On Priests
And once Zarathustra gave his disciples a sign and spoke these words to them:
“Here are priests: and even though they are my enemies, pass them by quietly and with sleeping sword!
“Among them too there are heroes; many of them suffered too much—: so they want to make others suffer.
“Wicked enemies they are: nothing is more vengeful than their humility. And whoever attacks them easily soils himself.
“But my blood is related to theirs; and I want my blood honored even in theirs.”—
And when they had passed by, pain assailed Zarathustra; and he had not wrestled long with his pain when he began to speak thus:
I am sorry for these priests. They also go against my taste; but that is the least thing to me, since I have been among human beings.
But I suffer and have suffered with them: to me they are prisoners and marked men. He whom they call redeemer put them in fetters:—
In fetters of false values and words of delusion! Ah, if only someone would redeem them from their redeemer!
On an island they once thought they had landed, when the sea tossed them about; but behold, it was a sleeping monster!
False values and words of delusion: these are the worst monsters for mortals—long does doom sleep and wait in them.
But at last it comes and wakes and devours and swallows whatever built huts upon it.
Oh, just look at these huts that these priests built for themselves! Churches they call their sweet-smelling caves.
Oh, this falsified light, this mildewed air! Here, where the soul may not—fly up to its height!
Instead their faith commands thus: “Up the stairs on your knees, you sinners!”
Truly, I would rather see even the shameless than the twisted eyes of their shame and devotion!
Who created such caves and stairs of penance for themselves? Was it not those who wanted to hide and were ashamed before the clear sky?
And only when the clear sky looks again through broken roofs, and down upon grass and red poppies by broken walls—will I turn my heart again to the places of this god.
They called God what contradicted them and hurt them: and truly, there was much of the hero’s way in their worship!
And they knew no other way to love their god than by nailing the human being to the cross!
As corpses they meant to live; in black they draped their corpse; even from their speeches I still smell the foul spice of burial vaults.
And whoever lives near them lives near black ponds, out of which the toad sings its song with sweet profundity.
Better songs they would have to sing for me before I learned to believe in their redeemer: more redeemed his disciples would have to look to me!
Naked I would like to see them: for beauty alone should preach repentance. But whom does this muffled-up gloom persuade!
Truly, their redeemers themselves did not come from freedom and freedom’s seventh heaven! Truly, they themselves never walked on the carpets of knowledge!
The spirit of these redeemers consisted of gaps; but into every gap they had set their delusion, their stopgap, which they called God.
In their pity their spirit had drowned, and when they swelled and overswelled with pity, a great folly always floated on top.
Eagerly and with shouting they drove their herd over their footbridge: as if there were only one footbridge to the future! Truly, these shepherds too still belonged among the sheep!
Small spirits and spacious souls these shepherds had: but, my brothers, what small countries even the most spacious souls have been until now!
Signs in blood they wrote on the way they went, and their folly taught that truth is proved with blood.
But blood is the worst witness to truth; blood poisons even the purest teaching into delusion and hatred of the heart.
And if someone goes through fire for his teaching—what does that prove! Truly, it is more when one’s own teaching comes out of one’s own burning!
Sultry heart and cold head: where these meet, there arises the blustering wind, the “redeemer.”
Truly, there have been greater ones and higher-born than those whom the people call redeemers, these rapturous blustering winds!
And by still greater ones than all redeemers were, you must be redeemed, my brothers, if you want to find the way to freedom!
Never yet has there been an Übermensch. Naked I have seen them both, the greatest and the smallest human being:—
They are still all too similar to each other. Truly, even the greatest I found—all too human!
Thus spoke Zarathustra.