The disciples

Once on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world then seem to me. The dream—and diction—of a God, did the world then seem to me;…

Zarathustra tells how he once cast his fancy beyond man and saw the world as the intoxicated vision of a tortured God. He then realised the God was his own human phantom, which left him when he made a brighter flame for himself.

Suffering was it, and impotence—that created all backworlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experienceth. Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a…

Zarathustra explains that suffering, impotence and a weary unwillingness to will made the other worlds. The body, despairing of itself, reached for the ultimate walls and found only nothing.

A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto men: no longer to thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth!

The ego, with all its perplexity, speaks most honestly of its being and honours the body and the earth. Zarathustra teaches a new pride and a new will: carry a terrestrial head and approve man's path.

The sick and perishing—it was they who despised the body and the earth, and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming blood-drops; but even those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth!…

The sick sought escape from misery by contriving heavenly paths. Zarathustra is gentle with them and hopes they will recover and create higher bodies, though sickness stays in a convalescent's tears at his God's grave.

Many sickly ones have there always been among those who muse, and languish for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the latest of virtues, which is uprightness. Backward they always gaze toward dark ages:…

Zarathustra says the God-longing hate doubt and uprightness, yet their real belief is in the body, which they find sickly. He tells his brethren to hear the healthy body, which speaks of the meaning of the earth.

“Body am I, and soul”—so saith the child. And why should one not speak like children? But the awakened one, the knowing one, saith: “Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the…

Zarathustra contrasts the child's 'body and soul' with the awakened one's 'body entirely.' He calls the body a plurality with one sense, and spirit its little instrument. The body does not say 'ego' but acts.

Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states. A state? What is that? Well! open now your ears unto me, for now will I say unto you my word concerning the death of…

Zarathustra contrasts living peoples, made by creators who served life, with the state, made by destroyers who snare many. The state lies in every tongue of good and evil and has stolen all it owns.

My brethren, will ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites! Better break the windows and jump into the open air! Do go out of the way of the bad odour! Withdraw from the idolatry of the superfluous! Do go…

Zarathustra urges his brethren to break the windows, leave the fumes, and take the open earth. Moderate poverty frees one from being possessed.

There, where the state ceaseth—there only commenceth the man who is not superfluous: there commenceth the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody. There, where the state CEASETH—pray look…

Zarathustra says that where the state ceases, the song of the necessary, irreplaceable ones begins, and he points to the rainbow and bridges of the Superman.

Ye crowd around your neighbour, and have fine words for it. But I say unto you: your neighbour-love is your bad love of yourselves. Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a virtue thereof: but…

Zarathustra tells his hearers that their neighbour-love is bad love of themselves and a flight from themselves dressed up as virtue. He advises neighbour-flight and furthest love instead.

The phantom that runneth on before thee, my brother, is fairer than thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou fearest, and runnest unto thy neighbour. Ye cannot endure it with yourselves,…

Zarathustra says people cannot endure themselves, so they seduce their neighbour into loving them and call in witnesses to flatter their self-image. Such love lies, makes solitude a prison, and makes the furthest ones pay for it.

Not the neighbour do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman. I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how to be a…

Zarathustra teaches the friend instead of the neighbour: a festival of the earth and a foretaste of the Superman, with an overflowing heart and a complete world to bestow. One must be a sponge to be loved by such hearts, and in the friend one loves the Superman.

My brethren, I advise you not to neighbour-love—I advise you to furthest love!—

Zarathustra restates his advice in brief: not neighbour-love but furthest love.

When Zarathustra once told this to his disciples they asked him: “And what, O Zarathustra, is the moral of thy story?” And Zarathustra answered them thus: The destroyer of morality, the good and just call me: my story…

The disciples ask what the moral of the story is. Zarathustra answers that the good and just call him a destroyer of morality, and that his story is immoral.

When, however, ye have an enemy, then return him not good for evil: for that would abash him. But prove that he hath done something good to you. And rather be angry than abash any one! And when ye are cursed, it…

Zarathustra tells his disciples not to shame an enemy with good but to show that the enemy did them a good turn. He says to share out injustice, to prefer a small revenge to none, and to take the blame oneself when one is rich enough to.

I do not like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there always glanceth the executioner and his cold steel. Tell me: where find we justice, which is love with seeing eyes? Devise me, then, the love which…

He dislikes the cold justice of judges with the executioner in their eyes. He asks for a love that bears all guilt and a justice that acquits all but the judge. He says he cannot be just from the heart and gives each one his own.

Finally, my brethren, guard against doing wrong to any anchorite. How could an anchorite forget! How could he requite! Like a deep well is an anchorite. Easy is it to throw in a stone: if it should sink to the bottom,…

Zarathustra warns his brethren not to wrong an anchorite, who cannot forget or requite. He compares him to a deep well into which a stone is easily thrown but cannot be retrieved, and says that if one has wronged him, one should kill him too.

That your dying may not be a reproach to man and the earth, my friends: that do I solicit from the honey of your soul. In your dying shall your spirit and your virtue still shine like an evening after-glow around the…

Zarathustra asks that his friends' dying be no reproach to man and the earth, but shine like an evening after-glow. He will become earth again, and throws the golden ball of his goal to his friends.

When Zarathustra had taken leave of the town to which his heart was attached, the name of which is “The Pied Cow,” there followed him many people who called themselves his disciples, and kept him company. Thus came they…

Leaving the town of the Pied Cow, Zarathustra tells his followers at a crossroad that he will go alone. They give him a staff with a golden handle showing a serpent twined round the sun.

Tell me, pray: how came gold to the highest value? Because it is uncommon, and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in lustre; it always bestoweth itself. Only as image of the highest virtue came gold to the highest…

Zarathustra asks why gold is most valued and answers that it is uncommon, unprofiting, beaming and gives itself. His disciples thirst to become gifts themselves, so they gather riches in order to give them out again. He calls this selfishness healthy and holy.

Another selfishness is there, an all-too-poor and hungry kind, which would always steal—the selfishness of the sick, the sickly selfishness. With the eye of the thief it looketh upon all that is lustrous; with the…

Another selfishness steals, looks greedily at the abundant and prowls round the tables of bestowers. Zarathustra calls this degeneration, the sense that says 'All for myself', and says we suspect it wherever the bestowing soul is lacking.

Upward soareth our sense: thus is it a simile of our body, a simile of an elevation. Such similes of elevations are the names of the virtues. Thus goeth the body through history, a becomer and fighter. And the…

Names of good and evil are only similes that hint. Virtue begins when the body is raised and the spirit speaks in similes: the heart overflows like a river, and the will commands all things as a lover's will. Zarathustra calls this new virtue power, a golden sun with the serpent of knowledge around it.

Here paused Zarathustra awhile, and looked lovingly on his disciples. Then he continued to speak thus—and his voice had changed: Remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue! Let your bestowing…

Virtue and spirit have often flown away and erred, and man is still an attempt who inherits both the rationality and the madness of the ages. Zarathustra calls his hearers to heal themselves and to value things anew. He says the earth shall become a place of healing, and the lonesome shall one day be a people from which the Superman arises.

I now go alone, my disciples! Ye also now go away, and alone! So will I have it. Verily, I advise you: depart from me, and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he hath…

Zarathustra says he goes alone and tells his disciples to leave and guard themselves against him. Believers are of little account because they had not yet sought themselves, and only when all have denied him will he return.

Now do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you.

Zarathustra makes his return conditional on his disciples' denial of him.

And once again shall ye have become friends unto me, and children of one hope: then will I be with you for the third time, to celebrate the great noontide with you. And it is the great noontide, when man is in the…

Zarathustra promises to return a third time to celebrate the great noontide with his disciples as friends and children of one hope. The chapter ends on the will 'Dead are all the gods: now do we desire the Superman to live.'

The figs fall from the trees, they are good and sweet; and in falling the red skins of them break. A north wind am I to ripe figs. Thus, like figs, do these doctrines fall for you, my friends: imbibe now their juice and…

In an autumn setting Zarathustra compares his teachings to falling figs. He says the word Superman now replaces the word God.

God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond your creating will. Could ye CREATE a God?—Then, I pray you, be silent about all Gods! But ye could well create the Superman. Not perhaps ye…

Zarathustra asks whether they could create or conceive a God and restricts their guessing to what is conceivable. He argues that if gods existed he could not bear not being one, therefore there are none.

My friends, there hath arisen a satire on your friend: “Behold Zarathustra! Walketh he not amongst us as if amongst animals?” But it is better said in this wise: “The discerning one walketh amongst men AS amongst…

Zarathustra answers a satire on himself: the discerning one walks among men as among animals, since man has had to be ashamed so often. The noble man spares sufferers shame, dislikes the merciful, and prefers pity at a distance, hooded and unrecognised.

Verily, I have done this and that for the afflicted: but something better did I always seem to do when I had learned to enjoy myself better. Since humanity came into being, man hath enjoyed himself too little: that…

Zarathustra explains why his help to the afflicted shamed them, and how great obligations breed revenge and small kindnesses become gnawing worms. He advises receiving with reserve, gives to friends, lets others pluck from his tree, and would abolish beggars.

Thus speaketh all great love: it surpasseth even forgiveness and pity.

Living among men is hard because silence is hard. For a suffering friend be a hard camp-bed, and to a friend who wrongs you say you cannot forgive the wrong he did to himself.

And one day Zarathustra made a sign to his disciples, and spake these words unto them: “Here are priests: but although they are mine enemies, pass them quietly and with sleeping swords! Even among them there are heroes;…

Zarathustra signals to his disciples to pass the priests quietly. He calls them enemies who have suffered too much and so make others suffer, yet says his blood is related to theirs.

And when they had passed, a pain attacked Zarathustra; but not long had he struggled with the pain, when he began to speak thus: It moveth my heart for those priests. They also go against my taste; but that is the…

After they pass, Zarathustra is struck by pain and speaks of the priests as prisoners fettered by their Saviour. He compares false values to a slumbering monster mistaken for an isle, which will wake and devour whatever is built on it.

Eagerly and with shouts drove they their flock over their foot-bridge; as if there were but one foot-bridge to the future! Verily, those shepherds also were still of the flock! Small spirits and spacious souls had those…

The shepherds drive their flock over one bridge to the future and write in blood, teaching that blood proves truth. Zarathustra answers that blood taints a teaching into delusion and hatred.

Sultry heart and cold head; where these meet, there ariseth the blusterer, the “Saviour.” Greater ones, verily, have there been, and higher-born ones, than those whom the people call Saviours, those rapturous…

Zarathustra calls the Saviour a blusterer where a sultry heart meets a cold head. He says greater ones have been, and that his brethren must be saved by still greater ones. He has seen the greatest and the smallest man naked and found them alike.

But Zarathustra came not to say unto all those liars and fools: “What do YE know of virtue! What COULD ye know of virtue!”— But that ye, my friends, might become weary of the old words which ye have learned from the…

Zarathustra says he does not come to tell them they know nothing of virtue, but that they may tire of the old words of reward and punishment. He compares the loss of their formulae to children's toys swept off by a wave, which will bring new shells.

Ah! my friends! That YOUR very Self be in your action, as the mother is in the child: let that be YOUR formula of virtue!

Zarathustra gives his friends a formula of virtue to replace the old ones.

For this is OUR height and our home: too high and steep do we here dwell for all uncleanly ones and their thirst. Cast but your pure eyes into the well of my delight, my friends! How could it become turbid thereby! It…

Zarathustra invites his friends to look into the well and to live like strong winds beside eagles, snow and sun. He says he will one day blow among the low and warns his enemies not to spit against the wind.

Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. “Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance”—thus do they talk to one another. “Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all…

The tarantulas' own pledge of vengeance and 'Will to Equality' is quoted, then unmasked as envy and conceit passed from father to son. Zarathustra tells his friends to distrust those with a strong impulse to punish and those who talk much of justice; the 'good and just' lack only power to be Pharisees.

My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others. There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas. That they speak in favour of life, though…

Zarathustra refuses to be mixed up with tarantulas who preach his doctrine of life from their dens. He says they do so only to do injury to the powerful, and that they were once world-maligners and heretic-burners.

And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula’s den is, riseth aloft an ancient temple’s ruins—just behold it with enlightened eyes! Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as the…

Beside the den stand the ruins of an ancient temple, whose vault and arch strive against each other in light and shade. Zarathustra reads this as a parable of struggle and inequality in beauty, and asks his friends to be enemies in the same way.

Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!—

The tarantula bites Zarathustra on the finger, thinking he should not sing of enmity for nothing. He asks his friends to bind him to the pillar, preferring to be a pillar-saint rather than a whirl of vengeance.

One evening went Zarathustra and his disciples through the forest; and when he sought for a well, lo, he lighted upon a green meadow peacefully surrounded with trees and bushes, where maidens were dancing together. As…

Zarathustra and his disciples find maidens dancing in a meadow. He tells them to keep dancing, since he is no enemy of maidens, and says he will sing a satire on the spirit of gravity.

Thus sang Zarathustra. But when the dance was over and the maidens had departed, he became sad. “The sun hath been long set,” said he at last, “the meadow is damp, and from the forest cometh coolness. An unknown…

When the dance ends and the maidens leave, Zarathustra grows sad as evening falls. He asks whether it is folly still to live and asks his friends to forgive his sadness.

“Since I have known the body better”—said Zarathustra to one of his disciples—“the spirit hath only been to me symbolically spirit; and all the ‘imperishable’—that is also but a simile.” “So have I heard thee say once…

Zarathustra says the spirit and the 'imperishable' are only similes. A disciple asks why he said poets lie too much. Zarathustra refuses to give reasons, admits he is a poet himself, and rejects the disciple's belief in him.

When Zarathustra so spake, his disciple resented it, but was silent. And Zarathustra also was silent; and his eye directed itself inwardly, as if it gazed into the far distance. At last he sighed and drew breath.— I am…

After a silence, Zarathustra says something in him belongs to the morrow. He finds the poets superficial, given to voluptuousness and tedium, and impure mixers.

Verily, said he unto his disciples, a little while, and there cometh the long twilight. Alas, how shall I preserve my light through it! That it may not smother in this sorrowfulness! To remoter worlds shall it be a…

Zarathustra fears the long twilight will smother his light. For three days he neither eats, drinks nor speaks, then sleeps while his disciples keep watch. He wakes and speaks as if from afar.

Hear, I pray you, the dream that I dreamed, my friends, and help me to divine its meaning! A riddle is it still unto me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it and encaged, and doth not yet fly above it on free…

Zarathustra tells his dream: as night-watchman of Death's mountain-fortress he opens the creaking gate with rusty keys. A roaring wind throws him a black coffin that bursts open with laughing caricatures, and his own cry wakes him.

Thus did Zarathustra relate his dream, and then was silent: for as yet he knew not the interpretation thereof. But the disciple whom he loved most arose quickly, seized Zarathustra’s hand, and said: “Thy life itself…

The disciple says Zarathustra is himself the wind and the coffin, an advocate of life whose laughter will break the sepulchres. The enemies were only dreamed by him and will awaken and come to him.

Thus spake the disciple; and all the others then thronged around Zarathustra, grasped him by the hands, and tried to persuade him to leave his bed and his sadness, and return unto them. Zarathustra, however, sat upright…

The disciples raise Zarathustra; he recovers and calls for a good meal to make amends for bad dreams. He says the soothsayer shall eat at his side and he will show him a sea to drown in, then looks long at the interpreter and shakes his head.

When Zarathustra had spoken thus unto the hunchback, and unto those of whom the hunchback was the mouthpiece and advocate, then did he turn to his disciples in profound dejection, and said: Verily, my friends, I walk…

Turning to his disciples, Zarathustra says he walks among men as among the limbs of a battlefield. He lives only as a seer of the future who composes fragments into unity and redeems chance.

Will—so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a prisoner. Willing emancipateth: but what is that called which still putteth…

The will is the emancipator but is chained by the 'It was', the stone it cannot roll back. Out of rage it torments whatever can suffer, and this is revenge itself.

THE SPIRIT OF REVENGE: my friends, that hath hitherto been man’s best contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was always penalty. “Penalty,” so calleth itself revenge. With a lying word it…

The spirit of revenge turns suffering into punishment and all life into penalty. Madness then preaches that everything must perish and that the only escape is for willing to become non-willing.

Away from those fabulous songs did I lead you when I taught you: “The Will is a creator.” All “It was” is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance—until the creating Will saith thereto: “But thus would I have it.”— Until…

Zarathustra contrasts the fabulous song of madness with his teaching that the will is a creator. He asks whether the will has ever unlearned revenge and been taught to will backwards.

—But at this point in his discourse it chanced that Zarathustra suddenly paused, and looked like a person in the greatest alarm. With terror in his eyes did he gaze on his disciples; his glances pierced as with arrows…

Zarathustra breaks off in alarm, then laughs and says silence is hard for a babbler. The hunchback asks why he speaks differently to his disciples, and Zarathustra says one may speak in a hunchbacked way with hunchbacks.

Not the height, it is the declivity that is terrible! The declivity, where the gaze shooteth DOWNWARDS, and the hand graspeth UPWARDS. There doth the heart become giddy through its double will. Ah, friends, do ye divine…

Zarathustra says the declivity, not the height, is terrible, because his gaze goes up while his hand clutches the depth. He chains himself to man and lets himself be deceived, so that his hand keeps its belief in firmness.

What hath happened unto me, my friends? Ye see me troubled, driven forth, unwillingly obedient, ready to go—alas, to go away from YOU! Yea, once more must Zarathustra retire to his solitude: but unjoyously this time…

Zarathustra tells his friends he is driven away against his will by an angry mistress, his stillest hour, and promises to tell them everything.

—Now have ye heard all, and why I have to return into my solitude. Nothing have I kept hidden from you, my friends. But even this have ye heard from me, WHO is still the most reserved of men—and will be so! Ah, my…

Zarathustra says he has hidden nothing and calls himself the most reserved of men. He weeps aloud, no one can console him, and he leaves alone that night.

Companions did the creating one once seek, and children of HIS hope: and lo, it turned out that he could not find them, except he himself should first create them. Thus am I in the midst of my work, to my children…

His children are trees in his garden; one day he will set each alone by the sea to learn lonesomeness and defiance. He therefore avoids his happiness and presents himself to misfortune for his own final testing.

It is my sympathy with all the past that I see it is abandoned,— —Abandoned to the favour, the spirit and the madness of every generation that cometh, and reinterpreteth all that hath been as its bridge! A great…

Zarathustra pities the past that each generation reinterprets as its bridge, and calls for many noble ones. He consecrates his brethren as a nobility that looks outward to the children's land, not back to ancestors or courts.

Ye flee from me? Ye are frightened? Ye tremble at this word? O my brethren, when I enjoined you to break up the good, and the tables of the good, then only did I embark man on his high seas. And now only cometh unto him…

The brethren flee at his word, but Zarathustra says that only now has man been embarked on his high seas. He calls them to be brave sailors who steer for the children's land.