And verily! Many a thing also that is OUR OWN is hard to bear! And many internal things in man are 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 concealed goodness and power is never dreamt of; the choicest 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.
All-satisfiedness, 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 genuine swine-nature! Ever to say YE-A—that hath only the ass learnt, 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 lickspittles; 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 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, must first learn standing and walking and running and climbing 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 shipwrecked 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?” Thus did I answer those who asked me “the way.” For THE way—it doth not exist!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
LVI. 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 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 gods in their dancing are 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, recommuning, 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:—
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 beyond? 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 surpassed.
—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 whatever else I have hung up over men like purple evening-afterglows.
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 compose 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 redeem 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.—
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 inexhaustible 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.
- 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-obedience! - 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
