Read Online Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale
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preacher of virtue.
His wisdom is: stay awake in order to sleep well. And truly, if life had no sense and I had to choose nonsense, this would be the most desirable nonsense for me, too.
Now it is clear to me what people were once seeking above all when they sought the teachers of virtue. They sought good sleep and opium virtues to bring it about!
To all of these lauded wise men of the academic chairs, wisdom meant sleep without dreams: they knew no better meaning of life.
And today too there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honourable: but their time is up. And they shall not stand for much longer: already they are lying down.
Blessed are these drowsy men: for they shall soon drop off.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Of the Afterworldsmen
O NCE Zarathustra too cast his deluded fancy beyond mankind, like all afterworldsmen. 5 Then the world seemed to me die work of a suffering and tormented God.
Then the world seemed to me the dream and fiction of a God; coloured vapour before the eyes of a discontented God.
Good and evil and joy and sorrow and I and You – I thought them coloured vapour before the creator’s eyes. The creator wanted to look away from himself, so he created the world.
It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from hissuffering and to forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting – that is what I once thought the world.
This world, the eternally imperfect, the eternal and imperfect image of a contradiction – an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator – that is what I once thought the world.
Thus I too once cast my deluded fancy beyond mankind, like all afterworldsmen. Beyond mankind in reality?
Ah, brothers, this God which I created was human work and human madness, like all gods!
He was human, and only a poor piece of man and Ego: this phantom came to me from my own fire and ashes, that is the truth! It did not come to me from the ‘beyond’!
What happened, my brothers? I, the sufferer, overcame myself, I carried my own ashes to the mountains, I made for myself a brighter flame. And behold! the phantom fled from me!
Now to me, the convalescent, it would be suffering and torment to believe in such phantoms: it would be suffering to me now and humiliation. Thus I speak to the afterworldsmen.
It was suffering and impotence – that created all afterworlds; and that brief madness of happiness that only the greatest sufferer experiences.
Weariness, which wants to reach the ultimate with a single leap, with a death-leap, 6 a poor ignorant weariness, which no longer wants even to want: that created all gods and afterworlds.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the body – that touched the ultimate walls with the fingers of its deluded spirit.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the earth – that heard the belly of being speak to it.
And then it wanted to get its head through the ultimate walls – and not its head only 7 – over into the ‘other world’.
But that ‘other world’, that inhuman, dehumanized world which is a heavenly Nothing, is well hidden from men; and the belly of being does not speak to man, except as man.
Truly, all being is hard to demonstrate; it is hard to makeit speak. Yet, tell me, brothers, is not the most wonderful of all things most clearly demonstrated?
Yes, this Ego, with its contradiction and confusion, speaks most honestly of its being – this creating, willing, evaluating Ego, which is the measure and value of things.
And this most honest being, the Ego – it speaks of the body, and it insists upon the body, even when it fables and fabricates and flutters with broken wings.
Ever more honestly it learns to speak, the Ego: and the more it learns, the more it finds titles and honours for the body and the earth.
My Ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to men: No longer to bury the head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head which
His wisdom is: stay awake in order to sleep well. And truly, if life had no sense and I had to choose nonsense, this would be the most desirable nonsense for me, too.
Now it is clear to me what people were once seeking above all when they sought the teachers of virtue. They sought good sleep and opium virtues to bring it about!
To all of these lauded wise men of the academic chairs, wisdom meant sleep without dreams: they knew no better meaning of life.
And today too there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honourable: but their time is up. And they shall not stand for much longer: already they are lying down.
Blessed are these drowsy men: for they shall soon drop off.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
Of the Afterworldsmen
O NCE Zarathustra too cast his deluded fancy beyond mankind, like all afterworldsmen. 5 Then the world seemed to me die work of a suffering and tormented God.
Then the world seemed to me the dream and fiction of a God; coloured vapour before the eyes of a discontented God.
Good and evil and joy and sorrow and I and You – I thought them coloured vapour before the creator’s eyes. The creator wanted to look away from himself, so he created the world.
It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from hissuffering and to forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting – that is what I once thought the world.
This world, the eternally imperfect, the eternal and imperfect image of a contradiction – an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator – that is what I once thought the world.
Thus I too once cast my deluded fancy beyond mankind, like all afterworldsmen. Beyond mankind in reality?
Ah, brothers, this God which I created was human work and human madness, like all gods!
He was human, and only a poor piece of man and Ego: this phantom came to me from my own fire and ashes, that is the truth! It did not come to me from the ‘beyond’!
What happened, my brothers? I, the sufferer, overcame myself, I carried my own ashes to the mountains, I made for myself a brighter flame. And behold! the phantom fled from me!
Now to me, the convalescent, it would be suffering and torment to believe in such phantoms: it would be suffering to me now and humiliation. Thus I speak to the afterworldsmen.
It was suffering and impotence – that created all afterworlds; and that brief madness of happiness that only the greatest sufferer experiences.
Weariness, which wants to reach the ultimate with a single leap, with a death-leap, 6 a poor ignorant weariness, which no longer wants even to want: that created all gods and afterworlds.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the body – that touched the ultimate walls with the fingers of its deluded spirit.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the earth – that heard the belly of being speak to it.
And then it wanted to get its head through the ultimate walls – and not its head only 7 – over into the ‘other world’.
But that ‘other world’, that inhuman, dehumanized world which is a heavenly Nothing, is well hidden from men; and the belly of being does not speak to man, except as man.
Truly, all being is hard to demonstrate; it is hard to makeit speak. Yet, tell me, brothers, is not the most wonderful of all things most clearly demonstrated?
Yes, this Ego, with its contradiction and confusion, speaks most honestly of its being – this creating, willing, evaluating Ego, which is the measure and value of things.
And this most honest being, the Ego – it speaks of the body, and it insists upon the body, even when it fables and fabricates and flutters with broken wings.
Ever more honestly it learns to speak, the Ego: and the more it learns, the more it finds titles and honours for the body and the earth.
My Ego taught me a new pride, I teach it to men: No longer to bury the head in the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head which
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