5 passages
O Zarathustra, here is the great city: here hast thou nothing to seek and everything to lose. Why wouldst thou wade through this mire? Have pity upon thy foot! Spit rather on the gate of the city, and—turn back! Here is…
The fool urges Zarathustra to spit on the city and turn back. He says great thoughts are boiled small there, and he attacks its newspapers, its lusts, its servile virtue and piety, and its rule by shopmen's gold.
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Here, however, did Zarathustra interrupt the foaming fool, and shut his mouth.— Stop this at once! called out Zarathustra, long have thy speech and thy species disgusted me! Why didst thou live so long by the swamp,…
Zarathustra shuts the fool's mouth and says he despises his contempt. He calls him a grunting-pig, not an ape, and says the fool misuses his word even when he is right.
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Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; but not out of the swamp!—
Zarathustra distinguishes his own contempt, born of love, from the fool's, born of the swamp.
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Thus spake Zarathustra. Then did he look on the great city and sighed, and was long silent. At last he spake thus: I loathe also this great city, and not only this fool. Here and there— there is nothing to better,…
After a long silence Zarathustra admits he loathes the city too. He wishes to see the pillar of fire that will consume it.
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Where one can no longer love, there should one—PASS BY!
Zarathustra gives the fool his parting precept and walks past both the fool and the great city.
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What the critics said
Brandes summarises Zarathustra's disgust with the petty virtues that make men smaller, his being called godless, the apostasy of his former companions, and his loathing of the great city and of the State.
Ludovici argues that the fool of 'On Passing-by' is Nietzsche's extreme opposite and his imitator, the iconoclast who destroys out of resentment and revenge, with whom the public confuses Nietzsche, who destroys out of love; Zarathustra's rebuke of him should warn readers against associating Nietzsche with noisy revolutionists.
Ludovici argues that the fool of 'On Passing-by' is Nietzsche's extreme opposite and his imitator, the iconoclast who destroys out of resentment and revenge, with whom the public confuses Nietzsche, who destroys out of love; Zarathustra's rebuke of him should warn readers against associating Nietzsche with noisy revolutionists.