Of the Rabble
Life is a fountain of delight; but where the rabble also drinks all wells are poisoned.
I love all that is clean; but I do not like to see the grinning mouths and the thirst of the unclean.
They cast their eyes down into the well: now their repulsive smile glitters up to me out of the well.
They have poisoned the holy water with their lasciviousness; and when they called their dirty dreams
"delight" they poisoned even the words, too.
The flame is unwilling to burn when they put their damp hearts to the fire; the spirit itself bubbles and smokes
when the rabble approaches the fire.
The fruit grows mawkish and over-ripe in their hands: the fruit tree becomes unstable and withered at the top
under their glance.
And many a one who turned away from life, turned away only from the rabble: he did not wish to share the well
and the flame and the fruit with the rabble.
And many a one who went into the desert and suffered thirst with beasts of prey merely did not wish to sit
around the cistern with dirty camel-drivers.
And many a one who came along like a destroyer and a shower of hail to all orchards wanted merely to put his
foot into the jaws of the rabble and so stop its throat.
And to know that life itself has need of enmity and dying and martyrdoms, that was not the mouthful that
choked me most.
But I once asked, and my question almost stifled me: What, does life have need of the rabble, too?
Are poisoned wells necessary, and stinking fires and dirty dreams and maggots in the bread of life?
Not my hate but my disgust hungrily devoured my life! Alas, I often grew weary of the spirit when I found
the rabble, too, had been gifted with spirit!
And I turned my back upon the rulers when I saw what they now call ruling: bartering and haggling for power --
with the rabble!
I dwelt with stopped ears among peoples with a strange language: that the language of their bartering and
their haggling for power might remain strange to me.
And I went ill-humouredly through all yesterdays and todays holding my nose: truly, all yesterdays and
todays smell badly of the scribbling rabble!
Like a cripple who has gone blind, deaf, and dumb: thus have I lived for a long time, that I might not live
with the power-rabble, the scribbling-rabble, and the pleasure-rabble.
My spirit mounted steps wearily and warily; alms of delight were its refreshment; the blind man's life
crept along on a staff.
Yet what happened to me? How did I free myself from disgust? Who rejuvenated my eyes? How did I fly to the height
where the rabble no longer sit at the well?
Did my disgust itself create wings and water-divining powers for me? Truly, I had to fly to the extremest height
to find again the fountain of delight!
Oh, I have found it, my brothers! Here, in the extremest height, the fountain of delight gushes up for me! And here there
is a life at which no rabble drinks with me!
You gush up almost too impetuously, fountain of delight! And in wanting to fill the cup, you often empty it again!
And I still have to learn to approach you more discreetly: my heart still flows towards you all-too-impetuously.
My heart, upon which my summer burns, a short, hot, melancholy, over-joyful summer: how my summer-heart longs
for your coolness!
Gone is the lingering affliction of my spring! Gone the malice of my snowflakes in June! Summer have I become entirely,
and summer-noonday!
A summer at the extremest height with cold fountains and blissful stillness: oh come, my friends, that the stillness may
become more blissful yet!
For this is our height and our home: we live too nobly and boldly here for all unclean men and their thirsts.
Only cast your pure eyes into the well of my delight, friends! You will not dim its sparkle! It shall laugh back at you
with its purity.
We build our nest in the tree Future; eagles shall bring food to us solitaries in their beaks!
Truly, food in which no unclean men could join us! They would think they were eating fire and burn their mouths!
Truly, we do not prepare a home here for unclean men! Their bodies and their spirits would call our happiness a cave of
ice!
So let us live above them like strong winds, neighbours of the eagles, neighbours of the snow, neighbours of the sun: that
is how strong winds live.
And like a wind will I one day blow among them and with my spirit take away the breath from their spirit: thus my
future will have it.
Truly, Zarathustra is a strong wind to all flatlands; and he offers this advice to his enemies and to all that
spews and spits: "Take care not to spit against the wind!"
Thus spoke Zarathustra.