust that cleaveth unto thy mouth."
"Who art thou at ail!" cried here the old magician with
defiant voice, "who dareth to speak thus unto me, the greatest
man now living?" and a green flash shot from his eye at
Zarathustra. But immediately after he changed, and said sadly:
"O Zarathustra, I am weary of it, I am disgusted with mine
arts, I am not great, why do I dissemble! But thou knowest
it well I sought for greatness!
A great man I wanted to appear, and persuaded many; but
the lie hath been beyond my power. On it do I collapse.
O Zarathustra, everything is a lie in me; but that I collapse
this my collapsing is genuine!"
"It honoureth thee," said Zarathustra gloomily, looking
down with sidelong glance, "it honoureth thee that thou
soughtest for greatness, but it betrayeth thee also. Thou art not
great.
Thou bad old magician, that is the best and the honestest
thing I honour in thee, that thou hast become weary of thy-
self, and hast expressed it: 'I am not great/
Therein do I honour thee as a penitent-in-spirit, and
although only for the twinkling of an eye, in that one moment
wast thou genuine.
But tell me, what,seekest thou here in my forests and rocks?
And if thou hast put thyself in my way, what proof of me
wouldst thou have?
Wherein didst thou put me to the test?"
Thus spake Zarathustra, and his eyes sparkled. But the old
magician kept silence for a while; then said he: "Did I put thee
to the test? I seek only.
O Zarathustra, I seek a genuine one, a right one, a simple
[ 286]
THE MAGICIAN
one, an unequivocal one, a man of perfect honesty, a vessel of
wisdom, a saint of knowledge, a great man!
Knowest thou it not, O Zarathustra? / seek Zarathustra!'
And here there arose a long silence between them: Zara-
thustra, however, became profoundly absorbed in thought, so
that he shut his eyes. But afterwards coming back to the situa-
tion, he grasped the hand of the magician, and said, full of
politeness and policy:
"Well! Up thither leadeth the way, there is the cave of
Zarathustra. In it mayest thou seek him whom thou wouldst
fain find.
And ask counsel of mine animals, mine eagle and my ser-
pent: they shall help thee to seek. My cave however is large.
I myself, to be sure I have as yet seen no great man. That
which is great, the acutest eye is at present insensible to it. It
is the kingdom of the populace.
Many a one have I found who stretched and inflated him-
self, and the people cried: 'Behold; a great man!' But what
good do all bellows do! The wind cometh out at last.
At last bursteth the frog which hath inflated itself too long:
then cometh out the wind. To prick a swollen one in the belly,
I call good pastime. Hear that, ye boys!
Our today is of the popular: who still knoweth what is
great and what is small! Who could there seek successfully for
greatness! A fool only: it succeedeth with fools.
Thou seekest for great men, thou strange fool? Who taught
that to thee? Is today the time for it? Oh, thou bad seeker, why
dost thou tempt me?"
Thus spake Zarathustra, comforted in his heart, and went
laughing on his way.
[ 287 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
66. Out of Service
NOT long, however, after Zarathustra had freed himself from
the magician, he again saw a person sitting beside the path
which he followed, namely a tall, black man, with a haggard,
pale countenance: this man grieved him exceedingly. "Alas,"
said he to his heart, "there sitteth disguised affliction; me-
thinketh he is of the type of the priests: what do they want in
my domain?
What! Hardly have I escaped from that magician, and must
another necromancer again run across my path,
Some sorcerer with laying-on-of -hands, some sombre
wonder-worker by the grace of God, some anointed world-
maligner, whom, may the devil take!
But the devil is never at the place which would be his right
place: he always cometh too late, that cursed dwarf and club-
foot!"
Thus cursed Zarathustra impatiently in his heart, and con-
sidered how with averted look he might slip past the black
man. But behold, it came about otherwise. For at the same
moment had the sitting one already perceived him; and not
unlike one whom an unexpected happiness overtaketh, he
sprang to his feet, and went straight towards Zarathustra.
"Whoever thou art, thou traveller," said he, "help a strayed
one, a seeker, an old man, who may here easily come to grief!
The world here is strange to me, and remote; wild beasts
also did I hear howling; and he who could have given me pro-
tection he is himself no more.
I was seeking the last pious man, a saint and an anchorite,
[288]
OUT OF SERVICE
who, alone in his forest, had not yet heard of what all the
world knoweth at present."
"What doth all the world know at present?" asked Zara
thustra. " Perhaps that the old God no longer liveth, in whom
all the world once believed?"
"Thou sayest it," answered the old man sorrowfully. "And
I served that old God until his last hour.
Now, however, am I out of service, without master, and yet
not free; likewise am I no longer merry even for an hour,
except it be in recollections.
Therefore did I ascend into these mountains, that I might
finally have a festival for myself once more, as becometh an
old pope and church-father: for know it, that I am the last
pope! a festival of pious recollections and divine services.
Now, however, is he himself dead, the most pious of men,
the saint in the forest, who praised his God constantly with
singing and mumbling.
He himself found I no longer when I found his cot but
two wolves found I therein, which howled on account of his
death, for all animals loved him. Then did I haste away.
Had I thus come in vain into these forests and mountains?
Then did my heart determine that I should seek another, the
most pious of all those who believe not in God , my heart
determined that I should seek Zarathustra!"
Thus spake the hoary man, and gazed with keen eyes at him
who stood before him. Zarathustra however seized the hand
of the old pope and regarded it a long while with admiration.
"Lo! thou venerable one," said he then, "what a fine and
long hand! That is the hand of one who hath ever dispensed
blessings. Now, however, doth it hold fast him whom thou
seekest, me, Zarathustra.
[ 289 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who saith: 'Who is un-
godlier than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?' "
Thus spake Zarathustra, and penetrated with his glances
the thoughts and arrear-thoughts of the old pope. At last the
latter began:
"He who most loved and possessed him hath now also lost
him most :
Lo, I myself am surely the most godless of us at present?
But who could rejoice at that!"
"Thou servedst him to the last?" asked Zarathustra
thoughtfully, after a deep silence, "thou knowest bow he
died? Is it true what they say, that sympathy choked him;
That he saw how man hung on the cross, and could not
endure it; that his love to man became his hell, and at last his
death?"
The old pope however did not answer, but looked aside
timidly, with a painful and gloomy expression.
"Let him go," said Zarathustra, after prolonged meditation,
still looking the old man straight in the eye.
"Let him go, he is gone. And though it honoureth thee that
thou speakest only in praise of this dead one, yet thou knowest
as well as I ivho he was, and that he went curious ways."
"To speak before three eyes," said the old pope cheerfully
(he was blind of one eye), "in divine matters I am more en-
lightened than Zarathustra himself and may well be so.
My love served him long years, my will followed all his will.
A good servant, however, knoweth everything, and many a
thing even which a master hideth from himself.
He was a hidden God, full of secrecy. Verily, he did not
come by his son otherwise than by secret ways. At the door of
his faith standeth adultery.
Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think
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OUT OF SERVICE
highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to
be judge? But the loving one loveth irrespective of reward
and requital.
When he was young, that God out of the Orient, then was
he harsh and revengeful, and built himself a hell for the
delight of his favourites.
At last, however, he became old and soft and mellow and
pitiful, more like a grandfather than a father, but most like
a tottering old grandmother.
There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney-corner, fretting
on account of his weak legs, world-weary, will- weary, and one
day he suffocated of his all-too-great pity."
'Thou old pope," said here Zarathustra interposing, "hast
thou seen that with thine eyes? It could well have happened
in that way: in that way, and also otherwise. When gods die
they always die many kinds of death.
Well! At all events, one way or other he is gone! He was
counter to the taste of mine ears and eyes; worse than that I
should not like to say against him.
I love everything that looketh bright and speaketh honestly.
But he thou knowest it, forsooth, thou old priest, there was
something of thy type in him, the priest-type he was equivo-
cal.
He was also indistinct. How he raged at us, this wrath-
snorter, because we understood him badly! But why did he
not speak more clearly?
And if the fault lay in our ears, why did he give us ears that
heard him badly? If there was dirt in our ears, well! who put
it in them?
Too much miscarried with him, this potter who had not
learned thoroughly! That he took revenge on his pots and
[ 291 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
creations, however, because they turned out badly that was a
sin against good taste.
There is also good taste in piety: this at last said: 'Away with
such a God! Better to have no God, better to set up destiny on
one's own account, better to be a fool, better to be God
oneself!' "
''What do I hear!" said then the old pope, with intent
ears; "O Zarathustra, thou art more pious than thou believest,
with such an unbelief! Some god in thee hath converted thee
to thine ungodliness.
Is it not thy piety itself which no longer lettcth thee be-
lieve in a God? And thine over-great honesty will yet lead
thee even beyond good and evil!
Behold, what hath been reserved for thee? Thou hast eyes
and hands and mouth, which have been predestined for bless-
ing from eternity. One doth not bless with the hand alone.
Nigh unto thee, though thou professest to be the ungod-
licst one, I feel a hale and holy odour of long benedictions: I
feel glad and grieved thereby.
Let me be thy guest, O Zarathustra, for a single night!
Nowhere on earth shall I now feel better than with thee!"
"Amen! So shall it be!" said Zarathustra, with great aston-
ishment; "up thither leadeth the way, there lieth the cave of
Zarathustra.
Gladly, forsooth, would I conduct thee thither myself, thou
venerable one; for I love all pious men. But now a cry of dis-
tress calleth me hastily away from thee.
In my domain shall no one come to grief; my cave is a
good haven. And best of all would I like to put every sorrowful
one again on firm land and firm legs.
[ 292 ]
TH E UGLIEST MAN
Who, however, could take thy melancholy off thy shoulders?
For that I am too weak. Long, verily, should we have to wait
until some one re-awoke thy God for thee.
For that old God liveth no more: he is indeed dead."
Thus spake Zarathustra.
6/. The Ugliest Man
AND again did Zarathustra' s feet run through mountains
and forests, and his eyes sought and sought, but nowhere was
he to be seen whom they wanted to see the sorely distressed
sufferer and crier. On the whole way, however, he rejoiced in
his heart and was full of gratitude. "What good things," said
he, "hath this day given me, as amends for its bad beginning!
What strange interlocutors have I found!
At their words will I now chew a long while as at good corn;
small shall my teeth grind and crush them, until they flow like
milk into my soul!"
When, however, the path again curved round a rock, all at
once the landscape changed, and Zarathustra entered into a
realm of death. Here bristled aloft black and red cliffs, with-
out any grass, tree, or bird's voice. For it was a valley which all
animals avoided, even the beasts of prey, except that a species
of ugly, thick, green serpent came here to die when they be-
came old. Therefore the shepherds called this valley: "Serpent-
death."
Zarathustra, however, became absorbed in dark recollec-
tions, for it seemed to him as if he had once before stood in
[ 293 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
this valley. And much heaviness settled on his mind, so that
he walked slowly and always more slowly, and at last stood
still. Then, however, when he opened his eyes, he saw some-
thing sitting by the wayside shaped like a man, and hardly
like a man, something nondescript. And all at once there came
over Zarathustra a great shame, because he had gazed on such
a thing. Blushing up to the very roots of his white hair, he
turned aside his glance, and raised his foot that he might
leave this ill-starred place. Then, however, became the dead
wilderness vocal: for from the ground a noise welled up,
gurgling and rattling, as water gurgleth and rattleth at night
through stopped-up water-pipes; and at last it turned into
human voice and human speech: it sounded thus:
"Zarathustra! Zarathustra! Read my riddle! Say, say! What
is the revenge on the witness?
I entice thee back; here is smooth ice! See to it, see to it,
that thy pride does not here break its legs!
Thou thinkest thyself wise, thou proud Zarathustra! Read
then the riddle, thou hard nut-cracker, the riddle that I am!
Say then: who am //"
When however Zarathustra had heard these words,
what think ye then took place in his soul? Pity overcame htm;
and he sank down all at once, like an oak that hath long with-
stood many tree-fellers, heavily, suddenly, to the terror even
of those who meant to fell it. But immediately he got up
again from the ground, and his countenance became stern.
"I know thee well,'* said he, with a brazen voice, "thou art
the murderer. of God! Let me go.
Thou couldst not endure him who beheld thee, who ever
beheld thee through and through, thou ugliest man. Thou
tookest revenge on this witness!"
Thus spake Zarathustra and was about to go; but the non-
[294}
THE UGLIEST MAN
descript grasped at a corner of his garment and began anew
to gurgle and seek for words. "Stay," said he at last
"Stay! Do not pass by! I have divined what axe it was
that struck thee to the ground: hail to thee, O Zarathustra, that
thou art again upon thy feet!
Thou hast divined, I know it well, how the man f eeleth who
killed him, the murderer of God. Stay! Sit down here be-
side me; it is not to no purpose.
To whom would I go but unto dice? Stay, sit down! Do not
however look at me! Honour thus mine ugliness!
They persecute me: now art thou my last refuge. Not with
their hatred, not with their bailiffs; Oh, such persecution
would I mock at, and be proud and cheerful!
Hath not all success hitherto been with the well-persecuted
ones? And he who persecuted! well learneth readily to be
obsequent when once he is put behind! But it is their pity
Their pity is it from which I flee away and flee to thee. O
Zarathustra, protect me, thou, my last refuge, thou sole one
who divinedst me:
Thou hast divined how the man f eeleth who killed him.
Stay! And if thou wilt go, thou impatient one, go not the way
that I came. That way is bad.
Art thou angry with me because I have already racked lan-
guage too long? Because I have already counselled thee? But
know that it is I, the ugliest man,
Who have also the largest, heaviest feet. Where 7 have
gone, the way is bad. I tread all paths to death and destruction.
But that thou passedst me by in silence, that thou blushedst
I saw it well: thereby did I know thee as Zarathustra.
Every one else would have thrown to me his alms, his pity,
in look and speech. But for that I am not beggar enough: that
didst thou divine.
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THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
For that I am too rich, rich in what is great, frightful,
ugliest, most unutterable! Thy shame, O Zarathustra, honoured
me!
With difficulty did I get out of the crowd of the pitiful,
that I might find the only one who at present teacheth that 'pity
is obtrusive' thyself, O Zarathustra!
Whether it be the pity of a God, or whether it be human
pity, it is offensive to modesty. And unwillingness to help may
be nobler than the virtue that rusheth to do so.
That however namely, pity is called virtue itself at
present by all petty people: they have 'no reverence for great
misfortune, great ugliness, great failure.
Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looketh over the backs
of thronging flocks of sheep. They are petty, good-woolcd,
good-willed, grey people.
As the heron looketh contemptuously at shallow pools, with
backward-bent head, so do I look at the throng of grey little
waves and wills and souls.
Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those
petty people: so we have at last given them power as well;
and now do they teach that 'good is only what petty people
call good.'
And 'truth' is at present what the preacher spake who him-
self sprang from them, that singular saint and advocate of
the petty people, who testified of himself: 'I am the truth.'
That immodest one hath long made the petty people greatly
puffed up, he who taught no small error when he taught: 'I
am the truth.'
Hath an immodest one ever been answered more courte-
ously? Thou, however, O Zarathustra, passedst him by, and
saidst: 'Nay! Nay! Three times Nay!'
Thou warnedst against his error; thou warnedst the first
TH E UGLIEST MAN
to do so against pity: not every one, not none, but thyself
and thy type.
Thou art ashamed of the shame of the great sufferer; and
verily when thou sayest: 'From pity there cometh a heavy
cloud; take heed, yc men!'
When thou teachest: 'All creators are hard, all great love
is beyond their pity:' O Zarathustra, how well versed dost
thou seem to me in weather-signs!
Thou thyself, however, warn thyself also against thy pity!
For many are on their way to thec, many suffering, doubting,
despairing, drowning, freezing ones
I warn thee also against myself. Thou hast read my best, my
worst riddle, myself, and what I have done. I know the axe that
felleth thee.
But he had to die: he looked with eyes which beheld
everything, he beheld men's depths and dregs, all his hidden
ignominy and ugliness.
His pity knew no modesty: he crept into my dirtiest corners.
This most prying, over-intrusive, over-pitiful one had to die.
He ever beheld me: on such a witness I would have revenge
or not live myself.
The God who beheld everything, and also man: that God
had to die! Man cannot endure it that such a witness should
live/'
Thus spake the ugliest man. Zarathustra however got up,
and prepared to go on: for he felt frozen to the very bowels.
"Thou nondescript," said he, "thou warnedst me against
thy path. As thanks for it I praise mine to thee. Behold, up
thither is the cave of Zarathustra.
My cave is large and deep and hath many corners; there
findeth he that is most hidden his hiding-place. And close be-
[ 297 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
side it, there are a hundred lurking-places and by-places for
creeping, fluttering, and hopping creatures.
Thou outcast, who hast cast thyself out, thou wilt not live
amongst men and men's pity? Well then, do like me! Thus
wilt thou learn also from me; only the doer learneth.
And talk first and foremost to mine animals! The proudest
animal and the wisest animal they might well be the right
counsellors for us both!"
Thus spake Zarathustra and went his way, more thought-
fully and slowly even than before: for he asked himself many
things, and hardly knew what to answer.
"How poor indeed is man," thought he in his heart, "how
ugly, how wheezy, how full of hidden shame!
They tell me that man loveth himself. Ah, how great must
that self-love be! How much contempt is opposed to it!
Even this man hath loved himself, as he hath despised him-
self, a great lover methinketh he is, and a great despiser.
No one have I yet found who more thoroughly despised
himself: even that is elevation. Alas, was this perhaps the
higher man whose cry I heard?
I love the great despisers. Man is something that hath to be
surpassed."
68. The Voluntary Beggar
WHEN Zarathustra had left the ugliest man, he was chilled and
felt lonesome: for much coldness and lonesomeness came over
his spirit, so that even his limbs became colder thereby. When,
however, he wandered on and on, uphill and down, at times
[ 298}
THE VOLUNTARY BEGGAR
past green meadows, though also sometimes over wild stony
couches where formerly perhaps an impatient brook had made
its bed, then he turned all at once warmer and heartier again.
"What hath happened unto me?'' he asked himself, "some-
thing warm and living quickeneth me; it must be in the neigh-
bourhood.
Already am I less alone; unconscious companions and
brethren rove around me; their warm breath toucheth my
soul."
When, however, he spied about and sought for the com-
forters of his lonesomeness, behold, there were kine there
standing together on an eminence, whose proximity and smell
had warmed his heart. The kinc, however, seemed to listen
eagerly to a speaker, and took no heed of him who approached.
When, however, Zarathustra was quite nigh unto them, then
did he hear plainly that a human voice spake in the midst of
the kine, and apparently all of them had turned their heads
towards the speaker.
Then ran Zarathustra up speedily and drove the animals
aside; for he feared that some one had here met with harm,
which the pity of the kine would hardly be able to relieve. But
in this he was deceived; for behold, there sat a man on the
ground who seemed to be persuading the animals to have no
fear of him, a peaceable man and Preacher-on-the-Mount, out
of whose eyes kindness itself preached. "What dost thou seek
here?" called out Zarathustra in astonishment.
"What do I here seek?" answered he: "the same that thou
seekest, thou mischief-maker; that is to say, happiness upon
earth.
To that end, however, I would fain learn of these kine. For
I tell thee that I have already talked half a morning unto
[ 299 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
them, and just now were they about to give me their answer.
Why dost thou disturb them?
Except ,we be converted and become as kine, we shall in no
wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. For we ought to learn
from them one tiling: ruminating.
And verily, although a man should gain the whole world,
and yet not learn one thing, ruminating, what would it profit
him! He would not be rid of hisaffliction,
His great affliction: that, however, is at present called
disgust. Who hath not at present his heart, his mouth and his
eyes full of disgust? Thou also! Thou also! But behold these
kine!"
Thus spake the Preachcr-on-the-Mount, and turned then his
own look towards Zarathustra for hitherto it had rested
lovingly on the kine : then, however, he put on a different ex-
pression. "Who is this with whom I talk?" he exclaimed,
frightened, and sprang up from the ground.
"This is the man without disgust, this is Zarathustra him-
self, the surmounter of the great disgust, this is the eye, this
is the mouth, this is the heart of Zarathustra himself."
And whilst he thus spake he kissed with o'erflowing eyes
the hands of him with whom he spake, and behaved alto-
gether like one to whom a precious gift and jewel hath fallen
unawares from heaven. The kine, however, gazed at it all and
wondered.
"Speak not of me, thou strange one; thou amiable one!" said
Zarathustra, and restrained his affection, "speak to me firstly
of thyself! Art thou not the voluntary beggar who once cast
away great riches,
Who was ashamed of his riches and of the rich, and fled
to the poorest to bestow upon them his abundance and his
heart? But they received him not."
[ 300 ]
THE VOLUNTARY BEGGAR
"But they received me not," said the voluntary beggar, "thou
knowest it, forsooth. So I went at last to the animals and to
those kine."
"Then learnedst thou," interrupted Zarathustra, "how much
harder it is to give properly than to take properly, and that be-
stowing well is an art the last, subtlest master-art of kind-
ness."
"Especially nowadays," answered the voluntary beggar: "at
present, that is to say, when everything low hath become re-
bellious and exclusive and haughty in its manner in the
manner of the populace.
For the hour hath come, thou knowest it forsooth, for the
great, evil, long, slow mob-and-slave-insurrection: it extendeth
and extendeth!
Now doth it provoke the lower classes, all benevolence and
petty giving; and the overrich may be on their guard!
Whoever at present drip, like bulgy bottles out of all-too-
small necks: of such bottles at present one willingly breaketh
the necks.
Wanton avidity, bilious envy, careworn revenge, populace-
pride: all these struck mine eye. It is no longer true that the
poor are blessed. The kingdom of heaven, however, is with
the kine."
"And why is it not with the rich?" asked Zarathustra tempt-
ingly, while he kept back the kine which sniffed familiarly at
the peaceful one.
"Why dost thou tempt me?" answered the other. "Thou
knowest it thyself better even than I. What was it drove me
to the poorest, O Zarathustra? Was it not my disgust at the
richest?
At the culprits of riches, with cold eyes and rank thoughts >
[ 301 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
who pick up profit out of all kinds of rubbish at this rabble
that stinkcth to heaven,
At this gilded, falsified populace, whose fathers were
pickpockets, or carrion-crows, or rag-pickers, with wives com-
pliant, lewd and forgetful: for they are all of them not far
different from harlots
Populace above, populace below! What are 'poor' and 'rich'
at present! That distinction did I unlearn, then did I flee
away further and ever further, until I came to those kine."
Thus spake the peaceful one, and puffed himself and per-
spired with his words: so that the kine wondered anew. Zara-
thustra, however, kept looking into his face with a smile, all
the time the man talked so severely and shook silently his
head.
"Thou doest violence to thyself, thou Preacher-on-the-
Mount, when thou usest such severe words. For such severity
neither thy mouth nor thine eye have been given thee.
Nor, methinketh, hath thy stomadi either: unto /'/ all such
rage and hatred and foaming-over is repugnant. Thy stomach
wanteth softer things: thou art not a butcher.
Rather sccmest thou to me a plant-eater and a root-man.
Perhaps thou grindest corn. Certainly, however, thou art averse
to fleshly joys, and thou lovest honey."
"Thou hast divined me well," answered the voluntary beg-
gar, with lightened heart. "I love honey, I also grind corn; for
I have sought out what tasteth sweetly and maketh pure breath:
Also what rec[uireth a long time, a day's-work and a
mouth's-work for gentle idlers and sluggards.
Furthest, to be sure, have those kine carried it: they have de-
vised ruminating and lying in the sun. They also abstain from
all heavy thoughts which inflate the heart."
"Well!" said Zarathustra, "thou shouldst also see mine
[ 302 ]
THE SHADOW
animals, mine eagle and my serpent, their like do not at
present exist on earth.
Behold, thither leadeth the way to my cave: be tonight its
guest. And talk to mine animals of the happiness of animals,
Until I myself come home. For now a cry of distress
calleth me hastily away from thec. Also, shouldst thou find
new honey with me, ice-cold, golden-comb-honey, eat it!
Now, however, take leave at once of thy kine, thou strange
one! thou amiable one! though it be hard for thee. For they
are thy warmest friends and preceptors!"
"One cxcepted, whom I hold still dearer," answered the
voluntary beggar. "Thou thyself art good, O Zarathustra, and
better even than a cow!"
"Away, away with thee! thou evil flatterer!" cried Zarathus-
tra mischievously, "why dost thou spoil me with such praise
and flattery-honey?
"Away, away from me!" cried he once more, and heaved
his stick at the fond beggar, who, however, ran nimbly away.
69. The Shadow
SCARCELY however was the voluntary beggar gone in haste,
and Zarathustra again alone, when he heard behind him a new
voice which called out: "Stay! Zarathustra! Do wait! It is
myself, forsooth, O Zarathustra, myself, thy shadow!" But
Zarathustra did not wait; for a sudden irritation came over
him on account of the crowd and the crowding in his moun-
tains. "Whither hath my lonesomeness gone?" spake he.
[ 303 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
"It is verily becoming too much for me; these mountains
swarm; my kingdom is no longer of this world; I require new
mountains.
My shadow calleth me? What matter about my shadow! Let
it run after me! I run away from it."
Thus spake Zarathustra to his heart and ran away. But the
one behind followed after him, so that immediately there were
three runners, one after the other namely, foremost the
voluntary beggar, then Zarathustra, and thirdly, and hindmost,
his shadow. But not long had they run thus- when Zarathustra
became conscious of his folly, and shook off with one jerk all
his irritation and detestation.
"What!" said he, "have not the most ludicrous things
always happened to us old anchorites and saints?
Verily, my folly hath grown big in the mountains! Now do
I hear six old fools' legs rattling behind one another!
But doth Zarathustra need to be frightened by his shadow?
Also, methinketh that after all it hath longer legs than mine."
Thus spake Zarathustra, and, laughing with eyes and en-
trails, he stood still and turned round quickly and behold,
he almost thereby threw his shadow and follower to the
ground, so closely had the latter followed at his heels, and so
weak was he. For when Zarathustra scrutinised him with his
glance he was frightened as by a sudden apparition, so slender,
swarthy, hollow and worn-out did this follower appear.
"Who art thou?" asked Zarathustra vehemently, "what doest
thou here? And why callest thou thyself my shadow? Thou art
not pleasing unto me."
"Forgive me," answered the shadow, "that it is I; and if I
please thee not well, O Zarathustra! therein do I admire thee
and thy good taste.
[304]
THE SHADOW
A wanderer am I, who have walked long at thy heels; always
on the way, but without a goal, also without a home: so that
verily, I lack little of being the eternally Wandering Jew,
except that I am not eternal and not a Jew.
What? Must I ever be on the way? Whirled by every wind,
unsettled, driven about? O earth, thou hast become too round
for me!
On every surface have I already sat, like tired dust have I
fallen asleep on mirrors and window-panes: everything taketh
from me, nothing giveth; I become thin I am almost equal
to a shadow.
After thee, however, O Zarathustra, did I fly and hie longest;
and though I hid myself from thee, I was nevertheless thy
best shadow : wherever thou hast sat, there sat I also.
With thee have I wandered about in the remotest, coldest
worlds, like a phantom that voluntarily hauntcth winter roofs
and snows.
With thee have I pushed into all the forbidden, all the worst
and the furthest: and if there be anything of virtue in me, it is
that I have had no fear of any prohibition.
With thee have I broken up whatever my heart revered; all
boundary-stones and statues have I o'erthrown; the most dan-
gerous wishes did I pursue, verily, beyond every crime did I
once go.
With thee did I unlearn the belief in words and worths and
in great names. When the devil casteth his skin, doth not his
name also fall away? It is also skin. The devil himself is
perhaps skin.
'Nothing is true, all is permitted' : so said I to myself. Into
the coldest water did I plunge with head and heart. Ah, how
oft did I stand there naked on that account, like a red crab!
[ 30 5 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Ah, where have gone all my goodness and all my shame and
all my belief in the good! Ah, where is the lying innocence
which I once possessed, the innocence of the good and of their
noble lies!
Too oft, verily, did I follow close to the heels of truth: then
did it kick me on the face. Sometimes I meant to lie, and be-
hold! then only did I hit the truth.
Too much hath become clear unto me: now it doth not con-
cern me any more. Nothing liveth any longer that I love,
how should I still love myself?
To live as I incline, or not to live at all': so do I wish; so
wisheth also the holiest. But alas! how have / still inclina-
tion?
Have / still a goal? A haven towards which my sail is set?
A good wind? Ah, he only who knoweth whither he saileth,
knoweth what wind is good, and a fair wind for him.
What still remaineth to me? A heart weary and flippant;
an unstable will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone.
This seeking for my home: O Zarathustra, dost thou know
that this seeking hath been my home-sickening; it eateth me up.
'Where is my home?' For it do I ask and seek, and have
sought, but have not found it. O eternal everywhere, O eternal
nowhere, O eternal in- vain!"
Thus spake the shadow, and Zarathustra's countenance
lengthened at his words. "Thou art my shadow!" said he at
last sadly.
"Thy danger is not small, thou free spirit and wanderer!
Thou hast had a bad day: see that a still worse evening doth
not overtake thee!
To such unsettled ones as thou, seemeth at last even a
[ 306 ]
NOONTIDE
prisoner blessed. Didst thou ever see how captured criminals
sleep? They sleep quietly, they enjoy their new security.
Beware lest in the end a narrow faith capture thee, a hard,
rigorous delusion! For now everything that is narrow and fixed
seduceth and tempteth thee.
Thou hast lost, thy goal. Alas, how wilt thou forego and
forget that loss? Thereby hast thou also lost thy way!
Thou poor rover and rambler, thou tired butterfly! wilt thou
have a rest and a home this evening? Then go up to my cave!
Thither leadeth the way to my cave. And now will I run
quickly away from thee again. Already lieth as it were a
shadow upon me.
I will run alone, so that it may again become bright around
me. Therefore must I still be a long time merrily upon my
legs. In the evening, however, there will be dancing with
me!"
Thus spake Zarathustra.
jo. Noontide
AND Zarathustra ran and ran, but he found no one else,
and was alone and ever found himself again; he enjoyed and
quaffed his solitude, and thought of good things for hours.
About the hour of noontide, however, when the sun stood
exactly over Zarathustra's head, he passed an old, bent and
gnarled tree, which was encircled round by the ardent love of
a vine, and hidden from itself; from this there hung yellow
[ 307 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
grapes in abundance, confronting the wanderer. Then he felt
inclined to quench a little thirst, and to break off for himself a
cluster of grapes. When, however, he had already his arm out-
stretched for that purpose, he felt still more inclined for some-
thing else namely, to lie down beside the tree at the hour of
perfect noontide and sleep.
This Zarathustra did; and no sooner had he laid himself on
the ground in the stillness and secrecy of the variegated grass,
than he had forgotten his little thirst, and fell asleep. For as
the proverb of Zarathustra saith: "One thing is more neces-
sary than the other." Only that his eyes remained open: for
they never grew weary of viewing and admiring the tree and
the love of the vine. In falling asleep, however, Zarathustra
spake thus to his heart:
"Hush! Hush! Hath not the world now become perfect?
What hath happened unto me?
As a delicate wind danceth invisibly upon parqueted seas,
light, feather-light, so danceth sleep upon me.
No eye doth it close to me, it leaveth my soul awake. Light
is it, verily, feather-light.
It persuadeth me, I know not how, it toucheth me inwardly
with a caressing hand, it constraineth me. Yea, it constraineth
me, so that my soul stretcheth itself out:
How long and weary it bccometh, my strange soul! Hath
a seventh-day evening come to it precisely at noontide? Hath
it already wandered too long, blissfully, among good and ripe
things?
It stretcheth itself out, long longer! it lieth still, my strange
soul. Too many good things hath it already tasted; this golden
sadness oppresseth it, it distorteth its mouth.
As a ship that putteth into the calmest cove: it now
[ 308 ]
NOONTIDE
draweth up to the land, weary of long voyages and uncertain
seas. Is not the land more faithful?
As such a ship huggeth the shore, tuggeth the shore: then
it sufficeth for a spider to spin its thread from the ship to the
land. No stronger ropes are required there.
As such a weary ship in the calmest cove, so do I also now
repose, nigh to the earth, faithful, trusting, waiting, bound
to it with the lightest threads.
O happiness! O happiness! Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my
soul? Thou liest in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour,
when no shepherd playcth his pipe.
Take care! Hot noontide sleepeth on the fields. Do not sing!
Hush! The world is perfect.
Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whis-
per! Lo hush! The old noontide sleepeth, it movcth its
mouth: doth it not just now drink a drop of happiness
An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine?
Something whisketh over it, its happiness laugheth. Thus
laugheth a God. Hush!
Tor happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness!' Thus
spake I once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy:
that have I now learned. Wise fools speak better.
The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest
thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance
little maketh up the best happiness. Hush!
What hath befallen me: Hark! Hath time flown away?
Do I not fall? Have I not fallen hark! into the well of
eternity?
What happeneth to me? Hush! It stingeth me alas to
the heart? To the heart! Oh, break up, break up, my heart,
after such happiness, after such a sting!
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
What? Hath not the world just now become perfect?
Round and ripe? Oh, for the golden round ring whither
doth it fly? Let me run after it! Quick!
Hush " (and here Zarathustra stretched himself, and
felt that he was asleep. )
"Up!" said he to himself, "thou sleeper! Thou noontide
sleeper! Well then, up, ye old legs! It is time and more than
time; many a good stretch of road is still awaiting you
Now have ye slept your fill; for how long a time? A half-
eternity! Well then, up now, mine old heart! For how long
after such a sleep mayest thou remain awake?"
(But then did he fall asleep anew, and his soul spake against
him and defended itself, and lay down again) "Leave me
alone! Hush! Hath not the world just now become perfect?
Oh, for the golden round ball!"
"Get up," said Zarathustra, "thou little thief, thou slug-
gard! What! Still stretching thyself , yawning, sighing, falling
into deep wells?
Who art thou then, O my soul!" ( and here he became fright-
ened, for a sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.)
"O heaven above me," said he sighing, and sat upright,
"thou gazest at me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul?
When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon
all earthly things, when wilt thou drink this strange soul
When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noon-
tide abyss! when wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?"
Thus spake Zarathustra, and rose from his couch beside the
tree, as if awakening from a strange drunkenness: and behold!
there stood the sun still exactly above his head. One might,
however, rightly infer therefrom that Zarathustra had not
then slept long.
[310]
THE GREETING
77. The Greeting
IT WAS late in the afternoon only when Zarathustra, after long
useless searching and strolling about, again came home to his
cave. When, however, he stood over against it, not more than
twenty paces therefrom, the thing happened which he now
least of all expected: he heard anew the great cry of distress,
And extraordinary! this time the cry came out of his own cave.
It was a long, manifold, peculiar cry, and Zarathustra plainly
distinguished that it was composed of many voices: although
heard at a distance it might sound like the cry out of a single
mouth.
Thereupon Zarathustra rushed forward to his cave, and
behold! what a spectacle awaited him after that concert! For
there did they all sit together whom he had passed during the
day: the king on the right and the king on the left, the old
magician, the pope, the voluntary beggar, the shadow, the in-
tellectually conscientious one, the sorrowful soothsayer, and
the ass; the ugliest man, however, had set a crown on his head,
and had put round him two purple girdles, for he liked, like
all ugly ones, to disguise himself and play the handsome per-
son. In the midst, however, of that sorrowful company stood
Zarathustra's eagle, ruffled and disquieted, for it had been
called upon to answer too much for which its pride had not any
answer; the wise serpent however hung round its neck.
All this did Zarathustra behold with great astonishment;
then however he scrutinised each individual guest with cour-
teous curiosity, read their souls and wondered anew. In the
meantime the assembled ones had risen from their seats, and
waited with reverence for Zarathustra to speak. Zarathustra
however spake thus :
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
"Ye despairing ones! Ye strange ones! So it was your cry of
distress that I heard? And now do I know also where he is to
be sought, whom I have sought for in vain today: the higher
man :
In mine own cave sitteth he, the higher man! But why do
I wonder! Have not I myself allured him to me by honey-
offerings and artful lure-calls of my happiness?
But it seemeth to me that ye are badly adapted for com-
pany: ye make one another's hearts fretful, ye that cry for
help, when ye sit here together? There is one that must first
come,
One who will make you laugh once more, a good jovial
buffoon, a dancer, a wind, a wild romp, some old fool:
what think yc?
Forgive me, however, ye despairing ones, for speaking such
trivial words before you, unworthy, verily, of such guests!
But ye do not divine what maketh my heart wanton:
Ye yourselves do it, and your aspect, forgive it me! For
every one becometh courageous who beholdeth a despairing
one. To encourage a despairing one every one thinketh him-
self strong enough to do so.
To myself have yc given this power, a good gift, mine
honourable guests! An excellent guest's-present! Well, do not
then upbraid when I also offer you something of mine.
This is mine empire and my dominion: that which is mine,
however, shall this evening and tonight be yours. Mine ani-
mals shall serve you : let my cave be your resting-place!
At house and home with me shall no one despair: in my
.purlieus do I protect every one from his wild beasts. And that
is the first thing which I offer you: security!
The second thing, however, is my little finger. And when ye
[ 312 ]
THE GRE ETING
have that, then take the whole hand also, yea and the heart
with it! Welcome here, welcome to you, my guests!"
Thus spake Zarathustra, and laughed with love and mis-
chief. After this greeting his guests bowed once more and were
reverentially silent; the king on the right, however, answered
him in their name.
"O Zarathustra, by the way in which thou hast given us thy
hand and thy greeting, we recognise thee as Zarathustra. Thou
hast humbled thyself before us; almost hast thou hurt our
reverence :
Who however could have humbled himself as thou hast
done, with such pride? That uplifteth us ourselves; a refresh-
ment is it, to our eyes and hearts.
To behold this, nr 'cly, gladly would we ascend higher
mountains than this. For as eager beholders have we come; we
wanted to see what brighteneth dim eyes.
And lo! now is it all over with our cries of distress. Now
are our minds and hearts open and enraptured. Little is lack-
ing for our spirits to become wanton.
There is nothing, O Zarathustra, that groweth more pleas-
ingly on earth than a lofty, strong will: it is the finest growth.
An entire landscape refresheth itself at one such tree.
To the pine do I compare him, O Zarathustra, which
groweth up like thee tall, silent, hardy, solitary, of the best,
supplest wood, stately,
In the end, however, grasping out for its dominion with
strong, green branches, asking weighty questions of the wind,
the storm, and whatever is at home on high places;
Answering more weightily, a commander, a victor! Oh!
who should not ascend high mountains to behold such
growths?
At thy tree,' O Zarathustra, the gloomy and ill-constituted
[ 313 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
also refresh themselves; at thy look even the wavering become
steady and heal their hearts.
And verily, towards thy mountain and thy tree do many eyes
turn to-day; a great longing hath arisen, and many have learned
to ask: 'Who is Zarathustra?'
And those into whose ears thou hast at any time dripped
thy song and thy honey: all the hidden ones, the lone-dwellers
and the twain-dwellers, have simultaneously said to their
hearts:
'Doth Zarathustra still live? It is no longer worth while to
live, everything is indifferent, everything is useless: or else
we must live with Zarathustra!'
'Why doth he not come who hath so long announced him-
self?' thus do many people ask; 'hath solitude swallowed him
up? Or should we perhaps go to him?'
Now doth it come to pass that solitude itself becometh
fragile and breaketh open, like a grave that breaketh open and
can no longer hold its dead. Everywhere one secth resurrected
ones.
Now do the waves rise and rise around thy mountain, O
Zarathustra. And however high be thy height, many of them
must rise up to thee: thy boat shall not rest much longer on dry
ground.
And that we despairing ones have now come into thy cave,
:ind already no longer despair: it is but a prognostic and a
presage that better ones are on the way to thee,
For they themselves are on the way to thee, the last
remnant of God among men that is to say, all the men of
great longing, of great loathing, of great satiety,
All who do not want to live unless they learn again to
hope unless they learn from thee, O Zarathustra, the great
hope!"
[314]
THE GREETING
Thus spake the king on the right, and seized the hand of
Zarathustra in order to kiss it; but Zarathustra checked his
veneration, and stepped back frightened, fleeing as it were,
silently and suddenly into the far distance. After a little while,
however, he was again at home with his guests, looked at
them with clear scrutinising eyes, and said:
"My guests, ye higher men, I will speak plain language and
plainly with you. It is not for you that I have waited here in
these mountains."
(" 'Plain language and plainly?' Good God!" said here the
king on the left to himself; "one seeth he doth not know the
good Occidentals, this sage out of the Orient!
But he meaneth 'blunt language and bluntly' well! That
is not the worst taste in these days!" )
"Ye may, verily, all of you be higher men," continued Zara-
thustra; "but for me ye are neither high enough, nor strong
enough.
For me, that is to say, for the inexorable which is now silent
in me, but will not always be silent. And if ye appertain to me,
still it is not as my right arm.
For he who himself standeth, like you, on sickly and tender
legs, wisheth above all to be treated indulgently, whether he be
conscious of it or hide it from himself.
My arms and my legs, however, I do not treat indulgently,
I do not treat my ivarriors Indulgently: how then could ye be
fit for my warfare?
With you I should spoil all my victories. And many of you
would tumble over if ye but heard the loud beating of my
drums.
Moreover, ye are not sufficiently beautiful and well-born for
me. I require pure, smooth mirrors for my doctrines; on your
surface even mine own likeness is distorted.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
On your shoulders presseth many a burden, many a recol-
lection; many a mischievous dwarf squatteth in your corners.
There is concealed populace also in you.
And though ye be high and of a higher type, much in you
is crooked and misshapen. There is no smith in the world that
could hammer you right and straight for me.
Ye are only bridges: may higher ones pass over upon you!
Ye signify steps: so do not upbraid him who ascendeth beyond
you into his height!
Out of your seed there may one day arise for me a genuine
son and perfect heir: but that time is distant. Ye yourselves
arc not those unto whom my heritage and name belong.
Not for you do I wait here in these mountains; not with you
may I descend for the last time. Yc have come unto me only
as a presage that higher ones are on the way to me,
Not the men of great longing, of great loathing, of great
satiety, and that which ye call the remnant of God;
Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! For others do I wait here
in these mountains, and will not lift my foot from thence
without them;
For higher ones, stronger ones, triumphanter ones,
merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in body and soul:
laughing lions must come!
O my guests, ye strange ones have ye yet heard nothing of
my children? And that they are on the way to me?
Do speak unto me of my gardens, of my Happy Isles, of my
new beautiful race why do ye not speak unto me thereof?
This gucsts'-present do I solicit of your love, that ye speak
unto me of my children. For them am I rich, for them I became
poor: what have I not surrendered.
What would I not surrender that I might have one thing:
[ 316 ]
TH E SUPPER
hese children, this living plantation, these life-trees of my
vill and of my highest hope!"
Thus spake Zarathustra, and stopped suddenly in his dis-
:ourse: for his longing came over him, and he closed his eyes
ind his mouth, because of the agitation of his heart. And all
lis guests also were silent, and stood still and confounded:
except only that the old soothsayer made signs with his hands
ind his gestures.
J2. The Supper
?OR at this point the soothsayer interrupted the greeting of
Zarathustra and his guests: he pressed forward as one who had
10 time to lose, seized Zarathustra's hand and exclaimed: "But
Zarathustra!
One thing is more necessary than the other, so sayest thou
hyself : well, one thing is now more necessary unto me than
ill others.
A word at the right time: didst thou not invite me to table?
\nd here are many who have made long journeys. Thou dost
lot mean to feed us merely with discourses?
Besides, all of you have thought too much about freezing,
Irowning, suffocating, and other bodily dangers: none of you,
lowever, have thought of my danger, namely, perishing of
mnger "
(Thus spake the soothsayer. Whea Zarathustra's animals,
lowever, heard these words, they ran away in terror. For they
;aw that all they had brought home during the day would not
>e enough to fill the one soothsayer. )
"Likewise perishing of thirst," continued the soothsayer.
'And although I hear water splashing here like words of wis-
[317]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
dom that is to say, plenteously and unweariedly, I want
wine!
Not every one is a born water-drinker like Zarathustra.
Neither doth water suit weary and withered ones: we deserve
wine // alone giveth immediate vigour and improvised
health!"
On this occasion, when the soothsayer was longing for wine,
it happened that the king on the left, the silent one, also found
expression for once. rt We took care," said he, "about wine, I,
along with my brother the king on the right: we have enough
of wine, a whole ass-load of it. So there is nothing lacking
but bread."
"Bread," replied Zarathustra, laughing when he spake, "it
is precisely bread that anchorites have not. But man doth not
live by bread alone, but also by the flesh of good lambs, of
which I have two:
These shall we slaughter quickly, and cook spicily with
sage: it is so that I like them. And there is also no lack of
roots and fruits, good enough even for the fastidious and
dainty, nor of nuts and other riddles for cracking.
Thus will we have a good repast in a little while. But who-
ever wisheth to eat with us must also give a hand to the work,
even the kings. For with Zarathustra even a king may be a
cook."
This proposal appealed to the hearts of all of them, save
that the voluntary beggar objected to the flesh and wine and
spices.
"Just hear this glutton Zarathustra!" said he jokingly: "doth
one go into caves and high mountains to make such repasts?
Now indeed do I understand what he once taught us:
'Blessed be moderate poverty!' And why he wisheth to do
away with beggars."
[ 318}
THE HIGHE R MAN
"Be of good cheer/' replied Zarathustra, "as I am. Abide
by thy customs, thou excellent one: grind thy corn, drink thy
water, praise thy cooking, if only it make thee glad!
I am a law only for mine own; I am not a law for all. He,
however, who belongeth unto me must be strong of bone and
light of foot,
Joyous in fight and feast, no sulker, no John o' Dreams,
ready for the hardest task as for the feast, healthy and hale.
The best belongeth unto mine and me; and if it be not given
us, then do we take it: the best food, the purest sky, the
strongest thoughts, the fairest women!"
Thus spake Zarathustra; the king on the right however
answered and said: "Strange! Did one ever hear such sensible
things out of the mouth of a wise man?
And verily, it is the strangest thing in a wise man, if over
and above, he be still sensible, and not an ass/'
Thus spake the king on the right and wondered; the ass
however, with ill-will, said YE-A to his remark. This however
was the beginning of that long repast which is called "The
Supper" in the history-books. At this there was nothing else
spoken of but the higher man.
The Higher Man
WHEN I came unto men for die first time, then did I commit
the anchoiite folly, the great folly: I appeared on the market-
place.
[ 319 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
And when I spake unto all, I spake unto none. In the eve-
ning, however, rope-dancers were my companions, and
corpses; and I myself almost a corpse.
With the new morning, however, there came unto me a new
truth: then did I learn to say: "Of what account to me are
market-place and populace and populace-noise and long popu-
lace-cars!"
Ye higher men, learn this from me: On the market-place no
one bclieveth in higher men. But if ye will speak there, very
well! The populace, however, blinketh: "We are all equal."
"Ye higher men," so blinketh the populace "there are
no higher men, we arc all equal; man is man, before God
we are all equal!"
Before God! Now, however, this God hath died. Before
the populace, however, we will not be equal. Ye higher men,
away from the market-place!
Before God! Now however this God hath died! Ye higher
men, this God was your greatest danger.
Only since he lay in the grave have ye again arisen/ Now
only cometh the great noontide, now only doth the higher
man become master!
Have ye understood this word, O my brethren? Ye are
frightened: do your hearts turn giddy? Doth the abyss here
yawn for you? Doth the hell-hound here yelp at you?
Well! Take heart! ye higher men! Now only travaileth the
mountain of the human future. God hath died: now do tqe
desire the Superman to live.
[ 320 ]
THE HIGHER MAN
3
The most careful ask to-day: "How is man to be main-
tained?" Zarathustra however asketh, as the first and only one:
''How is man to be surpassed?"
The Superman, I have at heart; that is the first and only thing
to me and not man: not the neighbour, not the poorest, not
the sorriest, not the best.
O my brethren, what I can love in man is that he is an over-
going and a down-going. And also in you there is much that
maketh me love and hope.
In that ye have despised, ye higher men, that maketh me
hope. For the great despisers are the great revcrers.
In that ye have despaired, there is much to honour. For ye
have not learned to submit yourselves, ye have not learned
petty policy.
For to-day have the petty people become master: they all
preach submission and humility and policy and diligence and
consideration and the long et cetera of petty virtues.
Whatever is of the effeminate type, whatever originateth
from the servile type, and especially the populace-mishmash:
that wisheth now to be master of all human destiny O
disgust! Disgust! Disgust!
That asketh and asketh and never tireth: "How is man to
maintain himself best, longest, most pleasantly?" Thereby
are they the masters of today.
These masters of today surpass them, O my brethren
these petty people: they are the Superman's greatest danger!
Surpass, ye higher men, the petty virtues, the petty policy,
the sand-grain considerateness, the ant-hill trumpery, the piti-
[ 321 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
able comfortableness, the "happiness of the greatest num-
ber"!
And rather despair than submit yourselves. And verily, I
love you, because ye know not today how to live, ye higher
men! For thus do ye live best!
Have ye courage, O my brethren? Are ye stout-hearted? Not
the courage before witnesses, but anchorite and eagle courage,
which not even a God any longer beholdeth?
Cold souls, mules, the blind and the drunken, I do not call
stout-hearted. He hath heart who knoweth fear, but vanquish-
eth it; who seeth the abyss, but with pride.
He who seeth the abyss, but with eagle's eyes, he who with
eagle's talons graspeth the abyss: he hath courage.
"Man is evil" so said to me for consolation, all the wisest
ones. Ah, if only it be still true today! For the evil is man's
best force.
"Man must become better and eviler" so do / teach. The
evilest is necessary for the Superman's best.
It may have been well for the preacher of the petty people
to suffer and be burdened by men's sin. I, however, rejoice in
great sin as my great consolation.
Such things, however, are not said for long ears. Every word,
also, is not suited for every mouth. These are fine far-away
things: at them sheep's claws shall not grasp!
[ 322 ]
THE HIGH E R MAN
6
Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye
have put wrong?
Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for
you sufferers? Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimb-
ing ones, new and easier footpaths?
Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! Always more, always belter
ones of your type shall succumb, for ye shall always have it
worse and harder. Thus only
Thus only groweth man aloft to the height where the
lightning striketh and shattered! him: high enough for the
lightning!
Towards the few, the long, the remote go forth my soul and
my seeking: of what account to me are your many little, short
miseries!
Ye do not yet suffer enough for me! For ye suffer from your-
selves, ye have not yet suffered jrom man. Ye would lie if ye
spake otherwise! None of you suffereth from what / have suf-
fered.
It is not enough for me that the lightning no longer doeth
harm. I do not wish to conduct it away: it shall l?arn to work
for me.
My wisdom hath accumulated long like a cloud, it becometh
stiller and darker. So doeth all wisdom which shall one day
bear lightnings.
[ 323 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Unto these men of today will I not be light, nor be called
light. Them will I blind: lightning of my wisdom! put out
their eyes!
8
Do not will anything beyond your power: there is a bad
falseness in those who will beyond their power.
Especially when they will great things! For they awaken
distrust in great things, these subtle false-coiners and stage-
players:
Until at last they are false towards themselves, squint-
eyed, whited cankers, glossed over with strong words, parade
virtues and brilliant false deeds.
Take good care there, ye higher men! For nothing is more
precious to me, and rarer, than honesty.
Is this today not that of the populace? The populace how-
ever knoweth not what is great and what is small, what is
straight and what is honest: it is innocently crooked, it ever
lieth.
9
Have a good distrust today, ye higher men, ye enheartened
ones! Ye open-hearted ones.! And keep your reasons secret! For
this today is that of the populace.
What the populace once learned to believe without reasons,
who could refute it to them by means of reasons?
And on the market-place one convinced! with gestures. But
reasons make the populace distrustful.
And when truth hath once triumphed there, then ask your-
[384]
THE HIGHE R MAN
selves with good distrust: "What strong error hath fought
for it?"
Be on your guard also against the learned! They hate you,
because they are unproductive! They have cold, withered eye%
before which every bird is unplumed.
Such persons vaunt about not lying: but inability to lie i:
still far from being love to truth. Be on your guard!
Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge!
Refrigerated spirits I do not believe in. He who cannot lie,
doth not know what truth is.
10
If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get
yourselves carried aloft; do not seat yourselves on other peo-
ple's backs and heads!
Thou hast mounted, however, on horseback? Thou now
ridest briskly up to thy goal? Well, my friend! But thy lame
foot is also with thee on horseback!
When thou readiest thy goal, when thou alightest from thy
horse: precisely on thy height, thou higher man, then wilt
thou stumble!
11
Ye creating ones, ye higher men! One is only pregnant with
one's own child.
Do not let yourselves be imposed upon or put upon! Who
then is your neighbour? Even if ye act "for your neighbour"
ye still do not create for him!
[ 825 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Unlearn, I pray you, this "for," ye creating ones: your very
virtue wisheth you to have naught to do with "for" and "on
account of" and "because." Against these false little words
shall ye stop your cars.
"For one's neighbour," is the virtue only of the petty people :
there it is said "like and like," and "hand washeth hand":
they have neither the right nor the power for your self-seeking!
In your self -seeking, ye creating ones, there is die foresight
and foreseeing of the pregnant! What no one's eye hath yet
seen, namely, the fruit this, sheltereth and saveth and nour-
isheth your entire love.
Where your entire love is, namely, with your child, there is
also your entire virtue! Your work, your will is your "neigh-
bour": let no false values impose upon you!
Ye creating ones, ye higher men! Whoever hath to give birth
is sick; whoever hath given birth, however, is unclean.
Ask women: one giveth birth, not because it giveth pleas-
ure. The pain maketh hens and poets cackle.
Ye creating ones, in you there is much uncleanness. That is
because ye have had to be mothers.
A new child: oh, how much new filth hath also come into
. the world! Go apart! He who hath given birth shall wash his
soul!
13
Be not virtuous beyond your powers! And seek nothing from
yourselves opposed to probability!
[ 326 ]
THE HIGHER MAN
Walk in the footsteps in which your fathers' virtue hath
already walked! How would ye rise high, if your fathers' will
should not rise with you?
He, however, who would be a firstling, let him take care lest
he also become a lastling! AncJ where the vices of your fathers
are, there should ye not set up as saints!
He whose f athers.were inclined for women, and for strong
wine and flesh of wildboar swine; what would it be if he
demanded chastity of himself?
A folly would it be! Much, verily, doth it seem to me for
such a one, if he should be the husband of one or of two or of
three women.
And if he founded monasteries, and inscribed over their
portals : "The way to holiness," I should still say: What good
is it! it is a new folly!
Hejiath founded for himself a penance-house and ref uge-
house: much good may it do! But I do not believe in it.
In solitude there groweth what any one bringeth into it
also the brute in one's nature. Thus is solitude inadvisable unto
many.
Hath there ever been anything filthier on earth than the
saints of the wilderness? Around them was not only the devil
loose but also the swine.
14
Shy, ashamed, awkward, like the tiger whose spring hath
failed thus, ye higher men, have I often seen you slink aside.
A cast which ye made had failed.
But what doth it matter, ye dice-players! Ye had not learned
[ 327 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
to play and mock, as one must play and mock! Do we not ever
sit at a great table of mocking and playing?
And if great things have been a failure with you, have ye
yourselves therefore been a failure? And if ye yourselves
have been a failure, hath man therefore been a failure?
If man, however, hath been a failure: well then! never
mind!
15
The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing suc-
ceed. Ye higher men here, have ye not all been failures?
Be of good cheer; what doth it matter? How much is still
possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to
laugh!
What wonder even that yc have failed and only half -suc-
ceeded, ye half-shattered ones! Doth not man's juture strive
and struggle in you?
Man's furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodi-
gious powers do not all these foam through one another in
your vessel?
What wonder that many a vessel shattereth! Learn to laugh
at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! Ye higher men, Oh, how
much is still possible!
And verily, how much hath already succeeded! How rich is
this earth in small, good, perfect things, in well-constituted
things!
Set around you small, good, perfect things, ye higher men.
Their golden maturity healeth the heart. The perfect teacheth
one to hope.
[ 328 ]
THE HIGHER MAN
16
What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was
it not the word of him who said: "Woe unto them that laugh
now!"
Did he himself find no cause for laughter on the earth?
Then he sought badly. A child even findeth cause for it.
He did not love sufficiently: otherwise would he also have
loved us, the laughing ones! But he hated and hooted us; wail-
ing and teeth-gnashing did he promise us.
Must one then curse immediately, when one doth not love?
That seemeth to me bad taste. Thus did he, however, this
absolute one. He sprang from the populace.
And he himself just did not love sufficiently; otherwise
would he have raged less because people did not love him. All
great love doth not seek love: it seeketh more.
Go out of the way of all such absolute ones! They are a poor
sickly type, a populace-type: they look at this life with ill-will,
they have an evil eye for this earth.
Go out of the way of all such absolute ones! They have heavy
feet and sultry hearts: they do not know how to dance. How
could the earth be light to such ones!
17
Tortuously do all good things come nigh to their goal. Liki:
cats they curve their backs; they purr inwardly with their ap-
proaching happiness, all good things laugh.
His step betrayeth whether a person already walketh on his
[ 329 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
own path: just see me walk! He, however, who cometh nigh to
his goal, danceth.
And verily, a statue have I not become, not yet do I stand
there stiff, stupid and stony, like a pillar; I love fast racing.
And though there be on earth fens and dense afflictions, he
who hath light feet runneth even across the mud, and danceth,
as upon well-swept ice.
Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not
forget your legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and
better still, if ye stand upon your heads!
18
This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown: I my-
self have put on this crown, I myself have consecrated my
laughter. No one else have I found to-day potent enough for
this.
Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one, who beck-
oneth with his pinions, one ready for flight, beckoning unto
all birds, ready and prepared, a blissfully light-spirited one:
Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-laugher,
no impatient one, no absolute one, one who loveth leaps and
side-leaps; I myself have put on this crown!
19
Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher! And do not
forget your legs! Lift up also your legs, ye good dancers, and
better still if ye stand upon your heads!
[ 330 ]
THE HIGHER MAN
There are also heavy animals in a state of happiness, there
are club-footed ones from the beginning. Curiously do they
exert themselves, like an elephant which endeavoureth to stand
upon its head.
Better, however, to be foolish with happiness than foolish
with misfortune, better to dance awkwardly than walk lamely.
So learn, I pray you, my wisdom, ye higher men : even the worst
thing hath two good reverse sides,
Even the worst thing hath good dancingrlegs: so learn,
I pray you, ye higher men, to put yourselves on your proper
legs!
So unlearn, I pray you, the sorrow-sighing, and all the popu-
lace-sadness! Oh, how sad the buffoons of the populace seem
to me today! This today, however, is that of the populace.
Do like unto the wind when it rusheth forth from its moun-
tain-caves: unto its own piping will it dance; the seas tremble
and leap under its footsteps.
That which giveth wings to asses, that which milketh the
lionesses: praised be that good, unruly spirit, which cometh
like a hurricane unto all the present and unto all the popu-
lace,
Which is hostile to thistle-heads and puzzle-heads, and to
all withered leaves and weeds: praised be this wild, good,
free spirit of the storm, which danceth upon fens and afflic-
tions, as upon meadows!
Which hateth the consumptive populace-dogs, and all the
ill-constituted, sullen brood: praised be this spirit of all free
[331 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
spirits, the laughing storm, which bloweth dust into the eyes
of all the melanopic and melancholic!
Ye higher men, the worst thing in you is that ye have none
of you learned to dance as ye ought to dance to dance beyond
yourselves! What doth it matter that ye have failed!
How many things are still possible! So learn to laugh be-
yond yourselves! Lift up your hearts, ye good dancers, high!
higher! And do not forget the good laughter!
This crown of the laughter, this rose-garland crown: to you,
my brethren, do I cast this crown! Laughing have I consecrated;
ye higher men, learn, I pray you to laugh!
74. The Song of Melancholy
WHEN Zarathustra spake these sayings, he stood nigh to the
entrance of his cave; with the last words, however, he slipped
away from his guests, and fled for a little while into the open
air.
"O pure odours around me/' cried he, "O blessed stillness
around me! But where are mine animals? Hither, hither, mine
eagle and my serpent!
Tell me, mine animals: these higher men, all of them do
they perhaps not smell well? O pure odours around me! Now
only do I know and feel how I love you, mine animals."
And Zarathustra said once more: "I love you, mine ani-
mals! 11 The eagle, however, and the serpent pressed close to
him when he spake these words, and looked up to him. In this
[ 332 ]
THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY
attitude were they all three silent together, and sniffed and
sipped the good air with one another. For the air here outside
was better than with the higher men.
Hardly, however, had Zarathustra left the cave when the
old magician got up, looked cunningly about him, and said:
"He is gone!
And already, ye higher men let me tickle you with this
complimentary and flattering name, as he himself doeth
already doth mine evil spirit of deceit and magic attack me,
my melancholy devil,
Which is an adversary to this Zarathustra from the very
heart: forgive it for this! Now doth it wish to cbnjure before
you, it hath just its hour; in vain do I struggle with this evil
spirit.
Unto all of you, whatever honours ye like to assume in your
names, whether ye call yourselves 'the free spirits' or 'the con-
scientious/ or 'the penitents of the spirit/ or 'the unfettered/
or 'the great longers/
Unto all of you, who like me suffer from the great loath-
ing, to whom the old God hath died, and as yet no new God
lieth in cradles and swaddling clothes unto all of you is mine
evil spirit and magic-devil favourable.
I know you, ye higher men, I know him, I know also this
fiend whom I love in spite of me, this Zarathustra: he himself
often seemeth to me like the beautiful mask of a saint,
Like a new strange mummery in which mine evil spirit,
the melancholy devil, delighteth: I love Zarathustra, so doth
it often seem to me, for the sake of mine evil spirit
[000 "I
*J&tJ J
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
But already doth // attack me and constrain me, this spirit of
melancholy, this evening-twilight devil: and verily, ye higher
men, it hath a longing
Open your eyes! it hath a longing to come naked,
whether male or female, I do not yet know: but it cometh, it
constraineth me, alas! open your wits!
The day dieth out, unto all things cometh now the evening,
also unto the best things; hear now, and see, ye higher men,
what devil man or woman this spirit of evening-melan-
choly is!"
Thus spake the old magician, looked cunningly about him,
and then seized his harp.
In evening's limpid air,
What time the dew's soothings
Unto the earth downpour,
Invisibly and unheard
For tender shoe-gear wear
The soothing dews, like all that's kind-gentle :
Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart,
How once thou thirsted est
For heaven's kindly teardrops and dew's down-drop-
pings,
All singed and weary thirstedest,
What time on yellow grass-pathways
Wicked, occidental sunny glances
Through sombre trees about thee sported,
Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting?
[334]
THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY
"Of truth the wooer? Thou?" so taunted they-
"Nay! Merely poet!
A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling,
That aye must lie,
That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie:
For booty lusting,
Motley masked,
Self -hidden, shrouded,
Himself his booty
He of truth the wooer?
Nay! Mere fool! Mere poet!
Just motley speaking,
From mask of fool confusedly shouting,
Circumambling on fabricated word-bridges,
On motley rainbow-arches,
'Twixt the spurious heavenly,
And spurious earthly,
Round us roving, round us soaring,
Mere fool! Mere poet!
He of truth the wooer?
Not still, stiff, smooth and cold,
Become an image,
A godlike statue,
Set up in front of temples,
As a God's own door-guard:
Nay! hostile to all such truthfulness-statues,
In every desert homelier than at temples,
With cattish wantonness,
Through every window leaping
Quickly into chances,
[335]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Every wild forest a-sniffing,
Greedily-longingly, sniffing,
That thou, in wild forests,
'Mong the motley-speckled fierce creatures,
Shouldest rove, sinful-sound and fine-coloured,
With longing lips smacking,
Blessedly mocking, blessedly hellish, blessedly blood-
thirsty,
Robbing, skulking, lying roving:
Or unto eagles like which fixedly,
Long adown the precipice look,
Adown their precipice:
Oh, how they whirl down now,
Thereunder, therein,
To ever deeper profoundness whirling!
Then,
Sudden,
With aim aright,
With quivering flight,
On lambkins pouncing,
Headlong down, sore-hungry,
For lambkins longing,
Fierce 'gainst all lamb-spirits,
Furious-fierce 'gainst all that look
Sheeplike, or lambeyed, or crisp- woolly,
Grey, with lambsheep kindliness!
Even thus,
Eaglelike, pantherlike,
Are the poet's desires,
Are thine own desires 'neath a thousand guises.
[ 336 ]
THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY
Thou fool! Thou poet!
Thou who all mankind vicwedst
So God, as sheep :
The God to rend within mankind,
As the sheep in mankind,
And in rending laughing
That, that is thine own blessedness!
Of a panther and eagle blessedness!
Of a poet and fool the blessedness!" r
In evening's limpid air,
What time the moon's sickle,
Green, 'twixt the purple-glowings,
And jealous, steal' th forth:
Of day the foe,
With every step in secret,
The rosy garland-hammocks
Downsickling, till they've sunken
Down nightwards, faded, downsunken:
Thus had I sunken one day
From mine own truth-insanity,
From mine own fervid day-longings,
Of day aweary, sick of sunshine,
Sunk downwards, even wards, shadowwards:
By one sole trueness
All scorched and thirsty:
Bethinkst thou still, bethinkst thou, burning heart,
How then thou thirstedest?
That 1 should banned be
From all the trueness!
Mere fool! Mere poet!
[ 337 ]
THUS SPAKE 2ARATHUSTRA
75. Science
THUS sang the magician; and all who were present went like
birds unawares into the net of his artful and melancholy volup-
tuousness. Only the spiritually conscientious one had not been
caught: he at once snatched the harp from the magician and
called out: "Air! Let in good air! Let in Zarathustra! Thou
makest this cave sultry and poisonous, thou bad old magi-
cian!
^hou seducest, thou false one, thou subtle one, to unknown
cs and deserts. And alas, that such as thou should talk
make ado about the truth!
ilas, to all free spirits who arc not on their guard against
such magicians! It is all over with their freedom: thou teaches t
and temptest back into prisons,
Thou old melancholy devil, out of thy lament soundeth
a hircment: thou resemblest those who with their praise of
chastity secretly invite to voluptuousness!"
Thus spake the conscientious one; the old magician, how-
ever, looked about him, enjoying his triumph, and on that
account put up with the annoyance which the conscientious one
caused him. "Be still!" said he with modest voice, "good songs
want to re-echo well; after good songs one should be long
silent.
Thus do all those present, the higher men. Thou, however,
hast perhaps understood but little of my song? In thee there
is little of the magic spirit."
"Thou praisest me," replied the conscientious one, "in that
thou separatest me from thyself; very well! But, ye others,
what do I see? Ye still sit there, all of you, with lusting eye
[QQj? 1
ooo J
SCIENCE
Ye free spirits, whither hath your freedom gone! Ye almost
seem to me to resemble those who have long*looked at bad
girls dancing naked: your souls themselves dance!
In you, ye higher men, there must be more of that which the
magician calleth his evil spirit of magic and deceit: we must
indeed be different.
And verily, we spake and thought long enough together ere
Zarathustra came home to his cave, for me not to be unaware
that we are different.
We seek different things even here aloft, ye and I. For I seek
more security; on that account have I come to Zarathustra. For
he is still the most steadfast tower and will
Today, when everything tottereth, when all the earth
quaketh. Ye, however, when I see what eyes ye make, it almost
seemeth to me that ye seek more insecurity,
More horror, more danger, more earthquake. Ye long (it
almost seemeth so to me forgive my presumption, ye higher
men)
Ye long for the worst and dangerousest life, which fright-
eneth me most, for the life of wild beasts, for forests, caves,
steep mountains and labyrinthine gorges.
And it is not those who lead out of danger that please you
best, but thoae who lead you away from all paths, the mis-
leaders. But if such longing in you be actual, it seemeth to me
nevertheless to be impossible.
For fear that is man's original and fundamental feeling;
through fear everything is explained, original sin and original
virtue. Through fear there grew also my virtue, that is to say:
Science.
For fear of wild animals that hath been longest fostered
in man, inclusive of the animal which he concealeth and f ear-
eth in himself: Zarathustra calleth it 'the beast inside/
[ 339 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Such prolonged ancient fear, at last become subtle, spir-
itual and intellectual at present, me thinketh, it is called
Science."
Thus spake the conscientious one; but Zarathustra, who had
just come back into his cave and had heard and divined the last
discourse, threw a handful of roses to the conscientious one,
and laughed on account of his "truths." "Why!" he exclaimed,
"what did I hear just now? Verily, it seemeth to me, thou art a
fool, or else I myself am one: and quietly and quickly will I
put thy 'truth' upside down.
For fear is an exception with us. Courage, however, and
adventure, and delight in the uncertain, in the unattempted
courage seemeth to me the entire primitive history of man.
The wildest and most courageous animals hath he envied
and robbed of all their virtues: thus only did he become man.
This courage, at last become subtle, spiritual and intellec-
tual, this human courage, with eagle's pinions and serpent's
wisdom: this, it seemeth to me, is called at present "
"Zarathustra!" cried all of them there assembled, as if with
one voice, and burst out at the same time into a great laugh-
ter; there arose, however, from them as it were a heavy cloud.
Even the magician laughed, and said wisely: "Well! It is gone,
mine evil spirit!
And did I not myself warn you against it when I said that
it was a deceiver, a lying and deceiving spirit?
Especially when it showeth itself naked. But what can / do
with regard to its tricks! Have / created it and the world?
Well! Let us be good again, and of good cheer! And al-
though Zarathustra looketh with evil eye just see him! he
disliketh me :
Ere night cometh will he again learn to love and laud me;
he cannot live long without committing such follies.
[340]
AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT
He loveth his enemies: this art knoweth he better than any
one I have seen. But he taketh revenge for it on his friends!"
Thus spake the old magician, and the higher men applauded
him; so that Zarathustra went round, and mischievously and
lovingly shook hands with his friends, like one who hath to
make amends and apologise to every one for something. When
however he had thereby come to the door of his cave, lo, then
had he again a longing for the good air outside, and for his
animals, and wished to steal out.
67. Among Daughters of the Desert
i
"'Go NOT away!" said then the wanderer who called himself
Zarathustra's shadow, "abide with us otherwise the old
gloomy affliction might again fall upon us.
Now hath that old magician given us of his worst for our
good, and lo! the good, pious pope there hath tears in his eyes,
and hath quite embarked again upon the sea of melancholy.
Those kings may well put on a good air before us still: for
that have they learned best of us all at present! Had they how-
ever no one to see them, I wager that with them also the bad
game would again commence,
The bad game of drifting clouds, of damp melancholy,
of curtained heavens, of stolen suns, of howling autumn-
winds,
The bad game of our howling and crying for help! Abide
with us, O Zarathustra! Here there is much concealed misery
[ 341 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
that wisheth to speak, mudi evening, much cloud, much damp
air!
Thou hast nourished us with strong food for men, and
powerful proverbs: do not let the weakly, womanly spirits
attack us anew at dessert!
Thou alone makes t the air around thee strong and clear. Did
I ever find anywhere on earth such good air as with thee in thy
cave?
Many lands have I seen, my nose hath learned to test and
estimate many kinds of air: but with thee do my nostrils taste
their greatest delight!
Unless it be, unless it be , do forgive an old recollection!
Forgive me an old after-dinner song, which I once composed
amongst daughters of the desert:
For with them was there equally good, clear, Oriental air;
there was I furthest from cloudy, damp, melancholy Old-
Europe!
Then did I love such Oriental maidens and other blue king-
doms of heaven, over which hang no clouds and no thoughts.
Ye would not believe how charmingly they sat there, when
they did not dance, profound, but without thoughts, like little
secrets, like beribboned riddles, like dessert-nuts
Many-hued and foreign, forsooth! but without clouds: rid-
dles which can be guessed: to please such maidens I then
composed an after-dinner psalm."
Thus spake the wanderer who called himself Zarathustra's
shadow; and before any one answered him, he had seized the
harp of the old magician, crossed his legs, and looked calmly
and sagely around him: with his nostrils, however, he in-
haled the air slowly and questioningly, like one who in new
countries tasteth new foreign air. Afterward he began to sing
with a kind of roaring.
AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT
The deserts grow: woe him who doth them hide!
Ha!
Solemnly!
In effect solemnly!
A worthy beginning!
Afric* manner, solemnly!
Of a lion worthy,
Or perhaps of a virtuous howl-monkey
But it's naught to you,
Yc friendly damsels dearly loved,
At whose own feet to me,
The first occasion,
To a European under palm-trees,
At seat is now granted. Selali.
Wonderful, truly!
Here do I sit now,
The desert nigh, and yet I am
So far still from the desert,
Even in naught yet deserted:
That is, I'm swallowed down
By this the smallest oasis :
It opened up just yawning,
Its loveliest mouth agape,
Most sweet-odoured of all mouthlets:
Then fell I right in,
Right down, right through in 'mong you,
Ye friendly damsels dearly loved! Selah.
[343]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Hail! hail! to that whale, fishlike,
If it thus for its guest's convenience
Made things nice! (ye well know,
Surely, my learned allusion?)
Hail to its belly,
If it had e'er
A such loveliest oasis-belly
As this is: though however I doubt about it,
With this come I out of Old-Europe,
That doubt' th more eagerly than doth any
Elderly married woman.
May the Lord improve it!
Amen!
Here do I sit now,
In this the smallest oasis,
Like a date indeed,
Brown, quite sweet, gold-suppurating,
For rounded mouth of maiden longing,
But yet still more for youthful, maidlike,
Ice-cold and snow-white and incisory
Front teeth: and for such assuredly,
Pine the hearts all of ardent date-fruits. Selah.
To the there-named south-fruits now,
Similar, all-too-similar,
Do I lie here; by little
Flying insects
Round-sniffled and round-played,
And also by yet littler,
Foolisher, and peccabler
Wishes and phantasies,
[944]
AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT
Environed by you,
Ye silent, prescntientest
Maiden-kittens,
Dudu and Suleika,
Rounds phinxed, that into one word
I may crowd much feeling:
(Forgive me, O God,
All such speech-sinning!)
Sit I here the best of air sniffling,
Paradisal air, truly,
Bright and buoyant air, golden-mottled,
As goodly air as ever
From lunar orb downfell
Be it by hazard,
Or supervened it by arrogancy?
As the ancient poets relate it.
But doubter, I'm now calling it
In question: with this do I come indeed
Out of Europe,
That doubt' th more eagerly than doth any
Elderly married woman.
May the Lord improve it!
Amen.
This the finest air drinking,
With nostrils out-swelled like goblets,
Lacking future, lacking remembrances,
Thus do I sit here, ye
Friendly damsels dearly loved,
And look at the palm-tree there,
How it, to a dance-girl, like,
[845]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Doth bow and bend and on its haunches bob,
One doth it too, when one view'th it long!
To a dance-girl like, who as it seem'th to me,
Too long, and dangerously persistent,
Always, always, just on single leg hath stood?
Then forgot she thereby, as it seem'th to me,
The other leg?
For vainly I, at least,
Did search for the amissing
Fellow- jewel
Namely, the other leg
In the sanctified precincts,
Nigh her very dearest, very tenderest,
Flapping and fluttering and flickering skirting.-
Yea, if ye should, ye beauteous friendly ones,
Quite take my word :
She hath, alas! lost it!
Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu!
It is away!
For ever away!
The other leg!
Oh, pity for that loveliest other leg!
Where may it now tarry, all-forsaken weeping?
The lonesomest leg?
In fear perhaps before a
Furious, yellow, blond and curled
Leonine monster? Or perhaps even
Gnawed away, nibbled badly
Most wretched, woeful! woeful! nibbled badly! Selah.
Oh, weep ye not,
Gentle spirits!
[3461
AMONG DAUGHTERS OF THE DESERT
Weep ye not, ye
Date-fruit spirits! Milk-boscms!
Ye sweetwood-heart
Purselets!
Weep ye no more,
Pallid Dudu!
Be a man, Suleika! Bold! Bold!
Or else should there perhaps
Something strengthening, heart-strengthening,
Here most proper be?
Some inspiring text?
Some solemn exhortation?
Ha! Up now! honour!
Moral honour! European honour!
Blow again, continue,
Bellows-box of virtue!
Ha!
Once more thy roaring,
Thy moral roaring!
As a virtuous lion
Nigh the daughters of deserts roaring!
For virtue's out-howl,
Ye very dearest maidens,
Is more than every
European fervour, European hot-hunger!
And now do I stand here,
As European,
I can't be different, God's help to me!
Amen!
The deserts grow: woe him who doth them hide!
1347]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
. The Awakening
AFTER the song of the wanderer and shadow, the cave became
all at once full of noise and laughter: and since the assembled
guests all spake simultaneously, and even the ass, encouraged
thereby, no longer remained silent, a little aversion and scorn
for his visitors came over Zarathustra, although he rejoiced at
their gladness. For it seemed to him a sign of convalescence.
So he slipped out into the open air and spake to his animals.
"Whither hath their distress now gone?" said he, and
already did he himself feel relieved of his petty disgust
"with me, it seemeth that they have unlearned their cries of
distress!
-Though, alas! not yet their crying." And Zarathustra
stopped his cars, for just then did the YE-A of the ass mix
strangely with the noisy jubilation of those higher men.
"They are merry," he began again, "and who knoweth?
perhaps at their host's expense; and if they have learned of me
to laugh, still it is not my laughter they have learned.
But what matter about that! They are old people: they re-
cover in their own way, they laugh in their own way; mine ears
have already endured worse and have not become peevish.
This day is a victory: he already yieldeth, he fleeth, the spirit
of gravity, mine old arch-enemy! How well this day is about to
end, which began so badly and gloomily!
And it is about to end. Already cometh the evening: over
the sea rideth it hither, the good rider! How it bobbeth, the
blessed one, the home-returning one, in its purple saddles!
[348]
THE AWAKE NING
The sky gazeth brightly thereon, the world lieth deep. Oh,
all ye strange ones who have come to me, it is already worth
while to have lived with me!"
Thus spake Zarathustra. And again came the cries and
laughter of the higher men out of the cave: then began he
anew:
"They bite at it, my bait taketh, there departeth also from
them their enemy, the spirit of gravity. Now do they learn to
laugh at themselves: do I hear rightly?
My virile food taketh effect, my strong and savoury sayings:
and verily, I did not nourish them with flatulent vegetables!
But with warrior-food, with conqueror-food: new desires did
I awaken.
New hopes are in their arms and legs, their hearts expand.
They find new words, soon will their spirits breathe wanton-
ness.
Such food may sure enough not be proper for children, nor
even for longing girls old and young. One persuadeth their
bowels otherwise; I am not their physician and teacher.
The disgust departeth from these higher men; well! that is
my victory. In my domain they become assured; all stupid
shame fleeth away; they empty themselves.
They empty their hearts, good times return unto them, they
keep holiday and ruminate, they become thankful.
That do I take as the best sign: they become thankful. Not
long will it be ere they devise festivals, and put up memorials
to their old joys.
They are convalescents!" Thus spake Zarathustra joyfully
to his heart and gazed outward; his animals, however, pressed
up to him, and honoured his happiness and his silence.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
2
All on a sudden however, Zarathustra's ear was frightened:
for the cave which had hitherto been full of noise and laugh-
ter, became all at once still as death; his nose, however, smelt
a sweet-scented vapour and incense-odour, as if from burning
pine-cones.
"What happeneth? What are they about?" he asked himself,
and stole up to the entrance, that he might be able unobserved
to see his guests. But wonder upon wonder! what was he then
obliged to behold with his own eyes!
"They have all of them become pious again, they pray, they
arc mad!" said he, and was astonished beyond measure. And
forsooth! all these higher men, the two kings, the pope out of
service, the evil magician, the voluntary beggar, the wanderer
and shadow, the old soothsayer, the spiritually conscientious
one, and the ugliest man they all lay on their knees like chil-
dren and credulous old women, and worshipped the ass. And
just then began the ugliest man to gurgle and snort, as if some-
thing unutterable in him tried to find expression; when, how-
ever, he had actually found words, behold! it was a pious,
strange litany in praise of the adored and censed ass. And the
litany sounded thus:
Amen! And glory and honour and wisdom and thanks and
praise and strength be to our God, from everlasting to ever-
lasting!
The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.
He carried our burdens, he hath taken upon him the form
of a servant, he is patient of heart and never saith Nay; and he
who loveth his God chastiseth him.
[ 350 ]
THE AWAKENING
The ass, however, here brayed YE -A.
He speaketh not: except that he ever saith Yea to the world
which he-created: thus doth he extol his world. It is his artful-
ness that speaketh not: thus is he rarely found wrong.
The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.
Uncomely goeth he through the world. Grey is the favourite
colour in which he wrappeth his virtue. Hath he spirit, then
doth he conceal it; every one, however, believeth in his long
ears.
The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.
What hidden wisdom it is to wear long ears, and only to say
Yea and never Nay! Hath he not created the world in his own
image, namely, as stupid as possible?
The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.
Thou goest straight and crooked ways; it concerneth thee
little what seemeth straight or crooked unto us men. Beyond
good and evil is thy domain. It is thine innocence not to know
what innocence is.
The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.
Lo! how thou spur nest none from thee, neither beggars nor
kings. Thou sufferest little children to come unto thee, and
when the bad boys decoy thee, then sayest thou simply, YE-A.
The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.
Thou lovest she-asses and fresh figs, thou art no food-
despiser. A thistle tickleth thy heart when thou chancest to be
hungry. There is the wisdom of a God therein.
The ass, however, here brayed YE-A.
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
78. The Ass-Festival
AT THIS place in the litany, however, Zarathustra could no
longer control himself; he himself cried out YE-A, louder even
than the ass, and sprang into the midst of hk maddened guests.
"Whatever are you about, ye grown-up children?" he ex-
claimed, pulling up the praying ones from the ground. "Alas,
if any one else, except Zarathustra, had seen you:
Every one would think you the worst blasphemers, or the
very foolishest old women, with your new belief!
And thou thyself, thou old pope, how is it in accordance
with thee, to adore an ass in such a manner as God?"
"O Zarathustra," answered the pope, "forgive me, but in
divine matters I am more enlightened even than thou. And it
is right that it should be so.
Better to adore God so, in this form, than in no form at all!
Think over this saying, mine exalted friend: thou wilt readily
divine that in such a saying there is wisdom.
He who said 'God is a Spirit' made the greatest stride and
slide hitherto made on earth towards unbelief: such a dictum
is not easily amended again on earth!
Mine old heart leapeth and boundeth because there is still
something to adore on earth. Forgive it, O Zarathustra, to an
old, pious pontiff -heart! "
"And thou," said Zarathustra to the wanderer and
shadow, "thou callest and thinkest thyself a free spirit? And
thou here practisest such idolatry and hierolatry?
THE ASS- F ESTIVAL
Worse verily, doest thou here than with thy bad brown girls,
thou bad, new believer!"
"It is sad enough," answered the wanderer and shadow,
"thou art right: but how can I help it! The old God liveth
again, O Zarathustra, thou mayst say what thou wilt.
The ugliest man is to blame for it all: he hath reawakened
him. And if he say that he once killed him, with Gods death
is always just a prejudice."
"And thou," said Zarathustra, "thou bad old magician,
what didst thou do! Who ought to believe any longer in thee
in this free age, when thou believest in such divine donkeyism?
It was a stupid thing that thou didst; how couldst thou, a
shrewd man, do such a stupid thing!"
"O Zarathustra," answered the shrewd magician, "thou art
right, it was a stupid thing, it was also repugnant to me."
"And thou even," said Zarathustra to the spiritually con-
scientious one, "consider, and put thy finger to thy nose! Doth
nothing go against thy conscience here? Is thy spirit not too
cleanly for this praying and the fumes of those devotees?"
"There is something therein," said the spiritually conscien-
tious one, and put his finger to his nose, "there is something in
this spectacle which even doeth good to my conscience.
Perhaps I dare not believe in God : certain it is however, that
God seemeth to me most worthy of belief in this form.
God is said to be eternal, according to the testimony of the
most pious : he who hath so much time taketh his time. As slow
and as stupid as possible: thereby can such a one nevertheless
go very far.
And he who hath too much spirit might well become infatu-
ated with stupidity and folly. Think of thyself, O Zarathustra!
Thou thyself verily! even thou couldst well become an
ass through superabundance of wisdom.
[ 353 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Doth not the true sage willingly walk on the crookedest
paths? The evidence teacheth it, O Zarathustra, thine own
evidence!"
"And thou thyself, finally," said Zarathustra, and turned
towards the ugliest man, who still lay on the ground stretch-
ing up his arm to the ass (for he gave it wine to drink) . "Say,
thou nondescript, what hast thou been about!
Thou seemest to me transformed, thine eyes glow, the man-
tle of the sublime covereth thine ugliness: what didst thou do?
Is it then true what they say, that thou hast again awakened
him? And why? Was he not for good reasons killed and made
away with?
Thou thyself seemest to me awakened: what didst thou do?
why didst thou turn round? Why didst thou get converted?
Speak, thou nondescript!"
"O Zarathustra," answered the ugliest man, "thou art a
rogue!
Whether be yet liveth, or again liveth, or is thoroughly dead
which of us both knoweth that best? I ask thee.
One thing however do I know, from thyself did I learn it
once, O Zarathustra: he who wanteth to kill most thoroughly,
laugheth.
'Not by wrath but by laughter doth one kill' thus spakest
thou once, O Zarathustra, thou hidden one, thou destroyer
without wrath, thou dangerous saint, thou art a rogue!"
Then, however, did it come to pass that Zarathustra, aston-
ished at such merely roguish answers, jumped back to the door
[ 354]
THE ASS- FESTIVAL
of his cave, and turning towards all his guests, cried out with
a strong voice:
"O ye wags, all of you, ye buffoons! Why do ye dissemble
and disguise yourselves before me!
How the hearts of all of you convulsed with delight and
wickedness, because ye had at last become again like little
children namely, pious,
Because ye at last did again as children do namely,
prayed, folded your hands and said 'good God' !
But now leave, I pray you, this nursery, mine own cave,
where today all childishness is carried on. Cool down, here
outside, your hot child-wantonness and heart-tumult!
To be sure: except ye become as little children ye shall not
enter into that kingdom of heaven." (And Zarathustra pointed
aloft with his hands.)
"But we do not at all want to enter into the kingdom of
heaven: we have become men, so ive ivant the kingdom of
earth: 1
3
And once more began Zarathustra to speak. "O my new
friends," said he, "ye strange ones, ye higher men, how well
do ye now please me,
Since ye have again become joyful! Ye have, verily, all
blossomed forth: it seemeth to me that for such flowers as you,
neiv festivals are required.
A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and ass-
festival, some old joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to
blow your souls bright.
[ 355 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
Forget not this night and this ass-festival, ye higher men!
That did ye devise when with me, that do I take as a good
omen, such things only the convalescents devise!
And should ye celebrate it again, this ass-festival, do it from
love to yourselves, do it also from love to me! And in remem-
brance of me!"
Thus spake Zarathustra.
The Drunken Song
MEANWHILE one after another had gone out into the open air,
and into the cool, thoughtful night; Zarathustra himself, how-
ever, led the ugliest man by the hand, that he might show him
his night-world, and the great round moon, and the silvery
water-falls near his cave. There they at last stood still beside
one another; all of them old people, but with comforted, brave
hearts, and astonished in themselves that it was so well with
them on earth; the mystery of the night, however, came nigher
and nigher to their hearts. And anew Zarathustra thought to
himself: "Oh, how well do they now please me, these higher
men!" but he did not say it aloud, for he respected their
happiness and their silence.
Then, however, there happened that which in this astonish-
ing long day was most astonishing: the ugliest man began once
more and for the last time to gurgle and snort, and when he
[ 356 ]
THE DRUNKEN SONG
had at length found expression, behold! there sprang a ques-
tion plump and plain out of his mouth, a good, deep, cleai
question, which moved the hearts of all who listened to him
"My friends, all of you," said the ugliest man, "what think
ye? For the sake of this day / am for the first time content tc
have lived mine entire life.
And that I testify so much is still not enough for me. Il
is worth while living on the earth : one day, one festival with
Zarathustra, hath taught me to love the earth.
'Was that life?' will I say unto death. 'Well! Once
more!'
My friends, what think ye? Will ye not, like me, say untc
death: 'Was that life? For the sake of Zarathustra, well!
Once more!' "
Thus spake the ugliest man; it was not, however, far from
midnight. And what took place then, think yc? As soon as the
higher men heard his question, they became all at once con-
scious of their transformation and convalescence, and of him
who was the cause thereof: then did they rush up to Zarathus-
tra, thanking, honouring, caressing him, and kissing his hands,
each in his own peculiar way; so that some laughed and some
wept. The old soothsayer, however, danced with delight; and
though he was then, as some narrators suppose, full of sweet
wine, he was certainly still fuller of sweet life, and had re-
nounced all weariness. There are even those who narrate that
the ass then danced: for not in vain had the ugliest man previ-
ously given it wine to drink. That may be the case, or it may be
otherwise; and if in truth the ass did not dance that evening,
there nevertheless happened then greater and rarer wonders
than the dancing of an ass would have been. In short, as the
proverb of Zarathustra saith: "What doth it matter!"
[ 357 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
When, however, this took place with the ugliest man, Zara-
thustra stood there like one drunken: his glance dulled, his
tongue faltered and his feet staggered. And who could divine
what thoughts then passed through Zarathustra's soul? Ap-
parently, however, his spirit retreated and fled in advance and
was in remote distances, and as it were "wandering on high
mountain- ridges," as it standeth written, " 'twixt two seas,
Wandering 'twixt the past and the future as a heavy
cloud." Gradually, however, while the higher men held him
in their arms, he came back to himself a little, and resisted
with his hands the crowd of the honouring and caring ones;
but he did not speak. All at once, however, he turned his head
quickly, for he seemed to hear something: then laid he his
finger on his mouth and said: "Come!"
And immediately it became still and mysterious round
about; from the depth however there came up slowly the sound
of a clock-bell. Zarathustra listened thereto, like the higher
men; then, however, laid he his finger on his mouth the second
time, and said again: "Come! Come! It is getting on to mid-
night!" and his voice had changed. But still he had not
moved from the spot. Then it became yet stiller and more mys-
terious, and everything hearkened, even the ass, and Zarathus-
tra's noble animals, the eagle and the serpent, likewise the
cave of Zarathustra and the big cool moon, and the night itself.
Zarathustra, however, laid his hand upon his mouth for the
third time, and said:
Come! Cornel Come! Let us now wander! It is the hour:
\ jf //j wander into the night!
[ 358}
THE DRUNKEN SONG
3
Ye higher men, it is getting on to midnight: then will I say
something into your ears, as that old clock-bell saith it into
mine ear,
As mysteriously, as frightfully, and as cordially as that
midnight clock-bell speakcth it to me, which hath experienced
more than one man:
Which hath already counted the smarting throbbings of
your fathers' hearts all! ah! how it sigheth! how it laugheth
in its dream! the old, deep, deep midnight!
Hush! Hush! Then is there many a thing heard which may
not be heard by day; now however, in the cool air, when even
all the tumult of your hearts hath become still,
Now doth it speak, now is it heard, now doth it steal into
overwakeful, nocturnal souls: ah! ah! how the midnight sigh-
eth! how it laygheth in its dream!
Hearest thou not how it mysteriously, frightfully, and
cordially speaketh unto thee, the old deep, deep midnight?
O man, take heed!
Woe to me! Whither hath time gone? Have I not sunk into
deep wells? The world sleepeth
Ah! Ah! The dog howleth, the moon shineth. Rather will I
die, rather will I die, than say unto you what my midnight-
heart now thinketh.
Already have I died. It is all over. Spider, why spinnest thou
around me? Wilt thou have blood? Ah! Ah! The dew f alleth,
the hour cometh
[ 359 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
The hour in which I frost and freeze, which asketh and
asketh and asketh: "Who hath sufficient courage for it?
Who is to be master of the world? Who is going to say:
Thus shall ye flow, ye great and small streams!"
The hour approacheth: O man, thou higher man, take
heed! this talk is for fine ears, for thine ears what saith deep
midnight's voice indeed?
It carrieth me away, my soul danceth. Day's-work! Day's-
work! Who is to be master of the world?
The moon is cool, the wind is still. Ah! Ah! Have ye already
flown high enough? Ye have danced : a leg, nevertheless, is not
a wing.
Ye good dancers, now is all delight over: wine hath become
lees, every cup hath become brittle, the sepulchres mutter.
Ye have not flown high enough : now do the sepulchres mut-
ter: 'Tree the dead! Why is it so long night? Doth not the
moon make us drunken?"
Ye higher men, free the sepulchres, awaken the corpses!
Ah, why doth the worm still burrow? There approacheth,
there approacheth, the hour,
There boometh the clock-bell, there thrilleth still the
heart, there burroweth still the wood-worm, the heart- worm.
Ah! Ah! The world is deep!
6
Sweet lyre! Sweet lyre! I love thy tone, thy drunken, ranun-
culine tone! how long, how far hath come unto me thy tone,
from the distance, from the ponds of love!
[ 360 ]
THE DRUNKEN SONG
Thou old clock-bell, thou sweet lyre! Every pain hath torn
thy heart, father-pain, fathers' -pain, forefathers'-pain; thy
speech hath become ripe,
Ripe like the golden autumn and the afternoon, like mine
andiorite heart now sayest thou: The world itself hath be-
come ripe, the grape turneth brown,
Now doth it wish to die, to die of happiness. Ye higher
men, do ye not feel it? There welleth up mysteriously an odour,
A perfume and odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, brown,
gold-wine-odour of old happiness.
Of drunken midnight-death happiness, which singeth:
the world is deep, and deeper than the day could read!
Leave me alone! Leave me alone! I am too pure for thee.
Touch me not! Hath not my world just now become perfect?
My skin is too pure for thy hands. Leave me alone, thou dull,
doltish, stupid day! Is not the midnight brighter?
The purest are to be masters of the world, the least known,
the strongest, the midnight-souls, who are brighter and deeper
than any day.
O day, thou gropest for me? Thou f eelest for my happiness?
For thee am I rich, lonesome, a treasure-pit, a gold chamber?
O world, thou wantest me? Am I worldly for thee? Am I
spiritual for thee? Am I divine for thee? But day and world,
ye are too coarse,
Have cleverer hands, grasp after deeper happiness, after
deeper unhappiness, grasp after some God; grasp not after me:
Mine unhappiness, my happiness is deep, thou strange
day, but yet am I no God, no God's-hell: deep is its ivoe.
[ 361 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
8
God's woe is deeper, thou strange world! Grasp at God's
woe, not at me! What am I! A drunken sweet lyre,
A midnight-lyre, a bell-frog, which no one understand-
eth, but which must speak before deaf ones, ye higher men!
For ye do not understand me!
Gone! Gone! O youth! O noontide! O afternoon! Now have
come evening and night and midnight, the dog howleth, the
wind:
Is the wind not a dog? It whineth, it barkcth, it howleth.
Ah! Ah! how she sigheth! how she laugheth, how she wheezeth
and panteth, the midnight!
How she just now speaketh soberly, this drunken poetess!
hath she perhaps overdrunk her drunkenness? hath she be-
come overawake? doth she ruminate?
Her woe doth she ruminate over, in a dream, the old, deep
midnight and still more her joy. For joy, although woe be
deep, joy is deeper still than grief can be.
9
Thou grape-vine! Why dost thou praise me? Have I not cut
thee! I am cruel, thou bleedest : what meaneth thy praise of
my drunken cruelty?
"Whatever hath become perfect, everything mature
wanteth to die!" so sayest thou. Blessed, blessed be the vint-
ner's knife! But everything immature wanteth to live: alas!
Woe saith: "Hence! Go! Away, thou woe!" But everything
that suff ereth wanteth to live, that it may become mature and
lively and longing,
[ 362 ]
THE DRUNKEN SONG
Longing for the further, the higher, the brighter. "I want
heirs," so saith everything that suffereth, "I want children, I do
not want myself,"
Joy, however, doth not want heirs, it doth not want children,
joy wanteth itself, it wanteth eternity, it wanteth recurrence,
it wanteth everything eternally-like-itself .
Woe saith: "Break, bleed, thou heart! Wander, thou leg!
Thou wing, fly! Onward! upward! thou pain!" Well! Cheer up!
O mine old heart: Woe saith: tr Hence! Go!"
10
Ye higher men, what think ye? Am I a soothsayer? Or a
dreamer? Or a drunkard? Or a dream-reader? Or a midnight-
bell?
Or a drop of dew? Or a fume and fragrance of eternity?
Hear ye it not? Smell ye it not? Just now hath my world become
perfect, midnight is also mid-day,
Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a
sun, go away! or ye will learn that a sage is also a fool.
Said ye ever Yea to one joy? O my friends, then said ye Yea
also unto all woe. All things are enlinked, enlaced and enam-
oured,
Wanted ye ever once to come twice; said ye ever: 'Thou
pleasest me, happiness! Instant! Moment!" then wanted ye all
to come back again!
All anew, all eternal, all enlinked, enlaced and enam-
oured, Oh, then did ye love the world,
Ye eternal ones, ye love it eternally and for all time: and
also unto woe do ye say: Hence! Go! but come back! For joys
all ivant eternity!
[ 363 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
11
All joy wanteth the eternity of all things, it wanteth honey,
it wanteth Ices, it wanteth drunken midnight, it wanteth
graves, it wanteth grave-tears' consolation, it wanteth gilded
evening-red
What doth not joy want! it is thirstier, heartier, hungrier,
more frightful, more mysterious, than all woe: it wanteth
itself, it biteth into itself, the ring's will writheth in it,
It wanteth love, it wanteth hate, it is over-rich, it bestow-
eth, it throwcth away, it beggeth for some one to take from it,
it thanketh the taker, it would fain be hated,
So rich is joy that it thirsteth for woe, for hell, for hate,
for shame, for the lame, for the world, for this world, Oh,
ye know it indeed!
Ye higher men, for you doth it long, this joy, this irrepressi-
ble, blessed joy for your woe, ye failures! For failures,
longeth all eternal joy.
For joys all want themselves, therefore do they also want
grief! O happiness, O pain! Oh break, thou heart! Ye higher
men, do learn it, that joys want eternity.
Joys want the eternity of all things, they want deep, pro-
found eternity!
12
Have ye now learned my song? Have ye divined what it
would say? Well! Cheer up! Ye higher men, sing now my
roundelay!
Sing now yourselves the song, the name of which is "Once
more," the signification of which is "Unto all eternity!"
sing, ye higher men, Zarathustra's roundelay!
]
THE SIGN
O man! Take heed!
What saith deep midnight's voice Indeed?
ff l slept my sleep ,
"From deepest dream I've woke, and plead:
"The ivorld is deep,
"And deeper than the day could read.
"Deep is its ivoe ,
"Joy deeper still than grief can be:
"Woe saith: Hence! Go!
"But joys all want eternity ,
" Want deep, profound eternity!"
80. The Sign
IN THE morning, however, after this night, Zarathustra
jumped up from his couch, and, having girded his loins, he
came out of his cave glowing and strong, like a morning sun
coming out of gloomy mountains.
'Thou great star," spake he, as he had spoken once before,
"thou deep eye of happiness, what would be all thy happiness
if thou hadst not those for whom thou shinest!
And if they remained in their chambers whilst thou art
already awake, and comest and bestowest and distributest, how
would thy proud modesty upbraid for it!
Well! they still sleep, these higher men, whilst 7 am awake:
they are not my proper companions! Not for them do I wait
here in my mountains.
At my work I want to be, at my day: but they understand
[ 365 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
not what arc the signs of my morning, my step is not for
them the awakening-call.
They still sleep in my cave; their dream still drinketh at my
drunken songs. The audient ear for me the obedient ear, is
yet lacking in their limbs."
This had Zarathustra spoken to his heart when the sun
arose: then looked he inquiringly aloft, for he heard above
him the sharp call of his eagle. "Well!" called he upwards,
"thus is it pleasing and proper to me. Mine animals are awake,
for I am awake.
Mine eagle is awake, and like me honoureth the sun. With
eagle-talons doth it grasp at the new light. Ye are my proper
animals; I love you.
But still do I lack my proper men!"
Thus spake Zarathustra; then, however, it happened that all
on a sudden he became aware that he was flocked around and
fluttered around, as if by innumerable birds, the whizzing of
so many wings, however, and the crowding around his head
was so great that he shut his eyes. And verily, there came down
upon him as it were a cloud, like a cloud of arrows which
poureth upon a new enemy. But behold, here it was a cloud of
love, and showered upon a new friend.
"What happeneth unto me?" thought Zarathustra in his
astonished heart, and slowly seated himself on the big stone
which lay close to the exit from his cave. But while he grasped
about with his hands, around him, above him and below him,
and repelled the tender birds, behold, there then happened to
him something still stranger: for he grasped thereby unawares
into a mass of thick, warm, shaggy hair; at the same time, how-
ever, there sounded before him a roar, a long, soft lion-roar.
"The sign cometh," said Zarathustra, and a change came
[ 366 ]
THE SIGN
over his heart. And in truth, when it turned clear before him,
there lay a yellow, powerful animal at his feet, resting its head
on his knee, unwilling to leave him out of love, and doing
like a dog which again findeth its old master. The doves, how-
ever, were no less eager with their love than the lion; and
whenever a dove whisked over its nose, the lion shook its head
and wondered and laughed.
When all this went on Zarathustra spake only a word: ff My
children are nigh, my children" , then he became quite mute.
His heart, however, was loosed, and from his eyes there
dropped down tears and fell upon his hands. And he took no
further notice of anything, but sat there motionless, without
repelling the animals further. Then flew the doves to and fro,
and perched on his shoulder, and caressed his white hair, and
did not tire of their tenderness and joyousness. The strong lion,
however, licked always the tears that fell on Zarathustra's
hands, and roared and growled shyly. Thus did these animals
do.
All this went on for a long time, or a short time : for properly
speaking, there is no time on earth for such things . Mean-
while, however, the higher men had awakened in Zarathustra's
cave, and marshalled themselves for a procession to go to meet
Zarathustra, and give him their morning greeting: for they had
found when they awakened that he no longer tarried with
them. When, however, they reached the door of the cave and
the noise of their steps had preceded them, the lion started
violently; it turned away all at once from Zarathustra, and
roaring wildly, sprang towards the cave. The higher men,
however, when they heard the lion roaring, cried all aloud as
with Oiie voice, fled back and vanished in an instant.
Zarathustra himself, however, stunned and strange, rose
from his seat, looked around him, stood there astonished, in-
[ 307 ]
THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
quired of his heart, bethought himself, and remained alone.
"What did I hear?" said he at last, slowly, "what happened
unto me just now?"
But soon there came to him his recollection, and he took in
at a glance all that had taken place between yesterday and to-
day. "Here is indeed the stone," said he, and stroked his beard,
"on /'/ sat I yester-morn; and here came the soothsayer unto me,
and here heard I first the cry which I heard just now, the great
cry of distress.
O ye higher men, your distress was it that the old soothsayer
foretold to me yester-morn,
Unto your distress did he want to seduce and tempt me:
'O Zarathustra,' said he to me, 'I come to seduce thee to thy
last sin/
To my last sin?" cried Zarathustra, and laughed angrily at
his own words: "what hath been reserved for me as my last
sin?"
And once more Zarathustra became absorbed in himself,
and sat down again on the big stone and meditated. Suddenly
he sprang up,
"Fellow-suffering! Fellow-suffering with the higher men!"
he cried out, and his countenance changed into brass. "Well!
That hath had its time!
My suffering and my fellow-suffering what matter about
them! Do I then strive after happiness? I strive after my work!
Well! The lion hath come, my children are nigh, Zarathustra
hath grown ripe, mine hour hath come:
This is my morning, my day beginneth: arise now, arise,
thou great noontide!"
Thus spake Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and
strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains.
[368]
BETOND GOOD AND EVIL
Translated by HELEN ZIMMERN
CONTENTS
Introduction 371
Preface 377
1 . Prejudices of Philosophers 38 1
2. The Free Spirit 407
3. 27? Religious Mood 431
4. Apophthegms and Interludes 450
5. 27? <? Natural History of Morals 473
6. We Scholars 498
7. Our Virtues 519
8. Peoples and Countries 548
9. What Is Noble? 575
/?<? Heights 612
INTRODUCTION
A DOUBLE purpose animated Friecirich Nietzsche in his
writing of "Beyond Good and Evil" which was begun in the
summer of 1885 and finished the following winter. It is at
once an explanation and an elucidation of 'Thus Spake Zara-
thustra," and a preparatory book for his greatest and most
important work, "The Will to Power." In it Nietzsche at-
tempts to define the relative terms of "good" and "evil," and
to draw a line of distinction between immorality and unmoral-
ity. He saw the inconsistencies involved in the attempt to
harmonize an ancient moral code with the needs of modern
life, and recognized the compromises which were constantly
being made between moral theory and social practice. His
object was to establish a relationship between morality and
necessity and to formulate a workable basis for human conduct.
Consequently "Beyond Good and Evil" is one of his most
important contributions to a new system of ethics, and touches
on many of the deepest principles of his philosophy.
Nietzsche opens "Beyond Good and Evil" with a long
chapter headed "Prejudices of Philosophers," in which he
outlines the course to be taken by his dialectic. The exposition
is accomplished by two methods; first, by an analysis and a
refutation of the systems of thinking made use of by antecedent
doctrinaires, and secondly, by defining the hypotheses on which
his own philosophy is built. This chapter is a most important
[ 371 ]
INTRODUCTION
one, setting forth, as it does, the rationale of his doctrine of
the will to power. It establishes Nietzsche's philosophic posi-
tion and presents a closely knit explanation of the course
pursued in the following chapters. The relativity of all truth
the hypothesis so often assumed in his previous work
Nietzsche here defends by analogy and argument. Using other
leading forms of philosophy as a ground for exploration, he
questions the absolutism of truth and shows wherein lies the
difficulty of a final definition. Nietzsche, in his analyses and
criticisms, is not solely destructive: he is subterraneously con-
structing his own philosophical system founded on the ''will to
power." This phrase is used many times in the careful research
of the first chapter. As the book proceeds, this doctrine
develops.
Nietzsche's best definition of what he calls the "free spirit,"
namely: the thinking man, the intellectual aristocrat, the
philosopher and ruler, is contained in the twenty-six pages of
the second chapter of "Beyond Good and Evil." In a series of
paragraphs longer than is Nietzsche's wont the leading
characteristics of this superior man are described. The "free
spirit," however, must not be confused with the superman. The
former is the "bridge" which the present-day man must cross
in the process of surpassing himself. In the delineation and
analysis of him, as presented to us here, we can glimpse his
most salient mental features. Heretofore, as in "Thus Spake
Zarathustra," he has been but partially and provisionally de-
fined. Now his instincts and desires, his habits and activities
are outlined. Furthermore, we are given an explanation of his
relation to the inferior man and to the organisms of his en-
vironment. The chapter is a most important one, for at many
points it is a subtle elucidation of many of Nietzsche's domi-
nant philosophic principles. By inference, the differences of
[ 372 ]
INTRODUCTION
class distinction are strictly drawn. The slave-morality (sklav-
moral) and the master-morality (herrenmoral) , though as yet
undefined, are balanced against each other; and the deport-
mental standards of the masters and slaves are defined by way
of distinguishing between these two opposing human factions.
A keen and far-reaching analysis of the various aspects
assumed by religious faith constitutes a third section of "Be-
yond Good and Evil." Though touching upon various influ-
ences of Christianity, this section is more general in its religious
scope than even "The Antichrist," many indications of which
are to be found here. This chapter has to do with the numer-
ous inner experiences of man, which are directly or indirectly
attributable to religious doctrines. The origin of the instinct
for faith itself is sought, and the results of this faith are
balanced against the needs of the individuals and of the race.
The relation between religious ecstasy and sensuality; the at-
tempt on the part of religious practitioners to arrive at a
negation of the will; the transition from religious gratitude to
fear; the psychology at the bottom of saint worship; to prob-
lems such as these Nietzsche devotes his energies in his inquiry
of the religious mood. There is an illuminating exposition of
the important stages in religious cruelty and of the motives
underlying the various forms of religious sacrifices.
A very important phase of Nietzsche's teaching is contained
in this criticism of the religious life. The detractors of the
Nietzsdiean doctrine base their judgments on the assumption
that the universal acceptance of his theories would result in
social chaos. Nietzsche desired no such general adoption of his
beliefs. In his bitterest diatribes against Christianity his object
was not to shake the faith of the great majority of mankind in
their idols. He sought merely to free the strong men from the
restrictions of a religion which fitted the needs of only the
[373]
INTRODUCTION
weaker members of society. He neither hoped nor desired to
wean the mass of humanity from Christianity or any similar
dogmatic comfort. On the contrary, he denounced those super-
ficial atheists who endeavored to weaken the foundations of
religion. He saw the positive necessity of such religions as a
basis for his slave-morality, and in the present chapter he
exhorts the rulers to preserve the religious faith of the serving
classes, and to use it as a means of government as an instru-
ment in the work of disciplining and educating. His entire
system of ethics is built on the complete disseverance of the
dominating class and the serving class; and his doctrine of
"beyond good and evil'* should be considered only as it per-
tains to the superior man. To apply it to all classes would be to
reduce Nietzsche's whole system of ethics to impracticability,
and therefore to an absurdity.
Passing from a consideration of the religious mood
Nietzsche enters a broader sphere of ethical research, and
endeavors to trace the history and development of morals. He
accuses the philosophers of having avoided the real problem
of morality, namely: the testing of the faith and motives which
lie beneath moral beliefs. This is the task he sets for himself,
and in his chapter, "The Natural History of Morals/' he makes
an examination of moral origins an examination which is
extended into an exhaustive treatise in his next book, "The
Genealogy of Morals." However, his dissection here is carried
out on a broader and far more general scale than in his previ-
ous books, such as "Human All-Too-Human" and "The Dawn
of Day." Heretofore he had confined himself to codes and
systems, to acts of morality and immorality, to judgments of
conducts. In "Beyond Good and Evil" he treats of moral preju-
dices as forces working hand in hand with human progress. In
1874]
INTRODU CTION
addition, there is a definite attitude of constructive thinking
here which is absent from his earlier work.
In the chapter, "We Scholars," Nietzsche continues his
definition of the philosopher, whom he holds to be the highest
type of man. Besides being a mere description of the intellec-
tual traits of this "free spirit," the chapter is also an exposition
;>f the shortcomings of those modern men who pose as philos-
ophers. Also the man of science and the man of genius are
malyzed and weighed as to their relative importance in the
:ommunity. In fact, we have here Nietzsche's most concise and
romplete definition of the individuals upon whom rests the
Durden of progress. These valuations of the intellectual leaders
ire important to the student, for by one's understanding them,
dong with the reasons for such valuations, a comprehension of
:he ensuing volumes is facilitated.
Important material touching on many of the fundamental
X)ints of Nietzsche's philosophy is embodied in the chapter
entitled "Our Virtues." The more general inquiries into con-
luct, and the research along the broader lines of ethics are
supplanted by inquiries into specific moral attributes. The cur-
rent virtues are questioned, and their historical significance is
letermined. The value of such virtues is tested in their rela-
ion to different types of men. Sacrifice, sympathy, brotherly
ove, service, loyalty, altruism, and similar ideals of conduct are
examined, and the results of such virtues are shown to be in-
:ompatible with the demands of modern social intercourse.
Nietzsche poses against these virtues the sterner and more
igid forms of conduct, pointing out wherein they meet with
he present requirements of human progress. The chapter is a
^reparation for his establishment of a new morality and also an
explanation of the dual ethical code which is one of the main
pillars in his philosophical structure. Before presenting his
[375]
INTRODUCTION
precept of a dual morality, Nietzsche endeavors to determine
woman's place in the political and social scheme, and points out
the necessity, not only of individual feminine functioning, but
of the preservation of a distinct polarity in sexual relationship.
In the final chapter many of Nietzsche's philosophical ideas
take definite shape. The doctrine of slave-morality and master-
morality, prepared for and partially defined in preceding chap-
ters, is here directly set forth, and those virtues and attitudes
which constitute the "nobility" of the master class are specifi-
cally defined. Nietzsche designates the duty of his aristocracy,
and segregates the human attributes according to the rank of
individuals. The Dionysian ideal, which underlies all the books
that follow "Beyond Good and Evil," receives its first direct
exposition and application. The hardier human traits, such as
egotism, cruelty, arrogance, retaliation, and appropriation, are
given ascendancy over the softer virtues, such as sympathy,
charity, forgiveness, loyalty and humility, and are pronounced
necessary constituents in the moral code of a natural aristocracy.
At this point is begun the transvaluation of values which was
to have been completed in "The Will to Power."
WlLLARD HUNTINGTON WRIGHT
[ 376]
PREFACE
SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman what then? Is there not
ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they
have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women that
the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which
they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been un-
skilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman? Certainly
she has never allowed herself to be won; and at present every
kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien ;'/, in-
deed, it stands at all! For there are scoffers who maintain that
it has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground nay more,
that it is at its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are good
grounds for hoping that all dogmatising in philosophy, what-
ever solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has
assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism and tyronism;
and probably the time is at hand when it will be once and again
understood what has actually sufficed for the basis of such im-
posing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists
have hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of
immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, in the
form of subject- and ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing
mischief) : perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the
part of grammar, or an audacious generalisation of very re-
stricted, very personal, very human all-too-human facts. The
philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to be hoped, was only a
[377 ]
PRE FACE
promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in
still earlier times, in the service of which probably more labour,
gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any
actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its "super-terres-
trial" pretensions in Asia and Egypt, the grand style of archi-
tecture. It seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon the
heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all great things have
first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring
caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature of this
kind for instance, the Vedanta doctrine in Asia, and Platon-
ism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must
certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and the
most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error
namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in
Itself. But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe,
rid of this nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at
least enjoy a healthier sleep, we, whose duty is wakejulness
itself, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle
against this error has fostered. It amounted to the very inver-
sion of truth, and the denial of the perspective the funda-
mental condition of life, to speak of Spirit and the Good as
Plato spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician:
"How did such a malady attack that finest product of antiquity,
Plato? Had the wicked Socrates really corrupted him? Was
Socrates after all a corrupter of youths, and deserved his hem-
lock?" But the struggle against Plato, or to speak plainer, and
for the "people" the struggle against the ecclesiastical op-
pression of millenniums of Christianity (for Christianity is
Platonism for the "people"), produced in Europe a magnifi-
cent tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere previ-
ously; with such a tensely-strained bow one can now aim at the
furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this
[ 378 ]
PREFACE
tension as a state of distress, and twice attempts have been made
in grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of Jesuitism,
and the second time by means of democratic enlightenment
which, with the aid of liberty of the press and newspaper-read-
ing, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit would not so
easily find itself in "distress"! (The Germans invented gun-
powder all credit to them! but they again made things square
they invented printing.) But we, who are neither Jesuits,
nor democrats, nor even sufficiently Germans, we good Euro-
peans, and free, very free spirits we have it still, all the dis-
tress of spirit and all the tension of its bow! And perhaps also
the arrow, the duty, and, who knows? the goal to aim at. . . .
SILS MARIA UPPER ENGADINE, ]une, 1885.
[ 379 ]
/. Prejudices of Philosophers
THE Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous-
enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers
have hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will
to Truth not laid before us! What strange, perplexing, ques-
tionable questions! It is already a long story; yet it seems as
if it were hardly commenced. Is it any wonder if we at last grow
distrustful, lose patience, and turn impatiently away? That this
Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves? Who is it
really that puts questions to us here? What really is this "Will
to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long halt at the question as
to the origin of this Will until at last we came to an absolute
standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We in-
quired about the value of this Will. Granted that we want the
truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even igno-
rance? The problem of the value of truth presented itself
before us or was it we who presented ourselves before the
problem? Which of us is the CEdipus here? Which the Sphinx?
It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of
interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to
us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if
we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and risk raising
it. For there is risk in raising it; perhaps there is no greater risk.
[ 381 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
"How could anything originate out of its opposite? For
example, truth out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the
will to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness? or
the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness?
Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay,
worse than a fool; things of the highest value must have a
different origin, an origin of their own in this transitory,
seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion
and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in the
lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the
Thing-in-itself there must be their source, and nowhere
else!" This mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice
by which metaphysicians of all times can be recognised, this
mode of valuation is at the back of all their logical procedure;
through this "belief" of theirs, they exert themselves for their
"knowledge," for something that is in the end solemnly
christened "the Truth." The fundamental belief of metaphysi-
cians is the belief in antitheses of values. It never occurred even
to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold
(where doubt, however, was most necessary) ; though they had
made a solemn vow, ff de omnibus dubitandum." For it may be
doubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly,
whether the popular valuations and antitheses of value upon
which metaphysicians have set their seal, are not perhaps
merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives,
besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from
below "frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expres-
sion current among painters. In spite of all the value which may
belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be
[ 382 ]
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life
generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will 'to delu-
sion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It might even be possible that
what constitutes the value of those good and respected things,
consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted,
and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things
perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps!
But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "Per-
hapses"! For that investigation one must await the advent of a
new order of philosophers, such as will have other tastes and
inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto prevalent philos-
ophers of the dangerous "Perhaps" in every sense of the term.
And to speak in all seriousness, I see sucn new philosophers
beginning to appear.
3
Having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read
between their lines long enough, I now say to myself that the
greater part of conscious thinking must be counted amongst the
instinctive functions, and it is so even in the case of philosophi-
cal thinking; one has here to learn anew, as one learned anew
about heredity and "innateness." As little as the act of birth
comes into consideration in the whole process and procedure of
heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" opposed to the in-
stinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the conscious
thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts,
and forced into definite channels. And behind all logic and its
seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to
speak more plainly, physiological demands, for the mainte-
nance of a definite mode of life. For example, that the certain
is worth more than the uncertain, that illusion is less valuable
[ 383]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
than "truth": such valuations, in spite of their regulative im-
portance for us, might notwithstanding be only superficial
valuations, special kinds of niaiserie, such as may be necessary
for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. Supposing, in
effect, that man is not just the "measure of things." . . .
4
The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to
it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most
strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-further-
ing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rear-
ing; and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the
falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori
belong), arc the most indispensable to us; that without a
recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality
with the purely imagined world of the absolute and immutable,
without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of
numbers, man could not live that the renunciation of false
opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life.
To recognise untruth as a condition of life: that is certainly
to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner,
and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone
placed itself beyond good and evil.
That which causes philosophers to be regarded half -distrust-
fully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery
how innocent they are how often and easily they make mis-
[384]
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
takes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike
they are, but that there is not enough honest dealing with
them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when
the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest
manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had been
discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold,
pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of
mystics, who, fairer and foolishcr, talk of "inspiration");
whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or "sugges*
tion," which is generally their heart's desire abstracted and
refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after
the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be re-
garded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their preju-
dices, which they dub "truths," and very far from having the
conscience which bravely admits this to itself; very far from
having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let
this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheer-
ful confidence and self -ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuff cry
of old Kant, equally stiff and decent, with which he entices us
into the dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead)
to his "categorical imperative" makes us fastidious ones
smile, we who find no small amusement in spying out the
subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical preachers. Or, still
more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of
which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and
mask in fact, the "love of his wisdom/' to translate the term
fairly and squarely in order thereby to strike terror at once
into the heart of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance
on that invincible maiden, that Pallas Athene: how much of
personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a
sickly recluse betray!
[ 383 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
G
It has gradually become clear to me what every great
philosophy up till now has consisted of namely, the confes-
sion of its originator, and a species of involuntary and un-
conscious autobiography; and moreover that the moral (or
immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true
vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.
Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical asser-
tions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well
(and wise) to first ask oneself: "What morality do they (or
does he) aim at?" Accordingly, I do not believe that an "im-
pulse to knowledge" is the father of philosophy; but that
another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of
knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. But
whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a
view to determining how far they may have here acted as
inspiring genii (or as demons and cobolds) , will find that they
have all practised philosophy at one time or another, and that
each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon
itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate lord
over all the other impulses. For every impulse is imperious, and
as such, attempts to philosophise. To be sure, in the case of
scholars, in the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise
"better/' if you will; there there may really be such a thing
as an "impulse to knowledge/' some kind of small, inde-
pendent clock-work, which, when well wound up, works away
industriously to that end, ivithout the rest of the scholarly im-
pulses taking any material part therein. The actual "interests"
of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another direc-
[ 386]
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
tion in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in
politics; it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of re-
search his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful
young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom spe-
cialist, or a chemist; he is not characterised by becoming this or
that. In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely
nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a
decided and decisive testimony as to who he is, that is to say,
in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each
other.
How malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothing more
stinging than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on
Plato and the Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In
its original sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies
"Flatterers of Dionysius" consequently, tyrants' accessories
and lick-spittles; besides this, however, it is as much as to say,
"They are all actor s, there is nothing genuine about them" ( for
Dionysiokolax was a popular name for an actor). And the
latter is really the malignant reproach that Epicurus cast upon
Plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the mise en
scene style of which Plato and his scholars were masters of
which Epicurus was not a master! He, the old school-teacher
of Samos, who sat concealed in his little garden at Athens, an^
wrote three hundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious
envy of Plato, who knows! Greece took a hundred yeart to find
out who the garden-god Epicurus really was. Did she ever find
out?
[ 387 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
8
There is a point in every philosophy at which the "convic-
tion" of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in
the words of an ancient mystery:
Adventavit asin/ts,
Pulcher et jortissimus.
You desire to live "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble
Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being
like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent,
without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at
once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves
indifference as a power how could you live in accordance
with such indifference? To live is not that just endeavouring
to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, prefer-
ring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be dif-
ferent? And granted that your imperative, "living according to
Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"
how could you do differently? Why should you make a
principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In
reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you
pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature,
you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary
stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dic-
tate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and
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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature
"according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made
after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and gen-
eralism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have
forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with sudi
hypnotic rigidity to see Nature falsely, that is to say, Stoically,
that you are no longer able to see it otherwise and to crown
all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bed-
lamite hope that because you are able to tyrannise over
yourselves Stoicism is self -tyranny Nature will also allow
herself to be tyrannised over: is not the Stoic a part of Nature?
. . . But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened
in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever
a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the
world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is
this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power,
the will to "creation of the world/' the will to the causa priuia.
10
The eagerness and subtlety, I should even say craftiness,
with which the problem of "the real and the apparent world"
is dealt with at present throughout Europe, furnishes food for
thought and attention; and he who hears only a "Will to
Truth" in the background, and nothing else, cannot certainly
boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated cases, it may
really have happened that such a Will to Truth a certain
extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambi-
tion of the forlorn hope has participated therein: that which
in the end always prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole
cartload of beautiful possibilities; there may even be puritani-
[ 389 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
cal fanatics of conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in
a sure nothing, rather than in an uncertain something. But
that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing, mortally wearied
soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a virtue
may display. It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger
and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they
side against appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspec-
tive," in that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about
as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth
stands still," and thus, apparently, allowing with complacency
their securest possession to escape ( for what does one at present
believe in more firmly than in one's body?), who knows if
they are not really trying to win back something which was
formerly an even securer possession, something of the old
domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal
soul," perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they
could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joy-
ously, than by "modern ideas"? There is distrust of these
modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in
all that has been constructed yesterday and today; there is
perhaps some slight admixture of satiety and scorn, whidi can
no longer endure the bric-a-brac of ideas of the most varied
origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on the
market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair
motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters,
in whom there is nothing either new or true, except this motley-
ness. Therein it seems to me that we should agree with those
sceptical anti-realists and knowledge-microscopists of the
present day; their instinct, which repels them from modern
reality, is unrefuted . . . what do their retrograde by-paths
concern us! The main thing about them is not that they wish to
[ 390]
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
go "back," but that they wish to get away therefrom. A little
more strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they
would be off and not back!
11
It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at
present to divert attention from the actual influence which
Kant exercised on German philosophy, and especially to
ignore prudently the value which he set upon himself. Kant
was first and foremost proud of his Table of Categories; with
it in his hand he said: "This is the most difficult thing that
could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics." Let us
only understand this "could be"! He was proud of having
discovered a new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic
judgment a priori. Granting that he deceived himself in this
matter; the development and rapid flourishing of German
philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and on the
eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible
something at all events "new faculties" of which to be still
prouder! But let us reflect for a moment it is high time
to do so. "How are synthetic judgments a priori possible? 9
Kant asks himself and what is really his answer? ff By means
of a means (faculty)" but unfortunately not in five words,
but so circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display of
German profundity and verbal flourishes, that one altogether
loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved in such
an answer. People were beside themselves with delight over
this new faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when
Kant further discovered a moral faculty in man for at that
[ 391 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
time Germans were still moral, not yet dabbling in the "Politics
of hard fact/' Then came the honeymoon of German philos-
ophy. All the young theologians of the Tubingen institution
went immediately into the groves all seeking for "faculties."
And what did they not find in that innocent, rich, and still
youthful period of the German spirit, to which Romanticism,
the malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet
distinguish between "finding" and "inventing"! Above all a
faculty for the "transcendental"; Schelling christened it, in-
tellectual intuition, and thereby gratified the most earnest
longings of the naturally pious-inclined Germans. One can do
no greater wrong to die whole of this exuberant and eccentric
movement (which was really youthfulness, notwithstanding
that it disguised itself so boldly in hoary and senile concep-
tions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it with moral
indignation. Enough, however the world grew older, and the
dream vanished. A time came when people rubbed their fore-
heads, and they still nib them to-day. People had been dream-
ing, and first and foremost old Kant. "By means of a means
(faculty) " -he had said, or at least meant to say. But, is that
an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely a
repetition of the question? How does opium induce sleep?
"By means of a means ( faculty) ," namely the virtus dormitiva,
replies the doctor in Moliere,
Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva,
Cujus est natura sensus assoupire.
But such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is
high time to replace the Kantian question, "How are synthetic
judgments a priori possible?" by another question, "Why is
belief in such judgments necessary?" m effect, it is high time
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PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
that we should understand that such judgments must be be-
lieved to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures
like ourselves; though they still might naturally be jalse judg-
ments! Or, more plainly spoken, and roughly and readily
synthetic judgments a priori should not "be possible" at all;
we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but
false judgments. Only, of course, the belief in their truth is
necessary, as plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging
to the perspective view of life. And finally, to call to mind the
enormous influence which "German philosophy" I hope you
understand its right to inverted commas (goosefect)? has
exercised throughout the whole of Europe, there is no doubt
that a certain virtus dormitiva had a share in it; thanks to Ger-
man philosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the virtu-
ous, the mystics, the artists, the three-fourths Christians, and
the political obscurantists of all nations, to find an antidote to
the still overwhelming sensualism which overflowed from the
last century into this, in short "sensus assoupire." . . .
As regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the best
refuted theories that have been advanced, and in Europe there
is now perhaps no one in the learned world so unscholarly as
to attach serious signification to it, except for convenient every-
day use (as an abbreviation of the means of expression)
thanks chiefly to the Pole Boscovich: he and the Pole Coper-
nicus have hitherto been the greatest and most successful
opponents of ocular evidence. For whilst Copernicus has per-
suaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth
does not stand fast, Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief
f ,7,95 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
in the last thing that "stood fast" of the earth the belief in
"substance," in "matter," in the earth-residuum, and particle-
atom: it is the greatest triumph over the senses that has
hitherto been gained on earth. One must, however, go still
further, and also declare war, relentless war to the knife,
against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a danger-
ous after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the
more celebrated "metaphysical requirements": one must also
above all give the finishing stroke to that other and more por-
tentous atomism which Christianity has taught best and longest,
the soul-atomism. Let it be permitted to designate by this
expression the belief which regards the soul as something inde-
structible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this
belief ought to be expelled from science! Between ourselves, it
is not at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby, and thus
renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses
as happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who
can hardly touch on the soul without immediately losing it.
But the way is open for new accepcations and refinements of
the soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as "mortal soul,"
and "soul of subjective multiplicity," and "soul as social struc-
ture of the instincts and passions," want henceforth to have
legitimate rights in science. In that the new psychologist is
about to put an end to the superstitions which have hitherto
flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of
the soul, he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a new
desert and a new distrust it is possible that the older psychol-
ogists had a merrier and more comfortable time of it; even-
tually, however, he finds that precisely thereby he is also
condemned to invent and, who knows? perhaps to discover
the new.
1394]
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
13
Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting
down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct
of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to dis-
charge its strength life itself is Will to Poiver; self -preserva-
tion is only one of the indirect and most frequent results
thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of
superfluous teleological principles! one of which is the in-
stinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's inconsist-
ency) . It is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must be
essentially economy of principles.
14
It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural
philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-arrangement
( according to us, if I may say so! ) and not a world-explanation;
but in so far as it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded
as more, and for a long time to come must be regarded as more
namely, as an explanation. It has eyes and fingers of its own,
it has ocular evidence and palpableness of its own : this operates
fascinatingly, persuasively, and convincingly upon an age with
fundamentally plebeian tastes in fact, it follows instinctively
the canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism. What is clear,
what is "explained"? Only that which can be seen and felt
one must pursue every problem thus far. Obversely, however,
the charm of the Platonic mode of thought, which was an
aristocratic mode, consisted precisely in resistance to obvious
sense-evidence perhaps among men who enjoyed even
[395]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
stronger and more fastidious senses than our contemporaries,
but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining
masters of them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey concep-
tional networks which they threw over the motley whirl of the
senses the mob of the senses, as Plato said. In this overcoming
of the world, and interpreting of the world in the manner of
Plato, there was an enjoyment different from that which the
physicists of today offer us and likewise the Darwinists and
antiteleologists among the physiological workers, with their
principle of the "smallest possible effort," and the greatest
possible blunder. "Where there is nothing more to see or to
grasp, there is also nothing more for men to do" that is cer-
tainly an imperative different from the Platonic one, but it may
notwithstanding be the right imperative for a hardy, laborious
race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, who have
nothing but roug h work to perform.
To study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist
on the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense
of the idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be
causes! Sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis,
if not as heuristic principle. What? And others say even
that the external world is the work of our organs? But then
our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work
of our organs! But then our organs themselves would be the
work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a complete
reductlo ad absurdum, if the conception causa sui is something
fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is not
the work of our organs ?
[ 396 ]
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
16
There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there
are "immediate certainties"; for instance, "I think," or as the
superstition of Schopenhauer puts it, "I will" ; as though cogni'
tion here got hold of its object purely and simply as "the thing
in itself," without any falsification taking place either on the
part of the subject or the object. I would repeat it, however, a
hundred times, that "immediate certainty," as well as "abso-
lute knowledge" and the "thing in itself," involve a contra-
dictio in adjecto; we really ought to free ourselves from the
misleading significance of words! The people on their part
may think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the
philosopher must say to himself: "When I analyse the process
that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think/ I find a whole series
of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would
be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it 15 / whc
think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks,
that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being
who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and finally
that it is already determined what is to be designated by think-
ing that I knoiv what thinking is. For if I had not already
decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I de-
termine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps
'willing' or 'feeling'? In short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes
that I compare my state at the present moment with other
states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is;
on account of this retrospective connection with further
'knowledge/ it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for
me." In place of the "immediate certainty" in which the
people may believe in the special case, tKe philosopher thus
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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
finds a series of metaphysical questions presented to him,
veritable conscience questions of the intellect, to wit: "From
whence did I get the notion of 'thinking'? Why do I believe in
cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an 'ego,'
and even of an 'ego* as cause, and finally of an 'ego' as cause
of thought?" He who ventures to answer these metaphysical
questions at once by an appeal to a sort of intuitive perception,
like the person who says, "I think, and know that this, at least,
is true, actual, and certain" will encounter a smile and two
notes of interrogation in a philosopher nowadays. "Sir," the
philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, "it is im-
probable that you are not mistaken, but why should it be the
truth?"
17
With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never
tire of emphasising a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly
recognised by these credulous minds namely, that a thought
comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish; so that it is a
perversion of the facts of the case to say that the subject "I" is
the condition of the predicate "think." One thinks; but that
this "one" is precisely the famous old "ego," is, to put it
mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an
"immediate certainty." After all, one has even gone too far
with this "one thinks" even the "one" contains an interpreta-
tion of the process, and does not belong to the process itself.
One infers here according to the usual grammatical formula
"To think is an activity; every activity requires an agency that
is active; consequently" ... It was pretty much on the same
lines that the older atomism sought, besides the operating
' 'power/ ' the material particle wherein it resides and out of
[ 398}
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
which it operates the atom. More rigorous minds, however,
learned at last to get along without this "earth-residuum," and
perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, even from the
logician's point of view, to get along without the little "one"
(to which the worthy old "ego" has refined itself) .
18
It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refut-
able; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle
minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the
"free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one
is alv^" c "Bearing who feels himself strong enough to refute
it.
19
Philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though
it were the best-known thing in the world; indeed, Schopen-
hauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really
known to us, absolutely and completely known, without deduc-
tion or addition. But it again and again seems to me that ia
this case Schopenhauer also only did what philosophers are
in the habit of doing he seems to have adopted a popular
prejudice and exaggerated it. Willing seems to me to be
above all something complicated, something that is a unity
only in name and it is precisely in a name that popular preju-
dice lurks, which has got the mastery over the inadequate pre-
cautions of philosophers in all ages. So let us for once be more
cautious, let us be "unphilosophical" : let us say that in all
willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the
[ 399 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
sensation of the condition "away from which we go," the sen-
sation of the condition "towards which we go," the sensation
of this "from" and "towards" itself, and then besides, an
accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our
putting in motion "arms and legs," commences its action by
force of habit, directly we "will" anything. Therefore, just as
sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be
recognised as ingredients of the will, so, in the second place,
thinking is also to be recognised; in every act of the will there
is a ruling thought; and let us not imagine it possible to sever
this thought from the "willing," as if the will would then
remain over! In the third place, the will is not only a complex
of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an emotion, and
in fact the emotion of the command. That which is termed
"freedom of the will" is essentially the emotion of supremacy
in respect to him who must obey: "I am free, 'he' must obey"
this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally so the
straining of the attention, the straight look which fix<* itself
exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgment that
"this and nothing else is necessary now," the inward certainty
that obedience will be rendered and whatever else pertains to
the position of the commander. A man who wills commands
something within himself which renders obedience, or which
he believes renders obedience. But now let us notice what is
the strangest thing about the will, this affair so extremely
complex, for which the people have only one name, Inasmuch
a$ in the given circumstances we are at the same time the com-
manding and the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we
know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resist-
ance, and motion, which usually commence immediately after
the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accus-
tomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about
1400]
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
it by means of the synthetic term "I" : a whole series of errone-
ous conclusions, and consequently of false judgments about the
will itself, has become attached to the act of willing to such a
degree that he who wills believes firmly that willing suffices
for action. Since in the majority of cases there has only been
exercise of will when the effect of the command consequently
obedience, and therefore action was to be expected, tRe
appearance has translated itself into the sentiment, as if there
were a necessity of effect; in a word, he who wills believes with
a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow
one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing,
to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensa-
tion of power which accompanies all success. "Freedom of
Will" that is the expression for the complex state of delight
of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the
same time identifies himself jvith the executor of the order
who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks
within himself that it was really his own will that overcame
them. In this way the person exercising vplition adds the feel-
ings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the
useful "underwills" or under-souls indeed, our body is but a
social structure composed of many souls to his feelings of
delight as commander. L'effet c'est moi: what happens here is
what happens in every well-constructed and happy common-
wealth, namely, that the governing class identifies itself with
the successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is abso-
lutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as
already said, of a social structure composed of many "souls";
on which account a philosopher should claim the right to in-
clude willing-as-such within the sphere of morals regarded
as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy under which the
phenomenon of "life" manifests itself.
[401-]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
That the separate philosophical ideas are not anything
optional or autonomously evolving, but grow up in connection
and relationship with each other; that, however suddenly and
arbitrarily they seem to appear in the history of thought, they
nevertheless belong just as much to a system as the collective
members of the fauna of a Continent is betrayed in the end
by the circumstance: how unfailingly the most diverse philos-
ophers always fill in again a definite fundamental scheme of
possible philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always
revolve once more in the same orbit; however independent of
each other they may feel themselves with their critical or sys-
tematic wills, something within them leads them, something
impels them in definite order the one after the other to wit,
the innate methodology and relationship of their ideas. Their
thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognising, a
remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient
common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas
formerly grew: philosophising is so far a kind of atavism of
the highest order. The wonderful family resemblance of all
Indian, Greek, and German philosophising is easily enough
explained. In fact, where there is affinity of language, owing to
the common philosophy of grammar I mean owing to the
unconscious domination and guidance of similar grammatical
functions it cannot but be that everything is prepared at the
outset for a similar development and succession of philosophi-
cal systems; just as the way seems barred against certain other
possibilities of world-interpretation. It is highly probable that
philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic languages
(where the conception of the subject is least developed) look
\ 402}
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
otherwise "into the world," and will be found on paths of
thought different from those of the Indo-Germans and Mussul-
mans, the spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately
also the spell of physiological valuations and racial conditions.
So much by way of rejecting Locke's superficiality with re-
gard to the origin of ideas.
The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has yet been
conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness;
but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle it-
self profoundly and frightfully with this very folly. The desire
for "freedom of will" in the superlative, metaphysical sens"e,
such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-
educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsi-
bility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world,
ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing less
than to be precisely this causa sui, and, with more than Mun-
chausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair,
out of the slough of nothingness. If any one should find out in
this manner the crass stupidity of the celebrated conception of
"free will" and put it out of his head altogether, I beg of him
to carry his "enlightenment a step further, and also put out of
his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of "free
will" : I mean "non-free will," which is tantamount to a misuse
of cause and effect. One should not wrongly materialise
"cause" and "effect," as the natural philosophers do (and who-
ever like them naturalises in thinking at present), according
to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause
[403]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
press and push until it "effects" its end; one should use "cause"
and "effect" only as pure conceptions, that is to say, as con-
ventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual
understanding, not for explanation. In "being-in-itself"
there is nothing of "casual-connection," of "necessity," or of
"psychological non-freedom"; there the effect does not follow
the cause, there "law" does not obtain. It is u f e alone who have
devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, num-
ber, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we inter-
pret and intermix this symbol-world, as "being in itself," with
things, we act once more as we have always acted mythologi-
cally. The "non-free will" is mythology; in real life it is only
a question of strong and weak wills. It is almost always a
symptom of what is lacking in himself, when a thinker, in
every "casual -connect ion" and "psychological necessity,"
manifests something of compulsion, indigence, obsequious-
ness, oppression, and non-freedom; it is suspicious to have such
feelings the person betrays himself. And in general, if I have
observed correctly, the "non-freedom of the will" is regarded
as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but
always in a profoundly personal manner: some will not give up
their "responsibility," their belief in themselves, the personal
right to their merits, at any price (the vain races belong to this
class) ; others on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for
anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward
self-contempt, seek to get out of the business, no matter how.
The latter, when they write books, are in the habit at present of
taking the side of criminals; a sort of socialistic sympathy is
their favourite disguise. And as a matter of fact, the fatalism of
the weak-willed embellishes itself surprisingly when it can
pose as "la religion de la sou ff ranee humaine"; that is its "good
taste."
[404]
PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS
Let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who cannot desist
from the mischief of putting his finger on bad modes of inter-
pretation, but "Nature's conformity to law," of which you
physicists talk so proudly, as though why, it exists only owing
to your interpretation and bad "philology." It is no matter of
fact, no "text," but rather just a naively humanitarian adjust-
ment and perversion of meaning, with which you make abun-
dant concessions to the democratic instincts of the modern
soul! "Everywhere equality before the law Nature is not dif-
ferent in that respect, nor better than we:" a fine instance of
secret motive, in which the vulgar antagonism to everything
privileged and autocratic likewise a second and more refined
atheism is once more disguised. "N/ Dieu, ni maitre' that,
also, is what you want; and therefore "Cheers for natural
law!" is it not so? But, as has been said, that is interpretation,
not text; and somebody might come along, who, with opposite
intentions and modes of interpretation, could read out of the
same "Nature," and with regard to the same phenomena, just
the tyrannically inconsiderate and relentless enforcement of
the claims of power an interpreter who should so place the
unexceptionalness and unconditionalness of all "Will to
Power" before your eyes, that almost every word, and the word
"tyranny" itself, would eventually seem unsuitable, or like a
weakening and softening metaphor as being too human; and
who should, nevertheless, end by asserting the same about this
world as you do, namely, that it has a "necessary" and "cal-
culable" course, not, however, because laws obtain in it, but
because they are absolutely lacking, and every power effects its 1 *
ultimate consequences every moment. Granted that this also fc
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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
only interpretation and you will be eager enough to make
this objection? well, so much the better.
All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral preju-
dices and timidities, it has not dared to launch out into the
depths. In so far as it is allowable to recognise in that which
has hitherto been written, evidence of that which has hitherto
been kept silent, it seems as if nobody had yet harboured the
notion of psychology as the Morphology and Development-
doctrine of the Will to Power, as I conceive of it. The power
of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most intel-
lectual world, the world apparently most indifferent and un-
prejudiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious, obstruc-
tive, blinding, and distorting manner. A proper physio-
psychology has to contend with unconscious antagonism in the
heart of the investigator, it has "the heart" against it: even a
doctrine of the reciprocal conditionalness of the "good" and
the "bad" impulses, causes (as refined immorality) distress
and aversion in a still strong and manly conscience still more
so, a doctrine of the derivation of all good impulses from bad
ones. If, however, a person should regard even the emotions
of hatred, envy, covetousness, and imperiousness as life-con-
ditioning emotions, as factors which must be present, funda-
mentally and essentially, in the general economy of life (which
must, therefore, be further developed if life is to be further
developed) , he will suffer from such a view of things as from
sea-sickness. And yet this hypothesis is far from being the
strangest and most painful in this immense and almost new
domain of dangerous knowledge; and there are in fact a hun-
[406]
THE FREE SPIRIT
dred good reasons why every one should keep away from it
who can do so! On the other hand, if one has once drifted
hither with one's bark, well! very good! now let us set our
teeth firmly! let us open our eyes and keep our hand fast on the
helm! We sail away right over morality, we crush out, we de-
stroy perhaps the remains of our own morality by daring to
make our voyage thither but what do we matter! Never yet
did a profounJer world of insight reveal itself to daring
travellers and adventurers, and the psychologist who thus
"makes a sacrifice" it is not the sacrifizio dell* mtelletto, on
the contrary! will at least be entitled to demand in return
that psychology shall once more be recognised as the queen
of the sciences, for whose service and equipment the other
.sciences exist. For psychology is once more the path to the
fundamental problems.
2. The Free Spirit
84
O sancta simplicitas! In what strange simplification and falsi-
fication man lives! One can never cease wondering when once
one has got eyes for beholding this marvel! How we have made
everything around us clear and free and easy and simple! how
we have been able to give our senses a passport to everything
superficial, our thoughts a god-like desire for wanton pranks
and wrong inferences! how from the beginning, we have
contrived to retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost
inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence, hearti-
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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
r>ess, and gaiety in order to enjoy life! And only^on this
solidified, granite-like foundation of ignorance could knowl-
edge rear itself hitherto, the will to knowledge on the founda-
tion of a far more powerful will, the will to ignorance, to the
uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its opposite, but as its refine-
ment! It is to be hoped, indeed, that language, here as else-
where, will not get over its awkwardness, and that it will con-
tinue to talk of opposites where there arc only degrees and
many refinements of gradation; it is equally to be hoped that
the incarnated Tartuffcry of morals, which now belongs to our
unconquerable "flesh and blood," will turn the words round in
the mouths of us discerning ones. Here and there we under-
stand it, and kugh at the way in which precisely the best knowl-
edge seeks most to retain us in this simplified, thoroughly
artificial, suitably imagined and suitably falsified world: at
the way in which, whether it will or not, it loves error, because,
as living itself, it loves life!
After such a cheerful commencement, a serious word would
fain be heard; it appeals to the most serious minds. Take care,
ye philosophers and friends of knowledge, and beware of
martyrdom! Of suffering "for the truth's sake"! even in your
own defence! It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of
your conscience; it makes you headstrong against objections
and red rags; it stupefies, animalises, and brutalises, when in
the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and
even worse consequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your
last card as protectors of truth upon earth as though "the
Truth" were such an innocent and incompetent creature as to
[408}
THE FREE SPIRIT
require protectors! and you of all people, ye knights of the
sorrowful countenance, Messrs. Loafers and Cobweb-spinners
of the spirit! Finally, ye know sufficiently well that it cannot
be of any consequence if ye just carry your point; ye know that
hitherto no philosopher has carried his point, and that there
might be a more laudable truthfulness in every little interroga-
tive mark which you place after your special words and
favourite doctrines (and occasionally after yourselves) than in
all the solemn pantomime and trumping games before accusers
and law-courts! Rather go out of the way! Flee into conceal-
ment! And have your masks and your ruses, that ye may be
mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared! And pray,
don't forget the garden, the garden with golden trellis-work!
And have people around you who are as a garden or as music
on the waters at eventide, when already the day becomes a
memory. Choose the good solitude, the free, wanton, light-
some solitude, which also gives you the right still to remain
good in any sense whatsoever! How poisonous, how crafty,
how bad, docs every long war make one, wlvYh cannot be
waged openly by means of force! How personal docs a long
fear make one, a long watching of enemies, of possible
enemies! These pariahs of society, these long-pursued, badly-
persecuted ones also the compulsory recluses, the Spinozas or
Giordano Brunos always become in the end, even under the
most intellectual masquerade, and perhaps without being
themselves aware of it, refined vengeance-seekers and poison-
brewers (just lay bare the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and
theology! ) , not to speak of the stupidity of moral indignation,
which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that the sense of
philosophical humour has left him. The martyrdom of the
philosopher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth," forces into
the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him; and
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BEYOND G60D AND EVIL
if one has hitherto contemplated him only with artistic curi-
osity, with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand
the dangerous desire to see him also in his deterioration (de-
teriorated into a "martyr/' into a stage- and tribune-bawler).
Only, that it is necessary with such a desire to be clear what
spectacle one will see in any case merely a satyric play, merely
an epilogue farce, merely the continued proof that the long,
real tragedy is at an end, supposing that every philosophy has
been a long tragedy in its origin.
Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a
privacy, where he is free from the crowd, the many, the ma-
jority where he may forget "men who are the rule," as their
exception; exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed
straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner
in the great and exceptional sense. Whoever, in intercourse
with men, does not occasionally glisten in all the green and
grey colours of distress, owing to disgust, satiety, sympathy,
gloominess and solitariness, is assuredly not a man of elevated
tastes; supposing, however, that he does not voluntarily take
all this burden and disgust upon himself, that he persistently
avoids it, and remains, as I said, quietly and proudly hidden in
his citadel, one thing is then certain: he was not made, he was
not predestined for knowledge. For as such, he would one day
have to say to himself: "The devil take my good taste! but 'the
rule' is more interesting than the exception than myself, the
exception!" And he would go doivn, and above all, he would
go "inside." The long and serious study of the average man
and consequently much disguise, self -overcoming, f amiliarity,
1410]
THE FREE SPIRIT
and bad intercourse (all intercourse is bad intercourse except
with one's equals) : that constitutes a necessary part of the
life-history of every philosopher; perhaps the most disagree-
able, odious, and disappointing part. If he is fortunate, how-
ever, as a favourite child of knowledge should be, he will meet
with suitable auxiliaries who will shorten and lighten his task;
I mean so-called cynics, those who simply recognise the animal,
the commonplace and "the rule" in themselves, and at the
same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make
them talk of themselves and their like before ivitnesses
sometimes they wallow, even in books, as oft their own dung-
hill. Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach
what is called honesty; and the higher man must open his ears
to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself
when the clown becomes shameless right before him, or the
scientific satyr speaks out. There are even cases where enchant-
ment mixes with the disgust namely, where by a freak of
nature, genius is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and
ape, as in the case of the Abbe Galiani, the profoundest,
acutest, and perhaps also filthiest man of his century he was
far profounder than Voltaire, and consequently also, a good
deal more silent. It happens more frequently, as has been
hinted, that a scientific head is placed on an ape's body, a fine
exceptional understanding in a base soul, an occurrence by no
means rare, especially amongst doctors and moral physiol-
ogists. And whenever anyone speaks without bitterness, or
rather quite innocently of man, as a belly with two require-
ments, and a head with one; whenever any one sees, seeks and
wants to see only hunger, sexual instinct, and vanity as the real
and only motives of human actions; in short, when any one
speaks "badly" and not even "ill" of man, then ought the
lover of knowledge to hearken attentively and diligently; he
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
ought, in general, to have an open ear wherever there is talk
without indignation. For the indignant man, and he who per-
petually tears and lacerates himself with his own teeth (or, in
place of himself, the world, God, or society), may indeed,
morally speaking, stand higher than the laughing and self-
satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more ordinary,
more indifferent, and less instructive case. And no one is such
a liar as the indignant man.
It is difficult to be understood, especially when one thinks
and lives gangasrotogati * among those only who think and
live otherwise namely, kurwagati,^ or at best "froglike,"
mancleikagati \ ( I do everything to be "difficultly understood"
myself!) and one should be heartily grateful for the good
will to some refinement of interpretation. As regards ''the
good friends," however, who are always too easy-going, and
think that as friends they have a right to ease, one does well at
the very first to grant them a playground and romping-place
for misunderstanding one can thus laugh still; or get rid of
them altogether, these good friends and laugh then also!
28
What is most difficult to render from one language into
another is the tempo of its style, which has its basis in the char-
* Like the river Ganges: presto.
t Like the tortoise: lento.
% Like the frog: staccato.
THE FREE SPIRIT
acter of the race, or to speak more physiologically, in the aver-
age tempo of the assimilation of its nutriment. There are
honestly meant translations, which, as involuntary vulgarisa-
tions, are almost falsifications of the original, merely because
its lively and merry tempo (which overleaps and obviates all
dangers in word and expression) could not also be rendered.
A German is almost incapacitated for presto in his language;
consequently also, as may be reasonably inferred, for many of
the most delightful and daring nuances of free, free-spirited
thought. And just as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in
body and conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius are un-
translatable for him. Everything ponderous, viscous, and
pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying species of
style, are developed in profuse variety among Germans
pardon me for stating the fact that even Goethe's prose, in its
mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a reflec-
tion of the "good old time" to which it belongs, and as an
expression of German taste at a time when there was still a
''German taste," which was a rococo-taste in moribus et artibus.
Lessing is an exception, owing to his histrionic nature, which
understood much, and was versed in many things; he who was
not the translator of Bayle to no purpose, who took refuge
willingly in the shadow of Diderot and Voltaire, and still more
willingly among the Roman comedy-writers Lessing loved
also free-spiritism in the tempo, and flight out of Germany.
But how could the German language, even in the prose of
Lessing, imitate the tempo of Machiavelli, who in his "Prin-
cipe" makes us breathe the dry, fine air of Florence, and cannot
help presenting the most serious events in a boisterous alle-
grissimo, perhaps dot without a malicious artistic sense of the
contrast he ventures to present long, heavy, difficult, danger-
ous thoughts, and a tempo of the gallop, and of the best,
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
wantonest humour? Finally, who would venture on a German
translation of Petronius, who, more than any great musician
hitherto, was a master of presto in invention, ideas, and words?
What matter in the end about the swamps of the sick, evil
world, or of the "ancient world," when like him, one has the
feet of a wind, the rush, the breath, the emancipating scorn
of a wind, which makes everything healthy, by making every-
thing run! And with regard to Aristophanes that trans-
figuring, complementary genius, for whose sake one pardons
all Hellenism for having existed, provided one has understood
in its full profundity all that there requires pardon and trans-
figuration; there is nothing that has caused me to meditate more
on Plato's secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily
preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there
was found no "Bible," nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or
Platonic but a book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato
have endured life a Greek life which be repudiated with-
out an Aristophanes?
It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a
privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with
the best right, but without being obliged to do so, proves that
he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond meas-
ure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold
the dangers which life in itself already brings with it; not the
least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses
his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some
minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief,
it is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither
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THE FREE SPIRIT
feel it, nor sympathise with it. And he cannot any longer go
back! He cannot even go back again to the sympathy of men!
30
Our deepest insights must and should appear as follies,
and under certain circumstances as crimes, when they come
unauthorisedly to the ears of those who arc not disposed and
predestined for them. The exoteric and the esoteric, as they
were formerly distinguished by philosophers among the
Indians, as among the Greeks, Persians, and Mussulmans, in
short, wherever people believed in gradations of rank and not
in equality and equal rights are not so much in contradis-
tinction to one another in respect to the exoteric class, standing
without, and viewing, estimating, measuring, and judging
from the outside, and not from the inside; the more essential
distinction is that the class in question views things from below
upwards while the esoteric class views things jrom above
downwards. There are heights of the soul from which tragedy
itself no longer appears to operate tragically; and if all the
woe in the world were taken together, who would dare to
decide whether the sight of it would necessarily seduce and
constrain to sympathy, and thus to a doubling of the woe? . . .
That which serves the higher class of men for nourishment or
refreshment, must be almost poison to an entirely different and
lower order of human beings. The virtues of the common man
would perhaps mean vice and weakness in a philosopher; it
might be possible for a highly developed man, supposing him
to degenerate and go to ruin, to acquire qualities thereby alone,
for the sake of which he would have to be honoured as a saint
in the lower world into which he had sunk. There are books
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
which have an inverse value for the soul and the health accord-
ing as the inferior soul and the lower vitality, or the higher and
more powerful, make use of them. In the former case they are
dangerous, disturbing, unsettling books, in the latter case they
are herald-calls which summon the bravest to their bravery.
Books for the general reader are always ill-smelling books, the
odour of paltry people clings to them. Where the populace eat
and drink, and even where they reverence, it is accustomed
to stink. One should not go into churches if one wishes to
breathe pure air.
SI
In our youthful years we still venerate and despise without
the art of nuance, which is the best gain of life, and we have
rightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon men and
things with Yea and Nay. Everything is so arranged that the
worst of all tastes, the taste for the unconditional, is cruelly
befooled and abused, until a man learns to introduce a little
art into his sentiments, and prefers to try conclusions with the
artificial, as do the real artists of life. The angry and reverent
spirit peculiar to youth appears to allow itself no peace, until
it has suitably falsified men and things, to be able to vent its
passion upon them: youth in itself even, is something falsi-
fying and deceptive. Later on, when the young soul, tortured
by continual disillusions, finally turns suspiciously against
itself still ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse
of conscience: how it upbraids itself, how impatiently it tears
itself, how it revenges itself for its long self -blinding, as
though it had been a voluntary blindness! In this transition one
THE FREE SPIRIT
punishes oneself by distrust of one's sentiments; one tortures
one's enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good con-
science to be a danger, as if it were the Self -concealment and
lassitude of a more refined uprightness; and above all, one
espouses upon principle the cause against "youth." A decade
later, and one comprehends that all this was also still youth!
Throughout the longest period of human history one calls
it the prehistoric period the value or non-value of an action
was inferred from its consequences; the action in itself was not
taken into consideration, any more than its origin; but pretty
much as in China at present, where the distinction or disgrace
of a child redounds to its parents, the retro-operating power of
success or failure was what induced men to think well or ill of
an action. Let us call this period the pre-moral period of man-
kind; the imperative, "know thyself!" was then still unknown.
In the last ten thousand years, on the other hand, on certain
large portions of the earth, one has gradually got so far, that
one no longer lets the consequences of an action, but its origin,
decide with regard to its worth : a great achievement as a whole,
an important refinement of vision and of criterion, the uncon-
scious effect of the supremacy of aristocratic values and of the
belief in "origin," the mark of a period which may be desig-
nated in the narrower sense as the moral one: the first attempt
at self-knowledge is thereby made. Instead of the conse-
quences, the origin what an inversion of perspective! And
assuredly an inversion effected only after long struggle and
wavering! To be sure, an ominous new superstition, a peculiar
narrowness of interpretation, attained supremacy precisely
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
thereby: the origin of an action was interpreted in the most
definite sense possible, as origin out of an intention; people
were agreed in the belief that the value of an action lay in the
value of its intention. The intention as the sole origin and ante-
cedent history of an action: under the influence of this preju-
dice moral praise and blame have been bestowed, and men
have judged and even philosophised almost up to the present
day. Is it not possible, however, that the necessity may now
have arisen of again making up our minds with regard to the
reversing and fundamental shifting of values, owing to a new
self -consciousness and acuteness in man is it not possible
that we may be standing on the threshold of a period which to
begin with, would be distinguished negatively as ultra-moral:
nowadays when, at least amongst us immoralists, the suspicion
arises that the decisive value of an action lies precisely in that
which is not intentional, and that all its intcntionalncss, all that
is seen, sensible, or "sensed" in it, belongs to its surface or
skin which, like every skin, betrays something, but conceals
still more? In short, we believe that the intention is only a sign
or symptom, which first requires an explanation a sign, more-
over, which has too many interpretations, and consequently
hardly any meaning in itself alone: that morality, in the sense
in which it has been understood hitherto, as intention-morality,
has been a prejudice, perhaps a prematureness or prelimi-
narincss, probably something of the same rank as astrology
and alchemy, but in any case something which must be sur-
mounted. The surmounting of morality, in a certain sense even
the self-mounting of morality let that be the name for the
long secret labour which has been reserved for the most refined,
the most upright, and also the most wicked consciences of to-
day, as the living touchstones of the soul.
THE FREE SPIRIT
It cannot be helped: the sentiment of surrender, of sacrifice
r one's neighbour, and all self-renunciation-morality, must
mercilessly called to account, and brought to judgment; just
the aesthetics of "disinterested contemplation," under which
e emasculation of art nowadays seeks insidiously enough to
^atc itself a good conscience. There is far too much witchery
d sugar in the sentiments "for others" and "not for myself,"
r one not needing to be doubly distrustful here, and for one
<ing promptly: "Are they not perhaps deceptions?" That
ey please him who has them, and him who enjoys their
jit, and also the mere spectator that is still no argument in
eir javour, but just calls for caution. Let us therefore be
utious!
34
At whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place one-
[f nowadays, seen from every position, the erroneousness of
e world in which we think we live is the surest and most
rtain thing our eyes can light upon: we find proof after
oof thereof, which would fain allure us 'into surmises con-
rning a deceptive principle in the "nature of things." He,
wever, who makes thinking itself, and consequently "the
irit," responsible for the falseness of the world an honour-
le exit, which every conscious or unconscious advocatus del
ails himself of he who regards this world, including space,
ne, form, and movement, as falsely deduced, would have at
ist good reason in the end to become distrustful also of all
inking; has it not hitherto been playing upon us the worst of
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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
scurvy tricks? and what guarantee would it give that it would
not continue to do what it has always been doing? In all seri-
ousness, the innocence of thinkers has something touching and
respect- inspiring in it, which even nowadays permits them to
wait upon consciousness with the request that it will give them
honest answers: for example whether it be "real" or not, and
why it keeps the outer world so resolutely at a distance, and
other questions of the same description. The belief in "imme-
diate certainties" is a moral naivete which docs honour to us
philosophers; but we have now to cease being "merely
moral" rncn! Apart from morality, such belief is a folly which
does little honour to us! If in middle-class life an ever-ready
distrust is regarded as the sign of a "bad character," and conse-
quently as an imprudence, here amongst us, beyond the middle-
class world and its Yeas and Nays, what should prevent our
being imprudent and saying: the philosopher has at length a
right to "bad character," as the being who has hitherto been
most befooled on earth he is now under obligation to dis-
trustfulness, to the wickedest squinting out of every abyss of
suspicion. Forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and
turn of expression; for I myself have long ago learned to think
and estimate differently with regard to deceiving and being
deceived, and I keep at least a couple of pokes in the ribs
ready for the blirid rage with which philosophers struggle
against being deceived. Why not? It is nothing more than a
moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance; it is,
in fact, the worst proved supposition in the world. So much
must be conceded : there could have been no life at all except
upon the basis of perspective estimates and semblances; and
if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and stupidity of many philos-
ophers, one wished to do away altogether with the "seeming
world" well, granted that you could do that, at least noth-
[420}
THE FREE SPIRIT
ing of your "truth" would thereby remain! Indeed, what is it
that forces us in general to the supposition that there is an
essential opposition of "true" and "false"? Is it not enough to
suppose degrees of secmingness, and as it were lighter and
darker shades and tones of semblance different valeurs, as
the painters say? Why might not the world which concerns us
be a fiction? And to any one who suggested: "But to a
fiction belongs an originator?" might it not be bluntly
replied: Why? May not this "belong" also belong to the
fiction? Is it not at length permitted to be a little ironical
towards the subject, just as towards the predicate, and object?
Might not the philosopher elevate himself above faith in
grammar? All respect to governesses, but is it not time that
philosophy should renounce governess-faith?
O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something
ticklish in "the truth," and in the search for the truth; and if
man goes about it too humanely "// ne cherche le vrai que
pour jaire le bien" I wager he finds nothing!
Supposing that nothing else is "given" as real but our world
of desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any
other "reality" but jilst that of our impulses for thinking is
only a relation of these impulses to one another: are we not
permitted to make the attempt and to ask the question whether
this which is "given" does not suffice, by means of our counter-
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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
parts, for the understanding even of the so-called mechanical
(or "material") world? I do not mean as an illusion, a "sem-
blance," a "representation" (in the Berkeleyan and Schopen-
haucrian sense), but as possessing the same degree of reality
as our emotions themselves as a more primitive form of the
world of emotions, in which everything still lies locked in a
mighty unity, which afterwards branches off and develops
itself in organic processes (naturally also, refines and debili-
tates) as a kind of instinctive life in which all organic
functions, including self-regulation, assimilation, nutrition,
secretion, and change of matter, are still synthetically united
with one another as a primary form of life? In the end, it is
not only permitted to make this attempt, it is commanded by
the conscience of logical method. Not to assume several kinds
of causality, so long as the attempt to get along with a single
one has not been pushed to its furtherest extent (to absurdity,
if I may be allowed to say so) : that is a morality of method
which one may not repudiate nowadays it follows "from its
definition," as mathematicians say. The question is ultimately
whether we really recognise the will as operating, whether we
believe in the causality of the will; if we do so and funda-
mentally our belief /;; this is just our belief in causality itself
we must make the attempt to posit hypothetically the causality
of the will as the only causality. "Will" can naturally only
operate on "will" and not on "matter" (not on "nerves," for
instance) : in short, the hypothesis must be hazarded, whether
will docs not operate on will wherever "effects" are recog-
nised and whether all mechanical action, inasmuch as a
power operates therein, is not just the power of will, the effect
of will. Granted, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our
entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of
THE FREE SPIRIT
one fundamental form of will namely, the Will to Power, as
my thesis puts it; granted that all organic functions could be
traced back to this Will to Power, and that the solution of the
problem of generation and nutrition it is one problem
could also be fpund therein: one would thus have acquired the
right to define all active force unequivocally as Will to Power.
The world seen from within, the world defined and designated
according to its "intelligible character" it would simply be
"Will to Power," and nothing else.
37
"What? Does not that mean in popular language: God is
disproved, but not the devil"? On the contrary! On the con-
trary, my friends! And who the devil also compels you to speak
popularly!
As happened finally in all the enlightenment of modern
times with the French Revolution (that terrible farce, quite
superfluous when judged close at hand, into which, however,
the noble and visionary spectators of all Europe have inter-
preted from a distance their own indignation and enthusiasm
so long and passionately, until the text has disappeared under
the interpretation), so a noble posterity might once more mis-
understand the whole of the past, and perhaps only thereby
makes its aspect endurable. Or rather, has not this already
happened? Have not we ourselves been that "noble pos-
terity"? And, in so far as we now comprehend this, is it not
thereby already past?
[ 423 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Nobody will very readily regard a doctrine as true merely be-
cause it makes people happy or virtuous excepting, perhaps,
the amiable "Idealists,'* who arc enthusiastic about the good,
true, and beautiful, and let all kinds of motley, coarse, and
good-natured desirabilities swim about promiscuously in their
pond. Happiness and virtue are no arguments. It is willingly
forgotten, however, even on the part of thoughtful minds, that
to make unhappy and to make bad are just as little counter-
arguments. A thing could be true, although it were in the
highest degree injurious and dangerous; indeed, the funda-
mental constitution of existence might be such that one suc-
cumbed by a full knowledge of it so that the strength of a
mind might be measured by the amount of "truth" it could
endure or to speak more plainly, by the extent to which it
reqf/irtd truth attenuated, veiled, sweetened, damped, and
falsified. But there is no doubt that for the discovery of certain
portions of truth the wicked and unfortunate are more favour-
ably situated and have a greater likelihood of success; not to
speak of the wicked who are happy a species about whom
moralists are silent. Perhaps severity and craft are more favour-
able conditions for the development of strong, independent
spirits and philosophers than the gentle, refined, yielding
good-nature, and habit of taking things easily, which are
prized, and rightly prized in a learned man. Presupposing
always, to begin with, that the term "philosopher" be not con-
fined to the philosopher who writes books, or even introduces
his philosophy into books! Stendhal furnishes a last feature
of the portrait of the free-spirited philosopher, which for the
sake of German taste I will not omit to underline for it is
[ 434 ]
THE FREE SPIRIT
opposed to German taste. "Pour etre bon philosophe" says
this last great psychologist, "il jaut etre sec, clair, sans illusion.
Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie dn caractere
requis pour jalre des decouvertes en pbilosophie, c'est-a-dire
pour voir clair dans ce qui est."
40
Everything that is profound loves the mask: the profoundest
things have a hatred even of figure and likeness. Should not
the contrary only be the right disguise for the shame of a God
to go about in? A question worth asking! it would be strange
if some mystic has not already ventured on the same kind of
thing. There are proceedings of such a delicate nature that it
is well to overwhelm ithem with coarseness and make them un-
recognisable; there are actions of love and of an extravagant
magnanimity after which nothing can be wiser than to take a
stick and thrash the witness soundly: one thereby obscures his
recollection. Many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own
memory, in order at least to have vengeance on this sole party
in the secret: shame is inventive. They arc not the worst things
of which one is most ashamed : there is not only deceit behind a
mask there is so much goodness in craft. I could imagine that
a man with something costly and fragile to conceal, would roll
through life clumsily and rotundly like an old, green, heavily-
hooped wine-cask: the refinement of his shame requiring it to
be so. A man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and
his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach, and
with regard to the existence of which his nearest and most
intimate friends may be ignorant; his mortal danger conceals
itself from their eyes, and equally so his regained security.
1425}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Such a hidden nature, which instinctively employs speech for
silence and concealment, and is inexhaustible in evasion of
communication, desires and insists that a mask of himself shall
occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his friends; and sup-
posing he does not desire it, his eyes will some day be opened to
the fact that there is nevertheless a mask of him there and that
it is well to be so. Every profound spirit needs a mask; nay,
more, around every profound spirit there continually grows a
mask, owing to the constantly false, that is to say, superficial
interpretation of every word he utters, every step he takes,
every sign of life he manifests.
One must subject oneself to one's own tests that one is
destined for independence and command, and do so at the
right time. One must not avoid one's tests, although they con-
stitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are
in the end tests made only before ourselves and before no other
judge. Not to cleave to any person, be it even the dearest
every person is a prison and also a recess. Not to cleave to a
fatherland, be it even the most suffering and necessitous it is
even less difficult to detach one's heart from a victorious father-
land. Not to cleave to a sympathy, be it even for higher men,
into whose peculiar torture and helplessness chance has given
us an insight. Not to cleave to a science, though it tempt one
with the most valuable discoveries, apparently specially re-
served for us. Not to cleave to one's own liberation, to the
voluptuous distance and remoteness of the bird, which always
flies further aloft in order always to see more under it the
danger of the flier. Not to cleave to our own virtues, nor be-
[486]
THE FREE SPIRIT
come as a whole a victim to any of our specialties, to our
"hospitality" for instance, which is the danger of dangers for
highly developed and wealthy souls, who deal prodigally,
almost indifferently with themselves, and push the virtue of
liberality so far that it becomes a vice. One must know how
to conserve oneself the best test of independence.
A new order of philosophers is appearing; I shall venture
to baptize them by a name not without danger. As far as I
understand them, as far as they allow themselves to be under-
stood for it is their nature to wish to remain something of a
puzzle these philosophers of the future might rightly, per-
haps also wrongly, claim to be designated as "tempters." This
name itself is after all only an attempt, or, if it be preferred,
a temptation.
Will they be new friends of "truth," these coming philoso-
phers? Very probably, for all philosophers hitherto have loved
their truths. But assuredly they will* not be dogmatists. It
must be contrary to their pride, and also contrary to their taste,
that their truth should still be truth for every one that which
has hitherto been the secret wish and ultimate purpose of all
dogmatic efforts. "My opinion is my opinion: another person
has not easily a right to it" such a philosopher of the future
will say, perhaps. One must renounce the bad taste of wishing
to agree with many people. "Good" is no longer good when
one's neighbour takes it into his mouth. And how could there
[427}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIi
be a "common good"! The expression contradicts itself; that
which can be common is always of small value. In the end
things must be as they are and have always been the great
things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the
delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly,
everything rare for the rare.
Need I say expressly after all this that they will be free, very
free spirits, these philosophers of the future as certainly also
they will not be merely free spirits, but something more,
higher, greater, and fundamentally different, which does not
wish to be misunderstood and mistaken? But while I say this,
I feel under obligation almost as much to them as to ourselves
(we free spirits who are their heralds and forerunners), to
sweep away from ourselves altogether a stupid old prejudice
and misunderstanding, which, like a fog, has too long made
the conception of "free spirit" obscure. In every country of
Europe, and the same in America, there is at present something
which makes an abuse of this name: a very narrow, pre-
possessed, enchained class of spirits, who desire almost the op-
posite of what our intentions and instincts prompt not to
mention that in respect to the new philosophers who are
appearing, they must still more be closed windows and bolted
doors. Briefly and regrettably, they belong to the levellers,
these wrongly named "free spirits'^ as glib-tongued and
scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its "modern
ideas": all of them men without solitude, without personal
solitude, blunt, honest fellows to whom neither courage nor
honourable conduct ought to be denied; only, they are not free,
[ 4*a ]
THE FREE SPIRIT
and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their innate par-
tiality for seeing the cause of almost M human misery and
failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed
a notion which happily inverts the truth entirely! What they
would fain attain with all their strength, is the universal,
green-meadow happiness of the herd, together with security,
safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for every one; their two
most frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called "Equal-
ity of Rights" and "Sympathy with all Sufferers" and suffer-
ing itself is looked upon by them as something which must be
done away with. We opposite ones, however, who have opened
our eye and conscience to the question how and where the
plant "man" has hitherto grown most vigorously, believe that
this has always taken place under the opposite conditions, that
for this end the dangerousncss of his situation had to be in-
creased enormously, his inventive faculty and dissembling
power (his "spirit") had to develop into subtlety and daring
under long oppression and compulsion, and his Will to Life
had to be increased to the unconditioned Will to Power: we
believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street
and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of
every kind, that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical,
predatory, and serpentine in man, serves as well for the eleva-
tion of the human species as its opposite: we do not even say
enough when we only say this much; and in any case we find
ourselves here, both with our speech and our science, at the
other extreme of all modern ideology and gregarious desira-
bility, as their antipodes perhaps? What wonder that we "free
spirits" are not exactly the most communicative spirits? that
we do not wish to betray in every respect what a spirit can free
itself from, and where perhaps it will then be driven? And as
to the import of the dangerous formula, "Beyond Good and
[429]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Evil," with which we at least avoid confusion, we are some-
thing else than "libres-penseurs," "liberi pensatori," "free-
thinkers," and whatever these honest advocates of ' 'modern
ideas" like to call themselves. Having been at home, or at least
guests, in many realms of the spirit; having escaped again and
again from the gloomy, agreeable nooks in which preferences
and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident of men and books,
or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us; full of
malice against the seductions of dependency which lie con-
cealed in honours, money, positions, or exaltation of the senses;
grateful even for distress and the vicissitudes of illness, because
they always free us from some rule, and its "prejudice," grate-
ful to the God, devil, sheep, and worm in us; inquisitive to a
fault, investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating
fingers for the intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most
indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and
acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of
"free will"; with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate
intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and
backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run; hidden ones
under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we re-
semble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from
morning till night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed
drawers, economical in learning and forgetting, inventive in
scheming; sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes
pedants, sometimes night-owls of work even in full day; yea, if
necessary, even scarcecrows and it is necessary nowadays, that
is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealous friends of
solitude, of our own profoundest midnight and mid-day soli-
tude: such kind of men are we, we free spirits! And perhaps
ye are also something of the same kind, ye coming ones, ye new
philosophers?
1430}
THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
. The Religious Mood
THE human soul and its limits, the range of man's inner ex-
pericnces hitherto attained, the heights, depths and distances
of these experiences, the entire history of the soul up to the
present time, and its still unexhausted possibilities: this is the
preordained hunting-domain for a born psychologist and lover
^f a "big hunt." But how often must he say despairingly to
himself: "A single individual! alas, only a single individual!
and this great forest, this virgin forest!" So he would like to
have some hundreds of hunting assistants, and fine trained
hounds, that he could send into the history of the human soul,
to drive his game together. In vain: again and again he experi-
ences, profoundly and bitterly, how difficult it is to find
assistants and dogs for all the things that directly excite his
curiosity. The evil of sending scholars into new and dangerous
hunting-domains, where courage, sagacity, and subtlety in
every sense are required, is that they are no longer serviceable
just when the "big hunt," and also the great danger com-
mences, it is precisely then that they lose their keen eye and
nose. In order, for instance, to divine and determine what sort
of history the problem of knowledge and conscience has
hitherto had in the souls of homines religiosi, a person would
perhaps himself have to possess as profound, as bruised, as
immense an experience as the intellectual conscience of Pascal;
and then he would still require that wide-spread heaven of
clear, wicked spirituality, which, from above, would be able to
oversee, arrange, and effectively f ormulise this mass of danger-
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
and painful experiences. But who could do me this
service! And who would have time to wait for such servants!
they evidently appear too rarely, they are so improbable at
all times! Eventually one must do everything oneself in order
to know something; which means that one has much to do!
But a curiosity like mine is once for all the most agreeable of
vices pardon me! I mean to say that the love of truth has its
reward in heaven, and already upon earth.
Faith, such as early Christianity desired, and not infre-
quently achieved in the midst of a sceptical and southernly
free-spirited world, which had centuries of struggle between
philosophical schools behind it and in it, counting besides the
education in tolerance which the imperinm Roman/an gave
this faith is not that sincere, austere slave-faith by which per-
haps a Luther or a Cromwell, or some other northern barbarian
of the spirit remained attached to his God and Christianity;
it is much rather the faith of Pascal, which resembles in a
terrible manner a continuous suicide of reason a tough, long-
lived, wormlike reason, which is not to be slain at once and
with a single blow. The Christian faith from the beginning, is
sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confi-
dence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, self-derision,
and self-mutilation. There is cruelty and religious Phoenician-
ism in this faith, which is adapted to a tender, many-sided, and
very fastidious conscience; it takes for granted that the sub-
jection of the spirit is indescribably pained, that all the past
and all the habits of such a spirit resist the absurdissimum, in
the form of which "faith" comes to it. Modern men, with their
THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
\
obtuseness as regards all Christian nomenclature, have no
longer the sense for the terribly superlative conception which
was implied to an antique taste by the paradox of the formula,
"God on the Cross." Hitherto there had never and nowhere
been such boldness in inversion, nor anything at once so dread-
ful, questioning, and questionable as this formula: it promised
a transvaluation of all ancient values. It was the Orient, the
projound Orient, it was the Oriental slave who thus took re-
venge on Rome and its noble, light-minded toleration, on the
Roman "Catholicism" of non-faith; and it was always, not the
faith, but the freedom from the faith, the half-stoical and
smiling indifference to the seriousness of the faith, which
made the slaves indignant at their masters and revolt against
them. "Enlightenment" causes revolt: for the slave desires the
unconditioned, lie understands nothing but the tyrannous, even
in morals; he loves as he hates, without nuance, to the very
depths, to the point of pain, to the point of sickness his many
hidden sufferings make him revolt against the noble taste
which seems to deny suffering. The scepticism with regard to
suffering, fundamentally only an attitude of aristocratic moral-
ity, was not the least of the causes, also, of the last great slave-
insurrection which began with the French Revolution.
Wherever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth
so far, we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions
as to regimen: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence but
without its being possible to determine with certainty which is
cause and which is effect, or // any relation at all of cause and
effect exists there. This latter doubt is justified by the fact that
[ 433 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
one of the most regular symptoms among savage as well as
among civilised peoples is the most sudden and excessive
sensuality; which then with equal suddenness transforms into
penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation, and will-renuncia-
tion: both symptoms perhaps explainable as disguised
epilepsy? But nowhere is it more obligatory to put aside ex-
planations: around no other type has there grown such a mass
of absurdity and superstition, no other type seems to have been
more interesting to men and even to philosophers perhaps it
is time to become just a little indifferent here, to learn caution,
or, better still, to look away, to go away. Yet in the back-
ground of the most recent philosophy, that of Schopenhauer,
we find almost as the problem in itself, this terrible note of
interrogation of the religious crisis and awakening. How is the
negation of will possible? how is the saint possible? that
seems to have been the very question with which Schopenhauer
made a start and became a philosopher. And thus it was a genu-
ine Schopenhauerian consequence, that his most convinced
adherent (perhaps also his last, as far as Germany is con-
cerned), namely, Richard Wagner, should bring his own life-
work to an end just here, and should finally put that terrible
and eternal type upon the stage as Kundry, type vecu, and as it
loved and lived, at the very time that the mad-doctors in
almost all European countries had an opportunity to study the
type close at hand, wherever the religious neurosis or as I
call it, "the religious mood" made its latest epidemical out-
break and display as the "Salvation Army." If it be a ques-
tion, however, as to what has been so extremely interesting to
men of all sorts in all ages, and even to philosophers, in the
whole phenomenon of the saint, it is undoubtedly the appear-
ance of the miraculous therein namely, the immediate suc-
cession of opposite*, of states of the soul regarded as morally
[434]
THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
antithetical: it was believed here to be self-evident that a "bad
man" was all at once turned into a "saint," a good man. The
hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at this point; is it
not possible it may have happened principally because psychol-
ogy had placed itself under the dominion of morals, because
it believed in oppositions of moral values, and saw, read, and
interpreted these oppositions into the text and facts of the case?
What? "Miracle" only an error of interpretation? A lack of
philology?
48
It seems that the Latin races are far more deeply attached
to their Catholicism than we Northerners are to Christianity
generally, and that consequently unbelief in Catholic countries
means something quite different from what it does among
Protestants namely, a sort of revolt against the spirit of the
race, while with us it is rather a return to the spirit (or non-
spirit) of the race. We Northerners undoubtedly derive our
origin from barbarous races, even as regards our talents for
religion we have poor talents for it. One may make an
exception in the case of the Celts, who have theretofore
furnished also the best soil for Christian infection in the north :
the Christian ideal blossomed forth in France as much as ever
the pale sun of the north would allow it. How strangely pious
for our taste are still these later French sceptics, whenever
there is any Celtic blood in their origin! How Catholic, how
un-German does Auguste Comte's Sociology seem to us, with
the Roman logic of its instincts! How Jesuitical, that amiable
and shrewd cicerone of Port-Royal, Sainte-Beuve, in spite of all
his hostility to Jesuits! And even Ernest Renan: how inacces-
1.435}
DEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
siblc to us Northerners does the language of such a Renan
appear, in whom every instant the merest touch of religious
thrill throws his refined voluptuous and comfortably couching
soul off its balance! Let us repeat after him these fine sentences
and what wickedness and haughtiness is immediately
aroused by way of answer in our probably less beautiful but
harder souls, that is to say, in our more German souls!
"Disons done hardiment que la religion est nn produit de
rhomme normal, que I'bomme est le plus dans le vrai quand
il est le plus religieux et le plus assure d'une destinee infinie.
. . . C'est quand il est bon qu'il vent que la virtu corresponde
a un order eternal, c'est quand il content pie les chases d'une
mantere desinteressee qu'il trouve la mort revoltante et ab-
surd e. Comment ne pas supposer que c'est dans ces moments-
la, que rhomme voit le mieux?" . . . These sentences are so
extremely antipodal to my ears and habits of thought, that in
my first impulse of rage on finding them, I wrote on the
margin, ff la niaiserie religieuse par excellence!" until in my
later rage I even took a fancy to them, these sentences with their
truth absolutely inverted! It is so nice and such a distinction to
have one's own antipodes!
That which is so astonishing in the religious life of the
ancient Greeks is the irrestrainable stream of gratitude which
it pours forth it is a very superior kind of man who takes
such an attitude towards nature and life. Later on, when the
populace got the upper hand in Greece, fear became rampant
also in religion; and Christianity was preparing itself.
THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
The passion for God: there are churlish, honest-hearted,
and importunate kinds of it, like that of Luther the whole
of Protestantism lacks the southern clelicatezza. There is an
Oriental exaltation of the mind in it, like that of an unde-
servedly favoured or elevated slave, as in the case of St.
Augustine, for instance, who lacks in an offensive manner, all
nobility in bearing and desires. There is a feminine tenderness
and sensuality in it, which modestly and unconsciously longs
for a uriw myst/ca et physica, as in the case of Madame de
Guyon. In many cases it appears, curiously enough, as the
disguise of a girl's or youth's puberty; here and there even as
the hysteria of an old maid, also as her last ambition. The
Church has frequently canonised the woman in such a case.
fit
The mightiest men have hitherto always bowed reverently
before the saint, as the enigma of self -subjugation and utter
voluntary privation why did they thus bow? They divined in
him and as it were behind the questionableness of his frail
and wretched appearance the superior force which wished
to test itself by such a subjugation; the strength of will, in
which they recognised their own strength and love of power,
and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in them-
selves when they honoured the saint. In addition to this, the
contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion: such
an enormity of self-negation and anti-naturalness will not have
been coveted for nothing they have said, inquiringly. There
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
is perhaps a reason for it, some very great danger, about \vlndi
the ascetic might wish to be more accurately informed through
his secret interlocutors and visitors? In a word, the mighty ones
of the world learned to have a new fear before him, they
divined a new power, a strange, still unconquered enemy:
it was the "Will to Power" which obliged them to halt before
the saint. They had to question him.
In the Jewish "Old Testament," the book of divine justice,
there are men, things, and sayings on such an immense scale,
that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare with
it. One stands with fear find reverence before those stupendous
remains of what man was formerly, and one has sad thoughts
about old Asia and its little out-pushed peninsula Europe,
which would like, by all means, to figure before Asia as the
"Progress of Mankind." To be sure, he who is himself only a
slender, tame house-animal, and knows only the wants of a
house-animal (like our cultured people of today, including
the Christians of "cultured" Christianity), need neither be
amazed nor even sad amid those ruins the taste for the Old
Testament is a touchstone with respect to "great" and "small" :
perhaps he will find that the New Testament, the book of
grace, still appeals more to his heart (there is much of the
odour of the genuine, tender, stupid beadsman and petty soul
in it ) . To have bound up this New Testament ( a kind of rococo
of taste in every respect) along with the Old Testament into
one book, as the "Bible," as "The Book in Itself," is perhaps
the greatest audacity and "sin against the Spirit" which literary
Europe has upon its conscience.
[438]
THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
Why Atheism nowadays? "The father" in God is thor-
oughly refuted; equally so "the judge," "the rewarder." Also
his "free will" : he does not hear and even if he did, he would
not know how to help. The worst is that he seems incapable of
communicating himself clearly; is he uncertain? This is what
I have made out (by questioning and listening at a variety of
conversations) to be the cause of the decline of European
theism; it appears to me that though the religious instinct is in
vigorous growth, it rejects the theistic satisfaction with pro-
found distrust.
54
What does all modern philosophy mainly do? Since
Descartes and indeed more in defiance of him than on the
basis of his procedure an attentat has been made on the part
of all philosophers on the old conception of the soul, under
the guise of a criticism of the subject and predicate conception
that is to say, an attentat on the fundamental presupposition
of Christian doctrine. Modern philosophy, as epistemological
scepticism, is secretly or openly anti-Christian, although (for
keener ears, be it said) by no means anti-religious. Formerly,
in effect, one believed in "the soul" as one believed in gram-
mar and the grammatical subject: one said, "I" is the condition,
"think" is the predicate and is conditioned to think is an
activity for which one must suppose a subject as cause. The
attempt was then made, with marvellous tenacity and subtlety,
to see if one could not get out of this net, to see if the opposite
[439 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
was not perhaps true: "think" the condition, and "I" the condi-
tioned; "I," therefore, only a synthesis which has been made
by thinking itself. Kant really wished to prove that, starting
from the subject, the subject could not be proved nor the
object either: the possibility of an apparent existence of the
subject, and therefore of "the soul," may not always have been
strange to him, the thought which once had an immense
power on earth as the Vedanta philosophy.
There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, with many
rounds; but three of these are the most important. Once on a
time men sacrificed human beings to their God, and perhaps
just those they loved the best to this category belong the
firstling sacrifices of all primitive religions, and also the sacri-
fice of the Emperor Tiberius in the Mithra-Grotto on the Island
of Capri, that most terrible of all Roman anachronisms. Then,
during the moral epoch of mankind, they sacrificed to their
God the strongest instincts they possessed, their ' 'nature";
this festal joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics and "anti-
natural" fanatics. Finally, what still remained to be sacrificed?
Was it not necessary in the end for men to sacrifice everything
comforting, holy, healing, all hope, all faith in hidden har-
monies, in future blessedness and justice? Was it not necessary
to sacrifice God himself, and out of cruelty to themselves to
worship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness? To sacri-
fice God for nothingness this paradoxical mystery of the ulti-
mate cruelty has been reserved for the rising generation; we all
know something thereof already.
[440]
THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
Whoever, like myself, prompted by some enigmatical
desire, has long endeavoured to go to the bottom of the ques-
tion of pessimism and free it from the half-Christian, half-
German narrowness and stupidity in which it has finally
presented itself to this century, namely, in the form of Schopen-
hauer's philosophy; whoever, with an Asiatic and super-
Asiatic eye, has actually looked inside, and into the most
world-renouncing of all possible modes of thought beyond
good and evil, and no longer like Buddha and Schopenhauer,
under the dominion and delusion of morality, whoever has
done this, has perhaps just thereby, without really desiring it,
opened his eyes to behold the opposite ideal: the ideal of the
most world-approving, exuberant and vivacious man, who has
not only learned -to compromise and arrange with that which
was and is, but wishes to have it again as it was and is, for all
eternity, insatiably calling out de capo, not only to himself, but
to the whole piece and play; and not only the play, but actually
to him who requires the play and makes it necessary; because
he always requires himself anew and makes himself neces-
sary. \Vhat? And this would not be circitlus vitiosus deus?
The distance, and as it were the space around man, grows
with the strength of his intellectual vision and insight: his
world becomes profounder; new stars, new enigmas, and
notions are ever coming into view. Perhaps everything on
which the intellectual eye has exercised its acuteness and pro-
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
fundity has just been an occasion for its exercise, something
of a game, something for children and childish minds. Per-
haps the most solemn conceptions that have caused the most
fighting and suffering, the conceptions "God" and "sin," will
one day seem to us of no more importance than a child's play-
thing or a child's pain seems to an old man; and perhaps
another plaything and another pain will then be necessary once
more for "the old man" always childish enough, an eternal
child!
58
Has it been observed to what extent outward idleness, or
semi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike for its
favourite microscopic labour of self-examination, and for its
soft placidity called "prayer," the state of perpetual readiness
for the "coming of God"), I mean the idleness with a good
conscience, the idleness of olden times and of blood, to which
the aristocratic sentiment that work is dishonouring that it
vulgarises body and soul is not quite unfamiliar? And that
consequently the modern, noisy, time-engrossing, conceited,
foolishly proud laboriousness educates and prepares for "un-
belief" more than anything else? Amongst these, for instance,
who are at present living apart from religion in Germany, I
find "free-thinkers" of diversified species and origin, but
above all a majority of those in whom laboriousness from gen-
eration to generation has dissolved the religious instincts; so
that they no longer know what purpose religions serve, and
only note their existence in the world with a kind of dull
astonishment. They feel themselves already fully occupied,
these good people, be it by their business or by their pleasures,
not to mention the "Fatherland," and the newspapers, and
THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
their "family duties"; it seems that they have no time whatever
left for religion; and above all, it is not obvious to them
whether it is a question of a new business or a new pleasure
for it is impossible, they say to themselves, that people should
go to church merely to spoil their tempers. They are by no
means enemies of religious customs; should certain circum-
stances, State affairs perhaps, require their participation in
such customs, they do what is required, as so many things are
done with a patient and unassuming seriousness, and without
much curiosity or discomfort; they live too much apart and
outside to feel even the necessity for a for or against in such
matters. Among those indifferent persons may be reckoned
nowadays the majority of German Protestants of the middle
classes, especially in the great laborious centres of trade and
commerce; also the majority of laborious scholars, and the
entire University personnel (with the exception of the theo-
logians, whose existence and possibility there always give
psychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve). On the
part of pious, or merely church-going people, there is seldom
any idea of how much good will, one might say arbitrary will,
is now necessary for a German scholar to take the problem of
religion seriously; his whole profession (and as I have said, his
whole workmanlike laboriousness, to which he is compelled
by his modern conscience) inclines him to a lofty and almost
charitable serenity as regards religion, with which is occa-
sionally mingled a slight disdain for the "uncleanliness" of
spirit which he takes for granted wherever any one still pro-
fesses to belong to the Church. It is only with the help of
history {not through his own personal experience, therefore)
that the scholar succeeds in bringing himself to a respectful
seriousness, and to a certain timid deference in presence of
\_443]
BEYOND GOOD AND HVIL
religions; but even when his sentiments have reached the stage
of gratitude towards them, he has not personally advanced one
step nearer to that which still maintains itself as Church or as
piety; perhaps even the contrary. The practical indifference to
religious matters in the midst of which he has been born and
brought up, usually sublimates itself in his case into circum-
spection and cleanliness, which shuns contact with religious
men and things; and it may be just the depth of his tolerance
and humanity which prompts him to avoid the delicate trouble
which tolerance itself brings with it. Every age has its own
divine type of naivete, for the discovery of which other ages
may envy it: and how much naivete adorable, childlike, and
boundlessly foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the
scholar in his superiority, in the good conscience of his toler-
ance, in the unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his in-
stinct treats the religious man as a lower and less valuable type,
beyond, before, and above which he himself has developed
he, the little arrogant dwarf and mob-man, the sedulously alert,
head-and-hand drudge of "ideas," of "modern ideas"!
Whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtless
divined what wisdom there is in the fact that men are super-
ficial. It is their preservative instinct which teaches them to be
flighty, lightsome, and false. Here and there one finds a
passionate and exaggerated adoration of "pure forms" in
philosophers as well as in artists: it is not to be doubted that
whoever has need of the cult of the superficial to that extent,
has at one time or another made an unlucky dive beneath it.
Perhaps there is even an order of rank with respect to those
[444]
THE RI:LIGIOUS HOOD
burnt children, the born artists who find the enjoyment of life
only in trying to falsify its image (as if taking wearisome
revenge on it) ; one might guess to what degree life has dis-
gusted them, by the extent to which they wish to sec its image
falsified, attenuated, ultraficd, and deified; one might reckon
the homines religiosl amongst the artists, as their highest rank.
It is the profound, suspicious fear of an incurable pessimism
which compels whole centuries to fasten their teeth into a
religious interpretation of existence: the fear of the instinct
which divines that truth might be attained too soon, before man
has become strong enough, hard enough, artist enough. . . .
Piety, the "Life in God," regarded in this light, would appear
as the most elaborate and ultimate product of the fear of taith,
as artist-adoration and artist-intoxication in presence of the
most logical of all falsifications, as the will to the inversion of
truth, to untruth at any price. Perhaps there has hitherto been
no more effective means of beautifying man than piety; by
means of it man can become so artful, so superficial, so irides-
cent, and so good, that his appearance no longer offends.
GO
To love mankind jor God's sake this has so far been the
noblest and remotest sentiment to which piankind has attained.
That love to mankind, without any redeeming intention in the
background, is only an additional folly and brutishness, that
the inclination to this love has first to get its proportion, its
delicacy, its grain of salt and sprinkling of ambergris from a
higher inclination: whoever first perceived and "experi-
enced" this, however his tongue may have stammered as it at-
[446]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
tempted to express such a delicate matter, let him for all tim
be holy and respected, as the man who has so far flown highes
and gone astray in the finest fashion!
61
The philosopher, as we free spirits understand him as th
man of the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience fo
the general development of mankind, will use religion fo
his disciplining and educating work, just as he will use th
contemporary political and economic conditions. The selecting
and disciplining influence destructive, as well as creative an<
fashioning which can be exercised by means of religion i
manifold and varied, according to the sort of people place*
under its spell and protection. For those who are strong an<
independent, destined and trained to command, in whom th
judgment and skill of a ruling race is incorporated, religioi
is an additional means for overcoming resistance in the exercis<
of authority as a bond which binds rulers and subjects ii
common, betraying and surrendering to the former the con
science of the latter, their inmost heart, which would fail
escape obedience. And in the case of the unique natures o
noble origin, if by virtue of superior spirituality they shoul<
incline to a more retired and contemplative life, reserving t<
themselves only the more refined forms of government (ove
chosen disciples or members of an order) , religion itself ma 1
be used as a means for obtaining peace from the noise anc
trouble of managing grosser affairs, and for securing immunit
from the unavoidable filth of all political agitation. Th<
Brahmins, for instance, understood this fact. With the help o
THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
a religious organisation, they secured to themselves the power
of nominating kings for the people, while their sentiments
prompted them to keep apart and outside, as men with a higher
and super-regal mission. At the same time religion gives in-
ducement and opportunity to some of the subjects to qualify
themselves for future ruling and commanding: the slowly as-
cending ranks and classes, in which, through fortunate mar-
riage customs, volitional power and delight in self-control
are on the increase. To them religion offers sufficient incentives
and temptations to aspire to higher intellectuality, and to ex-
perience the sentiments of authoritative self-control, of silence,
and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indis-
pensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks
to rise above its hereditary baseness and work itself upward to
future supremacy. And finally, to ordinary men, to the majority
of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and
are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable con-
tentcdncss with their lot and condition, peace of heart, en-
noblement of obedience, additional social happiness and
sympathy, with something of transfiguration and embellish-
ment, something of justification of all the common]")! accncss,
all the meanness, all the semi-animal poverty of their souls.
Religion, together with the religious significance of life, sheds
sunshine over such perpetually harassed men, and makes even
their own aspect endurable to them; it operates upon them as
the Epicurean philosophy usually operates upon sufferers of a
higher order, in a refreshing and refining manner, almost
turning suffering to account, and in the end even hallowing and
vindicating it. There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Chris-
tianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest
to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of
[447]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual
world in which they find it difficult enough to live this very
difficulty being necessary.
To be sure to make also the bad counter-reckoning against
such religions, and to bring to light their secret dangers the
cost is always excessive and terrible when religions do not
operate as an educational and disciplinary medium in the hands
of the philosopher, but rule voluntarily and paramountly, when
i hey wish to be the final end, and not a means along with other
means. Among men, as among all other animals, there is a
surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and neces-
sarily suffering individuals; the successful cases, among men
Lo, are always the exception; and in view of the fact that man
is lite animal not yet properly adapted to his environment, the
r.uo exception. But worse still. The higher the type a man rep-
resents, the greater is the improbability that he will succeed;
LA* accidental, the law of irrationality in the general constitu-
tion of mankind, manifests itself most terribly in its destructive
effect on the higher orders of men, the conditions of whose
lives are delicate, diverse, and difficult to determine. What,
then, is the attitude of the two greatest religions above-men-
tioned to the surplus of failures in life? They endeavour to
preserve and keep alive whatever can be preserved; in fact, as
the religions for sufferers, they take the part of these upon
principle; they are always in favour of those who suffer from
life as from a disease, and they would fain treat every other
experience of life as false and impossible. However highly we
may esteem this indulgent and preservative care (inasmuch as
[448]
THE RELIGIOUS MOOD
in applying to others, it has applied, and applies also to the
highest and usually the most suffering type of man), the
hitherto paramount religions to give a general appreciation
of them are among the principal causes which have kept the
type of "man" upon a lower level they have preserved too
much that which should have perished. One has to thank them
for invaluable services; and who is sufficiently rich in gratitude
not to feel poor at the contemplation of all that the * 'spiritual
men" of Christianity have done for Europe hitherto! But when
they had given comfort to the sufferers, courage to the op-
pressed and despairing, a staff and support to the helpless, and
when they had allured from society into convents and spiritual
penitentiaries the broken-hearted and distracted: what else had
they to do in order to work systematically in that fashion, and
with a good conscience, for the preservation of all the sick and
suffering, which means, in deed and in truth, to work for the
deterioration of the European race? To reverse all estimates of
value that is what they had to do! And to shatter the strong,
to spoil great hopes, to cast suspicion on the delight in beauty,
to break down everything autonomous, manly, conquering,
and imperious all instincts which are natural to the highest
and most successful type of "man" into uncertainty, distress
of conscience, and self-destruction; forsooth, to invert all love
of the earthly and of supremacy over the earth, into hatred oi
the earth and earthly things that is the task the Church im-
posed on itself, and was obliged to impose, until, according,
to its standard of value, "unworldliness," "unsensuousness,"
and "higher man" fused into one sentiment. If one could ob-
serve the strangely painful, equally coarse and refined comedy
of European Christianity with the derisive and impartial eye
of an Epicurean god, I should think one would never cease
marvelling and laughing; does it not actually seem that some
[4491
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
single will has ruled over Europe for eighteen centuries in
order to make a sublime abortion of man? He, however, who,
with opposite requirements (no longer Epicurean) and with
some divine hammer in his hand, could approach this almost
voluntary degeneration and stunting of mankind, as exempli-
fied in the European Christian (Pascal, for instance) , would he
not have to cry aloud with rage, pity, and horror: "Oh, you
bunglers, presumptuous pitiful bunglers, what have you done!
Was that a work for your hands? How you have hacked and
botched my finest stone! What have you presumed to do!"
I should say that Christianity has hitherto been the most
portentous of presumptions. Men, not great enough, nor hard
enough, to be entitled as artists to take part in fashioning man;
men, not sufficiently strong and far-sighted to dloiv, with sub-
lime self-constraint, the obvious law of the thousandfold
failures and perishings to prevail; men, not sufficiently noble
to see the radically different grades of rank and intervals of
rank that separate man from man: such men, with their
"equality before God," have hitherto swayed the destiny of
Europe; until at last a dwarfed, almost ludicrous species has
been produced, a gregarious animal, something obliging,
sickly, mediocre, the European of the present day.
4. Apophthegms and Interludes
63
He who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously and even
himself only in relation to his pupils.
[ 450 ]
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
64
* 'Knowledge for its own sake" that is the last snare laid by
morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once
more.
The charm of knowledge would be small, were it not that so
much shame has to be overcome on the way to it.
We are most dishonourable towards our God: he is not per-
mitted to sin.
The tendency of a person to allow himself to be degraded,
robbed, deceived, and exploited might be the diffidence of a
God amongst men.
(17
Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the ex-
pense of all others. Love to God also!
"I did that," says my memory. "I could not have done that,"
says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually the
memory yields.
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
69
One has regarded life carelessly, if one has failed to see the
hand that kills with leniency.
70
If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which
always recurs.
71
The Sage as Astronomer. So long as thou f eelest the stars as
an "above thee," thou lackest the eye of the discerning one.
It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments that
makes great men.
He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it.
Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye and calls it
his pride.
[462}
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
74
A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at least two
things besides: gratitude and purity.
The degree and nature of a man's sensuality extends to the
highest altitudes of his spirit.
Under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself.
77
With his principles a man seeks either to dominate, or justify,
or honour, or reproach, or conceal his habits: two men with
the same principles probably seek fundamentally different ends
therewith.
78
He who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself there-
by, as a despiser.
79
A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love,
betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.
[ 453 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
80
A thing that is explained ceases to concern us. What did the
God mean who gave the advice, "Know thyself!" Did it per-
haps imply: "Cease to be concerned about thyself! become
objective!" And Socrates? And the "scientific man"?
81
It is terrible to die of thirst at sea. Is it necessary that you
should so salt your truth that it will no longer quench thirst?
"Sympathy for all" would be harshness and tyranny for thee,
my good neighbour!
83
Instinct. When the house is on fire one forgets even the
dinner. Yes, but one recovers it from amongst the ashes.
84
Woman learns how to hate in proportion as she forgets how
to charm.
85
The same emotions are in man and woman, but in different
tempo; on that account man and woman never cease to mis-
understand each other.
[454]
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
In the background of all their personal vanity, women them-
selves have still their impersonal scorn for "woman."
87
Fettered Heart, Free Spirit. When one firmly fetters one's
heart and keeps it prisoner, one can allow one's spirit many
liberties: I said this once before. But people do not believe
it when I say so, unless they know it already.
88
One begins to distrust very clever persons when they become
embarrassed.
Dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who
experiences them is not something dreadful also.
90
Heavy, melancholy men turn lighter, and come temporarily
to their surface, precisely by that which makes others heavy
by hatred and love.
[466}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
91
So cold, so icy, that one burns one's finger at the touch of him!
Every hand that lays hold of him shrinks back! And for that
very reason many think him red-hot.
Who has not, at one time or another sacrificed himself for
the sake of his good name?
93
In affability there is no hatred of men, but precisely on that
account a great deal too much contempt of men.
94
The maturity of man that means, to havejreacquired the seri-
ousness that one had as a child at play.
95
To be ashamed of one's immorality is a step on the ladder at
the end of which one is ashamed also of one's morality.
[456}
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
96
One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa
blessing it rather than in love with it.
97
What? A great man? I always see merely the play-actor of his
own ideal.
98
When one trains one's conscience, it kisses one while it bites.
99
The Disappointed One Speaks. "I listened for the echo and
I heard only praise."
100
We all feign to ourselves that we are simpler than we are; we
thus relax ourselves away from our fellows.
101
A discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the
animalisation of God.
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
102
Discovering reciprocal love should really disenchant the lover
with regard to the beloved. "What! She is modest enough to
love even you? Or stupid enough? Or or "
103
The Danger in Happiness. "Everything now turns out best
for me. I now love every fate: who would like to be my fate?"
104
Not their love of humanity, but the hnpotence of their love,
prevents the Christians of today burning us.
105
The pia jraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the "piety")
of the free spirit (the "pious man of knowledge") than the
impia fra?/s. Hence the profound lack of judgment, in com-
parison with the church, characteristic of the type "free spirit"
as its non-freedom.
106
By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves.
[ 458 1
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
107
A sign of strong character, when once the resolution has been
taken, to shut the ear even to the best counter-arguments.
Occasionally, therefore, a will to stupidity.
108
There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral
interpretation of phenomena.
109
The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed : he extenu-
ates and maligns it.
110
The advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to turn
the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the
doer.
Ill
Our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride has
been wounded.
1469]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
112
To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and
not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he
guards against them.
113
"You want to prepossess him in your favour? Then you must
be embarrassed before him."
114
The immense expectation with regard to sexual love, and the
coyness in this expectation, spoils all the perspectives of women
at the outset.
115
Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game, woman's
play is mediocre.
116
The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain
courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.
117
The will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will
of another, or of several other, emotions.
[460]
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
118
There is an innocence of admiration: it is possessed by him to
whom it has not yet occurred that he himself may be admired
some day.
119
Our loathing of dirt may be so great as to prevent our clean-
ing ourselves "justifying" ourselves.
120
Sensuality often forces the growth of love too much, so that its
root remains weak, and is easily torn up.
121
It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished
to turn author and that he did not learn it better.
122
To rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merely polite-
ness of heart and the very opposite of vanity of spirit.
123
Even concubinage has been corrupted by marriage.
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
124
He who exults at the stake, does not triumph over pain, but
because of the fact that he does not feel pain where he exoected
it. A parable.
When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge
heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.
126
A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great
men. Yes, and then to get round them.
127
In the eyes of all true women science is hostile to the sense of
shame. They feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with
it or worse still! under their dress and finery.
128
The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must
you allure the senses to it.
[468]
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
129
The devil has the most extensive perspectives for God; on that
account he keeps so far away from him: the devil, in effect,
as the oldest friend of knowledge.
130
What a person is begins to betray itself when his talent de-
creases, when he ceases to show what he can do. Talent is
also an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment.
131
The sexes deceive themselves about each other: the reason is
that in reality they honour and love only themselves (or their
own ideal, to express it more agreeably). Thus man wishes
woman to be peaceable: but in fact woman is essentially un-
peaceable, like the cat, however well she may have assumed
the peaceable demeanour.
132
One is punished best for one's virtues.
133
He who cannot find the way to his ideal, lives more frivolously
and shamelessly than the man without an ideal.
1463]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
l.U
From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good con-
science, all evidence of truth.
135
Pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man; a consider-
able part of it is rather an essential condition of being good.
136
The one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the other seeks
some one whom he can assist: a good conversation thus origi-
nates.
137
In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mis-
takes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infre-
quently finds a mediocre man; and often even in a mediocre
artist, one finds a very remarkable man.
138
We do the same when awake as when dreaming: we only in-
vent and imagine him with whom we have intercourse and
forget it immediately.
[404]
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
139
In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.
140
Advice as a Riddle. "If the band is not to break, bite it first
secure to make!"
141
The belly is the reason why man does not so readily take him-
self for a God.
148
The chastest utterance I ever heard: "Dans le veritable amour
c*est I'ame qui envelop pe le corps."
143
Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for
what is most difficult to us. Concerning the origin of many
systems of morals.
144
When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally
something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself
[465]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
conduces to a certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if I may
say so, is "the barren animal/'
145
Comparing man and woman generally, one may say that
woman would not have the genius for adornment, if she had
not the instinct for the secondary role.
He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the
abyss will also gaze into thee.
147
From old Florentine novels moreover, from life: Buona
jewmina e mala jemmina vuol bastone. Sacchetti, Nov. 86.
148
To seduce their neighbour to a favourable opinion, and after-
wards to believe implicitly in this opinion of their neighbour
who can do this conjuring trick so well as women?
140
That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable
echo of what was formerly considered good the atavism of
an old ideal.
[466}
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the
demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God
everything becomes what? perhaps a "world"?
It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your
permission to possess it; eh, my friends?
"Where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always Para-
dise:" so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents.
153
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and
evil.
154
Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs
of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
155
The sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuous-
ness.
[467}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
lofi
Insanity in individuals is something rare but in groups, par-
ties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
157
The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it
one gets successfully through many a bad night.
168
Not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our
strongest impulse the tr*rant in us.
159
One must repay good and ill; but why just to the person who
did us good or ill?
160
One no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently after one has
communicated it.
161
Poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit
them.
[468]
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
"Our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour's
neighbour:'* so thinks every nation.
163
Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover
his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive
as to his normal character.
164
Jesus said to his Jews: "The law was for servants; love God
as I love him, as his Son! What have we Sons of God to do
with morals!"
165
In Sight of Every Party. A shepherd has always need of a
bellwether or he has himself to be a wether occasionally.
166
One may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompany-
ing grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.
1469]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
167
To vigourous men intimacy is a matter of shame and some-
thing precious.
las
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it,
certainly, but degenerated to Vice.
lao
To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing
oneself.
170
In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.
171
Pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge,
like tender hands on a Cyclops.
172
One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to
mankind (because one cannot embrace all) ; but this is what
one must never confess to the individual.
[470]
APOPHTHEGMS AND INTERLUDES
173
One does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when
one esteems equal or superior.
174
Ye Utilitarians ye, too, love the utile only as a vehicle for
your inclinations, ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels
insupportable!
175
One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired.
176
The vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is
counter to our vanity.
177
With regard to what "truthfulness" is, perhaps nobody has
ever been sufficiently truthful.
178
One does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a for-
feiture of the rights of man!
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
179
The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very
indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile "reformed."
180
There is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith
in a cause.
181
It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.
182
The familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not
be returned.
183
"I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because
I can no longer believe in you."
184
There is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance
of wickedness.
[472}
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
"I dislike him/' Why? "I am not a match for him." Did
any one ever answer so?
j. The Natural History of Morals
186
THE moral sentiment in Europe at present is perhaps as subtle,
belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the "Science of
Morals" belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and
coarse-fingered : an interesting contrast, which sometimes be-
comes incarnate and obvious in the very person of a moralist.
Indeed, the expression, "Science of Morals" is, in respect to
what is designated thereby, far too presumptuous and counter
to good taste, which is always a foretaste of more modest
expressions. One ought to avow with the utmost fairness what
is still necessary here for a long time, what is alone proper for
the present: namely, the collection of material, the compre-
hensive survey and classification of an immense domain of
delicate sentiments of worth, and distinctions of worth, which
live, grow, propagate, and perish and perhaps attempts to
give a clear idea of the recurring and more common forms of
these living crystallisations as preparation for a theory of
types of morality. To be sure, people have not hitherto been
so modest. All the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridicu-
lous seriousness, demanded of themselves something very
[473}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
much higher, more pretentious, and ceremonious, when they
concerned themselves with morality as a science: they wanted
to give a basis to morality and every philosopher hitherto has
believed that he has given it a basis; morality itself, however,
has been regarded as something "given." How far from their
awkward pride was the seemingly insignificant problem left
in dust and decay of a description of forms of morality, not-
withstanding that the finest hands and senses could hardly be
fine enough for it! It was precisely owing to moral philoso-
phers knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary
epitome, or an accidental abridgement perhaps as the moral-
ity of their environment, their position, their church, their
Zeitgeist, their climate and zone it was precisely because they
were badly instructed with regard to nations, eras, and past
ages, and were by no means eager to know about these matters,
that they did not even come in sight of the real problems of
morals problems which only disclose themselves by a com-
parison of many kinds of morality. In every "Science of
Morals" hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of
morality itself has been omitted; there has been no suspicion
that there was anything problematic there! That which phi-
losophers called "giving a basis to morality," and endeavoured
to realise, has, when seen in a right light, proved merely a
learned form of good faith in prevailing morality, a new means
of its expression, consequently just a matter-of-fact within the
sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort
of denial that it is laivjul for this morality to be called in ques-
tion and in any case the reverse of the testing, analysing,
doubting, and vivisecting of this very faith. Hear, for instance,
with what innocence almost worthy of honour Schopen-
hauer represents his own task, and draw your conclusions con-
cerning the scientificalness of a "Science" whose latest master
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
still talks in the strain of children and old wives: "The prin-
ciple," he says (page 1 36 of the Grand probleme der Ethik * ) ,
"the axiom about the purport of which all moralists are practi-
cally agreed: neminem laede, immo omnes quantum potes
juva is really the proposition which all moral teachers strive
to establish, . . . the real basis of ethics which has been
sought, like the philosopher's stone, for centuries." The dif-
ficulty of establishing the proposition referred to may indeed
be great it is well known that Schopenhauer also was unsuc-
cessful in his efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realised how
absurdly false and sentimental this proposition is, in a world
whose essence is Will to Power, may be reminded that Scho-
penhauer, although a pessimist, actually played the flute . . .
daily after dinner: one may read about the matter in his biog-
raphy. A question by the way: a pessimist, a repudiator of God
and of the world, who makes a halt at morality who assents
to morality, and plays the flute to laede-neminem morals, what?
Is that really a pessimist?
187
Apart from the value of such assertions as "there is a cate-
gorical imperative in us," one can always ask: What does such
.an assertion indicate about him who makes it? There are sys-
tems of morals which are meant to justify their author in the
eyes of other people; other systems of morals are meant to
trancjuillise him, and make him self-satisfied; with other sys-
tems he wants to crucify and humble himself; with others he
wishes to take revenge; with others to conceal himself; with
* Pages 54-55 of Schopenhauer's Basis of Morality, translated by Arthur B.
Bullock, M.A. (1903).
[ 476 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
others to glorify himself and gain superiority and distinction;
this system of morals helps its author to forget, that system
makes him, or something of him, forgotten; many a moralist
would like to exercise power and creative arbitrariness over
mankind; many another, perhaps, Kant especially, gives us to
understand by his morals that "what is estimable in me, is that
I know how to obey and with you it shall not be otherwise
than with me!" In short, systems of morals are only a sign-
language of the emotions.
188
In contrast to laisser-tdler, every system of morals is a sort
of tyranny against "nature" and also against "reason"; that is,
however, no objection, unless one should again decree by some
system of morals, that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonable-
ness are unlawful. What is essential and invaluable in every
system of morals, is that it is a long constraint. In order to
understand Stoicism, or Port-Royal, or Puritanism, one should
remember the constraint under which every language has at-
tained to strength and freedom the metrical constraint, the
tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. How much trouble have the
poets and orators of every nation given themselves! not ex-
cepting some of the prose writers of today, in whose ear dwells
an inexorable conscientiousness "for the sake of a folly," as
utilitarian bunglers say, and thereby deem themselves wise
"from submission to arbitrary laws," as the anarchists say, and
thereby fancy themselves "free," even free-spirited. The singu-
lar fact remains, however, that everything of the nature of
freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly certainty,
which exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself, or
[476}
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
in administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just
as in conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of
such arbitrary law; and in all seriousness, it is not at 41 im-
probable that precisely this is * 'nature" and "natural" and
not laisser-aller! Every artist knows how different from the
state of letting himself go, is his "most natural" condition,
the free arranging, locating, disposing, and constructing in the
moments of "inspiration" and how strictly and delicately
he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their very rigidness
and precision, defy all formulation by means of ideas (even
the most stable idea has, in comparison therewith, something
floating, manifold, and ambiguous in it) . The essential thing
"in heaven and in earth" is, apparently (to repeat it once
more) , that there should be long obedience in the same direc-
tion; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long
run, something which has made life worth living; for instance,
virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality anything
whatever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. The
long bondage of the spirit, the distrustful constraint in the
communicability of ideas, the discipline which the thinker
imposed on himself to think in accordance with the rules of a
church or a court, or conformable to Aristotelian premises, the
persistent spiritual will to interpret everything that happened
according to a Christian scheme, and in every occurrence to
rediscover and justify the Christian God: all this violence,
arbitrariness, severity, dreadf ulness, and unreasonableness, has
proved itself the disciplinary means whereby the European
spirit has attained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and
subtle mobility; granted also that much irrecoverable strength
and spirit had to be stifled, suffocated, and spoiled in the process
(for here, as everywhere, "nature" shows herself as she is, ir*
all her extravagant and indifferent magnificence, which is
[477]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
shocking, but nevertheless noble). That for centuries Euro-
pean thinkers only thought in order to prove something
nowadays, on the contrary, we are suspicious of every thinker
who "wishes to prove something" that it was always settled
beforehand what was to be the result of their strictest thinking,
as it was perhaps in the Asiatic astrology of former times, or
as it is still at the present day in the innocent, Christian-moral
explanation of immediate personal events "for the glory of
God," or "for the good of the soul": this tyranny, this arbi-
trariness, this severe and magnificent stupidity, has educated
the spirit; slavery, both in the coarser and the finer sense, is
apparently an indispensable means even of spiritual education
and discipline. One may look at every system of morals in this
light: it is "nature" therein which teaches to hate the laisser-
aller, the too great freedom, and implants the need for limited
horizons, for immediate duties it teaches the narrowing of
perspectives, and thus, in a certain sense, that stupidity is a
condition of life and development. "Thou must obey some one,
and for a long time; otherwise thou wilt come to grief, and lose
all respect "for thyself" this seems to me to be the moral im-
perative of nature, which is certainly neither "categorical," as
old Kant wished (consequently the "otherwise") , nor does it
address itself to the individual (what does nature care for the
individual!), but to nations, races, ages, and ranks, above all,
however, to the animal "man" generally, to mankind.
189
Industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle: it was
a master stroke of English instinct to hallow and begloom
Sunday to such an extent that the Englishman unconsciously
[478]
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
hankers for his week- and work-day again: as a kind of
cleverly devised, cleverly intercalated fast, such as is also fre-
quently found in the ancient world (although, as is appropriate
in southern nations, not precisely with respect to work) .^lany
kinds of fasts are necessary; and wherever powerful influence!
and habits prevail, legislators have to see that intercalary days
are appointed, on which such impulses are fettered, and learn
to hunger anew. Viewed from a higher standpoint, whole gen-
erations and epochs, when they show themselves infected with
any moral fanaticism, seem like those intercalated periods of
restraint and fasting, during which an impulse learns to hum-
ble and submit itself at the same time also to purify and
sharpen itself; certain philosophical sects likewise admit of a
similar interpretation (for instance, the Stoa, in the midst of
Hellenic culture, with the atmosphere rank and ovcrdiarged
with Aphrodisiacal odours). Here also is a hint 'for the ex-
planation of the paradox, why it was precisely in the most
Christian period of European history, and in general only
under the pressure of Christian sentiments, that the sexual im-
pulse sublimated into love (amour- passion).
WO
There is something in the morality of Plato which floes not
really belong to Plato, but which only appears in his philoso-
phy, one might say, in spite of him: namely, Socratism, for
which he himself was too noble. "No one desires to injure
himself, hence all evil is done unwittingly. The evil man in-
flicts injury on himself; he would not do so, however, if he
knew that evil is evil. The evil man, therefore, is only evil
through error; if one free him from error one will necessarily
1479}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
make him good." This mode of reasoning savours of the
populace, who perceive only the unpleasant consequences of
evil-doing, and practically judge that "it is stupid to do
wrorf^"; while they accept "good" as identical with "useful
and pleasant," without further thought. As regards every sys-
tem of utilitarianism, one may at once assume that it has the
same origin, and follow the scent: one will seldom err. Plato
did all he could to interpret something refined and noble into
the tenets of his teacher, and above all to interpret himself
into them he, the most daring of all interpreters, who lifted
the entire Socrates out of the street, as a popular theme and
song, to exhibit him in endless and impossible modifications
namely, in all his own disguises and multiplicities. In jest, and
in Homeric language as well, what is the Platonic Socrates, if
not
UAdicov onioftsv is UAdiaw p,eoor] is XI fiaiQa.
101
The old theological problem of "Faith" and "Knowledge,"
or more plainly, of instinct and reason the question whether,
in respect to the valuation of things, instinct deserves more
authority than rationality, which wants to appreciate and act
according to motives, according to a "Why," that is to say, in
conformity to purpose and utility it is always the old moral
problem that first appeared in the person of Socrates, and had
divided men's minds long before Christianity. Socrates him-
self, following, of course, the taste of his talent that of a
surpassing dialectician took first the side of reason; and, in
fact, what did he do all his life but laugh at the awkward in-
[480-]
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
capacity of the noble Athenians, who were men of instinct,
like all noble men, and could never give satisfactory answers
concerning the motives of their actions? In the end, however,
though silently and secretly, he laughed also at himself: with
his finer conscience and introspection, he found in himself the
same difficulty and incapacity. "But why" he said to himself
"should one on that account separate oneself from the in-
stincts! One must set them right, and the reason also one
must follow the instincts, but at the same time persuade the
reason to support them with good arguments/' This was the
real falseness of that great and mysterious ironist; he brought
his conscience up to the point that he was satisfied with a kind
of self -outwitting: in fact, he perceived the irrationality in the
moral judgment. Plato, more innocent in such matters, and
without the craftiness of the plebeian, wished to prove to
himself, at the expenditure of all his strength the greatest
strength a philosopher had ever expended that reason and
instinct lead spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to "God";
and since Plato, all theologians and philosophers have fol-
lowed the same path which means that in matters of moral-
ity, instinct (or as Christians call it, "Faith," or as I call it,
"the herd") has hitherto triumphed. Unless one should make
an exception 'in the case of Descartes, the father of rationalism
(and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution), who
recognised only the authority of reason: but reason is only a
tool, and Descartes was superficial.
192
Whoever has followed the history of a single science, finds
in its development a due to the understanding of the oldest
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
and commonest processes of all "knowledge and cognisance":
there, as here, the premature hypotheses, the fictions, the good
stupid will to "belief," and the lack of distrust and patience
are first developed our senses learn late, and never learn com-
pletely, to be subtle, reliable, and cautious organs of knowl-
edge. Our eyes find it easier on a given occasion to produce a
picture already often produced, than to seize upon the diver-
gence and novelty of an impression: the latter requires more
force, more "morality." It is difficult and painful for the ear
to listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly. When
we hear another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt to
form the sounds into words with which we are more familiar
and conversant it was thus, for example, that the Germans
modified the spoken word arcubalista into armbrust (cross-
bow). Our senses are also hostile and averse to the new; and
generally, even in the "simplest" processes of sensation, the
emotions dominate such as fear, love, hatred, and the pas-
sive emotion of indolence. As little as a reader nowadays
reads all the single words (not to speak of syllables) of a page
he rather takes about five out of every twenty words at ran-
dom, and "guesses" the probably % appropriate sense to them
just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely in respect
to its leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so much
easier to fancy the chance of a tree. Even in the midst of the
most remarkable experiences, we still do just the same; we
fabricate the greater part of the experience, and can hardly be
made to contemplate any event, except as "inventors" thereof.
All this goes to prove that from our fundamental nature and
from remote ages we have been accustomed to lying. Or, to
express it more politely and hypocritically, in short, more pleas-
antly one is much more of an artist than one is aware of.
In an animated conversation, I often see the face of the person
[482]
THE NATURAJ. HISTORY OF MORALS
with whom I am speaking so clearly and sharply defined before
me, according to the thought he expresses, or which I believe
to be evoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctness far
exceeds the strength of my visual faculty the delicacy of the
play of the muscles and of the expression of the eyes wnsl
therefore be imagined by me. Probably the person put on quite
a different expression, or none at all.
Quid quid luce ////>, lenebris agit: but also contrariwise.
What we experience in dreams, provided we experience it
often, pertains at last just as much to the general belongings of
our soul as anything "actually" experienced; by virtue thereof
we are richer or poorer, we have a requirement more or less,
and finally, in broad daylight, and even in the brightest mo-
ments of our waking life, we are ruled to some extent by the
nature of our dreams. Supposing that some one has often flown
in his dreams, and that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is con-
scious of the power and art of flying as his privilege and his
peculiarly enviable happiness; such a person, who believes that
on the slightest impulse, he can actualise all sorts of curves and
angles, who knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an
"upwards" without effort or constraint, a "downwards" with-
out descending or lowering without trouble! how could the
man with such dream-experiences and dream-habits fail to
find "happiness" differently coloured and defined, even in his
waking hours! How could he fail to long difierently for hap-
piness? "Flight," such as is described by poets, must, when
compared with his own "flying," be far too earthly, muscular,
violent, far too "troublesome" for him.
[483]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
194
The difference among men does not manifest itself only in
the difference of their lists of desirable things in their regard-
ing different good things as worth striving for, and being
disagreed as to the greater or less value, the order of rank, of
the commonly recognised desirable things: it manifests itself
much more in what they regard as actually having and possess-
ing a desirable thing. As regards a woman, for instance, the
control over her body and her sexual gratification serves as an
amply sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the more
modest man; another with a more suspicious and ambitious
thirst for possession, sees the "questionableness," the mere
apparentness of such ownership, and wishes to have finer tests
in order to know especially whether the woman not only gives
herself to him, but also gives up for his sake what she has or
would like to have only then does he look upon her as "pos-
sessed." A third, however, has not even here got to the limit
of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself
whether the woman, when she gives up everything for him,
does not perhaps do so for a phantom of him; he wishes first
to be thoroughly, indeed, profoundly well known; in order to
be loved at all he ventures to let himself be found out. Only
then does he feel the beloved one fully in his possession, when
she no longer deceives herself about him, when she loves him
just as much for the sake of his devilry and concealed insatia-
bility, as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. One man
would like to possess a nation, and he finds all the higher arts
of Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for his purpose. Another,
with a more refined thirst for possession, says to himself: "One
may not deceive where one desires to possess" he is irritated
[484}
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
and impatient at the idea that a mask of him should rule in the
hearts of the people: "I must, therefore, make myself known,
and first of all learn to know myself!" Amongst helpful and
charitable people, one almost always finds the awkward crafti-
ness which first gets up suitably him who has to be helped, as
though, for instance, he should "merit" help, seek just their
help, and would show himself deeply grateful, attached, and
subservient to them for all help. With these conceits, they take
control of the needy as a property, just as in general they are
charitable and helpful out of a desire for property. One finds
them jealous when they are crossed or forestalled in their char-
ity. Parents involuntarily make something like themselves
out of their children they call that "education"; no mother
doubts at the bottom of her heart that the child she has born
is thereby her property, no father hesitates about his right to
his oivn ideas and notions of worth. Indeed, in former times
fathers deemed it right to use their discretion concerning the
life or death of the newly born (as amongst the ancient Ger-
mans). And like the father, so also do the teacher, the class,
the priest, and the prince still see in every new individual an
unobjectionable opportunity for a new possession. The con-
sequence is . . ,
The Jews a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the
whole ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among
the nations," as they themselves say and believe the Jews
performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means
of which life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for
a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused into one the
\_485}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," "sensual,"
and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of
reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also in-
cluded the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint"
and "friend") the significance of the Jewish people is to be
found; it is with them that the slave-insurrection in morals
commences.
100
It is to be inferred that there are countless dark bodies near
the sun such as we shall never see. Amongst ourselves, this
is an allegory; and the psychologist of morals reads the whole
star-writing merely as an allegorical and symbolic language in
which much may be unexpressed.
197
The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Caesar
Borgia) are fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is mis-
understood, so long as one seeks a "morbidness" in the consti-
tution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths,
or even an innate "hell" in them as almost all moralists have
done hitherto. Does it not seem that there is a hatred of the
virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists? And that the
"tropical man" must be discredited at all costs, whether as
disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own hell and
self-torture? And why? In favour of the "temperate zones"?
In favour of the temperate men? The "moral"? The mediocre?
This for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity."
[ 480 ]
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
198
All the systems of morals which address themselves with a
view to their "happiness," as it is called what else are they
but suggestions for behaviour adapted to the degree of danger
from themselves in which the individuals live; recipes for their
passions, their good and bad propensities, in so far as such have
the Will to Power and would like to play the master; small and
great expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the musty
odour of old family medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of
them grotesque and absurd in their form because they
address themselves to "all," because they generalise where
generalisation is not authorised; all of them speaking uncondi-
tionally, and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them
flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but rather endur-
able only, and sometimes even seductive, when they are over-
spiced and begin to smell dangerously, especially of "the other
world?" That is all of little value when estimated intellectually,
and is far from being "science," much less "wisdom"; but,
repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is expediency,
expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity, stu-
pidity whether it be the indifference and statuesque coldness
towards the heated folly of the emotions, which the Stoics
advised and fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-
weeping of Spinoza, the destruction of the emotions by their
analysis and vivisection, which he recommended so naively; or
the lowering of the emotions to an innocent mean at which
they may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals; or even
morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary atten-
uation and spiritualisation by the symbolism of art, perhaps as
music, or as love of God, and of mankind for God's sake
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
for in religion the passions are once more enfranchised, pro-
vided that . . . ; or, finally, even the complaisant and wan-
ton surrender to the emotions, as has been taught by Hafis and
Goethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the spiritual and
corporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of wise old
codgers and drunkards, with whom it "no longer has much
danger." This also for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity."
199
Inasmuch as in all ages, as long as mankind has existed,
there have also been human herds (family alliances, commu-
nities, tribes, peoples, states, churches), and always a great
number who obey in proportion to the small number who com-
mand in view, therefore, of the fact that obedience has been
most practised and fostered among mankind hitherto, one may
reasonably suppose that, generally speaking, the need thereof
is now innate in every one, as a kind of formal conscience
which gives the command: "Thou shalt unconditionally do
something, unconditionally refrain from something"; in short,
"Thou shalt." This need tries to satisfy itself and to fill its
form with a content; according to its strength, impatience, and
eagerness, it at once seizes as an omnivorous appetite with
little selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into its ear by
all sorts of commanders parents, teachers, laws, class preju-
dices, or public opinion. The extraordinary limitation of hu-
man development, the hesitation, protractedness, frequent ret-
rogression, and turning thereof, is attributable to the fact that
the herd-instinct of obedience is transmitted best, and at the
cost of the art of command. If one imagine this instinct increas-
ing to its greatest extent, commanders and independent indi-
[4881
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
viduals will finally be lacking altogether; or they will suffei
inwardly from a bad conscience, and will have to impose z
deception on themselves in the first place in order to be able t(
command: just as if they also were only obeying. This condi
tion of things actually exists in Europe at present I call it the
moral hypocrisy of the commanding class. They know no othej
way of protecting themselves from their bad conscience thar
by playing the role of executors of older and higher orders (oi
predecessors, of the constitution, of justice, of the law, or 01
God himself) , or they even justify themselves by maxims frorr
the current opinions of the herd, as ' 'first servants of thei]
people," or "instruments of the public weal." On the othe
hand, the gregarious European man nowadays assumes an aij
as if he were the only kind of man that is allowable; he giori
fies his qualities, such as public spirit, kindness, deference
industry, temperance, modesty, indulgence, sympathy, by vir
tue of which he is gentle, endurable, and useful to the herd, a
the peculiarly human virtues. In cases, however, where it ii
believed that the leader and bellwether cannot be dispensec
with, attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace com
manders by the summing together of clever gregarious men
all representative constitutions, for example, are of this origin
In spite of all, what a blessing, what a deliverance from j
weight becoming unendurable, is the appearance of an absolut<
ruler for these gregarious Europeans of this fact the effect OJ
the appearance of Napoleon was the last great proof: the his
tory of the influence of Napoleon is almost the history of th<
higher happiness to which the entire century has attained ii
its worthiest individuals and periods.
[489]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
The man of an age of dissolution which mixes the races with
one another, who has the inheritance of a diversified descent in
his body that is to say, contrary, and often not only contrary,
instincts and standards of value, which struggle with one an-
other and arc seldom at peace such a man of late culture and
broken lights, will, on an average, be a weak man. His funda-
mental desire is that the war which is in him should come to an
end; happiness appears to him in the character of a soothing
medicine and mode of thought (for instance, Epicurean or
Christian) ; it is above all things the happiness of repose, of
undisturbedness, of repletion, of final unity it is the "Sabbath
of Sabbaths," to use the expression of the holy rhetorician,
St. Augustine, who was himself such a man. Should, how-
ever, the contrariety and conflict in such natures operate as an
additional incentive and stimulus to life and if, on the other
hand, in addition to their powerful and irreconcilable in-
stincts, they have also inherited and indoctrinated into them a
proper mastery and subtlety for carrying on the conflict with
themselves (that is to say, the faculty of self-control and self-
deception), there then arise those marvellously incomprehen-
sible, and inexplicable beings, those enigmatical men, pre-
destined for conquering and circumventing others, the finest
examples of which are Alcibiades and Gesar (with whom I
should like to associate the first of Europeans according to my
taste, the Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Second), and amongst
artists, perhaps Leonardo da Vinci. They appear precisely in
the same periods when that weaker type, with its longing for
repose, comes to the front; the two types are complementary
to each other, and spring from the same causes.
.[ 490 ]
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
201
As long as the utility which determines moral estimates is
only gregarious utility, as long as the preservation of the
community is only kept in view, and the immoral is sought
precisely and exclusively in what seems dangerous to the main-
tenance of the community, there can be no "morality of love
to one's neighbour." Granted even that there is already a little
constant exercise of consideration, sympathy, fairness, gentle-
ness, and mutual assistance, granted that even in this condition
of society all those instincts are already active which are latterly
distinguished by honourable names as "virtues," and eventu-
ally almost coincide with the conception "morality": in that
period they do not as yet belong to the domain of moral
valuations they are still ultra-moral. A sympathetic action,
for instance, is neither called good nor bad, moral nor immoral,
in the best period of the Romans; and should it be praised, a
sort of resentful disdain is compatible with this praise, even
at the best, directly the sympathetic action is compared with
one which contributes to the welfare of the whole, to the res
publica. After all, "love to our neighbour" is always a second-
ary matter, partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in
relation to our fear of our neighbour. After the fabric of soci-
ety seems on the whole established and secured against external
dangers, it is this fear of our neighbour which again creates
new perspectives of moral valuation. Certain strong and dan-
gerous instincts, such as the love of enterprise, foolhardiness,
revengefulness, astuteness, rapacity, and love of power, which
up till then had not only to be honoured from the point of
view of general utility under other names, of course, than
those here given but had to be fostered and cultivated (be-
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
cause they were perpetually required in the common danger
against the common enemies) , are now felt in their dangerous-
ness to be doubly strong when the outlets for them are lack-
ing and are gradually branded as immoral and given over to
calumny. The contrary instincts and inclinations now attain
to moral honour; the gregarious instinct gradually draws its
conclusions. How much or how little dangerousness to the
community or to equality is contained in an opinion, a condi-
tion, an emotion, a disposition, or an endowment that is now
the moral perspective; here again fear is the mother of morals.
It is by the loftiest and strongest instincts, when they break out
passionately and carry the individual far above and beyond the
average, and the low level of the gregarious conscience, that
the self-reliance of the community is destroyed; its belief in
itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks; consequently these very
instincts will be most branded and defamed. The lofty inde-
pendent spirituality, the will to stand alone, and even the
cogent reason, are felt to be dangers; everything that elevates
the individual above the herd, and is a source of fear to the
neighbour, is henceforth called evil; the tolerant, unassuming,
self-adapting, self-equalising disposition, the mediocrity of
desires, attains to moral distinction and honour. Finally, under
very peaceful circumstances, there is always less opportunity
and necessity for training the feelings to severity and rigour;
and now every form of severity, even in justice, begins to dis-
turb the conscience; a lofty and rigourous nobleness and self-
responsibility almost offends, and awakens distrust, "the
lamb," and still more "the sheep/' wins respect. There is a
point of diseased mellowness and effeminacy in the history of
society, at which society itself takes the part of him who injures
it, the part of the criminal, and does so, in fact, seriously and
honestly. To punish, appears to it to be somehow unfair it
[492}
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
is certain that the idea of ' 'punishment" and "the obligation to
punish" are then painful and alarming to people. "Is it not
sufficient if the criminal be rendered harmless? Why should
we still punish? Punishment itself is terrible!" with these
questions gregarious morality, the morality of fear, draws its
ultimate conclusion. If one could at all do away with danger,
the cause of fear, one would have done away with this morality
at the same time, it would no longer be necessary, it would not
consider itself any longer necessary! Whoever examines the
conscience of the present-day European, will always elicit
the same imperative from its thousand moral folds and hidden
recesses, the imperative of the timidity of the herd: "we wish
that some time or other there may be nothing more to jear!"
Some time or other the will and the way thereto is nowadays
called "progress" all over Europe.
Let us at once say again what we have already said a hundred
times, for people's ears nowadays are unwilling to hear such
truths our truths. We know well enough how offensively it
sounds when any one plainly, ,and without metaphor, counts
man amongst the animals; but it will be accounted to us almost
a crime, that it is precisely in respect to men of "modern
ideas" that we have constantly applied the terms "herd,"
"herd-instincts," and such like expressions. What avail is it?
We cannot do otherwise, for it is precisely here that our new
insight is. We have found that in all the principal moral judg-
ments Europe has become unanimous, including likewise the
countries where European influence prevails : in Europe people
evidently know what Socrates thought he did not know, and
1493}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
what the famous serpent of old once promised to teach they
"know" to-day what is good and evil. It must then sound hard
and be distasteful to the ear, when we always insist that that
which here thinks it knows, that which here glorifies itself
with praise and blame, and calls itself good, is the instinct of
the herding human animal : the instinct which has come and
is ever coming more and more to the front, to preponderance
and supremacy over other instincts, according to the increasing
physiological approximation and resemblance of which it is
the symptom. Morality in Europe at present is her ding- animal
morality; and therefore, as we understand the matter, only one
kind of human morality, beside which, before which, and after
which many other moralities, and above all higher moralities,
are or should be possible. Against such a "possibility," against
such a "should be," however, this morality defends itself with
all its strength; it says obstinately and inexorably: "I am moral-
ity itself and nothing else is morality!" Indeed, with the help of
a religion which has humoured and flattered the sublimest
desires of the herd ing-animal, things have reached such a point
that we always find a more visible expression of this morality
even in political and social arrangements: the democratic
movement is the inheritance of the Christian movement. That
its tempo, however, is much too slow and sleepy for the more
impatient ones, for those who are sick and distracted by the
herding-instinct, is indicated by the increasingly furious howl-
ing, and always less disguised teeth-gnashing of the anarchist
dogs, who are now roving through the highways of European
culture. Apparently in opposition to the peacefully industrious
democrats and Revolution-ideologues, and still more so to the
awkward philosophasters and fraternity-visionaries who call
themselves Socialists and want a "free society," those are really
at one with them all in their thorough and instinctive hostility
[ 494 ]
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
to every form of society other than that of the autonomous herd
(to the extent even of repudiating the notions "master" and
"servant" ni Dieu ni maitre, says a socialist formula) ; at one
in their tenacious opposition to every special claim, every spe-
cial right and privilege (this means ultimately opposition to
every right, for when all are equal, no one needs "rights" any
longer) ; at one in their distrust of punitive justice (as though
it were a violation of the weak, unfair to the necessary conse-
quences of all former society) ; but equally at one in th^r reli-
gion of sympathy, in their compassion for all that feels, lives,
and suffers (down to the very animals, up even to "God"
the extravagance of "sympathy for God" belongs to a demo-
cratic age) ; altogether at one in the cry and impatience of their
sympathy, in their deadly hatred of suffering generally, in their
almost feminine incapacity for witnessing it or allowing it;
at one in their involuntary bcglooming and heart-softening,
under the spell of which Europe seems to be threatened with
a new Buddhism; at one in their belief in the morality of
mutual sympathy, as though it were morality in itself, the
climax, the attained climax of mankind, the sole hope of the
future, the consolation of the present, the great discharge from
all the obligations of the past; altogether at one in their belief
in the community as the deliverer, in the herd, and therefore
in "themselves."
203
We, who hold a different belief we, who regard the demo-
cratic movement, not only as a degenerating form of political
organisation, but as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning
type of man, as involving his mediocrising and depreciation:
[406]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
vthere have we to fix our hopes? In new philosophers there
is no other alternative: in minds strong and original enough to
initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert
"eternal valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future, who
in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots
which will compel millenniums to take new paths. To teach
man the future of humanity as his will, as depending on human
will, and to make preparation for vast hazardous enterprises
and collective attempts in rearing and educating, in order
thereby to put an end to the frightful rule of folly and chance
which has hitherto gone by the name of "history" (the folly of
the "greatest number" is only its last form) for that purpose
a new type of philosophers and commanders will some time or
other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has
existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings
niight look pale and dwarfed. The image of such leaders
hovers before our eyes: is it lawful for me to say it aloud,
ye free spirits? The conditions which one would partly have
to create and partly utilise for their genesis; the presumptive
methods and tests by virtue of which a soul should grow up to
such an elevation and power as to feel a constraint to these
tasks; a transvaluation of values, under the new pressure and
hammer of which a conscience should be steeled and a heart
transformed into brass, so as to bear the weight of such respon-
sibility; and on the other hand the necessity for such leaders,
the dreadful danger that they might be lacking, or miscarry
and degenerate: these are our real anxieties and glooms, ye
know it well, ye free spirits! these are the heavy distant
thoughts and storms which sweep across the heaven of our life.
There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or
experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and
deteriorated; but he who has the rare eye for the universal
[496}
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MORALS
danger of "man*' himself deteriorating, he who like us has
recognised the extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto
played its game in respect to the future of mankind a game
in which neither the hand, nor even a "finger of God" has
participated! he who divines the fate that is hidden under
the idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of "modern ideas,"
and still more under the whole of Christo-European morality
suffers from an anguish with which no other is to be com-
pared. He sees at a glance all that could still be made out of
man through a favourable accumulation and augmentation of
human powers and arrangements; he knows with all the
knowledge of his conviction how unexhausted man still is for
the greatest possibilities, and how often in the past the type
man has stood in presence of mysterious decisions and new
paths: he knows still better from his painfulest recollections
on what wretched obstacles promising developments of the
highest rank have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken
down, sunk, and become contemptible. The universal degen-
eracy of mankind to the level of the "man of the future" as
idealised by the socialistic fools and shallow-pates this de-
generacy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious
animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society"), this
brutalising of man into a pigoiy with equal rights and claims,
is undoubtedly possible! He who has thought out this possi-
bility to its ultimate conclusion knows another loathing un-
known to the rest of mankind and perhaps also a new
mission!
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
6. We Scholars
AT the risk that moralising may also reveal itself here as that
which it has always been namely, resolutely montrer ses
plates, according to Balzac I would venture to protest
against an improper and injurious alteration of rank, which
quite unnoticed, and as if with the best conscience, threatens
nowadays to establish itself in the relations of science and
philosophy. I mean to say that one must have the right out of
one's own experience experience, as it seems to me, always
implies unfortunate experience? to treat of such an impor-
tant question of rank, so as not to speak of colour like the blind,
or against science like women and artists ("Ah! this dreadful
science!" sigh their instinct and their shame, "it always finds
things out!" ) The declaration of independence of the scientific
man, his emancipation from philosophy, is one of the subtler
after-effects of democratic organisation and disorganisation:
the self-glorification and self -conceitedness of the learned man
is now everywhere in full bloom, and in its best springtime
which does not mean to imply that in this case self-praise smells
sweetly. Here also the instinct of the populace cries, "Freedom
from all masters!" and after science has, with the happiest
results, resisted theology, whose "handmaid" it had been too
long, it now proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay
down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to play the "master"
what am I saying! to play the philosopher on its own ac-
count. My memory the memory of a scientific man, if you
please! teems with the nai'vetes of insolence which I have
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WE SCHOLARS
heard about philosophy and philosophers from young natural-
ists and old physicians (not to mention the most cultured and
most conceited of all learned men, the philologists and school-
masters, who are both the one and the other by profession).
On one occasion it was the specialist and the Jack Horner who
instinctively stood on the defensive against all synthetic tasks
and capabilities; at another time it was the industrious worker
who had got a scent of otium and refined luxuriousness in the
internal economy of the philosopher, and felt himself
aggrieved and belittled thereby. On another occasion it was
the colour-blindness of the utilitarian, who sees nothing in
philosophy but a series of refuted systems, and an extravagant
expenditure which "does nobody any good." At another time
the fear of disguised mysticism and of the boundary-adjust-
ment of knowledge became conspicuous, at another time the
disregard of individual philosophers, which had involuntarily
extended to disregard of philosophy generally. In fine, I found
most frequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy in
young scholars, the evil after-effect of some particular philos-
opher, to whom on the whole obedience had been foresworn,
without, however, the spell of his scornful estimates of other
philosophers having been got rid of the result being a
general ill-will to all philosophy. (Such seems to me, for in-
stance, the after-effect of Schopenhauer on the most modern
Germany: by his unintelligent rage against Hegel, he has suc-
ceeded in severing the whole of the last generation of Germans
from its connection with German culture, which culture, all
things considered, has been an elevation and a divining refine-
ment of the historical sense; but precisely at this point Schopen-
hauer himself was poor, irreceptive, and un-German to the
extent of ingeniousness. ) On the whole, speaking generally,
it may just have been the humanness, all-too-humanness of
[409]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
the modern philosophers themselves, in short, their con-
temptibleness, which has injured most radically the reverence
for philosophy and opened the doors to the instinct of the
populace. Let it but be acknowledged to what an extent our
modern world diverges from the whole style of the world of
Heraclitus, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever else all the royal
and magnificent anchorites of the spirit were called; and with
what justice an honest man of science may feel himself of a
better family and origin, in view of such representatives of
philosophy, who, owing to the fashion of the present day, are
just as much aloft as they are down below in Germany, for
instance, the two lions of Berlin, the anarchist Eugen Diihring
and the amalgamist Eduard von Hartmann. It is especially the
sight of those hotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves
"realists," or "positivists," which is calculated to implant a
dangerous distrust in the soul of a young and ambitious
scholar: those philosophers, at the best, are themselves but
scholars and specialists, that is very evident! All of them are
persons who have been vanquished and brought back again
under the dominion of science, who at one time or another
claimed more from themselves, without having a right to
the "more" and its responsibility and who now, creditably,
rancorously and vindictively, represent in word and deed,
disbelief in the master-task and supremacy of philosophy.
After all, how could it be otherwise? Science flourishes nowa-
days and has the good conscience clearly visible on its counte-
nance; while that to which the entire modern philosophy has
gradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy of the present day,
excites distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and pity. Philos-
ophy reduced to a "theory of knowledge," is no more in fact
than a diffident science of epochs and doctrine of forbearance:
a philosophy that never even gets beyond the threshold, and
f 5001
WE SCHOLARS
Durously denies itself the right to enter that is philosophy
its last throes, an end, an agony, something that awakens
r. How could such a philosophy rule!
The dangers that besc': the evolution of the philosopher are,
: act, so manifold nowadays, that one might doubt whether
; fruit could still come to maturity. The extent and towering
icture of the sciences have increased enormously, and there-
h also the probability that the philosopher will grow tired
n as a learner, or will attach himself somewhere and
ecialise": so that he will no longer attain to his elevation,
t is to say, to his superspection, his circumspection, and his
pection. Or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his
turity and strength is past; or when he is impaired,
rsened, and deteriorated, so that his view, his general esti-
te of things, is no longer of much importance. It is per-
>s just the refinement of his intellectual conscience that
kes him hesitate and linger on the way; he dreads the
iptation to become a dilettante, a millepede, a milleantenna;
oiows too well that as a discerner, one who has lost his self -
->ect no longer commands, no longer leads; unless he should
ire to become a great play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro
[ spiritual rat-catcher in short, a misleader. This is in the
instance a question of taste, if it has not really been a
>stion of conscience. To double once more the philosopher's
iculties, there is also the fact that he demands from himself
*rdict, a Yea or Nay, not concerning science, but concerning
1 and the worth of life he learns unwillingly to believe
t it is his right and even his duty to obtain this verdict, and
1501]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
he has to seek his way to the right and the belief only throug
the most extensive (perhaps disturbing and destroying) expc
riences, often hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. In fad
the philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by th
multitude, either with the scientific man and ideal scholar, o
with the religiously elevated, desensualised, desecularisc-
visionary and God-intoxicated man; and even yet when on
hears anybody praised, because he lives "wisely," or "as
philosopher," it hardly means anything more than "prudentl
and apart." Wisdom: that seems to the populace to be a kind o
flight, a means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from
bad game; but the genuine philosopher does it not seem s<
to //j, my friends? lives "unphilosophically" and "unwisely, 1
above all, imprudently, and feels the obligation and burden o
a hundred attempts and temptations of life he risks himsel
constantly, he plays this bad game.
In relation to the genius, that is to say, a being who eithe
engenders or produces both words understood in their fulles
sense the man of learning, the scientific average man, ha
always something of the old maid about him; for, like her, hi
is not conversant with the two principal functions of man. T<
both, of course, to the scholar and to the old maid, one con
cedes respectability, as if by way of indemnification in thes<
cases one emphasises the respectability and yet, in the com
pulsion of this concession, one has the same admixture o
vexation. Let us examine more closely: what is the scientifii
man? Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplao
virtues: that is to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non
[ 502 ]
WE SCHOLARS
self-sufficient type of man; he possesses industry, patient adapt-
ableness to rank and file, equability and moderation in
capacity and requirement; he has the instinct for people like
himself, and for that which they require for instance: the
portion of independence and green meadow without which
there is no rest from labour, the claim to honour and considera-
tion (which first and foremost presupposes recognition and
recognisability), the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual
ratification of his value and usefulness, with which the inward
distrust which lies at the bottom of the heart of all dependent
men and gregarious animals, has again and again to be over-
come. The learned man, as is appropriate, has also maladies
and faults of an ignoble kind: he is full of petty envy, and has
a lynx-eye for the weak points in those natures to whose ele-
vations he cannot attain. He is confiding, yet only as one who
lets himself go, but does not flow; and precisely before the man
of the great current he stands all the colder and more reserved
his eye is then like a smooth and irresponsive lake, which
is no longer moved by rapture or sympathy. The worst and
most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results from
the instinct of mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of
mediocrity, which labours instinctively for the destruction of
the exceptional man, and endeavours to break or still better,
to relax every bent bow. To relax, of course, with considera-
tion, and naturally with an indulgent hand to relax with
confiding sympathy: that is the real art of Jesuitism, which has
always understood how to introduce itself as the religion of
sympathy.
[ 503 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
However gratefully one may welcome the objective spirit
and who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity and its
confounded ipsisimosity! in the end, however, one must
learn caution even with regard to one's gratitude, and put a
stop to the exaggeration with which the unselfmg and deper-
sonalising of the spirit has recently been celebrated, as if it
were the goal in itself, as if it were salvation and glorification
as is especially accustomed to happen in the pessimist
school, which has also in its turn good reasons for paying the
highest honours to "disinterested knowledge." The objective
man, who no longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the
ideal man of learning in whom the scientific instinct blossoms
forth fully after a thousand complete and partial failures, is
assuredly one of the most costly instruments that exist, but his
place is in the hand of one who is more powerful. He is only
an instrument; we may s.iy, he is a mirror he is no "purpose*
in himself." The objective man is in truth a mirror: accus-
tomed to prostration before everything that wants to be known,
with such desires only as knowing or "reflecting" imply he
waits until something comes, and then expands himself sensi-
tively, so that even the lr;ht footsteps and gliding past of
spiritual beings may not be lost on his surface and film. What-
ever "personality" he still possesses seems to him accidental,
arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing; so much has he come to
regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms
and events. He calls up the recollection of "himself" with an
effort, and not infrequently wrongly; he readily confounds
himself with other persons, he makes mistakes with regard to
his own needs, and here only is he unrefined and negligent.
[504]
WE SCHOLARS
Perhaps he is troubled about the health, or the pettiness and
confined atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack of com-
panions and society indeed, he sets himself to reflect on. his
suffering, but in vain! His thoughts already rove away to the
more general case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he
knew yesterday how to help himself. He does not now take
himself seriously and devote time to himself: he is serene, not
from lack of trouble, but from lack of capacity for grasping
and dealing with his trouble. The habitual complaisance with
respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant and impartial
hospitality with which he receives everything that comes his
way, his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous in-
difference as to Yea and Nay: alas! there are enough of cases
in which he has to atone for these virtues of his! and as man
generally, he becomes far too easily the caput mortuum of such
virtues. Should one wish love or hatred from him I mean love
and hatred as God, woman, and animal understand them he
will do what he can, and furnish what he can. But one must
not be surprised if it should not be much if he should show
himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and
deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial,
and rather un tour de jorce, a slight ostentation and exaggera-
tion. He is only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in
his serene totality is he still "nature" and "natural." His mir-
roring and eternally self -polishing soul no longer knows how
to affirm, no longer how to deny; he does not command; neither
does he destroy. ff je ne me prise presque rien" he says, with
Leibnitz: let us not overlook nor under- value the presque!
Neither is he a model man; he does not go in advance of any
one, nor after, either; he places himself generally too far off to
have any reason for espousing the cause of either good or evil.
If he has been so long confounded with the philosopher, with
[505]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
the Caesarian trainer and dictator of civilisation, he has had far
too much honour, and what is more essential in him has been
overlooked he is an instrument, something of a slave, though
certainly the sublimest sort of slave, but nothing in himself
presque rien! The objective man is an instrument, a costly,
easily injured, easily tarnished, measuring instrument and
mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of and respected;
but he is no goal, no outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary
man in whom the rest of existence justifies itself, no termina-
tion and still less a commencement, an engendering, or
primary cause, nothing hardy, powerful, self-centred, that
wants to be master; but rather only a soft, inflated, delicate,
movable potter's-form, that must wait for some kind of con-
tent and frame to "shape" itself thereto for the most part a
man without frame and content, a "selfless" man. Conse-
quently, also, nothing for women, in parenthesi.
208
When a philosopher nowadays makes known that he is not
a sceptic I hope that has been gathered from the foregoing
description of the objective spirit? people all hear it im-
patiently; they regard him on that account with some appre-
hension, they would like to ask so many, many questions . . .
indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so many,
he is henceforth said to be dangerous. With his repudiation
of scepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-
threatening sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive
were being tried somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, per-
haps a newly discovered Russian nihiline, a pessimism bonae
roluntatis, that not only denies, means denial, but dreadful
[ 506 ]
S C H O L A R S
thought! practises denial. Against this kind of "good will"
a will to the veritable, actual negation of life there is, as is
generally acknowledged nowadays, no better soporific and
sedative than scepticism, the mild, pleasing, lulling poppy of
scepticism; and Hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doc-
tors of the day as an antidote to the "spirit," and its under-
ground noises. "Are not our ears already full of bad sounds?"
say the sceptics, as lovers of repose, and almost as a kind of
safety police, "this subterranean Nay is terrible! Be still, ye
pessimistic moles!" The sceptic, in effect, that delicate crea-
ture, is far too easily frightened; his conscience is schooled so
as to start at every Nay, and even at that sharp, decided Yea,
and feels something like a bite thereby. Yea! and Nay! they
seem to him opposed to morality; he loves, on the contrary,
to make a festival to his virtue by a noble aloofness, while
perhaps he says with Montaigne: "What do I know?" Or with
Socrates: "I know that I know nothing." Or: "Here I do not
trust myself, no door is open to me." Or: "Even if the door
were open, why should I enter immediately?" Or: "What is
the use of any hasty hypotheses? It might quite well be in good
taste to make no hypotheses at all. Are you absolutely obliged
to straighten at once what is crooked? to stuff every hole with
some kind of oakum? Is there not time enough for that? Has
not the time leisure? Oh, ye demons, can ye not at all wait?
The uncertain also has its charms, the Sphinx, too, is a Circe,
and Circe, too, was a philosopher." Thus does a sceptic
console himself; and in truth he needs some consolation. For
scepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain many-
sided physiological temperament, which in ordinary language
is called nervous debility and sickliness; it arises whenever
races or classes which have been long separated, decisively and
suddenly blend with one another. In the new generation, which
1507]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
has inherited as it were different standards and valuations in
its blood, everything is disquiet, derangement, doubt, and
tentative; the best powers operate restrictively, the very virtues
prevent each other growing and becoming strong, equilibrium,
ballast, and perpendicular stability are lacking in body and
soul. That, however, which is most diseased and degenerated
in such nondescripts is the will; they are no longer familiar
with independence of decision, or the courageous feeling of
pleasure in willing they are doubtful of the "freedom of the
will" even in their dreams. Our present-day Eilrope, the scene
of a senseless, precipitate attempt at a radical blending of
classes, and consequently of races, is therefore sceptical in all
its heights and depths, sometimes exhibiting the mobile
scepticism which springs impatiently and wantonly from
branch to branch, sometimes with gloomy aspect, like a cloud
overcharged with interrogative signs and often sick unto
death of its will! Paralysis of will; where do we not find this
cripple sitting nowadays! And yet how bedecked oftentimes!
How seductively ornamented! There are the finest gala dresses
and disguises for this disease; and that, for instance, most of
what places itself nowadays in the show-cases as "objective-
ness," "the scientific spirit," "I'art pour I'art," and "pure
voluntary knowledge," is only decked-out scepticism and
paralysis of will I am ready to answer for this diagnosis of
the European disease. The disease of the will is diffused
unequally over Europe; it is worst and most varied where
civilisation has longest prevailed; it decreases according as "the
barbarian" still or again asserts his claims under the loose
drapery of Western culture. It is therefore in the France of
today, as can be readily disclosed and comprehended, that the
will is most infirm; and France, which has always had a mas-
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WE SCHO LARS
terly aptitude for converting even the portentous crises of
its spirit into something charming and seductive, now mani-
fests emphatically its intellectual ascendancy over Europe, by
being the school and exhibition of all the charms of scepticism.
The power to will and to persist, moreover, in a resolution, is
already somewhat stronger in Germany, and again in the
North of Germany it is stronger than in Central Germany; it
is considerably stronger in England, Spain, and Corsica, asso-
ciated with phlegm in the former and with hard skulls in the
latter not to mention Italy, which is too young yet to know
what it wants, and must first show whether it can exercise will;
but it is strongest and most surprising of all in that immense
middle empire where Europe as it were flows back to Asia
namely, in Russia. There the power to will has been long stored
up and accumulated, there the will uncertain whether to be
negative or affirmative waits threateningly to be discharged
(to borrow their pet phrase from our physicists) . Perhaps not
only Indian wars and complications in Asia would be necessary
to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal sub-
version, the shattering of the empire into small states, and
above all the introduction of parliamentary imbecility, to-
gether with the obligation of every one to read his newspaper
at breakfast. I do not say this as one who desires it; in my heart
I should rather prefer the contrary I mean such an increase
in the threatening attitude of Russia, that Europe would have
to make up its mind to become equally threatening namely,
to acquire one will, by means of a new caste to rule over the
Continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its own, that can set
its aims thousands of years ahead; so that the long spun-out
comedy of its petty-stateism, and its dynastic as well as its
democratic many-willedness, might finally be brought to a
[ 509 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
close. The time for petty politics is past; the next century will
bring the struggle for the dominion of the world the com-
puls ton to great politics.
209
As to how far the new warlike age on which we Europeans
have evidently entered may perhaps favour the growth of an-
other and stronger kind of scepticism, I should like to express
myself preliminarily merely by a parable, which the lovers of
German history will already understand. That unscrupulous
enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers (who, as King of
Prussia, brought into being a military and sceptical genius
and therewith, in reality, the new and now triumphantly
emerged type of German), the problematic, crazy father of
Frederick the Great, had at one point the very knack 'and
lucky grasp of the genius: he knew what was then lacking in
Germany, the want of which was a hundred times more
alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social form
his ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety
of a profound instinct. Men were lacking; and he suspected,
to his bitterest regret, that his own son was not man enough.
There, however, he deceived himself; but who would not have
deceived himself in his place? He saw his son lapsed to
atheism, to the esprit, to the pleasant frivolity of clever French-
men he saw in the background the great bloodsucker, the
spider scepticism; he suspected the incurable wretchedness of a
heart no longer hard enough either for evil or good, and of a
broken will that no longer commands, is no longer 'able to
command. Meanwhile, however, there grew up in his son that
new kind of harder and more dangerous scepticism who
[510]
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knows to what extent it was encouraged just by his father's
hatred and the icy melancholy of a will condemned to solitude?
the scepticism of daring manliness, which is closely related
to the genius for war and conquest, and made its first entrance
into Germany in the person of the great Frederick. This
scepticism despises and nevertheless grasps; it undermines and
takes possession; it does not believe, but it does not thereby
lose itself; it gives the spirit a dangerous liberty, but it keeps
strict guard over the heart. It is the German form of scepticism,
which, as a continued Fredericianism, risen to the highest
spirituality, has kept Europe for a considerable time under
the dominion of the German spirit and its critical and histori-
cal distrust. Owing to the insuperably strong and tough mascu-
line character of the great German philologists and historical
critics (who, rightly estimated, were also all of them artists of
destruction and dissolution) , a new conception of the German
spirit gradually established itself in spite of all Romanticism
in music and philosophy in which the leaning towards
masculine scepticism was decidedly prominent: whether, for
instance, as fearlessness of gaze, as courage and sternness of
the dissecting hand, or as resolute will to dangerous voyages
of discovery, to spiritualised North Pole expeditions under
barren and dangerous skies. There may be good grounds for it
when warm-blooded and superficial humanitarians cross them-
selves before this spirit, cet esprit jataliste, ironique, mephisto-
phelique, as Michelet calls it, not without a shudder. But if
one would realise how characteristic is this fear of the "man"
in the German spirit which awakened Europe out of its "dog-
matic slumber," let us call to mind the former conception
which had to be overcome by this new one and that it is not
so very long ago that a masculinised woman could dare, with
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
unbridled presumption, to recommend the Germans to the in-
terest of Europe as gentle, good-hearted, weak-willed, and
poetical fools. Finally, let us only understand profoundly
enough Napoleon's astonishment when he saw Goethe: it re-
veals what had been regarded for centuries as the "German
spirit." "Voila un homme!" that was as much as to say: "But
this is a man! And I only expected to see a German!"
210
Supposing, then, that in the picture of the philosophers of
the future, some trait suggests the question whether they must
not perhaps be sceptics in the last-mentioned sense, something
in them would only be designated thereby and not they
themselves. With equal right they might call themselves
critics; and assuredly they will be men of experiments. By the
name with which I ventured to baptize them, I have already
expressly emphasised their attempting and their love of at-
tempting: is this because, as critics in body and soul, they will
love to make use of experiments in a new, and perhaps wider
and more dangerous sense? In their passion for knowledge,
will they have to go further in daring and painful attempts
than the sensitive and pampered taste of a democratic century
ran approve of? There is no doubt: these coming ones will
be least able to dispense with the serious and not unscrupulous
qualities which distinguish the critic from the sceptic: I mean
the certainty as to standards of worth, the conscious employ-
ment of a unity of method, the wary courage, the standing-
alone, and the capacity for self -responsibility; indeed, they will
avow among themselves a delight in denial and dissection, and
[*]
WE SCHOLARS
a certain considerate cruelty, which knows how to handle the
knife surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds. They will
be sterner (and perhaps not always towards themselves only)
than humane people may desire, they will not deal with the
"truth" in order that it may "please" them, or "elevate" and
"inspire" them they will rather have little faith in "truth"
bringing with it such revels for the feelings. They will smile,
those rigourous spirits, when any one says in their presence:
"that thought elevates me, why should it not be true?" or: "that
work enchants me, why should it not be beautiful?" or: "that
artist enlarges me, why should he not be great?" Perhaps they
will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is
thus rapturous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic; and
if any one could look into their inmost hearts, he would not
easily find therein the intention to reconcile "Christian senti-
ments" with "antique taste," or even with "modern parlia-
mentarism" (the kind of reconciliation necessarily found even
amongst philosophers in our very uncertain and consequently
very conciliatory century) . Critical discipline, and every habit
that conduces to purity and rigour in intellectual matters, will
not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers
of the future; they may even make a display thereof as their
special adornment nevertheless they will not want to be
called critics on that account. It will seem to them no small
indignity to philosophy to have it decreed, as is so welcome
nowadays, that "philosophy itself is criticism and critical
science and nothing else whatever!" Though this estimate of
philosophy may enjoy the approval of all the Positivists of
France and Germany (and possibly it even flattered the heart
and taste of Kant: let us call to mind the titles of his principal
works), our new philosophers will say, notwithstanding, that
critics are instruments of the philosopher, and just on that
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
account, as instruments, they are far from being philosophers
themselves! Even the great Chinaman of Konigsberg was only
a great critic.
211
I insist upon it that people finally cease confounding philo-
sophical workers, and in general scientific men, with philoso-
phers that precisely here one should strictly give "each his
own," and not give those far too much, these far too little. It
may be necessary for the education of the real philosopher that
he himself should have once stood upon all those steps upon
which his servants, the scientific workers of philosophy, re-
main standing, and must remain standing: he himself must
perhaps have been critic, and dogmatist, and historian, and
besides, poet, and collector, and traveller, and riddle-reader,
and moralist, and seer, and "free spirit," and almost every-
thing, in order to traverse the whole range of human values
and estimations, and that he may be able with a variety of eyes
and consciences to look from a height to any distance, from a
depth up to any height, from a nook into any expanse. But all
these are only preliminary conditions for his task; this task
itself demands something else it requires him to create
values. The philosophical workers, after the excellent pattern
of Kant and Hegel, have to fix and formalise some great exis-
ting body of valuations that is to say, former determinations
of value, creations of value, which have become prevalent, and
are for a time called "truths" whether in the domain of the
logical, the political (moral) , or the artistic. It is for these in-
vestigators to make whatever has happened and been esteemed
hitherto, conspicuous, conceivable, intelligible, and manage-
able, to shorten everything long, even "time" itself, and to
WE SCHOLARS
subjugate the entire past: an immense and wonderful task, in
the carrying out of which all refined pride, all tenacious will,
can surely find satisfaction. The real philosophers, however, are
commanders and law- givers;- they say : ' 'Thus shall it be! " They
determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind, and
thereby set aside the previous labour of all philosophical
workers, and all subjugators of the past they grasp at the
future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was, becomes
for them thereby a means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their
"knowing" is creating, their creating is a law-giving, their will
to truth is Will to Power. Are there at present such philos-
ophers? Have there ever been such philosophers? Must there
not be such philosophers some day? . . .
It is always more obvious to me that the philosopher, as a
man indispensable for the morrow and the day after the mor-
row, has ever found himself, and has been obliged to find
himself, in contradiction to the day in which he lives; his
enemy has always been the ideal of his day. Hitherto all those
extraordinary furtherers of humanity whom one calls philos-
ophers who rarely regarded themselves as lovers of wisdom,
but rather as disagreeable fools and dangerous interrogators
have found their mission, their hard, involuntary, imperative
mission (in the end however the greatness of their mission) , in
being the bad conscience of their age. In putting the vivisector's
knife to the breast of the very virtues of their age, they have
betrayed their own secret; it has been for the sake of a new
greatness of man, a new untrodden path to his aggrandisement.
They have always disclosed how much hypocrisy, indolence,
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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
self-indulgence, and self-neglect, how much falsehood was
concealed under the most venerated types of contemporary
morality, how much virtue was outlived; they have always said :
"We must remove hence to where you are least at home." In
face of a world of "modern ideas," which would like to con-
fine every one in a corner, in a "specialty," a philosopher, if
there could be philosophers nowadays, would be compelled to
place the greatness of man, the conception of "greatness,"
precisely in his comprehensiveness and multif ariousncss, in his
all-roundness; he would even determine worth and rank ac-
cording to the amount and variety of that which a man could
bear and take upon himself, according to the extent to which
a man could stretch his responsibility. Nowadays the taste
and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate the will; nothing is
so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness of will: conse-
quently, in the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will,
sternness and capacity for prolonged resolution, must specially
be included in the conception of "greatness"; with as good a
right as the opposite doctrine, with its ideal of a silly, renounc-
ing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to an opposite age
such as the sixteenth century, .which suffered from its ac-
cumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and
floods of selfishness. In the time of Socrates, among men only
of worn-out instincts, old conservative Athenians who let
themselves go "for the sake of happiness," as they said; for
the sake of pleasure, as their conduct indicated and who had
continually on their lips the old pompous words to which they
had long forfeited the right by the life they led, Irony was
perhaps necessary for greatness of soul, the wicked Socratic
assurance of the old physician and plebeian, who cut ruthlessly
into his own flesh, as into the flesh and heart of the "noble,"
with a look that said plainly enough: "Do not dissemble before
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me! here we are equal!" At present, on the contrary, when
throughout Europe the herding animal alone attains to
honours, and dispenses honours, when "equality of right" can
too readily be transformed into equality in wrong: I mean to
say into general war against everything rare, strange, and
privileged, against the higher man, the higher soul, the higher
duty, the higher responsibility, the creative plcnipotence and
lordliness at present it belongs to the conception of "great-
ness" to be noble, to wish to be apart, to be capable of being
different, to stand alone, to have to live by personal initiative;
and the philosopher will betray something of his own ideal
when he asserts: "He shall be the greatest who can be the most
solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man be-
yond good and evil, the master of his virtues, and of super-
abundance of will; precisely this shall be called greatness:
as diversified as can be entire, as ample as can be full." And to
ask once more the question: Is greatness possible nowadays?
213
It is difficult to learn what a philosopher is, because it cannot
be taught: one must "know" it by experience or one should
have the pride not to know it. The fact that at present people all
talk of things of which they cannot have any experience, is true
more especially and unfortunately as concerns the philosopher
and philosophical matters: the very few know them, are per-
mitted to know them, and all popular ideas about them are
false. Thus, for instance, the truly philosophical combination
of a bold, exuberant spirituality which runs at presto pace, and
a dialectic rigour and necessity which makes no false step, is
unknown to most thinkers and scholars from their' own experi-
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
ence, and therefore, should any one speak of it in their pres-
ence, it is incredible to them. They conceive of every necessity
as troublesome, as a painful compulsory obedience and state of
constraint; thinking itself is regarded by them as something
slow and hesitating, almost as a trouble, and often enough as
"worthy of the siveat of the noble" but not at all as some-
thing easy and divine, closely related to dancing and exuber-
ance! "To think" and to take a matter "seriously," "arduously"
that is one and the same thing to them; such only has been
their "experience." Artists have here perhaps a finer in-
tuition; they who know only too well that precisely when they
no longer do anything "arbitrarily," and everything of neces-
sity, their feeling of freedom, of subtlety, of power, of crea-
tively fixing, disposing and shaping, reaches its climax in
short, that necessity and "freedom of will" are then the same
thing with them. There is, in fine, a gradation of rank in
psychical states, to which the gradation of rank in the problems
corresponds; and the highest problems repel ruthlessly every
one who ventures too near them, without being predestined for
their solution by the loftiness and power of his spirituality. Of
what use is it for nimble, everyday intellects, or clumsy, honest
mechanics and empiricists to press, in their plebeian ambition,
close to such problems, and as it were into this "holy of holies"
as so often happens nowadays! But coarse feet must never
tread upon such carpets: this is provided for in the primary
law of things; the doors remain closed to those intruders,
though they may dash and break their heads thereon! People
have always to be born to a high station, or, more definitely,
they have to be bred for it: a person has only a right to philos-
ophy taking the word in its higher significance in virtue of
his descent; the ancestors, the "blood," decide here also. Many
generations must have prepared the way for the coming of the
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OUR VIRTU ES
philosopher; each of his virtues must have been separately
acquired, nurtured, transmitted, and embodied; not only the
bold, easy, delicate course and current of his thoughts, but
above all the readiness for great responsibilities, the majesty
of ruling glance and contemning look, the feeling of separa-
tion from the multitude with their duties and virtues, the
kindly patronage and defence of whatever is misunderstood
and calumniated, be it God or devil, the delight and practice
of supreme justice, the art of commanding, the amplitude of
will, the lingering eye which rarely admires, rarely looks up,
rarely loves. ...
7. Our Virtues
214
OUR Virtues? It is probable that we, too, have still our vir-
tues, although naturally they are not those sincere and massive
virtues on account of which we hold our grandfathers in
esteem and also at a little distance from us. We Europeans of
the day after tomorrow, we firstlings of the twentieth century
with all our dangerous curiosity, our multifariousness and
art of disguising, our mellow and seemingly sweetened cruelty
in sense and spirit we shall presumably, /'/ we must have
virtues, have those only which have come to agreement with
our most secret and heartfelt inclinations, with our most ardent
requirements : well, then, let us look for them in our labyrinths!
where, as we know, so many things lose themselves, so many
things get quite lost! And is there anything finer than to search
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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
for one's own virtues? Is it not almost to believe in one's own
virtues? But this ''believing in one's own virtues" is it not
practically the same as what was formerly called one's "good
conscience," that long, respectable pigtail of an idea, which
our grandfathers used to hang behind their heads, and often
enough also behind their understandings? It seems, therefore,
that however little we may imagine ourselves to be old-
fashioned and grandfatherly respectable in other respects, in
one thing we are nevertheless the worthy grandchildren of
our grandfathers, we last Europeans with good consciences: we
also still wear their pigtail. Ah! if you only knew how soon,
so very soon it will be different!
215
As in the stellar firmament there are sometimes two suns
which determine the path of one planet, and in certain cases
suns of different colours shine around a single planet, now with
red light, now with green, and then simultaneously illumine
and flood it with motley colours: so we modern men, owing to
the complicated mechanism of our "firmament," are deter-
mined by different moralities; our actions shine alternately in
different colours, and are seldom unequivocal and there are
often cases, also, in which our actions are motley-coloured.
216
To love one's enemies? I think that has been well learned: it
takes place thousands of times at present on a large and small
scale; indeed, at times the higher and sublimer thing takes
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OUR VIRTUES
place: we learn to despise when we love, and precisely when
we love best; all of it, however, unconsciously, without noise,
without ostentation, with the shame and secrecy of goodness,
which forbids the utterance of the pompous word and the
formula of virtue. Morality as attitude is opposed to our taste
nowadays. This is also an advance, as it was an advance in our
fathers that religion as attitude finally became opposed to
their taste, including the enmity and Voltairean bitterness
against religion (and all that formerly belonged to freethinker-
pantomime) . It is the music in our conscience, the dance in our
spirit, to which Puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody-
goodness won't chime.
817
Let us be careful in dealing with those who attach great im-
portance to being credited with jnoral tact and subtlety in
moral discernment! They never forgive us if they have once
made a mistake before us (or even with regard to us) they
inevitably become our instinctive calumniators and detractors,
even when they still remain our "friends." Blessed are the
forgetful: for they "get the better" even of their blunders.
218
The psychologists of France and where else are there still
psychologists nowadays? have never yet exhausted their
bitter and manifold enjoyment of the betise bourgeoise, just
as though ... in short, they betray something thereby. Flau-
bert, for instance, the honest citizen of Rouen, neither saw,
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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
heard, nor tasted anything else in the end; it was his mode of
self-torment and refined cruelty. As this is growing weari-
some, I would now recommend for a change something else
for a pleasure namely, the unconscious astuteness with which
good, fat, honest mediocrity always behaves towards loftier
spirits and the tasks they have to perform, the subtle, barbed,
Jesuitical astuteness, which is a thousand times subtler than the
taste and understanding of the middle-class in its best moments
subtler even than the understanding of its victims: a re-
peated proof that "instinct" is the most intelligent of all kinds
of intelligence which have hitherto been discovered. In short,
you psychologists, study the philosophy of the "rule" in its
struggle with the "exception" : there you have a spectacle fit for
Gods and godlike malignity! Or, in plainer words, practise
vivisection on "good people," on the "homo bonae voluntatis,"
... on yourselves!
219
The practice of judging and condemning morally, is the
favourite revenue of the intellectually shallow on those who are
less so; it is also a kind of indemnity for their being badly
endowed by nature; and finally, it is an opportunity for ac-
quiring spirit and becoming subtle: malice spiritualises.
They are glad in their inmost heart that there is a standard
according to which those who are over-endowed with intellec-
tual goods and privileges, are equal to them; they contend for
the "equality of all before God," and almost need the belief
in God for this purpose. It is among them that the most power-
ful antagonists of atheism are found. If any one were to say
to them: "a lofty spirituality is beyond all comparison with
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OUR VIRTUES
the honesty and respectability of a merely moral man" it
would make them furious; I shall take care not to say so. I
would rather flatter them with my theory that lofty spirituality
itself exists only as the ultimate product of moral qualities;
that it is a synthesis of all qualities attributed to the "merely
moral" man, after they have been acquired singly through long
training and practice, perhaps during a whole series of genera-
tions; that lofty spirituality is precisely the spiritualising of
justice, and the beneficent severity which knows that it is
authorised to maintain gradations of rank in the world, even
among things and not only among men.
220
Now that the praise of the "disinterested person" is so popu-
lar one must probably not without some danger get an idea
of what people actually take an interest in, and what are the
things generally which fundamentally and profoundly concern
ordinary men including the cultured, even the learned, and
perhaps philosophers also, if appearances do not deceive. The
fact thereby becomes obvious that the greater part of what in-
terests and charms higher natures, and more refined and
fastidious tastes, seems absolutely "uninteresting" to the aver-
age man: if, notwithstanding, he perceive devotion to these
interests, he calls it desmteresse, and wonders how it is possible
to act "disinterestedly." There have been philosophers who
could give this popular astonishment a seductive and mystical,
other- world expression (perhaps because they did not know
the higher nature by experience?) , instead of stating the naked
and candidly reasonable truth that "disinterested" action is
very interesting and "interested" action, provided that . . .
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
"And love?" What! Even an action for love's sake shall be
"unegoistic"? But you fools ! "And the praise of the self-
sacrificer?" But whoever has really offered sacrifice knows
that he wanted and obtained something for it perhaps some-
thing from himself for something from himself; that he re-
linquished here in order to have more there, perhaps in general
to be more, or even feel himself "more." But this is a realm of
questions and answers in which a more fastidious spirit does
not like to stay: for here truth ha's to stifle her yawns so much
when she is obliged to answer. And after all, truth is a woman;
one jnust not use force with her.
321
"It sometimes happens," said a moralistic pedant and trifle-
retailer, "that I honour and respect an unselfish man: not,
however, because he is unselfish, but because I think he has a
right to be useful to another man at his own expense. In short,
the question is always who he is, and who the other is. For in-
stance, in a person created and destined for command, self-
denial and modest retirement, instead of being virtues would
be the waste of virtues: so it seems to me. Every system of
unegoistic morality which takes itself unconditionally and
appeals to every one, not only sins against good taste, but is
also an incentive to sins of omission, an additional seduction
under the mask of philanthropy and precisely a seduction and
injury to the higher, rarer, and more privileged types of men.
Moral systems must be compelled first of all to bow before the
gradations of rank; their presumption must be driven home
to their conscience until they thoroughly understand at last
that it is immoral to say that "what is right for one is proper
for another." So said my moralistic pedant and bonhomme.
[524]
OUR VIRTU ES
Did he perhaps deserve to be laughed at when he thus exhorted
systems of morals to practise morality? But one should not be
too much in the right if one wishes to have the laughers on
one's own side; a grain of wrong pertains even to good taste.
Wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached nowa-
days and,jif I gather rightly, no other religion is any longer
preached let the psychologist have his ears open; through all
the vanity, through all the noise which is natural to these
preachers (as to all preachers), he will hear a hoarse, groan-
ing, genuine note of self-contempt. It belongs to the over-
shadowing and uglifying of Europe, which has been on the
increase for a century (the first symptoms of which are already
specified documentarily in a thoughtful letter of Galiani to
Madame d'Epinay) /'/ /"/ is not really the cause thereof! The
man of "modern ideas," the conceited ape, is excessively dis-
satisfied with himself this is perfectly certain. He suffers,
and his vanity wants him only "to suffer with his fellows."
The hybrid European a tolerably ugly plebeian, taken all
in all absolutely requires a costume: he needs history as a
storeroom of costumes. To be sure, he notices that none of the
costumes fit him properly he changes and changes. Let us
look at the nineteenth century with respect to these hasty
preferences and changes in its masquerades of style, and also
with respect to its moments of desperation on account of
[ 525 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
"nothing suiting" us. It is in vain to get ourselves up as
romantic, or classical, or Christian, or Florentine, or barocco,
or "national," in moribus et artibus: it does not "clothe us"!
But the "spirit," especially the "historical spirit," profits even
by this desperation: once and again a new sample of the past or
of the foreign is tested, put on, taken off, packed up, and above
all studied we are the first studious age in puncto of "cos-
tumes," I mean as concerns morals, articles of belief, artistic
tastes, and religions; we are prepared as no other age has ever
been for a carnival in the grand style, for the most spiritual
festival laughter and arrogance, for the transcendental height
of supreme folly and Aristophanic ridicule of the world. Per-
haps we are still discovering the domain of our invention just
here, the domain where even we can still be original, probably
as parodists of the world's history and as God's Merry-
Andrews, perhaps, though nothing else of the present have
a future, our laughter itself may have a future!
884
The historical sense (or the capacity for divining quickly the
order of rank of the valuations according to which a people, a
community, or an individual has lived, the "divining instinct"
for the relationships of these valuations, for the relation of the
authority of the valuations to the authority of the operating
forces), this historical sense, which we Europeans claim as
our specialty, has come to us in the train of the enchanting and
mad semi-barbarity into which Europe has been plunged by
the democratic mingling of classes and races it is only the
nineteenth century that has recognised this faculty as its sixth
sense. Owing to this mingling, the past of every form and
[686 ]
OUR VIRTUES
mode of life, and of cultures which were formerly clos
contiguous and superimposed on one another, flows forth i
us * 'modern souls"; our instincts now run back in all directic
we ourselves are a kind of chaos: in the end, as we have s;
the spirit perceives its advantage therein. By means of
semi-barbarity in body and in desire, we have secret ac<
everywhere, such as a noble age never had; we have ace
above all to the labyrinth of imperfect civilisations, and
every form of semi-barbarity that has at any time existed
earth; and in so far as the most considerable part of hun
civilisation hitherto has just been semi-barbarity, the "hist
cal sense" implies almost the sense and instinct for everythi
the taste and tongue for everything: whereby it immedial
proves itself to be an ignoble sense. For instance, we en
Homer once more: it is perhaps our happiest acquisition t
we know how to appreciate Homer, whom men of disi
guished culture ( as the French of the seventeenth century, ]
Saint-Evremond, who reproached him for his esprit vaste, i
even Voltaire, the last echo of the century) cannot and co
npt so easily appropriate whom they scarcely permitted th(
selves to enjoy. The very decided Yea and Nay of their pal;
their promptly ready disgust, their hesitating reluctance \*
regard to everything strange, their horror of the bad taste e
of lively curiosity, and in general the averseness of ev
distinguished and self-sufficing culture to avow a new desir
dissatisfaction with its own condition, or an admiration
what is strange: all this determines and disposes them
favourably even towards the best things of the world wh
are not their property or could not become their prey and
faculty is more unintelligible to such men than just this 1
torical sense, with its truckling, plebeian curiosity. The cas<
not different with Shakespeare, that marvellous Spani
[ 527]
UhYUIML) UUUL) AMU Jb V 1 L
Moorish-Saxon synthesis of taste, over whom an ancient
Athenian of the circle of ^schylus would have half-killed him-
self with laughter or irritation: but we accept precisely this
wild motlcyness, this medley of the most delicate, the most
coarse, and the most artificial, with a secret confidence and cor-
diality; we enjoy it as a refinement of art reserved expressly for
us, and allow ourselves to be as little disturbed by the repulsive
fumes and the proximity of the English populace in which
Shakespeare's art and taste live, as perhaps on the Chiaja of
Naples, where, with all our senses awake, we go our way,
enchanted and voluntarily, in spite of the drain-odour of the
lower quarters of the town. That as men of the "historical
sense" we have our virtues, is not to be disputed: we are un-
pretentious, unselfish, modest, brave, habituated to self-control
and self-renunciation, very grateful, very patient, very com-
plaisant but with all this we are perhaps not very "tasteful."
Let us finally confess it, that what is most difficult for us men
of the "historical sense" to grasp, feel, taste, and love, what
finds us fundamentally prejudiced and almost hostile, is pre-
cisely the perfection and ultimate maturity in every culture and
art, the essentially noble in works and men, their moment of
smootli sea and halcyon self-sufficiency, the goldenness and
coldness which all things show that have perfected themselves.
Perhaps our great virtue of the historical sense is in necessary
contrast to good taste, at least to the very bad taste; and we can
only evoke in ourselves imperfectly, hesitatingly, and with
compulsion the small, short, and happy godsends and glori-
fications of human life as they shine here and there: those
moments and marvellous experiences when a great power has
voluntarily come to a halt before the boundless and infinite,
when a superabundance of refined delight has been enjoyed by
a sudden checking and petrifying, by standing firmly and
[ 528 ]
OUR VIRTUES
planting oneself fixedly on still trembling ground. Propor
tionateness is strange to us, let us confess it to ourselves; ou
itching is really the itching for the infinite, the immeasurable
Like the rider on his forward panting horse, we let the rein;
fall before the infinite, we modern men, we semi-barbarian:
and are only in our highest bliss when we are in mos
danger.
Whether it be hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, o
eudaemonism, all those modes of thinking which measure th<
worth of things according to pleasure and pain, that is, accord
ing to accompanying circumstances and secondary considera
tions, are plausible modes of thought and naivetes, which ever;
one conscious of creative powers and an artist's conscience wil
look down upon with scorn, though not without sympathy
Sympathy for you! to be sure, tl^at is not sympathy as yoi
understand it: it is not sympathy for social "distress," fo
"society" with its sick and misfortuned, for the hereditarily
vicious and defective who lie on the ground around us; stil
less is it sympathy for the grumbling, vexed, revolutionary
slave-classes who strive after power they call it "freedom/
Our sympathy is a loftier and further-sighted sympathy: w<
see how man dwarfs himself, how you dwarf him! and then
are moments when we view your sympathy with an indescrib
able anguish, when we resist it, when we regard your seri
ousness as more dangerous than any kind of levity. You want
if possible and there is not a more foolish "if possible" tt
do away with suffering; and we? it really seems that iU(
would rather have it increased and made worse than it has eve
been! Well-being, as you understand it is certainly not a goal
[ 529 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
it seems to us an end; a condition which at once renders mi
ludicrous and contemptible and makes his destruction d
sirable! The discipline of suffering, of great suffering kno
ye not that it is only this discipline that has produced all tl
elevations of humanity hitherto? The tension of soul in mi
fortune which communicates to it its energy, its shuddering
view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in unde
going, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune, ar
whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatne
has been bestowed upon the soul has it not been bestowe
through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering? ]
man creature and creator are united: in man there is not on
matter, shred, excess, clay, mire, folly, chaos; but there is al<
the creator, the sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, tl
divinity of the spectator, and the seventh day do ye unde
stand this contrast? And that your sympathy for the "creatu
in man" applies to that which has to be fashioned, bruise
forged, stretched, roasted, annealed, refined to that whic
must necessarily suffer, and is meant to suffer? And our syn
pathy do ye not understand what our reverse sympathy a]
plies to, when it resists your sympathy as the worst of a
pampering and enervation? So it is sympathy against syn
pathy! But to repeat it once more, there are higher problen
than the problems of pleasure and pain and sympathy; and a
systems of philosophy which deal only with these are naivete
226
We Immoralists. This world with which we are concernec
in which we have to fear and love, this almost invisible, ii
audible world of delicate command and delicate obedience,
[630 ]
OUR VIRTUES
world of "almost" in every respect, captious, insidious, sharp,
and tender yes, it is well protected from clumsy spectators
and familiar curiosity! We are woven into a strong net and
garment of duties, and cannot disengage ourselves precisely
here, we are "men of duty," even we! Occasionally it is true we
dance in our "chains" and betwixt our "swords"; it is none
the less true that more often we gnash our teeth under the
circumstances, and are impatient at the secret hardship of our
lot. But do what we will, fools and appearances say of us:
"these are men without duty," we have always fools and
appearances against us!
227
Honesty, granting that it is the virtue from which we cannot
rid ourselves, we free spirits well, we will labour at it with
all our perversity and love, and not tire of "perfecting" our-
selves in our virtue, which alone remains: may its glance
some day overspread like a gilded, blue, mocking twilight this
aging civilisation with its dull gloomy seriousness! And if,
nevertheless, our honesty should one day grow weary, and sigh,
and stretch its limbs, and find us too hard, and would fain
have it pleasanter, easier, and gentler, like an agreeable vice,
let us remain hard, we latest Stoics, and let us send to its help
whatever devilry we have in us: our disgust at the clumsy
and undefined, our "nitimur in vethum" our love of adven-
ture, our sharpened and fastidious curiosity, our most subtle,
disguised, intellectual Will to Power and universal conquest,
which rambles and roves avidiously around all the realms of
the future let us go with all our "devils" to the help of our
"God"! It is probable that people will misunderstand and
[631]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
mistake us on that account: what does it matter! They will saj
"Their 'honesty' that is their devilry, and nothing else!
What does it matter! And even if they were right have nc
all Gods hitherto been such sanctified, re-baptized devils? An
after all, what do we know of ourselves? And what the spir
that leads lis wants to be called? ( It is a question of names.
And how many spirits we harbour? Our honesty, we frc
spirits let us be careful lest it become our vanity, our orn;
ment and ostentation, our limitation, our stupidity! Every vi;
tue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid to th
point of sanctity," they say in Russia, let us be careful le:
out of pure honesty we do not eventually become saints an
bores! Is not life a hundred times too short for us to boi
ourselves? One would have to believe in eternal life in ordc
to. ...
I hope to be forgiven for discovering that all moral philo:
ophy hitherto has been tedious and has belonged to the sopc
rific appliances and that 'Virtue/' in my opinion, has bee
more injured by the tediousness of its advocates than by an]
thing else; at the same time, however, I would not wish t
overlook their general usefulness. It is desirable that as fe^
people as possible should reflect upon morals, and consequent!
it is very desirable that morals should not some day becom
interesting! But let us not be afraid! Things still remain toda
as they have always been: I see no one in Europe who has (c
discloses) an idea of the fact that philosophising concernin
morals might be conducted in a dangerous, captious, and er
snaring manner that calamity might be involved thereir
OUR VIRTU ES
Observe, for example, the indefatigable, inevitable English
utilitarians: how ponderously and respectably they stalk on,
stalk along (a Homeric metaphor expresses it better) in
the footsteps of Bentham, just as he had already stalked in the
footsteps of the respectable Helvetius! (no, he was not a dan-
gerous man, Helvetius, ce senateur Pococurante, to use an
expression of Galiani) . No new thought, nothing of the nature
of a finer turning or better expression of an old thought, not
even a proper history of what has been previously thought on
the subject: an impossible literature, taking it all in all, unless
one knows how to leaven it with some mischief. In effect, the
old English vice called cant, which is moral Tartuffism, has
insinuated itself also into these moralists (whom one must
certainly read with an eye to their motives if one must read
them), concealed this time under the new form of the scien-
tific spirit; moreover, there is not absent from them a secret
struggle with the pangs of conscience, from which a race of
former Puritans must naturally suffer, in all their scientific
tinkering with morals. (Is not a moralist the opposite of a
Puritan? That is to say, as a thinker who regards morality as
questionable, as worthy of interrogation, in short, as a prob-
lem? Is moralising not immoral?) In the end, they all want
English morality to be recognised as authoritative, inasmuch
as mankind, or the "general utility," or "the happiness of the
greatest number," no! the happiness of England, will be best
served thereby. They would like, by all means, to convince
themselves that the striving after English happiness, I mean
after comfort and fashion (and in the highest instance, a seat
in Parliament) , is at the same time the true path of virtue; in
fact, that in so far as there has been virtue in the world hitherto,
it has just consisted in such striving. Not one of those ponder-
ous, conscience-stricken herding-animals (who undertake to
[ 533 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
advocate the cause of egoism as conducive to the general wel-
fare) wants to have any knowledge or inkling of the facts that
the "general welfare" is no ideal, no goal, no notion that can
be at all grasped, but is only a nostrum, that what is fair to
one may not at all be fair to another, that the requirement of
one morality for all is really a detriment to higher men, in
short, that there is a distinction of rank between man and man,
and consequently between morality and morality. They are an
unassuming and fundamentally mediocre species of men, these
utilitarian Englishmen, and, as already remarked, in so far as
they are tedious, one cannot think highly enough of their util-
ity. One ought even to encourage them, as has been partially
attempted in the following rhymes:
Hail, ye worthies, barrow-wheeling,
"Longer better," aye revealing,
Stiffer aye in head and knee;
Unenraptured, never jesting,
Mediocre everlasting,
Sans genie et sans esprit!
229
In these later ages, which may be proud of their humanity,
there still remains so much fear, so much superstition of thfc
fear, of the "cruel wild beast,' 1 the mastering of which consti*
tutes the very pride of these humaner ages that even obvious
truths, as if by the agreement of centuries, have long remained
unuttered, because they have the appearance of helping the
finally slain wild beast back to life again. I perhaps risk some-
thing when I allow such a truth to escape; let others capture it
[534}
OUR VIRTU E3
again and give it so much "milk of pious sentiment" * to
drink, that it will lie down quiet and forgotten, in its old cor-
ner. One ought to learn anew about cruelty,- and open one's
eyes; one ought at last to learn impatience, in order that such
immodest gross errors as, for instance, have been fostered by
ancient and modern philosophers with regard to tragedy may
no longer wander about virtuously and boldly. Almost every-
thing that we call "higher culture" is based upon the spiritual-
ising and intensifying of cruelty this is my thesis; the "wild
beast" has not been slain at all, it lives, it flourishes, it has only
been transfigured. That which constitutes the painful delight
of tragedy is cruelty; that which operates agreeably in so-called
tragic sympathy, and at the basis even of everything sublime,
up to the highest and most delicate thrills of metaphysics, ob-
tains its sweetness solely from the intermingled ingredient pf
cruelty. What the Roman enjoys in the arena, the Christian in
the ecstasies of the cross, the Spaniard at the sight of the faggot
and stake, or of the bull-fight, the present-day Japanese who
presses his way to the tragedy, the workman of the Parisian
suburbs who has a homesickness for bloody revolutions, the
Wagnerienne who, with unhinged will, "undergoes" the per-
formance of "Tristan and Isolde" what all these enjoy, and
strive with mysterious ardour to drink in, is the philtre of the
great Circe l cruelty." Here, to be sure, we must put asi:!c
entirely the blundering psychology of former times, which
could only teach with regard to cruelty that it originated at the
sight of the suffering of others: there is an abundant, super*
abundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering, in causing
one's own suffering and wherever man has allowed himself
to be persuaded to self-denial in the religious sense, or to self -
* An expression from Schiller's William Tell, Act IV, Scene 3.
[ 535 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
mutilation, as among the Phoenicians and ascetics, or in general,
to desensualisation, decarnalisation, and contrition, to Puri-
tanical repentance-spasms, to vivisection of conscience and to
Pascal-like sacrifizia dell' mtelleto] he is secretly allured and
impelled forwards by his cruelty, by the dangerous thrill of
cruelty towards himself. Finally, let us consider that even
the seeker of knowledge operates as an artist and glorifier of
cruelty, in that he compels his spirit to perceive against its own
inclination, and often enough against the wishes of his heart:
he forces it to say Nay, where he would like to affirm, love,
and adore; indeed, every instance of taking a thing profoundly
and fundamentally, is a violation, an intentional injuring of
the fundamental will of the spirit, which instinctively aims at
appearance and superficiality, even in every desire for knowl-
edge there is a drop of cruelty.
230
Perhaps what I have said here about a "fundamental will of
the spirit" may not be understood without further details; I
may be allowed a word of explanation. That imperious some-
thing which is popularly called "the spirit," wishes to be mas-
ter internally and externally, and to feel itself master; it has
the will of a multiplicity for a simplicity, a binding, taming,
imperious, and essentially ruling will. Its requirements and
capacities here, are the same as those assigned by physiologists
to everything that lives, grows, and multiplies. The power of
the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals itself in a
strong tendency to assimilate the new to the old, to simplify
the manifold, to overlook or repudiate the absolutely contra-
dictory; just as it arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent,
[ 536 ]
OUR VIRTU ES
and falsifies for itself certain traits and lines in the foreign ele-
ments, in every portion of the "outside world. Its object
thereby is the incorporation of new "experiences," the assort-
ment of new things in the old arrangements in short, growth;
or more properly, the feeling of growth, the feeling of in-
creased power is its object. This same will has at its service
an apparently opposed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly
adopted preference of ignorance, of arbitrary shutting out, a
closing of windows, an inner denial of this or that, a prohibi-
tion to approach, a sort of defensive attitude against much
that is knowable, a contentment with obscurity, with the shut-
ting-in horizon, an acceptance and approval of ignorance: as
that which is all necessary according to the degree of its appro-
priating power, its "digestive power," to speak figuratively
(and in fact "the spirit" resembles a stomach more than any-
thing else) . Here also belong an occasional propensity of the
spirit to let itself be deceived (perhaps with a waggish suspi-
cion that it is not so and so, but is only allowed to pass as such) ,
a delight in uncertainty and ambiguity, an exulting enjoyment
of arbitrary, out-of-the-way narrowness and mystery, of the
too-near, of the foreground, of the magnified, the diminished,
the misshapen, the beautified an enjoyment of the arbitrari-
ness of all these manifestations of power. Finally, in this con-
nection, there is the not unscrupulous readiness of the spirit to
deceive other spirits and dissemble before them the constant
pressing and straining of a creating, shaping, changeable
power: the spirit enjoys therein its craftiness and its variety of
disguises, it enjoys also its feeling of security therein it is
precisely by its Protean arts that it is best protected and con-
cealed! Counter to this propensity for appearance, for sim-
plification, for a disguise, for a cloak, in short, for an outside
for every outside is a cloak there operates the sublime
[537}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
tendency of the man of knowledge, which takes, and insists on
taking things profoundly, variously, and thoroughly; as a kind
of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste, which every
courageous thinker will acknowledge in himself, provided, as
it ought to be, that he has sharpened and hardened his eye suf-
ficiently long for introspection, and is accustomed to severe
discipline and even severe words. He will say: "There is some-
thing cruel in the tendency of my spirit" : let the virtuous and
amiable try to convince him that it is not so! In fact, it would
sound nicer, if, instead of our cruelty, perhaps our "extrava-
gant honesty" were talked about, whispered about and glori-
fied we free, very free spirits and some day perhaps such
will actually be our posthumous glory! Meanwhile for
there is plenty of time until then we should be at least in-
clined to deck ourselves out in such florid and fringed moral
verbiage; our whole former work has just made us sick of this
taste and its sprightly exuberance. They are beautiful, glisten-
ing, jingling, festive words: honesty, love of truth, love of
wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, heroism of the truthful
there is something in them that makes one's heart swell with
pride. But we anchorites and marmots have long ago persuaded
ourselves in all the secrecy of an anchorite's conscience, that
this worthy parade of verbiage also belongs to the old false
adornment, frippery, and gold-dust of unconscious human
vanity, and that even under such flattering colour and repaint-
ing, the terrible original text homo natura must again be recog-
nised. In effect, to translate man back again into nature; to
master the many vain and visionary interpretations and sub-
ordinate meanings which have hitherto been scratched and
daubed over the eternal original text, homo natura; to bring it
about that man shall henceforth stand before man as he now,
[538]
OUR VIRTUES
hardened by the discipline of science, stands before the other
forms of nature, with fearless QEdipus-eyes, and stopped
Ulysses-ears, deaf to the enticements of old metaphysical bird-
catchers, who have piped to him far too long: "Thou art more!
thou art higher! thou hast a different origin!" this may be a
strange and foolish task, but that it is a task, who can deny!
Why did we choose it, this foolish task? Or, to put the question
differently: "Why knowledge at all?" Every one will ask us
about this. And thus pressed, we, who have asked ourselves the
question a hundred times, have not found, and cannot find
any better answer. . . .
Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment does that
does not merely "conserve" as the physiologist knows. But
at the bottom of our souls, quite "down below," there is cer-
tainly something unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, of
predetermined decision and answer to predetermined, chosen
questions. In each cardinal problem there speaks an unchange-
able "I am this"; a thinker cannot learn anew about man and
woman, for instance, but can only learn fully he can only
follow to the end what is "fixed* ' about them in himself. Occa-
sionally we find certain solutions of problems which make
strong beliefs for us; perhaps they are henceforth called "con-
victions." Later on one sees in them only footsteps to self-
knowledge, guide-posts to the problem which we ourselves
are or more correctly to the great stupidity which we embody,
our spiritual fate, the unteachable in us, quite "down below."
In view of this liberal compliment which I have just paid
[539 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
myself, permission will perhaps be more readily allowed me
to utter some truths about "woman as she is/' provided that it
is known at the outset how literally they are merely my truths.
232
Woman wishes to be independent, and therefore she begins
to enlighten men about "woman as she is" this is one of the
worst developments of the general uglifying of Europe. For
what must these clumsy attempts of feminine scientifically
and self -exposure bring to light! Woman has so much cause for
shame; in woman there is so much pedantry, superficiality,
schoolmasterliness, petty presumption, unbridledness, and in-
discretion concealed stiidy only woman's behaviour towards
children! which has really been best restrained and domi-
nated hitherto by the fear of man. Alas, if ever the "eternally
tedious in woman" she has plenty of it! is allowed to ven-
ture forth! if she begins radically and on principle to unlearn
her wisdom and art of charming, of playing, of frightening
away sorrow, of alleviating and taking easily; if she forgets
her delicate aptitude for agreeable desires! Female voices are
already raised, which, by Saint Aristophanes! make one afraid:
with medical explicitness it is stated in a threatening man-
ner what woman first and last requires from man. Is it not in
the very worst taste that woman thus sets herself up to be
scientific? Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately been men's
affair, men's gift we remained therewith "among ourselves";
and in the end, in view of all that women write about "woman,"
we may well have considerable doubt as to whether woman
really desires enlightenment about herself and can desire it.
[540}
OUR VIRTU ES
If woman does not thereby seek a new ornament for herself
I believe ornamentation belongs to the eternally feminine?
why, then, she wishes to make herself feared : perhaps she
thereby wishes to get the mastery. But she does not want truth
what does woman care for truth? From the very first noth-
ing is more foreign, more repugnant, or more hostile to woman
than truth her great art is falsehood, her chief concern is
appearance and beauty. Let us confess it, we men: we honour
and love this very art and this very instinct in woman: we who
have the hard task, and for our recreation gladly seek the com-
pany of beings under whose hands, glances, and delicate fol-
lies, our seriousness, our gravity, and profundity appear almost
like follies to us. Finally, I ask the question: Did a woman
herself acknowledge profundity in a woman's mind, or justice
in a woman's heart? And is it not true that on the whole
"woman" has hitherto been most despised by woman herself,
and not at all by us? We men desire that woman should not
continue to compromise herself by enlightening us; just as it
was man's care and the consideration for woman, when the
church decreed : mulier taceat in ecclesia. It was to the benefit
of woman when Napoleon gave the too eloquent Madame de
Stael to understand: mulier taceat in politicis! and in my
opinion, he is a true friend of woman who calls out to women
to-day: mulier taceat de muliere!
233
It betrays corruption of the instincts apart from the fact
that it betrays bad taste when a woman refers to Madame
Roland, or Madame de Stael, or Monsieur George Sand, as
[541}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
though something were proved thereby in javor of " woman
as she is." Among men, these are the three comical women as
they are nothing more! and just the best involuntary coun-
ter-arguments against feminine emancipation and autonomy.
Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook; the terrible
thoughtlessness with which the feeding of the family and the
master of the house is managed! Woman does not understand
what food means, and she insists on being cook! If woman
had been a thinking creature, she should certainly, as cook for
thousands of years, have discovered the most important physi-
ological facts, and should likewise have got possession of the
healing art! Through bad female cooks through the entire
lack of reason in the kitchen the development of mankind
has been longest retarded and most interfered with: even to-
day matters are very little better. A word to High School
girls.
236
There are turns and casts of fancy, there are sentences, little
handfuls of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society
suddenly crystallises itself. Among these is the incidental re-
mark of Madame de Lambert to her son: "Mon ami, ne vous
permettez jamais que des folies, qui vous feront grand plaisir"
the motherliest and wisest remark, by the way, that was ever
addressed to a son.
OUR VIRTUES
236
I have no doubt that every noble woman will oppose what
Dante and Goethe believed about woman the former when
he sang, r f ella guardava suso, ed io in lei," and the latter when
he interpreted it, "the eternally feminine draws us alojt";- for
this is just what she believes of the eternally masculine.
837
Seven Apophthegms for Women
How the longest ennui flees,
When a man comes to our knees!
Age, alas! and science staid,
Furnish even weak virtue aid.
Sombre garb and silence meet:
Dress for every dame discreet.
Whom I thank when in my bliss?
God! and my good tailoress!
Young, a flower-decked cavern home;
Old, a dragon thence doth roam.
Noble title, leg that's fine,
Man as well: Oh, were he mine!
1543]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Speech in brief and sense in mass
Slippery for the jenny-ass!
Women have hitherto been treated by men like birds, which,
losing their way, have come down among them from an eleva-
tion: as something delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet, and
animating but as something also which must be cooped up
to prevent it flying away.
238
To be mistaken in the fundamental problem of "man and
woman," to deny here the profoundest antagonism and the
necessity for an eternally hostile tension, to dream here perhaps
of equal rights, equal training, equal claims and^bligations:
that is a typical sign of shallow-mindedness; and a thinker who
has proved himself shallow at this dangerous spot shallow
in instinct! may generally be regarded as suspicious, nay
more, as betrayed, as discovered; he will probably prove too
"short" for all fundamental questions of life, future as well as
present, and will be unable to descend into any of the depths.
On the other hand, a man who has depth of spirit as well as of
desires, and has also the depth of benevolence which is capable
of severity and harshness, and easily confounded with them,
can only think of woman as Orientals do: he must conceive of
her as a possession, as confinable property, as a being predes-
tined for service and accomplishing her mission therein he
must take his stand in this matter upon the immense rationality
OUR VIRTUE S
of Asia, upon the superiority of the instinct of Asia, as the
Greeks did formerly; those best heirs and scholars of Asia
who, as is well known, with their increasing culture and am-
plitude of power, from Homer to the time of Pericles, became
gradually stricter towards woman, in short, more oriental. How
necessary, how logical, even how humanely desirable this was,
let us consider for ourselves!
The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so
much respect by men as at present this belongs to the tend-
ency and fundamental taste of democracy, in the same way as
disrespectfulness to old age what wonder is it that abuse
should be immediately made of this respect? They want more,
they learn to make claims, the tribute of respect is at last felt
to be well-nigh galling: rivalry for rights, indeed actual strife
itself, would be preferred : in a word, woman is losing modesty.
And let us immediately add that she is also losing taste. She
is unlearning to I ear man: but the woman who "unlearns to
fear" sacrifices her most womanly instincts. That woman should
venture forward when the fear-inspiring quality in man or
more definitely, the man in man is no longer either desired
or fully developed, is reasonable enough and also intelligible
enough; what is more difficult to understand is that precisely
thereby woman deteriorates. This is what is happening now-
adays: let us not deceive ourselves about it! Wherever the in-
dustrial spirit has triumphed over the military and aristocratic
spirit, woman strives for the economic and legal independence
of a clerk: "woman as clerkess" is inscribed on the portal of
the modern society which is in course of formation. While she
[ 645 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
thus appropriates new rights, aspires to be "master/' and in-
scribes "progress" of woman on her flags and banners, the
very opposite realises itself with terrible obviousness: woman
retrogrades. Since the French Revolution the influence of
woman in Europe has declined in proportion as she has in-
creased her rights and claims; and the "emancipation of
woman," in so far as it is desired and demanded by women
themselves (and not only by masculine shallowpates), thus
'proves to be a remarkable symptom of the increased weaken-
ing and deadening of the most womanly instincts. There is
stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, of
which a well-reared woman who is always a sensible woman
might be heartily ashamed. To lose the intuition as to the
ground upon which she can most surely achieve victory; to
neglect exercise in the use of her proper weapons; to let-
herself-go before man, perhaps even "to the book," where
formerly she kept herself in control and in refined, artful
humility; to neutralise with her virtuous audacity man's faith
in a veiled) fundamentally different ideal in woman, something
eternally, necessarily feminine; to emphatically and loqua-
ciously dissuade man from the idea that woman must be pre-
served, cared for, protected, and indulged, like some delicate,
strangely wild, and often pleasant domestic animal; the clumsy
and indignant collection of everything of the nature of servi-
tude and bondage which the position of woman in the hitherto
existing order of society has entailed and still entails (as
though slavery were a counter-argument, and not rather a con-
dition of every higher culture, of every elevation of culture) :
what does all this betoken, if not a disintegration of womanly
instincts, a de-feminising? Certainly, there are enough of idi-
otic friends and corrupters of woman amongst the learned asses
of the masculine sex, who advise woman to de-feminise herself
OUR VIRTUES
in this manner, and to imitate all the stupidities from which
"man" in Europe, European "manliness," suffers, who
would like to lower woman to "general culture," indeed even
to newspaper reading and meddling with politics. Here and
there they wish even to make women into free spirits and lit-
erary workers: as though a woman without piety would not be
something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous to a profound and
godless man; almost everywhere her nerves arc being ruined
by the most morbid and dangerous kind of music (our latest
German music), and she is daily being made more hysterical
and more incapable of fulfilling her first and last function, that
of bearing robust children. They wish to "cultivate" her in
general still more, and intend, as they say, to make the "weaker
sex" strong by culture: as if history did not teach in the most
emphatic manner that the "cultivating" of mankind and his
weakening that is to say, the weakening, dissipating, and
languishing of his force of will have always kept pace with
one another, and that the most powerful and influential women
m the world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon) had just to
thank their force of will and not their schoolmasters! for
their power and ascendency over men. That which inspires
respect in woman, and often enough fear also, is her nature,
which is more "natural" than that of man, her genuine, carni-
vora-like, cunning flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove,
her naivete in egoism, her untrainableness and innate wildness,
the incomprehensibleness, extent and deviation of her desires
and virtues. . . . That which, in spite of fear, excites one's
sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat, "woman," is
that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more necessi-
tous of love and more condemned to disillusionment than any
other creature. Fear and sympathy: it is with these feelings that
man has hitherto stood in the presence of woman, always with
[547}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
one foot already in tragedy, which rends while it delights.
What? And all that is now to be at an end? And the disenchant-
ment of woman is in progress? The tediousness of woman is
slowly evolving? Oh Europe! Europe! We know the horned
animal which was always most attractive to thee, from which
danger is ever again threatening thee! Thy old fable might once
more become "history" an immense stupidity might once
again overmaster thee and carry thee away! And no God con-
cealed beneath it no! only an "idea," a "modern idea"! . . .
8. Peoples and Countries
40
I HEARD, once again for the first time, Richard Wagner's over-
ture to the Master singers: it is a piece of magnificent, gorgeous,
heavy, latter-day art, which has the pride to prc-suppose two
centuries of music as still living, in order that it may be under-
stood: it is an honour to Germans that such a pride did not
miscalculate! What flavours and forces, what seasons and
climes do we not find mingled in it! It impresses us at one time
as ancient, at another time as foreign, bitter, and too modern,
it is as arbitrary as it is pompously traditional, it is not infre-
quently roguish, still oftener rough and coarse it has fire and
courage, and at the same time the loose, dun-coloured skin of
fruits which ripen too late. It flows broad and full : and sud-
denly there is a moment of inexplicable hesitation, like a gap
that opens between cause and effect, an oppression that makes
us dream, almost a nightmare; but already it broadens and
[548}
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
widens anew, the old stream of delight the most manifold
delight, of old and new happiness; including especially the
joy of the artist in himself, which he refuses to conceal, his
astonished, happy cognisance of his mastery of the expedients
here employed, the new, newly acquired, imperfectly tested
expedients of art which he apparently betrays to us. All in all,
however, no beauty, no South, nothing of the delicate southern
clearness of the sky, nothing of grace, no dance, hardly a will
to logic; a certain clumsiness even, which is also emphasised,
as though the artist wished to say to us: "It is part of my
intention"; a cumbersome drapery, something arbitrarily bar-
baric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and venerable
conceits and witticisms; something German in the best and
worst sense of the word, something in the German'style, mani-
fold, formless, and inexhaustible; a certain German potency
and super-plenitude of soul, which is not afraid to hide itself
under the raffinements of decadence which, perhaps, feels
itself most at ease here; a real, genuine token of the German
soul, which is at the same time young and aged, too ripe and
yet still too rich in futurity. This kind of music expresses best
what I think of the Germans: they belong to the day before
yesterday and the day after tomorrow they have as yet no
today.
241
We "good Europeans," we also have hours when we allow
ourselves a warm-hearted patriotism, a plunge and relapse into
old loves and narrow views I have just given an example of
it hours of national excitement, of patriotic anguish, and all
other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment. Duller spirits
may perhaps only get done with what confines its operations
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
in us to hours and plays itself out in hours in a considerable
time: some in half a year, others in half a lifetime, according
to the speed and strength with which they digest and "change
their material." Indeed, I could think of sluggish, hesitating
races, which even in our rapidly moving Europe, would require
half a century ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks
of patriotism and soil-attachment, and return once more to rea-
son, that is to say, to "good Europeanism." And while digress-
ing on this possibility, I happen to become an ear-witness of a
conversation between two old patriots they were evidently
both hard of hearing and consequently spoke all the louder.
tf He has as much, and knows as much, philosophy as a peasant
or a corps-student/' said the one "he is still innocent. But
what does that matter nowadays! It is the age of the masses:
they lie on their belly before everything that is massive. And
so also in politicis. A statesman who rears up for them a new
Tower of Babel, some monstrosity of empire and power, they
call 'great' what does it matter that we more prudent and
conservative ones do not meanwhile give up the old belief that
it is only the great thought that gives greatness to an action or
affair. Supposing a statesman were to bring his people into the
position of being obliged henceforth to practise 'high politics/
for which they were by nature badly endowed and prepared,
so that they would have to sacrifice their old and reliable vir-
tues, out of love to a new and doubtful mediocrity; supposing
a statesman were to condemn his people generally to 'practise
politics/ when they have hitherto had something better to do
and think about, and when in the depths of their souls they
have been unable to free themselves from a prudent loathing
of the restlessness, emptiness, and noisy wranglings of the
essentially politics-practising nations; supposing such a
statesman were to stimulate the slumbering passions and avidi-
[ 550 ]
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
ties of his people, were to make a stigma out of their former
diffidence and delight in aloofness, an offence out of their
exoticism and hidden permanency, were to depreciate their
most radical proclivities, subvert their consciences, make their
minds narrow, and their tastes 'national' what! a statesman
who should do all this, which his people would have to do
penance for throughout their whole future, if they had a
future, such a statesman would be great, would he?" "Un-
doubtedly!" replied the other old patriot vehemently; "other-
wise he could not have done it! It was mad perhaps to wish
such a thing! But perhaps everything great has been just as mad
at its commencement!" "Misuse of words!" cried his inter-
locutor, contradictorily "strong! strong! Strong and mad!
Not great!" The old men had obviously become heated as
they thus shouted their "truths" in each other's faces; but I, in
my happiness and apartness, considered how soon a stronger
one may become master of the strong; and also that there is a
compensation for the intellectual supcrficialising of a nation
namely, in the deepening of another.
Whether v/c call it "civilisation," or "humanising," or
"progress," which now distinguishes the European; whether
we call it simply, without praise or blame, by the political
formula: the democratic movement in Europe behind all the
moral and political foregrounds pointed to by such formulas,
an immense physiological process goes on, which is ever ex-
tending: the process of the assimilation of Europeans; their
increasing detachment from the conditions under which, cli-
matically and hereditarily, united races originate; their increas-
[551]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
ing independence of every definite milieu, that for centuries
would fain inscribe itself with equal demands on soul and
body; that is to say, the slow emergence of an essentially
super-national and nomadic species of man, who possesses,
physiologically speaking, a maximum of the art and power of
adaptation as his typical distinction. This process of the evolv-
ing European, which can be retarded in its tempo by great
relapses, but will perhaps just gain and grow thereby in ve-
hemence and depth the still raging storm and stress of
"national sentiment" pertains to it, and also the anarchism
which is appearing at present this process will probably
arrive at results on which its nai've propagators and panegyrists,
the apostles of "modern ideas," would least care to reckon.
The same new conditions under which on an average a level-
ling and mediocrising of man will take place a useful, indus-
trious, variously serviceable and clever gregarious man are in
the highest degree suitable to give rise to exceptional men of
the most dangerous and attractive qualities. For, while the
capacity for adaptation, which is every day trying changing
conditions, and begins a new work with every generation,
almost with every decade, makes the power} ttlness of the type
impossible; while the collective impression of such future
Europeans will probably be that of numerous, talkative, weak-
willed, and very handy workmen who require a master, a
commander, as they require their daily bread; while, therefore,
the democratising of Europe will tend to the production of a
type prepared for slavery in the most subtle sense of the term:
the strong man will necessarily in individual and exceptional
cases, become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever
been before owing to the unprejudicedness of his schooling,
owing to the immense variety of practice, art, and disguise. I
njeant to say that the democratising of Europe is at the same
[552}
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing of tyrants
taking the word in all its meanings, even in its most spiritual
sense.
I hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly towards
the constellation Hercules: and I hope that the men on this
earth will do like the sun. And we foremost, we good
Europeans!
244
There was a time when it was customary to call Germans
* 'deep" by way of distinction; but now that the most successful
type of new Germanism is covetous of quite other honours, and
perhaps misses "smartness" in all that has depth, it is almost
opportune and patriotic to doubt whether we did not formerly
deceive ourselves with that commendation: in short, whether
German depth is not at bottom something different and worse
and something from which, thank God, we are on the point
of successfully ridding ourselves. Let us try, then, to relearn
with regard to German depth; the only thing necessary
for the purpose is a little vivisection of the German soul.
The German soul is above all manifold, varied in its source,
aggregated and superimposed, rather than actually built: this
is owing to its origin. A German who would embolden himself
to assert: "Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast," would make a
bad guess at the truth, or, more correctly, he would come far
short of the truth about the number of souls. As a people made
up of the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races,
perhaps even with a preponderance of the pre-Aryan element,
[ BBS ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
as the "people of the centre" in every sense of the term, the
Germans are more intangible, more ample, more contradictory,
more unknown, more incalculable, more surprising, and even
more terrifying than other peoples are to themselves: they
escape definition, and are thereby alone the despair of the
French. It is characteristic of the Germans that the question:
"What is German?" never dies out among them. Kotzebue cer-
tainly knew his Germans well enough: "we are known," they
cried jubilantly to him but Sand also thought he knew them.
Jean Paul knew what he was doing when he declared himself
incensed at Fichte's lying but patriotic flatteries and exaggera-
tions, but it is probable that Goethe thought differently about
Germans from Jean Paul, even though he acknowledged him
to be right with regard to Fichte. It is a question what Goethe
really thought about the Germans? But about many things
around him he never spoke explicitly, and all his life he knew
how to keep an astute silence probably he had good reason
for it. It is certain that it was not the "Wars of Independence"
that made him look up more joyfully, any more than it was the
French Revolution, the event on account of which he recon-
structed his "Faust," and indeed the whole problem of "man,"
was the appearance of Napoleon. There are words of Goethe
in which he condemns with impatient severity, as from a for-
eign land, that which Germans take a pride in: he once defined
the famous German turn of mind as "Indulgence towards its
own and others' weaknesses." Was he wrong? it is characteris-
tic of Germans that one is seldom entirely wrong about them.
The German soul has passages and galleries in it, there are
caves, hiding-places, and dungeons therein; its disorder has
much of the charm of the mysterious; the German is well ac-
quainted with the by-paths to chaos. And as everything loves
its symbol, so the German loves the clouds and all that is ob-
[ 554 ]
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
scure, evolving, crepuscular, damp, and shrouded : it seems
him that everything uncertain, undeveloped, self-displacin
and growing is "deep." The German himself does not exh
he is becoming, he is "developing himself." "Development"
therefore the essentially German discovery and hit in the gre
domain of philosophical formulas, a ruling idea, which, t
gether with German beer and German music, is labourir
to Germanise all Europe. Foreigners are astonished and a
tracted by the riddles which the conflicting nature at the bas
of the German soul propounds to them ( riddles which Heg
systematised and Richard Wagner has in the end set to music
"Good-natured and spiteful" such a juxtaposition, prepc
terous in the case of every other people, is unfortunately on
too often justified in Germany: one has only to live for a whi
among Swabians to know this! The clumsiness of the Germ;
scholar and his social distastefulness agree alarmingly we
with his physical rope-dancing and nimble boldness, of whi<
all the Gods have learned to be afraid. If any one wishes to s<
the "German soul" demonstrated ad octdos, let him only loc
at German taste, at German arts and manners: what boorii
indifference to "taste"! How the noblest and the commone
stand there in juxtaposition! How disorderly and how rich
the whole constitution of this soul! The German drags at h
soul, he drags at everything *he experiences. He digests h
events badly; he never gets "done" with them; and Germs
depth is often only a difficult, hesitating "digestion." And ju
as all chronic invalids, all dyspeptics, like what is convenien
so the German loves "frankness" and "honesty"; it is so co\
veritent to be frank and honest! This confidingness, th
complaisance, this showing-the-cards of German honesty,
probably the most dangerous and most successful disgui
which the German is up to nowadays: it is his proper Mephi
[ 555 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
tophelean art; with this he can "still achieve much"! The Ger-
man lets himself go, and thereby gazes with faithful, blue,
empty German eyes and other countries immediately con-
found him with his dressing-gown! I meant to say that, let
"German depth" be what it will among ourselves alone we
perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it we shall do well to
continue henceforth to honour its appearance and good name,
and not barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a people
of depth for Prussian "smartness," and Berlin wit and sand.
It is wise for a people to pose, and let itself be regarded, as
profound, clumsy, good-natured, honest, and foolish: it might
even be profound to do so! Finally, we should do honour to
our name we are not called the "tiusche Volk" (deceptive
people) for nothing. . . .
343
The "good old" time is past, it sang itself out in Mozart
how happy are we that his rococo still speaks to us, that his
"good company," his tender enthusiasm, his childish delight
in the Chinese and its flourishes, his courtesy of heart, his long-
ing for the elegant, the amorous,, the tripping, the tearful, and
his belief in the South, can still appeal to something left in us!
Ah, some time or other it will be over with it! but who can
doubt that it will be over still sooner with the intelligence and
taste for Beethoven! For he was only the last echo of a break
and transition in style, and not, like Mozart, the last echo of a
great European taste which had existed for centuries. Beetho-
ven is the intermediate event between an old mellow soul that
is constantly breaking down, and a future over-young soul that
[ 556 ]
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
is always coming; there is spread over his music the twilight of
eternal loss and eternal extravagant hope, the same light in
which Europe was bathed when it dreamed with Rousseau,
when it danced round the Tree of Liberty of the Revolution,
and finally almost fell down in adoration before Napoleon. But
how rapidly does this very sentiment now pale, how difficult
nowadays is even the apprehension of this sentiment, how
strangely does the language of Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley, and
Byron sound to our ear, in whom collectively the same fate of
Europe was able to speak, which knew how to sing in Beetho-
ven! Whatever German music came afterwards, belongs to
Romanticism, that is to say, to a movement which, historically
considered, was still shorter, more fleeting, and more superfi-
cial than that great interlude, the transition of Europe from
Rousseau to Napoleon, and to the rise of democracy. Weber
but what do we care nowadays for "Freischiitz" and "Oberon"!
Or Marschner's "Hans Heiling" and "Vampyre"! Or even
Wagner's "Tannhauser" ! That is extinct, although not yet for-
gotten music. This whole music of Romanticism, besides, was
not noble enough, was not musical enough, to maintain its
position anywhere but in the theatre and before the masses;
from the beginning it was second-rate music, which was little
thought of by genuine musicians. It was different with Felix
Mendelssohn, that halcyon master, who, on account of his
lighter, purer, happier soul, quickly acquired admiration, and
was equally quickly forgotten: as the beautiful episode of Ger-
man music. But with regard to Robert Schumann, who took
things seriously, and has been taken seriously from the first
he was the last that founded a school, do we not now regard
it as a satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance, that this very Roman-
ticism of Schumann's has been surmounted? Schumann, flee*
ing into the "Saxon Switzerland" of his soul, with a half
[5J7]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Werther-like, half Jean-Paul-like nature (assuredly not like
Beethoven! assuredly not like Byron!) his Manfred music is
a mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of injustice;
Schumann, with his taste, which was fundamentally a petty
taste ( that is to say, a dangerous propensity doubly danger-
ous among Germans for quiet lyricism and intoxication of
the feelings) , going constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and
retiring, a noble weakling who revelled in nothing but anony-
mous joy and sorrow, from the beginning a sort of girl and
noli me tangere this Schumann was already merely a German
event in music, and no longer a European event, as Beethoven
had been, as in a still greater degree Mozart had been; with
Schumann German music was threatened with its greatest
danger, that of losing the voice for the soul of Europe and
sinking into a merely national affair.
246
What a torture are books written in German to a reader who
has a third ear! How indignantly he stands beside the slowly
turning swamp of sounds without tune and rhythms without
dance, which Germans call a "book"! And even the German
who reads books! How lazily, how reluctantly, how badly he
reads! How many Germans know, and consider it obligatory
to know, that there is art in every good sentence art which
must be divined, if the sentence is to be understood! If there
is a misunderstanding about its tempo, for instance, the sen-
tence itself is misunderstood! That one must not be doubtful
about the rhythm-determining syllables, that one should feel
the breaking of the too-rigid symmetry as intentional and as a
charm, that one should lend a fine and patient ear to every
[558]
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
staccato and every rubato, that one should divine the sense in
the sequence of the vowels and diphthongs, and how delicately
and richly they can be tinted and retinted in the order of their
arrangement who among book-reading Germans is com-
plaisant enough to recognise such duties and requirements,
and to listen to so much art and intention in language? After
all, one just "has no ear for it"; and so the most marked con
trasts of style are not heard, and the most delicate artistry i
as it were squandered on the deaf. These were my thoughts
when I noticed how clumsily and unintuitively two masters in
the art of prose-writing have been confounded: one, whose
words drop down hesitatingly and coldly, as from the roof of
a damp cave he counts on their dull sound and echo; and
another who manipulates his language like a flexible sword,
and from his arm down into his toes feels the dangerous bliss
of the quivering, over-sharp blade, which wishes to bite, hiss,
and cut.
947
How little the German style has to do with harmony and
with the ear, is shown by the fact that precisely our good musi-
cians themselves write badly. The German does not read aloud,
he does not read for the ear, but only with his eyes; he has put
his ears away in the drawer for the time. In antiquity when a
man read which was seldom enough he read something to
himself, and in a loud voice; they were surprised when any one
read silently, and sought secretly the reason of it. In a loud
voice: that is to say, with all the swellings, inflections, and
variations of key and changes of tempo, in which the ancient
public world took delight. The laws of the written style were
[559 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
then the same as those of the spoken style; and these laws
depended partly on the surprising development and refined
requirements of the ear and larynx; partly on the strength,
endurance, and power of the ancient lungs. In the ancient
sense, a period is above all a physiological whole, inasmuch
as it is comprised in one breath. Such periods as occur in De-
mosthenes and Cicero, swelling twice and sinking twice, and
all in one breath, were pleasures to the men of antiquity, who
knew by their own schooling how to appreciate the virtue
therein, the rareness and the difficulty in the deliverance of
such a period; ive have really no right to the big period, we
modern men, who are short of breath in every sense! Those
ancients, indeed, were all of them dilettanti in speaking, conse-
quently connoisseurs, consequently critics they thus brought
their orators to the highest pitch; in the same manner as in the
last century, when all Italian ladies and gentlemen knew how
to sing, the virtuosoship of song (and with it also the art of
melody) reached its elevation. In Germany, however (until
quite recently when a kind of platform eloquence began shyly
and awkwardly enough to flutter its young wings) , there was
properly speaking only one kind of public and approximately
artistic discourse that delivered from the pulpit. The
preacher was the only one in Germany who knew the weight
of a syllable or a word, in what manner a sentence strikes,
springs, rushes, flows, and comes to a close; he alone had a
conscience in his ears, often enough a bad conscience: for
reasons are not lacking why proficiency in oratory should be
especially seldom attained by a German, or almost always too
late. The masterpiece of German prose is therefore with good
reason the masterpiece of its greatest preacher: the Bible has
hitherto been the best German book. Compared with Luther's
[660]
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
Bible, almost everything else is merely "literature" some-
thing which has not grown in Germany, and therefore has not
taken and does not take root in German hearts, as the Bible
has done.
248
There are two kinds of geniuses: one which above all engen-
ders and seeks to engender, and another which willingly lets
itself be fructified and brings forth. And similarly, among the
gifted nations, there are those on whom the woman's problem
of pregnancy has devolved, and the secret task of forming,
maturing, and perfecting the Greeks, for instance, were a
nation of this kind, and so are the French; and others which
have to fructify and become the cause of new modes of life
like the Jews, the Romans, and, in all modesty be it asked: like
the Germans? nations tortured and enraptured by unknown
fevers and irresistibly forced out of themselves, amorous and
longing for foreign races ( for such as "let themselves be fructi-
fied"), and withal imperious, like everything conscious of
being full of generative force, and consequently empowered
"by the grace of God." These two kinds of geniuses seek each
other like man and woman; but they also jnisunderstand each
other like man and woman.
240
Every nation has its own "Tartuffery," and calls that its
virtue. One does not know cannot know, the best that is
in one.
[561}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
250
What Europe owes to the Jews? Many things, good and
bad, and above all one thing of the nature both of the best and
the worst: the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and
majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the
whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness
and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring, and
exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life,
in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture,
its evening sky, now glows perhaps glows out. For this, we
artists among the spectators and philosophers, are grateful
to the Jews.
It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and
disturbances in short, slight attacks of stupidity pass over
the spirit of a people that suffers and wants to suffer from
national nervous fever and political ambition: for instance,
among present-day Germans there is alternately the anti-
French folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the anti-Polish folly, the
Christian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic
folly, the Prussian folly (just look at those poor historians, the
Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely bandaged heads),
and whatever else these little obscurations of the German spirit
and conscience may be called. May it be forgiven me that I, too,
when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did
not remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one
else, began to entertain thoughts about matters which did not
[662]
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
concern me the first symptom of political infection. About
the Jews, for instance, listen to the following: I have never
yet met a German who was favourably inclined to the Jews;
and however decided the repudiation of actual anti-Semitism
may be on the part of all prudent and political men, this
prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature
of the sentiment itself, but only against its dangerous excess,
and especially against the distasteful and infamous expression
of this excess of sentiment; on this point we must not deceive
ourselves. That Germany has amply sufficient Jews, that the
German stomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and will
long have difficulty) in disposing only of this quantity of
"Jew" as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the Englishman
have done by means of a stronger digestion: that is the un-
mistakable declaration and language of a general instinct, to
which one must listen and according to which one must act.
"Let no more Jews come in! And shut the doors, especially
towards the East (also towards Austria)!" thus commands
the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncer-
tain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished,
by a stronger race. The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt
the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in
Europe; they know how to succeed even under the worst con-
ditions (in fact better than under favourable ones) , by means
of virtues of some sort, which one would like nowadays to
label as vices owing above all to a resolute faith which does
not need to be ashamed before "modern ideas"; they alter only,
when they do alter, in the same way that the Russian Empire
makes its conquest as an empire that has plenty of time and
is not of yesterday namely, according to the principle, "as
slowly as possible"! A thinker who has the future of Europe
at heart, will, in all his perspectives concerning the future, cal-
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
culate upon the Jews, as he will calculate upon the Russians,
as above all the surest and likeliest factors in the great play and
battle of forces. That which is at present called a * 'nation" in
Europe, and is really rather a res facia than nata ( indeed, some-
times conf usingly similar to a res ficta et picta) , is in every case
something evolving, young, easily displaced, and not yet a race,
much less such a race acre perennius, as the Jews are: such
"nations" should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry
and hostility! It is certain that the Jews, if they desired or if
they were driven to it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish could
now have the ascendency, nay, literally the supremacy, over
Europe; that they are not working and planning for that end is
equally certain. Meanwhile, they rather wish and desire, even
somewhat importunely, to be insorbed and absorbed by Eu-
rope; they long to be finally settled, authorised, and respected
somewhere, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life, to the
" wandering Jew"; and one should certainly take account of
this impulse and tendency, and make advances to it (it possibly
betokens a mitigation of the Jewish instincts) : for which pur-
pose it would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the anti-
Semitic bawlcrs out of the country. One should make advances
with all prudence, and with selection; pretty much as the Eng-
lish nobility do. It stands to reason that the more powerful
and strongly marked types of new Germanism could enter into
relation with the Jews with the least hesitation, for instance,
the nobleman officer from the Prussian border: it would be
interesting in many ways to see whether the genius for money
and patience (and especially some intellect and intellectuality
sadly lacking in the place referred to) could not in addition
be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of commanding
and obeying for both of which the country in question has
now a classic reputation. But here it is expedient to break off
[564]
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
my festal discourse and my sprightly Teutonomania: for I have
already reached my serious topic, the "European problem/' as
I understand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste for Europe.
252
They are not a philosophical race the English: Bacon rep-
resents an attack on the philosophical spirit generally, Hobbes,
Hume, and Locke, an abasement, and a depreciation of the
idea of a "philosopher" for more than a century. It was against
Hume that Kant uprose and raised himself; it was Locke of
whom Schelling rightly said, ff je me prise Locke"; in the strug-
gle against the English mechanical stultification of the world,
Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were of one
accord; the two hostile brother-geniuses in philosophy, who
pushed in different directions towards the opposite poles of
German thought, and thereby wronged each other as only
brothers will do. What is lacking in England, and has always
been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew well enough,
the absurd muddle-head, Carlyle, who sought to conceal under
passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely,
what was lacking in Carlyle real poiver of intellect, real depth
of intellectual perception, in short, philosophy. It is character-
istic of such an unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to Chris-
tianity they need its discipline for "moralising" and human-
ising. The Englishman, more gloomy, sensual, headstrong,
and brutal than the German is for that very reason, as the
baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the more need
of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity itself
has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic
excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an anti-
[ 565]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
dote the finer poison to neutralise the coarser: a finer form
of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered
people, a step towards spiritualisation. The English coarseness
and rustic demureness is still most satisfactorily disguised by
Christian pantomime, and by praying and psalm-singing (or,
more correctly, it is thereby explained and differently ex-
pressed); and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who
formerly learned moral grunting under the influence of
Methodism (and more recently as the "Salvation Army"), a
penitential fit may really be the relatively highest manifesta-
tion of "humanity" to which they can be elevated: so much
may reasonably be admitted. That, however, which offends
even in the humanest Englishman is his lack of music, to
speak figuratively (and also literally) : he has neither rhythm
nor dance in the movements of his soul and body; indeed, not
even the desire for rhythm and dance, for "music." Listen to
him speaking; look at the most beautiful Englishwoman walk-
ing in no country on earth are there more beautiful doves
and swans; finally, listen to them singing! But I ask too
much. . . .
253
There are truths which are best recognised by mediocre
minds, because they are best adapted for them, there are truths
which only possess charms and seductive power for mediocre
spirits: one is pushed to this probably unpleasant conclusion,
now that the influence of respectable but mediocre Englishmen
I may mention Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spen-
cer begins to gain the ascendency in the middle-class region
of European taste. Indeed, who could doubt that it is a useful
[ 566 ]
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
thing for such minds to have the ascendancy for a time? It
would be an error to consider the highly developed and inde-
pendently soaring minds as specially qualified for determining
and collecting many little common facts, and deducing con-
clusions from them; as exceptions, they are rather from the
first in no very favourable position towards those who are "the
rules." After all, they have more to do than merely to perceive:
in effect, they have to be something new, they have to signify
something new, they have to represent new values! The gulf
between knowledge and capacity is perhaps greater, and also
more mysterious, than one thinks: the capable man in the grand
style, the creator, will possibly have to be an ignorant person;
while on the other hand, for scientific discoveries like those of
Darwin, a certain narrowness, aridity, and industrious careful-
ness (in short something English) may not be unfavourable
for arriving at them. Finally, let it not be forgotten that the
English, with their profound mediocrity, brought about once
before a general depression of European intelligence. What is
called "modern ideas/' or "the ideas of the eighteenth cen-
tury," or "French ideas" that, consequently, against which
the German mind rose up with profound disgust is of Eng-
lish origin, there is no doubt about it. The French were only
the apes and actors of these ideas, their best soldiers, and like-
wise, alas! their first and profoundest victims; for owing to
the diabolical Anglomania of "modern ideas," the ame fran*
fais has in the end become so thin and emaciated, that at present
one recalls its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its pro-
found, passionate strength, its inventive excellency, almost
with disbelief. One must, however, maintain this verdict of
historical justice in a determined manner, and defend it against
present prejudices and appearances: the European noblesse
of sentiment, taste, and manners, taking the word in every high
[567}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
sense is the work and invention of Prance; the European
ignobleness, the plebeianism of modern ideas is England's
work and invention.
Even at present France is still the seat cf the most intellectual
and refined culture of Europe, it is still the high school of
taste; but one must know how to find this "France of taste."
lie who belongs to it keeps himself well concealed: they may
be a small number in whom it lives and is embodied, besides
perhaps being men who do not stand upon the strongest legs,
in part fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids, in part persons over-
indulged, over-refined, such as have the ambition to conceal
themselves. They have all something in common: they keep
their ears closed in presence of the delirious folly and noisy
spouting of the democratic bourgeois. In fact, a besotted and
brutalised France at present sprawls in the foreground it
recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste, and at the
same time of self-admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo.
There is also something else common to them: a predilection
to resist intellectual Germanising and a still greater inabil-
ity to do so! In this France of intellect, which is also a France
of pessimism, Schopenhauer has perhaps become more at
home, and more indigenous than he has ever been in Ger-
many; not to speak of Heinrich Heine, who has long ago been
re-incarnated in the more refined and fastidious lyrists of Paris;
or of Hegel, who at present, in the form of Taine the first of
living historians exercises an almost tyrannical influence. As
regards Richard Wagner, however, the more French music
learns to adapt itself to the actual needs of the ame moderne,
[568 ]
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
the more will it "Wagnerise"; one can safely predict that be-
forehand, it is already taking place sufficiently! There are,
however, three things which the French can still boast of with
pride as their heritage and possession, and as indelible tokens
of their ancient intellectual superiority in Europe, in spite of
all voluntary or involuntary Germanising and vulgarising of
taste. Firstly, the capacity for artistic emotion, for devotion
to "form," for which the expression, Van pour I'art, along
with numerous others, has been invented: such capacity has
not been lacking in France for three centuries; and owing to
its reverence for the "small number/' it has again and again
made a sort of chamber music of literature possible, which is
sought for in vain elsewhere in Europe. The second thing
whereby the French can lay claim to a superiority over Europe
is their ancient, many-sided, moralistic culture, owing to which
one finds on an average, even in the petty romanciers of the
newspapers and chance boulevard iers de Paris, a psychological
sensitiveness and curiosity, of which, for example, one has no
conception (to say nothing of the thing itself!) in Germany.
The Germans lack a couple of centuries of the moralistic work
requisite thereto, which, as we have said, France has not
grudged: those who call the Germans "naive" on that account
give them commendation for a defect. (As the opposite of the
German inexperience and innocence in voluptate psychologica,
which is not too remotely associated with the tediousness of
German intercourse, and as the most successful expression of
genuine French curiosity and inventive talent in this domain
of delicate thrills, Henri Beyle may be noted; that remarkable
anticipatory and forerunning man, who, with a Napoleonic
tempo, traversed his Europe, in fact, several centuries of the
European soul, as a surveyor and discoverer thereof: it has
required two generations to overtake him one way or other, to
[ 500 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
divine long afterwards some of the riddles that perplexed and
enraptured him this strange Epicurean and man of interro-
gation, the last great psychologist of France) . There is yet a
third claim to superiority: in the French character there is a
successful half-way synthesis of the North and South, which
makes them comprehend many things, and enjoins upon them
other things, which an Englishman can never comprehend.
Their temperament, turned alternately to and from the South,
in which from time to time the Provencal and Ligurian blood
froths over, preserves them from the dreadful, northern gray-
in-gray, from sunless conceptual-spectrism and from poverty
of blood our German infirmity of taste, for the excessive
prevalence of which at the present moment, blood and iron,
that is to say "high politics," has with great resolution been
prescribed (according to a dangerous healing art, which bids
me wait and wait, but not yet hope). There is also still in
France a pre-understanding and ready welcome for those rarer
and rarely gratified men, who are too comprehensive to find
satisfaction in any kind of fatherlandism, and know how to
love the South when in the North and the North when in the
South the born Midlanders, the "good Europeans." For them
Bizet has made music, this latest genius, who has seen a new
beauty and seduction, who has discovered a piece of the
South in music.
I hold that many precautions should be taken against Ger-
man music. Suppose a person loves the South as I love it as
a great school of recovery for the most spiritual and the most
sensuous ills, as a boundless solar profusion and effulgence
which o'erspreads a sovereign existence believing in itself
[ 570 ]
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
well, such a person will learn to be somewhat on his guard
against German music, because, in injuring his taste anew, it
will also injure his health anew. Such a Southerner, a South-
erner not by origin but by belief, if he should dream of the
future of music, must also dream of it being freed from the
influence of the North, and must have in his ears the prelude
to a deeper, mightier, and perhaps more perverse and myste-
rious music, a super-German music, which does not fade, pale,
and die away, as all German music does, at the sight of the
blue, wanton sea and the Mediterranean clearness of sky a
super-European music, which holds its own even in presence
of the brown sunsets of the desert, whose soul is akin to the
palm-tree, and can be at home and can roam with big, beautiful,
lonely beasts of prey. ... I could imagine a music of which
the rarest charm would be that it knew nothing more of good
and evil; only that here and there perhaps some sailor's home-
sickness, some golden shadows and tender weaknesses might
sweep lightly over it; an art which, from the far distance,
would see the colours of a sinking and almost incomprehen-
sible moral world fleeing towards it, and would be hospitable
enough and profound enough to receive such belated fugitives.
256
Owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-
craze has induced and still induces among the nations of
Europe, owing also to the short-sighted and hasty-handed poli-
ticians, who with the help of this craze, are at present in power,
and do not suspect to what extent the disintegrating policy
they pursue must necessarily be only an interlude policy
owing to all this, and much else that is altogether unmention-
[671]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
able at present, the most unmistakable signs that Europe wishes
to be one, are now overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely misin-
terpreted. With all the more profound and large-minded men
of this century, the real general tendency of the mysterious
labour of their souls was to prepare the way for that new
synthesis, and tentatively to anticipate the European of the
future; only in their simulations, or in their weaker moments,
in old age perhaps, did they belong to the "fatherlands"
they only rested from themselves when they became "patriots."
I think of such men as Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal,
Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer: it must not be taken amiss if
I also count Richard Wagner among them, about whom one
must not let oneself be deceived by his own misunderstandings
(geniuses like him have seldom the right to understand them-
selves) , still less, of course, by the unseemly noise with which
he is now resisted and opposed in France: the fact remains,
nevertheless, that Richard Wagner and the later French
Romanticism of the forties, are most closely and intimately re-
lated to one another. They are akin, fundamentally akin, in all
the heights and depths of their requirements; it is Europe, the
one Europe, whose soul presses urgently and longingly, out-
wards and upwards, in their multifarious and boisterous art
whither? into a new light? towards a new sun? But who would
attempt to express accurately what all these masters of new
modes of speech could not express distinctly? It is certain that
the same storm and stress tormented them, that they sought in
the same manner, these last great seekers! All of them steeped
in literature to their eyes and ears the first artists of universal
literary culture for the most part even themselves writers,
poets, intermediaries and blenders of the arts and the senses
(Wagner, as musician is reckoned among painters, as poet
among musicians, as artist generally among actors ) ; all of them
[578]
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
fanatics for expression "at any cost" I specially mention
Delacroix, the nearest related to Wagner; all of them great
discoverers in the realm of the sublime, also of the loathsome
and dreadful, still greater discoverers in effect, in display, in
the art of the show-shop; all of them talented far beyond their
genius, out and out virtuosi, with mysterious accesses to all
that seduces, allures, constrains, and upsets; born enemies of
logic and of the straight line, hankering after the strange, the
exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, and the self-contradictory;
as men, Tantaluses of the will, plebeian parvenus, who knew
themselves to be incapable of a noble tempo or of a lento in life
and action think of Balzac, for instance, unrestrained
workers, almost destroying themselves by work; antinomians
and rebels in manners, ambitious and insatiable, without
equilibrium and enjoyment; all of them finally shattering arid
sinking down at the Christian cross (and with right and reason,
for who of them would have been sufficiently profound and
sufficiently original for an Antichristian philosophy?); on
the whole, a boldly daring, splendidly overbearing, high-
flying, and aloft-up-dragging class of higher men, who had
first to teach their century and it is the century of the masses
the conception "higher man." . . . Let the German friends
of Richard Wagner advise together as to whether there is any-
thing purely German in the Wagnerian art, or whether its dis-
tinction docs not consist precisely in coming from super-
German sources and impulses: in which connection it may not
be underrated how indispensable Paris was to the development
of his type, which the strength of his instincts made him long
to visit at the most decisive time and how the whole style of
his proceedings, of his self-apostolate, could only perfect itself
in sight of the French socialistic original. On a more subtle
comparison it will perhaps be found, to the honour of Richard
[673}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Wagner's German nature, that he has acted in everything with
more strength, daring, severity, and elevation than a nine-
teenth-century Frenchman could have done owing to the
circumstance that we Germans are as yet nearer to barbarism
than the French; perhaps even the most remarkable creation
of Richard Wagner is not only at present, but for ever inac-
cessible, incomprehensible, and inimitable to the whole latter-
day Latin race: the figure of Siegfried, that very free man, who
is probably far too free, too hard, too cheerful, too healthy, too
anti-Catholic for the taste of old and mellow civilised nations.
He may even have been a sin against Romanticism, this anti-
Latin Siegfried: well, Wagner atoned amply for this sin in his
old sad days, when anticipating a taste which has meanwhile
passed into politics he began, with the religious vehemence
peculiar to him, to preach, at least, the way to Rome, if not to
walk therein. That these last words may opt be misunder-
stood, I will call to my aid a few powerful rhymes, which will
even betray to less delicate ears what I mean what I mean
counter /<7the "last Wagner" and his Parsifal music:
Is this our mode?
From German heart came this vexed ululating?
From German body, this self-lacerating?
Is ours this priestly hand-dilation,
This incense-fuming exaltation?
Is ours this faltering, falling, shambling,
This quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling?
This sly nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing,
This wholly false enraptured heaven-o'erspringing?
Is this our mode?
Think well! ye still wait for admission
For what ye hear is Rome Rome's faith by intuition!
[674]
WHAT IS NOBLE?
9. What Is Noble?
EVERY elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the work
of an aristocratic society and so it will always be a society be-
lieving in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of
worth among human beings, and requiring slavery in some
form or other. Without the pathos of distance, such as grows
out of the incarnated difference of classes, out of the constant
outlooking and downlooking of the ruling caste on subordi-
nates and instruments, and out of their equally constant
practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and
keeping at a distance that other more mysterious pathos could
never have arisen, the longing for an ever new widening of
distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher,
rarer, further, more extended, more comprehensive states, in
short, just the elevation of the type "man," the continued "self-
surmounting of man," to use a moral formula in a supermoral
sense. To be sure, one must not resign oneself to any humani-
tarian illusions about the history of the origin of an aristocratic
society (that is to say, of the preliminary condition for the
elevation of the type "man"): the truth is hard. Let us
acknowledge unprejudicedly how every higher civilisation
hitherto has originated! Men with a still natural nature, bar-
barians in every terrible sense of the word, men of prey, still
in possession of unbroken strength of will and desire for
power, threw themselves upon weaker, more moral, more
peaceful races (perhaps trading or cattle-rearing communi-
ties) , or upon old mellow civilisations in which the final vital
1375]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
force was flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and de-
pravity. At the commencement, the noble caste was always the
barbarian caste: their superiority did not consist first of all in
their physical, but in their psychical power they were more
complete men (which at every point also implies the same as
"more complete beasts").
Corruption as the indication that anarchy threatens to
break out among the instincts, and that the foundation of the
emotions, called "life," is convulsed is something radically
different according to the organisation in which it manifests,
itself. When, for instance, an aristocracy like that of France at
the beginning of the Revolution, flung away its privileges with
sublime disgust and sacrificed itself to an excess of its moral
sentiments, it was corruption: it was really only the closing
act of the corruption which had existed for centuries, by virtue
of which that aristocracy had abdicated step by step its lordly
prerogatives and lowered itself to a junction of royalty (in the
end even to its decoration and parade-dress). The essential
thing, however, in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it
should not regard itself as a function either of the kingship or
the commonwealth, but as the significance and highest justi-
fication thereof that it should therefore accept with a good
conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, for its
sake, must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to
slaves and instruments. Its fundamental belief must be pre-
cisely that society is not allowed to exist for its own sake, but
only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a
select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their
[576]
WHAT IS NOBLE?
higher duties, and in general to a higher existence: like those
sun-seeking climbing plants in Java they arc called Sipo
Matador, which encircle an oak so long and so often with
their arms, until at last, high above it, but supported by it, they
can unfold their tops in the open light, and exhibit their happi-
ness.
SoO
To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from ex-
ploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this
may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among in-
dividuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely,
the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and
degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organisa-
tion) . As soon, however, as one wished* to take this principle
more generally, and if possible even as the fundamental prin-
ciple of society, it would immediately disclose what it really
is namely, a Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolu-
tion and decay. Here one must think profoundly to the very
basis and resist all sentimental weakfless: life itself is
essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and
weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, in-
corporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;
but why should one for ever use precisely these words on
which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even
the organisation within which, as was previously supposed,
the individuals treat each other as equal it takes place in
every healthy aristocracy must itself, if it be a living and not
a dying organisation, do all that towards other bodies, which
the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other: it
will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour
[677]
BEYOND GOOD AND IiVIL
to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendency
not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives,
and because life is precisely Will to Power. On no point, how-
ever, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwill-
ing to be corrected than on this matter; people now rave
everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming
conditions of society in which "the exploiting character" is to
be absent: that sounds to my ears as if they promised to
invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic
functions. "Exploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or
imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the nature of the
living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence
of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to
Life. Granting that as a theory this is a novelty as a reality
it is the fundamental jact of all history: let us be so far honest
towards ourselves!
260
In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities
which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I
found certain traits recurring regularly together, and connected
with one another, until finally two primary types revealed
themselves to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light.
There is master-morality and slave-morality; I would at once
add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilisations, there
are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities;
but one finds still of tener the confusion and mutual misunder-
standing of them, indeed, sometimes their close juxtaposition
even in the same man, within one soul. The distinctions of
moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly
[578]
WHAT IS NOBLE?
conscious of being different from the ruled or among the
ruled class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts. In the first
case, when it is the rulers who determine the conception
"good," it is the exalted, proud disposition which is regarded
as the distinguishing feature, and that which determines the
order of rank. The noble type of man separates from himself
the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposi-
tion displays itself: he despises them. Let it at once be noted
that in this first kind of morality the antithesis "good" and
"bad" means practically the same as "noble" and "despicable";
the antithesis "good" and "evil" is of a different origin. The
cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking
merely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the dis-
trustful, with their constrained glances, the self-abasing, the
dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, the mendi-
cant flatterers, and above all the liars: it is a fundamental
belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful.
"We truthful ones" the nobility in ancient Greece called
themselves. It is obvious that everywhere the designations of
moral value were at first applied to men, and were only deriva-
tively and at a later period applied to actions; it is a gross mis-
take, therefore, when historians of morals start questions like,
"Why have sympathetic actions been praised?" The noble type
of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not
require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: "What is
injurious to me is injurious in itself"; he knows that it is he
himself only who confers honour on things; he is a creator of
values. He honours whatever he recognises in himself: such
morality is self-glorification. In the foreground there is the
feeling of plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the
happiness of high tension, the consciousness of a wealth which
would fain give and bestow: the noble man also helps the
[579]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
unfortunate, but not or scarcely out of pity, but rather from
an impulse generated by the super-abundance of power. The
noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who
has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to
keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to
severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe
and hard. "Wotan placed a hard heart in my breast," says an
old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly expressed from the
soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud of
not being made for sympathy; the hero of the Saga therefore
adds warningly: "He who has not a hard heart when young,
will never have one." The noble and brave who think thus are
the furthest removed from the morality which sees precisely
in sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, or in destn-
teressement, the characteristic of the moral; faith in oneself,
pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards "selfless-
ness," belong as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless
scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the "warm
heart." It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is
their art, their domain for invention. The profound reverence
for age and for tradition all law rests on this double rever-
ence, the belief and prejudice in favour of ancestors and
unfavourable to newcomers, is typical in the morality of the
powerful; and if, reversely, men of "modern ideas" believe
almost instinctively in "progress" and the "future," and are
more and more lacking in respect for old age, the ignoble
origin of these "ideas" has complacently betrayed itself
thereby. A morality of the ruling class, however, is more
especially foreign and irritating to present-day taste in the
sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one's
equals; that one may act towards beings of a lower rank, to-
wards all that is foreign, just as seems good to one, or "as the
[580]
WHAT IS NOBLE?
heart desires," and in any case "beyond good and evil": it is
here that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a place.
The ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and
prolonged revenge both only within the circle of equals,
artfulness in retaliation, raflinement of the idea in friendship,
a certain necessity to have enemies (as outlets for the emotions
of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance in fact, in order to be
a good friend) : all these are typical characteristics of the noble
morality, which, as has been pointed out, is not the morality of
"modern ideas," and is therefore at present difficult to realise,
and also to unearth and disclose. It is otherwise with the
second type of morality, slave-morality. Supposing that Sie
abused, the oppressed, the suffering, the unemancipated,
the weary, and those uncertain of themselves, should moralise,
what will be the common element in their moral estimates?
Probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situa-
tion of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of
man, together with his situation. The slave has an unfavour-
able eye for the virtues of the powerful; he has a scepticism
and distrust, a refinement of distrust of everything "good"
that is there honoured he would fain persuade himself that
the very happiness there is not genuine. On the other hand,
those qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of suf-
ferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light; it
is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart,
patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honour;
for here these are the most useful qualities, and almost the only
means of supporting the burden of existence. Slave-morality is
essentially the morality of utility. Here is the seat of the origin
of the famous antithesis "good" and "evil" : power and dan-
gerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain dreadful-
ness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of being
[581]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the "evil"
man arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely
the "good" man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while
the bad man is regarded as the despicable being. The contrast
attains its maximum when, in accordance with the logical con-
sequences of slave-morality, a shade of depreciation it may
be slight and well-intentioned at last attaches itself to the
1'good" man of this morality; because, according to the servile
mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the safe
man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little
stupid, tin bonhomme. Everywhere that slave-morality gains
tiff ascendency, language shows a tendency to approximate the
significations of the words "good" and "stupid." At last
fundamental difference: the desire for freedom, the instinct
for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty
belong as necessarily to slave-morals and morality, as artifice
and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular
symptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating.
Hence we can understand without further detail why love
as a passion it is our European specialty must absolutely
be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the
Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the
et gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes
itself.
261
Vanity is one of the things which are perhaps most difficult
for a noble man to understand: he will be tempted to deny
it, where another kind of man thinks he sees it self -evidently.
The problem for him is to represent to his mind beings who
seek to arouse a good opinion of themselves which they them-
WHAT IS NOBLE?
selves do not possess and consequently also do not "deserve/
and who yet believe in this good opinion afterwards. This
seems to him on the one hand such bad taste and so self -disre-
spectful, and on the other hand so grotesquely unreasonable,
that he would like to consider vanity an exception, and is
doubtful about it in most cases when it is spoken of. He will
say, for instance: "I may be mistaken about my value, and on
the other hand may nevertheless demand that my value should
be acknowledged by others precisely as I rate it: that, how-
ever, is not vanity (but self-conceit, or, in most cases, that
which is called 'humility,' and also 'modesty')/' Or he will
even say: 'Tor many reasons I can delight in the good opinion
of others, perhaps because I love and honour them, and rejoice
in all their joys, perhaps also because their good opinion en-
dorses and strengthens my belief in my own good opinion,
perhaps because the good opinion of others, even in cases
where I do not share it, is useful to me, or gives promise of
usefulness: all this, however, is not vanity." The man of
noble character must first bring it home forcibly to his mind,
especially with the aid of history, that, from time immemorial,
in all social strata in any v/ay dependent, the ordinary man ivas
only that which he passed for: not being at all accustomed to
fix values, he did not assign even to himself any other value
than that which his master assigned to him (it is the peculiar
right of masters to create values). It may be looked upon as
the result of an extraordinary atavism, that the ordinary man,
even at present, is still always waiting for an opinion about
himself, and then instinctively submitting himself to it; yet
by no means only to a "good" opinion, but also to a bad and
unjust one (think, for instance, of the greater part of the self-
appreciations and self-depreciations which believing women
learn from their confessors, and which in general the believing
[583]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Christian learns from his Church) . In fact, conformably to the
slow rise of the democratic social order (and its cause, the
blending of the blood of masters and slaves), the originally
noble and rare impulse of the masters to assign a value to them-
selves and to "think well" of themselves, will now be more
and more encouraged and extended; but it has at all times an
older, ampler, and more radically ingrained propensity op-
posed to it and in the phenomenon of " vanity" this older
propensity overmasters the younger. The vain person rejoices
over every good opinion which he hears about himself (quite
apart from the point of view of its usefulness, and equally re-
gflclless of its truth or falsehood ), just as he suffers from every
bad opinion: for he subjects himself to both, he feels himself
subjected to both, by that oldest instinct of subjection which
breaks forth in him. It is "the slave" in the vain man's
blood, the remains of the slave's craftiness and how much
of the "slave" is still left in woman, for instance! which
seeks to j educe to good opinions of itself; it is the slave, too,
v.iio immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before
these opinions, as though he had not called them forth. And
to repeat it again: vanity is an atavism.
262
A species originates, and a type becomes established and
strong in the long struggle with essentially constant unfavour-
able conditions. On the other hand, it is known by the experi-
ence of breeders that species which receive superabundant
nourishment, and in general a surplus of protection and care,
immediately tend in the most marked way to develop varia-
tions, and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities (also in
[584]
WHAT IS NOBLE?
monstrous vices) . Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth,
say an ancient Greek polis, or Venice, as a voluntary or invol-
untary contrivance for the purpose of rearing human beings;
there are there men beside one another, thrown upon their
own resources, who want to make their species prevail, chieily
because they must prevail, or else run the terrible danger of
being exterminated. The favour, the superabundance, the pro-
tection are there lacking under which variations are fostered;
the species needs itself as species, as something which, pre-
cisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity, and simplicity of
structure, can in general prevail and make itself permanent in
constant struggle with its neighbours, or with rebellious or
rebellion-threatening vassals. The most varied experience
teaches it what are the qualities to which it principally owes the
fact that it still exists, in spite of all gods and men, and has
hitherto been victorious: these qualities it calls virtues, and
the$e virtues alone it develops to maturity. It does so with
severity, indeed it desires severity; every aristocratic morality is
intolerant in the education of youth, in the control of women,
in the marriage customs, in the relations of old and young, in
the penal laws (which have an eye only for the degenerating) :
it counts intolerance itself among the virtues, under the name
of "justice/' A type with few, but very marked features, a
species of severe, warlike, wisely silent, reserved and reticent
men (and as such, with the most delicate sensibility for the
charm and nuances of society) is thus established, unaffected
by the vicissitudes of generations; the constant struggle with
uniform unfavourable conditions is, as already remarked, the
cause of a type becoming stable and hard. Finally, however, a
happy state of things results, the enormous tension is relaxed;
there are perhaps no more enemies among the neighbouring
peoples, and the means of life, even of the enjoyment of life,
[585}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
are present in superabundance. With one stroke the bond and
constraint of the old discipline severs: it is no longer regarded
as necessary, as a condition of existence if it would continue,
it can only do so as a form of luxury, as an archaising taste.
Variations, whether they be deviations (into the higher, finer,
and rare) , or deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenly
on the scene in the greatest exuberance and splendour; the in-
dividual dares to be individual and detach himself. At this
turning-point of history there manifest themselves, side by
side, and often mixed and entangled together, a magnificent,
manifold, virgin-forest-like up-growth and up-striving, a kind
of tropical tempo in the rivalry of growth, and an extraordi-
nary decay and self-destruction, owing to the savagely opposing
and seemingly exploding egoisms, which strive with one an-
other "for sun and light/' and can no longer assign any limit,
restraint, or forbearance for themselves by means of the
hitherto existing morality. It was this morality itself which
piled up the strength so enormously, which bent the bow in
so threatening a manner: it is now "out of date," it is get-
ting "out of date." The dangerous and disquieting point has
been reached when the greater, more manifold, more compre-
hensive life is lived beyond the old morality; the "individual"
stands out, and is obliged to have recourse to his own law-
giving, his own arts and artifices for self-preservation, self-
devation, and self -deliverance. Nothing but new "Whys,"
nothing but new "Hows," no common formulas any longer,
misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other,
decay, deterioration, and the loftiest desires frightfully en-
angled, the genius of the race overflowing from all the cornu-
:opias of good and bad, a portentous simultaneousness of
Spring and Autumn, full of new charms and mysteries peculiar
[580}
WHAT IS NOBLE?
to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied corruption. Dan-
ger is again present, the mother of morality, great danger; this
time shifted into the individual, into the neighbour and friend,
into the street, into their own child, into their own heart, into
all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and
volitions. What will the moral philosophers who appear at
this time have to preach? They discover, these sharp onlookers
and loafers, that the end is quickly approaching, that every-
thing around them decays and produces decay, that nothing
will endure until the day after tomorrow, except one species
of man, the incurably mediocre. The mediocre alone have a
prospect of continuing and propagating themselves they will
be the men of the future, the sole survivors; "be like them!
become mediocre!" is now the only morality which has still a
significance, which still obtains a hearing. But it is difficult
to preach this morality of mediocrity! it can never avow what
it is and what it desires! it has to talk of moderation and dignity
and duty and brotherly love it will have difficulty in conceal-
ing its irony!
263
There is an instinct for rank, which more than anything else
is already the sign of a high rank; there is a delight in the
nuances of reverence which leads one to infer noble origin and
habits. The refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are
put to a perilous test when something passes by that is of the
highest rank, but is not yet protected by the awe of authority
from obtrusive touches and incivilities: something that goes its
way like a living touchstone, undistinguished, undiscovered,
[587}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
nd tentative, perhaps voluntarily veiled and disguised. He
/hose task and practice it is to investigate souls, will avail him-
elf of many varieties of this very art to determine the ultimate
alue of a soul, the unalterable, innate order of rank to which
i: belongs: he will test it by its instinct for reverence. Differ-
nee engendre haine: the vulgarity of many a nature spurts up
uddenly like dirty water, when any holy vessel, any jewel from
losed shrines, any book bearing the marks of great destiny, is
rought before it; while on the other hand, there is an involun-
iry silence, a hesitation of the eye, a cessation of all gestures,
y which it is indicated that a soul feels the nearness of what is
worthiest of respect. The way in which, on the whole, the
^verence for the Bible has hitherto been maintained in Europe,
\ perhaps the best example of discipline and refinement of
lanners which Europe owes to Christianity: books of such
rofoundness and supreme significance require for their pro-
xtion an external tyranny of authority, in order to acquire the
eriod of thousands of years which is necessary to exhaust and
nriddle them. Much has been achieved when the sentiment
as been at last instilled into the masses (the shallow-pates and
le boobies of. every kind) that they are not allowed to touch
verything, that there are holy experiences before which they
lust take off their shoes and keep away the unclean hand it
; almost their highest advance towards humanity. On the con-
ary, in the so-called cultured classes, the believers in "modern
leas," nothing is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame,
le easy insolence of eye and hand with which they touch,
iste, and finger everything; and it is possible that even yet
lere is more relative nobility of taste, and more tact for rever-
nce among the people, among the lower classes of the people,
specially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading
emimonde of intellect, the cultured class.
[588]
WHAT IS NOBLE?
264
It cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his ancestors
have preferably and most constantly done:- whether they were
perhaps diligent economisers attached to a desk and a cash-box,
jjiodest and citizen-like in their desires, modest also in their
virtues; or whether they were accustomed to commanding from
morning till night, fond of rude pleasures and probably of
still ruder duties and responsibilities; or whether, finally, at
one time or another, they have sacrificed old privileges of birth
and possession, in order to live wholly for their faith for
their "God," as men of an inexorable and sensitive con-
science, which blushes at every compromise. It is quite im-
possible for a man not to have the qualities and predilections
of his parents and ancestors in his constitution, whatever
appearances may suggest to the contrary. This is the problem
of race. Granted that one knows something of the parents, it is
admissible to draw a conclusion about the child: any kind of
offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy
self-vaunting the three things which together have consti-
tuted the genuine plebeian type in all times such must pass
over to the child, as surely as bad blood; and with the help of
the best education and culture one will only succeed in de-
ceiving with regard to such heredity. And what else does
education and culture try to do nowadays! In our very demo-
cratic, or rather, very plebeian age, "education" and "culture"
must be essentially the art of deceiving deceiving with re-
gard to origin, with regard to the inherited plebeianism in
body and soul. An educator who nowadays preached truthful-
ness above everything else, and called out constantly to his
pupils: "Be true! Be natural! Show yourselves as you are!"
1589']
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time
to have recourse to the jurca of Horace, naturam expellere:
with what results? "Plebeianism" usque recurret*
At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I submit that egoism
belongs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean the unalterable
relief that to a being such as "we/' other beings must naturally
DC in subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. The noble
>oul accepts the fact of his egoism without question, and also
vithout consciousness of harshness, constraint, or arbitrariness
herein, but rather as something that may have its basis in the
Drimary law of things: if he sought a designation for it he
vould say: "It is justice itself/ 1 He acknowledges under cer-
ain circumstances, which made him hesitate at first, that there
ire other equally privileged ones; as soon as he has settled this
juestion of rank, he moves among those equals and equally
privileged ones with the same assurance, as regards modesty
ind delicate respect, which he enjoys in intercourse with him-
elf in accordance with an innate heavenly mechanism which
Jl the stars understand. It is an additional instance of his
egoism, this artfulness and self -limitation in intercourse with
lis equals every star is a similar egoist; he honours himself
n them, and in the rights which he concedes to them, he has
10 doubt that the exchange of honours and rights, as the
*ssence of all intercourse, belongs also to the natural condition
)f things. The noble soul gives as he takes, prompted by the
>assionate and sensitive instinct of requital, which is at the
' Horace's "Epistles," I. x. 24.
[590]
WHAT IS NOB LE ?
root of his nature. The notion of "favour" has, inter pares,
neither significance nor good repute; there may be a sublime
way of letting gifts as it were light upon one from above, and
of drinking them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those arts
and displays the noble soul has no aptitude. His egoism hinders
him here: in general, he looks "aloft" unwillingly he looks
either forward, horizontally and deliberately, or downwards
he knoivs that he is on a height.
26G
"One can only truly esteem him who does not look out for
himself." Goethe to Rath Schlosscr.
267
The Chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their
children: "Siao-sin" ("make thy heart small"). This is the
essentially fundamental tendency in latter-day civilisations. I
have no doubt that an ancient Greek, also, would first .of all
remark the self-dwarfing in us Europeans of today in this
respect alone we should immediately be "distasteful" to him.
268
What, after all, is ignobleness? Words are vocal symbols
for ideas; ideas, however, are more or less definite mental sym-
bols for frequently returning and concurring sensations, for
groups of sensations. It is not sufficient to use the same words
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
in o/der to understand one another: we must also employ the
same words for the same kind of internal experiences, we must
in the end have experiences in common. On this account the
people of one nation understand one another better than those
belonging to different nations, even when they use the same
language; or rather, when people have lived long together
under similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, require-
ment, toil) there originates therefrom an entity that "under-
stands itself" namely, a nation. In all souls a like number of
frequently recurring experiences have gained the upper hand
3ver those occurring more rarely: about these matters people
understand one another rapidly and always more rapidly the
history of language is the history of a process of abbreviation;
3n the basis of this quick comprehension people always unite
:loser and closer. The greater the danger, the greater is the
need of agreeing quickly and readily about what is necessary;
lot to misunderstand one another in danger that is what can-
lot at all be dispensed with in intercourse. Also in all loves and
friendships one has the experience that nothing of the kind
rontinues when the discovery has been made that in using the
>ame words, one of the two parties has feelings, thoughts, in-
uitions, wishes, or fears different from those of the other.
(The fear of the "eternal misunderstanding" : that is the good
genius which so often keeps persons of different sexes from
:oo hasty attachments, to which sense and heart prompt them
and not some Schopenhauerian "genius of the species"!)
Whichever groups of sensations within a soul awaken most
eadily, begin to speak, and give the word of command these
decide as to the general order of rank of its values, and deter-
mine ultimately its list of desirable things. A man's estimates
)f value betray something of the structure of his soul, and
therein it sees its conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Sup-
f 592 ^
WHAT IS NOBLE?
posing now that necessity has from all time drawn together
only such men as could express similar requirements and
similar experiences by similar symbols, it results on the whole
that the easy communic ability of need, which implies ulti-
mately the undergoing only of average and common experi-
ences, must have been the most potent of all the forces which
have hitherto operated upon mankind. The more similar, the
more ordinary people, have always had and are still having the
advantage; the more select, more refined, more unique, and
difficulty comprehensible, are liable to stand alone; they suc-
cumb to accidents in their isolation, and seldom propagate
themselves. One must appeal to immense opposing forces, in
order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural progressus in
simile, the evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the
average, the gregarious to the ignoble!
269
The more a psychologist a born, art unavoidable psychol-
ogist and soul-diviner turns his attention to the more select
cases and individuals, the greater is his danger of being suffo-
cated by sympathy: he needs sternness and cheerfulness more
than any other man. For the corruption, the ruination of higher
men, of the more unusually constituted souls, is in fact, the
rule: it is dreadful to have such a rule always before one's eyes.
The manifold torment of the psychologist who has discovered
this ruination, who discovers once, and then discovers almost
repeatedly throughout all history, this universal inner "desper-
ateness" of higher men, this eternal "too late!" in every sense
may perhaps one day be the cause of his turning with bitter-
ness against his own lot, and of his making an attempt at self-
[593]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
destruction of his " going to ruin" himself. One may perceive
in almost every psychologist a tell-tale inclination for delight-
ful intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men: the
fact is thereby disclosed that he always requires healing, that
he needs a sort of flight and f orgetf ulness, away from what his
insight and incisiveness from what his "business" has laid
upon his conscience. The fear of his memory is peculiar to him.
He is easily silenced by the judgment of others; he hears with
unmoved countenance how people honour, admire, love, and
glorify, where he has perceived or he even conceals his
silence by expressly assenting to some plausible opinion. Per-
haps the paradox of his situation becomes so dreadful that,
precisely where he has learned great sympathy, together with
great contempt, the multitude, the educated, and the vision-
aries, have on their part learned great reverence reverence for
"great men" and marvellous animals, for the sake of whom
:>ne blesses and honours the fatherland, the earth, the dignity
of mankind, and one's own self, to whom one points the young,
and in view of whom one educates them. And who knows but
in all great instances hitherto just the same happened: that the
multitude worshipped a God, and that the "God" was only a
*poor sacrificial animal! Success has always been the greatest liar
and the "work" itself is a success; the great statesman, the
conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in their creations until
they are unrecognisable; the "work" of the artist, of the
philosopher, only invents him who has created it, is reputed to
have created it; the "great men," as they are reverenced, are
poor little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of his-
torical values spurious coinage prevails. Those great poets, for
example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol
(I do not venture to mention much greater names, but I have
them in my mind), as they now appear, and were perhaps
[594]
WHAT IS NOBLE?
obliged to be: men of the moment, enthusiastic, sensuous, and
childish, light-minded and impulsive in their trust and distrust;
with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed; often
taking revenge with their works for an internal defilement,
often seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too true
memory, often lost in the mud and almost in love with it, until
they become like the Will-o' -the- Wisps around the swamps,
and pretend to be stars the people then call them idealists,
often struggling with protracted disgust, with an ever-reap-
pearing phantom of disbelief, which makes them cold, and
obliges them to languish for gloria and devour "faith as it is"
out of the hands of intoxicated adulators: what a torment
these great artists are and the so-called higher men in general,
to him who has once found them out! It is thus conceivable
that it is just from woman who is clairvoyant in the world of
suffering, and also unfortunately eager to help and save to an
extent far beyond her powers that they have learned so readily
those outbreaks of boundless devoted sympathy, which the
multitude, above all the reverent multitude, do not understand,
and overwhelm with prying and self-gratifying interpreta-
tions. This sympathising invariably deceives itself as to its
power; woman would like to believe that love can do every-
thing it is the superstition peculiar to her. Alas, he who
knows the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious, and
blundering even the best and deepest love is he finds that it
rather destroys than saves! It is possible that under the holy
fable and travesty of the life of Jesus there is hidden one of the
most painful cases of the martyrdom of knowledge about love:
the martyrdom of the most innocent and most craving heart,
that never had enough of any human love, that demanded love,
that demanded inexorably and frantically to be loved and noth-
[595]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
ing else, with terrible outbursts against those who refused him
their love; the story of a poor soul insatiated and insatiable in
love, that had to invent hell to send thither those who would
not love him and that at last, enlightened about human
love, had to invent a God who is entire love, entire capacity for
love who takes pity on human love, because it is so paltry, so
ignorant! He who has such sentiments, he who has such knowl-
edge about love seeks for death! But why should one deal
with such painful matters? Provided, of course, that one is not
obliged to do so.
270
The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who
has suffered deeply it almost determines the order of rank
how deeply men can suffer the chilling certainty, with which
he is thoroughly imbued and coloured, that by virtue of his
suffering he knows more than the shrewdest and wisest can
ever know, that he has been familiar with, and "at home" in,
tnany distant, dreadful worlds of which "you know nothing"!
this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride
of the elect of knowledge, of the "initiated," of the almost
sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself
from contact with officious and sympathising hands, and in
general from all that is not its equal in suffering. Profound
suffering makes noble: it separates. One of the most refined
forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostenta-
tious boldness of taste, which takes suffering lightly, and puts
itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful and pro-
found. They are "gay men" who make use of gaiety, because
[696}
WHAT IS NOBLE?
they are misunderstood on account of it they wish to be mis-
understood. There are "scientific minds" who make use of
science, because it gives a gay appearance, and because scien-
tificalness leads to the conclusion that a person is superficial
they wish to mislead to a false conclusion. There are free inso-
lent minds which would fain conceal and deny that they are
broken, proud, incurable hearts (the cynicism of Hamlet the
case of Galiani) ; and occasionally folly itself is the mask of an
unfortunate over-assured knowledge. From which it follows
that it is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence
"for the mask," and not to make use of psychology and curi-
osity in the wrong place.
271
That which separates two men most profoundly is a dif-
ferent sense and grade of purity. What does it matter about all
their honesty and reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter
about all their mutual good-will: the fact still remains they
"cannot smell each other!" The highest instinct for purity
places him who is affected with it in the most extraordinary
and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just holiness the
highest spiritualisation of the instinct in question. Any kind of
cognisance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath,
any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul
out of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of ' 'afflic-
tion* ' into clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement: just
as much as such a tendency distinguishes it is a noble
tendency it also separates. The pity of the saint is pity for
the filth of the human, all-too-human. And there are grades
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as
filth.
272
Signs of nobility: never to think of lowering our duties to
the rank of duties for everybody; to be unwilling to renounce
or to share our responsibilities; to count our prerogatives, and
the exercise of them, among our duties.
A man who strives after great things, looks upon every one
whom he encounters on his way either as a means of advance,
or a delay and hindrance or as a temporary resting-place. His
peculiar lofty bounty to his fellow-men is only possible when
he attains his elevation and dominates. Impatience, and the
consciousness of being always condemned to comedy up to
that time for even strife is a comedy, and conceals the end,
as every means does spoil all intercourse for him; this kind of
man is acquainted with solitude, and what is most poisonous
in it.
274
The Problem of those who Wait. Happy chances are
necessary, and many incalculable elements, in order that a
higher man in whom the solution of a problem is dormant may
yet take action, or "break forth," as one might say at the
right moment. On an average it does not happen; and in all
[598]
WHAT IS NOBLE?
corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting who hardly
know to what extent they are waiting, and still less that they
wait in vain. Occasionally, too, the waking call comes too late
the chance which gives ' 'permission" to take action when
their best youth, and strength for action have been used up in
sitting still; and how many a one, just as he "sprang up," has
found with horror that his limbs are benumbed and his spirits
are now too heavy! "It is too late," he has said to himself and
has become self-distrustful and henceforth for ever useless.
In the domain of genius, may not the "Raphael without hands"
(taking the expression in its widest sense) perhaps not be the
exception, but the rule? Perhaps genius is by no means so
rare: but rather the five hundred hands which it requires in
order to tyrannise over the xaipog "the right time" in order
to take chance by the forelock!
275
He who does not wish to see the height of a man, looks all
fhe more. sharply at what is low in him, and in the foreground
and thereby betrays himself.
276
In all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is
better off than the nobler soul: the dangers of the latter must
be greater, the probability that it will come to grief and perish
is in fact immense, considering the multiplicity of the condi-
tions of its existence. In a lizard a finger grows again which
has been lost; not so in man.
[599 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
277
It is too bad! Always the old story! When a man has finished
building his house, he finds that he had learned unawares some-
thing which he ought absolutely to have known before he
began to build. The eternal, fatal "Too late!" The melan-
cholia of everything completed!
278
Wanderer, who art thou? I see thee follow thy path with-
out scorn, without love, with unfathomable eyes, wet and sad
as a plummet which has returned to the light insatiated out of
every depth what did it seek down there? with a bosom
that never sighs, with lips that conceal their loathing, with a
hand which only slowly grasps: who art thou? what hast thou
done? Rest thee here: this place has hospitality for every one
refresh thyself! And whoever thou art, what is it that now
pleases thee? What will serve to refresh thee? Only name it,
whatever I have I offer thee! "To refresh me? To refresh me?
Oh, thou prying one, what sayest thou! But give me, I pray
thee " What? what? Speak out! "Another mask! A second
mask!"
279
Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are
happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though
they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy ah, they
know only too well that it will flee from them!
[600]
WHAT IS NOBLE?
280
"Bad! Bad! What? Does he not go back?" Yes! But you
misunderstand him when you complain about it. He goes back
like every one who is about to make a great spring.
281
"Will people believe it of me? But I insist that they be-
lieve it of me: I have always thought very unsatisfactorily of
myself and about myself, only in very rare cases, only compul-
sorily, always without delight in 'the subject/ ready to digress
from 'myself,' and always without faith in the result, owing
to an unconquerable distrust of th possibility of self-knowl-
edge, which has led me so far as to feel a contradictio in adjectj
even in the idea of 'direct knowledge' which theorists allow
themselves: this matter of fact is almost the most certain
thing I know about myself. There must be a sort of repugnance
in me to believe anything definite about myself. Is there per-
haps some enigma therein? Probably; but fortunately nothing
for my own teeth. Perhaps it betrays the species to which I
belong? but not to myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me."
883
"But what has happened to you?" "I do not know," he
said, hesitatingly; "perhaps the Harpies have flown over my
table." It sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle, sober,
retiring man becomes suddenly mad, breaks the plates, upsets
[601]
DHYOND GOOD AND EVIL
the table, shrieks, raves, and shocks everybody and finally
withdraws, ashamed, and raging at himself whither? for
what purpose? To famish apart? To suffocate with his
memories? To him who has the desires of a lofty and
dainty soul, and only seldom finds his table laid and his food
prepared, the danger will always be great nowadays, how-
ever, it is extraordinarily so. Thrown into the midst of a noisy
and plebeian age, with which he does not like to eat out of the
same dish, he may readily perish of hunger and thirst or,
should he nevertheless finally "fall to," of sudden nausea.
We have probably all sat at tables to which we did not belong;
and precisely the most spiritual of us, who are most difficult
to nourish, know the dangerous dyspepsia which originates
from a sudden insight and disillusionment about our food
and our messmates the after-dinner nausea.
283
If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and at the same
time a noble self-control, to praise only where one does not
agree otherwise in fact one would praise oneself, which is
contrary to good taste: a self-control, to be sure, which offers
excellent opportunity and provocation to constant misunder-
standing. To be able to allow oneself this veritable luxury of
taste and morality, one must not live among intellectual im-
beciles, but rather among men whose misunderstandings and
mistakes amuse by their refinement or one will have to pay
dearly for it! "He praises me, therefore he acknowledges me
to be right" this asinine method of inference spoils half of
the life of us recluses, for it brings the asses into our neigh-
bourhood and friendship.
F 6081
WHAT IS NOBLE?
284
To live in a vast and proud tranquillity; always beyond
... To have, or not to have, one's emotions, one's For and
Against, according to choice; to lower oneself to them for
hours; to seat oneself on them as upon horses, and often as
upon asses: for one must know how to make use of their
stupidity as well as of their fire. To conserve one's three hun-
dred foregrounds; also one's black spectacles: for there are
circumstances when nobody must look into our eyes, still less
into our "motives." And to choose for company that roguish
and cheerful vice, politeness. And to remain master of one's
four virtues, courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude. For soli-
tude is a virtue with us, as a sublime bent and bias to purity,
which divines that in the contact of man and man "in society"
it must be unavoidably impure. All society makes one some-
how, somewhere, or sometime "commonplace."
The greatest events and thoughts the greatest thoughts,
however, are the greatest events are longest in being com-
prehended : the generations which are contemporary with them
do not experience such events they live past them. Something
happens there as in the realm of stars. The light of the furthest
stars is longest in reaching man; and before it has arrived
man denies that there are stars there. "How many centuries
does a mind require to be understood? that is also a standard,
one also makes a gradation of rank and an etiquette therewith,
such as is necessary for mind and for star.
[ 603]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
280
"Here is the prospect free, the mind exalted." * But there
is a reverse kind of man, who is also upon a height, and has
also a free prospect but looks downwards.
287
What is noble? What does the word "noble" still mean
for us nowadays? How does the noble man betray himself,,
how is he recognised under this heavy overcast sky of the com-
mencing plebeianism, by which everything is rendered opaque
and leaden? It is not his actions which establish his claim
actions are always ambiguous, always inscrutable; neither is it
his "works." One finds nowadays among artists and scholars
plenty of those who betray by their works that a profound
longing for nobleness impels them; but this very need of
nobleness is radically different from the needs of the noble
soul itself, and is in fact the eloquent and dangerous sign of
the lack thereof. It is not the works, but the belief which is
here decisive and determines the order of rank to employ
once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper
meaning, it is some fundamental certainty which a noble
soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is
not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost. The
noble soul has reverence for itself.
* Goethe's "Faust," Part II., Act V. The words of Dr. Marianus.
[6041
WHAT IS NOBLE?
288
There are men who are unavoidably intellectual, let them
turn and twist themselves as they will, and hold their hands
before their treacherous eyes as though the hand were not
a betrayer; it always comes out at last that they have something
which they hide namely, intellect. One of the subtlest means
of deceiving, at least as long as possible, and of successfully
representing oneself to be stupider than one really is which
in everyday life is often as desirable as an umbrella, is called
enthusiasm) including what belongs to it, for instance, virtue.
For as Galiani said, who was obliged to know it: vertu est
enthousiasme.
289
In the writings of a recluse one always hears something of
the echo of the wilderness, something of the murmuring tones
and timid vigilance of solitude; in his strongest words, even
in his cry itself, there sounds a new and more dangerous kind
of silence, of concealment. He who has sat day and night,
from year's end to year's end, alone with his soul in familiar
discord and discourse, he who has become a cave-bear, or a
treasure-seeker, or a treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave
it may be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine his ideas
themselves eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own,
and an odour, as much of the depth as of the mould, something
uncommunicative and repulsive, which blows chilly upon every
passer-by. The recluse does not believe that a philosopher
supposing that a philosopher has always in the first place been
[ 605}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
a recluse ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in
books: are riot books written precisely to hide what is in us?
indeed, he will doubt whether a philosopher can have "ulti-
mate and actual" opinions at all; whether behind every cave in
him there is not, and must necessarily be, a still deeper cave:
an ampler, stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an
abyss behind every bottom, beneath every "foundation." Every
philosophy is a foreground philosophy this is a recluse's
verdict. "There is something arbitrary in the fact that the
philosopher came to a stand here, took a retrospect and looked
around; that he here laid his spade aside and did not dig any
deeper there is also something suspicious in it." Every philos-
ophy also conceals a philosophy; every opinion is also a lurk-
ing-place, every word is also a mask.
290
Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than
of being misunderstood. The latter perhaps wounds his
vanity; but the former wounds his heart, his sympathy, which
always says: "Ah, why would you also have as hard a time of it
as I have?"
291
Man, a complex, mendacious, artful, and inscrutable ani-
mal, uncanny to the other animals by his artifice and sagacity,
rather than by his strength, has invented the good conscience
in order finally to enjoy his soul as something simple; and
the whole of morality is a long, audacious falsification, by
virtue of which generally enjoyment at the sight of the soul
[ 606 1
WHAT IS NOBLE?
becomes possible. From this point of view there is perhaps
much more in the conception of "art" than is generally be
lieved.
A philosopher: that is a man who constantly experiences,
sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things;
who is struck by his own thoughts as if they came from the
outside, from above and below, as a species of events and
lightning-flashes peculiar to him;- who is perhaps himself a
storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous man, around
whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping
and something uncanny going on. A philosopher: alas, a being
who often runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself
but whose curiosity always makes him "come to himself"
again.
A man who says: "I like that, I take it for my own, and
mean to guard and protect it from every one"; a man who can
conduct a case, carry out a resolution, remain true to an opinion,
keep hold of a woman, punish and overthrow insolence; a man
who has his indignation and his sword, and to whom the
weak, the suffering, the oppressed, and even the animals will-
ingly submit and naturally belong; in short, a man who is a
master by nature when such a man has sympathy, well! that
sympathy has value! But of what account is the sympathy of
those who suffer! Or of those even who preach sympathy!
There is nowadays, throughout almost the whole of Europe, a
sickly irritability and sensitiveness towards pain, and also a
[ 607]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
repulsive irrestrainableness in complaining, an cffeminising,
which, with the aid of religion and philosophical nonsense,
seeks to deck itself out as something superior there is a regu-
lar cult of suffering. The unmanliness of that which is called
''sympathy" by such groups of visionaries, is always, I believe,
the first thing that strikes the eye. One must resolutely and
radically taboo this latest form of bad taste; and finally I wish
people to put the good amulet, fe gai saber" ("gay science, 1 ' in
ordinary language) , on heart and neck, as a protection against
it.
294
The Olympian Vice. Despite the philosopher who, as a
genuine Englishman, tried to bring laughter into bad repute
in all thinking minds "Laughing is a bad infirmity of human
nature, which every thinking mind will strive to overcome"
(Hobbes) , I would even allow myself to rank philosophers
according to the quality of their laughing up to those who
are capable of golden laughter. And supposing that gods also
philosophise, which I am strongly inclined to believe, owing
to many reasons I have no doubt that they also know how
to laugh thereby in an overmanlike and new fashion and at
the expense of all serious things! Gods are fond of ridicule:
it seems that they cannot refrain from laughter even in holy
matters.
295
The genius of the heart, as that great mysterious one
possesses it, the tempter-god and born rat-catcher of con-
sciences, whose voice can descend into the nether-world of
[ 608]
WHAT IS NOBLE.'
every soul, who neither speaks a word nor casts a glance in
which there may not be some motive or touch of allurement, to
whose perfection it pertains that he knows how to appear,
not as he is, but in a guise which acts as an additional constraint
on his followers to press ever closer to him, to follow him
more cordially and thoroughly; the genius of the heart,
which imposes silence and attention on everything loud and
self -conceited, which smooths rough souls and makes them
taste a new longing to lie placid as a mirror, that the deep
heavens may be reflected in them; the genius of the heart,
which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate, and
to grasp more delicately; which scents the hidden and forgot-
ten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality
under thick dark ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of
gold, long buried and imprisoned in mud and sand; the genius
of the heart, from contact with which every one goes away
richer; not favoured or surprised, not as though gratified and
oppressed by the good things of others; but richer in himself,
newer than before, broken up, blown upon, and sounded by a
thawing wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more
fragile, more bruised, but full of hopes which as yet lack
names, full of a new will and current, full of a new ill-will and
counter-current ... but what am I doing, my friends? Of
whom am I talking to you? Have I forgotten myself so far that
I have not even told you his name? Unless it be that you have
already divined of your own accord who this questionable God
and spirit is, that wishes to be praised in such a manner? For,
as it happens to every one who from childhood onward has
always been on his legs, and in foreign lands, I have also
encountered on my path many strange and dangerous spirits;
above all, however, and again and again, the one of whom I
have just spoken: in fact, no less a personage than the god
[609 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Dionysus, the great equivocator and tempter, to whom, as you
know, I once offered in all secrecy and reverence my first-fruits
the last, as it seems to me, who has offered a sacrifice to him,
for I have found no one who could understand what I was then
doing. In the meantime, however, I have learned much, far
too much, about the philosophy of this god, and, as I said,
from mouth to mouth I, the last disciple and initiate of the
god Dionysus: and perhaps I might at last begin to give you,
my friends, as far as I am allowed, a little taste of this philos-
ophy? In a hushed voice, as is but seemly: for it has to do with
much that is secret, new, strange, wonderful, and uncanny.
The very fact that Dionysus is a philosopher, and that there-
fore gods also philosophise, seems to me a novelty which is
not unensnaring, and might perhaps arouse suspicion pre-
cisely amongst philosophers; amongst you, my friends, there
is less to be said against it, except that it comes too late and not
at the right time; for, as it has been disclosed to me, you are
loth nowadays to believe in God and gods. It may happen, too,
that in the frankness of my story I must go further than is
agreeable to the strict usages of your ears? Certainly the god
in question went further, very much further, in such dialogues,
and was always many paces ahead of me. . . . Indeed, if it
were allowed, I should have to give him, according to human
usage, fine ceremonious titles of lustre and merit, I should
have to extol his courage as investigator and discoverer, his
fearless honesty, truthfulness, and love of wisdom. But such a
God does not know what to do with all that respectable
trumpery and pomp. "Keep that," he would say, "for thyself
and those like thee, and whoever else require it! I have no
reason to cover my nakedness!" One suspects that this kind of
divinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame? He once said :
[610]
WHAT IS NOBLE?
"Under certain circumstances I love mankind" and referred
thereby to Ariadne, who was present; "in my opinion man is
an agreeable, brave, inventive animal, that has not his equal
upon earth, he makes his way even through all labyrinths. I
like man, and often think how I can still further advance him,
and make him stronger, more evil, and more profound."
"Stronger, more evil, and more profound?" I asked in horror.
"Yes," he said again, "stronger, more evil, and more pro-
found; also more beautiful" and thereby the tempter-god
smiled with his halcyon smile, as though he had just paid some
charming compliment. One here sees at once that it is not only
shame that this divinity lacks; and in general there are good
grounds for supposing that in some things the gods could all
of them come to us men for instruction. We men are more
human.
306
Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted
thoughts! Not long ago you were so variegated, young and
malicious, so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made
me sneeze and laugh and now? You have already doffed your
novelty, and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths,
so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, so tedious!
And was it ever otherwise? What then do we write and paint,
we mandarins with Chinese brush, we immortalisers of things
which lend themselves to writing, what are we alone capable
of painting? Alas, only that which is just about to fade and
begins to lose its odour! Alas, only exhausted and departing
storms and belated yellow sentiments! Alas, only birds strayed
and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves be captured
with the hand with our hand! We immortalise what cannot
1611]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
live and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and
mellow! And it is only for your afternoon, you, my written and
painted thoughts, for which alone I have colours, many colours,
perhaps, many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and
browns and greens and reds; but nobody will divine thereby
how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and marvels
*)f my solitude, you, my old, beloved evil thoughts!
From the Heights
TRANSLATED BY L. A. MAGNUS
MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight!
My summer's park!
Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark:
I peer for friends, am ready day and night,
Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right!
Is not the glacier's grey today for you
Rose-garlanded?
The brooklet seeks you; wind, cloud, with longing thread
And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue,
To spy for you from farthest eagle's view.
[ 612]
FROM THE HEIGHTS
3
My table was spread out for you on high:
Who dwelleth so
Star-near, so near the grisly pit below?
My realm what realm hath wider boundary?
My honey who hath sipped its f ragrancy?
4
Friends, ye are there! Woe me, yet I am not
He whom ye seek?
Ye stare and stop better your wrath could speak!
I am not I? Hand, -gait, face, changed? And what
I am, to you my friends, now am I not?
S
Am I an other? Strange am I to Me?
Yet from Me sprung?
A wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung?
Hindering too oft my own self's potency,
Wounded and hampered by self -victory?
6
I sought where-so the wind blow keenest. There I learned
to dwell
Where no man dwells, on lonesome ice-lorn fell,
And unlearned Man and God and curse and prayer?
Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare?
[ 613 ]
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
Ye, my old friends! Look! Ye turn pale, filled o'er
With love and fear!
Go! Yet not in wrath. Ye could ne'er live here.
Here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur,
A huntsman must one be, like chamois soar.
8
An evil huntsman was I? See how taut
My bow was bent!
Strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent
Woe now! That arrow is with peril fraught,
Perilous as none. Have yon safe home ye sought!
9
Ye go! Thou didst endure enough, oh, heart;
Strong was thy hope;
Unto new friends thy portals widely ope,
Let old ones be. Bid memory depart!
Wast thou young then, now better young thou art!
10
What linked us once together, one hope's tie
(Who now doth con
Those lines, now fading, Love once wrote thereon? )-
Is like a parchment, which the hand is shy
To touch like crackling leaves, all seared, all dry.
[614]
FROM THE HEIGHTS
Oh! Friends no more! They are what name for those?-
Friends' phantom-flight
Knocking at my heart's window-pane at night,
Gazing on me, that speaks "We were" and goes,
Oh, withered words once fragrant as the rose!
Finings of youth that might not understand!
For which I pined,
Which I deemed changed with me, kin of my kind:
But they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned:
None but new kith are native of my land!
Midday of life! My second youth's delight!
My summer's park!
Unrestful joy td long, to lurk, to hark!
I peer for friends! am ready day and night,
For my new friends. Come! Come! The time is right!
14
This song is done, the sweet sad cry of rue
Sang out its end;
A wizard wrought it, he the timely friend,
The midday friend, no, do not ask me who;
At mid-day 'twas, when one became as two.
[615}
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
We keep our Feast of Feasts, sure of our bourne,
Our aims self -same:
The Guest of Guests, friend Zarathustra, came!
The world now laughs, the grisly veil was torn,
And Light and Dark were one that wedding-morn.
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
Translated by HORACE B. SAMUEL, M.A.
EDITOR'S NOTE
IN 1887, with the view of amplifying and completing certain
new doctrines which he had merely sketched in Beyond Good
and Evil (see especially Aphorism 260) , Nietzsche published
The Genealogy of Morals. This work is perhaps the least
aphoristic, in form, of all Nietzsche's productions. For analyti-
cal power, more especially in those parts where Nietzsche
examines the ascetic ideal, The Genealogy of Morals is un-
equalled by any other of his works; and, in the light which it
throws upon the attitude of the ecclesiast to the man of resent-
ment and misfortune, it is one of the most valuable contribu-
tions to sacerdotal psychology.
[618]
CONTENTS
PREFACE 62]
FIRST ESSAY 63:
"Good and Evil," "Good and Bad"
SECOND ESSAY 66
"G///It," "Bad Conscience" and the Like
THIRD ESSAY yi^j
What Is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES 79^
PREFACE
WE are unknown, we knowcrs, ourselves to ourselves: this
has its own good reason. We have never searched for ourselves
how should it then come to pass, that we should ever find
ourselves? Rightly has it been said: "Where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also." Our treasure is there, where
stand the hives of our knowledge. It is to those hives that we
are always striving; as born creatures of flight, and as the
honey-gatherers of the spirit, we care really in our hearts only
for one thing to bring something "home to the hive!"
As far as the rest of life with its so-called "experiences" is
concerned, which of us has even sufficient serious interest? or
sufficient time? In our dealings with such points of life, we are,
I fear, never properly to the point; to be precise, our heart is
not there, and certainly not our car. Rather like one who, de-
lighting in a divine distraction, or sunken in the seas of his
own soul, in whose ear the clock has just thundered with all
its force its twelve strokes of noon, suddenly wakes up, and
asks himself, "What has in point of fact just struck?" so do we
at times rub afterwards, as it were, our puzzled ears, and ask
in complete astonishment and complete embarrassment,
"Through what have we in point of fact just lived?" further,
"who are we in point of fact?" and count, after they have struck,
as I have explained, all the twelve throbbing beats of the clock
PREFACE
of our experience, of our life, of our being ah! and count
wrong in the endeavour. Of necessity we remain strangers to
ourselves, we understand ourselves not, in ourselves we are
bound to be mistaken, for of us holds good to all eternity the
motto, "Each one is the farthest away from himself" as far as
ourselves are concerned we are not "knowers."
2
My thoughts concerning the genealogy of our moral preju-
dices for they constitute the issue in this polemic have their
first, bald, and provisional expression in that collection of
aphorisms entitled Human, all-too-Human, a Book for Free
Mtncls, the writing of which was begun in Sorrento, during a
winter which allowed me to gaze over the broad and danger-
ous territory through which my mind had up to that time wan-
dered. This took place in the winter of 1876-77; the thoughts
themselves are older.
They were in their substance already the same thoughts
which I take up again in the following treatises: we hope
that they have derived benefit from the long interval, that
they have grown riper, clearer, stronger, more complete. The
fact, however, that I still cling to them even now, that in the
meanwhile they have always held faster by each other, have, in
fact, grown out of their original shape and into each other, all
this strengthens in my mind the joyous confidence that they
must have been originally neither separate, disconnected,
capricious nor sporadic phenomena, but have sprung from a
common root, from a fundamental "fiat" of knowledge, whose
empire reached to the soul's depth, and that ever grew more
definite in its voice, and more definite in its demands. That is
[ 622}
PREFACE
the only state of affairs that is proper in the case of a philos-
opher.
We have no right to be "disconnected"; we must neither err
"disconnectedly" nor strike the truth "disconnectedly." Rather
with the necessity with which a tree bears its fruit, so do our
thoughts, our values, our Yes's and No's and If's and
Whcther's, grow connected and interrelated, mutual witnesses
of one will, one health, one kingdom, one sun as to whether
they are to your taste, these fruits of ours? But what matters
that to the trees? What matters that to us, us the philosophers?
Owing to a scrupulosity peculiar to myself, which I confess
reluctantly, it concerns indeed morality, a scrupulosity,
which manifests itself in my life at such an early period, with
so much spontaneity, with so chronic a persistence and so keen
an opposition to environment, epoch, precedent, and ancestry
that I should have been almost entitled to style it my "<* priori"
my curiosity and my suspicion felt themselves betimes bound
to halt at the question, of what in point of actual fact was the
origin of our "Good" and of our "Evil." Indeed, at the boyish
age of thirteen the problem of the origin of Evil already
haunted me: at an age "when games and God divide one's
heart," I devoted to that problem my first childish attempt at
the literary game, my first philosophic essay and as regards
my infantile solution of the problem, well, I gave quite prop-
erly the honour to God, and made him the father of evil. Did
my own "a priori" demand that precise solution from me?
that new, immoral, or at least "amoral" "^ priori" and that
"categorical imperative" which was its voice (but, oh! how
[ 623 ]
PREFACE
hostile to the Kantian article, and how pregnant with prob-
lems! ) , to which since then I have given more and more atten-
tion, and indeed what is more than attention. Fortunately I
soon learned to separate theological from moral prejudices,
and I gave up looking for a supernatural origin of evil. A
certain amount of historical and philological education, to say
nothing of an innate faculty of psychological discrimination
par excellence succeeded in transforming almost immediately
my original problem into the following one: Under what
conditions did Man invent for himself those judgments of
values, "Good" and "Evil"? And what intrinsic value do they
possess in themselves? Have they up to the present hindered
or advanced human well-being? Are they a symptom of the
distress, impoverishment, and degeneration of Human Life?
Or, conversely, is it in them that is manifested the fullness, the
strength, and the will of Life, its courage, its self-confidence,
its future? On this point I found and hazarded in my mind
the most diverse answers, I established distinctions in periods,
peoples, and castes, I became a specialist in my problem, and
from my answers grew new questions, new investigations, new
conjectures, new probabilities; until at last I had a land of my
own and a soil of my own, a whole secret world growing and
flowering, like hidden gardens of whose existence no one could
have an inkling oh, how happy are we, we finders of knowl-
edge, provided that we know how to keep silent sufficiently
long.
My first impulse to publish some of my hypotheses con-
cerning the origin of morality I owe to a clear, well-written,
and even precocious little book, in which a perverse and
[684]
PREFACE
vicious kind of moral philosophy (your real English kind)
was definitely presented to me for the first time; and this at-
tracted me with that magnetic attraction, inherent in that
which is diametrically opposed and antithetical to one's own
ideas. The title of the book was The Origin of the Moral Emo-
tions; its author, Dr. Paul Ree; the year of its appearance, 1877.
I may almost say that I have never read anything in which
every single dogma and conclusion has called forth from me
so emphatic a negation as did that book; albeit a negation un-
tainted by either pique or intolerance. I referred accordingly
both in season and out of season in the previous works, at
which I was then working, to the arguments of that book, not
to refute them for what have I got to do with mere refuta-
tions but substituting, as is natural to a positive mind, for an
improbable theory one which is more probable, and occa-
sionally no doubt for one philosophic error another. In that
early period I gave, as I have said, the first public expression
to those theories of origin to which these essays are devoted,
but with a clumsiness which I was the last to conceal from
myself, for I was as yet cramped, being still without a special
language for these special subjects, still frequently liable to
relapse and to vacillation. To go into details, compare what I
say in Human, all-too-Human, part i., about the parallel early
history of Good and Evil, Aph. 45 (namely, their origin from
the castes of the aristocrats and the slaves) ; similarly, Aph.
1 36 et seq., concerning the birth and value of ascetic morality;
similarly, Aphs. 96, 99, vol. ii., Aph. 89, concerning the
Morality of Custom, that far older and more original kind of
morality which is toto coelo different from the altruistic ethics
(in which Dr. Ree, like all the English moral philosophers,
sees the ethical "Thing-in-itself " ) ; finally, Aph. 92. Similarly,
Aph. 26 in Human, all-too-Human, part ii., and Aph. 112, the
[ 625}
PREFACE
Dawn of Day, concerning the origin of Justice as a balance be-
tween persons of approximately equal power (equilibrium as
the hypothesis of all contract, consequently of all law);
similarly, concerning the origin of Punishment, Human, all-
too-Hnman, part ii., Aphs. 22, 23, in regard to which the
deterrent object is neither essential nor original (as Dr. Ree
thinks: rather is it that this object is only imported, under
certain definite conditions, and always as something extra
and additional).
In reality I had set my heart at that time on something
much more important than the nature of the theories of
myself or others concerning the origin of morality (or, more
precisely, the real function from my view of these theories was
to point an end to which they were one among many means) .
The issue for me was the value of morality, and on that sub-
ject I had to place myself in a state of abstraction, in which I
was almost alone with my great teacher Schopenhauer, to
whom that book, with all its passion and inherent contradic-
tion (for that book also was a polemic), turned for present
help as though he were still alive. The issue was, strangely
enough, the value of the "unegoistic" instincts, the instincts
of pity, self-denial, and self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had
so persistently painted in golden colours, deified and ethereal-
ised, that eventually they appeared to him, as it were, high and
dry, as "intrinsic values in themselves," on the strength of
which he uttered both to Life and to himself his own negation.
But against these very instincts there voiced itself in my soul a
more and more fundamental mistrust, a scepticism that dug
[ 626 ]
PREFACE
ever deeper and deeper: and in this very instinct I saw the
great danger of mankind, its most sublime temptation and se-
duction seduction to what? to nothingness? in these very
instincts I saw the beginning of the end, stability, the exhaus-
tion that gazes backwards, the will turning against Life, the
last illness announcing itself with its own mincing melancholy:
I realised that the morality of pity which spread wider and
wider, and whose grip infected even philosophers with its
disease, was the most sinister symptom of our modern Euro-
pean civilisation; I realised that it was the route along which
that civilisation slid on its way to a new Buddhism? a
European Buddhism? Nihilism? This exaggerated estima-
tion in which modern philosophers have held pity, is quite a
new phenomenon: up to that time philosophers were abso-
lutely unanimous as to the u>orthlessness of pity. I need only
mention Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, and Kant four
minds as mutually different as is possible, but united on one
point; their contempt of pity.
This problem of the value of pity and of the pity-morality ( I
am an opponent of the modern infamous emasculation of our
emotions) seems at the first blush a mere isolated problem, a
note of interrogation for itself; he, however, who once halts at
this problem, and learns how to put questions, will experience
what I experienced: a new and immense vista unfolds itself
before him, a sense of potentiality seizes him like a vertigo,
every species of doubt, mistrust, and fear springs up, the belief
in morality, nay, in all morality, totters, finally a new demand
voices itself. Let us speak out this new demand: we need a
[ 627]
PRE FACE
critique of moral values, the value of these values is for the
first time to be called into question and for this purpose a
knowledge is necessary of the conditions and circumstances out
of which these values grew, and under which they experienced
their evolution and their distortion (morality as a result, as a
symptom, as a mask, as Tartuffism, as disease, as a misunder-
standing; but also morality as a cause, as a remedy, as a stimu-
lant, as a fetter, as a drug) , especially as such a knowledge has
neither existed up to the present time nor is even now generally
desired. The value of these "values' 1 was taken for granted as
an indisputable fact, which was beyond all question. No one
has, up to the present, exhibited the faintest doubt or hesita-
tion in judging the "good man" to be of a higher value than
the "evil man," of a higher value with regard specifically to
human progress, utility, and prosperity generally, not forget-
ting the future. What? Suppose the converse were the truth!
What? Suppose there lurked in the "good man" a symptom of
retrogression, such as a danger, a temptation, a poison, a nar-
cotic, by means of which the present battened on the future!
More comfortable and less risky perhaps than its opposite, but
also pettier, meaner! So that morality would really be saddled
with the guilt, if the maximum potentiality of the power and
splendour of the human species were never to be attained? So
that really morality would be the danger of dangers?
Enough, that after this vista had disclosed itself to me, I
myself had reason to search for learned, bold, and industrious
colleagues (I am doing it even to this very day). It means
traversing with new clamorous questions, and at the same time
[ 628]
PREFACE
with new eyes, the immense, distant, and completely unex-
plored land of morality of a morality which has actually
existed and been actually lived! and is this not practically
equivalent to first discovering that land? If, in this context, I
thought, amongst others, of the aforesaid Dr. Rcc, I did so
because I had no doubt that from the very nature of his ques-
tions he would be compelled to have recourse to a truer method,
in order to obtain his answer. Have I deceived myself on that
score? I wished at all events to give a better direction of vision
to an eye of such keenness and such impartiality. I wished to
direct him to the real history of morality, and to warn him,
while there was yet time, against a world of English theories
that culminated in the blue vacuum of heaven. Other colours,
of course, rise immediately to one's mind as being a hundred
times more potent than blue for a genealogy of morals: for
instance, grey, by which I mean authentic facts capable of
definite proof and having actually existed, or, to put it shortly,
the whole of that long hieroglyphic script (which is so hard
to decipher) about the past history of human morals. This
script was unknown to Dr. Rcc; but he had read Darwin:
and so in his philosophy the Darwinian beast and that pink of
modernity, the demure weakling and dilettante, who ''bites no
longer/' shake hands politely in a fashion, that is at least in-
structive, the latter exhibiting a certain facial expression of
refined and good-humoured indolence, tinged with a touch of
pessimism and exhaustion; as if it really did not pay to take all
these things I mean moral problems so seriously. I, on the
other hand, think that there are no subjects which pay better
for being taken seriously; part of this payment is, that per-
haps eventually they admit of being taken gaily. This gaiety,
indeed, or, to use my own language, this joyful wisdom, is a
payment; a payment for a protracted, brave, laborious, and
[ 629 ]
PREFACE
burrowing seriousness, which, it goes without saying, is the
attribute of but a few. But on that day on which we say from
the fullness of our hearts, "Forward! our old morality too is
fit material for Comedy," we shall have discovered a new plot,
and a new possibility for the Dionysian drama entitled The
Soul's Fate and he will speedily utilise it, one can wager
safely, he, the great ancient eternal dramatist of the comedy
of our existence.
8
If this writing be obscure to any individual, and jar on his
ears, I do not think that it is necessarily I who am to blame. It
is clear enough, on the hypothesis which I presuppose, namely,
that the reader has first read my previous writings and has not
grudged them a certain amount of trouble: it is not, indeed, a
simple matter to get really at their essence. Take, for instance,
my Zarathustra; I allow no one to pass muster as knowing that
book, unless every single word therein has at some time
wrought in him a profound wound, and at some time exercised
on him a profound enchantment: then and not till then can he
enjoy the privilege of participating reverently in the halcyon
element, from which that work is born, in its sunny brilliance,
its distance, its spaciousness, its certainty. In other cases the
aphoristic form produces difficulty, but this is only because this
form is treated too casually. An aphorism properly coined and
cast into its final mould is far from being "deciphered" as
soon as it has been read; on the contrary, it is then that it first
requires to be expounded of course for that purpose an art
of exposition is necessary. The third essay in this book provides
an example of what is offered, of what in such cases I call ex-
[ 630}
PREFACE
position: an aphorism is prefixed to that essay, the essay itself
is its commentary. Certainly one quality which nowadays has
been best forgotten and that is why it will take some time
yet for my writings to become readable is essential in order
to practise reading as an art a quality for the exercise of
which it is necessary to be a cow, and under no circumstances a
modern man! rumination.
SILS-MARIA, UPPER ENGADINE,
July, 1887.
FIRST ESSAY
"Good and Evil," "Good and Bad"
THOSE English psychologists, who up to the present are the
only philosophers who arc to be thanked for any endeavour
to get as far as a history of the origin of morality these men,
I say, offer us in their own personalities no paltry problem;
they even have, if I am to be quite frank about it, in the
capacity of living riddles, an advantage over their books
they themselves are interesting! These English psychologists
what do they really mean? \7e always find them voluntarily
or involuntarily at the same task of pushing to the front the
partie honteuse of our inner world, and looking for the effi-
cient, governing, and decisive principle in that precise quarter
where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be the
most reluctant to find it (fur example, in the vis inertias of
habit, or in forgetf ulncss, or in a blind and fortuitous mechan-
ism and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely
passive, reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid) what is
the real motive power which always impels these psychologists
in precisely this direction? Is it an instinct for human disparage-
ment somewhat sinister, vulgar, and malignant, or perhaps in-
[ 632 ]
GOOD AND EVIL
comprehensible even to itself? or perhaps a touch of pessimistic
jealousy, the mistrust of disillusioned idealists who have be-
come gloomy, poisoned, and bitter? or a petty subconscious
enmity and rancour against Christianity (and Plato), that
has conceivably never crossed the threshold of consciousness?
or just a vicious taste for those elements of life which are
bizarre, painfully paradoxical, mystical, and illogical? or, as a
final alternative, a dash of each of these motives a little vul-
garity, a little gloominess, a little anti-Christianity, a little
craving for the necessary piquancy?
But I am told that it is simply a case of old frigid and tedious
frogs crawling and hopping around men and inside men, as if
they were as thoroughly at home there, as they would be in a
swamp.
I am opposed to this statement, nay, I do not believe it; and
if, in the impossibility of knowledge, one is permitted to
wish, so do I wish from my heart that just the converse meta-
phor should apply, and that these analysts with their psycho-
logical microscopes should be, at bottom, brave, proud, and
magnanimous animals who know how to bridle both their
hearts and their smarts, and have specifically trained them-
selves to sacrifice what is desirable to what is true, any truth in
fact, even the simple, bitter, ugly, repulsive, unchristian, and
immoral truths for there are truths of that description.
All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would fain
dominate these historians of morality. But it is certainly a pity
that they lack the historical sense itself, that they themselves
[ 633 ]
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
are quite deserted by all the beneficent spirits of history. The
whole train of their thought runs, as was always the way of old-
fashioned philosophers, on thoroughly unhistorical lines:
there is no doubt on this point. The crass ineptitude of their
genealogy of morals is immediately apparent when the ques-
tion arises of ascertaining the origin of the idea and judgment
of "good." "Man had originally," so speaks their decree,
"praised and called 'good' altruistic acts from the standpoint
of those on whom they were conferred, that is, those to whom
they were useful; subsequently the origin of this praise was
forgotten, and altruistic acts, simply because, as a sheer matter
of habit, they were praised as good, came also to be felt as good
as though they contained in themselves some intrinsic good-
ness." The thing is obvious: this initial derivation contains
already all the typical and idiosyncratic traits of the English
psychologists we have "utility," "forgetting," "habit," and
finally "error," the whole assemblage forming the basis of a
system of values, on which the higher man has up to the present
prided himself as though it were a kind of privilege of man in
general. This pride must be brought low, this system of values
must lose its values: is that attained?
Now the first argument that comes ready to my hand is that
the real homestead of the concept "good" is sought and located
in the wrong place: the judgment "good" did not originate
among those to whom goodness was shown. Much rather has it
been the good themselves, that is, the aristocratic, the powerful,
the high-stationed, the high-minded, who have felt that they
themselves were good, and that their actions were good, that
is to say of the first order, in contradistinction to all the low,
the low-minded, the vulgar, and the plebeian. It was out of
this pathos of distance that they first arrogated the right to
[634]
GOOD AND EVIL
create values for their own profit, and to coin the names of such
values: what had they to do with utility? The standpoint of
utility is as alien and as inapplicable as it could possibly be,
when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of
supreme values, creating and demarcating as they do a hier-
archy within themselves: it is at this juncture that one arrives
at an appreciation of the contrast to that tepid temperature,
which is the presupposition on which every combination of
worldly wisdom and every calculation of. practical expediency
is always based and not for one occasional, not for one excep-
tional instance, but chronically. The pathos of nobility and dis-
tance, as I have said, the chronic and despotic esprit de corps
and fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race coming
into association with a meaner race, an "under race," this is the
origin of the antithesis of good and bad.
(The masters' right of giving names goes so far that it is
permissible to look upon language itself as the expression of
the power of the masters: they say "this is that, and that," they
seal finally every object and every event with a sound, and
thereby at the same time take possession of it. ) It is because
of this origin that the word "good" is far from having any
necessary connection with altruistic acts, in accordance with
the superstitious belief of these moral philosophers. On the
contrary, it is on the occasion of the decay of aristocratic values,
that the antitheses between "egoistic" "and "altruistic" press
more and more heavily on the human conscience it is, to use
my own language, the herd instinct which finds in this an-
tithesis an expression in many ways. And even then it takes a
considerable time for this instinct to become sufficiently domi-
nant, for the valuation to be inextricably dependent on this
antithesis (as is the case in contemporary Europe) ; for today
[ 635 ]
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
the prejudice is predominant, which, acting even now with all
the intensity of an obsession and brain disease, holds that
"moral," "altruistic," and "desinteresse" are concepts of equal
value.
In the second place, quite apart from the fact that this
hypothesis as to the genesis of the value "good" cannot be his-
torically upheld, it suffers from an inherent psychological con-
tradiction. The utility of altruistic conduct has presumably
been the origin of its being praised, and this origin has become
forgotten: But in what conceivable way is this forgetting
possible? Has perchance the utility of such conduct ceased at
some given moment? The contrary is the case. This utility has
rather been experienced every day at all times, and is conse-
quently a feature that obtains a new and regular emphasis with
every fresh day; it follows that, so far from vanishing from the
consciousness, so far indeed from being forgotten, it must
necessarily become impressed on the consciousness with ever-
increasing distinctness. How much more logical is that con-
trary theory (it is not the truer for that) which is represented,
for instance, by Herbert Spencer, who places the concept
"good" as essentially similar to the concept "useful," "pur-
posive," so that in the judgments "good" and "bad" mankind
is simply summarising and investing with a sanction its unjor-
gotten and unforgettable experiences concerning the "useful-
purposive" and the "mischievous-non-purposive." According
to this theory, "good" is the attribute of that which has previ-
ously shown itself useful; and so is able to claim to be con-
sidered "valuable in the highest degree," "valuable in itself."
[ 636 ]
GOOD AND EVIL
This method of explanation is also, as I have said, wrong,
but at any rate the explanation itself is coherent, and psycho-
logically tenable.
The guide-post which first put me on the right track was
this question what is the true etymological significance of
the various symbols for the idea "good" which have been
coined in the various languages? I then found that they all led
back to the same evolution of the same idea that everywhere
"aristocrat, " "noble" (in the social sense), is the root idea,
out of which have necessarily developed "good" in the sense
of "with aristocratic soul," "noble," in the sense of "with a
soul of high calibre," "with a privileged soul" a develop-
ment which invariably runs parallel with that other evolution
by which "vulgar," "plebeian," "low," are made to change
finally into "bad." The most eloquent proof of this last con-
tention is the German word "schlecht" itself: this word is
identical with "schlichf (compare "schlechtiveg* and
"schlechterdings") which, originally and as yet without any
sinister innuendo, simply denoted the plebeian man in contrast
to the aristocratic man. It is at the sufficiently late period of the
Thirty Years' War that this sense becomes changed to the
sense now current. From the standpoint of the Genealogy of
Morals this discovery seems to be substantial: the lateness of it
is to be attributed to the retarding influence exercised in the
modern world by democratic prejudice in the sphere of all
questions of origin. This extends, as will shortly be shown,
even to the province of natural science and physiology, which
prima jade is the most objective. The extent of the mischief
[ 637 ]
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
which is caused by this prejudice (once it is free of all tram-
mels except those of its own malice) , particularly to Ethics and
History, is shown by the notorious case of Buckle: it was in
Buckle that that plebeianism of the modern spirit, which is
of English origin, broke out once again from its malignant soil
with all the violence of a slimy volcano, and with that salted,
rampant, and vulgar eloquence with which up to the present
time all volcanoes have spoken.
With regard to our problem, which can justly be called an
intimate problem, and which elects to appeal to only a limited
number of ears: it is of no small interest to ascertain that in
those words and roots which denote "good" we catch glimpses
of that arch-trait, on the strength of which the aristocrats feel
themselves to be beings of a higher order than their fellows.
Indeed, they call themselves in perhaps the most frequent in-
stances simply after their superiority in power (e.g. "the
powerful," "the lords," "the commanders" ) , or after the most
obvious sign of their superiority, as for example "the rich,"
"the possessors" (that is the meaning of arya; and the Iranian
and Slav languages correspond) . But they also call themselves
after some characteristic idiosyncrasy; and this is the case which
now concerns us. They name themselves, for instance, "the
truthful" : this is first done by the Greek nobility whose mouth-
piece is found in Theognis, the Megarian poet. The word
o#/o, which is coined for the purpose, signifies etymologi-
cally "one who is," who has reality, who is real, who is true;
and then with a subjective twist, the "true," as the "truthful":
at this stage in the evolution of the idea, it becomes the motto
[ 638]
GOOD AND EVIL
and party cry of the nobility, and quite completes the transition
to the meaning "noble," so as to place outside the pale the
lying, vulgar man, as Theognis conceives and portrays him
till finally the word after the decay of the nobility is left to
delineate psychological noblesse, and becomes as it were ripe
and mellow. In the word XCXHOS as in <5edos (the plebeian in
contrast to the dyatios) the cowardice is emphasized. This
affords perhaps an inkling on what lines the etymological
origin of the very ambiguous dyaf)6$ is to be investigated. In
the Latin mains (which I place side by side with //e^ag)
the vulgar man can be distinguished as the dark-coloured, and
above all as the black-haired ("hie niger est"), as the pre-
Aryan inhabitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion
formed the clearest feature of distinction from the dominant
blonds, namely, the Aryan conquering race: at any rate
Gaelic has afforded me the exact analogue Fin (for instance,
in the name Fin-Gal}, the distinctive word of the nobility,
finally good, noble, clean, but originally the blond-haired
man in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals. The Celts,
if I may make a parenthetic statement, were throughout a
blond race; and it is wrong 'to connect, as Virchow still con-
nects, those traces of an essentially dark-haired population
which are to be seen on the more elaborate ethnographical maps
of Germany with any Celtic ancestry or with any admixture of
Celtic blood: in this context it is rather the pre- Aryan popula-
tion of Germany which surges up to these districts. (The same
is true substantially of the whole of Europe: in point of fact,
the subject race has finally again obtained the upper hand, in
complexion and the shortness of the skull, and perhaps in the
intellectual and social qualities. Who can guarantee that
modern democracy, still more modern anarchy, and indeed that
tendency to the "Commune," the most primitive form of
[ 639 ]
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
society, which is now common to all the Socialists in Europe,
does not in its real essence signify a monstrous reversion and
that the conquering and master race the Aryan race, is not
also becoming inferior physiologically?) I believe that I can
explain the Latin bonus as the "warrior": my hypothesis is
that I am right in deriving bonus from an older duonus (com-
pare bellum-duellum = duen-lum, in which the word duonus
appears to me to be contained) . Bonus accordingly as the man
of discord, of variance, "entzweiung" (duo}, as the warrior:
one sees what in ancient Rome "the good" meant for a man.
Must not our actual German word gut mean "the godlike, the
man of godlike race"? and be identical with the national name
(originally the nobles' name) of the Goths?
The grounds for this supposition do not appertain to this
work.
6
Above all, there is no exception (though there are oppor-
tunities for -exceptions) to this rule, that the idea of political
superiority always resolves itself into the idea of psychological
superiority, in those cases where the highest caste is at the same
time the priestly caste, and in accordance with its general char-
acteristics confers on itself the privilege of a title which alludes
specifically to its priestly function. It is in these cases, for
instances, that "clean" and "unclean" confront each other for
the first time as badges of class distinction; here again there
develops a "good" and a "bad," in a sense which has ceased
to be merely social. Moreover, care should be taken not to take
these ideas of "clean" and "unclean" too seriously, too
broadly, or too symbolically: all the ideas of ancient man have,
on the contrary, got to be understood in their initial stages, in
GOOD AND EVIL
a sense which is, to an almost inconceivable extent, crude,
coarse, physical, and narrow, and above all essentially unsym-
bolical. The "clean man" is originally only a man who washes
himself, who abstains from certain foods which are conducive
to skin diseases, who docs not sleep with the unclean women of
the lower classes, who has a horror of blood not more, not
much more! On the other hand, the very nature of a priestl)
aristocracy shows the reason why just at such an early juncture
there should ensure a really dangerous sharpening and intensi-
fication of opposed values: it is, in fact, through these opposed
values that gulfs are cleft in the social plane, which a veritable
Achilles of free thought would shudder to cross. There is from
the outset a certain diseased taint in such sacerdotal aristoc-
racies, and in the habits which prevail in such societies habits
which, averse as they are to action, constitute a compound of
introspection and explosive emotionalism, as a result of which
there appears that introspective morbidity and neurasthenia,
which adheres almost inevitably to all priests at all times: with
regard, however, to the remedy which they themselves have in-
vented for this disease the philosopher has no option but to
state, that it has proved itself in its effects a hundred times
more dangerous than the disease, from which it should have
been the deliverer. Humanity itself is still diseased from the
effects of the naivetes of this priestly cure. Take, for instance,
certain kinds of diet (abstention from flesh), fasts, sexual
continence, flight into the wilderness ( a kind of Weir-Mitchell
isolation, though of course without that system of excessive
feeding and fattening which is the most efficient antidote to all
the hysteria of the ascetic ideal) ; consider too the whole meta-
physic of the priests, with its war on the senses, its enervation,
its hair-splitting; consider its self-hypnotism on the fakir and
Brahman principles (it uses Brahman as a glass disc and obses-
[641}
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
sion) , and that climax which we can understand only too well
of an unusual satiety with its panacea of nothingness (or God:
the demand for a unio mystica with God is the demand of
the Buddhist for nothingness, Nirvana and nothing else! ) .
In sacerdotal societies every element is on a more dangerous
scale, not merely cures and remedies, but also pride, revenge,
cunning, exaltation, love, ambition, virtue, morbidity: fur-
ther, it can fairly be stated that it is on the soil of this essentially
dangerous form of human society, the sacerdotal form, that
man really becomes for the first time an interesting animal,
that it is in this form that the soul of man has in a higher sense
attained depths and become evil and those are the two funda-
mental forms of the superiority which up to the present man
has exhibited over every other animal.
The reader will have already surmised with what ease the
priestly mode of valuation can branch off from the knightly
aristocratic mode, and then develop into the very antithesis of
the latter: special impetus is given to this opposition, by every
occasion when the castes of the priests and warriors confront
each other with mutual jealousy and cannot agree over the
prize. The knightly-aristocratic "values" are based on a careful
cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and even effervescing
healthiness, that goes considerably beyond what is necessary
for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase, the dance,
the tourney on everything, in fact, which is contained in
strong, free, and joyous action. The priestly-aristocratic mode
of valuation is we have seen based on other hypotheses: it
is bad enough for this class when it is a question of war! Yet
[ft**]
GOOD AND EVIL
the priests are, as is notorious, the ivorst enemies why? Be-
cause they are the weakest. Their weakness causes their hate to
expand into a monstrous and sinister shape, a shape which is
most crafty and most poisonous. The really great haters in the
history of the world have always been priests, who are also the
cleverest haters in comparison with the cleverness of priestly
revenge, every other piece of cleverness is practically negli-
gible. Human history would be too fatuous for anything were it
not for the cleverness imported into it by the weak take at
once the most important instance. All the world's efforts
against the ' 'aristocrats," the "mighty," the "masters," the
"holders of power," are negligible by comparison with what
has been accomplished against those classes by the ]ews the
Jews, that priestly nation which eventually realised that the
one method of effecting satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants
was by means of a radical transvaluation of values, which was
at the same time an act of the cleverest revenge. Yet the method
was only appropriate to a nation of priests, to a nation of the
most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews
who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristo-
cratic beautiful = happy r= loved by the gods), dared
with a terrifying logic to suggest the contrary equation, and
indeed to maintain with the teeth of the most profound hatred
(the hatred of weakness) this contrary equation, namely, "the
wretched are alone the good; the poor, the weak, the lowly,
are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the loath-
some, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are
blessed, for them alone is salvation but you, on the other
hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity
the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless;
eternally also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the
damned!" We know who it was who reaped the heritage of
[643]
T H I- GENEALOGY OF MORALS
this Jewish transvaluation. In the context of the monstrous and
inordinately fateful initiative which the Jews have exhibited in
connection with this most fundamental of all declarations of
war, I remember the passage which came to my pen on an-
other occasion (Beyond Good and Evil, Aph. 195) that it
was, in fact, with the Jews that the revolt of the slaves begins
in the sphere of morals; that revolt which has behind it a his-
tory of two millennia, and which at the present day has only
moved out of our sight, because it has achieved victory.
8
But you understand this not? You have no eyes for a force
which has taken two thousand years to achieve victory?
There is nothing wonderful in this: all lengthy processes are
hard to see and to realise. But this is what took place: from the
trunk of that tree of revenge and hate, Jewish hate, that most
profound and sublime hate, which creates ideals and changes
old values to new creations, the like of which has never been
on earth, there grew a phenomenon which was equally in-
comparable, a new love, the most profound and sublime of all
kinds of love; and from what other trunk could it have
grown? But beware of supposing that this love has soared on
its upward growth, as in any way a real negation of that thirst
for revenge, as an antithesis to the Jewish hate! No, the con-
trary is the truth! This love grew out of that hate, as its crown,
as its triumphant crown, circling wider and wider amid the
clarity and fullness of the sun, and pursuing in the very king-
dom of light and height its goal of hatred, its victory, its spoil,
its strategy, with the same intensity with which the roots of that
tree of hate sank into everything which was deep and evil with
[644]
GOOD AND EVIL
increasing stability and increasing desire. This Jesus of
Nazareth, the incarnate gospel of love, this "Redeemer" bring-
ing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinful was
he not really temptation in its most sinister and irresistible
form, temptation to take the tortuous path to those very
Jewish values and those very Jewish ideals? Has not Israel
really obtained the final goal of its sublime revenge, by the
tortuous paths of this "Redeemer," for all that he might pose
as Israel's adversary and Israel's destroyer? Is it not due to the
black magic of a really great policy of revenge, of a far-seeing,
burrowing revenge, both acting and calculating with slowness,
that Israel himself must repudiate before all the world the
actual instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the cross,
so that all the world that is, all the enemies of Israel could
nibble without suspicion at this very bait? Could, moreover,
any human mind with all its elaborate ingenuity invent a bait
that was more truly dangerous? Anything that was even equiva-
lent in the power of its seductive, intoxicating, defiling, and
corrupting influence to that symbol^cf the holy cross, to that
awful paradox of a "god on the cross," to that mystery of the
unthinkable, supreme, and utter horror of the self-crucifixion
of a god for the salvation of man? It is at least certain that sub
hoc signo Israel, with its revenge and transvaluation of all
values, has up to the present always triumphed again over all
other ideals, over all more aristocratic ideals.
9
"But why do you talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit to the
facts; that the people have triumphed or the slaves, or the
populace, or the herd, or whatever name you care to give them
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
if this has happened through the Jews, so be it! In that case
no nation ever had a greater mission in the world's history.
The 'masters' have been done away with; the morality of the
vulgar man has triumphed. This triumph may also be called a
blood-poisoning (it has mutually fused the races) I do not
dispute it; but there is no doubt but that this intoxication has
succeeded. The 'redemption' of the human race (that is, from
the masters) is progressing swimmingly; everything is obvi-
ously becoming Judaised, or Christianised, or vulgarised (what
is there in the words?) . It seems impossible to stop the course
of this poisoning through the whole body politic of mankind
but its tempo and pace may from the present time be slower,
more delicate, quieter, more discreet there is time enough.
In view of this context has the Church nowadays any necessary
purpose? Has it, in fact, a right to live? Or could man get on
without it? Quceritur. It seems that it fetters and retards this
tendency, instead of accelerating it. Well, even that might be
its utility. The Church certainly is a crude and boorish institu-
tion, that is repugnant to an intelligence with any pretence at
delicacy, to a really modern taste. Should it not at any rate
learn to be somewhat more subtle? It alienates nowadays,
more than it allures. Which of us would, forsooth, be a free-
thinker if there were no Church? It is the Church which repels
us, not its poison apart from the Church we like the poison."
This is the epilogue of a freethinker to my discourse, of an
honourable animal (as he has given abundant proof), and a
democrat to boot; he had up to that time listened to me, and
could not endure my silence, but for me, indeed, with regard
to this topic there is much on which to be silent.
[646]
GOOD AND EVIL
10
The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very prin-
ciple of resentment becoming creative and giving birth to
values a resentment experienced by creatures who, deprived
as they are of the proper outlet of action, are forced to find
their compensation in an imaginary revenge. While every aris-
tocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its
own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the very out-
set to what is "outside itself," "different from itself," and
"not itself": and this "no" is its creative deed. This volte-face
of the valuing standpoint this inevitable gravitation to the
objective instead of back to the subjective 1 is typical of "re-
sentment": the slave-morality requires as the condition of its
existence an external and objective world, to employ physio-
logical terminology, it requires objective stimuli to be capable
of action at all its action is fundamentally a reaction. The
contrary is the case when we come to the aristocrat's system of
values: it acts and grows spontaneously, it merely seeks its
antithesis in order to pronounce a more grateful and exultant
"yes" to its own self; its negative conception, "low," "vul-
gar," "bad," is merely a pale late-born foil in comparison,
with its positive and fundamental conception (saturated as it
is with life and passion) , of -"we aristocrats, we good ones, we
beautiful ones, we happy ones."
When the aristocratic morality goes astray and commits
sacrilege on reality, this is limited to that particular sphere
with which it is not sufficiently acquainted a sphere, in fact,
from the real knowledge of which it disdainfully defends it-
self. It misjudges, in some cases, the sphere which it despises,
the sphere of the common vulgar man and the low people: on
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
tlvj other hand, due weight should be given to the considera-
tion that in any case the mood of contempt, of disdain, of
superciliousness, even on the supposition that it jalsely por-
trays the object of its contempt, will always be far removed
from that degree of falsity which will always characterise the
attacks in efligy, of course of the vindictive hatred and
revengefulness of the weak in onslaughts on their enemies. In
point of fact, there is in contempt too strong an admixture of
nonchalance, of casualncss, of boredom, of impatience, even
of personal exultation, for it to be capable of distorting its
victim into a real caricature or a real monstrosity. Attention
again should be paid to the almost benevolent nuances which,
for instance, the Greek nobility imports into all the words by
which it distinguishes the common people from itself; note
how continuously a kind of pity, care, and consideration im-
parts its honeyed flavour, until at last almost all the words
which are applied to the vulgar man survive finally as expres-
sions for "unhappy," "worthy of pity" (compare dedo$ t
dsikaios, nov)]QO<; f //o#???/>0; the latter two names really
denoting the vulgar man as labour-slave and beast of burden)
and how, conversely, "bad," "low," "unhappy" have never
ceased to ring in the Greek ear with a tone in which "unhappy"
is the predominant note: this is a heritage of the old noble
aristocratic morality, which remains true to itself even in con-
tempt (let philologists remember the sense in which oiv(>6s,
<ivo/.6os, liijfjicov, dvo-iv%elv, vppog d used to be employed) .
The "well-born" simply felt themselves the "happy"; they
did not have to manufacture their happiness artificially
through looking at their enemies, or in cases to talk and lie
themselves into happiness ( as is the custom with all resentful
men); and similarly, complete men as they were, exuberant
with strength, and consequently necessarily energetic, they
\ 648}
GOOD AND EVIL
were too wise to dissociate happiness from action activity
becomes in their minds necessarily counted as happiness (that
is the etymology of ev ngdiieiv} all in sharp contrast to
the "happiness" of the weak and the oppressed, with their
festering venom and malignity, among whom happiness ap-
pears essentially as a narcotic, a deadening, a quietude, a peace,
a "Sabbath/* an enervation of the mind and relaxation of the
limbs, in short, a purely passive phenomenon. While the
aristocratic man lived in confidence and openness with himself
(ysvvalos, "noble-born," emphasises the nuance "sincere,"
and perhaps also "naif"), the resentful man, on the other
hand, is neither sincere nor nai'f, nor honest and candid with
himself. His soul squints- his mind loves hidden crannies,
tortuous paths and backdoors, everything secret appeals to him
as his word, his safety, his balm; he is past master in silence,
in not forgetting, in waiting, in provisional self-depreciation
and self-abasement. A race of such resentful men will of neces-
sity eventually prove more prudent than any aristocratic race,
it will honour prudence on quite a distinct scale, as, in fact, a
paramount condition of existence, while prudence among aris-
tocratic men is apt to be tinged with a delicate flavour of lux-
ury and refinement; so among them it plays nothing like so
integral a part as that complete certainty of function of the
governing unconscious instincts, or as indeed a certain lack ol
prudence, such as a vehement and valiant charge, whether
against danger or the enemy, or as those ecstatic bursts of
rage, love, reverence, gratitude, by which at all times noble
souls have recognised each other. When the resentment of the
aristocratic man manifests itself, it fulfils and exhausts itself
in an immediate reaction, and consequently instills no venom :
on the other hand, it never manifests itself at all in countless
instances, when in the case of the feeble and weak it would
1649]
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
be inevitable. An inability to take seriously for any length of
time their enemies, their disasters, their misdeeds that is the
sign of the full strong natures who possess a superfluity of
moulding pkstic force, that heals completely and produces
forgetfulness: a good example of this in the modern world
is Mirabeau, who had no memory for any insults and mean-
nesses which were practised on him, and who was only in-
capable of forgiving because he forgot. Such a man indeed
shakes off with a shrug many a worm which would have
buried itself in another; it is only in characters like these that
we see the possibility (supposing, of course, that there is such
a possibility in the world) of the real "love of one's enemies."
What respect for his enemies is found, forsooth, in an aristo-
cratic man and such a reverence is already a bridge to love!
He insists on having his enemy to himself as his distinction.
He tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose character
there is nothing to despise and much to honour! On the other
hand, imagine the * 'enemy" as the resentful man conceives
him and it is here exactly that we see his work, his creative-
ness; he has conceived "the evil enemy," the "evil one," and
indeed that is the root idea from which he now evolves as a
contrasting and corresponding figure a "good one," himself
his very self!
11
The method of this man is quite contrary to that of the aris-
tocratic man, who conceives the root idea "good" spontane-
ously and straight away, that is to say, out of himself, and
from that material then creates for himself a concept of "bad"!
This "bad" of aristocratic origin and that "evil" out of the
[ 650}
GOOD AND EVIL
cauldron of unsatisfied hatred the former an imitation, an
"extra," an additional nuance; the latter, on the other hand,
the original, the beginning, the essential act in the conception
of a slave-morality these two words "bad" and "evil," how
great a difference do they mark, in spite of the fact that they
have an identical contrary in the idea "good." But the idea
"good" is not the same: much rather let the question be asked,
"Who is really evil according to the meaning of the morality
of resentment?" In all sternness let it be answered thus:
just the good man of the other morality, just the aristocrat, the
powerful one, the one who rules, but who is distorted by the
venomous eye of resent fulness, into a new colour, a new sig-
nification, a new appearance. This particular point we would
be the last to deny: the man who learned to know those "good"
ones only as enemies, learned at the same time not to know them
only as "evil enemies," and the same men who inter pares were
kept so rigorously in bounds through convention, respect, cus-
tom, and gratitude, though much more through mutual vigi-
lance and jealousy inter pares, these men who in their rela-
tions with each other find so many new ways of manifesting
consideration, self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friend-
ship, these men are in reference to what is outside their circle
(where the foreign element, a foreign country, begins), not
much better than beasts of prey, which have been let loose.
They enjoy there freedom from all social control, they feel
that in the wilderness they can give vent with impunity to that
tension which is produced by enclosure and imprisonment in
the peace of society, they revert to the innocence of the beast-
of-prey conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps come
from a ghostly bout of murder, arson, rape, and torture, with
bravado and a moral equanimity, as though merely some wild
student's prank had been played, perfectly convinced that the
THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS
poets have now an ample theme to sing and celebrate. It is
impossible not to recognise at the core of all these aristocratic
races the beast of prey; the magnificent blond brute, avidly
rampant for spoil and victory; this hidden core needed an out-
let from time to time, the beast must get loose again, must
return into the wilderness the Roman, Arabic, German, and
Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vik-
ings, are all alike in this need. It is the aristocratic races who
have left the idea "Barbarian" on all the tracks in which they
have marched; nay, a consciousness of this very barbarianism,
and even a pride in it, manifests itself even in their highest
civilisation (for example, when Pericles says to his Athenians
in that celebrated funeral oration, "Our audacity has forced a
way over every land and sea, rearing everywhere imperishable
memorials of itself for good and for evil"). This audacity of
aristocratic races, mad, absurd, and spasmodic as may be its
expression; the incalculable and fantastic nature of their enter-
prises, Pericles sets in special relief and glory the Qaftvpia
of the Athenians, their nonchalance and contempt for safety,
body, life, and comfort, their awful joy and intense delight in
all destruction, in all the ecstasies of victory and cruelty, all
these features become crystallised, for those who suffered
thereby in the picture of the "barbarian," of the "evil enemy,"
perhaps of the "Goth" and of the "Vandal." The profound,
icy mistrust which the German provokes, as soon as he arrives
at power, even at the present time, is always still an after-
math of that inextinguishable horror with which for whole
centuries Europe has regarded the wrath of the blond Teuton
beast (although between the old Germans and ourselves there
exists scarcely a psychological, let alone a physical, relation-
ship). I have once called attention to the embarrassment of
Hesiod, when he conceived the series of social ages, and en-
[662}
GOOD AND EVIL
deavoured to express them in gold, silver, and bronze. He
could only dispose of the contradiction, with which he was'
confronted, by the Homeric world, an age magnificent indeed,
but at the same time so awful and so violent, by making two
ages out of one, which he henceforth placed one behind the
other first, the age of the heroes and demigods, as that world
had remained in the memories of the aristocratic families,
who found therein their own ancestors; secondly, the bronze
age, as that corresponding age appeared to the descendants of
the oppressed, spoiled, ill-treated, exiled, enslaved; namely, as
an age of bronze, as I have said, hard, cold, terrible, without
feelings and without conscience, crushing everything, and
bespattering everything with blood. Granted the truth of the
theory now believed to be true, that the very essence of all
civilisation is to train out of man, the beast of prey, a tame and
civil 
