SECOND PART.
29. XXIX. THE TARANTULAS.
Lo, this is the tarantula's den! Would'st thou see the tarantula itself?
Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it may tremble.
There cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on thy
back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in thy soul.
Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab;
with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy!
Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, ye
preachers of EQUALITY! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful
ones!
But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I
laugh in your face my laughter of the height.
Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your
den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word
"justice."
Because, FOR MAN TO BE REDEEMED FROM REVENGE--that is for me the bridge to
the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.
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 who are not like us"--thus
do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.
"And 'Will to Equality'--that itself shall henceforth be the name of
virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!"
Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you
for "equality": your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus
in virtue-words!
Fretted conceit and suppressed envy--perhaps your fathers' conceit and
envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance.
What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in the
son the father's revealed secret.
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