Five words about old things did I hear yester-night at the garden-wall: they came from such old, sorrowful, arid night-watchmen.
“For a father he careth not sufficiently for his children: human fathers do this better!”—
“He is too old! He now careth no more for his children,”—answered the other night-watchman.
“HATH he then children? No one can prove it unless he himself prove it! I have long wished that he would for once prove it thoroughly.”
“Prove? As if HE had ever proved anything! Proving is difficult to him; he layeth great stress on one’s BELIEVING him.”
“Ay! Ay! Belief saveth him; belief in him. That is the way with old people! So it is with us also!”—
—Thus spake to each other the two old night-watchmen and light-scarers, and tooted thereupon sorrowfully on their horns: so did it happen yester-night at the garden-wall.
To me, however, did the heart writhe with laughter, and was like to break; it knew not where to go, and sunk into the midriff.
Verily, it will be my death yet—to choke with laughter when I see asses drunken, and hear night-watchmen thus doubt about God.
Hath the time not LONG since passed for all such doubts? Who may nowadays awaken such old slumbering, light-shunning things!
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.