On Old and New Tablets
1
Here I sit and wait, old broken tablets around me and new tablets too, half written on. When will my hour come?
—the hour of my descent, of my going under: for once more I want to go to human beings.
For that I am waiting now: for first the signs must come to me that it is my hour—namely the laughing lion with the flock of doves.
Meanwhile I speak to myself as one who has time. No one tells me anything new: so I tell myself myself.—
2
When I came to human beings, I found them sitting on an old conceit: all of them had long fancied they knew what was good and evil for the human being.
All talk of virtue seemed to them an old, tired thing; and whoever wanted to sleep well still spoke of “good” and “evil” before going to bed.
I disturbed this sleepiness when I taught: what is good and evil no one knows yet:—unless it be the creator!
—But he is the one who creates the human being’s goal and gives the earth its meaning and its future: only he creates it that something is good and evil.
And I bade them overturn their old chairs of teaching, and wherever that old conceit had sat; I bade them laugh at their great masters of virtue and saints and poets and world redeemers.
At their gloomy wise men I bade them laugh, and at whoever had ever sat on the tree of life as a black scarecrow, warning.
I sat down by their great avenue of tombs, and even beside carrion and vultures—and I laughed at all their past and its crumbling, decaying glory.
Truly, like preachers of repentance and fools I cried wrath and outcry over all their great and small—that their best is so very small! That their most evil is so very small!—thus I laughed.
Thus my wise longing cried and laughed out of me, which was born on mountains, a wild wisdom, truly!—my great longing with its roaring wings.
And often it swept me away and up and off, in the very midst of laughter: then I flew, shuddering, an arrow, through sun-drunk rapture:
—out into distant futures that no dream has yet seen, into hotter souths than artists ever dreamed of: there where gods, dancing, are ashamed of all clothes:—
—for I speak in parables, and like poets I limp and stammer: and truly, I am ashamed that I must still be a poet!—
Where all becoming seemed to me the dance of gods and the mischief of gods, and the world let loose and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:—
—as an eternal fleeing and seeking-again of themselves by many gods, as the blissful self-contradicting, hearing-again, belonging-again-to-themselves of many gods:—
Where all time seemed to me a blissful mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played blissfully with the goad of freedom:—
Where I also found again my old devil and archenemy, the Spirit of Gravity, and everything he created: compulsion, statute, necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil:—
For must there not be something over which one dances, dances away? Must there not, for the sake of the light, the lightest—be moles and heavy dwarfs?—
3
It was there too that I picked up the word “Übermensch” from the road, and that the human being is something that must be overcome,
—that the human being is a bridge and not an end: calling himself blessed for his noon and his evening, as the way to new dawns:
—Zarathustra’s word of the great noon, and whatever else I hung up over human beings, like purple second sunsets.
Truly, I let them see new stars too, along with new nights; and over clouds and day and night I spread out laughter like a many-colored tent.
I taught them all my imagining and striving: to compose into one and carry together what is fragment in the human being and riddle and dreadful accident—
—as poet, guesser of riddles, and redeemer of accident I taught them to create upon the future, and to redeem, by creating, everything that was—.
To redeem what is past in the human being and to re-create all “It was,” until the will says: “But thus I willed it! Thus shall I will it—”
—This I called redemption for them, this alone I taught them to call redemption.—
Now I am waiting for my redemption—that I may go to them for the last time.
For once more I want to go to human beings: among them I want to go under, dying I want to give them my richest gift!
I learned this from the sun when it goes down, the overrich one: then it pours gold into the sea out of inexhaustible riches—
—so that even the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars! For this I once saw, and as I watched I could not have my fill of tears.—
Like the sun Zarathustra too wants to go under: now he sits here and waits, old broken tablets around him and new tablets too—half written on.
4
Behold, here is a new tablet: but where are my brothers who will carry it with me down into the valley and into hearts of flesh?—
Thus my great love of the farthest demands it: do not spare your neighbor! The human being is something that must be overcome.
There are many kinds of paths and ways of overcoming: see to it yourself! But only a buffoon thinks: “The human being can also be jumped over.”
Overcome yourself even in your neighbor: and a right that you can seize for yourself you shall not let anyone give you!
What you do, no one can do back to you. Behold, there is no retribution.
Whoever cannot command himself shall obey. And many a one can command himself, but much is still lacking before he also obeys himself!
5
This is the way of noble souls: they want to have nothing for nothing, least of all life.
Whoever is of the rabble wants to live for nothing; but we others, to whom life gave itself—we always reflect on what we can best give in return!
And truly, it is a noble saying that says: “What life promises us, we want to keep—for life!”
One should not want to enjoy where one does not give enjoyment. And—one should not want to enjoy!
For enjoyment and innocence are the most bashful things: neither wants to be sought. One should have them—, but one should rather seek guilt and pains!—
6
O my brothers, whoever is a firstling is always sacrificed. But now we are firstlings.
We all bleed on secret altars, we all burn and roast in honor of old idols.
Our best is still young: that excites old palates. Our flesh is tender, our hide is only a lamb’s hide:—how should we not excite old idol-priests!
In ourselves he still dwells, the old idol-priest, who roasts our best for his feast. Ah, my brothers, how should firstlings not be sacrifices!
But so our kind wills it; and I love those who do not want to preserve themselves. Those who go under I love with my whole love: for they cross over.—
7
To be true—few can do that! And whoever can does not yet want to! But least of all can the good.
Oh, these good ones!—Good people never speak the truth; for the spirit, to be good in such a way is a sickness.
They give way, these good ones, they give themselves up, their heart repeats what it is told, their ground obeys; but whoever obeys does not hear himself!
Everything the good call evil must come together for one truth to be born: O my brothers, are you evil enough for this truth?
Reckless daring, long mistrust, the cruel No, surfeit, cutting into the living—how seldom does that come together! But from such seed truth is begotten!
Beside the bad conscience all knowledge has grown until now! Break, break for me, you knowers, the old tablets!
8
When the water has planks over it, when footbridges and railings spring across the river: truly, then no one is believed who says: “Everything flows.”
Instead even the dolts contradict him. “What?” say the dolts, “everything flows? But the planks and railings are over the river!”
“Over the river everything is firm, all the values of things, the bridges, concepts, all ‘good’ and ‘evil’: all that is firm!”—
But when hard winter comes, the tamer of rivers: then even the wittiest learn mistrust; and, truly, not only the dolts say then: “Should not everything—stand still?”
“At bottom everything stands still”—that is a true winter teaching, a good thing for barren times, a good comfort for hibernators and stove-squatters.
“At bottom everything stands still”—: but against this the thaw wind preaches!
The thaw wind, a bull that is no plowing bull—a raging bull, a destroyer, who breaks ice with angry horns! But ice—breaks footbridges!
O my brothers, is not everything flowing now? Have not all railings and footbridges fallen into the water? Who would still hold on to “good” and “evil”?
“Woe to us! Hail to us! The thaw wind is blowing!”—Preach this for me, O my brothers, through all the lanes!
9
There is an old delusion that is called good and evil. Around soothsayers and astrologers the wheel of this delusion has turned until now.
Once people believed in soothsayers and astrologers: and that is why they believed: “Everything is fate: you shall, because you must!”
Then again people mistrusted all soothsayers and astrologers: and that is why they believed: “Everything is freedom: you can, because you will!”
O my brothers, about stars and the future there has until now only been delusion, not knowledge: and that is why about good and evil there has until now only been delusion, not knowledge!
10
“You shall not rob! You shall not kill!”—such words were once called holy; before them people bent knee and head and took off their shoes.
But I ask you: where in the world have there ever been better robbers and killers than such holy words?
Is there not in all life itself—robbing and killing? And by calling such words holy, was not truth itself—killed?
Or was it a sermon of death that called holy what contradicted and dissuaded from all life?—O my brothers, break, break for me the old tablets!
11
This is my pity for all that is past, that I see: it is abandoned—
—abandoned to the grace, the spirit, the madness of every generation that comes and reinterprets everything that was as a bridge to itself!
A great despot could come, a cunning monster, who with his grace and disgrace would force and squeeze everything past: until it became a bridge for him and an omen and a herald and a cockcrow.
But this is the other danger and my other pity:—whoever is of the rabble remembers back as far as his grandfather—but with the grandfather time stops.
Thus everything past is abandoned: for it could happen one day that the rabble became master and drowned all time in shallow waters.
Therefore, O my brothers, a new nobility is needed, which is the adversary of all rabble and of everything despotic and writes anew on new tablets the word “noble.”
For many noble ones are needed, and many kinds of noble ones, for there to be nobility! Or, as I once said in a parable: “Just this is godliness, that there are gods but no God!”
12
O my brothers, I consecrate you and direct you to a new nobility: you shall become begetters and breeders and sowers of the future—
—truly, not to a nobility that you could buy like shopkeepers and with shopkeepers’ gold: for everything that has its price has little value.
Let it not be where you come from that makes your honor from now on, but where you are going! Your will and your foot, which wants to go out beyond yourselves—let that make your new honor!
Truly not that you have served a prince—what do princes matter anymore!—or that you became a bulwark for what stands, so that it might stand more firmly!
Not that your family became courtly at courts, and you learned, many-colored, like a flamingo, to stand for long hours in shallow ponds.
—For being able to stand is a merit among courtiers; and all courtiers believe that the bliss after death includes—being allowed to sit!—
Nor that a spirit they call holy led your forefathers into promised lands that I do not praise: for where the worst of all trees grew, the cross—that land has nothing to be praised!—
—and truly, wherever this “Holy Spirit” led its knights, always on such campaigns—goats and geese and crossheads and wrongheads ran in front!—
O my brothers, your nobility shall not look backward but outward! Exiles you shall be from all fatherlands and forefatherlands!
Your children’s land you shall love: let this love be your new nobility—the undiscovered land, in the farthest sea! For it I bid your sails search and search!
In your children you shall make up for being your fathers’ children: thus you shall redeem everything past! This new tablet I place over you!
13
“Why live? All is vanity! Living—that is threshing straw; living—that is burning oneself and still not getting warm.”—
Such antiquated chatter still passes for “wisdom”; and because it is old and smells musty, it is honored all the more. Even mold ennobles.—
Children were allowed to talk like that: they shy away from fire because it burned them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom.
And whoever is always “threshing straw,” how should he be allowed to rail against threshing! Such a fool’s mouth ought to be muzzled!
Such people sit down at the table and bring nothing with them, not even a good hunger:—and then they rail: “All is vanity!”
But to eat and drink well, O my brothers, is truly no vain art! Break, break for me the tablets of the never-glad!
14
“To the pure all things are pure”—so the people say. But I say to you: to swine all things become swine!
That is why the fanatics and head-hangers, whose hearts hang down too, preach: “The world itself is a filthy monster.”
For all of these are unclean in spirit; but especially those who have neither rest nor respite unless they see the world from behind—the afterworldly!
To them I say to their faces, even though it does not sound lovely: the world resembles the human being in that it has a behind—that much is true!
There is much filth in the world: that much is true! But that does not make the world itself a filthy monster!
There is wisdom in the fact that much in the world smells bad: disgust itself creates wings and powers that divine water springs!
Even in the best there is still something to be disgusted by; and even the best is still something that must be overcome!—
O my brothers, there is much wisdom in the fact that there is much filth in the world!—
15
Such sayings I heard pious afterworldly ones speak to their conscience; and truly, without guile or falsehood—though there is nothing more false in the world, nor more wicked.
“Let the world be the world! Do not lift even one finger against it!”
“Let whoever wants to choke and stab and cut and scrape people: do not lift even one finger against it! That way they will learn to renounce the world.”
“And your own reason—you yourself shall throttle and choke it; for it is a reason of this world—that way you yourself will learn to renounce the world.”—
—Break, break for me, O my brothers, these old tablets of the pious! Shatter with your words the sayings of the slanderers of the world!
16
“Whoever learns much unlearns all violent desire”—so people whisper to one another today in all the dark lanes.
“Wisdom makes weary, nothing is—worth it; you shall not desire!”—this new tablet I found hanging even in open marketplaces.
Break for me, O my brothers, break this new tablet too! The world-weary hung it up, and the preachers of death, and the jailers too: for look, it is also a sermon for servitude!—
Because they learned badly, and not the best, and everything too early and everything too fast: because they ate badly, they got that ruined stomach—
—for their spirit is a ruined stomach: it counsels death! For truly, my brothers, the spirit is a stomach!
Life is a well of joy: but for anyone out of whom the ruined stomach speaks, the father of gloom, all springs are poisoned.
To know: that is joy for the lion-willed! But whoever has grown weary is himself only “willed”; all the waves play with him.
And this is always the way of weak human beings: they lose themselves on their paths. And at last their weariness even asks: “Why did we ever take paths at all! It is all the same!”
To them it sounds lovely in their ears when it is preached: “Nothing is worth it! You shall not will!” But this is a sermon for servitude.
O my brothers, Zarathustra comes as a fresh roaring wind to all who are weary of the way; many noses he will yet make sneeze!
My free breath blows even through walls, and into prisons and imprisoned spirits!
Willing liberates: for willing is creating: so I teach. And you shall learn only in order to create!
And learning too you shall first learn from me,
learning well!—Whoever has ears, let him hear!
17
There stands the boat—over there perhaps the way leads into the great nothing.—But who wants to step into this “perhaps”?
None of you wants to step into the death boat! Then how can you want to be world-weary!
World-weary! And you have not even been carried off from the earth! I always found you still lusting after earth, still in love with your own earth-weariness!
Not for nothing does your lip hang down:—a small earthly wish still sits on it! And in your eye—does not a little cloud of unforgotten earthly joy swim there?
There are many good inventions on earth, some useful, others pleasant: for their sake the earth is to be loved.
And there are many things so well invented there that they are like a woman’s breast: useful and pleasant at once.
But you world-weary ones! You earth-idlers! You should be beaten with rods! With strokes of the rod your legs should be made lively again.
For: if you are not sick and worn-out wretches of whom the earth is weary, then you are sly sloths or sweet-toothed, skulking cats of pleasure. And if you will not run merrily again, then you shall—pass away!
One should not want to be a physician to the incurable: thus Zarathustra teaches:—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 that weariness created, and tablets that laziness created, rotten laziness: even if they speak alike, they want to be heard differently.—
Look at this languishing man here! He is only a span away from his goal, but out of weariness he has defiantly lain down here in the dust: this brave one!
Out of weariness he yawns at the path and the earth and the goal and himself: he will not take one more step—this brave one!
Now the sun glows down on him, and the dogs lick at his sweat: but he lies there in his defiance and would rather languish:—
—languish a span away from his goal! Truly, you will yet have to drag him by the hair into his heaven—this hero!
Better still, you let him lie where he has lain down, so that sleep may come to him, the comforter, with cooling, rustling rain:
Let him lie until he wakes of his own accord, until of his own accord he recants all weariness and what weariness taught through him!
Only, my brothers, scare the dogs away from him, the lazy sneaks, and all the swarming vermin:—
—all the swarming vermin of the “educated,” who feast on the sweat of every hero!—
19
I draw circles around me and holy boundaries; ever fewer climb with me up ever higher mountains—I build a mountain range out of ever holier mountains.—
But wherever you may climb with me, O my brothers: see to it that no parasite climbs with you!
Parasite: that is a worm, a crawling, cringing worm that wants to grow fat on your sick, sore corners.
And this is its art, that it guesses where climbing souls are weary: in your grief and dejection, in your tender shame it builds its loathsome nest.
Where the strong is weak, where the noble is all too mild—in there it builds its loathsome nest: the parasite lives where the great has small sore corners.
What is the highest kind of all that is, and what the lowest? The parasite is the lowest kind; but whoever is of the highest kind feeds the most parasites.
For the soul that has the longest ladder and can go down deepest: how should the most parasites not sit on it?—
—the most comprehensive soul, which can run and stray and roam farthest within itself; the most necessary soul, which plunges for joy into chance:—
—the soul that is, which dives into becoming; the soul that has, which wants to go into willing and longing:—
—the soul that flees itself, that catches up with itself in the widest circle; the wisest soul, to which folly speaks most sweetly:—
—the soul that loves itself most, in which all things have their streaming and counterstreaming and ebb and flood:—oh, how should the highest soul not have the worst parasites?
20
O my brothers, am I cruel, then? But I say: what is falling, one should also push!
Everything of today—it is falling, it is decaying: who would hold it up! But I—I want to push it as well!
Do you know the lust that rolls stones into steep depths?—These human beings of today: just look at them, how they roll into my depths!
I am a prelude of better players, O my brothers! An example! Do as my example does!
And whomever you do not teach to fly, teach him for me—to fall faster!—
21
I love the brave: but it is not enough to be a slasher with the sword—one must also know: strike, but look first at whom!
And often there is more bravery in holding back and passing by: so that one may save oneself for the worthier enemy!
You shall have only enemies who are to be hated, but not enemies to be despised: you must be proud of your enemy: thus I taught once before.
For the worthier enemy, O my friends, you shall save yourselves: that is why you must pass by much—
—especially much riffraff that makes noise in your ears about the people and peoples.
Keep your eye clean of their for and against! There is much right there, much wrong: whoever looks on grows angry.
To look in, to lash in—there they are one: so go away into the forests and lay your sword to sleep!
Go your ways! And let people and peoples go theirs!—dark ways, truly, on which not one hope flashes like heat lightning any longer!
Let the shopkeeper rule there, where everything that still glitters—is shopkeepers’ gold! It is the time of kings no longer: what calls itself a people today deserves no kings.
Just look how these peoples now act like shopkeepers themselves: they pick the smallest advantages even out of every rubbish heap!
They lie in wait for one another, they lie in wait to get something out of one another—that they call “good neighborliness.” O blissful 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 wants to rule! And where the teaching sounds otherwise, there—the best is lacking.
22
If they—had bread for nothing, woe! What would they scream for! Their upkeep—that is what really keeps them entertained; and they shall have a hard time of it!
They are beasts of prey: in their “working”—there is robbing too, in their “earning”—there is outwitting too! That is why they shall have a hard time of it!
So they shall become better beasts of prey, finer, cleverer, more like human beings: for the human being is the best beast of prey.
The human being has already robbed all animals of their virtues: that is because of all animals the human being has had the hardest time.
Only the birds are still above him. And if the human being learned to fly as well, woe! how high up—would his lust for prey fly!
23
This is how I want man and woman: the one fit for war, the other fit for giving birth, but both fit for dancing with head and legs.
And let every day be lost to us on which there was not one dance! And let every truth be called false to us with which there was not one laugh!
24
Your marrying: see to it that it is not a bad conclusion! You concluded too quickly: so there follows from it—marriage-breaking!
And better still marriage-breaking than marriage-bending, marriage-lying!—Thus a woman said to me: “Yes, I broke the marriage, but first the marriage broke—me!”
The badly matched I have always found to be the worst of the vengeful: they make all the world pay for the fact that they no longer run singly.
For this reason I want the honest to say to each other: “We love each other: let us see to it that we keep loving each other! Or shall our promise be a blunder?”
—“Give us a term and a small marriage, so that we may see whether we are fit for the great marriage! It is a great thing always to be two!”
Thus I counsel all who are honest; and what would my love of the Übermensch and of everything that is to come be if I counseled and spoke otherwise!
Not only to propagate yourselves onward but upward—for that, O my brothers, may the garden of marriage help you!
25
Whoever has grown wise about old origins, behold, he will at last seek the wellsprings of the future and new origins.—
O my brothers, it will not be long before new peoples arise and new springs rush down into new depths.
For the earthquake—it buries many wells, it creates much languishing: it also raises inner powers and secrets to the light.
The earthquake reveals new springs. In the earthquake of old peoples new springs break out.
And whoever cries: “Behold, here is a well for many who are thirsty, one heart for many who are longing, one will for many instruments”:—around him a people gathers, that is: many who are trying.
Who can command, who must obey—that is tried there! Ah, with what long seeking and guessing and failing and learning and trying anew!
Human society: it is a trial, so I teach—a long seeking: but what it seeks is the one who commands!—
—a trial, O my brothers! And no “contract”! Break, break for me such a word of the softhearted and the half-and-halfs!
26
O my brothers! With whom does the greatest danger to all human future lie? Is it not with the good and the just?—
—with those who say and feel in their hearts: “We already know what is good and just, and we have it too; woe to those who still seek here!”—
And whatever harm the evil may do: the harm of the good is the most harmful harm!
And whatever harm the slanderers of the world may do: the harm of the good is the most harmful harm.
O my brothers, someone once looked into the hearts of the good and the just and said: “They are the Pharisees.” But he was not understood.
The good and the just themselves were not allowed to understand him: their spirit is imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably clever.
But this is the truth: the good must be Pharisees—they have no choice!
The good must crucify the one who invents his own virtue for himself! That is the truth!
But the second one who discovered their land, the land, heart, and soil of the good and the just: it was he who asked: “Whom do they hate most?”
The creator they hate most: the one who breaks 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 the one who writes new values on new tablets, they sacrifice the future to themselves—they crucify all human future!
The good—they have always been the beginning of the end.—
27
O my brothers, have you understood this word too? And what I once said of the “last human being”?—
With whom does the greatest danger to all human future lie? Is it not with the good and the just?
Break, break for me the good and the just!—O my brothers, have you understood this word too?
28
You flee from me? You are frightened? You tremble at this word?
O my brothers, when I bade you break the good and the tablets of the good: only then did I put the human being out to sea on his high sea.
And only now does the great terror come to him, the great looking around, the great sickness, the great disgust, the great seasickness.
False coasts and false securities the good taught you; in the lies of the good you were born and sheltered. Everything has been lied crooked and bent down to the ground by the good.
But whoever discovered the land “human being” discovered the land “human future” too. Now you shall be seafarers for me, brave and patient!
Walk upright in good time, O my brothers, learn to walk upright! The sea is storming: many want to pull themselves upright again by you.
The sea is storming: everything is in the sea. Well then! Up! You old sailors’ hearts!
What fatherland! Thither our helm wants to go, where our children’s land is! Out there, stormier than the sea, storms our great longing!—
29
“Why so hard!” the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. “Are we not close relatives, after all?”—
Why so soft? O my brothers, thus I ask you: are you not, after all—my brothers?
Why so soft, so yielding and giving way? Why is there so much denial, so much self-denial in your hearts? So little fate in your eyes?
And if you will not be fates and inexorable ones: how could you—conquer with me?
And if your hardness will not flash and cut and cut to pieces: how could 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 bronze—harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is altogether hard.
This new tablet, O my brothers, I place over you: become hard!—
30
O you my will! You turning of all need, you my necessity! Preserve me from all small victories!
You dispensation of my soul, which I call destiny! You-in-me! Over-me! Preserve me and save me up for one great destiny!
And your last greatness, my will, save it up for your last—so that you may be inexorable in your victory! Ah, who has not succumbed to his victory!
Ah, whose eye has not darkened in this drunken twilight! Ah, whose foot has not reeled and unlearned in victory—how to stand!—
—That I may one day be ready and ripe at the great noon: ready and ripe like glowing bronze, like a cloud pregnant with lightning, and a swelling udder of milk:—
—ready for myself and for my most hidden will: a bow ardent for its arrow, an arrow ardent for its star:—
—a star, ready and ripe in its noon, glowing, pierced, blissful before annihilating sun-arrows:—
—a sun itself and an inexorable sun-will, ready for annihilating in victory!
O will, turning of all need, you my necessity! Save me up for one great victory!—
Thus spoke Zarathustra.