ON OLD AND NEW TABLETS

1

Here I sit and wait, old broken tablets around me and also new half-written tablets. When will my hour come?

-the hour of my descent, of my going under: for I want to go among men once more.

For that I am waiting now: for first the signs must come to me that my hour has arrived-namely the laughing lion with the flock of doves.

Meanwhile I talk to myself as one who has time. No one tells me anything new: so I tell myself to myself

2

When I came to men, I found them resting on an old conceit: all of them thought they had long known what was good and evil for man.

All talk of virtue seemed an old and wearisome business to them; and he who wished to sleep well spoke of “good” and “evil” before retiring to rest.

I disturbed this sleepiness when I taught that no one yet knows what is good and evil—unless it be he who creates!

—But it is he who creates man’s goal and gives the earth its meaning and its future: that anything at all is good and evil, that is his creation.

And I bade them overturn their old academic chairs and wherever that old conceit had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists and saints and poets and world-redeemers.

I bade them laugh at their gloomy sages and at whoever had at any time sat forebodingly on the tree of life like a black scare-crow.

I sat down by their great road of tombs among cadavers and vultures—and I laughed at all their past and its rotting, decaying glory.

Truly, like preachers of repentance and fools, I raised a hue and cry of wrath on all their greatness and smallness—that their best is so very small! That their worst is so very small!-thus I laughed.

My wise longing, born in the mountains, cried and laughed in me; a wild wisdom, truly!-my great broad-winged longing.

And often it carried me off and up and away and in the midst of laughter: then I flew quivering like an arrow with sun-drunken rapture:

—out into distant futures, which no dream has yet seen, into warmer Souths than artists ever dreamed: there where gods in their dancing are ashamed of all clothes:—

—that I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the poets: and truly I am ashamed that I still have to be a poet!

Where all becoming seemed to me the dancing of gods and the playfulness of gods, and the world unloosed and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:—

—like many gods eternally fleeing and seeking one another, like many gods blessedly contradicting, communing, and belonging together again:—

Where all time seemed to me a happy mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of freedom:—

Where I also found again my old devil and archenemy, the spirit of gravity, and all that he created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil:—

For must there not be that which is danced over, danced beyond? Must there not, for the sake of the nimble, the nimblest,—be moles and clumsy dwarfs?—

3

There it was too that I picked up the word “Übermensch” by the way, and that man is something that must be overcome,

—that man is a bridge and not a goal: rejoicing over his noon-tides and evenings, as advances to new dawns:

—Zarathustra’s declaration of the great noon, and whatever else I have hung up over men like a purple afterglow of evening.

Truly, I also let them see new stars along with new nights; and over cloud and day and night I spread out laughter like a colored canopy. I taught them all my poetry and aspiration: to compose and collect into one what is fragment in man and riddle and dreadful chance—

To redeem what is past in man and to transform every “It was” until the will says: “But so I willed it! So shall I will it—”

—this I called redemption, this alone I taught them to call redemption. —

Now I await my redemption-that I may go to them for the last time.

For I want to go to men once more: I want to go under among them, in dying I will give them my richest gift!

I learned this from the sun when it goes down, the overrich: it then pours gold into the sea from inexhaustible riches,—

—so that even the poorest fisherman still rows with golden oars! For I saw this once, and did not tire of weeping to see it.-Like the sun, Zarathustra too wants to go under: now he sits here and waits, old broken tablets around him and also new tablets—half-written.

4

Behold, here is a new tablet: but where are my brothers who will carry it with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?—

Thus my great love of the farthest demands it: do not spare your neighbor! Man is something that must be overcome.

There are many diverse paths and ways of overcoming: see to that yourself! But only a jester thinks: “man can also be jumped over.”

Overcome yourself even in your neighbor: and a right that you can rob you should not accept as a gift!

What you do, no one can do to you in turn. Behold, there is no retribution.

He who cannot command himself should obey. And many a one can command himself, but much is still lacking before he obeys!

5

This is the nature of noble souls: they do not want something for nothing, least of all, life.

He who is of the mob wants to live for nothing; but we others, to whom life has given itself—we are always considering what we can best give in return!

And truly, it is a noble speech that says: “What life has promised us, we shall keep that promise—to life!”

One should not wish to enjoy where one has not given joy. And-one should not wish to enjoy!

For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things: neither likes to be sought. One should have them-but one should rather seek for guilt and pain!—

6

O my brothers, the first-born is always sacrificed. But now we are first-born!

We all bleed on secret sacrificial altars, we all burn and roast in honor of ancient idols.

Our best is still young: this excites old palates. Our flesh is tender, our skin is only lambs’ skin:-how could we not excite old idol-priests!

In us ourselves he lives on still, the old idol-priest, who roasts our best for his feast. Ah, my brothers, how should the first-born not be sacrifices!

But so our kind wants it; and I love those who do not wish to preserve themselves. I love with my whole love those who go under and perish: for they cross over.—

7

To be truthful-few can do it! And those who can, will not! But the good can do this least of all.

Oh, these good men! Good men never speak the truth; to be good in this way is a disease of the spirit.

They yield, those good ones, they submit themselves, their heart repeats, their ground obeys: but he who obeys does not listen to himself!

All that the good call evil must come together that one truth may be born: O my brothers, are you evil enough for this truth?

The daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel No, the tedium, the cutting to the quick-how seldom do these come together! But from such seed is-truth produced!

All knowledge thus far has grown up beside the bad conscience! Break, break, you knowers, the old tablets!

8

When the water is spanned by planks, when bridges and railings reach over the river: truly, then he is not believed who says: “Everything is in flux.”11

Even the simpletons contradict him. “What?” say the simpletons, “everything in flux? But there are planks and railings over the stream!

“Over the stream all is stable, all the values of things, the bridges and bearings, all ‘good’ and ‘evil’: these are all stable!”—

But when the hard winter comes, the river animal-tamer: then even the cleverest learn mistrust; and then truly not only the simpletons say: “Should not everything—stand still?”

“Fundamentally everything stands still”—that is a fit winter teaching, a good cheer for unfruitful seasons, a great comfort for hibernators and fireside-squatters.

“Fundamentally everything stands still”—: but the thawing wind preaches to the contrary!

The thawing wind, an ox that is no plough-ox—a raging ox, a destroyer who breaks the ice with angry horns! But ice-breaks bridges!

O my brothers, is everything not now in flux? Have not all railings and bridges fallen into the water? Who could still cling to “good” and “evil”?

“Woe to us! Hail to us! The thawing wind blows!”—Preach thus, O my brothers, through every street!

9

There is an old illusion, which is called good and evil. Up to now the orbit of this illusion has revolved around soothsayers and astrologers.

Once man believed in soothsayers and astrologers: and therefore man believed: “Everything is fate: you shall, for you must!”

Then again man mistrusted all soothsayers and astrologers: and therefore man believed: “Everything is freedom: you can, for you will!”

O my brothers, concerning the stars and the future there has so far been only illusion, and not knowledge: and therefore concerning good and evil there has so far been only illusion and not knowledge!

10

“Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not kill!”—such words were once called holy; before them one bowed the knee and the head and took off one’s shoes.

But I ask you: Where have there ever been better robbers and killers in the world than such holy words?

Is there not in all life itself—robbing and killing? And when such words were called holy was not truth itself-slain?

-Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contradicted and opposed all life?—0 my brothers, break, break the old tablets!

11

This is my pity for all the past that I see: it is abandoned,—

—abandoned to the favor, the spirit, the madness of every generation that comes and transforms all that has been into its own bridge!

A great despot could come, a cunning devil, who according to his pleasure and displeasure, might strain and constrain all the past: until it became his bridge and harbinger and herald and cockcrow.

This however is the other danger and my other pity—he who is of the mob remembers back to his grandfather—but with his grandfather time stops.

Thus all the past is abandoned: for one day the herd might become master and drown all time in shallow waters.

Therefore, O my brothers, a new nobility is needed to be the adversary of all mob rule and despotism and to write again the word “noble” on new tablets.

For many noble are needed, and noble of many kinds, that there may be nobility! Or, as I once said in a parable: “Precisely this is godlike, that there are gods, but no God!”

12

O my brothers, I consecrate and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become procreators and cultivators and sowers of the future—

—truly, not to a nobility which you could buy like shopkeepers with shopkeepers’ gold: for whatever has its price has little value.

Not from where you have come will you find your honor henceforth, but from where you are going! Your will and your foot, which seek to step out beyond you—let them be your new honor!

Truly, not that you have served a prince—what do princes matter now!-nor that you have become a bulwark to that which stands, that it may stand more firmly!

Not that your family have grown courtly at courts and you have learned, like a flamingo, to stand for long hours in a colorful costume in shallow pools:

-For being able to stand is a merit among courtiers; and all courtiers believe that blessedness after death must comprise-being allowed to sit!

Nor that a ghost which they call holy led your ancestors into promised lands, which I do not praise: for where the worst of all trees grew, the cross,-in that land there is nothing to praise!—

—and truly, wherever this “holy ghost” led its knights, always in such campaigns-goats and geese and the contrary and crude ran foremost!—

O my brothers, your nobility shall not gaze backward, but outward! You shall be exiles from all father-and forefather-lands!

You shall love your children’s land: let this love be your new nobility, —the undiscovered country in the remotest seas!12 For it I bid your sails search and search!

You shall make amends to your children for being the children of your fathers: thus shall you redeem all that is past! This new tablet I place over you!

13

“Why live? All is vanity! To live-that is thrashing straw; to live—that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm.”-Such ancient babbling still passes for “wisdom”; it is honored all the more because it is old and smells musty. Even mould ennobles—

Children might speak thus: they shrink from the fire because it has burned them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.

And he who is always “thrashing straw,” why should he be allowed to slander thrashing! Such fools should be muzzled!

Such people sit down to dinner and bring nothing with them, not even a good appetite—and then they slander: “All is vain!”

But to eat and drink well, my brothers, is truly no vain art! Break, break the tablets of the never gay!

14

“To the clean are all things clean”—so the people say. But I say to you: To the swine all things become swinish!

Therefore the swooners and drooping heads, whose hearts also droop limply, preach: “The world itself is a filthy monster.”

For all these have an unclean spirit; but especially those who have no peace or rest unless they see the world from behind—the afterworldly!

I tell these to their faces, although it may not sound pretty: the world is like man in having a behind—that much is true!

There is much filth in the world: that much is true! But the world itself is not therefore a filthy monster!

There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smells badly: disgust itself creates wings and water-divining powers!

Even in the best there is still something that nauseates; and even the best is something that must be overcome!—

O my brothers, there is much wisdom in this, that there is much filth in the world!—

15

Such sayings I heard the pious afterworldly speak to their consciences, and truly without malice or falsehood-although there is nothing more false in the world, or more malicious.

“Let the world be as it is! Do not even raise a finger against it!”

“Let whoever will strangle and stab and fleece and flay the people: do not raise a finger against it! Thus they will learn to renounce the world.”

“And your own reason—you shall yourself stifle and choke it; for it is a reason of this world,-thus you shall yourself learn to renounce the world.”13—

—Break, break, O my brothers, those old tablets of the pious! Break the maxims of those who slander the world!—

16

“Whoever learns much unlearns all violent desire”—that is whispered today in all the dark lanes.

“Wisdom wearies, nothing is worthwhile; you shall not desire!” —I found this new tablet hanging even in the public markets.

Break, O my brothers, break this new tablet too! The weary of the world hung it up, and the preachers of death and the jailer: for behold, it is also a sermon for slavery!—

Because they learned badly and the best things not at all, and everything too early and everything too fast; because they ate badly, from that their stomach-aches resulted,—

—For their spirit is a stomach-ache: it advises death! For truly, my brothers, the spirit is a stomach!

Life is a well of delight: but all wells are poisoned to him in whom the stomach-ache, the father of misery, speaks.

To know: that is delight to the lion-willed! But he who has become weary is himself merely “willed,” he is the sport of every wave.

And such is always the nature of weak men: they lose themselves on their way. And at last their weariness asks: “Why did we ever go on the way? It is all the same!”

To them it sounds pleasant to have preached in their ears: “Nothing is worthwhile! You shall not will!” But that is a sermon for slavery.

O my brothers, Zarathustra comes as a fresh blustering wind to all the way-weary; he will yet make many noses sneeze!

My free breath blows even through walls, and into prisons and imprisoned spirits!

Willing liberates: for willing is creating: thus I teach. And you should learn solely in order to create!

And you shall first learn from me how to learn, how to learn well!—Who has ears, let him hear!

17

There stands the bark-over there perhaps is the way into the great nothingness. But who would embark on this “perhaps”?

None of you want to embark on the boat of death! How then could you be world-weary!

World-weary! And you have not yet even parted from the earth! I have always found you still greedy for the earth, still in love with your own earth-weariness!

Your lip does not hang down in vain—a small earthly wish still sits on it! And in your eye-does not a little cloud of unforgotten earthly bliss float there?

On the earth there are many good inventions, some useful, some pleasing: the earth is to be loved for their sake.

And there is such a variety of well-invented things that the earth is like a woman’s breasts: useful as well as pleasing.

But you world-weary ones! You earth-idlers! You should be lashed with switches! With lashes one should make your legs sprightly again.

For: if you are not invalids and decrepit wretches of whom the earth is weary, then you are sly sloths or dainty, sneaking pleasure-cats. And if you will not run gaily again, then you shall—pass away!

One should not want to be a physician to the incurable: thus teaches Zarathustra-so you shall pass away!

But it takes more courage to make an end than to make a new verse: all physicians and poets know that.—

18

O my brothers, there are tablets framed by weariness and tablets framed by sloth, the rotten: although they speak similarly they want to be heard differently.—

Look at this languishing one! He is but an inch from his goal, yet from weariness he has laid himself down obstinately in the dust: this brave one!

He yawns from weariness at the path and the earth and the goal and himself: he will not go a step further,—this brave one!

Now the sun glows on him and dogs lick his sweat: but he lies there in his obstinacy and prefers to languish: 14—

—to languish an inch from his goal! Truly, you will have to drag him into his heaven by the hair of his head-this hero!

Better still that you let him lie where he has lain down, that sleep may come to him, the comforter, with cooling murmuring rain.

Let him lie until he wakes of his own accord-until of his own accord he renounces all weariness and what weariness has taught through him!

Only, my brothers, drive the dogs away from him, the idle skulkers, and all the swarming vermin—

—all the swarming vermin of the “cultured,” who-feast on the sweat of every hero!—

19

I form circles around me and holy boundaries; ever fewer climb with me up ever-higher mountains: I build a mountain range out of everholier mountains.-But wherever you would climb with me, O my brothers, see to it that a parasite does not climb with you!

Parasite: that is a worm, a creeping, cringing worm that tries to fatten itself on your sick sore places.

And this is its art, that it finds where climbing souls are weary: in your grief and dejection, in your tender modesty, it builds its disgusting nest.

Where the strong are weak, where the noble are all-too-gentle-there it builds its disgusting nest; the parasite lives where the great have small sores.

Which is the highest type of being and which the lowest? The parasite is the lowest type; but he who is of the highest type feeds the most parasites.

For the soul which has the longest ladder, and can go deepest down: how could there not be the most parasites upon it?—

—the most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and roam furthest in itself; the most necessary soul, which out of joy flings itself into chance—

—the soul which, having being, plunges into becoming; the possessor, which wants to will and desire:—

—the soul fleeing from itself which overtakes itself in the widest circle; the wisest soul, which folly exhorts most sweetly:—

—the soul which loves itself most, in which all things have their current and countercurrent and ebb and now:—oh how should the loftiest soul not have the worst parasites?

20

O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: That which is falling should also be pushed!

Everything of today—it is falling, it is decaying: who would check it! But I—I even want to push it!

Do you know the delight that rolls stones into precipitous depths?—These men of today: just see how they roll into my depths!

I am a prelude to better players, O my brothers! A precedent! Follow my precedent!

And he whom you do not teach to fly, teach—to fall faster!—

21

I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a swordsman,—one must also know against whom to be a swordsman!

And often is it greater bravery to refrain and pass by: in order to reserve oneself for a worthier enemy!

You should have only enemies whom you hate but not enemies you despise: you must be proud of your enemy: thus I taught once before.

For the worthier enemy, O my brothers, you shall reserve yourselves: therefore must you pass by much,—

—especially much rabble, who din in your ears about the people and peoples.

Keep your eye clear of their for and against! There is much right, much wrong in it: whoever looks on grows angry.

Sighting and smiting—here they are the same thing: therefore depart into the forests and lay your sword to sleep!

Go your ways! And let the people and peoples go theirs!-dark ways, truly, on which not one hope flashes any more!

Let the shopkeeper rule where all that still glitters is—shopkeepers’ gold. The time of kings is past: what today calls itself the people deserves no kings.

Just see how these peoples themselves now behave like the shopkeepers: they pick up the smallest advantage out of all kinds of rubbish!

They lie around lurking and spy around smirking—they call that “being good neighbors.” O blessed distant time when a people said to itself: “I want to be-master over peoples!”

For, my brothers: the best shall rule, the best also want to rule! And where the doctrine is different, there-the best is lacking.

22

If they—had bread for nothing, ah!15 What would they cry for! Their sustenance-that is their true entertainment; and it should be hard for them!

They are beasts of prey: even in their “working”—there is robbery, even in their “earning”—there is fraud! Therefore it should be hard for them!

Thus they shall become better beasts of prey, subtler, cleverer, more man-like: for man is the best beast of prey.

Man has already robbed all the animals of their virtues: that is why of all animals it has been hardest for man.

Only the birds are still beyond him. And if man should yet learn to fly, ah! to what height—would his rapaciousness fly!

23

Thus I want man and woman: the one fit for war, the other fit to give birth, but both fit for dancing with head and legs.

And we should consider every day lost on which we did not dance once. And we should call every truth false which does not give one laugh!

24

Your wedlock: see that it is not a bad lock! You lock too quickly: so there follows from it—wedlock-breaking!16

And yet better marriage breaking than marriage bending, marriage lying!-A woman spoke to me so: “Indeed I broke the marriage, but first the marriage broke—me!”

I have always found the badly paired to be the most revengeful: they make every one suffer for it that they are no longer single.

Therefore I would have the honest say to one another: “We love each other: let us see to it that we stay in love! Or shall our promise be a mistake?”

—“Give us a probation and a little marriage, so that we may see if we are fit for the great marriage! It is a big thing to be always together.”

Thus I counsel all the honest; and what would be my love of the Übermensch and of all that is to come if I should counsel and speak otherwise!

To propagate yourselves not only onwards but upwards—toward that, O my brothers, may the garden of marriage help you!

25

He who has grown wise concerning old origins, behold, he will at last seek springs of the future and new origins.—

O my brothers, it will not be long until new peoples shall arise and new springs rush down into new depths.

For the earthquake-it chokes up many wells and causes much thirst: but it also brings inner powers and secrets to light.

The earthquake reveals new springs. In the earthquake of old peoples new springs burst forth.

And whoever calls out: “Behold, here is a well for many thirsty, one heart for many longing, one will for many instruments”:—around him assembles a people, that is to say: many triers.

Who can command, who must obey—that is tried out there! Ah, with what long seeking and solving and failing and learning and trying again!

Human society: it is a trial, so I teach—a long seeking: but it seeks the commander!—

—a trial, oh my brothers! And no “contract”! Break, break that word of the soft hearted and half-and-half!

26

O my brothers! With whom lies the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just?—

—with those who say and feel in their hearts: “We already know what is good and just, we have it too; woe to those who are still searching for it!

And whatever harm the evil may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm!

And whatever harm the slanderers of the world may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm!

O my brothers, one man once saw into the hearts of the good and just and said: “They are the pharisees.” But he was not understood.

The good and just themselves could not understand him: their spirit is imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably shrewd.

But it is the truth: the good must be pharisees-they have no choice!

The good must crucify him who invents his own virtue!17 That is the truth!

But the second one who discovered their country, the country, heart and soil of the good and just: it was he who asked: “Whom do they hate most?”

The creator is the one they hate most: him who breaks the tablets and old values, the breaker,—him they call the lawbreaker.

For the good-they cannot create: they are always the beginning of the end:—

—they crucify him who writes new values on new tablets, they sacrifice the future to themselves—they crucify the whole human future!

The good-they have always been the beginning of the end.—

27

O my brothers, have you really understood this word? And what I once said of the “last man”?—

With whom lies the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just?

Break, break the good and just!—O my brothers, have you really understood this word?

28

You flee from me? You are frightened? You tremble at this word?

O my brothers, when I bade you to break the good and the tablets of the good, only then did I launch mankind upon its high seas.

And only now does the great terror, the great prospect, the great sickness, the great nausea, the great seasickness come to it.

The good taught you false shores and false assurances; in the lies of the good you were born and bred. Everything has been made fraudulent and twisted through and through by the good.

But he who discovered the country of “man,” discovered also the country of “man’s future.” Now you shall be seafarers, valiant, patient!

Stand up straight in good time, oh my brothers, learn to stand up straight! The sea storms: many want to right themselves again with your help.

The sea storms: everything is at sea. Well then! Come on! You old seaman-hearts!

What of fatherland! Our helm wants to fare away, out where our children’s land is! Out that way, stormier than the sea, storms our great longing!—

29

“Why so hard!”—said the kitchen coal one day to the diamond; “are we not then close kin?”—

Why so soft? O my brothers thus I ask you: are you not then—my brothers?

Why so soft, so submissive and yielding? Why is there so much negation and abnegation in your hearts? So little fate in your glances?

And if you will not be fates and the inexorable: how can you-conquer with me?

And if your hardness will not flash and cut and cut to pieces, how can you one day—create with me?

For creators are hard. And it must seem bliss to you to press your hand upon millennia as upon wax,—

—bliss to write upon the will of millennia as upon brass,-harder than brass, nobler than brass. Only the noblest is entirely hard.

This new tablet, O my brothers, I put over you: become hard!—

30

O you my will! You end of all need, my own necessity! Keep me from all small victories!

You predestination of my soul, which I call destiny! You in-me! Over-me! Keep and save me for one great destiny!

And your last greatness, my will, save for your last—that you may be inexorable in your victory! Ah, who has not succumbed to his own victory!

Ah, whose eye has not dimmed in this drunken twilight! Ah, whose foot has not faltered and in victory forgotten-how to stand!—

—That I may one day be ready and ripe in the great noon: ready and ripe like glowing ore, like a cloud heavy with lightning and swollen milk-udders:—

—ready for myself and my most hidden will: a bow eager for its arrow, an arrow eager for its star:—

—a star, ready and ripe in its noon, glowing, pierced, blissful through by annihilating sun-arrows:—

—a sun itself and an inexorable sun-will, ready for annihilation in victory!

O will, you end of every need, my necessity! Save me for one great victory!—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.