Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None

Zarathustra says that the wisest ones call their lustful drives a “will to truth” (88). He proclaims, “Will to thinkability of all being, that what I call your will” (88). Zarathustra writes of the will, “Your will and your values you set upon the river of becoming; what the people believe to be good and evil reveals to me an ancient will to power. It was you, you wisest ones, who placed such guests into the skiff and gave them pomp and proud names—you and your dominating will! Now the river carries your skiff along: it has to carry it. It matters little whether the breaking wave foams and angrily opposes the keel!” (88). Zarathustra describes the will as a force generated by man. He then posits out of this general understanding of will a will to power. A will to power is what first differentiated between good and evil. He then extracts another will, the will to truth. A will to truth works towards knowledge and takes wisdom as its subject. Will to power and will to truth come together as a will to life. Zarathustra begins discussing the nature of life. He argues that living is obeying and that the one who cannot obey themselves must be commanded. Yet, commanding is harder than obeying. Zarathustra states, “And not only that the commander bears the burden of all obeyers, and that this burden easily crushes him:—In all commanding it seemed to me there is an experiment and a risk […] It must become the judge and avenger and victim of its own law” (89). The will to power is found even in those who serve. The weaker follows their own will to serve the stronger out of a desire to be stronger over what is still weaker than them. Similarly, the stronger give way and risk life itself. “This is a gambling with death. All seemingly good acts are tainted with the will to become master” (89). The will to power becomes a form of gambling with death. 

Zarathustra describes a deep sea filled with monsters. Among them swims the sublime one. He is made of “ugly truths, hunter’s spoils, and tattered clothing” (91). Having not yet learned laughing and beauty, he returned to the gloomy depths of knowledge. If only the sublime one would grow tired of his sublimity, then beauty would arise. Only then would Zarathustra find the fish tasty. He says, “And only when he turns away from himself will he leap over his own shadow—and truly! Into his own sun” (91). He would smell of the earth and not of contempt for the earth, becoming elevated and not merely sublime. For the one with the heroic will, such as the sublime one, beauty is the most difficult of all virtues to learn because it is not achieved by violent willing. “To stand with muscles relaxed and with an unharnessed will: this is most difficult for all of you sublime ones! When power becomes gracious and descends into view: beauty I call such descending” (92). The sublime one has since emulated a column, retaining height but becoming hard and unyielding. To be beautiful, one must learn kindness. 

Zarathustra travels far into the future and is filled with dread. He returns to the present to share what he has learned. He speaks of colors, revealing that he has never seen such shades in his life. He laughs in amazement and shock from the realization that one’s true colors do reveal themselves. He states that he has seen each one of their true colors: “If one were to pull away veil and wrap and color and gesture from you, there would be just enough left over to scare away the crows. […] I would rather be a day laborer in the underworld and among the shades of yore!—Even the underworldly are fatter and fuller than you!” (94). Zarathustra cannot stand the people of the present, either naked or clothed. He tells his followers that they are little more than paintings of everything that has ever been believed or, rather, that they are products of the old customs. Therefore, all of them lack true beliefs. Their only reality is that they will one day die. Zarathustra tells the people of the present that they make him laugh. 

When the moon rose, Zarathustra imagined that it wanted to give birth to a sun. But, the moon lied, and Zarathustra begins to contemplate the man in the moon. He says, “Indeed, he is not much of a man either, this timid nocturnal rhapsodist. Truly, with a bad conscience he wanders over the rooftops. For he is lecherous and jealous, this monk in the moon, lecherous for the earth and for all the joys of lovers” (95). The moon may love the earth and earthly things, but there is shame in its love. The moon cares not that it gives way to the sun or that it shines for man. Zarathustra says to his listeners that they are like the moon. He says, “Your spirit was persuaded to despise the earthly, but not your entrails; and they are the strongest part of you! And now your spirit is ashamed to do the bidding of your entrails, and out of its own shame it takes the paths that sneak and lie” (95). For what is highest, speaks the lying spirit, would be to look at life without desire. In a reference to Mary immaculately conceiving Jesus, Zarathustra comments on a view of desire: “And to me the immaculate perception of all things would be that I desire nothing from things, except that I might lie there before them like a mirror with a hundred eyes” (96). To love without desire is to love without creating, becoming, or begetting. The immaculate perceiving ones will never give birth and instead will lie pregnant on the horizon. 

As he lay asleep a sheep ate an ivy wreath upon Zarathustra’s head and said to him that he was no longer a scholar. Zarathustra concedes that he has moved out of the house of scholars because he has not been trained to approach the truth as if cracking nuts. Of scholars he proclaims, “They sit cool in their cool shade; in all things they want to be mere spectators and they take care not to sit where the sun burns on the steps” (98). These scholars work like machines and do not trust one another. Instead, they lie in wait to undermine one another. When Zarathustra dwelled with them, he swelled over them and for this they resented him. Much like with the actors and jesters, Zarathustra represented bad consciousness to them, or rather, exposed their façade. 

Zarathustra comments on his recent speeches concerning the spirit/body duality. He says that, since his time in isolation, he has learned more about the body and that spirit has become a hypothetical spirit to him. Zarathustra argues that one is not obligated to keep the same opinion for life. He says, “I do not belong to those whose Why may be questioned. Is my experience of yesterday? It has been a long time since I experienced the reasons of my opinions. Would I not have to be a keg of memory if I were also to have my reasons with me?” (99). When the listener says that he has faith in Zarathustra, seemingly separating Zarathustra as something other than his teachings, Zarathustra lectures him on faith. Zarathustra argues that he should not have faith in him. He exposes the poets for falsely believing themselves to be geniuses under the guise of inspiration. Poets do not accurately search the depths of their soul and are prideful. 

There is an island not far away that has a mountain that smokes continuously. The people of the village believe the smoking comes from a boulder sitting at the gates to the underworld. One day, a crew on a boat caught sight of Zarathustra on the island and believed him to be entering hell. Now, everyone is convinced that the devil has snatched Zarathustra. When Zarathustra returns, his disciples relay this story to him. Zarathustra realizes that the world revolves around the inventors of new values. He argues that the play of smoke and noise is nothing more than a show that eventually fades. He says, “And just confess! When your noise and smoke cleared, it was always very little that has happened” (104). When the fire hound says he does not know of the church, Zarathustra calls him a hypocrite. He argues, “Like you yourself the state is a hypocrite hound; like you it likes to speak with smoke and bellowing—to make believe, like you, that it speaks from the belly of things. For it wants absolutely to be the most important animal on earth, this state; and people believe it, too” (104). Zarathustra shames the fire hound by appealing to his pride and describing another, better fire hound made of gold. The disciples barely listen to Zarathustra as they are eager to tell him what the sailors thought. Zarathustra says that what the sailors think means nothing to him. 

A soothsayer said that “everything is empty, everything is the same, everything was!” (105). Zarathustra heard this soothsayer and his prophecy went straight to his heart and transformed him. Sadly, Zarathustra became like the men to whom the soothsayer had spoken. Zarathustra grieved. He did not eat, drink, or speak for three days. Suddenly, he fell into a deep sleep. When he awakes, surrounded by his disciples, he tells them of a dream. In the dream, he had renounced all life and become a grave watcher. While watching graves, he hears three loud blows at a door. Zarathustra cries out, “Alpa! Who bears his ashes to the mountain!” (107). A roaring wind tears open the top of the coffin and places it before Zarathustra. The coffin spewed forth a burst of thousandfold laughter.

Upon hearing this dream, one of his disciples offers an interpretation. He says to Zarathustra, “Are you yourself not the wind with its shrill whistling, that tears open the gates of the fortresses of death? Are you yourself not the coffin full of colorful sarcasms and the angelic grimaces of life?” (108). He tells Zarathustra that he advocates for life and that he spreads laughter over them like a colorful tent. He states, “But as you awakened from them and came to yourself, thus shall they awaken from themselves—and come to you!” (108). Zarathustra examines the faces of his disciples but does not recognize them. As they help him to his feet, his eyes transform and he comprehends all that has happened. He tells his disciples to prepare a good meal, inviting the soothsayer. He gazes into the face of the one who interpreted the dream and shakes his head. 

As Zarathustra crosses a bridge, the cripples and beggars of the village surround him. One speaks for the rest, saying, “Behold, Zarathustra! The people too learn from you and are gaining faith in your teaching; but in order to believe you completely, they need one more thing—you must first persuade us cripples!” (109). The cripple says that if Zarathustra is to make believers of them, he should heal them. Zarathustra responds, “If one takes the hump from the hunchback, then one takes his spirit too—thus teach the people. And if one gives the blind man his eyesight, then he sees too many bad things on earth, such that he curses the one who healed him. But the one who makes the lame walk causes him the greatest harm, for scarcely does he begin to walk when his vices run away with him—thus teach the people about cripples. And why should Zarathustra not learn also from the people, if the people learn from Zarathustra?” (109).

Zarathustra recounts seeing a single gigantic ear and that, after looking at it more closely, he saw a tiny stalk of a man. The people said that the big ear was a great human being. But Zarathustra believes this man to be a cripple who had little of everything and too much of one thing. The cripple says, “The will cannot will backward; that it cannot break time and time’s greed—that is the will’s loneliest misery” (111). Zarathustra references a stone in front of a tomb that could not be rolled away. He argues that the will is the same, stating that no deed can be annihilated and nothing can be undone through punishment. Zarathustra is shocked at the cripple’s speech. When the cripple hears Zarathustra laugh, he asks why he speaks otherwise to his disciples than to them? Zarathustra answers, that one is allowed to speak hunched with hunchbacks. 

Zarathustra asks his disciples if they can guess his heart’s double will. His will clings to mankind because he is drawn upward to the overman. Zarathustra concedes that his love of mankind and his desire to help them have allowed him to be deceived. If he navigated through mankind searching for potential deceivers, he would easily be swept away into anxiety and fear. He states, “That is my first human prudence, that I allow myself to be deceived, in order to not be on the lookout for deceivers” (113). His second human prudence is that he “spare(s) the vain more than the proud” (113). Vain people love to perform and invent themselves, whereas Zarathustra is a spectator of life. He spares the vain because they act as physicians for melancholy. The vain person needs faith in them, believing all good things said about them whether or not they are true. This desire lies at the bottom of the heart that asks, “What am I?” (114). Zarathustra then speaks of his third human prudence, saying, “I do not allow my view of the evil ones to be spoiled by your fearfulness” (114). To fear the devil is to become estranged from the greatness of the soul and the kindness of the overman. Zarathustra suspects that some of them would even call the overman the devil. He concludes by stating that he wants to sit among them so as to not recognize himself and them. He says this is his final human prudence. 

Zarathustra says that once again he must return to the mountains and solitude. He leaves his followers with a parable. He recalls that yesterday, at the stillest hour, the ground around him faded away and a dream began. A voice spoke to him saying, “You know it Zarathustra?” (115). Zarathustra tries to convince the voice to leave him alone, but the voice continues. It tells Zarathustra that he does not matter and that he is not yet humble enough. The voice says that he who wishes to move mountains must also move valleys. Zarathustra pleads that the people have not understood his message and that they have mocked him. The voice responds, “What does their mockery matter! You are one who has forgotten how to obey; now you shall command! […] To accomplish great things is difficult; but what is even more difficult is to command great things. That is what is most unforgivable in you: you have the power, and you do not want to rule” (116). Zarathustra concedes that he lacks the courage of the lion, but the voice corrects him saying that it is the soft words of doves that change the world. Zarathustra must become a child again and lose the shame he has acquired while living among mankind. The voice tells him to return to solitude. Zarathustra weeps at the thought of leaving his friends.