--- title: "Thus Spake Zarathustra" author: "Friedrich Nietzsche" translator: "Thomas Common" languages: [en] shelf: "Philosophy" section: 61 of 95 url: https://scriptura.si/works/nietzsche-zarathustra/61/ cite: "Friedrich Nietzsche, tr. Thomas Common, Thus Spake Zarathustra, section 61. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/nietzsche-zarathustra/61/" --- # Thus Spake Zarathustra *Friedrich Nietzsche, tr. Thomas Common* A prophet comes down from his mountain to teach the overman, in sermons and songs. ## 61. LVI. Old and New Tables · 1 of 6 Source: https://scriptura.si/works/nietzsche-zarathustra/61/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/nietzsche-zarathustra/61/#p-N ### 1 [¶1] Here do I sit and wait, old broken tables around me and also new half-written tables. When cometh mine hour? [¶2] —The hour of my descent, of my down-going: for once more will I go unto men. [¶3] For that hour do I now wait: for first must the signs come unto me that it is MINE hour—namely, the laughing lion with the flock of doves. [¶4] Meanwhile do I talk to myself as one who hath time. No one telleth me anything new, so I tell myself mine own story. ### 2 [¶6] When I came unto men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation: all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men. [¶7] An old wearisome business seemed to them all discourse about virtue; and he who wished to sleep well spake of “good” and “bad” ere retiring to rest. [¶8] This somnolence did I disturb when I taught that NO ONE YET KNOWETH what is good and bad:—unless it be the creating one! [¶9] —It is he, however, who createth man’s goal, and giveth to the earth its meaning and its future: he only EFFECTETH it THAT aught is good or bad. [¶10] And I bade them upset their old academic chairs, and wherever that old infatuation had sat; I bade them laugh at their great moralists, their saints, their poets, and their Saviours. [¶11] At their gloomy sages did I bid them laugh, and whoever had sat admonishing as a black scarecrow on the tree of life. [¶12] On their great grave-highway did I seat myself, and even beside the carrion and vultures—and I laughed at all their bygone and its mellow decaying glory. [¶13] Verily, like penitential preachers and fools did I cry wrath and shame on all their greatness and smallness. Oh, that their best is so very small! Oh, that their worst is so very small! Thus did I laugh. [¶14] Thus did my wise longing, born in the mountains, cry and laugh in me; a wild wisdom, verily!—my great pinion-rustling longing. [¶15] And oft did it carry me off and up and away and in the midst of laughter; then flew I quivering like an arrow with sun-intoxicated rapture: [¶16] —Out into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen, into warmer souths than ever sculptor conceived,—where gods in their dancing are ashamed of all clothes: [¶17] (That I may speak in parables and halt and stammer like the poets: and verily I am ashamed that I have still to be a poet!) [¶18] Where all becoming seemed to me dancing of Gods, and wantoning of Gods, and the world unloosed and unbridled and fleeing back to itself:— [¶19] —As an eternal self-fleeing and re-seeking of one another of many Gods, as the blessed self-contradicting, recommuning, and refraternising with one another of many Gods:— [¶20] Where all time seemed to me a blessed mockery of moments, where necessity was freedom itself, which played happily with the goad of freedom:— [¶21] Where I also found again mine old devil and arch-enemy, the spirit of gravity, and all that it created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence and purpose and will and good and evil:— [¶22] For must there not be that which is danced OVER, danced beyond? Must there not, for the sake of the nimble, the nimblest,—be moles and clumsy dwarfs?— ### 3 [¶24] There was it also where I picked up from the path the word “Superman,” and that man is something that must be surpassed. [¶25] —That man is a bridge and not a goal—rejoicing over his noontides and evenings, as advances to new rosy dawns: [¶26] —The Zarathustra word of the great noontide, and whatever else I have hung up over men like purple evening-afterglows. [¶27] Verily, also new stars did I make them see, along with new nights; and over cloud and day and night, did I spread out laughter like a gay-coloured canopy. [¶28] I taught them all MY poetisation and aspiration: to compose and collect into unity what is fragment in man, and riddle and fearful chance;— [¶29] —As composer, riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance, did I teach them to create the future, and all that HATH BEEN—to redeem by creating. [¶30] The past of man to redeem, and every “It was” to transform, until the Will saith: “But so did I will it! So shall I will it—” [¶31] —This did I call redemption; this alone taught I them to call redemption.— [¶32] Now do I await MY redemption—that I may go unto them for the last time. [¶33] For once more will I go unto men: AMONGST them will my sun set; in dying will I give them my choicest gift! [¶34] From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches,— [¶35] —So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with GOLDEN oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it.— [¶36] Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables—half-written. ### 4 [¶38] Behold, here is a new table; but where are my brethren who will carry it with me to the valley and into hearts of flesh?— [¶39] Thus demandeth my great love to the remotest ones: BE NOT CONSIDERATE OF THY NEIGHBOUR! Man is something that must be surpassed. [¶40] There are many divers ways and modes of surpassing: see THOU thereto! But only a buffoon thinketh: “man can also be OVERLEAPT.” [¶41] Surpass thyself even in thy neighbour: and a right which thou canst seize upon, shalt thou not allow to be given thee! [¶42] What thou doest can no one do to thee again. Lo, there is no requital. [¶43] He who cannot command himself shall obey. And many a one CAN command himself, but still sorely lacketh self-obedience! ### 5