Thus Spake Zarathustra. Фридрих Вильгельм Ницше

It is autumn all around, and clear sky, and afternoon.

      Lo, what fullness is around us! And out of the midst of superabundance, it is delightful to look out upon distant seas.

      Once did people say God, when they looked out upon distant seas; now, however, have I taught you to say, Superman.

      God is a conjecture: but I do not wish your conjecturing to reach beyond your creating will.

      Could ye CREATE a God? – Then, I pray you, be silent about all Gods! But ye could well create the Superman.

      Not perhaps ye yourselves, my brethren! But into fathers and forefathers of the Superman could ye transform yourselves: and let that be your best creating! —

      God is a conjecture: but I should like your conjecturing restricted to the conceivable.

      Could ye CONCEIVE a God? – But let this mean Will to Truth unto you, that everything be transformed into the humanly conceivable, the humanly visible, the humanly sensible! Your own discernment shall ye follow out to the end!

      And what ye have called the world shall but be created by you: your reason, your likeness, your will, your love, shall it itself become! And verily, for your bliss, ye discerning ones!

      And how would ye endure life without that hope, ye discerning ones? Neither in the inconceivable could ye have been born, nor in the irrational.

      But that I may reveal my heart entirely unto you, my friends: IF there were gods, how could I endure it to be no God! THEREFORE there are no Gods.

      Yea, I have drawn the conclusion; now, however, doth it draw me. —

      God is a conjecture: but who could drink all the bitterness of this conjecture without dying? Shall his faith be taken from the creating one, and from the eagle his flights into eagle-heights?

      God is a thought – it maketh all the straight crooked, and all that standeth reel. What? Time would be gone, and all the perishable would be but a lie?

      To think this is giddiness and vertigo to human limbs, and even vomiting to the stomach: verily, the reeling sickness do I call it, to conjecture such a thing.

      Evil do I call it and misanthropic: all that teaching about the one, and the plenum, and the unmoved, and the sufficient, and the imperishable!

      All the imperishable – that’s but a simile, and the poets lie too much. —

      But of time and of becoming shall the best similes speak: a praise shall they be, and a justification of all perishableness!

      Creating – that is the great salvation from suffering, and life’s alleviation. But for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation.

      Yea, much bitter dying must there be in your life, ye creators! Thus are ye advocates and justifiers of all perishableness.

      For the creator himself to be the new-born child, he must also be willing to be the child-bearer, and endure the pangs of the child-bearer.

      Verily, through a hundred souls went I my way, and through a hundred cradles and birth-throes. Many a farewell have I taken; I know the heart-breaking last hours.

      But so willeth it my creating Will, my fate. Or, to tell you it more candidly: just such a fate – willeth my Will.

      All FEELING suffereth in me, and is in prison: but my WILLING ever cometh to me as mine emancipator and comforter.

      Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and emancipation – so teacheth you Zarathustra.

      No longer willing, and no longer valuing, and no longer creating! Ah, that that great debility may ever be far from me!

      And also in discerning do I feel only my will’s procreating and evolving delight; and if there be innocence in my knowledge, it is because there is will to procreation in it.

      Away from God and Gods did this will allure me; what would there be to create if there were – Gods!

      But to man doth it ever impel me anew, my fervent creative will; thus impelleth it the hammer to the stone.

      Ah, ye men, within the stone slumbereth an image for me, the image of my visions! Ah, that it should slumber in the hardest, ugliest stone!

      Now rageth my hammer ruthlessly against its prison. From the stone fly the fragments: what’s that to me?

      I will complete it: for a shadow came unto me – the stillest and lightest of all things once came unto me!

      The beauty of the Superman came unto me as a shadow. Ah, my brethren! Of what account now are – the Gods to me! —

      Thus spake Zarathustra.

      XXV. THE PITIFUL

      My friends, there hath arisen a satire on your friend: “Behold Zarathustra! Walketh he not amongst us as if amongst animals?”

      But it is better said in this wise: “The discerning one walketh amongst men AS amongst animals.”

      Man himself is to the discerning one: the animal with red cheeks.

      How hath that happened unto him? Is it not because he hath had to be ashamed too oft?

      O my friends! Thus speaketh the discerning one: shame, shame, shame – that is the history of man!

      And on that account doth the noble one enjoin upon himself not to abash: bashfulness doth he enjoin on himself in presence of all sufferers.

      Verily, I like them not, the merciful ones, whose bliss is in their pity: too destitute are they of bashfulness.

      If I must be pitiful, I dislike to be called so; and if I be so, it is preferably at a distance.

      Preferably also do I shroud my head, and flee, before being recognised: and thus do I bid you do, my friends!

      May my destiny ever lead unafflicted ones like you across my path, and those with whom I MAY have hope and repast and honey in common!

      Verily, I have done this and that for the afflicted: but something better did I always seem to do when I had learned to enjoy myself better.

      Since humanity came into being, man hath enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brethren, is our original sin!

      And when we learn better to enjoy ourselves, then do we unlearn best to give pain unto others, and to contrive pain.

      Therefore do I wash the hand that hath helped the sufferer; therefore do I wipe also my soul.

      For in seeing the sufferer suffering – thereof was I ashamed on account of his shame; and in helping him, sorely did I wound his pride.

      Great obligations do not make grateful, but revengeful; and when a small kindness is not forgotten, it becometh a gnawing worm.

      “Be shy in accepting! Distinguish by accepting!” – thus do I advise those who have naught to bestow.

      I, however, am a bestower: willingly do I bestow as friend to friends. Strangers, however, and the poor, may pluck for themselves the fruit from my tree: thus doth it cause less shame.

      Beggars, however, one should entirely do away with! Verily, it annoyeth one to give unto them, and it annoyeth one not to give unto them.

      And likewise sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: the sting of conscience teacheth one to sting.

      The worst things, however, are the petty thoughts. Verily, better to have done evilly than to have thought pettily!

      To be sure, ye say: “The delight in petty evils spareth one many a great evil deed.” But here one should not wish to be sparing.