Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

THIRD PART. 56. LVI. OLD AND NEW TABLES.

1.

Here do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new half-written tables. When cometh mine hour?

--The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once more will I go unto men.

For that hour do I now wait: for first must the signs come unto me that it is MINE hour--namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves.

Meanwhile do I talk to myself as one who hath time. No one telleth me anything new, so I tell myself mine own story.

2.

When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation: all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men.

An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse about virtue; and he who wished to sleep well spake of "good" and "bad" ere retiring to rest.

This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWETH what is good and bad:--unless it be the creating one!

--It is he, however, who createth man's goal, and giveth to the earth its meaning and its future: he only EFFECTETH it THAT aught is good or bad.

And I bade them upset their old academic chairs, and wherever that old infatuation had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists, their saints, their poets, and their Saviours.

At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life.

On their great grave-highway did I seat myself, and even beside the carrion and vultures--and I laughed at all their bygone and its mellow decaying glory.