Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None — Part 3: LII. The Apostates
1. Ah, lieth everything already withered and grey which but lately stood green and many-hued on this meadow!
And how much honey of hope did I carry hence into my beehives!
Those young hearts have already all become old—and not old even!
only weary, ordinary, comfortable:—they declare it: “We have again become pious.
” Of late did I see them run forth at early morn with valorous steps: but the feet of their knowledge became weary, and now do they malign even their morning valour!
Verily, many of them once lifted their legs like the dancer; to them winked the laughter of my wisdom:—then did they bethink themselves.
Just now have I seen them bent down—to creep to the cross.
Around light and liberty did they once flutter like gnats and young poets.
A little older, a little colder: and already are they mystifiers, and mumblers and mollycoddles.
Did perhaps their hearts despond, because lonesomeness had swallowed me like a whale?
Did their ear perhaps hearken yearningly-long for me IN VAIN, and for my trumpet-notes and herald-calls?
—Ah!
Ever are there but few of those whose hearts have persistent courage and exuberance; and in such remaineth also the spirit patient.
The rest, however, are COWARDLY.
The rest: these are always the great majority, the common-place, the superfluous, the far too many—those all are cowardly!
— Him who is of my type, will also the experiences of my type meet on the way: so that his first companions must be corpses and buffoons.
His second companions, however—they will call themselves his BELIEVERS,—will be a living host, with much love, much folly, much unbearded veneration.
To those believers shall he who is of my type among men not bind his heart; in those spring-times and many-hued meadows shall he not believe, who knoweth the fickly faint-hearted human species!
COULD they do otherwise, then would they also WILL otherwise.
The half-and-half spoil every whole.
That leaves become withered,—what is there to lament about that!
Let them go and fall away, O Zarathustra, and do not lament!
Better even to blow amongst them with rustling winds,— —Blow amongst those leaves, O Zarathustra, that everything WITHERED may run away from thee the faster!
— 2. “We have again become pious”—so do those apostates confess; and some of them are still too pusillanimous thus to confess.
Unto them I look into the eye,—before them I say it unto their face and unto the blush on their cheeks: Ye are those who again PRAY!
It is however a shame to pray!
Not for all, but for thee, and me, and whoever hath his conscience in his head.
For THEE it is a shame to pray!
Thou knowest it well: the faint-hearted devil in thee, which would fain fold its arms, and place its hands in its bosom, and take it easier:—this faint-hearted devil persuadeth thee that “there IS a God!
” THEREBY, however, dost thou belong to the light-dreading type, to whom light never permitteth repose: now must thou daily thrust thy head deeper into obscurity and vapour!
And verily, thou choosest the hour well: for just now do the nocturnal birds again fly abroad.
The hour hath come for all light-dreading people, the vesper hour and leisure hour, when they do not—“take leisure.
” I hear it and smell it: it hath come—their hour for hunt and procession, not indeed for a wild hunt, but for a tame, lame, snuffling, soft-treaders’, soft-prayers’ hunt,— —For a hunt after susceptible simpletons: all mouse-traps for the heart have again been set!
And whenever I lift a curtain, a night-moth rusheth out of it.
Did it perhaps squat there along with another night-moth?
For everywhere do I smell small concealed communities; and wherever there are closets there are new devotees therein, and the atmosphere of devotees.
They sit for long evenings beside one another, and say: “Let us again become like little children and say, ‘good God!
’”—ruined in mouths and stomachs by the pious confectioners.
Or they look for long evenings at a crafty, lurking cross-spider, that preacheth prudence to the spiders themselves, and teacheth that “under crosses it is good for cobweb-spinning!
” Or they sit all day at swamps with angle-rods, and on that account think themselves PROFOUND; but whoever fisheth where there are no fish, I do not even call him superficial!
Or they learn in godly-gay style to play the harp with a hymn-poet, who would fain harp himself into the heart of young girls:—for he hath tired of old girls and their praises.
Or they learn to shudder with a learned semi-madcap, who waiteth in darkened rooms for spirits to come to him—and the spirit runneth away entirely!
Or they listen to an old roving howl- and growl-piper, who hath learnt from the sad winds the sadness of sounds; now pipeth he as the wind, and preacheth sadness in sad strains.
And some of them have even become night-watchmen: they know now how to blow horns, and go about at night and awaken old things which have long fallen asleep.
Five words about old things did I hear yester-night at the garden-wall: they came from such old, sorrowful, arid night-watchmen.
“For a father he careth not sufficiently for his children: human fathers do this better!
”— “He is too old!
He now careth no more for his children,”—answered the other night-watchman.
“HATH he then children?
No one can prove it unless he himself prove it!
I have long wished that he would for once prove it thoroughly.
” “Prove?
As if HE had ever proved anything!
Proving is difficult to him;
he layeth great stress on one’s BELIEVING him.
” “Ay!
Ay!
Belief saveth him; belief in him.
That is the way with old people!
So it is with us also!
”— —Thus spake to each other the two old night-watchmen and light-scarers, and tooted thereupon sorrowfully on their horns: so did it happen yester-night at the garden-wall.
To me, however, did the heart writhe with laughter, and was like to break; it knew not where to go, and sunk into the midriff.
Verily, it will be my death yet—to choke with laughter when I see asses drunken, and hear night-watchmen thus doubt about God.
Hath the time not LONG since passed for all such doubts?
Who may nowadays awaken such old slumbering, light-shunning things!
With the old Deities hath it long since come to an end:—and verily, a good joyful Deity-end had they!
They did not “begloom” themselves to death—that do people fabricate!
On the contrary, they—LAUGHED themselves to death once on a time!
That took place when the unGodliest utterance came from a God himself—the utterance: “There is but one God!
Thou shalt have no other Gods before me!
”— —An old grim-beard of a God, a jealous one, forgot himself in such wise:— And all the Gods then laughed, and shook upon their thrones, and exclaimed: “Is it not just divinity that there are Gods, but no God?
” He that hath an ear let him hear.
— Thus talked Zarathustra in the city he loved, which is surnamed “The Pied Cow.
” For from here he had but two days to travel to reach once more his cave and his animals; his soul, however, rejoiced unceasingly on account of the nighness of his return home.
