Thus Spoke Zarathustra

1.

ne morning, not long after his return to his cave, Zarathustra sprang
up from his couch like a madman, crying with a frightful voice, and
acting as if some one still lay on the couch who did not wish to rise.
Zarathustra’s voice also resounded in such a manner that his animals
came to him frightened, and out of all the neighbouring caves and
lurking-places all the creatures slipped away—flying, fluttering,
creeping or leaping, according to their variety of foot or wing.
Zarathustra, however, spake these words:

Up, abysmal thought out of my depth! I am thy cock and morning dawn,
thou overslept reptile: Up! Up! My voice shall soon crow thee awake!

Unbind the fetters of thine ears: listen! For I wish to hear thee! Up!
Up! There is thunder enough to make the very graves listen!

And rub the sleep and all the dimness and blindness out of thine eyes!
Hear me also with thine eyes: my voice is a medicine even for those born
blind.

And once thou art awake, then shalt thou ever remain awake. It is not
MY custom to awake great-grandmothers out of their sleep that I may bid
them—sleep on!

Thou stirrest, stretchest thyself, wheezest? Up! Up! Not wheeze, shalt
thou,—but speak unto me! Zarathustra calleth thee, Zarathustra the
godless!

I, Zarathustra, the advocate of living, the advocate of suffering, the
advocate of the circuit—thee do I call, my most abysmal thought!

Joy to me! Thou comest,—I hear thee! Mine abyss SPEAKETH, my lowest
depth have I turned over into the light!

Joy to me! Come hither! Give me thy hand—ha! let be! aha!—Disgust,
disgust, disgust—alas to me!

2.

Hardly, however, had Zarathustra spoken these words, when he fell down
as one dead, and remained long as one dead. When however he again came
to himself, then was he pale and trembling, and remained lying; and for
long he would neither eat nor drink. This condition continued for seven
days; his animals, however, did not leave him day nor night, except that
the eagle flew forth to fetch food. And what it fetched and foraged,
it laid on Zarathustra’s couch: so that Zarathustra at last lay among
yellow and red berries, grapes, rosy apples, sweet-smelling herbage, and
pine-cones. At his feet, however, two lambs were stretched, which the
eagle had with difficulty carried off from their shepherds.

At last, after seven days, Zarathustra raised himself upon his couch,
took a rosy apple in his hand, smelt it and found its smell pleasant.
Then did his animals think the time had come to speak unto him.

“O Zarathustra,” said they, “now hast thou lain thus for seven days with
heavy eyes: wilt thou not set thyself again upon thy feet?

Step out of thy cave: the world waiteth for thee as a garden. The wind
playeth with heavy fragrance which seeketh for thee; and all brooks
would like to run after thee.

All things long for thee, since thou hast remained alone for seven
days—step forth out of thy cave! All things want to be thy physicians!

Did perhaps a new knowledge come to thee, a bitter, grievous knowledge?
Like leavened dough layest thou, thy soul arose and swelled beyond all
its bounds.—”

—O mine animals, answered Zarathustra, talk on thus and let me listen!
It refresheth me so to hear your talk: where there is talk, there is the
world as a garden unto me.

How charming it is that there are words and tones; are not words and
tones rainbows and seeming bridges ‘twixt the eternally separated?

To each soul belongeth another world; to each soul is every other soul a
back-world.

Among the most alike doth semblance deceive most delightfully: for the
smallest gap is most difficult to bridge over.

For me—how could there be an outside-of-me? There is no outside! But
this we forget on hearing tones; how delightful it is that we forget!

Have not names and tones been given unto things that man may refresh
himself with them? It is a beautiful folly, speaking; therewith danceth
man over everything.

How lovely is all speech and all falsehoods of tones! With tones danceth
our love on variegated rainbows.—

—“O Zarathustra,” said then his animals, “to those who think like us,
things all dance themselves: they come and hold out the hand and laugh
and flee—and return.

Everything goeth, everything returneth; eternally rolleth the wheel
of existence. Everything dieth, everything blossometh forth again;
eternally runneth on the year of existence.

Everything breaketh, everything is integrated anew; eternally buildeth
itself the same house of existence. All things separate, all things
again greet one another; eternally true to itself remaineth the ring of
existence.

Every moment beginneth existence, around every ‘Here’ rolleth the ball
‘There.’ The middle is everywhere. Crooked is the path of eternity.”—

—O ye wags and barrel-organs! answered Zarathustra, and smiled once
more, how well do ye know what had to be fulfilled in seven days:—

—And how that monster crept into my throat and choked me! But I bit off
its head and spat it away from me.

And ye—ye have made a lyre-lay out of it? Now, however, do I lie here,
still exhausted with that biting and spitting-away, still sick with mine
own salvation.

AND YE LOOKED ON AT IT ALL? O mine animals, are ye also cruel? Did
ye like to look at my great pain as men do? For man is the cruellest
animal.

At tragedies, bull-fights, and crucifixions hath he hitherto been
happiest on earth; and when he invented his hell, behold, that was his
heaven on earth.

When the great man crieth—: immediately runneth the little man thither,
and his tongue hangeth out of his mouth for very lusting. He, however,
calleth it his “pity.”

The little man, especially the poet—how passionately doth he accuse
life in words! Hearken to him, but do not fail to hear the delight which
is in all accusation!

Such accusers of life—them life overcometh with a glance of the eye.
“Thou lovest me?” saith the insolent one; “wait a little, as yet have I
no time for thee.”

Towards himself man is the cruellest animal; and in all who call
themselves “sinners” and “bearers of the cross” and “penitents,” do not
overlook the voluptuousness in their plaints and accusations!

And I myself—do I thereby want to be man’s accuser? Ah, mine animals,
this only have I learned hitherto, that for man his baddest is necessary
for his best,—

—That all that is baddest is the best POWER, and the hardest stone for
the highest creator; and that man must become better AND badder:—

Not to THIS torture-stake was I tied, that I know man is bad,—but I
cried, as no one hath yet cried:

“Ah, that his baddest is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very
small!”

The great disgust at man—IT strangled me and had crept into my throat:
and what the soothsayer had presaged: “All is alike, nothing is worth
while, knowledge strangleth.”

A long twilight limped on before me, a fatally weary, fatally
intoxicated sadness, which spake with yawning mouth.

“Eternally he returneth, the man of whom thou art weary, the small
man”—so yawned my sadness, and dragged its foot and could not go to
sleep.

A cavern, became the human earth to me; its breast caved in; everything
living became to me human dust and bones and mouldering past.

My sighing sat on all human graves, and could no longer arise: my
sighing and questioning croaked and choked, and gnawed and nagged day
and night:

—“Ah, man returneth eternally! The small man returneth eternally!”

Naked had I once seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest
man: all too like one another—all too human, even the greatest man!

All too small, even the greatest man!—that was my disgust at man! And
the eternal return also of the smallest man!—that was my disgust at all
existence!

Ah, Disgust! Disgust! Disgust!—Thus spake Zarathustra, and sighed and
shuddered; for he remembered his sickness. Then did his animals prevent
him from speaking further.

“Do not speak further, thou convalescent!”—so answered his animals,
“but go out where the world waiteth for thee like a garden.

Go out unto the roses, the bees, and the flocks of doves! Especially,
however, unto the singing birds, to learn SINGING from them!

For singing is for the convalescent; the sound ones may talk. And
when the sound also want songs, then want they other songs than the
convalescent.”

—“O ye wags and barrel-organs, do be silent!” answered Zarathustra, and
smiled at his animals. “How well ye know what consolation I devised for
myself in seven days!

That I have to sing once more—THAT consolation did I devise for myself,
and THIS convalescence: would ye also make another lyre-lay thereof?”

—“Do not talk further,” answered his animals once more; “rather, thou
convalescent, prepare for thyself first a lyre, a new lyre!

For behold, O Zarathustra! For thy new lays there are needed new lyres.

Sing and bubble over, O Zarathustra, heal thy soul with new lays: that
thou mayest bear thy great fate, which hath not yet been any one’s fate!

For thine animals know it well, O Zarathustra, who thou art and must
become: behold, THOU ART THE TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RETURN,—that is now
THY fate!

That thou must be the first to teach this teaching—how could this great
fate not be thy greatest danger and infirmity!

Behold, we know what thou teachest: that all things eternally return,
and ourselves with them, and that we have already existed times without
number, and all things with us.

Thou teachest that there is a great year of Becoming, a prodigy of a
great year; it must, like a sand-glass, ever turn up anew, that it may
anew run down and run out:—

—So that all those years are like one another in the greatest and also
in the smallest, so that we ourselves, in every great year, are like
ourselves in the greatest and also in the smallest.

And if thou wouldst now die, O Zarathustra, behold, we know also how
thou wouldst then speak to thyself:—but thine animals beseech thee not
to die yet!

Thou wouldst speak, and without trembling, buoyant rather with bliss,
for a great weight and worry would be taken from thee, thou patientest
one!—

‘Now do I die and disappear,’ wouldst thou say, ‘and in a moment I am
nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies.

But the plexus of causes returneth in which I am intertwined,—it will
again create me! I myself pertain to the causes of the eternal return.

I come again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this
serpent—NOT to a new life, or a better life, or a similar life:

—I come again eternally to this identical and selfsame life, in its
greatest and its smallest, to teach again the eternal return of all
things,—

—To speak again the word of the great noontide of earth and man, to
announce again to man the Superman.

I have spoken my word. I break down by my word: so willeth mine eternal
fate—as announcer do I succumb!

The hour hath now come for the down-goer to bless himself. Thus—ENDETH
Zarathustra’s down-going.’”—

When the animals had spoken these words they were silent and waited, so
that Zarathustra might say something to them: but Zarathustra did not
hear that they were silent. On the contrary, he lay quietly with closed
eyes like a person sleeping, although he did not sleep; for he communed
just then with his soul. The serpent, however, and the eagle, when they
found him silent in such wise, respected the great stillness around him,
and prudently retired.