Latest / The Philosophy Insights Collection / 52 - Thus Spake Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche
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- Part three, Chapter fifty two, The Apostates, Section one, ah liath everything already withered and gray with 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 become 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? Verily, 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 I have seen them bent down to creep to 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 molly coddles. Did perhaps their hearts despond because lonesomeness 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 courage and exuberance, and in such remainance also the spirit patient. The rest, however, are cowardly. The rest these are always the great majority, the commonplace, the superfluous, the far 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 buffoons. His second companions, however, they will call themselves his believers, will be a living host, with much love, much folly, much unbearded veneration to those believe fevers. Shall he who is of my type among men not bind his heart in those springtimes and many hued meadows? Shall he not believe? Who knoweth the thickly, faint hearted human species? Could they do otherwise than 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 among those leaves, O Zarathustra, that everything withered may run away from THEE the faster. Section two. We have again become pious, So do those apost its confess. And some of them are still too pusillanimous. Thus to confess unto them, I look into the eye before them, I say it, unto their face, and unto the blush on their cheeks. Ye are those who again pray. It is, however, a shame to pray, not for all, but for THEE and me, And whoever hath his conscience in his head for THEE, it is a shame to pray. Thou knowest it well. The faint hearted devil in THEE, which would fain fold its arms and place its hands in its bosom, and take it easier. This faint hearted devil persuadeth THEE that there is a god. Thereby, however, dost thou belong to the light dreading type, to whom light never permitteth repose? Now must thou daily thrust thy head deeper into obscurity and vapor, and verily thou choosest the hour well, For just now do the nocturnal birds again fly abroad. The hour hath 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 hath come the 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 hut have again been set. And whenever I lift a curtain, a night moth rusheth out of it, did it perhaps squatter along with another night moth? For everywhere 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 us again become like little children, and say good God, ruined in mouths and stomachs by the pious confectioners. Or they look for long evenings at the crafty lurking cross spider that preacheth prudence to the spiders themselves, and teacheth that under crosses it is good for cobwebs spinning. Or they sit all day at swamps with angle rods, and on that account think themselves profound. But whoever fishes where there are no fish, I do not even call him superficial. Or they learn in godly gay style to play the harp with a hymned poet who would fain harp himself into the heart of young girls, for he had tired of old girls and their praises. Or they learn to shudder with the learned semi madcap, who waiteth in darkened rooms for spirits to come to him, and the spirit runneth away entirely. Or they listen to an old roving howl and growl piper, who hath learnt from the sad winds the sadness of sounds. Now pipeth he has the wind, and preacheth sadness in sad strains. And some of them have even become night watchmen. They know now how to blow horns and go about that night and awaken old things which have long fallen asleep. Five words about old things did I hear yester night at the garden wall. They came from such old, sorrowful barried night watchmen. For a father, he careth not sufficiently for his children. Human fathers do this better. He is too old. He now careth no more for his children, answered the other night watchmen. Hath he children? No one can prove it unless he himself prove it. I have long wished that he would for once prove it, thoroughly prove, as if he had ever proved anything. Proving is difficult to him. He layeth great stress on one's believing him. A yea belief, saveth him, believe in him. That is the way with old people, so it is with us. Also. Thus speak to each other the two old night watchmen and light scarers, and tooted thereupon sorrowfully on their horns. So did it happen yester night at the garden wall. To me, however, did the heart write with laughter, and was like to break. I knew not where to go, and sunk into the midriff. Verily, it will be my death yet to choke with laughter when I see asses drunken and hear night watchmen. Thus doubt about God? Hath the time not long since passed? For all such doubts who may nowadays awaken such old, slumbering, light shunning things with the old deities. Hath it long since come to an end? And verily, a good, joyful deity end had they they did not begloom themselves to death, that do people fabricate. On the contrary, they laughed themselves to death once on a time that took place when the ungodliest utterance came from a garden self, the utterance there is but one God, Thou shalt have no other gods before me, an old grim beard of a god, a jealous one, forgot himself in such wise. And all the gods then laughed and shook upon their thrones and exclaimed, is it not just divinity that there are gods? But no god? He that hath an ear let him? Hear Thus talked Zarathustra in the city he loved, which he surnamed the Pied Cow, for from here he had but two days to travel to reach once more his cave and his animals. His soul, however, rejoiced unceasingly on account of the nightness of his return home. End of Palut three, section fifty two.