LITMIR.BIZ

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the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.

      Few people know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery?

      Shall I covet my neighbour’s maidservant? All that would ill accord with good sleep.

      And even if one have all the virtues, there is still one thing needful: to send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time.

      That they may not quarrel with one another, the good females! And about thee, thou unhappy one!

      Peace with God and thy neighbour: so desireth good sleep. And peace also with thy neighbour’s devil! Otherwise it will haunt thee in the night.

      Honour to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked government! So desireth good sleep. How can I help it, if power like to walk on crooked legs?

      He who leadeth his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for me the best shepherd: so doth it accord with good sleep.

      Many honours I want not, nor great treasures: they excite the spleen. But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little treasure.

      A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come and go at the right time. So doth it accord with good sleep.

      Well, also, do the poor in spirit please me: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always give in to them.

      Thus passeth the day unto the virtuous. When night cometh, then take I good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned – sleep, the lord of the virtues!

      But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy ten overcomings?

      And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself?

      Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me all at once – sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues.

      Sleep tappeth on mine eye, and it turneth heavy. Sleep toucheth my mouth, and it remaineth open.

      Verily, on soft soles doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, like this academic chair.

      But not much longer do I then stand: I already lie. —

      When Zarathustra heard the wise man thus speak, he laughed in his heart: for thereby had a light dawned upon him. And thus spake he to his heart:

      A fool seemeth this wise man with his forty thoughts: but I believe he knoweth well how to sleep.

      Happy even is he who liveth near this wise man! Such sleep is contagious – even through a thick wall it is contagious.

      A magic resideth even in his academic chair. And not in vain did the youths sit before the preacher of virtue.

      His wisdom is to keep awake in order to sleep well. And verily, if life had no sense, and had I to choose nonsense, this would be the desirablest nonsense for me also.

      Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it!

      To all those belauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life.

      Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honourable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie.

      Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep. —

      Thus spake Zarathustra.

      III. Backworldsmen

      Once on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world then seem to me.

      The dream – and diction – of a God, did the world then seem to me; coloured vapours before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one.

      Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou – coloured vapours did they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away from himself, – thereupon he created the world.

      Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world once seem to me.

      This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction’s image and imperfect image – an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator: – thus did the world once seem to me.

      Thus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth?

      Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!

      A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego. Out of mine own ashes and glow it came unto me, that phantom. And verily, it came not unto me from the beyond!

      What happened, my brethren? I surpassed myself, the suffering one; I carried mine own ashes to the mountain; a brighter flame I contrived for myself. And lo! Thereupon the phantom WITHDREW from me!

      To me the convalescent would it now be suffering and torment to believe in such phantoms: suffering would it now be to me, and humiliation. Thus speak I to backworldsmen.

      Suffering was it, and impotence – that created all backworlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experienceth.

      Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.

      Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the body – it groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls.

      Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the earth – it heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it.

      And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head – and not with its head only – into “the other world.”

      But that “other world” is well concealed from man, that dehumanised, inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man.

      Verily, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak. Tell me, ye brethren, is not the strangest of all things best proved?

      Yea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most uprightly of its being – this creating, willing, evaluing ego, which is the measure and value of things.

      And this most upright existence, the ego – it speaketh of the body, and still implieth the body, even when it museth and raveth and fluttereth with broken wings.

      Always more uprightly learneth it to speak, the ego; and the more it learneth, the more doth it find titles and honours for the body and the earth.

      A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto men: no longer to thrust one’s head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth!

      A new will teach I unto men: to choose that path which man hath followed blindly, and to approve of it – and no longer to slink aside from it, like the sick and perishing!

      The sick and perishing – it was they who despised the body and the earth, and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming blood-drops; but even those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth!

      From their misery they sought escape, and the stars were too remote for them. Then they sighed: “O that there were heavenly paths by which to steal into another existence and into happiness!” Then they contrived for themselves their by-paths and bloody draughts!

      Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied themselves transported, these ungrateful ones. But to what did they owe the convulsion and rapture of their transport? To their body and this earth.

      Gentle

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