There comes the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on your back is your triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in your soul.
Revenge is in your soul: wherever you bite, there arises black scab; with revenge, your poison makes the soul giddy!
Thus do I speak to you in parable, you who make the soul giddy, you preachers of equality! Tarantulas are you to me, and secretly revengeful ones!
But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore 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 from 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 vir-tue; and against all that has power will we raise an outcry!»
You preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence cries 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.
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What the father has hid comes 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 inspires them-but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that makes them so.
Their jealousy leads them also into thinkers’ paths; and this is the sign of their jealousy- they always go too far: so that their fatigue has at last to go to sleep on the snow.
In all their lamentations sounds vengeance, in all their eulogies is mal-eficence; and being judge seems to them bliss.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the im-pulse to punish is powerful!
They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound.
Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! 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 favor of life, though they sit in their den, these poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life- is because 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 otherwise: and they themselves were once the best world-maligners and heretic-burners.
With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confoun-ded. For thus speaks justice to me: «Men are not equal.»
And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Su-perman, if I spoke otherwise?
On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and always shall there be more war and inequality among them: thus do 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!
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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 overcome itself!
Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs- life itself into remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties- therefore does it require elevation!
And because it requires elevation, therefore does it require steps, and variance of steps and climbers! To rise strives life, and in rising to over-come itself.
And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula’s den is, rises aloft an ancient temple’s ruins- just behold it with enlightened eyes!
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 does 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! Div-inely will we strive against one another!-
Alas! There has the tarantula bit me myself, my old enemy! Divinely steadfast and beautiful, it has bit me on the finger!
«Punishment must there be, and justice»- so thinks it: «not gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honor of enmity!»
Yes, it has 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!
No cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!-
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
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Chapter 8
The Famous Wise Men
THE people have you served and the people’s superstition- not the truth!- all you 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 does the master give free scope to his slaves, and even enjoys 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 has it echoed through all time.
Your people would you justify in their reverence: that called you «Will to Truth,» you famous wise ones!
And your heart has 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 you always been, as the ad-vocates of the people.
And many a powerful one who wanted to run well with the people, has harnessed in front of his horses- a donkey, a famous wise man.
And now, you famous wise ones, I would have you finally throw off entirely the skin of the lion!
The skin of the beast of prey, the speckled skin, and the dishevelled locks of the investigator, the searcher, and the conqueror!
Ah! for me to learn to believe in your «conscientiousness,» you would first have to break your venerating will.
Conscientious- so call I him who goes into God-forsaken wildernesses, and has broken his venerating heart.
In the yellow sands and burnt by the sun, he doubtless peers thirstily at the isles rich in fountains, where life reposes under shady trees.
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But his thirst does not persuade him to become like those comfortable ones: for where there are oases, there are also idols.
Hungry, fierce, lonesome, God-forsaken: so does the lion-will wish itself.
Free from the happiness of slaves, redeemed from deities and adora-tions, fearless and fear-inspiring, grand and lonesome: 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.
For, always do they draw, as asses- the people’s carts!
Not that I on that account upbraid them: but serving ones do they re-main, and harnessed ones, even though they glitter in golden harness.
And often have they been good servants and worthy of their hire. For thus says virtue: «If you must be a servant, seek him to whom your ser-vice is most useful!
The spirit and virtue of your master shall advance by you being his servant: thus will you yourself advance with his spirit and virtue!»
And verily, you famous wise ones, you servants of the people! You yourselves have advanced with the people’s spirit and virtue- and the people by you! To your honor do I say it!
But the people you 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 cuts into life: by its own torture does it in-crease its own knowledge,- did you know that before?
And the spirit’s happiness is this: to be anointed and consecrated with tears as a sacrificial victim,- did you know that before?
And the blindness of the blind one, and his seeking and groping, shall yet testify to the power of the sun into which he has gazed,- did you know that before?
And with mountains shall the
