Break up for me, O my brethren, break up also that NEW table! The
weary-o’-the-world put it up, and the preachers of death and the jailer:
for lo, it is also a sermon for slavery:—
Because they learned badly and not the best, and everything too early
and everything too fast; because they ATE badly: from thence hath
resulted their ruined stomach;—
—For a ruined stomach, is their spirit: IT persuadeth to death! For
verily, my brethren, the spirit IS a stomach!
Life is a well of delight, but to him in whom the ruined stomach
speaketh, the father of affliction, all fountains are poisoned.
To discern: that is DELIGHT to the lion-willed! But he who hath become
weary, is himself merely “willed”; with him play all the waves.
And such is always the nature of weak men: they lose themselves on their
way. And at last asketh their weariness: “Why did we ever go on the way?
All is indifferent!”
TO THEM soundeth it pleasant to have preached in their ears: “Nothing is
worth while! Ye shall not will!” That, however, is a sermon for slavery.
O my brethren, a fresh blustering wind cometh Zarathustra unto all
way-weary ones; many noses will he yet make sneeze!
Even through walls bloweth my free breath, and in into prisons and
imprisoned spirits!
Willing emancipateth: for willing is creating: so do I teach. And ONLY
for creating shall ye learn!
And also the learning shall ye LEARN only from me, the learning
well!—He who hath ears let him hear!
17.
There standeth the boat—thither goeth it over, perhaps into vast
nothingness—but who willeth to enter into this “Perhaps”?
None of you want to enter into the death-boat! How should ye then be
WORLD-WEARY ones!
World-weary ones! And have not even withdrawn from the earth! Eager
did I ever find you for the earth, amorous still of your own
earth-weariness!
Not in vain doth your lip hang down:—a small worldly wish still sitteth
thereon! And in your eye—floateth there not a cloudlet of unforgotten
earthly bliss?
There are on the earth many good inventions, some useful, some pleasant:
for their sake is the earth to be loved.
And many such good inventions are there, that they are like woman’s
breasts: useful at the same time, and pleasant.
Ye world-weary ones, however! Ye earth-idlers! You, shall one beat with
stripes! With stripes shall one again make you sprightly limbs.
For if ye be not invalids, or decrepit creatures, of whom the earth is
weary, then are ye sly sloths, or dainty, sneaking pleasure-cats. And if
ye will not again RUN gaily, then shall ye—pass away!
To the incurable shall one not seek to be a physician: thus teacheth
Zarathustra:—so shall ye pass away!
But more COURAGE is needed to make an end than to make a new verse: that
do all physicians and poets know well.—
18.
O my brethren, there are tables which weariness framed, and tables
which slothfulness framed, corrupt slothfulness: although they speak
similarly, they want to be heard differently.—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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