XXXV. THE SUBLIME ONES.
When yester-eve the moon arose, then did I fancy it about to bear a sun: so broad and teeming did it lie on the horizon.
But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and sooner will I believe in the man in the moon than in the woman.
To be sure, little of a man is he also, that timid night-reveller.
For he is covetous and jealous, the monk in the moon; covetous of the earth, and all the joys of lovers.
Nay, I like him not, that tom-cat on the roofs!
Piously and silently doth he stalk along on the star-carpets:—but I like no light-treading human feet, on which not even a spur jingleth. Gloomy did this hunter return from the forest of knowledge.
Every honest one’s step speaketh; the cat however, stealeth along over the ground.
This parable speak I unto you sentimental dissemblers, unto you, the “pure discerners!” You do I call—covetous ones!
Also ye love the earth, and the earthly: I have divined you well!—but shame is in your love, and a bad conscience—ye are like the moon! But all life is a dispute about taste and tasting!
To despise the earthly hath your spirit been persuaded, but not your bowels: these, however, are the strongest in you!
And now is your spirit ashamed to be at the service of your bowels, and goeth by-ways and lying ways to escape its own shame.
“That would be the highest thing for me”—so saith your lying spirit unto itself—“to gaze upon life without desire, and not like the dog, with hanging-out tongue:
To be happy in gazing: with dead will, free from the grip and greed of selfishness—cold and ashy-grey all over, but with intoxicated moon-eyes!
That would be the dearest thing to me”—thus doth the seduced one seduce himself,—“to love the earth as the moon loveth it, and with the eye only to feel its beauty. To be sure, he now resteth, but he hath not yet taken rest in the sunshine.
And this do I call IMMACULATE perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred facets.”—
Oh, ye sentimental dissemblers, ye covetous ones!
Verily, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do ye love the earth! O’ershadowed is still the sense of his eye.
Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation.
Where is beauty?
Loving and perishing: these have rhymed from eternity.
But now doth your emasculated ogling profess to be “contemplation!” And that which can be examined with cowardly eyes is to be christened “beautiful!” Oh, ye violators of noble names! But he should also redeem his monsters and enigmas; into heavenly children should he transform them.
But it shall be your curse, ye immaculate ones, ye pure discerners, that ye shall never bring forth, even though ye lie broad and teeming on the horizon!
Verily, ye fill your mouth with noble words: and we are to believe that your heart overfloweth, ye cozeners? Gracefulness belongeth to the munificence of the magnanimous.
But MY words are poor, contemptible, stammering words: gladly do I pick up what falleth from the table at your repasts.
Yet still can I say therewith the truth—to dissemblers! Yea, my fish-bones, shells, and prickly leaves shall—tickle the noses of dissemblers!
Bad air is always about you and your repasts: your lascivious thoughts, your lies, and secrets are indeed in the air!
Dare only to believe in yourselves—in yourselves and in your inward parts!
A God’s mask have ye hung in front of you, ye “pure ones”: into a God’s mask hath your execrable coiling snake crawled.
Verily ye deceive, ye “contemplative ones!” Even Zarathustra was once the dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not divine the serpent’s coil with which it was stuffed.
A God’s soul, I once thought I saw playing in your games, ye pure discerners!
Serpents’ filth and evil odour, the distance concealed from me: and that a lizard’s craft prowled thereabouts lasciviously.
But I came NIGH unto you: then came to me the day,—and now cometh it to you,—at an end is the moon’s love affair!
See there!
For already she cometh, the glowing one,—HER love to the earth cometh!
See there, how she cometh impatiently over the sea!
Thus spake Zarathustra.
