LIV. THE THREE EVIL THINGS.

Here do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new half-written tables.

—The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once more will I go unto men. Jealous is she always of the glows of my morning-dream.

For that hour do I now wait: for first must the signs come unto me that it is MINE hour—namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves.

Meanwhile do I talk to myself as one who hath time.

Did my wisdom perhaps speak secretly to it, my laughing, wide-awake day-wisdom, which mocketh at all “infinite worlds”? For it saith: “Where force is, there becometh NUMBER the master: it hath more force.”

How confidently did my dream contemplate this finite world, not new-fangledly, not old-fangledly, not timidly, not entreatingly:—

—As if a big round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe golden apple, with a coolly-soft, velvety skin:—thus did the world present itself unto me:—

—As if a tree nodded unto me, a broad-branched, strong-willed tree, curved as a recline and a foot-stool for weary travellers: thus did the world stand on my promontory:—

—As if delicate hands carried a casket towards me—a casket open for the delectation of modest adoring eyes: thus did the world present itself before me to-day:—

—Not riddle enough to scare human love from it, not solution enough to put to sleep human wisdom:—a humanly good thing was the world to me to-day, of which such bad things are said!

How I thank my morning-dream that I thus at to-day’s dawn, weighed the world! As a humanly good thing did it come unto me, this dream and heart-comforter!

And that I may do the like by day, and imitate and copy its best, now will I put the three worst things on the scales, and weigh them humanly well.—

He who taught to bless taught also to curse: what are the three best cursed things in the world? These will I put on the scales.

VOLUPTUOUSNESS, PASSION FOR POWER, and SELFISHNESS: these three things have hitherto been best cursed, and have been in worst and falsest repute—these three things will I weigh humanly well.

Well! Here is my promontory, and there is the sea—IT rolleth hither unto me, shaggily and fawningly, the old, faithful, hundred-headed dog-monster that I love!—

Well! Here will I hold the scales over the weltering sea: and also a witness do I choose to look on—thee, the anchorite-tree, thee, the strong-odoured, broad-arched tree that I love!—

On what bridge goeth the now to the hereafter? By what constraint doth the high stoop to the low? And what enjoineth even the highest still—to grow upwards?—

Now stand the scales poised and at rest: three heavy questions have I thrown in; three heavy answers carrieth the other scale.

2.

When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation: all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men.

An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse about virtue; and he who wished to sleep well spake of “good” and “bad” ere retiring to rest.

This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWETH what is good and bad:—unless it be the creating one!

—It is he, however, who createth man’s goal, and giveth to the earth its meaning and its future: he only EFFECTETH it THAT aught is good or bad.

And I bade them upset their old academic chairs, and wherever that old infatuation had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists, their saints, their poets, and their Saviours. For to many is marriage promised, and more than marriage,—

At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life.

On their great grave-highway did I seat myself, and even beside the carrion and vultures—and I laughed at all their bygone and its mellow decaying glory.

Verily, like penitential preachers and fools did I cry wrath and shame on all their greatness and smallness.

Thus did my wise longing, born in the mountains, cry and laugh in me; a wild wisdom, verily!—my great pinion-rustling longing.

And oft did it carry me off and up and away and in the midst of laughter; then flew I quivering like an arrow with sun-intoxicated rapture:

—Out into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen, into warmer souths than ever sculptor conceived,—where gods in their dancing are ashamed of all clothes:

(That I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the poets: and verily I am ashamed that I have still to be a poet!)

Where all becoming seemed to me dancing of Gods, and wantoning of Gods, and the world unloosed and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:—

—As an eternal self-fleeing and re-seeking of one another of many Gods, as the blessed self-contradicting, recommuning, and refraternising with one another of many Gods:— Verily, nothing sick or diseased is there in such longing and descending!

Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of freedom:—

Where I also found again mine old devil and arch-enemy, the spirit of gravity, and all that it created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil:—

For must there not be that which is danced OVER, danced beyond?

3.

There was it also where I picked up from the path the word “Superman,” and that man is something that must be surpassed. Of such bodies and souls the self-enjoyment calleth itself “virtue.”

—That man is a bridge and not a goal—rejoicing over his noontides and evenings, as advances to new rosy dawns:

—The Zarathustra word of the great noontide, and whatever else I have hung up over men like purple evening-afterglows.

Verily, also new stars did I make them see, along with new nights; and over cloud and day and night, did I spread out laughter like a gay-coloured canopy.

I taught them all MY poetisation and aspiration: to compose and collect into unity what is fragment in man, and riddle and fearful chance;—

—As composer, riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance, did I teach them to create the future, and all that HATH BEEN—to redeem by creating.

The past of man to redeem, and every “It was” to transform, until the Will saith: “But so did I will it!

—This did I call redemption; this alone taught I them to call redemption.—

Now do I await MY redemption—that I may go unto them for the last time.

For once more will I go unto men: AMONGST them will my sun set; in dying will I give them my choicest gift!

From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches,—

—So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with GOLDEN oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it.—

Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables—half-written.

4.

Thus spake Zarathustra.