ON THE PITYING

ON THE PITYING

MY FRIENDS, A GIBE was told to your friend: “Just look at Zarathustra! Doesn’t he walk among us as if among animals?”

But it is better said so: “The knower walks among men as among animals.”2

To the knower man himself is: the animal that has red cheeks.

How has that happened to him? Is it not because he has had to be ashamed too often?

O my friends! Thus speaks the knower: shame, shame, shame—that is the history of mankind!

And that is why the noble bids himself not to shame: he is ashamed himself before all sufferers.

Truly, I do not like them, the merciful who feel blessed in their pity: they are much too lacking in shame.3

If I must pity, at least I do not want it named so; and if I do, it is preferably from a distance.

I should also like to shroud my head and flee before I am recognized: and thus I enjoin you to do, my friends!

May my fate always lead those, like you, who do not suffer to cross my path, and those with whom I may share hope and meal and honey!

Truly, I may have done this and that for sufferers: but I always seem to have done better when I learned to feel better joys.

Since there have been men, man has enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin!

And learning better to feel joy, we unlearn best how to hurt to others or to plan hurts for them.

Therefore I wash my hand when it has helped the sufferer, therefore I also wipe even my soul.

For in seeing the sufferer suffer, I was ashamed on account of his shame; and in helping him, I sorely wound his pride.

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a small kindness is not forgotten, it becomes a gnawing worm.

“Be reserved in accepting! Distinguish by accepting!”—thus I advise those who have nothing to give.

But I am a gift-giver: I like to give, as friend to friends. But strangers and the poor may pluck for themselves the fruit from my tree: that causes less shame.

But beggars should be entirely done away with! Truly, it annoys one to give to them and it annoys one not to give to them.

And likewise sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: the bite of conscience teaches one to bite.

The very worst, however, are petty thoughts. Truly, better to have done evilly than to have thought pettily!

To be sure, you say: “The delight in petty evils saves us from many a big evil deed.” But here one should not wish to save.

An evil deed is like a boil: it itches and irritates and breaks open-it speaks honestly.

“Look, I am disease,”—so speaks the evil deed: that is its honesty.

But the petty thought is like an infection: it creeps and hides and wants to be nowhere-until the whole body is decayed and withered by petty infections.

But to him who is possessed by the devil I whisper this word in his ear: “Better for you to rear up your devil! Even for you there is still a path to greatness!”—

Ah, my brothers! One knows a little too much about every one! And some become transparent to us, but yet we can by no means pass through them.

It is difficult to live among men, because it is so difficult to be silent.

And we are most unfair not to him who is offensive to us, but to him who does not concern us at all.

But if you have a suffering friend, be a resting place for his suffering, but like a hard bed, a field cot: thus you will serve him best.

And if a friend does you wrong, then say: “I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to yourself, however—how could I forgive that!”

Thus speaks all great love: it surpasses even forgiveness and pity.

One should hold fast one’s heart; for when one lets it go, how soon one’s head runs away!

Ah, where in the world has there been greater folly than among the pitying? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the folly of the pitying?

Woe to all lovers who do not have a height that is above their pity!

Thus spoke the devil to me once: “God too has his hell: it is his love of man.”

And most recently I heard him speak this word: “God is dead: God died of his pity for man.”—

So be warned against pity: from there a heavy cloud yet comes to man! Truly, I understand weather signs!

But also mark this word: all great love is even above all its pity: for it still seeks-to create the beloved!

“I sacrifice myself to my love, and my neighbor as myself”—so goes the language of all creators.

But all creators are hard.—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.