Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

FOURTH AND LAST PART. 71. LXXI. THE GREETING. (continued)

Now do the waves rise and rise around thy mountain, O Zarathustra. And however high be thy height, many of them must rise up to thee: thy boat shall not rest much longer on dry ground.

And that we despairing ones have now come into thy cave, and already no longer despair:--it is but a prognostic and a presage that better ones are on the way to thee,--

--For they themselves are on the way to thee, the last remnant of God among men--that is to say, all the men of great longing, of great loathing, of great satiety,

--All who do not want to live unless they learn again to HOPE--unless they learn from thee, O Zarathustra, the GREAT hope!"

Thus spake the king on the right, and seized the hand of Zarathustra in order to kiss it; but Zarathustra checked his veneration, and stepped back frightened, fleeing as it were, silently and suddenly into the far distance. After a little while, however, he was again at home with his guests, looked at them with clear scrutinising eyes, and said:

"My guests, ye higher men, I will speak plain language and plainly with you. It is not for YOU that I have waited here in these mountains."

("'Plain language and plainly?' Good God!" said here the king on the left to himself; "one seeth he doth not know the good Occidentals, this sage out of the Orient!

But he meaneth 'blunt language and bluntly'--well! That is not the worst taste in these days!")

"Ye may, verily, all of you be higher men," continued Zarathustra; "but for me--ye are neither high enough, nor strong enough.

For me, that is to say, for the inexorable which is now silent in me, but will not always be silent. And if ye appertain to me, still it is not as my right arm.