Zarathustra
To those who have not the time to wade through the twelve volumes of Nietzsche’s works and yet wish to become acquainted with him at his best, we recommend a perusal of his book Thus Spake Zarathustra. It is original and interesting, full of striking passages, sometimes flashes with deep truths, then again is sterile and unprofitable, or even tedious, and sometimes absurd; but at any rate it presents the embodiment of Nietzsche’s grandest thoughts in their most attractive and characteristic form. We need scarcely warn the reader that Zarathustra is only another name for Friedrich Nietzsche and has nothing to do with the historical person of that name, the great Iranian prophet, the founder of Mazdaism.
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is a hermit philosopher who, weary of his wisdom, leaves his cave and comes to mingle with men, to teach them the overman. He meets a saint who loves God, and Zarathustra leaving him says: “Is it possible? This old saint in his forest has not yet heard that God is dead!”
Zarathustra preaches to a crowd in the market:
“I teach you the overman. Man is a something that shall be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass him?
“All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and are ye going to be the ebb of this great tide and rather revert to the animal than surpass man?
“What with man is the ape? A joke or a sore shame. Man shall be the same for the overman, a joke or a sore shame.
“Behold, I teach you the overman!
“The overman is the significance of the earth. Your will shall say; the overman shall be the significance of the earth.
“I conjure you, my brethren, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak unto you of superterrestrial hopes! Poisoners they are whether they know it or not.
“Verily, a muddy stream is man. One must be the ocean to be able to receive a muddy stream without becoming unclean.
“Behold, I teach you the overman: he is that ocean, in him your great contempt can sink.
“What is the greatest thing ye can experience? That is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which not only your happiness, but your reason and virtue as well, turn loathsome.
“I love him who is of a free spirit and of a free heart: thus his head is merely the intestine of his heart, but his heart driveth him to destruction.
“I love all those who are like heavy drops falling one by one from the dark cloud lowering over men: they announce the coming of the lightning and perish in the announcing.
“Behold, I am an announcer of the lightning and a heavy drop from the clouds; that lightning’s name it the overman.”
Zarathustra comes as an enemy of the good and the just. He says:
“Lo, the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh to pieces their tables of values,—the law-breaker, the criminal:—but he is the creator.
“The destroyer of morality I am called by the good and just: my tale is immoral.”
Nietzsche’s favorite animals are the proud eagle and the cunning serpent, the former because it typifies aristocracy, the latter as the wisest among all creatures of the earth. It is a strange and exceptional combination, for these two animals are commonly represented as enemies. The eagle and serpent was the emblem of ancient Elis and is at present the coat-of-arms of Mexico, but in both cases the eagle is interpreted to be the conqueror of the serpent, not its friend, carrying it as his prey in his claws.
Zarathustra’s philosophy is a combination of the eagle’s pride and the serpent’s wisdom, which Nietzsche describes thus:
“Lo! an eagle swept through the air in wide circles, a serpent hanging from it not like a prey, but like a friend: coiling round its neck.
“They are mine animals,’ said Zarathustra and rejoiced heartily.
“The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the sun have set out to reconnoitre.
“They wish to learn whether Zarathustra still liveth. Verily, do I still live.
“More dangerous than among animals I found it among men. Dangerous ways are taken by Zarathustra. Let mine animals lead me!”
Here is a sentence worth quoting:
“Of all that is written I love only that which the writer wrote with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt learn that blood is spirit.”
In another chapter on the back-worlds-men Nietzsche writes:
“Once Zarathustra threw his spell beyond man, like all back-worlds-men. Then the world seemed to me the work of a suffering and tortured God.
“Alas! brethren, that God whom I created was man’s work and man’s madness, like all Gods!
“Man he was, and but a poor piece of man and the I. From mine own ashes and flame it came unto me, that ghost yea verily! It did not come unto me from beyond!
“What happened, brethren? I overcame myself, the sufferer, and carrying mine own ashes unto the mountains invented for myself a brighter flame. And lo! the ghost departed from me!
“Now to me, the convalescent, it would be suffering and pain to believe in such ghosts: suffering it would be for me and humiliation. Thus spake I unto the back-worlds-men.”
Nietzsche’s self is not ideal but material; it is not thought, not even the will, but the body. The following passage sounds like Vedantism as interpreted by a materialist:
“He who is awake and knoweth saith: Body I am throughout, and nothing besides; and soul is merely a word for a something in body.
“Body is one great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a herdsman.
“Also thy little reason, my brother, which thou callest ’spirit’—it is a tool of thy body, a little tool and toy of thy great reason.
“T, thou sayest and art proud of that word. But the greater thing is—which thou wilt not believe—thy body and its great reason. It doth not say T, but it is the acting ‘I.’
“The self ever listeneth and seeketh: it compareth, subdueth, conquereth, destroyeth. It ruleth and is the ruler of the ‘I’ as well.
“Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, standeth a mighty lord, an unknown wise man—whose name is self. In thy body he dwelleth, thy body he is.
“There is more reason in thy body than in thy best wisdom. And who can know why thy body needeth thy beat wisdom?
“Thy self laugheth at thine ‘I’ and its prancings: What are these boundings and flights of thought? it saith unto itself. A round-about way to my purpose. I am the leading-string of the I and the suggester of its concepts.
“The creative self created for itself valuing and despising, it created for itself lust and woe. The creative body created for itself the spirit to be the hand of its will.”
One of the best passages in Zarathustra’s sermons is Nietzsche’s command to love the overman, the man of the distant future:
“I tell you, your love of your neighbor is your bad love of yourselves.
“Ye flee from yourselves unto your neighbor and would fain make a virtue thereof; but I see through your unselfishness.’
“The thou is older than the I; the thou hath been proclaimed holy, but the I not yet; man thus thrusteth himself upon his neighbor.
“Do I counsel you to love your neighbor? I rather counsel you to flee from your neighbor and to love the most remote.
“Love unto the most remote future man is higher than love unto your neighbor. And I consider love unto things and ghosts to be higher than love unto men.
“This ghost which marcheth before thee, my brother, is more beautiful than thou art. Why dost thou not give him thy flesh and thy bones? Thou art afraid and fleest unto thy neighbor.
“Unable to endure yourselves and not loving yourselves enough, you seek to wheedle your neighbor into loving you and thus to gild you with his error.
“My brethren, I counsel you not to love your neighbor; I counsel you to love those who are the most remote.”
In perfect agreement with the ideal of the overman is Nietzsche’s view of marriage, and verily it contains a very true and noble thought:
“Thou shalt build beyond thyself. But first thou must be built thyself square in body and soul.
“Thou shalt not only propagate thyself but propagate thyself upwards! Therefore the garden of marriage may help thee!
“Thou shalt create a higher body, a prime motor, a wheel of self-rolling,—thou shalt create a creator.
“Marriage: thus I call the will of two to create that one which is more than they who created it I call marriage reverence unto each other as unto those who will such a will.
“Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the much-too-many call marriage, those superfluous—alas, what call I that?
“Alas! that soul’s poverty of two! Alas! that soul’s dirt of two! Alas! that miserable ease of two!
“Marriage they call that; and they say marriage is made in heaven.
“Well, I like it not that heaven of the superfluous!”
Nietzsche takes a Schopenhauerian view of womankind, excepting from the common condemnation his sister alone, to whom he once said, “You are not a woman, you are a friend.” He says of woman:
“Too long a slave and a tyrant have been hidden in woman. Therefore woman is not yet capable of friendship; she knoweth love only.”
Nietzsche is not aware that the self changes and that it grows by the acquisition of truth. He treats the self as remaining the same, and truth as that which our will has made conceivable. Truth to him is a mere creature of the self. Here is Zarathustra’s condemnation of man’s search for truth:
“‘Will unto truth’ ye call, ye wisest men, what inspireth you and maketh you ardent?
“‘Will unto the conceivableness of all that is,’—thus I call your will!
“All that is ye are going to make conceivable. For with good mistrust ye doubt whether it is conceivable.
“But it hath to submit itself and bend before yourselves! Thus your will willeth. Smooth it shall become and subject unto spirit as its mirror and reflected image.
“That is your entire will, ye wisest men, as a will unto power; even when ye speak of good and evil and of valuations.
“Ye will create the world before which to kneel down. Thus it is your last hope and drunkenness.”
Recognition of truth is regarded as submission:
“To be true,—few are able to be so! And he who is able doth not want to be so. But least of all the good are able.
“Oh, these good people! Good men never speak the truth. To be good in that way is a sickness for the mind.
“They yield, these good men, they submit themselves; their heart saith what is said unto it, their foundation obeyeth. But whoever obeyeth doth not hear himself!”
Nietzsche despises science. He must have had sorry experiences with scientists who offered him the dry bones of scholarship as scientific truth.
“When I lay sleeping, a sheep ate at the ivy-wreath of my head,—ate and said eating: ‘Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.’
“Said it and went off clumsily and proudly. So a child told me.
“This is the truth: I have departed from the house of scholars, and the door I have shut violently behind me.
“Too long sat my soul hungry at their table. Not, as they, am I trained for perceiving as for cracking nuts.
“Freedom I love, and a breeze over a fresh soil. And I would rather sleep on ox-skins then on their honors and respectabilities.
“I am too hot and am burnt with mine own thoughts, so as often to take my breath away. Then I must go into the open air and away from all dusty rooms.
“Like millworks they work, and like corn-crushers. Let folk only throw their grain into them! They know only too well how to grind corn and make white dust out of it.
“They look well at each other’s fingers and trust each other not over-much. Ingenious in little stratagems, they wait for those whose knowledge walketh on lame feet; like spiders they wait.
“They also know how to play with false dice; and I found them playing so eagerly that they perspired from it.
“We are strangers unto each other, and their virtues are still more contrary unto my taste than their falsehoods and false dice.”
Even if all scientists were puny sciolists, the ideal of science would remain, and if all the professed seekers for truth were faithless to and unworthy of their high calling, truth itself would not be abolished.
So far as we can see, Nietzsche never became acquainted with any one of the exact sciences. He was a philologist who felt greatly dissatisfied with the loose methods of his colleagues, but he has not done much in his own specialty to attain to a greater exactness of results. His essays on Homer, on the Greek tragedy, and similar subjects, have apparently not received much recognition among philologists and historians.
Having gathered a number of followers in his cave, one of them, called the conscientious man, said to the others:
“We seek different things, even up here, ye and I. For I seek more security. Therefore have I come unto Zarathustra. For he is the firmest tower and will—
“Fear—that is man’s hereditary and fundamental feeling. By fear everything is explained, original sin and original virtue. Out of fear also hath grown my virtue, which is called Science.
“Such long, old fears, at last become refined, spiritual, intellectual, to-day, methinketh, it is called Science.”
This conception of science is refuted by Nietzsche in this fashion:
“Thus spake the conscientious one. But Zarathustra, who had just returned into his cave and had heard the last speech and guessed its sense, threw a handful of roses at the conscientious one, laughing at his ‘truths.’ ‘What?’ he called. ‘What did I hear just now? Verily, methinketh, thou art a fool, or I am one myself. And thy “truth” I turn upside down with one blow, and that quickly.’
“‘For fear is our exception. But courage and adventure, and the joy of what is uncertain, what hath never been dared—courage, methinketh, is the whole prehistoric development of man.
“‘From the wildest, most courageous beasts he hath, by his envy and his preying, won all their virtues. Only thus hath he become a man.
“‘This courage, at last become refined, spiritual, intellectual, this human courage with an eagle’s wings and a serpent’s wisdom—it, methinketh, is called to-day—’
“‘Zarathustra!’ cried all who sat together there, as from one mouth making a great laughter withal.”
In spite of identifying the self with the body, which is mortal, Nietzsche longs for the immortal. He says:
“Oh! how could I fail to be eager for eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings, the ring of recurrence?
“Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have had children, unless it be this woman I love—for I love thee, O Eternity!”
The best known of Nietzsche’s poems forms the conclusion of Thus Spake Zarathustra, the most impressive work of Nietzsche, and is called by him “The Drunken Song.” The thoughts are almost incoherent and it is difficult to say what is really meant by it. Nothing is more characteristic of Nietzsche’s attitude and the vagueness of his fitful mode of thought. It has been illustrated by Hans Lindlof, in the same spirit in which Richard Strauss has written a musical composition on the theme of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.
“The Drunken Song” reads in our translation as follows:
“Man, listen, pray!
What the deep midnight has to say:
‘I lay asleep,
‘But woke from dreams deep and distraught
The world is deep,
’E’en deeper than the day e’er thought.
‘Deep’s the world’s pain,—
‘Joy deeper still than heartache’s burning.
‘Pain says, Life’s vain!
‘But for eternity Joy’s yearning.
‘For deep eternity Joy’s yearning!’”
Prof. William Benjamin Smith has translated this same song, and we think it will be interesting to our readers to compare his translation with our rendering. It reads as follows:
“Oh Man! Give ear!
What saith the midnight deep and drear?
‘From sleep, from sleep
‘I woke as from a dream profound.
‘The world is deep
’And deeper than the day can sound.
‘Deep is its woe,—
‘Joy, deeper still than heart’s distress.
‘Woe saith, Forego!
‘But Joy wills everlastingness,—
‘Wills deep, deep everlastingness.’”