LXXI. THE GREETING.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm and Common, Thomas
With you I should spoil all my victories. And many of you would tumble over if ye but heard the loud beating of my drums.
Moreover, ye are not sufficiently beautiful and well-born for me. I require pure, smooth mirrors for my doctrines; on your surface even mine own likeness is distorted.
On your shoulders presseth many a burden, many a recollection; many a mischievous dwarf squatteth in your corners. There is concealed populace also in you.
And though ye be high and of a higher type, much in you is crooked and misshapen. There is no smith in the world that could hammer you right and straight for me.
Ye are only bridges: may higher ones pass over upon you! Ye signify steps: so do not upbraid him who ascendeth beyond you into HIS height!
Out of your seed there may one day arise for me a genuine son and perfect heir: but that time is distant. Ye yourselves are not those unto whom my heritage and name belong.
Not for you do I wait here in these mountains; not with you may I descend for the last time. Ye have come unto me only as a presage that higher ones are on the way to me,—
—NOT the men of great longing, of great loathing, of great satiety, and that which ye call the remnant of God;
—Nay! Nay! Three times Nay! For OTHERS do I wait here in these mountains, and will not lift my foot from thence without them;
—For higher ones, stronger ones, triumphanter ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in body and soul: LAUGHING LIONS must come!
O my guests, ye strange ones—have ye yet heard nothing of my children? And that they are on the way to me?
Do speak unto me of my gardens, of my Happy Isles, of my new beautiful race—why do ye not speak unto me thereof?
This guests’-present do I solicit of your love, that ye speak unto me of my children. For them am I rich, for them I became poor: what have I not surrendered,
—What would I not surrender that I might have one thing: THESE children, THIS living plantation, THESE life-trees of my will and of my highest hope!”
Thus spake Zarathustra, and stopped suddenly in his discourse: for his longing came over him, and he closed his eyes and his mouth, because of the agitation of his heart. And all his guests also were silent, and stood still and confounded: except only that the old soothsayer made signs with his hands and his gestures.