Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche [top fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

did they bethink themselves. Just now have I 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 mollycoddles.

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 remaineth 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 believers shall he who is of my type among men not bind his heart; in those spring-times and many-hued meadows shall he not believe, who knoweth the fickly fainthearted human species!

Could they do otherwise, then 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 amongst those leaves, O Zarathustra, that everything withered may run away from thee the faster!⁠—

II

“We have again become pious”⁠—so do those apostates 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 fainthearted devil in thee, which would fain fold its arms, and place its hands in its bosom, and take it easier:⁠—this fainthearted 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 vapour!

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—their 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 mousetraps for the heart have again been set! And whenever I lift a curtain, a night-moth rusheth out of it.

Did it perhaps squat there 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 a crafty, lurking cross-spider, that preacheth prudence to the spiders themselves, and teacheth that “under crosses it is good for cobweb-spinning!”

Or they sit all day at swamps with angle-rods, and on that account think themselves profound; but whoever fisheth 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 hymn-poet, who would fain harp himself into the heart of young girls:⁠—for he hath tired of old girls and their praises.

Or they learn to shudder with a 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 as 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 at 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, arid 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-watchman.

“Hath he then 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.”

“Ay! Ay! Belief saveth him; belief in him. That is the way with old people! So it is with us also!”⁠—

—Thus spake 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 writhe with laughter, and was like to break; it 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 God himself⁠—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: