“—And I saw a great sadness come over mankind. The best turned weary of their works.
A doctrine appeared, a faith ran beside it: ‘All is empty, all is alike, all hath been!’
And from all hills there re-echoed: ‘All is empty, all is alike, all hath been!’
To be sure we have harvested: but why have all our fruits become rotten and brown? What was it fell last night from the evil moon?
In vain was all our labour, poison hath our wine become, the evil eye hath singed yellow our fields and hearts.
Arid have we all become; and fire falling upon us, then do we turn dust like ashes:—yea, the fire itself have we made aweary.
All our fountains have dried up, even the sea hath receded. All the ground trieth to gape, but the depth will not swallow!
‘Alas! where is there still a sea in which one could be drowned?’ so soundeth our plaint—across shallow swamps.
Verily, even for dying have we become too weary; now do we keep awake and live on—in sepulchres.”
Thus did Zarathustra hear a soothsayer speak; and the foreboding touched his heart and transformed him. Sorrowfully did he go about and wearily; and he became like unto those of whom the soothsayer had spoken.—
What the critics said
Ludovici identifies the soothsayer with Schopenhauer, whom Nietzsche once followed, and says Nietzsche overcame pessimism by finding an object in existence, the raising of society to a higher level.