ON THE THREE EVILS

1

In a dream, in my last morning dream, I stood today in the foothills—beyond the world, I held a pair of scales and weighed the world.

Oh that the dawn came too early to me: she glowed me awake, the jealous one! She is always jealous of the glow of my morning dreams.

Measurable by him who has time, weighable by a good weigher, attainable by strong wings, divinable by divine nutcrackers: thus did my dream find the world:—

My dream, a bold sailor, half-ship half-hurricane, silent as a butterfly, impatient as a falcon: how did it have the patience and time today to weigh the world!

Did my wisdom perhaps speak secretly to it, my laughing, wakeful day-wisdom, which mocks at all “infinite worlds”? For it says: “Wherever there is force, number becomes master: it has more force.”

How confidently did my dream contemplate this finite world, not inquisitively, not acquisitively, not timidly, not entreatingly: —

—as if a full apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe golden apple, with a soft, cool, velvety skin:-thus the world presented itself to me:—

—as if a tree nodded to me, a wide-branching, strong-willed tree, bent for reclining and a footstool for weary travelers: thus the world stood on my foothills:—

—as if delicate hands carried a casket towards me—a casket open for the delectation of modest, adoring eyes: thus the world presented itself before me today:—

—not riddle enough to frighten away human love, not solution enough to put to sleep human wisdom:-a humanly good thing the world was to me today, of which so many evil things are said!

How I thank my morning dream that I thus weighed the world this morning! As a humanly good thing it came to me, this dream and comforter of the heart!

And that I may do the same as it by day and learn and copy its best, now I will put the three most evil things on the scales and weigh them humanly well.—

He who taught how to bless also taught how to curse: what are the three most cursed things in the world? I will put these on the scales.

Sex, the lust to rule, selfishness: these three things have so far been most cursed and held in worst and falsest repute-these three things I will weigh humanly well.

Well then! Here are my foothills and there is the sea—it rolls here to me, shaggy, fawning, the faithful old hundred-headed canine monster that I love!—

Well then! Here I will hold the scales over the weltering sea: and I also choose a witness to look on—you, hermit tree, you fragrant, broad arched tree that I love!—

On what bridge does the present pass to the future? What compulsion compels the high stoop to the low? And what bids even the highest-to grow still higher?—

Now the scales stand level and still: I have thrown in three weighty questions, three weighty answers balance the other scale.

2

Sex: a sting and stake to all hair-shirted despisers of the body and cursed as “the world” by all afterworldly: for it mocks and makes fools of all teachers of confusion and error.

Sex: to the rabble the slow fire on which it is burnt; to all wormy wood, to all stinking rags, the ever-ready rut and oven.

Sex: for free hearts, innocent and free, the garden happiness of the earth, an overflowing of thanks to the present from all the future.

Sex: a sweet poison only to the withered, but to the lion-willed the great cordial and the reverently reserved wine of wines.

Sex: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope. For marriage is promised to many, and more than marriage,—

—to many that are stranger to one another than man and woman:-and who has fully understood how strange man and woman are to one another!

Sex:-but I will have hedges around my thoughts, and even around my words, lest swine and swooners should break into my gardens!—

The lust to rule: the fiery scourge of the hardest of the hard-hearted; the cruel torture reserved by the cruelest for themselves; the dark flame of living pyres.

The lust to rule: the wicked gadfly mounted on the vainest peoples; the mocker of all uncertain virtues; which rides on every horse and every pride.

The lust to rule: the earthquake which breaks and breaks open all that is rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punitive demolisher of whited sepulchers; the flashing question mark beside premature answers.

The lust to rule: before whose glance man creeps and crouches and drudges and becomes lower than the snake and the swine—until at last the great contempt cries out of him—,

The lust to rule: the terrible teacher of the great contempt, which preaches in the face of cities and empires “away with you!”—until at last they themselves cry out “away with me!”

The lust to rule: which, however, rises alluringly even to the pure and solitary and up to self-sufficient elevations, glowing like a love that paints purple delights enticingly on earthly heavens.

The lust to rule: but who would call it lust, when the height longs to stoop for power! Truly, there is nothing sick or diseased in such longing and descending!

That the lonesome height may not for ever remain lonesome and self-sufficient; that the mountains may come to the valleys and the winds of the heights to the plains:—

Oh who could find the right baptismal and virtuous name for such longing! “Gift-giving virtue”—thus did Zarathustra once name the unnamable.

And then it happened too,-and truly, it happened for the first time!-that his word blessed selfishness , the wholesome, healthy selfishness, that springs from the powerful soul:—

—from the powerful soul, to which pertains the exalted body, the handsome, triumphant, refreshing body, around which everything becomes a mirror:

-the supple, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and epitome is the self-rejoicing soul. The self-rejoicing of such bodies and souls calls itself: “Virtue.”

Such self-rejoicing protects itself with its words of good and bad as with sacred groves; with the names of its happiness it banishes everything contemptible from itself.

Away from itself it banishes everything cowardly; it says: “Bad—that is cowardly!” He who is always fretting, sighing, complaining, and who gleans even the slightest advantage seems contemptible to it.

It also despises all grievous wisdom: for truly, there is also wisdom that blooms in the dark, a nightshade wisdom, which always sighs: “all is vain!”

Shy distrust seems base to it, and every one who wants oaths instead of looks and hands: and all-too-mistrustful wisdom, for such is the mode of cowardly souls.

It regards as baser still the obsequious, doglike one, who immediately lies on his back, the submissive; and there is also wisdom that is submissive and doglike and pious and obsequious.

Altogether hateful to it and nauseating is he who will never defend himself, he who swallows down poisonous spittle and evil glances, the all-too-patient one, the all-suffering, all-satisfied one: for that is servile.

Whether they be servile before gods and divine kicks, or before men and the stupid opinions of men: it spits at all kinds of slaves, this blessed selfishness!

Bad: thus it calls all that is stooped and sordidly servile, constrained blinking eyes, oppressed hearts, and that false yielding manner that kisses with broad cowardly lips.

And sham wisdom: so it calls all wit that slaves and old men and the weary affect; and especially the whole wicked, nitwitted, witless foolishness of priests!

But the sham-wise, all the priests, the world-weary, and those whose souls are womanish and servile—oh how their game has all along cheated selfishness!

And precisely that was virtue and was called virtue-to cheat selfishness! And “semess”—so all those world-weary cowards and cross-marked spiders wanted themselves, with good reason!

But for all those the day is now at hand, the change, the sword of judgment, the great noon: there much shall be revealed!

And he who proclaims the “I” wholesome and holy, and selfishness blessed, truly, he speaks also what he knows, a prophet: “Behold, it comes, it is near, the great noon!”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.