This, yes this, is bitterness to my bowels, that I can neither endure you naked nor clothed, you present-day men!
All that is unhomelike in the future, and whatever makes strayed birds shiver, is verily more homelike and familiar than your «reality.»
For thus speak you: «Real are we wholly, and without faith and super-stition»: thus do you plume yourselves- alas! even without plumes!
Indeed, how would you be able to believe, you divers-colored ones!-you who are pictures of all that has ever been believed!
Perambulating refutations are you, of belief itself, and a dislocation of all thought. Untrustworthy ones: thus do I call you, you 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 you: therefore do you lack belief. But he who had to cre-ate, had always his presaging dreams and astral premonitions- and be-lieved in believing!-
Half-open doors are you, at which grave-diggers wait. And this is your reality: «Everything deserves to perish.»
Alas, how you stand there before me, you unfruitful ones; how lean your ribs! And many of you surely have had knowledge thereof.
Many a one has said: «There has surely a God filched something from me secretly whilst I slept? enough to make a girl for himself therefrom!
«Amazing is the poverty of my ribs!» thus has spoken many a present-day man.
Yes, you are laughable to me, you present-day men! And especially when you marvel at yourselves!
And woe to 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!
It shall not on that account become heavier to me! And not from you, you present-day men, shall my great weariness arise.-
Ah, where shall I now ascend with my longing! From all mountains do I look out for fatherlands and motherlands.
But a home have I found nowhere: unsettled am I in all cities, and de-camping at all gates.
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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 re-motest sea: for it do I bid my sails search and search.
To my children will I make amends for being the child of my fathers: and to all the future- for this present-day!-
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
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Chapter 15 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. With a bad conscience does 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.
No, I like him not, that tom-cat on the roofs! Hateful to me are all that slink around half-closed windows!
Piously and silently does he stalk along on the star-carpets:- but I like no light-treading human feet, on which not even a spur jingles.
Every honest one’s step speaks; the cat however, steals along over the ground. Behold, cat-like does the moon come along, and dishonestly.-
This parable speak I to you sentimental dissemblers, to you, the «pure discerners!» You do I call- covetous ones!
Also you love the earth, and the earthly: I have divined you well!- but shame is in your love, and a bad conscience- you are like the moon!
To despise the earthly has 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 goes in by-ways and lying ways to escape its own shame.
«That would be the highest thing for me»- so says your lying spirit to 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 do the seduced one se-duce himself,- «to love the earth as the moon loves it, and with the eye only to feel its beauty.
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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, you sentimental dissemblers, you covetous ones! You lack inno-cence in your desire: and now do you defame desiring on that account!
Not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do you love the earth! Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation. And he who
seeks to create beyond himself, has for me the purest will.
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 to you cowards!
But now does your emasculated ogling profess to be «contemplation!» And that which can be examined with cowardly eyes is to be christened «beautiful!» Oh, you violators of noble names!
But it shall be your curse, you immaculate ones, you pure discerners, that you shall never bring forth, even though you lie broad and teeming on the horizon!
You fill your mouth with noble words: and we are to believe that your heart overflows, you cozeners?
But my words are poor, contemptible, stammering words: gladly do I pick up what falls from the table at your repasts.
Yet still can I say therewith the truth- to dissemblers! Yes, 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 does not believe in himself always lies.
A God’s mask have you hung in front of you, you «pure ones»: into a God’s mask has your execrable coiling snake crawled.
Verily you deceive, you «contemplative ones!» Even Zarathustra 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, you 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 near to you: then came to me the day,- and now comes it to you,- at an end is the moon’s love affair!
See there! Surprised and pale does it stand- before the rosy dawn!
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For already she comes, the glowing one,- her love to the earth comes! Innocence, and creative desire, is all solar love!
See there, how she comes impatiently over the sea! Do you 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 rises the desire of the sea with its thousand breasts.
Kissed and sucked would it be by the thirst of the sun; vapor would it become, and height, and path of light, and light itself!
Like the sun do I love life, and all deep seas.
And this means to me knowledge: all that is deep shall ascend- to my height!-
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
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Chapter 16 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. 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 pop-pies. Innocent are they, even in their wickedness.
But to the sheep I am no longer a scholar: so wills 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 honors and dignities.
I am too hot and scorched with my 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 burns on the steps.
Like those who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do they also wait, and gape
