XXVII. THE VIRTUOUS.
Lo, this is the tarantula’s den!
There cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula!
Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab; with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy!
Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, ye preachers of EQUALITY! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful ones!
But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I laugh in your face my laughter of the height. Ye want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your to-day?
Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word “justice.” And verily, I do not even teach that virtue is its own reward.
Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. “Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance”—thus do they talk to one another.
“Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us”—thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.
“And ‘Will to Equality’—that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!”
Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you for “equality”: your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words!
Fretted conceit and suppressed envy—perhaps your fathers’ conceit and envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance. The ring’s thirst is in you: to reach itself again struggleth every ring, and turneth itself.
What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in the son the father’s revealed secret.
Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspireth them—but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that maketh them so.
Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers’ paths; and this is the sign of their jealousy—they always go too far: so that their fatigue hath at last to go to sleep on the snow.
In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound. But the more they sink, the more ardently gloweth their eye, and the longing for their God.
Distrust all those who talk much of their justice!
And when they call themselves “the good and just,” forget not, that for them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but—power!
My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others.
There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas.
That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their den, these poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life—is because they would thereby do injury.
To those would they thereby do injury who have power at present: for with those the preaching of death is still most at home. And when they say: “I am just,” it always soundeth like: “I am just—revenged!”
Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise: and they themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners.
With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded.
And neither shall they become so!
On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and always shall there be more war and inequality among them: thus doth my great love make me speak!
Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities; and with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other the supreme fight!
Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself!
Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs—life itself: into remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties— THEREFORE doth it require elevation!
And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it require steps, and variance of steps and climbers!
And just behold, my friends!
Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as the wisest ones about the secret of life! What COULD ye know of virtue!”—
That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable.
How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving ones.—
Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends!
Alas! There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old enemy!
“Punishment must there be, and justice”—so thinketh it: “not gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honour of enmity!”
Yea, it hath revenged itself!
That I may NOT turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my friends, to this pillar!
Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
