XLVI. THE VISION AND THE ENIGMA.

O heaven above me, thou pure, thou deep heaven! Thou abyss of light! Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires. Zarathustra, however, was fond of all those who make distant voyages, and dislike to live without danger. And behold! when listening, his own tongue was at last loosened, and the ice of his heart broke. Then did he begin to speak thus:

Up to thy height to toss myself—that is MY depth!

The God veileth his beauty: thus hidest thou thy stars.

Mute o’er the raging sea hast thou risen for me to-day; thy love and thy modesty make a revelation unto my raging soul.

In that thou camest unto me beautiful, veiled in thy beauty, in that thou spakest unto me mutely, obvious in thy wisdom:

Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of thy soul! BEFORE the sun didst thou come unto me—the lonesomest one.

We have been friends from the beginning: to us are grief, gruesomeness, and ground common; even the sun is common to us.

We do not speak to each other, because we know too much—: we keep silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other.

Art thou not the light of my fire?

Together did we learn everything; together did we learn to ascend beyond ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloudedly:—

—Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out of miles of distance, when under us constraint and purpose and guilt steam like rain. Thou threwest thyself high, but every thrown stone must—fall!

And wandered I alone, for WHAT did my soul hunger by night and in labyrinthine paths? And climbed I mountains, WHOM did I ever seek, if not thee, upon mountains?

And all my wandering and mountain-climbing: a necessity was it merely, and a makeshift of the unhandy one:—to FLY only, wanteth mine entire will, to fly into THEE!

And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee!

The passing clouds I detest—those stealthy cats of prey: they take from thee and me what is common to us—the vast unbounded Yea- and Amen-saying. A sick one did I resemble, whom bad torture wearieth, and a worse dream reawakeneth out of his first sleep.—

These mediators and mixers we detest—the passing clouds: those half-and-half ones, that have neither learned to bless nor to curse from the heart. This courage at last bade me stand still and say: “Dwarf! Thou! Or I!”—

Rather will I sit in a tub under a closed heaven, rather will I sit in the abyss without heaven, than see thee, thou luminous heaven, tainted with passing clouds!

And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged gold-wires of lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum upon their kettle-bellies:— With sound of triumph hath he overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain.

—An angry drummer, because they rob me of thy Yea and Amen!—thou heaven above me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!—because they rob thee of MY Yea and Amen.

For rather will I have noise and thunders and tempest-blasts, than this discreet, doubting cat-repose; and also amongst men do I hate most of all the soft-treaders, and half-and-half ones, and the doubting, hesitating, passing clouds. Fellow-suffering, however, is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man looketh into life, so deeply also doth he look into suffering.

And “he who cannot bless shall LEARN to curse!”—this clear teaching dropt unto me from the clear heaven; this star standeth in my heaven even in dark nights. Well! Once more!”

I, however, am a blesser and a Yea-sayer, if thou be but around me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light!—into all abysses do I then carry my beneficent Yea-saying.

A blesser have I become and a Yea-sayer: and therefore strove I long and was a striver, that I might one day get my hands free for blessing.

This, however, is my blessing: to stand above everything as its own heaven, its round roof, its azure bell and eternal security: and blessed is he who thus blesseth! I, however, am the stronger of the two:—thou knowest not mine abysmal thought! IT—couldst thou not endure!”

For all things are baptized at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds. And it squatted on a stone in front of me. There was however a gateway just where we halted.

Verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that “above all things there standeth the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of hazard, the heaven of wantonness.” Dwarf!” I continued, “it hath two faces. Two roads come together here: these hath no one yet gone to the end of.

“Of Hazard”—that is the oldest nobility in the world; that gave I back to all things; I emancipated them from bondage under purpose. And that long lane forward—that is another eternity.

This freedom and celestial serenity did I put like an azure bell above all things, when I taught that over them and through them, no “eternal Will”—willeth. The name of the gateway is inscribed above: ‘This Moment.’

This wantonness and folly did I put in place of that Will, when I taught that “In everything there is one thing impossible—rationality!”

A LITTLE reason, to be sure, a germ of wisdom scattered from star to star—this leaven is mixed in all things: for the sake of folly, wisdom is mixed in all things!

A little wisdom is indeed possible; but this blessed security have I found in all things, that they prefer—to dance on the feet of chance. Or I shall let thee squat where thou squattest, Haltfoot,—and I carried thee HIGH!”

O heaven above me! thou pure, thou lofty heaven! This is now thy purity unto me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and reason-cobweb:—

—That thou art to me a dancing-floor for divine chances, that thou art to me a table of the Gods, for divine dice and dice-players!— Must not whatever CAN happen of all things have already happened, resulted, and gone by?

But thou blushest? Have I spoken unspeakable things?

Or is it the shame of being two of us that maketh thee blush!—Dost thou bid me go and be silent, because now—DAY cometh? CONSEQUENTLY—itself also?

The world is deep:—and deeper than e’er the day could read.

O heaven above me, thou modest one! thou glowing one!

The day cometh: so let us part!—

Thus did I speak, and always more softly: for I was afraid of mine own thoughts, and arrear-thoughts. Then, suddenly did I hear a dog HOWL near me.

Had I ever heard a dog howl thus? My thoughts ran back. Yes! When I was a child, in my most distant childhood:

—Then did I hear a dog howl thus. And saw it also, with hair bristling, its head upwards, trembling in the stillest midnight, when even dogs believe in ghosts:

—So that it excited my commiseration. For just then went the full moon, silent as death, over the house; just then did it stand still, a glowing globe—at rest on the flat roof, as if on some one’s property:—

Thereby had the dog been terrified: for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And when I again heard such howling, then did it excite my commiseration once more.

Where was now the dwarf? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Had I dreamt? Had I awakened? ‘Twixt rugged rocks did I suddenly stand alone, dreary in the dreariest moonlight.

BUT THERE LAY A MAN! And there! The dog leaping, bristling, whining—now did it see me coming—then did it howl again, then did it CRY:—had I ever heard a dog cry so for help?

And verily, what I saw, the like had I never seen. A young shepherd did I see, writhing, choking, quivering, with distorted countenance, and with a heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth.

Had I ever seen so much loathing and pale horror on one countenance? He had perhaps gone to sleep? Then had the serpent crawled into his throat—there had it bitten itself fast.

My hand pulled at the serpent, and pulled:—in vain! I failed to pull the serpent out of his throat. Then there cried out of me: “Bite! Bite!

Its head off! Bite!”—so cried it out of me; my horror, my hatred, my loathing, my pity, all my good and my bad cried with one voice out of me.—

Ye daring ones around me! Ye venturers and adventurers, and whoever of you have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas! Ye enigma-enjoyers!

Solve unto me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret unto me the vision of the lonesomest one!

For it was a vision and a foresight:—WHAT did I then behold in parable? And WHO is it that must come some day?

WHO is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus crawled? WHO is the man into whose throat all the heaviest and blackest will thus crawl?

—The shepherd however bit as my cry had admonished him; he bit with a strong bite! Far away did he spit the head of the serpent—: and sprang up.—

No longer shepherd, no longer man—a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as HE laughed!

O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,—and now gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed.

My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me: oh, how can I still endure to live! And how could I endure to die at present!—

Thus spake Zarathustra.