Thus Spake Zarathustra
by
Friedrich Nietzsche
Part 8 out of 8
small to his arch-enemy and in defiance of him.
That there is much to be said for Nietzsche's hypothesis of the Eternal
Recurrence of all things great and small, nobody who has read the
literature on the subject will doubt for an instant; but it remains a very
daring conjecture notwithstanding and even in its ultimate effect, as a
dogma, on the minds of men, I venture to doubt whether Nietzsche ever
properly estimated its worth (see Note on Chapter LVII.).
What follows is clear enough. Zarathustra sees a young shepherd struggling
on the ground with a snake holding fast to the back of his throat. The
sage, assuming that the snake must have crawled into the young man's mouth
while he lay sleeping, runs to his help and pulls at the loathsome reptile
with all his might, but in vain. At last, in despair, Zarathustra appeals
to the young man's will. Knowing full well what a ghastly operation he is
recommending, he nevertheless cries, "Bite! Bite! Its head off! Bite!"
as the only possible solution of the difficulty. The young shepherd bites,
and far away he spits the snake's head, whereupon he rises, "No longer
shepherd, no longer man--a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being,
that LAUGHED! Never on earth laughed a man as he laughed!"
In this parable the young shepherd is obviously the man of to-day; the
snake that chokes him represents the stultifying and paralysing social
values that threaten to shatter humanity, and the advice "Bite! Bite!" is
but Nietzsche's exasperated cry to mankind to alter their values before it
is too late.
Chapter XLVII. Involuntary Bliss.
This, like "The Wanderer", is one of the many introspective passages in the
work, and is full of innuendos and hints as to the Nietzschean outlook on
life.
Chapter XLVIII. Before Sunrise.
Here we have a record of Zarathustra's avowal of optimism, as also the
important statement concerning "Chance" or "Accident" (verse 27). Those
who are familiar with Nietzsche's philosophy will not require to be told
what an important role his doctrine of chance plays in his teaching. The
Giant Chance has hitherto played with the puppet "man,"--this is the fact
he cannot contemplate with equanimity. Man shall now exploit chance, he
says again and again, and make it fall on its knees before him! (See verse
33 in "On the Olive Mount", and verses 9-10 in "The Bedwarfing Virtue").
Chapter XLIX. The Bedwarfing Virtue.
This requires scarcely any comment. It is a satire on modern man and his
belittling virtues. In verses 23 and 24 of the second part of the
discourse we are reminded of Nietzsche's powerful indictment of the great
of to-day, in the Antichrist (Aphorism 43):--"At present nobody has any
longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of domination, for a
feeling of reverence for himself and his equals,--FOR PATHOS OF
DISTANCE...Our politics are MORBID from this want of courage!--The
aristocracy of character has been undermined most craftily by the lie of
the equality of souls; and if the belief in the 'privilege of the many,'
makes revolutions and WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE them, it is Christianity, let
us not doubt it, it is CHRISTIAN valuations, which translate every
revolution merely into blood and crime!" (see also "Beyond Good and Evil",
pages 120, 121). Nietzsche thought it was a bad sign of the times that
even rulers have lost the courage of their positions, and that a man of
Frederick the Great's power and distinguished gifts should have been able
to say: "Ich bin der erste Diener des Staates" (I am the first servant of
the State.) To this utterance of the great sovereign, verse 24 undoubtedly
refers. "Cowardice" and "Mediocrity," are the names with which he labels
modern notions of virtue and moderation.
In Part III., we get the sentiments of the discourse "In the Happy Isles",
but perhaps in stronger terms. Once again we find Nietzsche thoroughly at
ease, if not cheerful, as an atheist, and speaking with vertiginous daring
of making chance go on its knees to him. In verse 20, Zarathustra makes
yet another attempt at defining his entirely anti-anarchical attitude, and
unless such passages have been completely overlooked or deliberately
ignored hitherto by those who will persist in laying anarchy at his door,
it is impossible to understand how he ever became associated with that foul
political party.
The last verse introduces the expression, "THE GREAT NOONTIDE!" In the
poem to be found at the end of "Beyond Good and Evil", we meet with the
expression again, and we shall find it occurring time and again in
Nietzsche's works. It will be found fully elucidated in the fifth part of
"The Twilight of the Idols"; but for those who cannot refer to this book,
it were well to point out that Nietzsche called the present period--our
period--the noon of man's history. Dawn is behind us. The childhood of
mankind is over. Now we KNOW; there is now no longer any excuse for
mistakes which will tend to botch and disfigure the type man. "With
respect to what is past," he says, "I have, like all discerning ones, great
toleration, that is to say, GENEROUS self-control...But my feeling changes
suddenly, and breaks out as soon as I enter the modern period, OUR period.
Our age KNOWS..." (See Note on Chapter LXX.).
Chapter LI. On Passing-by.
Here we find Nietzsche confronted with his extreme opposite, with him
therefore for whom he is most frequently mistaken by the unwary.
"Zarathustra's ape" he is called in the discourse. He is one of those at
whose hands Nietzsche had to suffer most during his life-time, and at whose
hands his philosophy has suffered most since his death. In this respect it
may seem a little trivial to speak of extremes meeting; but it is
wonderfully apt. Many have adopted Nietzsche's mannerisms and word-
coinages, who had nothing in common with him beyond the ideas and
"business" they plagiarised; but the superficial observer and a large
portion of the public, not knowing of these things,--not knowing perhaps
that there are iconoclasts who destroy out of love and are therefore
creators, and that there are others who destroy out of resentment and
revengefulness and who are therefore revolutionists and anarchists,--are
prone to confound the two, to the detriment of the nobler type.
If we now read what the fool says to Zarathustra, and note the tricks of
speech he has borrowed from him: if we carefully follow the attitude he
assumes, we shall understand why Zarathustra finally interrupts him. "Stop
this at once," Zarathustra cries, "long have thy speech and thy species
disgusted me...Out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take
wing; BUT NOT OUT OF THE SWAMP!" It were well if this discourse were taken
to heart by all those who are too ready to associate Nietzsche with lesser
and noiser men,--with mountebanks and mummers.
Chapter LII. The Apostates.
It is clear that this applies to all those breathless and hasty "tasters of
everything," who plunge too rashly into the sea of independent thought and
"heresy," and who, having miscalculated their strength, find it impossible
to keep their head above water. "A little older, a little colder," says
Nietzsche. They soon clamber back to the conventions of the age they
intended reforming. The French then say "le diable se fait hermite," but
these men, as a rule, have never been devils, neither do they become
angels; for, in order to be really good or evil, some strength and deep
breathing is required. Those who are more interested in supporting
orthodoxy than in being over nice concerning the kind of support they give
it, often refer to these people as evidence in favour of the true faith.
Chapter LIII. The Return Home.
This is an example of a class of writing which may be passed over too
lightly by those whom poetasters have made distrustful of poetry. From
first to last it is extremely valuable as an autobiographical note. The
inevitable superficiality of the rabble is contrasted with the peaceful and
profound depths of the anchorite. Here we first get a direct hint
concerning Nietzsche's fundamental passion--the main force behind all his
new values and scathing criticism of existing values. In verse 30 we are
told that pity was his greatest danger. The broad altruism of the law-
giver, thinking over vast eras of time, was continually being pitted by
Nietzsche, in himself, against that transient and meaner sympathy for the
neighbour which he more perhaps than any of his contemporaries had suffered
from, but which he was certain involved enormous dangers not only for
himself but also to the next and subsequent generations (see Note B., where
"pity" is mentioned among the degenerate virtues). Later in the book we
shall see how his profound compassion leads him into temptation, and how
frantically he struggles against it. In verses 31 and 32, he tells us to
what extent he had to modify himself in order to be endured by his fellows
whom he loved (see also verse 12 in "Manly Prudence"). Nietzsche's great
love for his fellows, which he confesses in the Prologue, and which is at
the root of all his teaching, seems rather to elude the discerning powers
of the average philanthropist and modern man. He cannot see the wood for
the trees. A philanthropy that sacrifices the minority of the present-day
for the majority constituting posterity, completely evades his mental
grasp, and Nietzsche's philosophy, because it declares Christian values to
be a danger to the future of our kind, is therefore shelved as brutal,
cold, and hard (see Note on Chapter XXXVI.). Nietzsche tried to be all
things to all men; he was sufficiently fond of his fellows for that: in
the Return Home he describes how he ultimately returns to loneliness in
order to recover from the effects of his experiment.
Chapter LIV. The Three Evil Things.
Nietzsche is here completely in his element. Three things hitherto best-
cursed and most calumniated on earth, are brought forward to be weighed.
Voluptuousness, thirst of power, and selfishness,--the three forces in
humanity which Christianity has done most to garble and besmirch,--
Nietzsche endeavours to reinstate in their former places of honour.
Voluptuousness, or sensual pleasure, is a dangerous thing to discuss
nowadays. If we mention it with favour we may be regarded, however
unjustly, as the advocate of savages, satyrs, and pure sensuality. If we
condemn it, we either go over to the Puritans or we join those who are wont
to come to table with no edge to their appetites and who therefore grumble
at all good fare. There can be no doubt that the value of healthy innocent
voluptuousness, like the value of health itself, must have been greatly
discounted by all those who, resenting their inability to partake of this
world's goods, cried like St Paul: "I would that all men were even as I
myself." Now Nietzsche's philosophy might be called an attempt at giving
back to healthy and normal men innocence and a clean conscience in their
desires--NOT to applaud the vulgar sensualists who respond to every
stimulus and whose passions are out of hand; not to tell the mean, selfish
individual, whose selfishness is a pollution (see Aphorism 33, "Twilight of
the Idols"), that he is right, nor to assure the weak, the sick, and the
crippled, that the thirst of power, which they gratify by exploiting the
happier and healthier individuals, is justified;--but to save the clean
healthy man from the values of those around him, who look at everything
through the mud that is in their own bodies,--to give him, and him alone, a
clean conscience in his manhood and the desires of his manhood. "Do I
counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel to innocence in your
instincts." In verse 7 of the second paragraph (as in verse I of paragraph
19 in "The Old and New Tables") Nietzsche gives us a reason for his
occasional obscurity (see also verses 3 to 7 of "Poets"). As I have
already pointed out, his philosophy is quite esoteric. It can serve no
purpose with the ordinary, mediocre type of man. I, personally, can no
longer have any doubt that Nietzsche's only object, in that part of his
philosophy where he bids his friends stand "Beyond Good and Evil" with him,
was to save higher men, whose growth and scope might be limited by the too
strict observance of modern values from foundering on the rocks of a
"Compromise" between their own genius and traditional conventions. The
only possible way in which the great man can achieve greatness is by means
of exceptional freedom--the freedom which assists him in experiencing
HIMSELF. Verses 20 to 30 afford an excellent supplement to Nietzsche's
description of the attitude of the noble type towards the slaves in
Aphorism 260 of the work "Beyond Good and Evil" (see also Note B.)
Chapter LV. The Spirit of Gravity.
(See Note on Chapter XLVI.) In Part II. of this discourse we meet with a
doctrine not touched upon hitherto, save indirectly;--I refer to the
doctrine of self-love. We should try to understand this perfectly before
proceeding; for it is precisely views of this sort which, after having been
cut out of the original context, are repeated far and wide as internal
evidence proving the general unsoundness of Nietzsche's philosophy.
Already in the last of the "Thoughts out of Season" Nietzsche speaks as
follows about modern men: "...these modern creatures wish rather to be
hunted down, wounded and torn to shreds, than to live alone with themselves
in solitary calm. Alone with oneself!--this thought terrifies the modern
soul; it is his one anxiety, his one ghastly fear" (English Edition, page
141). In his feverish scurry to find entertainment and diversion, whether
in a novel, a newspaper, or a play, the modern man condemns his own age
utterly; for he shows that in his heart of hearts he despises himself. One
cannot change a condition of this sort in a day; to become endurable to
oneself an inner transformation is necessary. Too long have we lost
ourselves in our friends and entertainments to be able to find ourselves so
soon at another's bidding. "And verily, it is no commandment for to-day
and to-morrow to LEARN to love oneself. Rather is it of all arts the
finest, subtlest, last, and patientest."
In the last verse Nietzsche challenges us to show that our way is the right
way. In his teaching he does not coerce us, nor does he overpersuade; he
simply says: "I am a law only for mine own, I am not a law for all. This
--is now MY way,--where is yours?"
Chapter LVI. Old and New Tables. Par. 2.
Nietzsche himself declares this to be the most decisive portion of the
whole of "Thus Spake Zarathustra". It is a sort of epitome of his leading
doctrines. In verse 12 of the second paragraph, we learn how he himself
would fain have abandoned the poetical method of expression had he not
known only too well that the only chance a new doctrine has of surviving,
nowadays, depends upon its being given to the world in some kind of art-
form. Just as prophets, centuries ago, often had to have recourse to the
mask of madness in order to mitigate the hatred of those who did not and
could not see as they did; so, to-day, the struggle for existence among
opinions and values is so great, that an art-form is practically the only
garb in which a new philosophy can dare to introduce itself to us.
Pars. 3 and 4.
Many of the paragraphs will be found to be merely reminiscent of former
discourses. For instance, par. 3 recalls "Redemption". The last verse of
par. 4 is important. Freedom which, as I have pointed out before,
Nietzsche considered a dangerous acquisition in inexperienced or unworthy
hands, here receives its death-blow as a general desideratum. In the first
Part we read under "The Way of the Creating One", that freedom as an end in
itself does not concern Zarathustra at all. He says there: "Free from
what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra? Clearly, however, shall thine
eye answer me: free FOR WHAT?" And in "The Bedwarfing Virtue": "Ah that
ye understood my word: 'Do ever what ye will--but first be such as CAN
WILL.'"
Par. 5.
Here we have a description of the kind of altruism Nietzsche exacted from
higher men. It is really a comment upon "The Bestowing Virtue" (see Note
on Chapter XXII.).
Par. 6.
This refers, of course, to the reception pioneers of Nietzsche's stamp meet
with at the hands of their contemporaries.
Par. 8.
Nietzsche teaches that nothing is stable,--not even values,--not even the
concepts good and evil. He likens life unto a stream. But foot-bridges
and railings span the stream, and they seem to stand firm. Many will be
reminded of good and evil when they look upon these structures; for thus
these same values stand over the stream of life, and life flows on beneath
them and leaves them standing. When, however, winter comes and the stream
gets frozen, many inquire: "Should not everything--STAND STILL?
Fundamentally everything standeth still." But soon the spring cometh and
with it the thaw-wind. It breaks the ice, and the ice breaks down the
foot-bridges and railings, whereupon everything is swept away. This state
of affairs, according to Nietzsche, has now been reached. "Oh, my
brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX? Have not all railings and
foot-bridges fallen into the water? Who would still HOLD ON to 'good' and
'evil'?"
Par. 9.
This is complementary to the first three verses of par. 2.
Par. 10.
So far, this is perhaps the most important paragraph. It is a protest
against reading a moral order of things in life. "Life is something
essentially immoral!" Nietzsche tells us in the introduction to the "Birth
of Tragedy". Even to call life "activity," or to define it further as "the
continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations," as
Spencer has it, Nietzsche characterises as a "democratic idiosyncracy." He
says to define it in this way, "is to mistake the true nature and function
of life, which is Will to Power...Life is ESSENTIALLY appropriation,
injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion
of its own forms, incorporation and at least, putting it mildest,
exploitation." Adaptation is merely a secondary activity, a mere re-
activity (see Note on Chapter LVII.).
Pars. 11, 12.
These deal with Nietzsche's principle of the desirability of rearing a
select race. The biological and historical grounds for his insistence upon
this principle are, of course, manifold. Gobineau in his great work,
"L'Inegalite des Races Humaines", lays strong emphasis upon the evils which
arise from promiscuous and inter-social marriages. He alone would suffice
to carry Nietzsche's point against all those who are opposed to the other
conditions, to the conditions which would have saved Rome, which have
maintained the strength of the Jewish race, and which are strictly
maintained by every breeder of animals throughout the world. Darwin in his
remarks relative to the degeneration of CULTIVATED types of animals through
the action of promiscuous breeding, brings Gobineau support from the realm
of biology.
The last two verses of par. 12 were discussed in the Notes on Chapters
XXXVI. and LIII.
Par. 13.
This, like the first part of "The Soothsayer", is obviously a reference to
the Schopenhauerian Pessimism.
Pars. 14, 15, 16, 17.
These are supplementary to the discourse "Backworld's-men".
Par. 18.
We must be careful to separate this paragraph, in sense, from the previous
four paragraphs. Nietzsche is still dealing with Pessimism here; but it is
the pessimism of the hero--the man most susceptible of all to desperate
views of life, owing to the obstacles that are arrayed against him in a
world where men of his kind are very rare and are continually being
sacrificed. It was to save this man that Nietzsche wrote. Heroism foiled,
thwarted, and wrecked, hoping and fighting until the last, is at length
overtaken by despair, and renounces all struggle for sleep. This is not
the natural or constitutional pessimism which proceeds from an unhealthy
body--the dyspeptic's lack of appetite; it is rather the desperation of the
netted lion that ultimately stops all movement, because the more it moves
the more involved it becomes.
Par. 20.
"All that increases power is good, all that springs from weakness is bad.
The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our charity.
And one shall also help them thereto." Nietzsche partly divined the kind
of reception moral values of this stamp would meet with at the hands of the
effeminate manhood of Europe. Here we see that he had anticipated the most
likely form their criticism would take (see also the last two verses of
par. 17).
Par. 21.
The first ten verses, here, are reminiscent of "War and Warriors" and of
"The Flies in the Market-Place." Verses 11 and 12, however, are
particularly important. There is a strong argument in favour of the sharp
differentiation of castes and of races (and even of sexes; see Note on
Chapter XVIII.) running all through Nietzsche's writings. But sharp
differentiation also implies antagonism in some form or other--hence
Nietzsche's fears for modern men. What modern men desire above all, is
peace and the cessation of pain. But neither great races nor great castes
have ever been built up in this way. "Who still wanteth to rule?"
Zarathustra asks in the "Prologue". "Who still wanteth to obey? Both are
too burdensome." This is rapidly becoming everybody's attitude to-day.
The tame moral reading of the face of nature, together with such democratic
interpretations of life as those suggested by Herbert Spencer, are signs of
a physiological condition which is the reverse of that bounding and
irresponsible healthiness in which harder and more tragic values rule.
Par. 24.
This should be read in conjunction with "Child and Marriage". In the fifth
verse we shall recognise our old friend "Marriage on the ten-years system,"
which George Meredith suggested some years ago. This, however, must not be
taken too literally. I do not think Nietzsche's profoundest views on
marriage were ever intended to be given over to the public at all, at least
not for the present. They appear in the biography by his sister, and
although their wisdom is unquestionable, the nature of the reforms he
suggests render it impossible for them to become popular just now.
Pars. 26, 27.
See Note on "The Prologue".
Par. 28.
Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from predilection. No bitterness or empty
hate dictated his vituperations against existing values and against the
dogmas of his parents and forefathers. He knew too well what these things
meant to the millions who profess them, to approach the task of uprooting
them with levity or even with haste. He saw what modern anarchists and
revolutionists do NOT see--namely, that man is in danger of actual
destruction when his customs and values are broken. I need hardly point
out, therefore, how deeply he was conscious of the responsibility he threw
upon our shoulders when he invited us to reconsider our position. The
lines in this paragraph are evidence enough of his earnestness.
Chapter LVII. The Convalescent.
We meet with several puzzles here. Zarathustra calls himself the advocate
of the circle (the Eternal Recurrence of all things), and he calls this
doctrine his abysmal thought. In the last verse of the first paragraph,
however, after hailing his deepest thought, he cries: "Disgust, disgust,
disgust!" We know Nietzsche's ideal man was that "world-approving,
exuberant, and vivacious creature, who has not only learnt to compromise
and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes to have it again, AS IT
WAS AND IS, for all eternity insatiably calling out da capo, not only to
himself, but to the whole piece and play" (see Note on Chapter XLII.). But
if one ask oneself what the conditions to such an attitude are, one will
realise immediately how utterly different Nietzsche was from his ideal.
The man who insatiably cries da capo to himself and to the whole of his
mise-en-scene, must be in a position to desire every incident in his life
to be repeated, not once, but again and again eternally. Now, Nietzsche's
life had been too full of disappointments, illness, unsuccessful struggles,
and snubs, to allow of his thinking of the Eternal Recurrence without
loathing--hence probably the words of the last verse.
In verses 15 and 16, we have Nietzsche declaring himself an evolutionist in
the broadest sense--that is to say, that he believes in the Development
Hypothesis as the description of the process by which species have
originated. Now, to understand his position correctly we must show his
relationship to the two greatest of modern evolutionists--Darwin and
Spencer. As a philosopher, however, Nietzsche does not stand or fall by
his objections to the Darwinian or Spencerian cosmogony. He never laid
claim to a very profound knowledge of biology, and his criticism is far
more valuable as the attitude of a fresh mind than as that of a specialist
towards the question. Moreover, in his objections many difficulties are
raised which are not settled by an appeal to either of the men above
mentioned. We have given Nietzsche's definition of life in the Note on
Chapter LVI., par. 10. Still, there remains a hope that Darwin and
Nietzsche may some day become reconciled by a new description of the
processes by which varieties occur. The appearance of varieties among
animals and of "sporting plants" in the vegetable kingdom, is still
shrouded in mystery, and the question whether this is not precisely the
ground on which Darwin and Nietzsche will meet, is an interesting one. The
former says in his "Origin of Species", concerning the causes of
variability: "...there are two factors, namely, the nature of the
organism, and the nature of the conditions. THE FORMER SEEMS TO BE MUCH
THE MORE IMPORTANT (The italics are mine.), for nearly similar variations
sometimes arise under, as far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and
on the other hand, dissimilar variations arise under conditions which
appear to be nearly uniform." Nietzsche, recognising this same truth,
would ascribe practically all the importance to the "highest functionaries
in the organism, in which the life-will appears as an active and formative
principle," and except in certain cases (where passive organisms alone are
concerned) would not give such a prominent place to the influence of
environment. Adaptation, according to him, is merely a secondary activity,
a mere re-activity, and he is therefore quite opposed to Spencer's
definition: "Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to
external relations." Again in the motive force behind animal and plant
life, Nietzsche disagrees with Darwin. He transforms the "Struggle for
Existence"--the passive and involuntary condition--into the "Struggle for
Power," which is active and creative, and much more in harmony with
Darwin's own view, given above, concerning the importance of the organism
itself. The change is one of such far-reaching importance that we cannot
dispose of it in a breath, as a mere play upon words. "Much is reckoned
higher than life itself by the living one." Nietzsche says that to speak
of the activity of life as a "struggle for existence," is to state the case
inadequately. He warns us not to confound Malthus with nature. There is
something more than this struggle between the organic beings on this earth;
want, which is supposed to bring this struggle about, is not so common as
is supposed; some other force must be operative. The Will to Power is this
force, "the instinct of self-preservation is only one of the indirect and
most frequent results thereof." A certain lack of acumen in psychological
questions and the condition of affairs in England at the time Darwin wrote,
may both, according to Nietzsche, have induced the renowned naturalist to
describe the forces of nature as he did in his "Origin of Species".
In verses 28, 29, and 30 of the second portion of this discourse we meet
with a doctrine which, at first sight, seems to be merely "le manoir a
l'envers," indeed one English critic has actually said of Nietzsche, that
"Thus Spake Zarathustra" is no more than a compendium of modern views and
maxims turned upside down. Examining these heterodox pronouncements a
little more closely, however, we may possibly perceive their truth.
Regarding good and evil as purely relative values, it stands to reason that
what may be bad or evil in a given man, relative to a certain environment,
may actually be good if not highly virtuous in him relative to a certain
other environment. If this hypothetical man represent the ascending line
of life--that is to say, if he promise all that which is highest in a
Graeco-Roman sense, then it is likely that he will be condemned as wicked
if introduced into the society of men representing the opposite and
descending line of life.
By depriving a man of his wickedness--more particularly nowadays--
therefore, one may unwittingly be doing violence to the greatest in him.
It may be an outrage against his wholeness, just as the lopping-off of a
leg would be. Fortunately, the natural so-called "wickedness" of higher
men has in a certain measure been able to resist this lopping process which
successive slave-moralities have practised; but signs are not wanting which
show that the noblest wickedness is fast vanishing from society--the
wickedness of courage and determination--and that Nietzsche had good
reasons for crying: "Ah, that (man's) baddest is so very small! Ah, that
his best is so very small. What is good? To be brave is good! It is the
good war which halloweth every cause!" (see also par. 5, "Higher Man").
Chapter LX. The Seven Seals.
This is a final paean which Zarathustra sings to Eternity and the marriage-
ring of rings, the ring of the Eternal Recurrence.
...
PART IV.
In my opinion this part is Nietzsche's open avowal that all his philosophy,
together with all his hopes, enthusiastic outbursts, blasphemies,
prolixities, and obscurities, were merely so many gifts laid at the feet of
higher men. He had no desire to save the world. What he wished to
determine was: Who is to be master of the world? This is a very different
thing. He came to save higher men;--to give them that freedom by which,
alone, they can develop and reach their zenith (see Note on Chapter LIV.,
end). It has been argued, and with considerable force, that no such
philosophy is required by higher men, that, as a matter of fact, higher
men, by virtue of their constitutions always, do stand Beyond Good and
Evil, and never allow anything to stand in the way of their complete
growth. Nietzsche, however, was evidently not so confident about this. He
would probably have argued that we only see the successful cases. Being a
great man himself, he was well aware of the dangers threatening greatness
in our age. In "Beyond Good and Evil" he writes: "There are few pains so
grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man
has missed his way and deteriorated..." He knew "from his painfullest
recollections on what wretched obstacles promising developments of the
highest rank have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and
become contemptible." Now in Part IV. we shall find that his strongest
temptation to descend to the feeling of "pity" for his contemporaries, is
the "cry for help" which he hears from the lips of the higher men exposed
to the dreadful danger of their modern environment.
Chapter LXI. The Honey Sacrifice.
In the fourteenth verse of this discourse Nietzsche defines the solemn duty
he imposed upon himself: "Become what thou art." Surely the criticism
which has been directed against this maxim must all fall to the ground when
it is remembered, once and for all, that Nietzsche's teaching was never
intended to be other than an esoteric one. "I am a law only for mine own,"
he says emphatically, "I am not a law for all." It is of the greatest
importance to humanity that its highest individuals should be allowed to
attain to their full development; for, only by means of its heroes can the
human race be led forward step by step to higher and yet higher levels.
"Become what thou art" applied to all, of course, becomes a vicious maxim;
it is to be hoped, however, that we may learn in time that the same action
performed by a given number of men, loses its identity precisely that same
number of times.--"Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi."
At the last eight verses many readers may be tempted to laugh. In England
we almost always laugh when a man takes himself seriously at anything save
sport. And there is of course no reason why the reader should not be
hilarious.--A certain greatness is requisite, both in order to be sublime
and to have reverence for the sublime. Nietzsche earnestly believed that
the Zarathustra-kingdom--his dynasty of a thousand years--would one day
come; if he had not believed it so earnestly, if every artist in fact had
not believed so earnestly in his Hazar, whether of ten, fifteen, a hundred,
or a thousand years, we should have lost all our higher men; they would
have become pessimists, suicides, or merchants. If the minor poet and
philosopher has made us shy of the prophetic seriousness which
characterized an Isaiah or a Jeremiah, it is surely our loss and the minor
poet's gain.
Chapter LXII. The Cry of Distress.
We now meet with Zarathustra in extraordinary circumstances. He is
confronted with Schopenhauer and tempted by the old Soothsayer to commit
the sin of pity. "I have come that I may seduce thee to thy last sin!"
says the Soothsayer to Zarathustra. It will be remembered that in
Schopenhauer's ethics, pity is elevated to the highest place among the
virtues, and very consistently too, seeing that the Weltanschauung is a
pessimistic one. Schopenhauer appeals to Nietzsche's deepest and strongest
sentiment--his sympathy for higher men. "Why dost thou conceal thyself?"
he cries. "It is THE HIGHER MAN that calleth for thee!" Zarathustra is
almost overcome by the Soothsayer's pleading, as he had been once already
in the past, but he resists him step by step. At length he can withstand
him no longer, and, on the plea that the higher man is on his ground and
therefore under his protection, Zarathustra departs in search of him,
leaving Schopenhauer--a higher man in Nietzsche's opinion--in the cave as a
guest.
Chapter LXIII. Talk with the Kings.
On his way Zarathustra meets two more higher men of his time; two kings
cross his path. They are above the average modern type; for their
instincts tell them what real ruling is, and they despise the mockery which
they have been taught to call "Reigning." "We ARE NOT the first men," they
say, "and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of this imposture have we
at last become weary and disgusted." It is the kings who tell Zarathustra:
"There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny than when the mighty of
the earth are not also the first men. There everything becometh false and
distorted and monstrous." The kings are also asked by Zarathustra to
accept the shelter of his cave, whereupon he proceeds on his way.
Chapter LXIV. The Leech.
Among the higher men whom Zarathustra wishes to save, is also the
scientific specialist--the man who honestly and scrupulously pursues his
investigations, as Darwin did, in one department of knowledge. "I love him
who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman
may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going." "The spiritually
conscientious one," he is called in this discourse. Zarathustra steps on
him unawares, and the slave of science, bleeding from the violence he has
done to himself by his self-imposed task, speaks proudly of his little
sphere of knowledge--his little hand's breadth of ground on Zarathustra's
territory, philosophy. "Where mine honesty ceaseth," says the true
scientific specialist, "there am I blind and want also to be blind. Where
I want to know, however, there want I also to be honest--namely, severe,
rigorous, restricted, cruel, and inexorable." Zarathustra greatly
respecting this man, invites him too to the cave, and then vanishes in
answer to another cry for help.
Chapter LXV. The Magician.
The Magician is of course an artist, and Nietzsche's intimate knowledge of
perhaps the greatest artist of his age rendered the selection of Wagner, as
the type in this discourse, almost inevitable. Most readers will be
acquainted with the facts relating to Nietzsche's and Wagner's friendship
and ultimate separation. As a boy and a youth Nietzsche had shown such a
remarkable gift for music that it had been a question at one time whether
he should not perhaps give up everything else in order to develop this
gift, but he became a scholar notwithstanding, although he never entirely
gave up composing, and playing the piano. While still in his teens, he
became acquainted with Wagner's music and grew passionately fond of it.
Long before he met Wagner he must have idealised him in his mind to an
extent which only a profoundly artistic nature could have been capable of.
Nietzsche always had high ideals for humanity. If one were asked whether,
throughout his many changes, there was yet one aim, one direction, and one
hope to which he held fast, one would be forced to reply in the affirmative
and declare that aim, direction, and hope to have been "the elevation of
the type man." Now, when Nietzsche met Wagner he was actually casting
about for an incarnation of his dreams for the German people, and we have
only to remember his youth (he was twenty-one when he was introduced to
Wagner), his love of Wagner's music, and the undoubted power of the great
musician's personality, in order to realise how very uncritical his
attitude must have been in the first flood of his enthusiasm. Again, when
the friendship ripened, we cannot well imagine Nietzsche, the younger man,
being anything less than intoxicated by his senior's attention and love,
and we are therefore not surprised to find him pressing Wagner forward as
the great Reformer and Saviour of mankind. "Wagner in Bayreuth" (English
Edition, 1909) gives us the best proof of Nietzsche's infatuation, and
although signs are not wanting in this essay which show how clearly and
even cruelly he was sub-consciously "taking stock" of his friend--even
then, the work is a record of what great love and admiration can do in the
way of endowing the object of one's affection with all the qualities and
ideals that a fertile imagination can conceive.
When the blow came it was therefore all the more severe. Nietzsche at
length realised that the friend of his fancy and the real Richard Wagner--
the composer of Parsifal--were not one; the fact dawned upon him slowly;
disappointment upon disappointment, revelation after revelation, ultimately
brought it home to him, and though his best instincts were naturally
opposed to it at first, the revulsion of feeling at last became too strong
to be ignored, and Nietzsche was plunged into the blackest despair. Years
after his break with Wagner, he wrote "The Case of Wagner", and "Nietzsche
contra Wagner", and these works are with us to prove the sincerity and
depth of his views on the man who was the greatest event of his life.
The poem in this discourse is, of course, reminiscent of Wagner's own
poetical manner, and it must be remembered that the whole was written
subsequent to Nietzsche's final break with his friend. The dialogue
between Zarathustra and the Magician reveals pretty fully what it was that
Nietzsche grew to loathe so intensely in Wagner,--viz., his pronounced
histrionic tendencies, his dissembling powers, his inordinate vanity, his
equivocalness, his falseness. "It honoureth thee," says Zarathustra, "that
thou soughtest for greatness, but it betrayeth thee also. Thou art not
great." The Magician is nevertheless sent as a guest to Zarathustra's
cave; for, in his heart, Zarathustra believed until the end that the
Magician was a higher man broken by modern values.
Chapter LXVI. Out of Service.
Zarathustra now meets the last pope, and, in a poetical form, we get
Nietzsche's description of the course Judaism and Christianity pursued
before they reached their final break-up in Atheism, Agnosticism, and the
like. The God of a strong, warlike race--the God of Israel--is a jealous,
revengeful God. He is a power that can be pictured and endured only by a
hardy and courageous race, a race rich enough to sacrifice and to lose in
sacrifice. The image of this God degenerates with the people that
appropriate it, and gradually He becomes a God of love--"soft and mellow,"
a lower middle-class deity, who is "pitiful." He can no longer be a God
who requires sacrifice, for we ourselves are no longer rich enough for
that. The tables are therefore turned upon Him; HE must sacrifice to us.
His pity becomes so great that he actually does sacrifice something to us--
His only begotten Son. Such a process carried to its logical conclusions
must ultimately end in His own destruction, and thus we find the pope
declaring that God was one day suffocated by His all-too-great pity. What
follows is clear enough. Zarathustra recognises another higher man in the
ex-pope and sends him too as a guest to the cave.
Chapter LXVII. The Ugliest Man.
This discourse contains perhaps the boldest of Nietzsche's suggestions
concerning Atheism, as well as some extremely penetrating remarks upon the
sentiment of pity. Zarathustra comes across the repulsive creature sitting
on the wayside, and what does he do? He manifests the only correct
feelings that can be manifested in the presence of any great misery--that
is to say, shame, reverence, embarrassment. Nietzsche detested the
obtrusive and gushing pity that goes up to misery without a blush either on
its cheek or in its heart--the pity which is only another form of self-
glorification. "Thank God that I am not like thee!"--only this self-
glorifying sentiment can lend a well-constituted man the impudence to SHOW
his pity for the cripple and the ill-constituted. In the presence of the
ugliest man Nietzsche blushes,--he blushes for his race; his own particular
kind of altruism--the altruism that might have prevented the existence of
this man--strikes him with all its force. He will have the world
otherwise. He will have a world where one need not blush for one's
fellows--hence his appeal to us to love only our children's land, the land
undiscovered in the remotest sea.
Zarathustra calls the ugliest man the murderer of God! Certainly, this is
one aspect of a certain kind of Atheism--the Atheism of the man who reveres
beauty to such an extent that his own ugliness, which outrages him, must be
concealed from every eye lest it should not be respected as Zarathustra
respected it. If there be a God, He too must be evaded. His pity must be
foiled. But God is ubiquitous and omniscient. Therefore, for the really
GREAT ugly man, He must not exist. "Their pity IS it from which I flee
away," he says--that is to say: "It is from their want of reverence and
lack of shame in presence of my great misery!" The ugliest man despises
himself; but Zarathustra said in his Prologue: "I love the great despisers
because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other
shore." He therefore honours the ugliest man: sees height in his self-
contempt, and invites him to join the other higher men in the cave.
Chapter LXVIII. The Voluntary Beggar.
In this discourse, we undoubtedly have the ideal Buddhist, if not Gautama
Buddha himself. Nietzsche had the greatest respect for Buddhism, and
almost wherever he refers to it in his works, it is in terms of praise. He
recognised that though Buddhism is undoubtedly a religion for decadents,
its decadent values emanate from the higher and not, as in Christianity,
from the lower grades of society. In Aphorism 20 of "The Antichrist", he
compares it exhaustively with Christianity, and the result of his
investigation is very much in favour of the older religion. Still, he
recognised a most decided Buddhistic influence in Christ's teaching, and
the words in verses 29, 30, and 31 are very reminiscent of his views in
regard to the Christian Savior.
The figure of Christ has been introduced often enough into fiction, and
many scholars have undertaken to write His life according to their own
lights, but few perhaps have ever attempted to present Him to us bereft of
all those characteristics which a lack of the sense of harmony has attached
to His person through the ages in which His doctrines have been taught.
Now Nietzsche disagreed entirely with Renan's view, that Christ was "le
grand maitre en ironie"; in Aphorism 31 of "The Antichrist", he says that
he (Nietzsche) always purged his picture of the Humble Nazarene of all
those bitter and spiteful outbursts which, in view of the struggle the
first Christians went through, may very well have been added to the
original character by Apologists and Sectarians who, at that time, could
ill afford to consider nice psychological points, seeing that what they
needed, above all, was a wrangling and abusive deity. These two
conflicting halves in the character of the Christ of the Gospels, which no
sound psychology can ever reconcile, Nietzsche always kept distinct in his
own mind; he could not credit the same man with sentiments sometimes so
noble and at other times so vulgar, and in presenting us with this new
portrait of the Saviour, purged of all impurities, Nietzsche rendered
military honours to a foe, which far exceed in worth all that His most
ardent disciples have ever claimed for Him. In verse 26 we are vividly
reminded of Herbert Spencer's words "'Le mariage de convenance' is
legalised prostitution."
Chapter LXIX. The Shadow.
Here we have a description of that courageous and wayward spirit that
literally haunts the footsteps of every great thinker and every great
leader; sometimes with the result that it loses all aims, all hopes, and
all trust in a definite goal. It is the case of the bravest and most
broad-minded men of to-day. These literally shadow the most daring
movements in the science and art of their generation; they completely lose
their bearings and actually find themselves, in the end, without a way, a
goal, or a home. "On every surface have I already sat!...I become thin, I
am almost equal to a shadow!" At last, in despair, such men do indeed cry
out: "Nothing is true; all is permitted," and then they become mere
wreckage. "Too much hath become clear unto me: now nothing mattereth to
me any more. Nothing liveth any longer that I love,--how should I still
love myself! Have I still a goal? Where is MY home?" Zarathustra
realises the danger threatening such a man. "Thy danger is not small, thou
free spirit and wanderer," he says. "Thou hast had a bad day. See that a
still worse evening doth not overtake thee!" The danger Zarathustra refers
to is precisely this, that even a prison may seem a blessing to such a man.
At least the bars keep him in a place of rest; a place of confinement, at
its worst, is real. "Beware lest in the end a narrow faith capture thee,"
says Zarathustra, "for now everything that is narrow and fixed seduceth and
tempteth thee."
Chapter LXX. Noontide.
At the noon of life Nietzsche said he entered the world; with him man came
of age. We are now held responsible for our actions; our old guardians,
the gods and demi-gods of our youth, the superstitions and fears of our
childhood, withdraw; the field lies open before us; we lived through our
morning with but one master--chance--; let us see to it that we MAKE our
afternoon our own (see Note XLIX., Part III.).
Chapter LXXI. The Greeting.
Here I think I may claim that my contention in regard to the purpose and
aim of the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy (as stated at the beginning of
my Notes on Part IV.) is completely upheld. He fought for "all who do not
want to live, unless they learn again to HOPE--unless THEY learn (from him)
the GREAT hope!" Zarathustra's address to his guests shows clearly enough
how he wished to help them: "I DO NOT TREAT MY WARRIORS INDULGENTLY," he
says: "how then could ye be fit for MY warfare?" He rebukes and spurns
them, no word of love comes from his lips. Elsewhere he says a man should
be a hard bed to his friend, thus alone can he be of use to him. Nietzsche
would be a hard bed to higher men. He would make them harder; for, in
order to be a law unto himself, man must possess the requisite hardness.
"I wait for higher ones, stronger ones, more triumphant ones, merrier ones,
for such as are built squarely in body and soul." He says in par. 6 of
"Higher Man":--
"Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put
wrong? Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you
sufferers? Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones new and
easier footpaths?"
"Nay! Nay! Three times nay! Always more, always better ones of your type
shall succumb--for ye shall always have it worse and harder."
Chapter LXXII. The Supper.
In the first seven verses of this discourse, I cannot help seeing a gentle
allusion to Schopenhauer's habits as a bon-vivant. For a pessimist, be it
remembered, Schopenhauer led quite an extraordinary life. He ate well,
loved well, played the flute well, and I believe he smoked the best cigars.
What follows is clear enough.
Chapter LXXIII. The Higher Man. Par. 1.
Nietzsche admits, here, that at one time he had thought of appealing to the
people, to the crowd in the market-place, but that he had ultimately to
abandon the task. He bids higher men depart from the market-place.
Par. 3.
Here we are told quite plainly what class of men actually owe all their
impulses and desires to the instinct of self-preservation. The struggle
for existence is indeed the only spur in the case of such people. To them
it matters not in what shape or condition man be preserved, provided only
he survive. The transcendental maxim that "Life per se is precious" is the
ruling maxim here.
Par. 4.
In the Note on Chapter LVII. (end) I speak of Nietzsche's elevation of the
virtue, Courage, to the highest place among the virtues. Here he tells
higher men the class of courage he expects from them.
Pars. 5, 6.
These have already been referred to in the Notes on Chapters LVII. (end)
and LXXI.
Par. 7.
I suggest that the last verse in this paragraph strongly confirms the view
that Nietzsche's teaching was always meant by him to be esoteric and for
higher man alone.
Par. 9.
In the last verse, here, another shaft of light is thrown upon the
Immaculate Perception or so-called "pure objectivity" of the scientific
mind. "Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge." Where a
man's emotions cease to accompany him in his investigations, he is not
necessarily nearer the truth. Says Spencer, in the Preface to his
Autobiography:--"In the genesis of a system of thought, the emotional
nature is a large factor: perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual
nature" (see pages 134, 141 of Vol. I., "Thoughts out of Season").
Pars. 10, 11.
When we approach Nietzsche's philosophy we must be prepared to be
independent thinkers; in fact, the greatest virtue of his works is perhaps
the subtlety with which they impose the obligation upon one of thinking
alone, of scoring off one's own bat, and of shifting intellectually for
oneself.
Par. 13.
"I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me, may
grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not." These two paragraphs are an
exhortation to higher men to become independent.
Par. 15.
Here Nietzsche perhaps exaggerates the importance of heredity. As,
however, the question is by no means one on which we are all agreed, what
he says is not without value.
A very important principle in Nietzsche's philosophy is enunciated in the
first verse of this paragraph. "The higher its type, always the seldomer
doth a thing succeed" (see page 82 of "Beyond Good and Evil"). Those who,
like some political economists, talk in a business-like way about the
terrific waste of human life and energy, deliberately overlook the fact
that the waste most to be deplored usually occurs among higher individuals.
Economy was never precisely one of nature's leading principles. All this
sentimental wailing over the larger proportion of failures than successes
in human life, does not seem to take into account the fact that it is the
rarest thing on earth for a highly organised being to attain to the fullest
development and activity of all its functions, simply because it is so
highly organised. The blind Will to Power in nature therefore stands in
urgent need of direction by man.
Pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
These paragraphs deal with Nietzsche's protest against the democratic
seriousness (Pobelernst) of modern times. "All good things laugh," he
says, and his final command to the higher men is, "LEARN, I pray you--to
laugh." All that is GOOD, in Nietzsche's sense, is cheerful. To be able
to crack a joke about one's deepest feelings is the greatest test of their
value. The man who does not laugh, like the man who does not make faces,
is already a buffoon at heart.
"What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the
word of him who said: 'Woe unto them that laugh now!' Did he himself find
no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought badly. A child even
findeth cause for it."
Chapter LXXIV. The Song of Melancholy.
After his address to the higher men, Zarathustra goes out into the open to
recover himself. Meanwhile the magician (Wagner), seizing the opportunity
in order to draw them all into his net once more, sings the Song of
Melancholy.
Chapter LXXV. Science.
The only one to resist the "melancholy voluptuousness" of his art, is the
spiritually conscientious one--the scientific specialist of whom we read in
the discourse entitled "The Leech". He takes the harp from the magician
and cries for air, while reproving the musician in the style of "The Case
of Wagner". When the magician retaliates by saying that the spiritually
conscientious one could have understood little of his song, the latter
replies: "Thou praisest me in that thou separatest me from thyself." The
speech of the scientific man to his fellow higher men is well worth
studying. By means of it, Nietzsche pays a high tribute to the honesty of
the true specialist, while, in representing him as the only one who can
resist the demoniacal influence of the magician's music, he elevates him at
a stroke, above all those present. Zarathustra and the spiritually
conscientious one join issue at the end on the question of the proper place
of "fear" in man's history, and Nietzsche avails himself of the opportunity
in order to restate his views concerning the relation of courage to
humanity. It is precisely because courage has played the most important
part in our development that he would not see it vanish from among our
virtues to-day. "...courage seemeth to me the entire primitive history of
man."
Chapter LXXVI. Among the Daughters of the Desert.
This tells its own tale.
Chapter LXXVII. The Awakening.
In this discourse, Nietzsche wishes to give his followers a warning. He
thinks he has so far helped them that they have become convalescent, that
new desires are awakened in them and that new hopes are in their arms and
legs. But he mistakes the nature of the change. True, he has helped them,
he has given them back what they most need, i.e., belief in believing--the
confidence in having confidence in something, but how do they use it? This
belief in faith, if one can so express it without seeming tautological, has
certainly been restored to them, and in the first flood of their enthusiasm
they use it by bowing down and worshipping an ass! When writing this
passage, Nietzsche was obviously thinking of the accusations which were
levelled at the early Christians by their pagan contemporaries. It is well
known that they were supposed not only to be eaters of human flesh but also
ass-worshippers, and among the Roman graffiti, the most famous is the one
found on the Palatino, showing a man worshipping a cross on which is
suspended a figure with the head of an ass (see Minucius Felix, "Octavius"
IX.; Tacitus, "Historiae" v. 3; Tertullian, "Apologia", etc.). Nietzsche's
obvious moral, however, is that great scientists and thinkers, once they
have reached the wall encircling scepticism and have thereby learned to
recover their confidence in the act of believing, as such, usually manifest
the change in their outlook by falling victims to the narrowest and most
superstitious of creeds. So much for the introduction of the ass as an
object of worship.
Now, with regard to the actual service and Ass-Festival, no reader who
happens to be acquainted with the religious history of the Middle Ages will
fail to see the allusion here to the asinaria festa which were by no means
uncommon in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe during the thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.
Chapter LXXVIII. The Ass-Festival.
At length, in the middle of their feast, Zarathustra bursts in upon them
and rebukes them soundly. But he does not do so long; in the Ass-Festival,
it suddenly occurs to him, that he is concerned with a ceremony that may
not be without its purpose, as something foolish but necessary--a
recreation for wise men. He is therefore highly pleased that the higher
men have all blossomed forth; they therefore require new festivals,--"A
little valiant nonsense, some divine service and ass-festival, some old
joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow their souls bright."
He tells them not to forget that night and the ass-festival, for "such
things only the convalescent devise! And should ye celebrate it again," he
concludes, "do it from love to yourselves, do it also from love to me! And
in remembrance of ME!"
Chapter LXXIX. The Drunken Song.
It were the height of presumption to attempt to fix any particular
interpretation of my own to the words of this song. With what has gone
before, the reader, while reading it as poetry, should be able to seek and
find his own meaning in it. The doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence appears
for the last time here, in an art-form. Nietzsche lays stress upon the
fact that all happiness, all delight, longs for repetitions, and just as a
child cries "Again! Again!" to the adult who happens to be amusing him; so
the man who sees a meaning, and a joyful meaning, in existence must also
cry "Again!" and yet "Again!" to all his life.
Chapter LXXX. The Sign.
In this discourse, Nietzsche disassociates himself finally from the higher
men, and by the symbol of the lion, wishes to convey to us that he has won
over and mastered the best and the most terrible in nature. That great
power and tenderness are kin, was already his belief in 1875--eight years
before he wrote this speech, and when the birds and the lion come to him,
it is because he is the embodiment of the two qualities. All that is
terrible and great in nature, the higher men are not yet prepared for; for
they retreat horror-stricken into the cave when the lion springs at them;
but Zarathustra makes not a move towards them. He was tempted to them on
the previous day, he says, but "That hath had its time! My suffering and
my fellow suffering,--what matter about them! Do I then strive after
HAPPINESS? I strive after my work! Well! the lion hath come, my children
are nigh. Zarathustra hath grown ripe. MY day beginneth: ARISE NOW,
ARISE, THOU GREAT NOONDAY!"
...
The above I know to be open to much criticism. I shall be grateful to all
those who will be kind enough to show me where and how I have gone wrong;
but I should like to point out that, as they stand, I have not given to
these Notes by any means their final form.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
London, February 1909.
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