ON REDEMPTION
ON REDEMPTION
WHEN ZARATHUSTRA WAS GOING over the great bridge one day, the cripples and the beggars surrounded him, and a hunchback spoke thus to him:
“Behold, Zarathustra! Even the people learn from you and come to believe in your teaching: but for them to believe fully in you, one thing is still necessary—you must first of all convince us cripples! Here now you have a fine selection, and truly, an opportunity with more than one forelock! You can heal the blind, and make the lame run; and from him who has too much behind him you could well take a little away—that, I think, would be the right method to make the cripples believe in Zarathustra!”
But Zarathustra replied thus to him who so spoke: “When one takes his hump from the hunchback, then one takes his spirit from him—so the people teach. And when one gives the blind man eyes, then he sees too many bad things on the earth: so that he curses him who healed him. He, however, who makes the lame man run, inflicts upon him the greatest injury; for hardly can he run, when his vices run away with him—so the people teach concerning cripples. And why should not Zarathustra also learn from the people, when the people learn from Zarathustra?
“But it is the smallest thing to me since I have been among men, to see: ‘this one person lost an eye and this other an ear and a third a leg, and there are others, who have lost the tongue or the nose or the head.’
“I see and have seen worse things and many things so hideous that I should neither like to speak of all of them nor yet even once keep silent about some of them: namely, men who lack everything, except one thing that they have too much of—men who are nothing more than a big eye or a big mouth or a big belly or something else big—I call such people inverse cripples.
And when I came out of my solitude and crossed this bridge for the first time, I did not believe my eyes but looked again and again and said at last: “That is an ear! An ear as big as a man!” I looked still more attentively—and actually there did move under the ear something that was pitiably small and poor and slim. And in truth this immense ear was perched on a small thin stalk-but the stalk was a man! If one used a magnifying glass one could even further recognize a small envious face, and also a bloated little soul dangling at the stalk. The people told me, however, that the big ear was not only a man, but a great man, a genius. But I have never believed the people when they spoke of great men—and I maintain my belief that it was an inverse cripple, who had too little of everything and too much of one thing.”
When Zarathustra had spoken thus to the hunchback and to those whose mouthpiece and advocate the hunchback was, he turned to his disciples in profound dismay and said:
“Truly, my friends, I walk among men as among the fragments and limbs of human beings!
“This is the terrible thing to my eye, that I find man broken up, and scattered about, as on a battle-and butcher-ground.
“And when my eye flees from the present to the past it always finds the same: fragments and limbs and fearful chances-but no men!
“The present and the past upon earth—ah! my friends-that is my most unbearable burden; and I would not know how to go on living if I were not a seer of what is to come.
“A seer, a willer, a creator, a future itself, and a bridge to the future—and ah, also as a cripple on this bridge: all that is Zarathustra.
“And you also asked yourselves often: ‘Who is Zarathustra to us? What shall he be called by us?’ And like me you gave yourselves questions for answers.
“Is he a promiser? Or a fulfiller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? A harvest? Or a ploughshare? A physician? Or a convalescent?
“Is he a poet? Or a truthteller? A liberator? Or a subjugator? A good? Or an evil?
“I walk among men as among the fragments of the future: that future which I contemplate.
“And it is all my art and aim, to compose into one and gather together what is fragment and riddle and fearful chance.
“And how could I bear to be a man if man were not also poet and guesser of riddles and redeemer of chance!
“To redeem what is past, and to transform every ‘It was’ into ‘Thus would I have it!’—that alone do I call redemption!
“Will—so the liberator and joy-bringer is called: thus I have taught you, my friends! But now learn this as well: the will itself is still a prisoner.
“Willing liberates: but what is it that puts even the liberator in chains?
“ ‘It was’: thus the will’s teeth-gnashing and loneliest tribulation is called. Powerless against that which has been done, it is an angry spectator of all that is past.
“The will cannot will backwards; that it cannot break time and time’s desire-that is the will’s loneliest tribulation.
“Willing liberates: what does willing itself devise in order to get free from its tribulation and mock at its prison?
“Ah, every prisoner becomes a fool! The imprisoned will too always foolishly releases itself.
“That time does not run backward, that is its wrath; ‘That which was’—that is the name of the stone it cannot roll.
“And thus it rolls stones out of wrath and irritation, and takes revenge on whatever does not, like it, feel wrath and irritation.
“Thus the will, the liberator, becomes a torturer: and it takes revenge on all that is capable of suffering, because it cannot go backward.
“This, yes, this alone is revenge itself: the will’s antipathy to time and its ‘It was.’
“Truly, a great foolishness dwells in our will; and it became a curse to all humanity, that this foolishness acquired spirit!
“The spirit of revenge: my friends, that has so far been the subject of man’s best reflection; and where there was suffering, there was always supposed to be punishment.
“ ‘Punishment,’ is what revenge calls itself: it feigns a good conscience for itself with a hypocritical lie.
“And because in the willer himself there is suffering, because he cannot will backwards—thus was willing itself and all life supposed to be—punishment!
“And then cloud after cloud rolled over the spirit: until at last madness preached: ‘Everything passes away, therefore everything deserves to pass away!’
“ ‘And this itself is justice, the law of time, that he must devour his children’: thus madness preached.
“ ‘Things are morally ordered according to justice and punishment. Oh, where is there deliverance from the flux of things and from the punishment of ‘existence’?’ Thus madness preached.
“ ‘Can there be deliverance when there is eternal justice? Ah, the stone, ‘It was’ cannot be rolled away: all punishments too must be eternal!’ Thus madness preached.
“ ‘No deed can be annihilated: how could it be undone by the punishment! That existence too must eternally become deed and guilt, this, this is what is eternal in the punishment ‘existence’!’
“ ‘Unless the will should at last deliver itself and willing become not willing—’: but you know, my brothers, this fable of madness!
“I led you away from those fables when I taught you: ‘The will is a creator.’
All ‘It was’ is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance-until the creating will says to it: ‘But I willed it thus!“—
Until the creating will says to it: “But I will it thus! Thus shall I will it!”
But did it ever speak thus? And when does this happen? Has the will been unharnessed from its own folly?
Has the will become its own deliverer and joy-bringer? Has it unlearned the spirit of revenge and all teeth-gnashing?
And who has taught it reconciliation with time, and something higher than all reconciliation?
The will that is the will to power must will something higher than all reconciliation-but how does that happen? Who has taught it also to will backwards?”
-But at this point in his speech Zarathustra suddenly paused and looked exactly like one who has received a severe shock. With terror in his eyes he gazed on his disciples; his glances pierced their thoughts and afterthoughts17 as with arrows. But in a short time he laughed again and said calmly:
“It is difficult to live among men because keeping silent is so difficult. Especially for a babbler.”—
Thus spoke Zarathustra. The hunchback, however, had listened to the conversation and had covered his face during the time; but when he heard Zarathustra laugh, he looked up with curiosity, and said slowly:
“But why does Zarathustra speak to us differently than to his disciples?”
Zarathustra answered: “What is surprising in that! With hunchbacks one may well speak in a hunchbacked way!”
“Very good,” said the hunchback; “and with pupils one may well tell tales out of school.
“But why does Zarathustra speak differently to his pupils-than to himself?”—