Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

THIRD PART. 57. LVII. THE CONVALESCENT. (continued)

At tragedies, bull-fights, and crucifixions hath he hitherto been happiest on earth; and when he invented his hell, behold, that was his heaven on earth.

When the great man crieth--: immediately runneth the little man thither, and his tongue hangeth out of his mouth for very lusting. He, however, calleth it his "pity."

The little man, especially the poet--how passionately doth he accuse life in words! Hearken to him, but do not fail to hear the delight which is in all accusation!

Such accusers of life--them life overcometh with a glance of the eye. "Thou lovest me?" saith the insolent one; "wait a little, as yet have I no time for thee."

Towards himself man is the cruellest animal; and in all who call themselves "sinners" and "bearers of the cross" and "penitents," do not overlook the voluptuousness in their plaints and accusations!

And I myself--do I thereby want to be man's accuser? Ah, mine animals, this only have I learned hitherto, that for man his baddest is necessary for his best,--

--That all that is baddest is the best POWER, and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must become better AND badder:--

Not to THIS torture-stake was I tied, that I know man is bad,--but I cried, as no one hath yet cried:

"Ah, that his baddest is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very small!"

The great disgust at man--IT strangled me and had crept into my throat: and what the soothsayer had presaged: "All is alike, nothing is worth while, knowledge strangleth."

A long twilight limped on before me, a fatally weary, fatally intoxicated sadness, which spake with yawning mouth.

"Eternally he returneth, the man of whom thou art weary, the small man"--so yawned my sadness, and dragged its foot and could not go to sleep.