THE PRIESTS

THE PRIESTS

AND ONCE ZARATHUSTRA GAVE a sign to his disciples and spoke these words to them:

“Here are priests: and though they are my enemies, pass by them quietly and with sleeping swords!

“Among them too there are heroes; many of them have suffered too much-: so they want to make others suffer.

“They are evil enemies: nothing is more vengeful than their meekness. And whoever attacks them readily soils himself

“But my blood is related to theirs; and I want to know that my blood is honored even in theirs.”—

And when they had passed, pain gripped Zarathustra; and he had not wrestled long with the pain when he began to speak thus:

My heart moves for those priests. They also go against my taste; but that is the smallest matter to me, since I am among men.

But I suffer and have suffered with them: They are prisoners to me and marked ones. He whom they call Savior put them in fetters:—

In fetters of false values and delusive words! Oh, that some one would yet save them from their Savior!

They believed once that they had landed on an island, when the sea tossed them about; but look, it was a sleeping monster!

False values and delusive words: these are the worst monsters for mortals—calamity sleeps and waits long in them.

But at last it comes and wakes and eats and devours and what built huts upon it.

Oh, just look at those huts which these priests have built! Churches they call their sweet-smelling caves!

Oh, that falsified light, this musty air! Here, where the soul is not permitted to soar to its height!

For thus their faith commands: “Up the stairs on your knees, you sinners!”

Truly, I would rather see even the shameless than the contorted eyes of their shame and devotion!

Who created for themselves such caves and stairways of repentance? Was it not those who wanted to conceal themselves and were ashamed under the pure sky?

And only when the pure sky looks again through broken ceilings, and down upon grass and red poppies near ruined walls—will I again turn my heart to the haunts of this God.

They called God that which opposed and afflicted them: and truly, much was heroic in their worship!

And they did not how to love their God other than by nailing man to the cross!

They meant to live as corpses; in black they draped their corpses; out of their speech too I still smell the foul odor of slaughterhouses.

And whoever lives near them lives near black pools, where the toad sings his song with sweet melancholy.

They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to believe in their Savior: and his disciples would have to look more saved!

I would like to see them naked: for only beauty should preach repentance. But who would be persuaded by that muffled misery!

Truly, their saviors themselves did not come from freedom and freedom’s seventh heaven! Truly, they themselves have never walked on the carpets of knowledge!

The spirit of those saviors consisted of emptiness; but into every empty gap they put their delusion, their stopgap, which they called God.

Their spirit was drowned in their pity; and when they were swollen and overswollen with pity, it was always a great folly that swam on top.

They drove their herd over their path eagerly and with shouts: as if there were but a single path to the future! Truly, these shepherds also belonged among the sheep!

These shepherds had small spirits and spacious souls: but, my brothers, what small lands have even the most spacious souls been so far!

They left marks of blood along the way they went, and their folly taught that with blood the truth is proved.

But blood is the worst witness of truth; blood poisons even the purest teaching and turns it into delusion and hatred of the heart.

And if a man goes through fire for his teaching—what does that prove! It is truly more when one’s teaching comes from one’s own burning!

A sultry heart and a cold head: where these two meet there arises the roaring wind, the “Savior.”

There have been those truly greater and higher born than those whom the people call saviors, those blowhards who carry away!

And by ones still greater than any of the saviors must you, my brothers, be saved, if you would find the way to freedom!

Never yet has there been an Übermensch. I saw both of them naked, the greatest and the smallest man:—

They are still all-too-similar to one another. Truly, even the greatest I found—all-too-human!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.