Thus sang Zarathustra.
167
Chapter 7 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 unawares 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 something of the expression and modulation of language, and perhaps liked also to bor-row from the store of his wisdom. And the fool talked thus to Zarathustra:
O Zarathustra, here is the great city: here have you nothing to seek and everything to lose.
Why would you wade through this mire? Have pity upon your foot! Spit rather on the gate of the city, and- turn back!
Here is the hell for hermits’ thoughts: here are great thoughts seethed alive and boiled small.
Here do all great sentiments decay: here may only rattle-boned sensa-tions rattle!
Smell you not already the shambles and cookshops of the spirit? Steams not this city with the fumes of slaughtered spirit?
See you not the souls hanging like limp dirty rags?- And they make newspapers also out of these rags!
Hear you not how spirit has here become a verbal game? Loathsome verbal swill does it vomit forth!- And they make newspapers also out of this verbal swill.
They hound one another, and know not where! They inflame one an-other, 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 in-flamed, and seek coolness from frozen spirits; they are all sick and sore through public opinion.
168
All lusts and vices are here at home; but here there are also the virtu-ous; 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, haunch-less daughters.
There is here also much piety, and much faithful spittle-licking and spittle-backing, before the God of Hosts.
«From on high,» drips the star, and the gracious spittle; for the high, longs every starless bosom.
The moon has its court, and the court has its moon-calves: to all, however, that comes from the court do the mendicant people pray, and all appointable mendicant virtues.
«I serve, you serve, we serve»- so prays all appointable virtue to the prince: that the merited star may at last stick on the slender breast!
But the moon still revolves around all that is earthly: so revolves 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 proposes, but the shopman- disposes!
By all that is luminous and strong and good in you, O Zarathustra! Spit on this city of shopmen and return back!
Here flows all blood putridly and tepidly and frothily through all veins: spit on the great city, which is the great slum where all the scum froths together!
Spit on the city of compressed souls and slender breasts, of pointed eyes and sticky fingers-
-On the city of the obtrusive, the brazen-faced, the pen-demagogues and tongue-demagogues, the overheated ambitious:-
Where everything maimed, ill-famed, lustful, untrustful, over-mellow, sickly-yellow and seditious, festers perniciously:-
-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 your speech and your species disgusted me!
Why did you live so long by the swamp, that you yourself had to be-come a frog and a toad?
Flows there not a tainted, frothy, swamp-blood in your own veins, when you have thus learned to croak and revile?
169
Why went you not into the forest? Or why did you not till the ground? Is the sea not full of green islands?
I despise your contempt; and when you warned me- why did you not warn yourself?
Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; but not out of the swamp!-
They call you my ape, you foaming fool: but I call you my grunting-pig,- by your grunting, you spoil even my praise of folly.
What was it that first made you grunt? Because no one sufficiently flattered you:- therefore did you seat yourself beside this filth, that you might have cause for much grunting,-
-That you might have cause for much vengeance! For vengeance, you vain fool, is all your foaming; I have divined you well!
But your fools’-word injures me, even when you are right! And even if Zarathustra’s word were a hundred times justified, you would ever- do wrong with my word!
Thus spoke Zarathustra. Then did he look on the great city and sighed, and was long silent. At last he spoke 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 has its time and its own fate.-
This precept, however, give I to you, in parting, you fool: Where one can no longer love, there should one- pass by!-
Thus spoke Zarathustra, and passed by the fool and the great city.
170
Chapter 8 The Apostates
1.
AH, LIES 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 be-come pious.»
Of late did I see 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 valor!
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 crawl before 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 mumblers and mollycoddles.
Did perhaps their hearts despond, because solitude had swallowed me like a whale? Did their ear perhaps hearken 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 cour-age and exuberance; and in such remains also the spirit patient. The rest, however, are cowardly.
The rest: these are always the great majority, the common-place, the superfluous, the all-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 fools.
His second companions, however- they will call themselves his believ-ers,- will be a living host, with much love, much folly, much unbearded veneration.
171
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 be-lieve, who knows the fickly faint-hearted human species!
Could they do otherwise, then would they also will otherwise. 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 everything withered may run away from you the faster!-
172
2.
«We have again become pious»- so do those apostates confess; and some of them are still too pusillanimous thus to confess.
To them I look into the eye,- before them I say it to their face and to the blush on their cheeks: You are those who again pray!
It is shameful to pray! Not for all, but for you, and me, and whoever has his conscience in his head. For you it is shameful to pray!
You know it well: the faint-hearted devil in you, which would rather fold its arms, and place its hands in its bosom, and take it easier:- this faint-hearted devil persuades you that «there is a God!»
Thereby, however, do you belong to the light-dreading type, to whom light never permits repose: now must you daily thrust your head deeper into obscurity and vapor!
And verily, you choose the hour well: for just now do the nocturnal birds again fly abroad. The hour has 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 has 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 curtain, a night-moth rushes out of it.
Did it perhaps squat there along with another night-moth? For every-where 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
