That I have to sing once more—THAT consolation did I devise for myself, and THIS convalescence: would ye also make another lyre-lay thereof?” —“Do not talk further,” answered his animals once more; “rather, thou convalescent, prepare for thyself first a lyre, a new lyre! For behold, O Zarathustra! For thy new lays there are needed new lyres. Sing and bubble over, O Zarathustra, heal thy soul with new lays: that thou mayest bear thy great fate, which hath not yet been any one’s fate! For thine animals know it well, O Zarathustra, who thou art and must become: behold, THOU ART THE TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RETURN,—that is now THY fate! That thou must be the first to teach this teaching—how could this great fate not be thy greatest danger and infirmity! Behold, we know what thou teachest: that all things eternally return, and ourselves with them, and that we have already existed times without number, and all things with us. Thou teachest that there is a great year of Becoming, a prodigy of a great year; it must, like a sand-glass, ever turn up anew, that it may anew run down and run out:— —So that all those years are like one another in the greatest and also in the smallest, so that we ourselves, in every great year, are like ourselves in the greatest and also in the smallest. And if thou wouldst now die, O Zarathustra, behold, we know also how thou wouldst then speak to thyself:—but thine animals beseech thee not to die yet! Thou wouldst speak, and without trembling, buoyant rather with bliss, for a great weight and worry would be taken from thee, thou patientest one!— ‘Now do I die and disappear,’ wouldst thou say, ‘and in a moment I am nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies. But the plexus of causes returneth in which I am intertwined,—it will again create me! I myself pertain to the causes of the eternal return. I come again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent—NOT to a new life, or a better life, or a similar life: —I come again eternally to this identical and selfsame life, in its greatest and its smallest, to teach again the eternal return of all things,— —To speak again the word of the great noontide of earth and man, to announce again to man the Superman. I have spoken my word. I break down by my word: so willeth mine eternal fate—as announcer do I succumb! The hour hath now come for the down-goer to bless himself. Thus—ENDETH Zarathustra’s down-going.’”— When the animals had spoken these words they were silent and waited, so that Zarathustra might say something to them: but Zarathustra did not hear that they were silent. On the contrary, he lay quietly with closed eyes like a person sleeping, although he did not sleep; for he communed just then with his soul. The serpent, however, and the eagle, when they found him silent in such wise, respected the great stillness around him, and prudently retired. LVIII. THE GREAT LONGING.