XXVII. The Virtuous

With thunder and heavenly fireworks must one speak to indolent and somnolent senses. But beauty’s voice speaketh gently: it appealeth only to the most awakened souls. Gently vibrated and laughed unto me to-day my…

Zarathustra says beauty speaks gently, and that it laughed at the virtuous: they want to be paid besides. He denies any paymaster, even that virtue is its own reward, and says his word will grub up their souls like a boar's snout or ploughshare.

For this is your truth: ye are TOO PURE for the filth of the words: vengeance, punishment, recompense, retribution.

Zarathustra says that the truth of the virtuous is their purity from these words.

Ye love your virtue as a mother loveth her child; but when did one hear of a mother wanting to be paid for her love?

The virtuous are called too pure for the words vengeance, punishment and recompense. Their virtue is their own Self, like a ring reaching back to itself, and its light travels on like a dead star's.

But sure enough there are those to whom virtue meaneth writhing under the lash: and ye have hearkened too much unto their crying! And others are there who call virtue the slothfulness of their vices; and when once their…

Zarathustra lists those who call virtue a writhing under the lash, a slothful vice, a heavy drag, a ticking clock, a pose, a swamp or an evil eye. Almost everyone claims to be an authority on good and evil.

And when they say: “I am just,” it always soundeth like: “I am just—revenged!”

Zarathustra says this of those who are proud of their modicum of righteousness.

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.