THE HONEY SACRIFICE

THE HONEY SACRIFICE

—AND AGAIN MONTHS AND years passed over Zarathustra’s soul, and he did not heed them; but his hair became white. One day, as he sat on a stone in front of his cave and looked silently out,-but there one gazes out on the sea, and across winding abysses,—his animals went thoughtfully around him, and at last placed themselves in front of him.

“0 Zarathustra,” they said, “you gaze out perhaps for your happiness?” —“What matters happiness!” he answered, “I have long ceased to strive any more for happiness, I strive for my work.”—“0 Zarathustra,” the animals said then, “you say that as one who has an excess of good things. Don’t you lie in a sky-blue lake of happiness?”—“You jokers,” answered Zarathustra and smiled, “how well you chose the image! But you know too that my happiness is heavy, and not like a fluid wave: it oppresses me and will not leave me, and is like molten pitch.”—

Then his animals went thoughtfully around him and placed themselves once more in front of him. “0 Zarathustra,” they said, “is that why you yourself always become yellower and darker, although your hair looks white and flaxen? Behold, you are sitting in your pitch of hard luck!”—“What do you say, my animals?” said Zarathustra and laughed, “truly I slandered when I spoke of pitch. As it happens with me, so is it with all fruits that turn ripe. It is the honey in my veins that makes my blood thicker, and also my soul stiller.”—“So it will be, 0 Zarathustra,” answered his animals, and pressed up to him; “but will you not climb a high mountain today? The air is pure, and today one sees more of the world than ever.”—“Yes, my animals,” he answered, “your advice is admirable and according to my heart: I will climb a high mountain today! But see that honey is there ready to hand, yellow, white, good, ice-cool golden honey in the comb. For know that at the summit I will make the honey-sacrifice.”—

But when Zarathustra had reached the summit, he sent home the animals that had accompanied him, and found that he was now alone-then he laughed heartily, looked around him, and spoke thus:

That I spoke of sacrifices and honey-sacrifices was merely a ruse and, truly, a useful folly! Up here I can now speak more freely than in front of hermits’ caves and hermits’ pets.

What sacrifice! I squander what is given to me, a squanderer with a thousand hands: how could I call that-sacrificing?

And when I desired honey I only desired bait and sweet mucus and mucilage, for which even growling bears and strange, sulky, evil birds put out their tongues:

-the best bait, such as huntsmen and fishermen need. For if the world is like a dark forest of animals and a pleasure-ground for all wild huntsmen, it seems to me rather, and preferably, a fathomless, rich sea;

-a sea full of colorful fishes and crabs, for which even the gods might long and might be tempted to become fishers in it and casters of nets: so rich is the world in wonderful things, great and small!

Especially the human world, the human sea—now towards it I cast my golden fishing rod and say: open up, you human abyss!

Open up and throw me your fish and shining crabs! With my best bait shall I bait today the strangest human fish!

-my happiness itself I cast out far and wide, between sunrise, noon, and sunset, to see if many human fish will not learn to kick and tug at my happiness.

Until, biting at my sharp hidden hooks, they have to come up to my height, the most mottled abysmal groundlings to the most wicked of all fishers of men.

For that is what I am through and through, reeling, reeling in, raising up, raising, a raiser, trainer, and taskmaster, who not in vain once advised himself: “Become who you are!”

Thus may men now come up to me: for as yet I await the signs that it is time for my descent; as yet do I not myself go under, as I must, among men.

Therefore I wait here, crafty and scornful upon high mountains, no impatient one, no patient one, rather one who has forgotten even patience-because he no longer “suffers in patience.”

For my destiny gives me time: perhaps it has forgotten me? Or does it sit in the shade behind a big stone and catch flies?

And truly, I am well disposed to my eternal destiny, because it does not dog and hurry me, but leaves me time for jests and mischief: so that today I have climbed this high mountain to catch fish.

Did ever any one catch fish upon high mountains? And though what I seek and do here is folly, it is still better than if I became solemn down there from waiting, and green and yellow—

—to become a posturing wrath-snorter from waiting, a holy howling storm from the mountains, an impatient one that shouts down into the valleys: “Listen, or else I will lash you with the scourge of God!”

Not that I bear a grudge against such wrathful ones for that: they are good enough for a laugh! How impatient they must be, those big drums of alarm, which find a voice now or never!

But I and my destiny—we do not speak to today, neither do we speak to the never: for speaking we have patience and time and more than time. For one day it must come and may not pass by.

What must one day come and may not pass by? Our great Hazar, our great, remote empire of man, the Zarathustra empire of a thousand years—

How remote may such “remoteness” be? What does it concern me? But on that account to me it is nonetheless sure—I stand secure with both feet on this ground;

—on an eternal ground, on hard primordial rock, on this highest, hardest, primordial mountain ridge to which all winds come as to the breaking storm, asking where? and whence? and whither?

Here laugh, laugh, my bright healthy sarcasm! From high mountains cast down your glittering mocking laughter! With your glitter bait for me the finest human fish!

And whatever belongs to me in all seas, my in-and-for-me in all things-fish that out for me, bring that up to me: for that I wait, the wickedest of all fishermen.

Out! out! my fishing rod! In, down, bait of my happiness! Drip your sweetest dew, honey of my heart! Bite, my fishing rod, into the belly of all black misery!

Look out, look out, my eye! Oh, how many seas ring round about me, what dawning human futures! And above me—what rose-red stillness! What unclouded silence!