Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong reverent spirit that would bear much: for the heavy and the heaviest longs its strength.
What is heavy? so asks the spirit that would bear much, and then kneels down like the camel, and wants to be well laden.
What is the heaviest thing, you heroes? asks the spirit that would bear much, that I may take it upon me and exult in my strength.
Is it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one’s pride? To exhibit one’s folly in order to mock at one’s wisdom?
Or is it this: To desert our cause when it triumphs? To climb high mountains to tempt the tempter?
Or is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger in one’s soul?
Or is it this: To be sick and send away the comforters, and to make friends of the deaf, who never hear your requests?
Or is it this: To go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and not avoid cold frogs and hot toads?
Or is it this: To love those who despise us, and to give one’s hand to the phantom who tries to frighten us?
All these heaviest things the spirit that would bear much takes upon itself: like the camel, that, when laden, hastens into the desert, so speeds the spirit into its desert.
But in the loneliest desert happens the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becomes a lion; he will seize his freedom and be master in his own wilderness.
Here he seeks his last master: he wants to fight him and his last God; for victory he will struggle with the great dragon.
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Who is the great dragon which the spirit no longer wants to call Lord and God? «Thou-shalt,» is the great dragon called. But the spirit of the li-on says, «I will.»
«Thou-shalt,» lies in his path, sparkling with gold- a scale-covered beast; and on each scale glitters a golden «Thou-shalt!»
The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: «All values of all things- glitter on me.
All value has long been created, and I am all created value. Verily, there shall be no more ‘I will’ .» Thus speaks the dragon.
My brothers, why does the spirit need the lion? Why is the beast of burden, which renounces and is reverent, not enough?
To create new values- that, even the lion cannot accomplish: but to cre-ate for oneself freedom for new creating- that freedom the might of the lion can seize.
To create freedom for oneself, and give a sacred No even to duty: for that, my brothers, the lion is needed.
To assume the right to new values- that is the most terrifying assump-tion for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. To such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.
He once loved «Thou-shalt» as the most sacred: now is he forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the most sacred things, that free-dom from his love may be his prey: the lion is needed for such prey.
But tell me, my brothers, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child?
The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes.
For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred Yes is needed: the spir-it now wills his own will; the world’s outcast now conquers his own world.
Of three metamorphoses of the spirit I have told you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.-
Thus spoke Zarathustra. And at that time he stayed in the town which is called The Pied Cow.
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Chapter 2
The Academic Chairs of Virtue
A SAGE was praised to Zarathustra, as one who could speak well about sleep and virtue: greatly was he honored and rewarded for it, and all the youths sat before his chair. To him went Zarathustra, and sat among the youths before his chair. And thus spoke the wise man:
Respect and modesty in presence of sleep! That is the first thing! And to avoid all who sleep badly and keep awake at night!
Modest is even the thief in presence of sleep: he always steals softly through the night. Shameless, however, is the night-watchman; shame-lessly he carries his horn.
No small art is it to sleep: for its sake must one stay awake all day.
Ten times a day must you overcome yourself: that causes wholesome weariness, and is opium for the soul.
Ten times must you reconcile again with yourself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.
Ten truths must you find during the day; otherwise will you seek truth during the night, and your soul will have been hungry.
Ten times must you laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise your stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb you in the night.
Few people know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery?
Shall I covet my neighbor’s maidservant? All that would ill accord with good sleep.
And even if one have all the virtues, there is still one thing needful: to send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time.
That they may not quarrel with one another, the good females! And about you, you unhappy one!
Peace with God and your neighbor: so desires good sleep. And peace also with your neighbor’s devil! Otherwise he will haunt you in the night.
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Honor to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked gov-ernment! So desires good sleep. How can I help it, if power likes to walk on crooked legs?
He who leads his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for me the best shepherd: so does it accord with good sleep.
Many honors I want not, nor great treasures: they excite the spleen. But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little treasure.
A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come and go at the right time. So does it accord with good sleep.
Well, also, do the poor in spirit please me: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always give in to them.
Thus passes the day to the virtuous. When night comes, then take I good care not to summon sleep. It dislikes to be summoned- sleep, the lord of the virtues!
But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus chewing the cud, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were your ten overcomings?
And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself?
Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, I am overcome by sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues.
Sleep taps on my eye, and it turns heavy. Sleep touches my mouth, and it remains open.
On soft soles does it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and steals from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, like this academic chair.
But not much longer do I then stand: Soon I will lie.-
When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his heart: for a light had dawned upon him. And thus he spoke to his heart:
This sage with his forty thoughts is a fool: but I believe he knows well how to sleep.
Happy is he who even lives near this wise man! Such sleep is conta-gious- contagious even through a thick wall.
A magic resides even in his academic chair. And it is not in vain that the youths sit before this preacher of virtue.
His wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well. And verily, if life had no sense, and had I to choose nonsense, this would be the most sens-ible nonsense for me also.
Now I know well what people once sought above all else when they sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought, and opiate virtues to promote it!
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To all those belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep without dreams: they knew no better meaning of life.
Even now, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not all are so honest: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: soon they will lie.
Blessed are those sleepy ones: for they shall soon drop off.-Thus spoke Zarathustra.
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Chapter 3 The Afterworldly
ONCE on a time, Zarathustra also cast his delusion beyond man, like all the afterworldly. The work of a suffering and tortured God, the world then seemed to me.
The dream- and fiction- of a God, the world then seemed to me; colored vapors before the eyes of a divinely suffering one.
Good and evil, and joy and pain, and I and you- colored vapors did they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away from himself,- and so he created the world.
Intoxicating joy it is for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, the world once seemed to me.
This world, the
