On the Pitying

My friends, a mocking word has reached your friend: “Just look at Zarathustra! Does he not walk among us as among animals?”

But it is better said this way: “The knower walks among human beings as among animals.”

But to the knower the human being himself is called: the animal with red cheeks.

How did this happen 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 the human being!

And that is why the noble one commands himself not to shame others: he commands himself to feel shame before all who suffer.

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

If I must be pitying, I still do not want to be called so; and if I am, then preferably from a distance.

I also like to cover my head and flee before I am even recognized: and so I bid you do, my friends!

May my destiny always lead across my path those who, like you, are without suffering, and those with whom I may share hope and meal and honey!

Truly, I have done this and that for the suffering: but it always seemed to me I did better when I learned to rejoice better.

Since there have been human beings, the human being has rejoiced too little: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin!

And if we learn to rejoice better, then we best unlearn how to hurt others and to think up hurts.

That is why I wash my hand that helped the sufferer, that is why I wipe off my soul as well.

For I was ashamed, for the sake of his shame, that I had seen the sufferer suffering; and when I helped him, I sinned hard against his pride.

Great obligations do not make people grateful, but vengeful; and if the small kindness is not forgotten, it becomes a gnawing worm besides.

“Be reluctant in accepting! Do honor by accepting!”—thus I advise those who have nothing to give away.

But I am one who bestows: I like to bestow, as a friend to friends. But strangers and the poor may pick the fruit from my tree themselves: that shames them less.

But beggars should be abolished entirely! Truly, it annoys you to give to them, and it annoys you not to give to them.

And likewise sinners and bad consciences! Believe me, my friends: the bites of conscience train you to bite.

But the worst are petty thoughts. Truly, better even to have done evil than to have thought small!

To be sure, you say: “The joy in petty malice spares us many a great evil deed.” But here one should not want to spare.

The evil deed is like a boil: it itches and scratches and breaks out—it speaks honestly.

“Behold, I am sickness”—thus speaks the evil deed; that is its honesty.

But the petty thought is like a fungus: it creeps and stoops and wants to be nowhere—until the whole body is rotten and withered with little fungi.

But to him who is possessed by the devil I say this word in his ear: “Better still, raise your devil up to greatness! For you, too, there is still a way to greatness!”—

Ah, my brothers! We know a little too much about everyone! And many a one becomes transparent to us, but that is far from meaning we can pass through him.

It is hard to live with human beings, because silence is so hard.

And it is not against the one we find repugnant that we are most unfair, but against the one who is no concern of ours at all.

But if you have a suffering friend, be a resting place for his suffering, yet a hard bed, as it were, a camp bed: thus you will serve him best.

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

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

One should hold one’s heart firmly; for if one lets it go, how soon one’s head runs away too!

Ah, where in the world have greater follies happened than among the pitying? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the pitying?

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

Thus the devil once spoke to me: “God too has his hell: that is his love of human beings.”

And recently I heard him say this word: “God is dead; God died of his pity for human beings.”—

So be warned against pity: from there a heavy cloud is still coming to human beings! Truly, I know the signs of the weather!

But mark this word too: all great love is above even all its pity: for it wants, beyond that, to—create what it loves!

“I offer myself to my love, and my neighbor as myself”—thus goes the speech of all creators.

But all creators are hard.—

Thus spoke Zarathustra.