The Portable Nietzsche (25 page)

Once when the sea cast them about, they thought they were landing on an island; but behold, it was a sleeping monster. False values and delusive words: these are the worst monsters for mortals; long does calamity sleep and wait in them. But eventually it comes and wakes and eats and devours what built huts upon it. Behold these huts which these priests built! Churches they call their sweet-smelling caves. Oh, that falsified light! That musty air! Here the soul is not allowed to soar to its height. For thus their faith commands: “Crawl up the stairs on your knees, ye sinners!”

Verily, rather would I see even the shameless than the contorted eyes of their shame and devotion! Who created for themselves such caves and stairways of repentance? Was it not such as wanted to hide themselves and were ashamed before the pure sky?

And only when the pure sky again looks through broken ceilings and down upon grass and red poppies near broken walls, will I again turn my heart to the abodes of this god.

They have called “God” what was contrary to them and gave them pain; and verily, there was much of the heroic in their adoration. And they did not know how to love their god except by crucifying man.

As corpses they meant to live; in black they decked out their corpses; out of their speech, too, I still smell the bad odor of death chambers. And whoever lives near them lives near black ponds out of which an ominous frog sings its song with sweet melancholy. They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer: and his disciples would have to look more redeemed!

Naked would I see them: for only beauty should preach repentance. But who would be persuaded by this muffled melancholy? Verily, their redeemers themselves did not come out of freedom and the seventh heaven of freedom. Verily, they themselves have never walked on the carpets of knowledge. Of gaps was the spirit of these redeemers made up; but into every gap they put their delusion, their stopgap, which they called God.

Their spirit was drowned in their pity; and when they were swollen and overswollen with pity, it was always a great folly that swam on top. Eagerly and with much shouting they drove their herd over their path; as if there were but a single path to the future. Verily, these shepherds themselves belonged among the sheep. Small spirits and spacious souls these shepherds had; but my brothers, what small domains have even the most spacious souls proved to be so far!

They wrote signs of blood on the way they walked, and their folly taught that with blood one proved truth. But blood is the worst witness of truth; blood poisons even the purest doctrine and turns it into delusion and hatred of the heart. And if a man goes through fire for his doctrine—what does that prove? Verily, it is more if your own doctrine comes out of your own fire.

A sultry heart and a cold head: where these two meet there arises the roaring wind, the “Redeemer.” There have been greater ones, verily, and more highborn than those whom the people call redeemers, those roaring winds which carry away. And you, my brothers, must be redeemed from still greater ones than all the redeemers if you would find the way to freedom.

Never yet has there been an overman. Naked I saw both the greatest and the smallest man: they are still all-too-similar to each other. Verily, even the greatest I found all-too-human.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Slack and sleeping senses must be addressed with thunder and heavenly fireworks. But the voice of beauty speaks gently: it creeps only into the most awakened souls. Gently trembled and laughed my shield today; that is the holy laughter and tremor of beauty. About you, the virtuous, my beauty laughed today. And thus its voice came to me: “They still want to be paid.”

You who are virtuous still want to be paid! Do you want rewards for virtue, and heaven for earth, and the eternal for your today?

And now are you angry with me because I teach that there is no reward and paymaster? And verily, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward.

Alas, that is my sorrow: they have lied reward and punishment into the foundation of things, and now also into the foundation of your souls, you who are virtuous. But like the boar's snout, my words shall tear open the foundation of your souls: a plowshare will I be to you. All the secrets of your foundation shall come to light; and when you lie uprooted and broken in the sun, then will your lies also be separated from your truths.

For this is your truth: you are too
pure
for the filth of the words: revenge, punishment, reward, retribution. You love your virtue as a mother her child; but when has a mother ever wished to be paid for her love? Your virtue is what is dearest to you. The thirst of the ring lives in you: every ring strives and turns to reach itself again. And like a dying star is every work of your virtue: its light is always still on its way and it wanders—and when will it no longer be on its way? Thus the light of your virtue is still on its way even when the work has been done. Though it be forgotten and dead, the ray of its light still lives and wanders. That your virtue is your self and not something foreign, a skin, a cloak, that is the truth from the foundation of your souls, you who are virtuous.

Yet there are those for whom virtue is the spasm under the scourge, and you have listened to their clamor too much.

And there are others who call it virtue when their vices grow lazy; and when their hatred and jealousy stretch their limbs for once, then their “justice” comes to life and rubs its sleepy eyes.

And there are others who are drawn downward: their devils draw them. But the more they sink, the more fervently glow their eyes and their lust for their god. Alas, their clamor too has reached your ears, you who are virtuous: “What I am not, that, that to me are God and virtue!”

And there are others who come along, heavy and creaking like carts carrying stones downhill: they talk much of dignity and virtue—they call their brake virtue.

And there are others who are like cheap clocks that must be wound: they tick and they want the tick-tock to be called virtue. Verily, I have my pleasure in these: wherever I find such clocks, I shall wind and wound them with my mockery, and they shall whir for me.

And others are proud of their handful of justice and commit outrages against all things for its sake, till the world is drowned in their injustice. Oh, how ill the word virtue comes out of their mouths! And when they say, “I am just,” it always sounds like “I am just—revenged.” With their virtue they want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies, and they exalt themselves only to humble others.

And then again there are such as sit in their swamp and speak thus out of the reeds: “Virtue—that is sitting still in a swamp. We bite no one and avoid those who want to bite; and in all things we hold the opinion that is given to us.”

And then again there are such as love gestures and think that virtue is some kind of gesture. Their knees always adore, and their hands are hymns to virtue, but their heart knows nothing about it.

And then again there are such as consider it virtue to say, “Virtue is necessary”; but at bottom they believe only that the police is necessary.

And some who cannot see what is high in man call it virtue that they see all-too-closely what is low in man: thus they call their evil eye virtue.

And some want to be edified and elevated, and they call that virtue, while others want to be bowled over, and they call that virtue too.

And thus almost all believe that they have a share in virtue; and at the very least everyone wants to be an expert on good and evil.

Yet Zarathustra did not come to say to all these liars and fools: “What do
you
know of virtue? What
could
you know of virtue?”

Rather, that you, my friends, might grow weary of the old words you have learned from the fools and liars.

Weary of the words: reward, retribution, punishment, and revenge in justice.

Weary of saying: what makes an act good is that it is unselfish.

Oh, my friends, that your self be in your deed as the mother is in her child—let that be
your
word concerning virtue!

Verily, I may have taken a hundred words from you and the dearest toys of your virtue, and now you are angry with me, as children are angry. They played by the sea, and a wave came and carried off their toy to the depths: now they are crying. But the same wave shall bring them new toys and shower new colorful shells before them. Thus they will be comforted; and like them, you too, my friends, shall have your comfortings—and new colorful shells.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Life is a well of joy; but where the rabble drinks too, all wells are poisoned. I am fond of all that is clean, but I have no wish to see the grinning snouts and the thirst of the unclean. They cast their eye into the well: now their revolting smile shines up out of the well. They have poisoned the holy water with their lustfulness; and when they called their dirty dreams “pleasure,” they poisoned the language too. The flame is vexed when their moist hearts come near the fire; the spirit itself seethes and smokes where the rabble steps near the fire. In their hands all fruit grows sweetish and overmellow; their glance makes the fruit tree a prey of the wind and withers its crown.

And some who turned away from life only turned away from the rabble: they did not want to share well and flame and fruit with the rabble.

And some who went into the wilderness and suffered thirst with the beasts of prey merely did not want to sit around the cistern with filthy camel drivers.

And some who came along like annihilators and like a hailstorm to all orchards merely wanted to put a foot into the gaping jaws of the rabble to plug up its throat.

The bite on which I gagged the most is not the knowledge that life itself requires hostility and death and torture-crosses—but once I asked, and I was almost choked by my question: What? does life require even the rabble? Are poisoned wells required, and stinking fires and soiled dreams and maggots in the bread of life?

Not my hatred but my nausea gnawed hungrily at my life. Alas, I often grew weary of the spirit when I found that even the rabble had
esprit
. And I turned my back on those who rule when I saw what they now call ruling: higgling and haggling for power—with the rabble. I have lived with closed ears among people with foreign tongues: would that the tongue of their higgling and their haggling for power might remain foreign to me. And, holding my nose, I walked disgruntled through all of yesterday and today: verily, all of yesterday and today smells foul of the writing rabble.

Like a cripple who has become deaf and blind and dumb: thus have I lived for many years lest I live with the power-, writing- and pleasure-rabble. Laboriously and cautiously my spirit climbed steps; alms of pleasure were its refreshment; and life crept along for the blind as on a cane.

What was it that happened to me? How did I redeem myself from nausea? Who rejuvenated my sight? How did I fly to the height where no more rabble sits by the well? Was it my nausea itself which created wings for me and water-divining powers? Verily, I had to fly to the highest spheres that I might find the fount of pleasure again.

Oh, I found it, my brothers! Here, in the highest spheres, the fount of pleasure wells up for me! And here is a life of which the rabble does not drink.

You flow for me almost too violently, fountain of pleasure. And often you empty the cup again by wanting to fill it. And I must still learn to approach you more modestly: all-too-violently my heart still flows toward you—
my
heart, upon which my summer burns, short, hot, melancholy, overblissful: how my summer-heart craves your coolness!

Gone is the hesitant gloom of my spring! Gone the malice of my snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely, and summer noon! A summer in the highest spheres with cold wells and blissful silence: oh, come, my friends, that the silence may become still more blissful!

For this is
our
height and our home: we live here too high and steep for all the unclean and their thirst. Cast your pure eyes into the well of my pleasure, friends! How should that make it muddy? It shall laugh back at you in its own purity.

On the tree, Future, we build our nest; and in our solitude eagles shall bring us nourishment in their beaks. Verily, no nourishment which the unclean might share: they would think they were devouring fire and they would burn their mouths. Verily, we keep no homes here for the unclean: our pleasure would be an ice cave to their bodies and their spirits.

And we want to live over them like strong winds, neighbors of the eagles, neighbors of the snow, neighbors of the sun: thus live strong winds. And like a wind I yet want to blow among them one day, and with my spirit take the breath of their spirit: thus my future wills it.

Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra for all who are low; and this counsel he gives to all his enemies and all who spit and spew: “Beware of spitting
against
the wind!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Behold, this is the hole of the tarantula. Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Here hangs its web; touch it, that it tremble!

There it comes willingly: welcome, tarantula! Your triangle and symbol sits black on your back; and I also know what sits in your soul. Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite, black scabs grow; your poison makes the soul whirl with revenge.

Thus I speak to you in a parable—you who make souls whirl, you preachers of
equality
. To me you are tarantulas, and secretly vengeful. But I shall bring your secrets to light; therefore I laugh in your faces with my laughter of the heights. Therefore I tear at your webs, that your rage may lure you out of your lie-holes and your revenge may leap out from behind your word justice. For
that man be delivered from revenge
, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.