ON IMMACULATE PERCEPTION
ON IMMACULATE PERCEPTION
WHEN THE MOON ROSE yesterday I thought it was about to bear a sun: so broad and pregnant did it lie on the horizon.
But it was a liar with its pregnancy; and I will sooner believe in the man in the moon than in the woman.
To be sure, he is not much of a man either, that timid nightreveler. Truly, with a bad conscience he stalks over the roofs.
For he is covetous and jealous, the monk in the moon; covetous of the earth, and all the joys of lovers.
No, I do not like him, that tomcat on the roofs! I hate all that slink around half-closed windows !
Piously and silently he stalks along on carpets of stars-but I do not like light-stepping feet on which not even a spur jingles.
Every honest man’s step speaks; the cat, however, steals along over the ground. Behold, the moon comes along cat-like and dishonestly. —
This parable I speak to you sentimental hypocrites, to you “pure knowers!” I call you—lustful!
You too love the earth and the earthly: I have seen through you!-but shame is in your love and a bad conscience—you are like the moon!
Your spirit has been persuaded to despise the earthly, but your entrails have not: these, however, are the strongest in you!
And now your spirit is ashamed to be at the service of your entrails, and goes by-ways and lying ways to escape its own shame.
“That would be the highest thing for me”—so your lying spirit says to itself—“to gaze upon life without desire, and not like the dog with its tongue hanging out,
“To be happy in gazing: with a dead will, free from the grip and greed of selfishness—cold and grey as ash in body but with intoxicated moon-eyes!11
“That would be the dearest thing to me”—thus does the seduced one seduce himself—“to love the earth as the moon loves it, and with the eye only to feel its beauty.
“And this I call immaculate perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred eyes.”—
Oh, you sentimental hypocrites, you lustful ones! You lack innocence in your desire: and therefore now you slander desire!
Truly, you do not love the earth as creators, procreators, and those who have joy in becoming!
Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation. And he who seeks to create beyond himself in my view has the purest will.
Where is beauty? Where I must will with my whole will; where I will love and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image.
Loving and perishing: these have rhymed from eternity. Will to love: that is to be willing also to die. Thus I speak to you cowards!
But now your emasculated leers wish to be “contemplation!” And that which can be examined with cowardly eyes is to be christened “beautiful!” Oh you befoulers of noble names!
But it shall be your curse, you immaculate ones, you pure knowers, that you shall never give birth, even though you lie broad and pregnant on the horizon!
Truly, you fill your mouth with noble words: and we are to believe that your heart overflows, you great liars?
But my words are poor, despised, crooked words: I gladly pick up what falls from the table at your meals.
I can still use them to speak-the truth to hypocrites! Yes, my fishbones, shells, and prickly leaves shall—tickle the noses of hypocrites!
Bad air always surrounds you and your meals: your lustful thoughts, your lies and secrets are indeed in the air!
Only dare to believe in yourselves-in yourselves and in your entrails! He who does not believe in himself always lies.
You have put on a god’s mask, you “pure” ones: into a god’s mask your dreadful coiling snake has crawled.
Truly, you deceive, you “contemplative ones!” Even Zarathustra was once the dupe of your godlike exterior; he did not guess at the serpent’s coil with which it was stuffed.
I once thought I saw a god’s soul at play in your games, you pure knowers! Once I thought there was no better art than your arts!
Distance concealed from me the serpent’s filth and foul odor: and that a lizard’s cunning crawled around lecherously.
But I came near to you: then the day dawned for me—and now it dawns for you—the moon’s love affair is at an end!
See there! Caught and pale it stands there-before the dawn!
For already she comes, the glowing one-her love to the earth comes! All solar love is innocence and creative desire!
See there, how she comes impatiently over the sea! Do you not feel the thirst and the hot breath of her love?
She wants to suck at the sea and drink its depths to her height: now the desire of the sea rises with its thousand breasts.
It wants to be kissed and sucked by the thirst of the sun; it wants to become air and height and light’s footpath and light itself!
Truly, I love life like the sun and all deep seas.
And to me this is knowledge: all that is deep shall ascend-to my height!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.