Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

FOURTH AND LAST PART. 68. LXVIII. THE VOLUNTARY BEGGAR. (continued)

For the hour hath come, thou knowest it forsooth, for the great, evil, long, slow mob-and-slave-insurrection: it extendeth and extendeth!

Now doth it provoke the lower classes, all benevolence and petty giving; and the overrich may be on their guard!

Whoever at present drip, like bulgy bottles out of all-too-small necks:--of such bottles at present one willingly breaketh the necks.

Wanton avidity, bilious envy, careworn revenge, populace-pride: all these struck mine eye. It is no longer true that the poor are blessed. The kingdom of heaven, however, is with the kine."

"And why is it not with the rich?" asked Zarathustra temptingly, while he kept back the kine which sniffed familiarly at the peaceful one.

"Why dost thou tempt me?" answered the other. "Thou knowest it thyself better even than I. What was it drove me to the poorest, O Zarathustra? Was it not my disgust at the richest?

--At the culprits of riches, with cold eyes and rank thoughts, who pick up profit out of all kinds of rubbish--at this rabble that stinketh to heaven,

--At this gilded, falsified populace, whose fathers were pickpockets, or carrion-crows, or rag-pickers, with wives compliant, lewd and forgetful:-- for they are all of them not far different from harlots--

Populace above, populace below! What are 'poor' and 'rich' at present! That distinction did I unlearn,--then did I flee away further and ever further, until I came to those kine."

Thus spake the peaceful one, and puffed himself and perspired with his words: so that the kine wondered anew. Zarathustra, however, kept looking into his face with a smile, all the time the man talked so severely--and shook silently his head.

"Thou doest violence to thyself, thou Preacher-on-the-Mount, when thou usest such severe words. For such severity neither thy mouth nor thine eye have been given thee.