Chapter 27

“Thou ill announcer,” said Zarathustra at last, “that is a cry of distress, and the cry of a man; it may come perhaps out of a black sea. But what doth human distress matter to me! My last sin which hath been reserved for me,—knowest thou what it is called?” —“PITY!” answered the soothsayer from an overflowing heart, and raised both his hands aloft—“O Zarathustra, I have come that I may seduce thee to thy last sin!”— And hardly had those words been uttered when there sounded the cry once more, and longer and more alarming than before—also much nearer. “Hearest thou? Hearest thou, O Zarathustra?” called out the soothsayer, “the cry concerneth thee, it calleth thee: Come, come, come; it is time, it is the highest time!”— Zarathustra was silent thereupon, confused and staggered; at last he asked, like one who hesitateth in himself: “And who is it that there calleth me?” “But thou knowest it, certainly,” answered the soothsayer warmly, “why dost thou conceal thyself? It is THE HIGHER MAN that crieth for thee!” “The higher man?” cried Zarathustra, horror-stricken: “what wanteth HE? What wanteth HE? The higher man! What wanteth he here?”—and his skin covered with perspiration. The soothsayer, however, did not heed Zarathustra’s alarm, but listened and listened in the downward direction. When, however, it had been still there for a long while, he looked behind, and saw Zarathustra standing trembling. “O Zarathustra,” he began, with sorrowful voice, “thou dost not stand there like one whose happiness maketh him giddy: thou wilt have to dance lest thou tumble down! But although thou shouldst dance before me, and leap all thy side-leaps, no one may say unto me: ‘Behold, here danceth the last joyous man!’ In vain would any one come to this height who sought HIM here: caves would he find, indeed, and back-caves, hiding-places for hidden ones; but not lucky mines, nor treasure-chambers, nor new gold-veins of happiness. Happiness—how indeed could one find happiness among such buried-alive and solitary ones! Must I yet seek the last happiness on the Happy Isles, and far away among forgotten seas? But all is alike, nothing is worth while, no seeking is of service, there are no longer any Happy Isles!”— Thus sighed the soothsayer; with his last sigh, however, Zarathustra again became serene and assured, like one who hath come out of a deep chasm into the light. “Nay! Nay! Three times Nay!” exclaimed he with a strong voice, and stroked his beard—“THAT do I know better! There are still Happy Isles! Silence THEREON, thou sighing sorrow-sack! Cease to splash THEREON, thou rain-cloud of the forenoon! Do I not already stand here wet with thy misery, and drenched like a dog? Now do I shake myself and run away from thee, that I may again become dry: thereat mayest thou not wonder! Do I seem to thee discourteous? Here however is MY court. But as regards the higher man: well! I shall seek him at once in those forests: FROM THENCE came his cry. Perhaps he is there hard beset by an evil beast. He is in MY domain: therein shall he receive no scath! And verily, there are many evil beasts about me.”— With those words Zarathustra turned around to depart. Then said the soothsayer: “O Zarathustra, thou art a rogue! I know it well: thou wouldst fain be rid of me! Rather wouldst thou run into the forest and lay snares for evil beasts! But what good-will it do thee? In the evening wilt thou have me again: in thine own cave will I sit, patient and heavy like a block—and wait for thee!” “So be it!” shouted back Zarathustra, as he went away: “and what is mine in my cave belongeth also unto thee, my guest! Shouldst thou however find honey therein, well! just lick it up, thou growling bear, and sweeten thy soul! For in the evening we want both to be in good spirits; —In good spirits and joyful, because this day hath come to an end! And thou thyself shalt dance to my lays, as my dancing-bear. Thou dost not believe this? Thou shakest thy head? Well! Cheer up, old bear! But I also—am a soothsayer.” Thus spake Zarathustra. LXIII. TALK WITH THE KINGS. 1. Ere Zarathustra had been an hour on his way in the mountains and forests, he saw all at once a strange procession. Right on the path which he was about to descend came two kings walking, bedecked with crowns and purple girdles, and variegated like flamingoes: they drove before them a laden ass. “What do these kings want in my domain?” said Zarathustra in astonishment to his heart, and hid himself hastily behind a thicket. When however the kings approached to him, he said half-aloud, like one speaking only to himself: “Strange! Strange! How doth this harmonise? Two kings do I see—and only one ass!” Thereupon the two kings made a halt; they smiled and looked towards the spot whence the voice proceeded, and afterwards looked into each other’s faces. “Such things do we also think among ourselves,” said the king on the right, “but we do not utter them.” The king on the left, however, shrugged his shoulders and answered: “That may perhaps be a goat-herd. Or an anchorite who hath lived too long among rocks and trees. For no society at all spoileth also good manners.” “Good manners?” replied angrily and bitterly the other king: “what then do we run out of the way of? Is it not ‘good manners’? Our ‘good society’? Better, verily, to live among anchorites and goatherds, than with our gilded, false, over-rouged populace—though it call itself ‘good society.’ —Though it call itself ‘nobility.’ But there all is false and foul, above all the blood—thanks to old evil diseases and worse curers. The best and dearest to me at present is still a sound peasant, coarse, artful, obstinate and enduring: that is at present the noblest type. The peasant is at present the best; and the peasant type should be master! But it is the kingdom of the populace—I no longer allow anything to be imposed upon me. The populace, however—that meaneth, hodgepodge. Populace-hodgepodge: therein is everything mixed with everything, saint and swindler, gentleman and Jew, and every beast out of Noah’s ark. Good manners! Everything is false and foul with us. No one knoweth any longer how to reverence: it is THAT precisely that we run away from. They are fulsome obtrusive dogs; they gild palm-leaves. This loathing choketh me, that we kings ourselves have become false, draped and disguised with the old faded pomp of our ancestors, show-pieces for the stupidest, the craftiest, and whosoever at present trafficketh for power. We ARE NOT the first men—and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of this imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted. From the rabble have we gone out of the way, from all those bawlers and scribe-blowflies, from the trader-stench, the ambition-fidgeting, the bad breath—: fie, to live among the rabble; —Fie, to stand for the first men among the rabble! Ah, loathing! Loathing! Loathing! What doth it now matter about us kings!”— “Thine old sickness seizeth thee,” said here the king on the left, “thy loathing seizeth thee, my poor brother. Thou knowest, however, that some one heareth us.” Immediately thereupon, Zarathustra, who had opened ears and eyes to this talk, rose from his hiding-place, advanced towards the kings, and thus began: “He who hearkeneth unto you, he who gladly hearkeneth unto you, is called Zarathustra. I am Zarathustra who once said: ‘What doth it now matter about kings!’ Forgive me; I rejoiced when ye said to each other: ‘What doth it matter about us kings!’ Here, however, is MY domain and jurisdiction: what may ye be seeking in my domain? Perhaps, however, ye have FOUND on your way what I seek: namely, the higher man.” When the kings heard this, they beat upon their breasts and said with one voice: “We are recognised! With the sword of thine utterance severest thou the thickest darkness of our hearts. Thou hast discovered our distress; for lo! we are on our way to find the higher man— —The man that is higher than we, although we are kings. To him do we convey this ass. For the highest man shall also be the highest lord on earth. There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becometh false and distorted and monstrous. And when they are even the last men, and more beast than man, then riseth and riseth the populace in honour, and at last saith even the populace-virtue: ‘Lo, I alone am virtue!’”— What have I just heard? answered Zarathustra. What wisdom in kings! I am enchanted, and verily, I have already promptings to make a rhyme thereon:— —Even if it should happen to be a rhyme not suited for every one’s ears. I unlearned long ago to have consideration for long ears. Well then! Well now! (Here, however, it happened that the ass also found utterance: it said distinctly and with malevolence, Y-E-A.) ‘Twas once—methinks year one of our blessed Lord,—Drunk without wine, the Sybil thus deplored:—“How ill things go! Decline! Decline! Ne’er sank the world so low! Rome now hath turned harlot and harlot-stew, Rome’s Caesar a beast, and God—hath turned Jew!” 2. With those rhymes of Zarathustra the kings were delighted; the king on the right, however, said: “O Zarathustra, how well it was that we set out to see thee! For thine enemies showed us thy likeness in their mirror: there lookedst thou with the grimace of a devil, and sneeringly: so that we were afraid of thee. But what good did it do! Always didst thou prick us anew in heart and ear with thy sayings. Then did we say at last: What doth it matter how he look! We must HEAR him; him who teacheth: ‘Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the long!’ No one ever spake such warlike words: ‘What is good? To be brave is good. It is the good war that halloweth every cause.’ O Zarathustra, our fathers’ blood stirred in our veins at such words: it was like the voice of spring to old wine-casks. When the swords ran among one another like red-spotted serpents, then did our fathers become fond of life; the sun of every peace seemed to them languid and lukewarm, the long peace, however, made them ashamed. How they sighed, our fathers, when they saw on the wall brightly furbished, dried-up swords! Like those they thirsted for war. For a sword thirsteth to drink blood, and sparkleth with desire.”— —When the kings thus discoursed and talked eagerly of the happiness of their fathers, there came upon Zarathustra no little desire to mock at their eagerness: for evidently they were very peaceable kings whom he saw before him, kings with old and refined features. But he restrained himself. “Well!” said he, “thither leadeth the way, there lieth the cave of Zarathustra; and this day is to have a long evening! At present, however, a cry of distress calleth me hastily away from you. It will honour my cave if kings want to sit and wait in it: but, to be sure, ye will have to wait long! Well! What of that! Where doth one at present learn better to wait than at courts? And the whole virtue of kings that hath remained unto them—is it not called to-day: ABILITY to wait?” Thus spake Zarathustra. LXIV. THE LEECH. And Zarathustra went thoughtfully on, further and lower down, through forests and past moory bottoms; as it happeneth, however, to every one who meditateth upon hard matters, he trod thereby unawares upon a man. And lo, there spurted into his face all at once a cry of pain, and two curses and twenty bad invectives, so that in his fright he raised his stick and also struck the trodden one. Immediately afterwards, however, he regained his composure, and his heart laughed at the folly he had just committed. “Pardon me,” said he to the trodden one, who had got up enraged, and had seated himself, “pardon me, and hear first of all a parable. As a wanderer who dreameth of remote things on a lonesome highway, runneth unawares against a sleeping dog, a dog which lieth in the sun: —As both of them then start up and snap at each other, like deadly enemies, those two beings mortally frightened—so did it happen unto us. And yet! And yet—how little was lacking for them to caress each other, that dog and that lonesome one! Are they not both—lonesome ones!” —“Whoever thou art,” said the trodden one, still enraged, “thou treadest also too nigh me with thy parable, and not only with thy foot! Lo! am I then a dog?”—And thereupon the sitting one got up, and pulled his naked arm out of the swamp. For at first he had lain outstretched on the ground, hidden and indiscernible, like those who lie in wait for swamp-game. “But whatever art thou about!” called out Zarathustra in alarm, for he saw a deal of blood streaming over the naked arm,—“what hath hurt thee? Hath an evil beast bit thee, thou unfortunate one?” The bleeding one laughed, still angry, “What matter is it to thee!” said he, and was about to go on. “Here am I at home and in my province. Let him question me whoever will: to a dolt, however, I shall hardly answer.” “Thou art mistaken,” said Zarathustra sympathetically, and held him fast; “thou art mistaken. Here thou art not at home, but in my domain, and therein shall no one receive any hurt. Call me however what thou wilt—I am who I must be. I call myself Zarathustra. Well! Up thither is the way to Zarathustra’s cave: it is not far,—wilt thou not attend to thy wounds at my home? It hath gone badly with thee, thou unfortunate one, in this life: first a beast bit thee, and then—a man trod upon thee!”— When however the trodden one had heard the name of Zarathustra he was transformed. “What happeneth unto me!” he exclaimed, “WHO preoccupieth me so much in this life as this one man, namely Zarathustra, and that one animal that liveth on blood, the leech? For the sake of the leech did I lie here by this swamp, like a fisher, and already had mine outstretched arm been bitten ten times, when there biteth a still finer leech at my blood, Zarathustra himself! O happiness! O miracle! Praised be this day which enticed me into the swamp! Praised be the best, the livest cupping-glass, that at present liveth; praised be the great conscience-leech Zarathustra!”— Thus spake the trodden one, and Zarathustra rejoiced at his words and their refined reverential style.