Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

FOURTH AND LAST PART. 67. LXVII. THE UGLIEST MAN. (continued)

--Thou hast divined how the man feeleth who killed HIM. Stay! And if thou wilt go, thou impatient one, go not the way that I came. THAT way is bad.

Art thou angry with me because I have already racked language too long? Because I have already counselled thee? But know that it is I, the ugliest man,

--Who have also the largest, heaviest feet. Where I have gone, the way is bad. I tread all paths to death and destruction.

But that thou passedst me by in silence, that thou blushedst--I saw it well: thereby did I know thee as Zarathustra.

Every one else would have thrown to me his alms, his pity, in look and speech. But for that--I am not beggar enough: that didst thou divine.

For that I am too RICH, rich in what is great, frightful, ugliest, most unutterable! Thy shame, O Zarathustra, HONOURED me!

With difficulty did I get out of the crowd of the pitiful,--that I might find the only one who at present teacheth that 'pity is obtrusive'-- thyself, O Zarathustra!

--Whether it be the pity of a God, or whether it be human pity, it is offensive to modesty. And unwillingness to help may be nobler than the virtue that rusheth to do so.

THAT however--namely, pity--is called virtue itself at present by all petty people:--they have no reverence for great misfortune, great ugliness, great failure.

Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looketh over the backs of thronging flocks of sheep. They are petty, good-wooled, good-willed, grey people.

As the heron looketh contemptuously at shallow pools, with backward-bent head, so do I look at the throng of grey little waves and wills and souls.

Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those petty people: SO we have at last given them power as well;--and now do they teach that 'good is only what petty people call good.'