Latest / Logic Library / 26 - Thus Spake Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche
Transcript
- Part two, Chapter twenty six. The priests, And one day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples and spake these words unto them. Here are priests, but although they are mine, enemies pass them quietly and with sleeping swords. Even among them there are heroes. Many of them have suffered too much, so they want to make others suffer. Bad enemies are they? Nothing is more revengeful than their meekness. And readily doth he soil himself who toucheth them. But my blood is related to theirs, and I want withal to see my blood honored in theirs. And when they had passed, a pain attack Zarathustra. But not long had he struggled with the pain when he began to speak. Thus it moveth my heart for those priests. They also go against my taste. But that is the smallest matter unto me, since I am among men. But I suffer and have suffered with them. Prisoners are they unto me? And stigmatized ones. He whom they call savior put them in fetters, And fetters are false virtues and fatuous words. Oh that some one would save them all from their savior. On an isle they once thought they had landed when the sea tossed them about. But behold it was a slumbering monster. False virtues and fatuous words. These are the worst monsters for mortals. Long slumbereth and waiteth the faith that is in them. But at last it cometh and awaketh, and devouereth and engulfeth whatever hath built tabernacles upon it. Oh, just look at those tabernacles which those priests have built themselves churches they call their sweet smelling caves. Oh, that false fied light, that mustified air, where the soul may not fly aloft to its height. But so enjoineth their belief on your knees up the stair, ye sinners. Verily, rather would I see a shameless one than the distorted eyes of their shame and devotion? Who created for themselves such caves and penitent stairs? Was it not those who sought to conceal themselves and were shamed under the clear sky? And only when the clear sky looketh again through ruined roofs, and down upon grass and red poppies on ruined walls, while I again turn my heart to the seats of this God they called God, that which opposed and afflicted them. And verily there was much hero spirit in their worship, and they knew not how to love their God otherwise, And by nailing men to the cross as corpses they thought to live in black draped they there corpses. Even in their talk? Do I still fill the evil flavor of charnel houses? And he who liveth nigh unto them, liveth nigh unto blackpools? Wherein the toad singeth this song with sweet gravity? Better songs would they have to sing for me to believe in their savior? More like save ones? Would his disciples have to appear unto me naked? Would I like to see them? For beauty alone should preach penitence. But whom would that disguised affliction convince? Verily, their saviors themselves came not from freedom and from freedom seventh heaven. Verily, they themselves never trod the carpets of knowledge of defects. Did the spirit of those saviors consist? But into every defect had they put their illusion, their stock gap, which they called God. In their pity was their spirit drowned. And when they swelled and over swelled with pity, there always floated to the surface a great folly. Eagerly and with shouts drove they their flock o'er their foot bridge, as if there were but one footbridge to the future. Verily, those shepherds also were still of the flock. Small spirits and spacious souls had those shepherds. But my brethren, what small domains have even the most spacious souls? Hitherto ben? Characters of blood? Did they write on the way they went? And their folly taught? The truth is proved by blood. But blood is the very worst witness to truth. Blood tainteth the purest teaching, and turneth it into delusion and hatred of heart. And when a person goeth through fire for his teaching, what doth that prove? It? Is more? Verily, when out of one's own burning cometh one's own teaching, sultry heart and cold head. Where these meet, there ariseth the blusterer the savior. Greater ones verily have there been, and higher born ones than those whom the people call saviors, those rapturous blusterers, And by still greater ones than any of the saviors. Must ye be saved, my brethren, if ye would find the way to freedom? Never yet hath there been a superman naked. Have I seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest man, all too similar? Are they still to each other? Verily, even the greatest found I all too human. Thus spake Zarathustra, end of Chapter twenty six,